Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Re-configuring the free world: Kissinger, Brzezinski, and the trilateral agenda

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Journal of Transatlantic Studies Aims and scope

Abstract

Did Henry Kissinger’s 1973 ‘Year of Europe (and Japan)’—initiative fall flat? Not at all, this essay argues. By focusing on the roles of Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who together dominated much of US policymaking in the 1970s (and shared a European background), the article maintains that such initiatives as the G-7 and the CSCE reshaped the relationship between the USA and its major European allies (and Japan) in a way that reflected the changing international environment but did not dilute America’s dominant position as the leader of the ‘West’.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. For a full text of the speech: Address by the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), April 23, 1973, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XXXVIII, Part 1, Foundations of Foreign Policy, 1973-1976 (hereafter FRUS, followed by further details). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v38p1/d8.

  2. Daniel J. Sargent, A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 174. For a sample of accounts that discuss the ‘Year of Europe’ in some detail see: Aurelie Gfeller, Building a European Identity: France, the United States and the Oil Shock, 1973–1974 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012); Keith Hamilton, ‘Britain, France, and America’s Year of Europe, 1973,’ Diplomacy and Statecraft, 17, no. 4 (2006), 871–895; Jussi M. Hanhimäki, The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Catherine Hynes, The Year That Never Was: Heath, the Nixon Administration and the Year of Europe (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2009); Stephan Kieninger, Dynamic Detente: The United States and Europe, 1964–1975 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016), 226–229; Daniel Möckli, European Foreign Policy During the Cold War (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008), 140–184; Silvia Pietrantonio, ‘The year that never was: 1973 and the crisis between the United States and the European Community,’ Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 8, no. 2 (2010), 158–177; Joseph M. Siracusa and Hang Thi Thuy Nguyen, Richard Nixon and European Integration: A Reappraisal (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

  3. A point memorably made in the title of: Geir Lundestad, Just Another Major Crisis? United States and Europe Since 2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

  4. Indeed, the Year of Europe never appears in the latest massive tomes on post-war European history or the Cold War: Ian Kershaw, Roller-Coaster: Europe, 1950–2017 (London: Allen Lane, 2018) and Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A World History (New York: Basic Books, 2017).

  5. ‘The Year of Europe?’ by ‘Z’, Foreign Affairs, 52, no. 2 (1974), 248.

  6. N. Piers Ludlow, ‘The Real Years of Europe? US-European Relations during the Ford Administration,’ Journal of Cold War Studies, 15, no. 3 (2013), 136–161.

  7. See, for example, the essays in Niall Ferguson et al. (eds.), The Shock of the Global: the 1970s in Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); Sargent, Transformation, 165–228.

  8. Scholars have written surprisingly little about the contrasts between Kissinger and Brzezinski. But see: Gerry Agyris Andrianopoulos, Kissinger and Brzezinski: The NSC and the Struggle for Control of US National Security Policy (London: Macmillan, 1991); Justin Vaisse, ‘Zbig, Henry, and the New U.S. Foreign Policy Elite’, in Charles Gati (ed.), Zbig: The Strategy and Statecraft of Zbigniew Brzezinski (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). For a more extensive version: Vaisse, Zbigniew Brzezinski: America’s Grand Strategist (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), especially 117–156.

  9. On the 1960s and transatlantic relations see: Thomas A. Schwartz, Lyndon Johnson and Europe: In the Shadow of Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Geir Lundestad, United States and Western Europe Since 1945: From ‘Empire’ by Invitation to Transatlantic Drift (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), and the essays in Piers N. Ludlow (ed.), European Integration and the Cold War: Ostpolitik—Westpolitik, 1965-1973 (London: Routledge, 2007).

  10. For the latest major biography detailing Kissinger’s early career: Niall Ferguson, Kissinger, Volume I, 1923–1968: The Idealist (New York: Penguin, 2015).

  11. Henry Kissinger, The Necessity for Choice: Prospects of American Foreign Policy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), 168.

  12. Henry Kissinger, The Troubled Partnership: A Re-Appraisal of the Atlantic Alliance (New York: McGraw Hill, 1965).

  13. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Alternative to Partition: For A Broader Conception of America’s Role in Europe (New York: McGraw Hill, 1965), 1.

  14. Best known was Zbigniew Brzezinski and William Griffith, ‘Peaceful Engagement in Eastern Europe’, Foreign Affairs, 39, no. 4 (1961), 642–654. Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s Brzezinski published several other pieces in Foreign Affairs with a similar tone. See: Essays of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Foreign Affairs Anthology Series. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/anthologies/2017-05-27/essays-zbigniew-brzezinski. See also, Vaisse, Brzezinski, 228-239; Andrianopoulos, Kissinger and Brzezinski, 38–60.

  15. National Security Action Memorandum 352: Bridge Building, July 8, 1966. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v17/d15. On bridge-building in the 1960s see Mitchell Lerner,’ “Trying to Find the Guy Who Invited Them”: Lyndon Johnson. Bridge-Building and the End of the Prague Spring’, Diplomatic History, 32, no. 1 (2008), 77–103; Schwartz, Lyndon Johnson and Europe, 133–135, 210–212.

  16. For a brief comparison see: Vaisse, Brzezinski, 117–156. Fifty years later Brzezinski considered the drafting of the speech the major accomplishment of his time in the State Department. Author’s interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, March 15, 2015, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC.

  17. Brzezinski, ‘Tomorrow’s Agenda’, Foreign Affairs, 44, no. 4 (1966), 662–670.

  18. Paper prepared by the Policy Planning Council (drafted by Brzezinski), November 6, 1967. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v15/d236.

  19. ‘The Framework of East–West Reconciliation’, Foreign Affairs, 46, no. 2 (1968), 256–275.

  20. Kissinger’s and, to a much lesser extent, Brzezinski’s roles in the 1968 campaigns have been discussed at length by numerous authors. See: Vaisse, Brzezinski, 143–148; Ferguson, Kissinger, 809–834.

  21. Kissinger, American Foreign Policy, 78.

  22. Hynes, The Year that Never Was, 1–2. This is the general point in Luke A Nichter, Richard Nixon and Europe: The Reshaping of the Postwar Atlantic World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), see especially 1–6, 103–124.

  23. See Jussi M. Hanhimäki, ‘Searching for a Balance: The American Perspective’, in Ludlow, European Integration and the Cold War, 152–173.

  24. See Möckli, European Foreign Policy, 38–55. These issues are also discussed in: Kieninger, Dynamic Detente, 189–220; Angela Romano, ‘The Main Task of European Political Cooperation: Fostering Détente in Europe’, in Poul Villaume and Odd Arne Westad (eds.), Perforating the Iron Curtain: European Détente, Transatlantic Relations, and the Cold War, 1965–1985 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010), 123–142.

  25. Time, March 12, 1973.

  26. Cited in Geir Lundestad, ‘Empire’ by Integration: The United States and European Integration, 1945–1997 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 100.

  27. Cited in Luke A Nichter, Richard Nixon and Europe, 91.

  28. Ibid., 114–124; Möckli, European Foreign Policy, 141.

  29. Zbigniew Brzezinski, ‘America and Europe’, Foreign Affairs, 49, no. 1 (1970), 30. For further discussion on some of the themes in following paragraphs see Vaisse, Brzezinski, 157–212.

  30. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era (New York: Viking Press, 1970) and The Fragile Blossom: Crisis and Change in Japan (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).

  31. Brzezinski, ‘America and Europe’, 29.

  32. For a bit more detailed discussion on Brzezinski’s contacts with a number of potential Democratic Party contenders for the 1972 nomination see Vaisse, Brzezinski, 150–156.

  33. This was expressed forcefully and publicly in Brzezinski, ‘America and Europe’ and Brzezinski, ‘Japan’s Global Engagement’, Foreign Affairs 50: 2 (January 1972), 270–282.

  34. Brzezinski to Jackson, October 12, 1971. Zbigniew Brzezinski Papers, Library of Congress, Washington DC (hereafter ZBP), BOX I: 94, Folder 10: ‘Presidential Election Campaigns 1972, Jackson, Henry M.’

  35. Brzezinski to Muskie, March 6, 1972. ZBP, BOX I: 94, FOLDER 13: ‘Presidential Election Campaigns 1972, Muskie Edmund M.’

  36. Brzezinski to Humphrey, April 13, 1972. ZBP, BOX I: 94, FOLDER 9: ‘Presidential Election Campaigns 1972, Humphrey Hubert’.

  37. This can be found in Trialogue-2: A Bulletin of American-European-Japanese Affairs, November 11, 1973. http://trilateral.org//download/doc/November_1973_North_American_European_Japanese_Affairs.pdf.

  38. For details see: Dino Knudsen, The Trilateral Commission and Global Governance: Informal Elite Diplomacy, 1972–1982 (London: Routledge, 2016), 29–55. In the first decade of TriCom’s existence other prominent Americans that became members included future President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State Alexander Haig.

  39. For more details on these issues see: Knudsen, Trilateral Commission, 87–103.

  40. See: Jussi Hanhimäki, ‘“They Can Write it in Swahili”: Kissinger, the Soviets, and the Helsinki Accords, 1973–1975’, Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 1, no. 1 (2003), 37–58; Michael Morgan, The Final Act: The Helsinki Accords and the Transformation of the Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018). On the long-term impact of the CSCE see: Sarah Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011) and Daniel C. Thomas, The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of Communism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

  41. On G7 see the essays in: Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol and Federico Romero (eds.), International Summitry and Global Governance: The Rise of G7 and the European Council, 1974–1991 (London: Routledge, 2014).

  42. Knudsen, Trilateral Commission, 167.

  43. A bizarre example of how Brzezinski’s historical role has sometimes been exaggerated is evident in one book’s provocative title: Andrzej Lubowski, Zbig: The Man Who Cracked the Kremlin (Los Angeles: Open Road Distributions, 2013). See also Jussi M. Hanhimäki, ‘Threat or Opportunity? Kissinger, Brzezinski, and the Demise of the Soviet Union’, in Bernhard Blumenau, Jussi M. Hanhimäki and Barbara Zanchetta (eds.), New Perspectives on the End of the Cold War: Unexpected Transformations? (London: Routledge, 2018), 12–31.

  44. For a straightforward summary see Hynes, ‘The European Response to Kissinger’s Year of Europe Initiative’, in Hynes and Scanlon, Reform and Renewal, 129–150. See also, Nichter, Richard Nixon and Europe, 125–157 and Möckli, European Foreign Policy, 140–183.

  45. Kieninger, Dynamic Detente, 229; Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1982), 745.

  46. A point made, for example, in Barbara Zanchetta, The Transformation of American International Power in the 1970s (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

References

  1. Andrianopoulos, Gerry Agyris. 1991. Kissinger and Brzezinski: The NSC and the Struggle for Control of US National Security Policy. London: Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  2. Brzezinski, Zbigniew. 1965. Alternative to Partition: For A Broader Conception of America’s Role in Europe, 1. New York: McGraw Hill.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Brzezinski, Zbigniew. 1966. Tomorrow’s agenda. Foreign Affairs 44(4): 662–670.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Brzezinski, Zbigniew. 1968. The framework of east–west reconciliation. Foreign Affairs 46(2): 256–275.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Brzezinski, Zbigniew. 1970. Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era. New York: Viking Press.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Brzezinski, Zbigniew. 1972. The Fragile Blossom: Crisis and Change in Japan. New York: Harper and Row.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Brzezinski, Zbigniew, and William Griffith. 1961. Peaceful engagement in Eastern Europe. Foreign Affairs 39(4): 642–654.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Ferguson, Niall. 2015. Kissinger, Volume I, 1923–1968: The Idealist. New York: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Ferguson, Niall, et al. (eds.). 2010. The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Gfeller, Aurelie. 2012. Building a European Identity: France, the United States and the Oil Shock, 1973–1974. New York: Berghahn Books.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Hanhimäki, Jussi. 2003. “They Can Write it in Swahili”: Kissinger, the Soviets, and the Helsinki Accords, 1973–1975. Journal of Transatlantic Studies 1(1): 37–58.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Hanhimäki, Jussi M. 2004. The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  13. Hanhimäki, Jussi M. 2018. Threat or opportunity? Kissinger, Brzezinski, and the demise of the Soviet Union. In New Perspectives on the End of the Cold War: Unexpected Transformations?, ed. Bernhard Blumenau, Jussi M. Hanhimäki, and Barbara Zanchetta, 12–31. London: Routledge.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  14. Hynes, Catherine. 2009. The Year That Never Was: Heath, the Nixon Administration and the Year of Europe. Dublin: University College Dublin Press.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Kershaw, Ian. 2018. Roller-Coaster: Europe, 1950–2017. London: Allen Lane.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Kieninger, Stephan. 2016. Dynamic Detente: The United States and Europe, 1964–1975, 226–229. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Kissinger, Henry. 1961. The Necessity for Choice: Prospects of American Foreign Policy, 168. New York: Harper & Brothers.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Kissinger, Henry. 1965. The Troubled Partnership: A Re-Appraisal of the Atlantic Alliance. New York: McGraw Hill.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Kissinger, Henry. 1982. Years of Upheaval, 745. Boston: Little, Brown & Company.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Knudsen, Dino. 2016. The Trilateral Commission and Global Governance: Informal Elite Diplomacy, 1972–1982, 29–55. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  21. Lerner, Mitchell. 2008. “Trying to find the guy who invited them”: Lyndon Johnson. Bridge–building and the end of the prague spring. Diplomatic History 32(1): 77–103.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Lubowski, Andrzej. 2013. Zbig: The Man Who Cracked the Kremlin. Los Angeles: Open Road Distributions.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Ludlow, Piers N. (ed.). 2007. European Integration and the Cold War: Ostpolitik–Westpolitik, 1965–1973. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  24. Ludlow, N.Piers. 2013. The real years of Europe? US-European relations during the Ford administration. Journal of Cold War Studies 15(3): 136–161.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Lundestad, Geir. 1998. ‘Empire’ by Integration: The United States and European Integration, 1945–1997, 100. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Lundestad, Geir. 2005. United States and Western Europe Since 1945: From ‘Empire’ by Invitation to Transatlantic Drift. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Lundestad, Geir. 2008. Just Another Major Crisis? United States and Europe Since 2000. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  28. Möckli, Daniel. 2008. European Foreign Policy During the Cold War, 140–184. London: I.B. Tauris.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Morgan, Michael. 2018. The Final Act: The Helsinki Accords and the Transformation of the Cold War. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  30. Mourlon-Druol, Emmanuel, and Federico Romero (eds.). 2014. International Summitry and Global Governance: The Rise of G7 and the European Council, 1974–1991. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  31. Nichter, Luke A. 2015. Richard Nixon and Europe: The Reshaping of the Postwar Atlantic World. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  32. Pietrantonio, Silvia. 2010. The year that never was: 1973 and the crisis between the United States and the European Community. Journal of Transatlantic Studies 8(2): 158–177.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Romano, Angela. 2010. The main task of european political cooperation: Fostering Détente in Europe. In Perforating the Iron Curtain: European Détente, Transatlantic Relations, and the Cold War, 1965–1985, ed. Poul Villaume and Odd Arne Westad, 123–142. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.

    Google Scholar 

  34. Sargent, Daniel J. 2015. A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s, 174. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  35. Schwartz, Thomas A. 2003. Lyndon Johnson and Europe: In the Shadow of Vietnam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  36. Siracusa, Joseph M., and Hang Thi Thuy Nguyen. 2018. Richard Nixon and European Integration: A Reappraisal. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  37. Snyder, Sarah. 2011. Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  38. Thomas, Daniel C. 2001. The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of Communism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  39. Vaisse, Justin. 2013. Zbig, Henry, and the New U.S. foreign policy elite. In Zbig: The Strategy and Statecraft of Zbigniew Brzezinski, ed. Charles Gati. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  40. Vaisse, Justin. 2018. Zbigniew Brzezinski: America’s Grand Strategist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  41. Westad, Odd Arne. 2017. The Cold War: A World History. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  42. Zanchetta, Barbara. 2014. The Transformation of American International Power in the 1970s. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Chemin Eugène-Rigot 2A, Case Postale 1672, 1211, Geneva 1, Switzerland

    Jussi M. Hanhimäki

Authors
  1. Jussi M. Hanhimäki
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jussi M. Hanhimäki.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Hanhimäki, J.M. Re-configuring the free world: Kissinger, Brzezinski, and the trilateral agenda. J Transatl Stud 17, 23–41 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s42738-019-00002-4

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s42738-019-00002-4

Keywords

Search

Navigation