Summary.
After escalating U.S. involvement in Vietnam Nixon sought some arrangement through Detente which would permit American forces to withdraw, while leaving South Vietnam secure against attack. Finally, negotiating with the North Vietnamese
Richard Nixon and Detente
- Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994)
- The only president to resign the office
- Previously served as a US representative and senator from California
- Served in the United States Navy during World War II
- Nixon initially escalated the war in Vietnam, he subsequently ended US involvement in 1973
- Iinitiated détente and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union
- Nixon sought some arrangement which would permit American forces to withdraw, while leaving South Vietnam secure against attack
- March 1969 Nixon approved a secret bombing campaign of North Vietnamese positions in Cambodia
- More bombs were dropped over Cambodia under Johnson and Nixon than the Allies dropped during World War II
- By mid-1969, Nixon began efforts to negotiate peace with the North Vietnamese
- Détente
- The easing of strained relations, especially in a political situation
- Easing of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1970s
- The first time in the Cold War period that the US and the USSR worked together to lessen international tensions
- Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) treaty, agreed for both countries to halt the production of nuclear weapons