Kissinger and the Diplomacy of Coercive Linkage in the “Special Relationship” between the United States and Great Britain, 1969–1977

The majority of scholarly accounts suggest that Anglo-Americans throughout the era of détente, 1969–1977, were often fraught with difficulties. In particular, the relationship between the Nixon administration and the British government of Edward Heath is often seen as the nadir for the Anglo-American relationship during the Cold War. Nonetheless, elements of the Anglo-American “special relationship,” particularly those related to intelligence and nuclear co-operation, are often seen by scholars to have operated outside of these wider political difficulties. By utilising recently declassified documentation from both U.S. and UK archives, it is shown that both intelligence and nuclear co-operation were continually used by the United States as a means of convincing London to follow more amenable policy lines. With Henry Kissinger very much to the fore, it is illustrated how this coercive diplomacy had mixed results in achieving what Washington desired. Ultimately, this policy line would not accomplish what its main adherent, Henry Kissinger, sought.