Caveat; Realism, Reagan, and Foreign Policy

New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1984. First Printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xiii, [3], 367, [1] pages. Illustrations. Index. Slight wear and scuffing to DJ. Inscribed by the author ("Al Haig"). Alexander Meigs "Al" Haig Jr. (December 2, 1924 - February 20, 2010) was an Army general who served as the United States Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan and White House Chief of Staff under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He served as Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, and as Supreme Allied Commander Europe. A veteran of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, Haig earned of the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star with oak leaf cluster, and the Purple Heart. Haig was White House Chief of Staff, during the height of the Watergate affair from May 1973 until Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. Haig was credited with keeping the government running while President Nixon was preoccupied with Watergate. During July and August 1974, Haig played an instrumental role in finally persuading Nixon to resign. Haig remained White House Chief of Staff during these early days of the Ford Administration. Excerpted from a review posted on-line: Reagan and Haig had seen each other three times before the Election of 1980 but on only one of these occasions, shortly before Reagan's nomination, had there been anything that might be described as a talk. Under Nixon's Presidency he had become Kissinger's indispensable deputy, fighting his bureaucratic battles and even taking his share of negotiating missions. He was Nixon's Chief of Staff during the last weeks of Watergate and had had a successful tour as SACEUR which had commended him to America's European allies. He counted as an expert in the fields of foreign policy and security in an Administration that was much lacking in those branches of expertise. The new President reputedly had a strong disposition to give priority to domestic policy and a laid-back approach to the Presidency generally: so that it was natural for Haig to suppose that he would be the one to take the foreign affairs portfolio. The trouble was that the Reagan concept of the Presidency involved the total management of his time, and of access to him, by a small group of trusted advisers, whose notion of Presidential priority for domestic affairs did not include the idea of someone else bestriding the world.