The Influence Of Public Opinion On The Nixon Administration's Foreign Policy

The establishment of the country foreign policy is subjected to various factors. The UnitedStates is a democratic country which Separation of political system and the characteristics ofmultiple democratic society provide the public the opportunity of participating in foreign policy.This needs the decision makers take the public opinion into consideration while making thediplomatic decision. The government and relevant policy makers should pay high attention tohow to correctly overall evaluate the role of the public foreign policy. At the end of60’s in20thcentury, because of the international situation changes, the decline of the American hegemony,and the disastrous effects the Vietnam War brought to America, the Nixon government had tocarry on homologous adjustment to the foreign policy with realism attitude：End Vietnamese war,mollify soviet-American relations, realize the normalization of relations between China and theUnited States, and improve the relationship with Western Europe, Japan etc. This text tries to richthe research of the relationship between public opinion and foreign policy through analyzing thepublic opinion’s influence on the Nixon government foreign policy.The structure and content of this text as follows：The prolegomena mainly introduces the realistic meaning and academic meaning ofstudying the influence which the public opinion exerts on foreign policy, and the researchsituation and the research methods of this paper. The instruction briefly analyzes influencefactors which affect the Nixon government foreign policy. The main body elaborates theinfluence of the public opinion upon the Nixon government foreign policy from four parts：The first part elaborates the related theory of public opinion. Introducing the concept,classification of the public opinion and the causes of public opinion which can affect diplomaticdecision-making and the way in which public opinion influenced the foreign policy to solve thetheory problem between public opinion and foreign policies.The second part analyzes how the public opinion influenced the Nixon government foreignpolicy of socialist countries. Choosing Cuban missile events, the three meetings betweenAmerican and Soviet and the event of China’s joining the United Nations to do concreteresearches so as to inquire into how the public opinion influenced the Nixon government’smitigation policy to the socialism nation.The third part, through analyzing the influences that the public opinion exerted on theproblems of the relation between American and Europe, the economic development betweenAmerica and Japan, the Us and European defend and Japan’s Okinawa back to discuss how thepublic opinion influenced the Nixon’s capitalist countries policy.The fourth part discusses public opinion’s influences on the war policy. Focus on the analysis of the public opinion how to promote the end of the Vietnam War and the fourth war inthe Middle East.The last part is conclusion, which sums up the relationship between public opinion andforeign policy, and the apocalypse of foreign policy to China. Although the public opinion itselfhas certain limitations, it plays an important part on the foreign decision. Therefore, the decisionmaker of our country should arouse enough attention and listen to the opinion of the masses andcounteract appropriate way to guide public opinion to contribute efforts to the policy.