Conference

Nixon in the World: American Foreign Relations, 1969-77

Organizer: Robert McMahon, Ralph D. Mershon Professor of History

Friday-Saturday, Dec. 1-2, 2006
Mershon Center for International Security Studies
1501 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH 43201

This conference will examine U.S. foreign policy during the Nixon and Ford administrations. Topics include American grand strategy, nuclear issues and arms control, the opening to China, U.S.-Soviet relations, and the Vietnam War. Attending will be the contributors to The Dilemmas of Power: American Foreign Policy Under Nixon, Kissinger and Ford, to be published in 2007 by Oxford University Press, as well as commentators from a variety of departments at OSU and other universities.

If you would like to attend this conference, please e-mail Ann Powers no later than Tuesday, Nov. 28. Please let her know whether you are coming on Friday or Saturday, and which days you would like lunch.

Conference Schedule

Friday, December 1

8:15 a.m. -- Coffee and pastries

9 a.m. - Welcoming Remarks
Andrew Preston, Cambridge University, and Fredrik Logevall, Cornell University
Richard Herrmann, Director, Mershon Center for International Security Studies

9:30 a.m. - Panel 1: Strategy
Presenter: Jussi M. Hanhimäki, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, "The Search for a Grand Design"
Comment : Alexander Wendt, The Ohio State University
Presenter: Jeremi Suri, University of Wisconsin, Madison, "The American Grand Strategy"
Comment : Walter Hixson, University of Akron

11 a.m. -- Break

11:30 a.m. - Panel 2: Domestic Politics
Presenter: Dominic Sandbrook, Rothermere American Institute, Oxford University, "Salesmanship or Substance? The Impact of Domestic Politics and Watergate"
Comment: Alonzo Hamby, Ohio University

12:15 p.m. -- Lunch

1:45 p.m. - Panel 3: Openings in China and Europe
Presenter: Margaret MacMillan, University of Toronto, "Nixon, Kissinger, and the Opening to China"
Comment: John Mueller, The Ohio State University
Presenter: Michael Cotey Morgan, Yale University, " American Visions of Détente and the Helsinki Process"
Comment: Carole Fink, The Ohio State University

3:15 p.m. -- Break

3:30 p.m. - Panel 4: Détente and Arms Control
Presenter: Mary Elise Sarotte, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, "Contemporaneous but not Coordinated: Détente and Ostpolitik"
Comment: Ted Hopf, The Ohio State University
Presenter: Francis J. Gavin, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, "Nuclear Nixon - Successes, Failures, Puzzles"
Comment: Randall Schweller, The Ohio State University

Saturday, December 2

8 a.m. -- Coffee and pastries

9 a.m. - Panel 5: Vietnam
Presenter: Lien-Hang Nguyen, University of Kentucky, "The Vietnam War, 1969-1973"
Comment: Jeffrey Kimball, Miami University (Ohio)
Presenter: Robert D. Schulzinger University of Colorado, Boulder, "Nixon, Ford, Kissinger, and the Bitter End in Vietnam, 1973-1976"
Comment: Chester Pach, Ohio University

10:30 a.m. -- Break

11 a.m. - Panel 6: The Middle East and South Asia
Presenter: Salim Yaqub, University of California-Santa Barbara, "The Triumph of Incrementalism: Arab-Israeli Peacemaking in the Nixon-Ford Era"
Comment: Peter Hahn, The Ohio State University
Presenter: Robert J. McMahon, The Ohio State University, " The Danger of Geopolitical Fantasies: The Nixon Administration and the South Asia Crisis of 1971"
Comment: Gary R. Hess, Bowling Green State University

12:30 p.m. -- Lunch

2 p.m. -- Panel 7: The Western Hemisphere
Presenter: Mark Atwood Lawrence, University of Texas at Austin, "Policing the Neighborhood: Nixon, Ford, Kissinger, and U.S. Policy Toward Latin America"
Comment: Jason Parker, The Mershon Center and Texas A&M University
Presenter: Robert Bothwell, University of Toronto, "Not on the List: Kissinger and Canada"
Comment: Mary Ann Heiss, Kent State University

3:30 p.m. -- Break

3:45 p.m. - Closing Session
Comment: Participants, commentators, and audience

4:45-p.m. - Closing Remarks
Andrew Preston, Cambridge University, and Fredrik Logevall, Cornell University

Robert McMahon
Ralph D. Mershon Professor of History