This is the first monograph length study that charts the coercive diplomacy of the administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford as practiced against their British ally in order to persuade Edward Heath’s government to follow a more amenable course throughout the ‘Year of Europe’ and to convince Harold Wilson’s governments to lessen the severity of proposed defence cuts. Such diplomacy proved effective against Heath but rather less so against Wilson. It is argued that relations between the two sides were often strained, indeed, to the extent that the most ‘special’ elements of the relationship, that of intelligence and nuclear co-operation, were suspended. Yet, the relationship also witnessed considerable co-operation. This book offers new perspectives on US and UK policy towards British membership of the European Economic Community; demonstrates how US détente policies created strain in the ‘special relationship’; reveals the temporary shutdown of US-UK intelligence and nuclear co-operation; provides new insights in US-UK defence co-operation, and revaluates the US-UK relationship throughout the IMF Crisis.
, Richard Nixon. The devaluation of sterling On 19 October 1967, National Security Adviser Walt Rostow told Johnson that as ‘part of a last ditch British effort’ to hold sterling at $2.80, London had raised the bank rate by half a per cent. Trouble had befallen Britain despite everything. In 1966 the British had ‘moved strongly … to support the pound: they deflated their economy, cut down foreign commitments
relationship would come under severe strain. Demonstrative of this was the fact that on a number of separate occasions the most ‘special’ areas of US−UK cooperation, which related to the intelligence and nuclear aspects of the relationship, were suspended at the behest of Washington because of wider US−UK political disagreements. Indeed, by the end of 1973, it appeared as if the special relationship was at an end with both Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger declaring it to be ‘over’.2 01_Strained_partnership_001-023.indd 1 06/11/2013 12:43 2 A strained partnership? Yet
Richard Nixon (London: Jonathan Cape, 1994). 4 Stanley Kutler, Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes (New York: The Free Press, 1997), p. 458; Haig, Inner Circles, pp. 321–408. 5 On Nixon considering firing Kissinger see: Anthony Summers, The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon (London: Victor Gollancz, 2000), pp. 451–2; Chuck Colson, Born Again (New York: Crossings Classics, 1976), pp. 73–5. During this conversation with Schlesinger, Nixon reveals that he intended for Schlesinger to balance Kissinger’s domination of US foreign policy. See
2 Re-assessing foreign policy 1969–72 There could be no special partnership between Britain and the United States, even if Britain wanted it. Prime Minister Heath to President Pompidou, May 19711 The jilted lover According to Henry Kissinger, Edward Heath rejected a close working partnership with Richard Nixon, which left him feeling akin to that of a ‘jilted lover’.2 Kissinger’s analysis has had an incredible impact upon the subsequent scholarly assessments of the US–UK relationship. As Heath’s official biographer Philip Ziegler has claimed, ‘Certainly it was
events: in Forrest Gump, for example, the film splices the character of Gump into fictionalised interactions with historical figures captured in archival film images – Gump is seen shaking hands with JFK and Richard Nixon, standing on the University of Alabama steps with George Wallace and conversing with John Lennon. And in the case of Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan , the film creates a
. . . Our troops will have the best possible support in the entire world. They will not be asked to fight with one hand tied behind their backs.’ 5 Bush was seeking to put to rest a spectre that had come to haunt America’s political and military self-image, what Richard Nixon and others had called the ‘Vietnam Syndrome’. 6 The debate over American foreign policy had, according to Nixon, been ‘grotesquely
federal powers. Cooperative federalism was championed most enthusiastically during Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs in the 1960s, and it continued to grow even under the more cautious Richard Nixon, whose “new federalism” tried to remove to some extent the federal bureaucracy from its heavy involvement in state and local governments through such innovations as revenue sharing. A reaction set in with Ronald Reagan, whose “new federalism” was more like the old dual federalism in that he sought to “sort out” the responsibilities of the different levels and, in the
, the President will deliver a weekly radio address on any subject of his choice and will on important occasions address the nation via television. Newspapers still have an important role to play. They have retained the ability to pursue stories over a longer period of time and to undertake in-depth investigations, free from the pressures suffered by television and radio to report news on an hourly basis. The most famous of these investigations was the Watergate affair which, ultimately, led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. The central figures behind
unauthorised publication led to legal threats from the production office to several media outlets, including the Los Angeles Times blog and Hollywood Reporter. Another potential difficulty for Lionsgate was highlighted by Entertainment Weekly in its coverage of the making of W.65 Richard Nixon had died almost a year before Stone’s biopic of him commenced shooting in May 1995, and more than twenty years had passed since Nixon’s resignation from the presidency in August 1974. By comparison, George W. Bush was not only still a serving president, but his legacy and the future of