Richard Nixon and Europe

The US-European relationship remains the closest and most important alliance in the world. Since 1945, successive American presidents each put their own touches on transatlantic relations, but the literature has reached only into the presidency of Lyndon Johnson (1963–9). This first study of transatlantic relations during the era of Richard Nixon shows a complex, turbulent period during which the postwar period came to an end, and the modern era came to be on both sides of the Atlantic in terms of political, economic, and military relations.

'In his extremely well-researched, well-written, and carefully balanced account of Richard Nixon's significant political and economic relations with Europe, Luke A. Nichter has brilliantly filled a major gap in our understanding of the administration's foreign policy.' Melvin Small, Wayne State University, 'Steeped in transatlantic archives and written for a general audience, Richard Nixon and Europe is a landmark contribution that provides the first sophisticated analysis of how President Richard Nixon fit the Western European alliance into American foreign policy and how the Nixon Doctrine extended far beyond Vietnam to Western Europe.' Irwin F. Gellman, Franklin and Marshall College, Pennsylvania, 'Impressively researched and persuasively argued, Luke A. Nichter's book fills an important gap in the literature of the Nixon presidency. Overshadowed by China, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam, Europe was nevertheless an important arena in which Nixon sought to change American policies. Nichter has written a fascinating narrative of Nixon's efforts, using the White House tapes to detail the end of the Bretton Woods system, and provided an insightful account of the divisions created between the United States and Europe over the Yom Kippur War.' Thomas Schwartz, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, 'This is the first monograph that attempts to evaluate comprehensively President Richard Nixon's impact on US-European relations … The book is based on extensive multi-archival research in the US, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, as well as the NATO, Council of Europe, and European Economic Community (EEC) archives. The author has consulted a huge spectrum of published sources, while he places special emphasis on the White House tapes, a large part of them published and co-edited by him in 2014–15. Thus, he is in a position to present an authoritative interpretation of Nixon's European policies.' Evanthis Hatzivassiliou, H-Diplo Roundtable Review, 'History does not offer repeat performances, but themes in relations between nation states and alliances nonetheless recur in modified forms. That is not the least of the lessons to be drawn from Nichter's searching and intelligent account of US foreign policy towards Europe during Nixon's Presidency.' Nigel Bowles, H-Diplo Roundtable Review

Luke A. Nichter is an Associate Professor of History at Texas A & M University, Central Texas, and a noted expert on the Nixon tapes. Nichter's books include The Nixon Tapes: 1971–1972 (co-authored with Douglas Brinkley) and book-length biographies of Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and George W. Bush for the First Men, America's Presidents series. Nichter is a former founding executive producer of C-SPAN's American History TV and his work is periodically reported on by the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Associated Press. His website, www.nixontapes.org, offers free access to all 3,000 hours of publicly released Nixon tapes as a public service.