Nixon Government's European Security

The international political system had been transformed from Europe system to Two-poles system after the Second World War. While withdrawing form the centre of whole world politics, the divided Europe had been the frontline during the Cold War which the two camps confronting each other. The United States looked upon the West European as "the natural allies" and regarded ensuring the stablity of European Continent as one of the vital national security goals which only inferior to the security of the U.S. local territory. Under the NATO's frame, the American nuclear umbrella and its direct succor had ensured the European continent could be maintained "peace" under the balance of power of US-Soviet. European Security was the key element of American global strategy and foreign policy, this dissertation focued on the European Security policy of the Nixon government and carried out the monographic study.At the initial stage after the Second World War, the U.S. relied on the nuclear monopolizeation, pursuing the provincial containment and the nuclear deterrent strategy in Europe, and established the Containment combing with Atlantic alliance policy style in European Security, which ensuring the stability of Europe situation and the U.S. leading position in the West. 1949-1962, the U.S. had the superiority on strategic arms, its European Security poliy emphasised on the effect of nuclear deterrent. Accompanying with the Massive Retaliation Strategy, the U.S. pushed the organization and functional ceaselessness of NATO actively, in order to improve the military integration degree of the Atlantic Alliance. In Kennedy-Johnson times , US-Soviet Union gap in strategy nuclear force had been vanished gradually, which made the U.S. lost the overwhelming single-side advantage and the Flexible Response Strategy and MLF (Multiple Force) had substituted the Massive Retaliation Strategy. The Nixon government confronted the serious crisis and had chosen the Realistic Deterrent Strategy, and tried to realize the genuine partnership with Europe allies, according to support Europe Unity, expenditure sharing and common defense. The European Security policy of the Nixon government originated from the history of the U.S. European Security policy, under the control of the complicated domestic and international situation, which obeyed and served it's global strategy essentially.In European security affairs, the Nixon government confronted a lot of difficulties such as the geographical problem, routine strength inferior, internal contradiction of alliance and heavy armament burden. Its European security policy was centered around the two basic questions: how best to achieve security and cooperation in Europe, and how to reduce both NATO and Warsaw Pact forces in Europe. On the basis of analysing the force of East and West and other main influencing factors carefully, the Nixon government had ascertained three great policies target: containment and detente, effective deterrent, the U.S. and Europe working together for expenditure sharing and common defense. Its policy foused on US-Soviet detente, SALTâ… ,Berlin agreement, CSCE ( the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe) and MBFR ( the Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions Negotiations in Central Europe). The Nixon government pursued the defense and detente stratedy, by means of making use of various diplomacy means, such as political and econmic exchanging and cooperation between East and West, in order to avoide simple military confliction, lighten its armament burden and internal pressure, reinforcing the unity of the Atlantic Alliance and ensuring the U.S. leading position.With the development of detente, US-Soviet Summit Meeting and signature of Berlin Agreement, the prerequisite of CSCE and MBFR was resloved. The U.S. hold negative attitude to CSCE initially, however because of active attitude of the Europe countries, the Nixon government adopt the CSCE to avoid be isolated in Atlantic Alliance. CSCE was a beneficial attemption of communication and cooperation between East and Weat in the Cold War. The Nixon government pursued realistic diplomacy and Linkage tactics in the preparing process of CSCE, in order to protect the West benefit and promote detente with Soviet Union. The confliction between East and West and the view diffenences in allies, which gave many difficulities to the Nixon government to pursuing its policy, and the Final Act of CSCE was not compulsory to any countries. The short-term effect of CSCE was limited but it initiated official and popular ways for communication and exchange in East-West, which had broken the barriers Soviet Union building in Europe after the Second World War and helped the West to get the Cold War victory ultimately through the penetration of politics and culture and the trial of soft power.The intention of MBFR came into being gradually in the combined action of US-Soviet arms competition and evading confliction. The Nixon government had three mainly targets in MBFR. Firstly, the U.S. wanted to make use of Soviet Union's eager for CSCE to gain whose concession on European detente and disarmament issue. Secondly, the Nixon government wanted to reduce the disparity on conventional military strength in central Europe between East and West by the disarmament negotiation.Thirdly, the U.S. wanted to pursue expenditure sharing with European allies and lighten its military budget pressure. The U.S. insisted a mutual and balanced force reductions, however the Soviet Union insisted the mutual eaqual force reductions, the two super powers had argued ceaselessly about the region of disarmament, the force type and the proportion, the schedule and affirming measure, edc. The Nixon government grasped the Soviet's eager for CSCE, having come true ultimately to agree pushing forward CSCE to get the Soviet Union ratification to MBFR in return, and realized the separate negotiation and the connected agenda successfully. Because the two bloc had the implacable benefit conflicts and highly sensitive on strength contrast, there wasn't a final disarmament scheme, and Soviet Union had still kept the superiority on conventional strength in Central Europe. The leadership monopolizing and the responsibility sharing are the inherence contradiction of the U.S. expenditure sharing policy, separatist tendency of Europe allies and their dependence on U.S. nuclear strength deepened the contradictory between Europe and the U.S. on defense problem.The increasing interdependence has been a driving force of detente, which has provided an excitation to countries cooperation and restricted some tradition forms of their competition. But the Detente Strategy was measure but not purpose. The European Security policy of the Nixon government confronted the political pressure , the economic promble, the Soviet and East factor, and European allies distrustion, which showed the effection and limitation of realistic foreign policy and the Linkage tactics. The U.S. dominance to the allies was to ensure its benefit coming true ultimately, and the Nixon government tried to hold its Europe provincialism strategy and global strategy together and hope become "the Genuine Partnership " with European allies. In the situation of strategy balance of US-Soviet Union and European revival, the U.S. hegemony management system was difficult to adopt the dyadic supervisor mode of perpendicularity simplely, but must build on the multilateral doctrine international system basis. Similar to the Detente Strategy of Nixon doctrine, its European Security policy exactly showed the essential contradictory between power and goal in U.S. diplomacy on some degree.