MAN OF THE YEAR: Nixon: Determined to Make a Difference

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the end of old patterns in international affairs. China, Japan and a newly strengthened Western Europe would play increasingly important roles in a complex, uncertain, but potentially more peaceful world having several power centers. Yet, while the old bipolar system was obviously changing, the U.S. and the Soviet Union for the near future would still remain the two real superpowers and the only nations with intercontinental ballistic missiles targeted at each other's cities. Thus one of the major questions about Nixon's China move was the extent to which it was aimed at the Soviet Union.

In the short run, it seems to have had a decidedly beneficial effect in improving U.S.-U.S.S.R. relations in 1971. The two nations reached agreement to ban biological warfare and signed a Big Four preliminary agreement to ensure freer travel between the two sectors of Berlin. Significant progress was made toward a historic agreement on limiting strategic nuclear arms; the prolonged SALT talks are expected to result in restrictions on offensive and defensive missile systems early in 1972, a major breakthrough in relations between the old cold war antagonists.

The China move also led to the scheduling of a summit meeting in May, when Nixon is due to meet Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow. No postwar U.S. President has ever been to the Soviet Union while in office. Eisenhower had his plans to go in 1960 shot down along with Francis Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane; Lyndon Johnson's trip was wiped out by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. If Nixon is able to make it to Moscow, it will be no small achievement.

As 1971 closed, a new threat to Russian-American relations rose when war broke out between India and Pakistan. The U.S. abandoned neutrality to take a surprisingly strong stand in condemning India and supporting Pakistan's brutal—and losing—military government. Russia, just as vehemently, backed India, with which it had signed a treaty of friendship during the year. Yet even in that conflict, the two superpowers covertly cooperated to limit its scope.

In sum, it was a year of brilliant beginnings for Nixon in international affairs, a year in which the U.S. clearly regained the initiative and displayed both imagination and skill.

Ill: THE DOLLAR

Nixon's freeze on most wages, prices, rents and dividends, plus his 10% surcharge on most imports—and eventually his devaluation of the dollar —were the biggest shocks of all. This was especially true because he had spoken so often, right up to the last minutes, against such measures. But in the end he was forced to act because his "steady as she goes" economic policies were not working—a fact apparent early in the year to some of his economic advisers, whose warnings were ignored.

Nixon preferred to rely on what AFL-CIO President George Meany called the Administration's "bluebirds of happiness" to proclaim that every day in every way things were getting better and better. Although most of the economic indicators looked bad, Nixon himself predicted in March: "I think we'll have a hell of a good second half." When Federal Reserve Board Chairman Arthur Burns kept urging a get-tough incomes policy, Nixon told his top domestic affairs adviser, John Ehrlichman: "Let's try to get Arthur off