“‘Winning an election is
terribly important, Henry’: Thinking about Domestic Politics and U.S. Foreign
Relations”
Thomas A. Schwartz's 2008 SHAFR
Presidential Address
In his presidential address to the
Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), Thomas A. Schwartz
referred more than once to Luke Nichter's Nixon tapes research. Schwartz's
address at the 2008 SHAFR annual meeting, held June 26-28, 2008 at The Ohio
State University, focused on the links between foreign and domestic politics,
citing Nichter's original tape research on the subject of the collapse of
Bretton Woods in August 1971.
With the recent publication of
Schwartz's president address in the April edition of the scholarly journal Diplomatic
History, scholars now have the opportunity to more fully examine his
thought-provoking thesis related to the at times intractable links between
domestic and foreign policymaking. In addition, Melvin Small of Wayne State
University recently reviewed Schwartz's address in-depth for H-Diplo
(pdf, 219k).
President Richard Nixon's unilateral
actions in knocking down the international monetary system that had been in
place since 1944 ultimately decoupled the link between gold and the dollar,
resulting in a worldwide float that began in 1973 which has continued to the
present day. The episode played a major role in U.S.-European relations and
contributed to the eventual deterioration in Nixon era transatlantic relations.
The following is an excerpt from
Schwartz's address that refers to Nichter's Nixon tapes work.
Schwartz noted:
"With
Richard Nixon, memories of his 1960 electoral defeat were haunting him,
especially after the Republican Party’s losses in the 1970 midterm election.
Oddly enough, Nixon’s decision to begin taping in February 1971
coincides with the intense concerns the President had during that year to avoid
becoming a one-term President. Consider
the August 1971 decision to end the Bretton Woods system and break the tie
between the price of gold and the dollar, beginning the system of flexible
exchange rates which remains such an important feature of the international
economy. Historians, political scientists,
and economists have endlessly debated these decisions, and their significance
for changing the global economic system – and marking an important turning
point in postwar international history – is widely acknowledged."
"Yet the decision making, as Luke Nichter’s recently completed
dissertation makes clear, was fundamentally domestic, an outgrowth of Nixon’s
own belief that Eisenhower’s acceptance of a brief recession in 1960 – in
part for international economic reasons – had doomed his earlier presidential
bid. (Or as Nixon put it, the Fed
“already screwed him once,” and he wasn’t going to let it happen again.)
Nichter’s work involves a detailed examination of the Presidential
tapes for the August 1971 decisions, and reveal Nixon’s obsession with
political dimensions of any steps he would take. As
he emphasized repeatedly to Treasury Secretary John Connally – a man who was
similarly steeped in the politics of the matter and shared Nixon’s feelings
– “our primary goal must be a continued upward surge in the domestic
economy. And we must not, in order to
stabilize the international situation, cut our guts out here.” (Nichter,
p.123)
"In dealing with a more skeptical
Arthur Burns, Nixon assured him that while he would rely on his technical
advice, politics was another matter. “I
would be the last to know what the hell this is all about,” Nixon told Burns,
“the price of gold, of exchange, two tiers, and SDR, etc. etc. etc.
I’m going to have to rely on you … as to what the technical things
are.” But then came the kicker, as so
often was the case in Nixon conversations: “On the other hand, between now and
the election in November, there must be one paramount consideration.
And that paramount consideration is not the responsibility of the US in
the world, it isn’t outgoing policy, it isn’t the fact that in foreign
policy we’ve done this, that, or the other thing, the main thing is that we
have to create the impression that the president of the United States, finally,
at long last, after 25 years with blood, sweat, and tears is […] looking after
[America’s] interests.” The
Churchillian rhetoric aside, Nixon made it clear later in the same conversation:
“Arthur, the stakes are too high here. We
cannot elect, we cannot elect, and I’m going to say quite candidly, some of
those irresponsible people that are running around the country now.
We inherited a hell of a lot of hard problems and we’re trying to
handle it as well as we can. And that
means, frankly, playing this international thing to the hilt politically.”
To listen to the complete
conversation referenced above between President Nixon, Arthur Burns, and John
Connally, click
here. (mp3, 43m)
To listen to Schwartz's complete
presidential address,
click here. (mp3,
43m)
For the complete text of Nichter's
dissertation, which received the history dissertation prize from Bowling Green
State University and is now undergoing revisions for publication, click
here.
For more information on SHAFR, click
here.
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