Chapter Twenty-Nine

Limits Of A Superpower
1969-1980
Richard Nixon’s Foreign Policy
 Vietnam
• Nixon wanted to reduce US involvement in Vietnam
• Vietnamization:
– Gradually withdraw US troops and replace them with money
and weapons
– Nixon Doctrine
• All future Asian allies would receive support, but not through troops.
• Opposition to Nixon’s War Policies
– National Guard killed students at a protest
• Peace Talks, Bombing, and Armistice
– Nixon and Kissinger met with North Vietnam’s foreign minister
– Nixon bombed North Vietnam to ‘force a settlement’
– Paris Accords of January
• Promised an armistice, cease-fire, and free elections
 Détente with China and the Soviet
Union
• Reduction of cold war tensions
• Visits to China
– Led to US recognition of Communist China
• Arms Control with the USSR
– Limited Antiballistic Missiles
Nixon’s Domestic Policy
 The New Federalism
• Family Assistance Plan
– Welfare reform
 Nixon’s Economic Policies
• Stagflation
– Stagnation plus inflation. Clever, no?
• Removed the dollar from the gold standard
• Froze wages for 90 days
• 10% surplus on all trade
 The Burger Court
• Four of the Supreme Court Justices resigned,
and Nixon was able to appoint members
favorable to him
• Warren E. Burger was appointed, as was Harry
Blackmun, Lewis Powell, and William
Rehnquist
• The court that he shaped ordered him later to
turn over the Watergate tapes
 The Election of 1972
• Democratic
– Senator George McGovern
• Republican
– Richard Nixon
 WATERGATE
• Best part of the book 
 White House Abuses
• Men hired by Nixon were caught breaking into
the Watergate complex
• Wiretaps were ordered by Nixon
• A group called the Plumbers were used to stop
leaks
• They also burglarized a shrink’s office to get
information to discredit him (He published the
Pentagon Papers)
 The Watergate Investigations
• Most of Nixon’s cabinet and VP were forced to
resign
• Nixon had kept tapes of Watergate, and tried
to claim executive privilege on them
• It didn’t work xD
• Nixon faced impeachment, and later resigned
 Other Developments
• War Powers Act
– Nixon approved thousands of bombings on
Cambodia, which happened to be a neutral
territory
– The War Powers Act required the president to
report to congress 48 hours before taking ANY
military action whatsoever
 Resignation of a President
• Nixon chose to resign from the Presidency,
rather than being impeached and tried by the
senate.
Gerald Ford in the White House
 Pardoning of Nixon
• Gerald Ford gave Nixon a pardon for ‘any part
he may have played in the Watergate Scandal’
 Investigating the CIA
• During the presidency of Ford, George Bush
was hired to help reform the CIA, after it
arranged the assassination of different foreign
dictators
 Failure of US Policy in Southeast Asia
• Fall of Saigon
– Communist Vietnamese took over Saigon, and the
entire country fell to Communism
• Genocide in Cambodia
– Communist Khmer Rouge killed a million people
 The Election of 1976
• Republican
– Gerald Ford
• Democrats
– Jimmy Carter

• Carter won election

Jimmy Carter’s Presidency
 Foreign Policy
• Human Rights Diplomacy
– Andrew Young (Black) appointed as diplomat to the United
Nations
• Panama Canal
– A new treaty was made so that the canal would eventually be
controlled by the natives
• Camp David Accords (1978)
– Carter invited Egypt and Israel leaders to Camp David, where
they negotiated a treaty
• Iran and the Hostage Crisis
– Iranians took over the US embassy and held 50 Americans
hostage. The rescue helicopter was shot down, and Carter did
not manage to rescue them.
Domestic Policy: Dealing With Inflation
• Inflation reached 13%
• Interest rates were shot up to 20%
• Carter’s popularity fell to 23%
American Society In Transition
 Growth of Immigration
• 47% of immigrants came from Latin America
• 37% of immigrants came from Asia
• Less than 13% came from Europe
• An estimated 12 million immigrants came
from Latin America and Asia illegally
• Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
– Punishment for hiring illegal's
 The Environmental Movement
• 20 million people participated in Earth Day in
1970
• Power plants in Pennsylvania and Chernobyl
exploded, leading to the irritation of the
public.