President Nixon’s foreign policy was manifested in the fact that he shifted the American ideological conflict with China and USSR towards a containment policy. Nixon foreign policy with China imperatively changed the course of US-China relations by visiting China in 1972.
Explanation:
R. Nixon repeatedly stated the necessity of changing the American approach to China during his election campaign. After winning the presidential election of 1968, the solution of foreign policy problems fell on the shoulders of the US Republican administration, which, faced with the impossibility of pursuing its foreign policy course by the old methods, was forced to start looking for new approaches that could lead America out of the crisis associated with the unpopular war in Vietnam, the rise of national liberation movements in the world and the discontent of the American public with Washington’s foreign policy.
Therefore, the Nixon administration made an attempt to partially solve the existing foreign policy problems in Asia in the Chinese direction. However, Nixon was forced to overcome serious obstacles to improving relations with the PRC. The fact is that for two decades, Americans viewed communist China as an implacable enemy. In America, it was believed that Beijing, acting in the interests of world communism, was determined to oust the United States from the western Pacific. To many, Mao Zedong seemed even more unacceptable than the Soviet leaders.
Therefore, the foreign policy of the president Nixon involved very first steps towards reconciliation with China could cause irritation within part of the political establishment and the public in the United States. However, preparations for revising Washington’s Chinese policy began in the early days of the Republican administration. On the whole, the period looked rather ambiguous in assessing the results of the foreign and military policies of the Richard Nixon administration. Despite the wide successes of Nixon foreign policy achievements, which marked by the end of the Vietnam War, the continuation of a wide dialogue with Moscow and Beijing, and the deepening of contacts with other states, the president was not able to enlist the support of his initiatives in a democratic congress.