The world and Richard Nixon.

• Author: Fernandez, Michael A.

The World and Richard Nixon.

C.L. Sulzberger. Prentice Hall,$18.95. This is a loosely organized review of Nixon's foreign policy, based on the well-founded notion that Richard Nixon is not the beast that most Americans find him to be. That it refrains from the Nixon-bashing commonplace among American journalists is refreshing. That it takes sides is disturbing; Cy Sulzberger's many years as foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times should have produced a better balanced book, one less dependent on its subject's own writings and public statements.

No new Nixon revelations orreassessments here. Yes, Nixon, in one of his "exclusive' moments with Sulzberger, admits that dropping military conscription for the All-Volunteer Force was a mistake. But his defense is incoherent and Sulzberger simply lets his tape recorder run. Nixon also admits that his timing of the Cambodian bombings was all wrong. Along with the bombing and mining of Haiphong, he says the Cambodian bombings should have been sooner to force an earlier Paris Accord. They then should have continued, providing cover for the South Viet-namese army after a major withdrawal of U.S. military forces. Given the broad public objections to the bombings at the time, it's hard to imagine why a seasoned journalist failed to follow this up by questioning the effect that bombing might have had--and did have--on Cambodia.

As a political theorist, Sulzbergeris a realist. Yet he fails to accept the central fact that for Nixon the U.S.-Soviet conflict is ideological and power politics must account for it. Strange that Nixon, the man who developed a national reputation as a dogged anti-communist on the House Un-American Activities Committee and participated in the famous "kitchen debate' with Khrushchev, would be so...