Nick Bryant

But then in 1966, 67, he saw America becoming unglued by the Vietnam War and all the protests.

And that was horrifying to most Americans.

But to Nixon, it was a siren song.

It summoned him back to politics.

And while he had spent eight years in the wilderness, he had concluded that containment with the Soviet Union and the communists wasn't working.

And he wanted to actually,

become a peacemaker.

And when he was campaigning in 68, and I'm not a Nixon apologist.

He did some good things.

He did some bad things.

But when he was campaigning in 67, he was talking about, I'm going to be the peacemaker.

And everybody thought, oh, you know, this is just Nixon lying.

And, you know, it's just a cynical campaign ploy.

But when he did get elected,

He started reaching out to the communist Chinese, and he started reaching out to the Russians.

He wanted to do strategic armament limitations with the Soviet Union, and he wanted to open up China for diplomatic relations, because once China had become communist, once Mao had defeated Chiang Kai-shek, we just completely ostracized China.

And Nixon knew that he was gonna have to go up against the hawks.

to do this, and he knew how much power the hawks had.

And on his, I think it's the second day, he came out with National Security Memorandum Decision Two, which sounds kind of like an innocuous bureaucratic directive, but basically what he said is that the CIA, the Department of Defense, and the State Department will have no bearing on any of my geopolitical moves.

So basically, it was telling the hawks to go to hell.