Abstract
The study of the Atlantic Alliance led Kissinger to criticize US policies toward it and to advocate the creation of an Atlantic community. Hence, it was not suprising that Europeans perceived his appointment as a demonstration of Nixon’s determination to fulfill his campaign pledge to resolve the dilemmas undermining NATO unity. Few noted that Kissinger had concluded that no final solution to NATO’s strategic dilemmas is possible so long as it remains composed of sovereign states and that European and US interests are not identical everywhere. This chapter examines Kissinger’s impact on US alliance, and particularly NATO, policy by analyzing the consistency between his beliefs regarding world politics and strategy and tactics for achieving national goals and his policy preferences and/or actions as it became evident in the rationale of policies in official statements and in his memoranda to Nixon, in his approach to issues and in the agreements with allies. The impact of those beliefs on Kissinger’s behavior is also determined by analyzing their consistency with his policy recommendations after he left office.
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Notes
Nixon, US Foreign Policy for the 1970s: A New Strategy for Peace, p. 7. Hahn, “The Nixon Doctrine: Design and Dilemmas,” ORBIS 2 (Summer 1972), p. 370.
Nixon, US Foreign Policy for the 1970s: A New Strategy for Peace, p. 8; US Foreign Policy for the 1970s: Building for Peace, p. 24. Hahn, “The Nixon Doctrine: Design and Dilemmas,” pp. 369–70; and Werner Kaltefleiter, “Europe and the Nixon Doctrine: A German Point of View,” ORBIS 1 (Spring 1973), pp. 75–77.
Nixon, US Foreign Policy for the 1970s: Building for Peace. pp. 12, 26, 28. George Liska, Beyond Kissinger (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1975), pp. 64–65.
Stanley Hoffman, Primacy and World Order (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978), pp. 46–48.
Willy Brandt, People and Politics: The Years 1960–1975, trans. J. Maxwell Brownjohn (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1978), p. 285. Statement in Washington in April 1970.
Roger Morgan, The United States and West Germany 1945–1973 (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 209–10.
J. Robert Schaetzel, The Unhinged Alliance (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1975), pp. 52–53.
Kissinger, White House Years, p. 389. He stated: “not even the possibility of limited cooperation in the nuclear field was excluded.” Osgood et al., Retreat From Empire? p. 182. Richard H. Ullman, “The Covert French Connection,” Foreign Policy 75 (Summer 1989):91–92, on Kissinger’s offer to Jobert in June 1973 to assist the French nuclear program.
Wilfrid L. Kohl, “The Nixon-Kissinger Foreign Policy System and U.S.-European Relations: Patterns of Policy Making,” World Politics, vol. XXVIII, no. 1 (October 1975), pp. 27–28. Leacacos, “Kissinger’s Apparat,” pp. 25–27.
Kissinger, White House Years, p. 402. For options discussed see John Yochelson, “The American Military Presence in Europe: Current Debate in the United States,” ORBIS, XV (Fall 1971), p. 793.
Kissinger, White House Years, pp. 218–20. The NPG, created by McNamara to give Europe a voice in nuclear decisions, was composed of four permanent members, US, Britain, FRG, and Italy, and three members rotated at eighteen-month intervals. To maintain independence in nuclear matters France did not participate. Osgood et al., Retreat From Empire?, p. 167. Paul Buteux, The Politics of Nuclear Consultation in NATO 1965–1980 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 110–45.
Kissinger, White House Years, p. 87. De Gaulle’s terms: (a) a truly independent Western Europe that could play an effective international role requires freedom from NATO which perpetuates US domination. An effective political organization dictates a concert composed of France, Britain, the FRG, and Italy, but its core would be Anglo-French cooperation; (b) this required the replacement of the EEC with a broad, free-trade area especially for agricultural products; (c) to facilitate Anglo-French cooperation de Gaulle was ready to hold “private” bilateral discussions with Britain on political, economic, monetary, and financial problems; pp. 87–88, for Britain’s briefing of other allies. Edward A. Kolodziej, French International Policy Under de Gaulle and Pompidou (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974), pp. 401–3.
United States Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Policy Toward Europe (Washington: GPO, 1966), p. 137.
Press and Information Office of the Federal Government, The Quadripartite Agreement on Berlin (Bonn, 1971), pp. 12–13.
Kissinger, “The Year of Europe”, State Bulletin, vol. 68 (May 14, 1973), pp. 593–98.
Nixon, US Foreign Policy for the 1970s: Shaping a Durable Peace, pp. 92–93. Kissinger, “The United States and a Unifying Europe: the Necessity for Partnership,” State Bulletin, vol. 69 (December 31, 1973), pp. 777–82. He affirmed Europe’s global responsibilities.
Kissinger, “The United States and a Unifying Europe,” State Bulletin, vol. 69 (December 31, 1973), pp. 780–81.
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© 1991 Gerry Argyris Andrianopoulos
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Andrianopoulos, G.A. (1991). Kissinger and the Allies: Seeking a Common Policy. In: Kissinger and Brzezinski. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21741-0_10
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