
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 24, 1994                   TAG: 9404240120
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: B8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MARTIN KASINDORF NEWSDAY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HE LED COLD WAR

By the time he died, never charismatic and never widely beloved, Richard Nixon was remembered in the world of public policy not merely for Watergate but also for his profound impact on the history of the Cold War.

In shrewd 1972 geopolitical turnabouts, Nixon reopened communications with China and inaugurated detente with the Soviet Union, ultimately signing two major arms-control agreements with Moscow. Chinese Premier Chou En-lai called Nixon's approach to Beijing "a bridge over the vastest ocean in the world, 25 years of no communication."

"Presidents are judged by what they do in the foreign policy area, and toward peace," said Herbert Klein, Nixon's White House communications director, now editor-in-chief of Copley Newspapers. "Clearly, he has been the most moving factor toward that in this century."

Through the early Cold War, Nixon appeared unlikely to be the American politician who would peacefully reorder relations with Communist powers. In his scuffling years as an ambitious Republican in the House and Senate, Nixon played a strong role in polarizing the national political discourse by painting Democratic opponents as "soft on communism." After more than two decades of fear, only a demonstrated hard-liner like Nixon would have been allowed to hold out olive branches to Moscow and Beijing.

He did more than open up to China and the Soviets: He ultimately kept his campaign promise to bring U.S. fighting in Vietnam to an end.

He had said in 1968 that he had a "secret plan" to end the war. But to the despair of anti-war forces, it took him until the first week of his second term to achieve a peace agreement. In the meantime, four Kent State University students protesting a 1970 expansion of the war to Cambodia were killed by National Guard troops.

Student protesters infuriated Nixon. He once called them "bums." Henry Kissinger later said that in Nixon's conduct of Vietnam policy, "the ride was rougher than it need have been."

Though he never could build bridges to the young, Nixon, a mere plurality winner of the three-way 1968 campaign, had the political skills and the masterful timing to turn his foreign policy successes into a 49-state, 61 percent-majority win over Democrat George McGovern in 1972.

That moment of triumph was his peak.

Nixon's great goal in office, Harvard presidential scholar Richard Neustadt said, was "a generation of peace achieved by carefully maneuvering American forces and diplomacy and economic resources to bolster and adjust a world balance of power." Nixon dashed these hopes, Neustadt said, by "trying to entrap his real and fancied enemies, then covering up."

by CNB