The Foreign Relations of the United States series presents the official documentary historical record of major foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity of the United States Government. This volume is part of a subseries of the Foreign Relations of the United States that documents the most significant foreign policy issues and major decisions of the administrations of Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford. Five volumes in this subseries, volumes XII through XVI, cover U.S. relations with the Soviet Union. This specific volume documents United States policy toward Soviet Union from June 1972 until August 1974, following closely the development of the administration's policy of Détente and culminating with President Nixon's resignation in August 1974. This volume continues the practice of covering U.S.-Soviet relations in a global context, highlighting conflict and collaboration between the two superpowers in the era of Détente. Chronologically, it follows volume XIV, Soviet Union, October 1971- May 1972, which documents the May 1972 Moscow Summit between President Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. This volume includes numerous direct personal communications between Nixon and Brezhnev covering a host of issues, including clarifying the practical application of the SALT I and ABM agreements signed in Moscow. Other major themes covered include the war in Indochina, arms control, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSE), commercial relations and most-favored-nation status, grain sales, the emigration of Soviet Jews, Jackson-Vanik legislation, and the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

This book examines the dynamic evolution of Western détente policies which sought to transform Europe and overcome its Cold War division through more communication and engagement. Kieninger challenges the traditional Cold War narrative that détente prolonged the division of Europe and precipitated America’s decline in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Rather, he argues that policymakers in the U.S. Department of State and in Western Europe envisaged the stability enabled by détente as a precondition for change, as Communist regimes saw a sense of security as a prerequisite for opening up their societies to Western influence over time. Kieninger identifies the Helsinki Accords, Lyndon Johnson’s bridge building, and Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik as efforts aimed at constructive changes in Eastern Europe through a multiplication of contacts, communication, and cooperation on all societal levels. This study also illuminates the longevity of America’s policy of peaceful change against the background of the nuclear stalemate and the military status quo.

Winner, 2024 Book Award, Society for History in the Federal Government In 1974, the Hughes Glomar Explorer, ostensibly an advanced deep-sea mining vessel owned by reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, lowered a claw-like contraption to the floor of the Pacific Ocean. This high-tech venture was only a cover story for an even more improbable scheme: a CIA mission to retrieve a sunken Soviet submarine. Like a Jules Verne novel with an Ian Fleming twist, the saga of the Glomar Explorer features underwater espionage, impossible gadgetry, and high-stakes international drama. It also marks a key moment in the history of transparency—and not just for what became known as the Glomar response: “We can neither confirm nor deny. . . . ” M. Todd Bennett plumbs the depths of government secrecy in this new account of the Glomar mission and its consequences. Trawling through recently declassified documents, he explores the logistics, media fallout, and geopolitical significance of one of the most ambitious operations in intelligence history. Glomar, Bennett argues, played a pivotal but underappreciated role in helping the CIA ward off oversight amid a push for transparency and accountability. He reframes the operation’s history to offer an alternative perspective on the 1970s, a decade known for expansive openness, as well as the persistent tension between the demands of democracy and the need for secrecy in foreign policy. Combining keen historical analysis and gripping storytelling, Neither Confirm nor Deny brings to the surface fresh insights into the history of the security state, the politics of intelligence, and the CIA’s relationship with the media and the public.

This book re-examines the Nixon administration’s attitude and approach to the European integration project. The formulation of US policy towards European integration in the Nixon presidential years (1969-1974) was conditioned by the perceived relative decline of the United States, Western European emergence and competition, the feared Communist expansionism, and US national interests. Against that backdrop, the Nixon administration saw the need to re-evaluate its policy on Western Europe and the integration process on this continent. Underpinning this study is the extensive use of newly-released archival materials from the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, the Library of Congress, and the State Department. Furthermore, the work is based on the public papers in the American Presidency Project and the materials on the topic of European integration and unification in the Archive of European Integration. Finally, the study has extensively used newspaper archives as well as the declassified online documents, memoirs and diaries of former US officials. Mining these sources made it possible to shed new light on the complexity and dynamism of the Nixon administration’s policy towards European integration.

Most Americans consider détente—the reduction of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union—to be among the Nixon administration's most significant foreign policy successes. The diplomatic back channel that national security advisor Henry Kis

This sweeping history of the development of professional, institutionalized intelligence examines the implications of the fall of the state monopoly on espionage today and beyond. During the Cold War, only the alliances clustered around the two superpowers maintained viable intelligence endeavors, whereas a century ago, many states could aspire to be competitive at these dark arts. Today, larger states have lost their monopoly on intelligence skills and capabilities as technological and sociopolitical changes have made it possible for private organizations and even individuals to unearth secrets and influence global events. Historian Michael Warner addresses the birth of professional intelligence in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century and the subsequent rise of US intelligence during the Cold War. He brings this history up to the present day as intelligence agencies used the struggle against terrorism and the digital revolution to improve capabilities in the 2000s. Throughout, the book examines how states and other entities use intelligence to create, exploit, and protect secret advantages against others, and emphasizes how technological advancement and ideological competition drive intelligence, improving its techniques and creating a need for intelligence and counterintelligence activities to serve and protect policymakers and commanders. The world changes intelligence and intelligence changes the world. This sweeping history of espionage and intelligence will be a welcomed by practitioners, students, and scholars of security studies, international affairs, and intelligence, as well as general audiences interested in the evolution of espionage and technology.

Ronald Neumann, former US ambassador and president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, called the second edition of Career Diplomacy a "must-read for those seeking understanding of today's foreign service." In this third edition Kopp and Naland, both of whom had distinguished careers in the field, provide an authoritative and candid account of the foreign service, exploring the five career tracks--consular, political, economic, management, and public diplomacy--through their own experience and through interviews with over one hundred current and former foreign service officials. The book includes significant revisions and updates from the previous edition, such as: Obama administration's use of the foreign service; a thorough discussion of the relationship of the foreign service and the Department of State to other agencies, and to the combatant commands; an expanded analysis of hiring procedures; commentary on challenging management issues in the Department of State, including the proliferation of political appointments, the rapid growth in the number of high-level positions, and the difficulties of running an agency with employees in two personnel systems (civil service and foreign service); and a fresh examination of the changing nature and demographics of the foreign service. Includes a glossary, bibliography, and list of websites and blogs on the subject.

“The NSC, part star chamber, part gladiator arena, and part Game of Thrones drama is expertly revealed to us in the pages of Gans’ primer on Washington power.” — Kurt Campbell, Chairman of the Asia Group, LLC Since its founding more than seventy years ago, the National Security Council has exerted more influence on the president’s foreign policy decisions—and on the nation’s conflicts abroad—than any other institution or individual. And yet, until the explosive Trump presidency, few Americans could even name a member. “A must-read for anyone interested in how Washington really works” (Ivo H. Daalder), White House Warriors finally reveals how the NSC evolved from a handful of administrative clerks to, as one recent commander-in-chief called them, the president’s “personal band of warriors.” When Congress originally created the National Security Council in 1947, it was intended to better coordinate foreign policy after World War II. Nearly an afterthought, a small administrative staff was established to help keep its papers moving. President Kennedy was, as John Gans documents, the first to make what became known as the NSC staff his own, selectively hiring bright young aides to do his bidding during the disastrous Bay of Pigs operation, the fraught Cuban Missile Crisis, and the deepening Vietnam War. Despite Kennedy’s death and the tragic outcome of some of his decision, the NSC staff endured. President Richard Nixon handed the staff’s reigns solely to Henry Kissinger, who, given his controlling instincts, micromanaged its work on Vietnam. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s NSC was cast into turmoil by overreaching staff members who, led by Oliver North, nearly brought down a presidency in the Iran-Contra scandal. Later, when President George W. Bush’s administration was bitterly divided by the Iraq War, his NSC staff stepped forward to write a plan for the Surge in Iraq. Juxtaposing extensive archival research with new interviews, Gans demonstrates that knowing the NSC staff’s history and its war stories is the only way to truly understand American foreign policy. As this essential account builds to the swift removals of advisors General Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon in 2017, we see the staff’s influence in President Donald Trump’s still chaotic administration and come to understand the role it might play in its aftermath. A revelatory history written with riveting DC insider detail, White House Warriors traces the path that has led us to an era of American aggression abroad, debilitating fights within the government, and whispers about a deep state conspiring against the public.

The history of one of the most secretive segments of America’s intelligence community. Above the politics and ideological battles of Washington, DC, is a committee that meets behind locked doors and leaves its paper trail in classified files. The President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB) is one of the most secretive and potentially influential segments of the US intelligence community. Established in 1956, the PIAB advises the president about intelligence collection, analysis, and estimates, and about the legality of foreign intelligence activities. Privileged and Confidential is the first and only study of the PIAB. Foreign policy veterans Kenneth Michael Absher, Michael C. Desch, and Roman Popadiuk trace the board’s history from Eisenhower through Obama and evaluate its effectiveness under each president. Created to be an independent panel of nonpartisan experts, the PIAB has become increasingly susceptible to politics in recent years and has lost some of its influence. The authors, however, clearly demonstrate the board’s potential to offer a unique and valuable perspective on intelligence issues. Privileged and Confidential not only illuminates a little-known element of US intelligence operations but also offers suggestions for enhancing a critical executive function.

Conventional wisdom and ideologies hold that responsibility for the partition of the Republic of Cyprus in the wake of Turkey’s multiple advances on the island in summer 1974 rests on domestic ethnic and religious tensions between the Turks and the Greeks. This book, drawing on a wealth of archival material, shows that this is not the case at all. As the detailed report of the United Nations mediator, Galo Plaza, had shown in 1965, the Turks and the Greeks living on the island could easily have co-existed if left alone to determine their future. This did not happen. The partition of the island had been inscribed in NATO’s policy since the 1950s, rewarding the strongest component of NATO’s southern flank, Turkey, at the expense of Greece, the weaker component. The volume details the role of CIA agents in Greece and the machinations of the Greek junta of Dimitrios Ioannides to overthrow the charismatic leader of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios, who had been fighting for an independent and non-aligned Cyprus. It also explains how the partition of Cyprus in 1974 has opened up prospects for the partition of the Aegean Sea between Greece and Turkey, with Greece’s eastern Aegean islands becoming ‘NATOlands’ in the service of the war against Russia. The volume is an essential reading for researchers and students of the history and politics of Cyprus, Greece, Turkey and south-eastern Europe.