Professor Nicole Hemmer
speaker
296 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Jun 2025
Professor Nicole Hemmer’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
This is the story of the Cold War Presidency, that it accrues more and more and more power in all sorts of ways, through the intelligence agencies, through the ability to wage war, through just the growth of the executive state. You end up having power because so much is focused on foreign policy and strategies for nuclear war.
So much of that power sits in the executive and rests on the person of the presidency. So Nixon is really the heir to power.
Nixon war überrascht von den Protesten. Er fühlte sich, als ob die Protesten illegitimiert waren. Er dachte nicht, dass die Protestanten patriotisch waren. Aber das gesagt, eine der Dinge, die Nixon während eines seiner dunklen Nachts des Sohnes gemacht hat, war, dass er runterging und mit Protestanten gesprochen hat, die in Washington, D.C. waren, die die Kriegspolitik protestierten.
So there really were these two sides of Nixon. You listen to the tapes and the secret tapes that he recorded in the Oval Office and he often says the worst things about protesters. He talks about wanting to shoot Quaker protesters in the face, despite the fact that he himself was a Quaker. But he also then goes down and he talks to these protesters who are gathered in the National Mall.
trying to have like this rap session with them to show that he hears them and sees their protests. So I think that this is part of the two sides of Richard Nixon that play out over these protests.
Right. And that conflict that's taking place within the person of the president becomes the country's conflict because of all that power he has.
He does. I mean, this is part of a celebratory moment in the Nixon presidency. It really is kind of like the climax before the day tomorrow of this presidency. Because he's coming off of this trip to China, where he's opening the U.S. to communist China. And then he has these peace talks. And he really does see himself in this moment as the person who is bringing order to the world.
And of course, behind the scenes, the negotiation is... Okay, we're going to declare peace with honor in 1973. And there's a kind of side negotiation with the North Vietnamese. They won't attack until 1975. And so you have actually what ends up being a chaotic and disorderly retreat from Vietnam that happens in 73.
And then in 75, the complete collapse, but in some of those enduring images of the U.S. Embassy being evacuated.
Yeah, it happens after he's left the White House. And he, I believe, takes credit for getting the U.S. out, right? Like, you can't control what happens in Vietnam going forward, but the U.S. got out and for a while there was some stability in Vietnam, but ultimately, you know... couldn't stay there forever.
He was fascinated by foreign policy. He was fascinated about the way that power flowed around the globe. And he had read so much on it. And he had theories about what would become known at the time as realpolitik, right, that we needed more realism in foreign policy and less ideology. And this really is a turning point. in how presidents think about the Cold War.
It had been seen in the 1950s and 60s as this clash between incompatible ideological worldviews. Nixon takes a step back and he's like, well, actually, I've talked to people in all these different parts of the world and Der Kommunismus in der Sowjetunion ist nicht das gleiche wie der Kommunismus in China.
Und in Wahrheit gibt es einen Weg, uns zwischen diesen zwei kommunistischen Supermächten zu triangulieren und sie zu verbinden und mit China zu öffnen, obwohl es eine kommunistische Regierung hat. Und so bringt er eine wirklich studierte und erfahrene Außenpolitik. Es endet einfach nicht sein, dass es sein Legitimum ist, weil von allem anderen.
He logged so many tens of thousands of miles crisscrossing the globe as Vice President. And really thought that that was going to be the launching pad for him to become President in 1960. That he could say in this very fraught moment across the globe, here was somebody who had this real experience. and could lead the US through this very precarious moment in the Cold War.
He doesn't get that shot in 1960, but then in 1968 he finally has his hand on the wheel and is eager and excited to reshape global politics.
There's this saying that comes after the opening of China, which is, only Nixon could go to China. And what that saying means is that only Nixon could do it without being red-baited by Richard Nixon. Because had an earlier president tried to do it, Nixon would have accused them of being communists. That's where he sort of built his reputation.
And in fact, the opening of China brings him into open conflict with the conservative movement in the United States, who are actually like, wait a second, we thought you were one of us, that you understood that communists were an existential threat. What are you doing, like sitting down with these butcherous enemies?
And they actually break with Nixon right ahead of the 1972 election because of this. They support minor third party candidates. But Nixon stays the course because he realizes that by the time the 1972 election is rolling around, that he's got that one. He doesn't necessarily need the William F. Buckley Juniors of the world to be on his side.
I don't think he understood where the US and China relations would be in the 21st century. He understood that there was opportunity in that moment, that there could be this new realpolitik way of viewing the power on the global stage. So I think he understood the potential of a rise in China. But I think that he was more hoping to harness opportunity.
Rather than where we are now, where the US is really entering in some ways a new Cold War with China on very different economic terms.
Showing 181–200 of 296 · page 10 of 15
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