HE reached for a place in history by opening a dialogue with China, ending a quarter-century of vitriolic estrangement between two of the world's major powers. He embarked upon a dazzling round of summitry that will culminate in odysseys to Peking and Moscow. He doggedly pursued his own slow timetable in withdrawing the nation's combat troops from their longest and most humiliating war, largely damping domestic discord unparalleled in the U.S. in more than a century. He clamped Government controls on the economy, causing the most drastic federal interference with private enterprise since the Korean War. He devalued the dollar, after unilaterally ordering changes in monetary policy that sent shock waves through the world's markets, and are leading to a badly needed fundamental reform of the international monetary machinery.
In doing all that—and doing it with a flair for secrecy and surprise that has marked his leadership as both refreshingly flexible and disconcertingly unpredictable—Richard Milhous Nixon, more than any other man or woman, dominated the world's news in 1971. He was undeniably the Man of the Year.
Sharp Break. Each of the U.S. President's momentous moves was only a start—and each could fail. In fact, rarely have there been so many large ventures in mid-passage so late in any presidential term. Still uninspiring in rhetoric and often stiff in style, for the first time during his presidency he emerged as a tough, determined world leader. Finally seizing firm control of his office, he was willing to break sharply with tradition in his privately expressed desire "to make a difference" in his time. Should all his ventures succeed, history will indeed record not only that he made a difference but that 1971 was a year of stupendous achievement. Even now, with matters only well begun, few modern Presidents can boast of having done so much in a single twelve-month span—perhaps Lyndon Johnson with his great flood of legislation in 1965, certainly Harry Truman with the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine in 1947 and Franklin Roosevelt in the New Deal heyday of 1933.
There were, of course, others with prime roles on the world stage. Britain's Prime Minister Edward Heath, with whom Nixon met in Bermuda last week, scored a decisive and deserved victory in persuading the House of Commons to approve Britain's entry into Europe's Common Market in 1973. He thus ended an often bitter ten-year struggle, bringing a step closer Jean Monnet's grand vision of a united Europe. West Germany's Chancellor Willy Brandt won a Nobel Peace Prize for his continued efforts to reach a reconciliation between his nation and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, an Ostpolitik whose initiation helped make him TIME's Man of the Year in 1970.
Only Chou. In the nervous Middle East, Israel's Prime Minister Golda Meir and Egypt's President Anwar Sadat clung to a precarious cease-fire and flirted warily with proposals to ease tensions, while talking as pugnaciously as ever. Whatever the merits of their long-range goals, Pakistan's President Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan (now deposed) and India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi brought more suffering to the subcontinent, he by turning his troops loose in a murderous rampage against rebellious Bengalis in East Pakistan, she