Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 194-027
Date: Sunday, June 25, 1972 at 10:30 AM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Colson, Charles W.
Recording device: Camp David Hard Wire
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/194-027

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite it as authoritative.

[0:02] There was a piece of the Washington Post this morning, Sunday, but that were intended to associate himself with Eisenhower's military and foreign policy period.
[0:19] To any sophisticated person, this is almost a
[0:25] so ridiculous to be laughable, right?
[0:28] On the other hand, we can be sure that the left-wing media will do their very best to try to find out that the governor's really following the line that tries to hardly prove very fair.
[0:45] This idea of, you know, hurrying hard to entice somebody who is believable, right?
[0:51] The main thing that comes to mind is Al Brunner.
[0:56] He is highly respected as Eisenhower's chief of staff, but whether or not he would step up to a political issue this time remains to be seen.
[1:03] At least he could be checked out, perhaps by somebody like Bryce Harlow, but since Bryce was gone by somebody else, we know his time is of the essence.
[1:13] Another would be Arthur Radford, who was Eisenhower's chief of staff during the period of the containment policy and the massive retaliation policy.
[1:21] In fact, period paragraph.
[1:23] In any event, the lines should be along the following colon paragraph.
[1:38] America tries to say that the United States should have a policy of massive retaliation at this time, but the Soviet Union would be substantially superior to us
[1:51] in both the military and conventional forces.
[1:58] This is totally different from the Eisenhardt concept of massive retaliation period.
[2:07] In the 1950s, that actually robbed the Eisenhardt administration until, and through the period, even the Kennedy, even the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
[2:19] the advantage of the United States over the Soviet Union was so massive that a policy of massive retaliation totally deterred aggression.
[2:31] In other words, a policy of massive retaliation will only work when you have a massive advantage over your opponent.
[2:44] A policy of massive retaliation
[2:47] ends up as a policy of mass, of mutual suicide, of, or of, uh, of mutual suicide, or putting it more bluntly, of national suicide for the United States.
[2:57] Your, uh, your potential opponent, in this case is Soviet, has forces equal to, or even in some instances superior to your own career.
[3:15] The other point that should be made is that Eisenhower's policy was one of containment of communism, a policy that was wrongly criticized by all of the MacGyver-type people in the press at that time, and which now they suddenly rediscovered as being something the type of thing that MacGyver and his party supported, period.
[3:43] In a way, probably, Eisenhower's policy was one of containment of communism, whether it was in Europe, in P.Y.
[3:51] Mansu, or in the crisis in the Mideast, in the intercession again in 1950 in Britain.
[4:02] For that matter, it's not very important.
[4:04] For that matter, in Vietnam, where Eisenhower stood firm
[4:09] on the side of the South Vietnamese against the Russians that aren't great.
[4:18] The McGovern policy on the other hand, instead of being a policy of containing communism, is one of surrendering to communism in at least Vietnam.
[4:36] And if he goes forward with his program of unilateral disarmament, one of the inevitable surrender in the world, period.
[4:51] How to handle these ideas?
[4:54] It is the only question, period.
[4:57] Perhaps the best thing to do is to have Rutger, if you can get him, or Raptor write a letter to the Post
[5:07] of setting forth tough, hard terms.
[5:09] Some of these ideas that I am trying to touch upon here have been written by one of our hardliners, Mike McKinnon, not by the softliners.
[5:24] Henry looked over only for substance, not for style.
[5:31] Another way to follow up on it is to have Goldwater or somebody of that kind in a strong, hard speech saying, my governor is liable in Eisenhardt and Eisenhardt's memory by attempting to reach out and associate his appeasement, unilateral disarmament policy with the Eisenhardt policy of a strong America and one of containing and stopping communism around the world.
[5:54] That's the end of the memorandum and the end of the table.