Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 377 › Conversation 377-020
Nixon alone in his EOB office on National Defense and Foreign Policy
Sunday, October 29, 1972 · 11:36 AM–12:01 PM ET · Old Executive Office Building · 11 min
AI Summary
President Richard Nixon met to rehearse a formal address centered on the necessity of maintaining American military strength and global leadership. The speech outlines his administration's foreign policy philosophy, arguing against the erosion of U.S. defense capabilities and emphasizing that national power is essential for global peace and the protection of allies like Israel. Nixon frames the preservation of military superiority as a moral and strategic imperative to ensure the 1970s serve as an era of peace rather than a decline in American influence.
- National Defense
- Foreign Policy
- Military Strategy
- Presidential Address
- Cold War
- Global Security
Audio
Transcript (AI-generated)
This transcript is incomplete. The transcription skipped stretches of speech — roughly 5 minutes of this recording (about 45% of it) is represented by only a few words. Listen to the audio rather than relying on the text below; a corrected transcript is queued.
This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.
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Good afternoon, I would like to talk to you this afternoon about .
I don't
If we didn't start closing on the 1st, we would close on the 2nd.
We would close on the 3rd.
Now we stand in our own .
America's strategic environment, of course, .
Our tactical airwaves .
Developed in the .
Remember, .
Our aircraft .
They would cut the marines more than almost one foot.
Seven feet apart, 60 men per inch would be shot and reduced to the ground.
Missile modernization, proposed by Glenn Andrews, was likely to be halted.
The result would be to leave America with the second strongest army, the second strongest nation, the second strongest airport in the world.
Some might ask, what's wrong with being a second?
Isn't that the end wish of the Nationalists?
The United is always going to be number one.
The answer to that question is that the day the United States becomes the second strongest nation in the world, peace and freedom will be in business everywhere it goes.
We do not seek power for its own sake.
What we seek is to ensure that ours and mine
and its military portions are more powerful than the United States.
History is part of the community.
The war was caused not by the strength of one nation alone, but the weakness of one nation perished to the moment.
Last spring in Moscow, I signed an agreement to the limitation of all medical equipment and weapons in the part of the United States and Soviet Union.
I could never have reached that agreement.
The United States and the United States
or are we begotten stricken the way our offensive missile forces are?
If we were to take such action now, we would be strong with any chance for a further armament mission from Fulton Brown to infuse into the regard of both the public and the U.S. military and the U.S. military.
If we knew the life of the additional forces now supporting our NATO allies in North America, and those also being proposed by our allies, we would throw away the prospect of a neutral and balanced reduction in Soviet forces.
that is why
But the United States relied heavily on the policy of NAFTA for the evaluation of the 19-15 fiscal recess.
We take the gun arms and conventional forces of the day, and go back to the policy of NAFTA for the evaluation of the 19-17.
But for all of that, it's a very chaotic time for the United States on the 15-15, or even a 20-to-1 ratio of 20-15, which is very hard for conservatives.
Massive retaliation was credible then, and it was credible during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when our nuclear advantage was about 8.1.
No enemy would dare contest such open-air bombs.
However, when I gave it a watch in January 1969, I found that this massive move was superior to no longer.
stand with the abortions while the United States is standing still.
And as a result today, the United States is looking at our people.
And is that what we've done?
Totally unrealistic.
If we've been any longer very aggressive against the small nation, we're putting up with survival, and I'm aggressive against my own survival.
If our only option were a nuclear retaliation, which we believe to go through suicide with the United States,
The mutual destruction of the U.K. both sides would know.
No potential aggressor would respect America's security measures to our defense and allies on the Middle East.
The Middle East, for example, was involved in the incursion of Syrian transport into Georgia, but might have become a grave war on the premises prior to the U.K. and the movement of U.S. systems.
to Israel and drag them with power to the suburbs.
American naval security already kept them in that situation, where it would have been powerless to do so.
That is why, for the sake of Israel, and other nations, small nations, who are committed, and other small nations, as well as by our own side, we must never give up our security on the land
I just want to say that I can't change our own country's life.
An American power is an equal force in the world.
Those who say that our war policy is selfish and bad, we should be proud of the fact that in the four years before this, the United States was following through with a comprehensive strategy, according to the United States of America, and that if we rebut those orders, we're in the highest position.
there will be
yeah yeah yeah
The United States, he said, is the only nation to ever become the most powerful in the world without seeking the equivalent of freedom of speech.
This fact did not push his way into the position of world leadership in the last five generations.
That position came to us unsung.
but we have wine filled with it as well, not by ambition or greed or ideology, but only by the high ideals of the American people.
The people of America are the great power in the world, and our primary name is America.
The United States is trusted with power by all the people of the United States.
No nation, friends, or aggression
for the United States to advocate its committed role in the world in order to protect the media's responsibilities and good intentions alone, without the vacuum and the strong defense of the United States of America.
And those numbers are down that road.
That is the road which has led to a fair America, a world that remains fit on the high road
I will build and develop my five successful presidents in our country, Democrats and Republicans alike, and Franklin Roosevelt, Hillary Clinton, White House, and John McCain.
As long as I am president, I shall keep America on that road.
I shall keep this country strong over and strong economic.
And to follow the moral values and the trust of God is our ultimate goal.
Only in this way can we make certain
the 1970s will not be the twilight of American greatness, but the dawn of a new age, not a time of petty turmoil, but the beginning of a whole generation of peace for us, for all mankind.
NARA Description
On October 29, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 11:36 am and 12:01 pm. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 377-020 of the White House Tapes.
Nixon Library Finding Aid
Conversation No. 377-20 Date: October 29, 1972 Time: Unknown between 11:36 am and 12:01 pm Location: Executive Office Building The President rehearsed a speech. [A transcript of the final version of this speech appears in Public Papers of the Presidents, Richard Nixon, 1972, pp. 1065-1069]
Also recorded on October 29, 1972
- 032-086 10:20 AM · 10 sec — Charles W. Colson and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 10:20 am and 10:55 am.
- 032-087 10:20 AM · 18 sec — Charles W. Colson and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 10:20 am and 10:55 am.
- 032-088 10:20 AM · 34 sec — Charles W. Colson and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 10:20 am and 10:55 am.
- 377-016 10:55 AM · 19 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 10:55 am and 11:00 am.
- 377-017 11:00 AM · 13 sec — President Richard M. Nixon, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Edward R. F. Cox, and Tricia Nixon Cox met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 11:00 am to 11:05 am.
- 377-018 11:06 AM · 13 sec — unknown person(s) met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 11:06 am and 11:36 am.
- 377-019 11:36 AM · 10 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Manolo Sanchez met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 11:36 am and 12:01 pm.
- 377-021 11:36 AM · 7 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Manolo Sanchez met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 11:36 am and 12:01 pm.
Cite this conversation
Conversation 377-020, October 29, 1972. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/377-020 (accessed October 5, 2026).