President Nixon and Foreign Policy

Opening to China

• Ping Pong Diplomacy• Forrest Gump Clip:• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB41zC3

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Opening to China

• Page 11 timeline books.• A breakthrough of sorts occurred in the spring

of 1971, when Mao Zedong invited an American table tennis team to China for some exhibition matches.

Ping Pong Diplomacy

• The players and journalists were invited to play and to cover the team’s visit, ending the information blockade of China in place since 1949.

Opening to China

• The announcement that the President would make an unprecedented trip to Beijing caused a sensation among the American people.

• Nixon's visit to China in February 1972 was widely televised and heavily viewed. It was only a first step, but a decisive one, in the growing relationship between the two states.

Detente With the Soviet Union

• Detente: an easing of relations (from tense)• The announcement of the Beijing summit

produced an immediate improvement in American relations with the U.S.S.R.—namely, an invitation for Nixon to meet with Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev in Russia.

Detente With the Soviet Union

• It was a sign that Nixon's effort at "triangulation" was working; fear of improved relations between China and America was leading the Soviets to better their own relations with America, just as Nixon hoped.

SALT Treaty

• Page 11 timeline books.• Of more lasting importance were the treaties

the two men signed to control the growth of nuclear arms. The agreements—a Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty and an Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty—did not end the arms race, but they paved the way for future pacts which sought to reduce and eliminate arms.

SALT I

• SALT I limited the number of SLBM capable submarines that NATO and the United States could operate to 50 with a maximum of 800 SLBM launchers between them. If the United States or NATO were to increase that number, the USSR could respond with increasing their arsenal by the same amount.

Yom Kippur War

• When Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on Judaism's holiest day, Yom Kippur, they were backed up by Gulf oil states that announced a price increase of 70 percent; and when Nixon asked Congress for emergency aid to Israel,

Yom Kippur War

The First Oil Embargo

• Page 23 timeline book.• Arab officials imposed a total embargo on oil

shipments to the United States. American dependence on foreign oil meant the crisis would not be resolved on military terms alone.

Watergate Document Activity

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml6o40s9R-A