RICHARD NIXON

Richard Nixon went down in history as one of the United States worst presidents. Even though he did a few bad things while he was in office, most people fail to see how many good things that he accomplished. While he was president, Nixon had a lot of success in other countries with his foreign policies. But like all of America’s past presidents, he also had his flaws while he was in office.

Most people living in America at the time were against the Vietnam War. One of Nixon’s biggest successes of his foreign policies was getting the United States out of the Vietnam War. The process in which Nixon withdrew troops was called Vietnamization. This process sought to save American lives and expenses through gradual with drawl of forces from Vietnam. So some people admire Nixon by succeeding to bring all the American troops from Vietnam.

Another big success Nixon had overseas is when he reopened relations with China. Richard Nixon himself actually took a trip to China and this was a very important trip because it was the first Americans inside the borders of the People’s Republic of China. The reason this trip was also so historical was because it marked the time when the United States of America would begin to recognize the People’s Republic of China. It was the Ping Pong Diplomacy that allowed the American Ping Pong team to go to China and compete against ping pong teams from the rest of the world. The reason the United States tried so hard to create a good relationship between China and America was to put pressure on or relieve pressure with other countries.

Nixon also had great success in his effort on arms control with the Soviet Union. Part of this was SALT I. SALT stands for Strategic Arms Limitations Talks. This whole thing also lead to the Triangular Diplomacy. The three nations that were part of the Triangular Diplomacy were the United States, China, and Russia. So Nixon had great success with the USSR.

Another event that happened while Nixon was president was when his involvement with Israel eventually went on to cause an oil crisis in America that didn’t just have an effect at the time but remained to play an effect in the future. The oil crisis started when Arab nations said they would not sell oil to the United States anymore. The result of this would cause the price of a barrel of oil to quadruple. This would mark the first time that the Arab nations would use oil as a political and economic weapon.

Obviously Nixon’s biggest fail as president and the one thing that everybody knows him for today is Watergate. Nixon was involved in one of the biggest scandals in American history. It was because of Nixon’s involvement in Watergate that he became the first United States president in history to have to resign from office. It is because of this that Richard Nixon would go down in history as one of the worst presidents the United States has ever elected.