4). With this message, President Reagan put America on the offensive for fighting against Communism, which differed from Nixon, who took the less violent approach to solving the problem.Nixon had failed to ameliorate the problem in Vietnam through Vietnamization because he decided to invade Cambodia on April 30, 1970 therefore extending the war to peripheral countries rather than shrinking U.S. involvement as was originally planned. The Cambodia Incursion sparked much anti-war action at home and the infamous Kent State University incident ensued, where four students were killed. The result of the Cambodia Incursion consisted of the Communist North Vietnamese moving into the area occupied by the Americans, thus moving closer to the South Vietnamese army and indicating the failure of the attempted containment. It took Nixon one more lesson to change his foreign policy, this time the South Vietnamese invaded Communist bases in Laos in February 1971 and fought without the help of American troops. It resulted in failure by the South Vietnamese and “by the middle of the year, the Communists controlled more of Laos than before” (LPW, 466).The change that followed in foreign policy for Nixon resulted in a string of international successes at containing Communism, by realizing that there were five economic superpowers in the world: U.S., Japan, China, Russia, EEC. His first move was to befriend China and consequently use this friendship to contain Communist Russia. Nixon was the first American President to visit China and the people at home overwhelmingly applauded this effort. He succeeded in containing Communism by getting Russia and China out of the way due to the American shipment of desperately needed wheat to both countries, consequently pitting the two largest Communist powers against each other for American favors. Therefore when Nixon responded to a North Vietnam offensive in April 1972 with the heaviest bombing of ...
