Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.2478/cirr-2014-0006
Foreign Policy Making and the U.S. Vision of European Integration in the Nixon Era
Hang Nguyen
; Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam
Abstract
This paper offers an insight into Washington’s foreign policy establishment and its vision of European integration under the Nixon administration. It argues that President Nixon and his National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, managed to formulate many important aspects of foreign policy at the White House. From a realist perspective, the Nixon-Kissinger team saw the emergence of a new
world order and in it the evolvement of European integration in a way different from previous U.S. administrations. The paper begins by discussing the Nixon administration’s realist approach to foreign policy before analyzing President Nixon’s determination to make decisions on foreign relations at the White House. Next, the paper examines the main features of the Nixon-Kissinger team’s vision of European integration. It concludes that, as realists, the Nixon administration supported integration in Western Europe, yet Washington was ambivalent if a united Europe with increasing self-confidence and self-assertiveness would be in the U.S. national interest. Henceforth, the European integration process had to be, in the Nixon-Kissinger view, taking place under U.S. control in the form of the consultative mechanism and the U.S. military umbrella.
Keywords
Nixon administration; European integration; foreign policy; consultative mechanism; European Economic Community
Hrčak ID:
125651
URI
Publication date:
29.7.2014.
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