Between the Bear and the Dragon: Nixon, Kissinger and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Era of Detente

Abstract

THEForeign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series has long served as an indispensable source for the study of US diplomatic history and foreign policy, and the latest publications to emerge from the Historian's Office at the State Department take the documentary record into the early years of President Richard M. Nixon's administration as some of the most dramatic events of the era of détente unfolded. The series as a whole has now undergone a number of changes since the mid-1990s, which represent, if not a full-scale renaissance, at least a significant enhancement of a major resource for modern historians. Much of this was made possible by the decision of the Historian's Office at that time to hire additional staff, permitting an expansion of activities and an intensification of research effort in ways which the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's equivalent operation can only dream of. Moreover, as the volumes covering the Lyndon B. Johnson presidency were brought to a conclusion, there was an appreciation that the volume and scope of documentation now available required a rethink of the standard publication format. Electronic versions of the print volumes would now be generated as a matter of course, and the older volumes of the Kennedy administration would also be offered in this form to any visitor to the Office of the Historian's website. Looking ahead to coverage of the Nixon-Ford years between 1969 and 1976, there would now be additional electronic-only document collections (sixteen in all) to supplement the planned forty-one print volumes—again all available free for use over the internet. The topics dealt with in the e-volumes for the early 1969–72 period include Iran and Iraq, North Africa, and Arms Control and Disarmament (excluding coverage of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty [SALT] talks, which is to be published in a print volume), while there has also been an opportunity to produce a compilation of additional documents to complement those contained in the print volume for China.1 It is also to be hoped that the microfiche supplements that were at one time generated for several earlier volumes in the FRUS series can also be provided in electronic form for internet use, as they are rarely cited by scholars but contain much invaluable material.