“Too Dangerous to Tackle” (Nixon Tapes)
Featuring
“Too Dangerous to Tackle” (Nixon Tapes) Lyrics
Date: June 11, 1971
Time 2:40 – 2:57 p.m.
Location Oval Office
Participants: Nixon, Haldeman, and Kissinger
Haldeman: Rogers called me this morning, all concerned about the conversation last night on expropriation. He said, “You can’t do anything about that. It’s—Our national policy is in favor of expropriation.” And he’s very concerned about Connally’s view on Europe, and we can’t have— Any thought of not supporting the European Community would be a direct opposition to the President’s position.
Nixon: Well, we’re not going to do anything openly on it, but we can—
Haldeman: Yeah.
Nixon: —adjust some things behind the scenes. But on expropriation, Bill was reflecting the whole State Department attitude. We sure as hell can do something about expropriation. Don’t you agree, Henry? Should we just simply lie back and let them expropriate things around the world? Screw ‘em—
Kissinger: I think, unless we become too dangerous to tackle, there’s going to be a constant erosion of our international position.
Nixon: Right.
Kissinger: We can say what we want about [John Foster] Dulles, but in his period, people were just too afraid to tackle us.
Nixon: They didn’t monkey around with the United States.
Kissinger: And, one of the advantages the Soviets have is: anyone who wants to play domestic politics with kicking around a superpower thinks three times before he tackles the Soviets—
Nixon: That’s right.
About
Elected a year before, Chile’s Salvador Allende was moving forward on the nationalization of some industries in his country, making the revenue from the lucrative mining industry, for example, public property instead of profit for the US corporations.
Faced with what appeared to be a popular and unstoppable leftward turn in Chile, President Nixon’s team lament their unwillingness to abuse wayward nations in the way the USSR would. They reminisce about the John Foster Dulles era of international intervention, when Washington was “too dangerous to tackle” and people “didn’t monkey around with the United States.”
It should be pointed out, of course, that Chile was simply exercising their sovereign right to determine the fate of their vast mining wealth.
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- “Too Dangerous to Tackle” (Nixon Tapes)
