1972 | Political Events
Political Events
President Nixon arrives at Beijing (Peking) February 20 with his wife, Pat, and his national security adviser Henry A. Kissinger, now 48, to confer with Chairman Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) and Premier Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai), ending the U.S. hostility toward the People's Republic of China (PRC) that has persisted since 1949. Nixon has kept his secretary of state William P. Rogers in the dark about Kissinger's negotiations (see 1973); a U.S. table-tennis team visited the PRC last year, initiating an era of "Ping-Pong diplomacy," a subsequent visit by Kissinger has paved the way for a resumption of normal relations, and Chairman Mao has invited Nixon, who 6 days earlier has ordered that U.S. trade with the People's Republic be on the same basis as trade with the USSR and Soviet-bloc nations. The PRC and the United States both seek more leverage in their opposition to Moscow.
Beijing's UN ambassador lays claim March 3 to Hong Kong and Macao and reasserts claims to the uninhabited Senkalu Islands claimed also by Japan; a PRC UN delegate charges Japan with expansionism.
Premier Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai) meets with North Vietnam's Premier Pham Van Dong to assure him that China has made no secret commitments to President Nixon with regard to Indochina, where hostilities continue.
The Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention opened for signature April 10 is the world's first multilateral disarmament treaty banning production and use of an entire category of weapons. Supplementing the 1925 Geneva protocol, it will come into effect March 26, 1975, but while it outlaws development, production, and stockpiling of bacteriological and toxic weapons and provides for their destruction it fails to establish any formal regime to monitor compliance. Soviet and U.S. scientists will continue to develop deadly chemical weapons of mass destruction (see anthrax release, 1979).
U.S. planes bomb Haiphong and Hanoi April 16. The B-52 raids are the first on the big North Vietnamese cities since 1968 and heated debate on the resumption of bombing begins in the U.S. Senate April 19 as North Vietnamese MiG-21 fighter jets attack U.S. destroyers that are shelling coastal positions.
The provincial capital Quang Tri falls to the North Vietnamese May 1, 80 U.S. advisers are evacuated, and South Vietnam's Third Division flees to the South. Saigon relieves the commander of the division, who later claims to have resigned; more than 150,000 flee the imperial capital of Hue as deserters loot the city, engage in gunfights among themselves, and set fire to the marketplace; President Thieu visits Hue and gives military police authority to shoot looters and arsonists, communist forces surround Kontum and Pleiku, Saigon fails in efforts to reopen the supply route between the two beleaguered cities, and U.S. planes mine the approaches to Haiphong while intensifying raids on communist transport lines.
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover dies at Washington, D.C., May 2 at age 77, and his body lies in state in the Capitol Rotunda before burial. He has directed the bureau for 48 years, being allowed to remain in office through special presidential dispensation despite rumors that he is a cross-dresser who holds power by keeping files on the indiscretions of leading politicians, including heads of state.
Congresswoman Bella Abzug (D. N.Y.) introduces a resolution May 9 calling for the impeachment of President Nixon following his decision to mine North Vietnamese harbors. Chinese, Soviet, North Vietnamese, and Mongolian representatives meet at Beijing (Peking) May 19 to speed aid to North Vietnam following the U.S. action in mining Haiphong and other North Vietnamese ports.
President Nixon arrives at Moscow May 22 and confers with Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev in the first visit of a U.S. president to the Soviet Union since 1945. Nixon also visits Teheran and Warsaw. The Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Systems (ABS) Treaty signed at Moscow May 26 and ratified by the U.S. Senate August 3 goes into force October 3, with the signatories pledged to have only two ABM deployment areas each, located in a way that bars them from providing a nationwide ABM defense or becoming the basis for developing such a defense. Wishing to avert an arms race in outer space and depending on mutual vulnerability (or Mutually Assured Destruction [MAD]) to keep the peace, both parties agree also to limit qualitative improvement of their ABM technology (but see Reagan, 1983).
Japan regains Okinawa May 15 after 27 years of U.S. occupation. Two U.S. hunters on Guam have discovered former Japanese Army soldier Shoichi Yokoi, 56, in January and marched him at gunpoint to a local police station. When U.S. troops took Guam in 1944, some Japanese soldiers committed suicide rather than surrender, but Yokoi and more than 1,000 others hid in the jungle; after his comrades were captured or died of starvation or disease, Yokoi lived in a cave for 27 years, surviving on fish, frogs, fruit, nuts, rats, shrimp, and snails. He is returned to Japan, given an audience with Emperor Hirohito, and marries, but while some Japanese hail him as a hero others regard his behavior as antiquated silliness.
Japan's prime minister Eisaku Sato resigns in June after 7½ years in office and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party elects machine politician Kakuei Tanaka, 54, prime minister. Unlike the Tokyo University law school professors who have held the office since World War II, Tanaka went into the contracting business straight out of high school. He sets out to "remodel the Japanese archipelago" by moving much of the nation's industry and workforce from the overcrowded Tokyo-Osaka-Nagoya area to the back country, but although his plan meets with wide popularity his contractor friends receive inside information on what is to be built where and when (see 1974).
Nepal's king Mahendra bir Bikram Shah Dev dies January 21 after an autocratic 16-year reign in which he has dissolved the elected parliament, banned political parties, but opened his country to extensive tourism. He is succeeded by his 26-year-old son, who will be crowned in February 1975 and continue his late father's policies, reigning as Birendra bir Bikram Shah Dev (see 1990).
Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) proclaims herself a sovereign state in January with Mujibur Rahman, 51, as the new nation's first prime minister (see 1971). Jailed briefly in his teens for agitating against British rule, Rahman studied law and political economy at universities in Calcutta and Dacca, cofounded the Awami League in 1949, advocating political economy for East Pakistan, and his arrest in the late 1960s incited mob violence, setting the stage for independence (but see 1975).
Ceylon becomes a republic May 22 and changes her name to Sri Lanka, but ethnic strife between the largely Buddhist Sinhalese and a mostly Hindu Tamil minority has roiled the island for decades and will intensify as the Tamils demand a separate state (see 1983).
India and Pakistan sign a treaty in July calling for peaceful negotiations over the issue of Kashmir (see 1971). India continues her claim of sovereignty over the entire state, and it remains a source of contention (see 1989). Former Indian governor general Chakravarti Rajagoplachari dies at Madras December 25 at age 93.
Philippines president Ferdinand E. Marcos declares martial law September 21 in response to an alleged "communist rebellion" (see 1965). Now 55, he closes Congress, has suspected activists arrested, and assumes the near-dictatorial powers that he will retain for 14 years, instituting a fascist-style regime that will enrich himself and his cronies at the expense of human rights (see 1981).
Australia's prime minister William McMahon resigns late in the year following the defeat of his Liberal Party by the Labor Party, which regains power under the leadership of Gough Whitlam, 56, who has been supported by publisher Rupert Murdoch and his newspaper the Australian. Murdoch denies Whitlam's charge that he has demanded to be made ambassador to London in return for his support; Whitlam will hold office until he is dismissed in 1975.
U.S. B-52s attack Hanoi for 12 days in December, dropping explosives that kill thousands and destroy almost everything except the North Vietnamese determination to survive.
Denmark's Frederik IX dies at Copenhagen January 14 at age 72 after a 25-year reign. He is succeeded by his daughter, 31, who will reign as Margrethe II.
"Bloody Sunday" January 30 in Northern Ireland sees 13 Roman Catholics shot dead by British troops at Londonderry, where riots have followed a civil rights march conducted in defiance of a government ban. The Irish Republican Army calls a general strike January 31 to protest the shootings, and an estimated 25,000 demonstrators rally in protest at Dublin February 2, destroying the British Embassy by fire. Britain imposes direct rule over Northern Ireland March 30 after years of violence between Catholics and Protestants: 467 Northern Irish are killed in the course of the year (see 1973).
The duke of Windsor who reigned briefly as Britain's Edward VIII dies of cancer at Paris May 28 at age 77.
Gunmen hired by Palestinian guerrillas shoot up Lod Airport near Tel Aviv May 30, killing 24 and wounding 76. Two of the gunmen are Japanese, two are killed by security guards, an Israeli court convicts Kozo Okamoto and sentences him July 17 to life imprisonment.
Egypt's president Anwar el-Sadat abruptly expels 20,000 Soviet advisers in July and opens a secret line of communications with Washington, hoping that the United States might influence Israel to return occupied regions in return for Egyptian help in ridding the Middle East of Soviet involvement (but see 1973).
Ghana's first president Kwame Nkrumah dies of cancer at Bucharest April 27 at age 62.
Uganda's Idi Amin asks Israel for the wherewithal to attack Tanzania, where former president Milton Obote has taken refuge and tries to regain his country through a military coup (see 1971). The Israelis refuse, and Amin travels to Libya, whose Col. Qaddafi promises to help, whereupon Amin orders 500 Israelis out of his country, aborting some major building projects as he bombs some Tanzanian towns and purges his army of Acholi and Lango officers. Printing money to cover his expenditures, Amin rages against Jews and Zionism; he announces August 5 that all Ugandans of Asian origin with British passports must leave the country within 90 days. Most of the 40,000 people involved are third-generation descendants of workers brought by the British from the Indian sub-continent; they are allowed to take with them only what they can carry, most go to Britain, and Amin launches a wave of terror against dissidents, bringing them to the Nile Mansions Hotel at Kampala for interrogation and torture as his killer squads begin a campaign of abduction, rape, and murder (see 1976).
Dahomey (later Benin) has a coup d'état in October: Mathieu Kérókou overthrows the triumvirate that has ruled since 1970 and will have himself elected president repeatedly through the end of the century (see Benin, 1975).
A U.S. Federal Election Campaign Act signed into law by President Nixon February 7 limits campaign spending in the media to 10¢ per person of voting age in the candidate's constituency and requires that all campaign contributions be reported. Both parties but especially the Republicans receive millions in contributions before the new law takes effect April 7 (see 1974).
A "confidential" memorandum released to newspapers February 29 by columnist Jack Anderson links a Justice Department settlement favoring ITT in pending antitrust suits to an ITT commitment to supply funds for the Republican National Convention to be held at San Diego.
Former congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (D. N.Y.), is flown from Bimini to Miami April 4 and dies in a hospital there that night at age 63 from complications following prostate surgery; retired Supreme Court justice James F. Byrnes dies at Columbia, S.C., April 9 at age 92.
The U.S. Central Security Service established under the 20-year-old National Security Agency (NSA) will become the nation's largest employer of mathematicians. Headquartered at Fort Meade, Md., the agency aims to promote a full partnership between the NSA, the National Cryptological School, and the military's cryptology people; its director is required by law to be a military officer.
The U.S. Navy begins using F-14 fighter planes, designed in the 1960s and built by Grumman Corp. A successor to the F-4 Phantom II jet, the new plane is powered by two Pratt & Whitney or General Electric turbofan engines capable of generating 21,000 to 27,000 pounds of thrust with afterburning and can fly at twice the speed of sound at high altitudes. The radar-intercept officer seated behind the pilot can track up to 24 enemy aircraft at distances up to 195 miles while guiding long-range missiles to six of those enemy planes. Production of the F-14 will continue until 1992.
Gov. Wallace of Alabama campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination but is shot three times at Laurel, Md., May 15 by would-be assassin Arthur H. Bremer, 22, while addressing a crowd before a forthcoming primary election. Wallace's spine is severed and he will be a paraplegic until his death in 1998; frustrated in an earlier attempt to assassinate President Nixon, Bremer is sentenced in June to a 63-year prison term for attempted murder.
The Watergate affair that will grow into the greatest constitutional crisis thus far in U.S. history has its beginnings at 2 o'clock in the morning of June 17 when District of Columbia police arrest five men inside Democratic Party national headquarters in Washington's new Watergate apartment complex. Security guard Frank Wills, 24, has found a door taped open and alerted police, who seize Bernard L. Barker, 55, James W. McCord, 42, Eugenio R. Martinez, 48, Frank A. Sturgis (Fiorini), 47, and Virgilio R. Gonzalez, 46, with cameras and electronic surveillance equipment. President Nixon's campaign manager John Mitchell states June 18 that they were not "operating either on our behalf or with our consent," but Nixon's office confirms June 19 that Barker met earlier in June with CIA official E. Howard Hunt, 53, who until March 29 had been acting as consultant to presidential counsel Charles W. Colson, 38. Nixon tells Colson June 20 that he is involved in a "dangerous job." Hunt has earlier directed CIA activities against Cuba's prime minister Fidel Castro, and three of the men arrested are Cubans, but the motive for their break-in and the source of their support remains a mystery. President Nixon meets June 23 with his chief of staff H. R. Haldeman and says, "The only way to solve this, and we're set up beautifully to do it, is for us to have [Deputy CIA Director Vernon] Walters call [FBI Director Pat] Gray and say, 'Stay the hell out of this . . . [The CIA] should call the FBI and say that, 'We wish, for the good of the country, [that you] don't [look] any further into this case.' Period" (the secret White House taping system installed by Nixon records the conversation; see 1973).
Sen. George S. McGovern, 49, (S.D.) receives the Democratic nomination for the presidency at Miami Beach (Republican operatives have aborted the campaign of Sen. Edmund S. Muskie, 58, [Me.], who had led Nixon in opinion polls). McGovern selects Sen. Thomas F. Eagleton, 42, (Mo.) as his running mate but switches to former Peace Corps director R. Sargent Shriver Jr., 56, when Eagleton turns out to have been treated for manic depression. "Peace is at hand" in Vietnam, says Henry A. Kissinger on the eve of election, and President Nixon wins reelection despite gossip about the Watergate break-in. McGovern carries only Massachusetts with its 17 electoral votes, Nixon receives 47 million votes, 521 electoral votes, to 29 million for McGovern in the most one-sided presidential election since 1936.
Barbara Jordan wins election to the U.S. House of Representatives, where she will serve her Texas congressional district for three terms. She is the first black woman ever to be elected to Congress from a Southern state.
Former congressman Martin Dies of Dies Committee (Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities) notoriety dies at Lufkin, Texas, November 14 at age 71; former president Harry S. Truman at Independence, Mo., December 26 at age 88; former Canadian prime minister (and 1957 Nobel Peace Prize winner) Lester B. Pearson of liver cancer at Ottawa December 27 at age 75.
Peru resumes diplomatic relations with Cuba. President Velasco Alvarado has chosen to part company with the U.S. policy of isolating the Cubans.
Guatemalan rebels who include Rolando Moran (Ricardo Ramírez), 41, form the Guerrilla Army of the Poor that has been inspired by the revolt of Cuba's Fidel Castro. The son of an army colonel, Ramírez uses a nom de guerre and the Indian factor in Guatemalan politics and society, arguing that the "ethnic-national struggle" is as important as the class struggle; he will help make his group the largest of the country's four leftist factions (see 1982).
Puerto Rico's governor Luis A. Ferré loses his bid for reelection as the Popular Democratic Party regains power under the leadership of Rafael Hernández Colón.