1038 ★ CHAPTER 26 The Triumph of Conservatism
be sure, in the Third World, Nixon and Henry Kissinger, his national security
adviser and secretary of state, continued their predecessors’ policy of attempt-
ing to undermine governments deemed dangerous to American strategic or
economic interests. Nixon funneled arms to dictatorial pro- American regimes
in Iran, the Philippines, and South Africa. After Chile in 1970 elected socialist
Salvador Allende as president, the CIA worked with his domestic opponents
to destabilize the regime. On September 11, 1973, Allende was overthrown and
killed in a military coup, which installed a bloody dictatorship under General
Augusto Pinochet. Thousands of Allende backers, including a few Americans
then in Chile, were tortured and murdered, and many others fled the country.
The Nixon administration knew of the coup plans in advance but failed to warn
Allende, and it continued to back Pinochet despite his brutal policies. Democracy
did not return to Chile until the end of the 1980s.
In his relations with the major communist powers, however, Nixon funda-
mentally altered Cold War policies. Nixon had launched his political career as a
fierce and, critics charged, unscrupulous anticommunist. But in the language of
foreign relations, he and Kissinger were “realists.” They had more interest in power
than ideology and preferred international stability to relentless conflict. Nixon also
hoped that if relations with the Soviet Union improved, the Russians would influ-
ence North Vietnam to agree to an end to the Vietnam War on terms acceptable to
the United States.
Nixon realized that far from being part of a unified communist bloc, China
had its own interests, different from those of the Soviet Union, and was destined
to play a major role on the world stage. The policy of refusing to recognize Chi-
na’s communist government had reached a dead end. In 1971, Kissinger flew
secretly to China, paving the way for Nixon’s own astonishing public visit of
February 1972. The trip led to the Beijing government’s taking up China’s seat
at the United Nations, previously occupied by the exiled regime on Taiwan.
Full diplomatic relations between the United States and the People’s Republic
of China were not established until 1979. But Nixon’s visit sparked a dramatic
increase in trade between the two countries.
Three months after his trip to Beijing, Nixon became the first Cold War
American president to visit the Soviet Union, where he engaged in intense nego-
tiations with his Soviet counterpart, Leonid Brezhnev. Out of this “summit”
meeting came agreements for increased trade and two landmark arms- control
treaties. SALT (named for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks under way
since 1969) froze each country’s arsenal of intercontinental missiles capable of
carrying nuclear warheads. The Anti– Ballistic Missile Treaty banned the devel-
opment of systems designed to intercept incoming missiles, so that neither side
would be tempted to attack the other without fearing devastating retaliation.
Nixon and Brezhnev proclaimed a new era of “peaceful coexistence,” in which
détente (cooperation) would replace the hostility of the Cold War.