Nixon Repudiated.

As Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974, Kissinger told him that his foreign-policy achievements would assure him a positive place in history. The achievements seemed substantial: detente with the Soviet Union; the opening to China; withdrawal from Vietnam; a brokered peace in the Middle East. Already, however, Nixon's foreign policy had come under considerable fire, and by the end of the 1970s his policies appeared repudiated. Southeast Asia fell to communism, and detente with the Soviet Union was abandoned. Triangular diplomacy was dead, and the Cold War returned.

Attack from the Right.

Members of Nixon's own party were the first to repudiate his foreign policy. Conservative Republicans, sensitive to defense issues and concerned with the country's standing among the world powers, were deeply shaken by the fall of South Vietnam to the Communists. Postwar reductions in defense spending increased...