The Year of Europe, 1972-1974

This publication was the first volume of Documents on British Policy Overseas (DBPO) and is the first to be published in digital format. It reproduces in colour some 568 scanned and fully searchable documents drawn from the records of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and other Whitehall Departments, some of which are not otherwise in the public domain. The two CDs containing the documents are accompanied by a hard-copy booklet, which includes an introductory essay and lists of abbreviations and personalities.

The volume covers three inter-related themes: Britain's entry into the European Community and its effect on the transatlantic relationship; the 1973 Arab-Israeli war; and the impact of the energy crisis on inter-allied relations.

British-US relations and US/European relations following Britain's entry into the enlarged European Community in January 1973

The Nixon Administration designated 1973 the 'Year of Europe', a diplomatic initiative aimed at refocusing US policy on Europe and redefining the transatlantic relationship. In a speech of 23 April 1973, Henry Kissinger called for a 'new Atlantic Charter setting the goals for the future'. The American initiative placed Edward Heath's Conservative administration in an awkward dilemma. Heath wanted to give priority to forging an ever-closer European economic and political union with its own distinct foreign policy but was keen to maintain traditional links with the Americans. He was anxious to allay French concern that Britain was an American Trojan Horse in Europe. The French foreign minister, Michel Jobert, was particularly suspicious of British intentions and viewed the Year of Europe exercise as an attempt by Washington to further institutionalise the relationship between the US and Western Europe. In the absence of a co-ordinated European response to his initiative, Kissinger took British statesmen and diplomats to task for their failure to 'deliver' the French.

The volume documents British diplomatic efforts to assuage a petulant Kissinger, and explain the workings of the European Community whose decision-making processes he failed to understand, and persuade a reluctant France to adopt a more constructive response to the drafting of an EC/US joint declaration defining the transatlantic relationship.

A primary aim of British diplomacy was to promote a notion of 'European Identity' based on cooperation, rather than competition, with the United States. This objective was frustrated by European doubts concerning US intentions. The Watergate affair compounded these difficulties undermining public confidence in the Nixon presidency. Christopher Ewart-Biggs, then British Minister in Paris, summarised the inherent problem of forging a new transatlantic accord. 'It is a question of trying to relate what America is to what Europe is hoping to be - a relationship between a society of aspiration and evolution with a society of actuality and even of decay, or between a partly-formed phoenix and a complete but groggy Leviathan.'

The documents also highlight the occult nature of Kissinger's diplomacy. A particular fascinating example is 'Operation Hullabaloo', the British codename for Kissinger's top secret employment of a senior British diplomat, Sir Thomas Brimelow, to draft the US/Soviet Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War without the knowledge of the State Department.

The Diplomacy of the Fourth Arab-Israeli War

Transatlantic differences were exacerbated by conflict in the Middle East. On 6 October 1973, the Fourth Arab-Israeli War broke out, a conflict that relegated the 'Year of Europe' to the periphery of international diplomacy. British policy in the Middle East had been based on persuading Israel to withdraw from Arab lands occupied in 1967 so facilitating a settlement to be reached with her neighbours. The British repeatedly urged the Americans to apply more pressure on the Israelis to persuade them that this policy was the only viable long-term solution. The Secretary of State, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, noted in June 1973, the existing deadlock could not be broken except by the United States, the only country which could exert the necessary leverage on Israel. In the absence of a settlement, he forecast that the Arabs would become 'more frustrated, radicalised and irrational'. The Egyptian and Syrian assaults on Israeli positions in Sinai and on the Golan, vindicated this analysis.

Kissinger saw matters differently, viewing the conflict as an extension of the cold war confrontation between East and West. The British and the French had more parochial concerns and became increasingly alarmed by the prospect of the Arab states seeking to exploit Western Europe's economic dependence on their oil for diplomatic ends. Britain and the US were also at odds when on 13 October Douglas-Home refused to sponsor an American draft UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in situ. Neither of the two superpowers intended to participate in the vote on the draft, and the British doubted Kissinger's claim that the Egyptians would acquiesce in such a move. Britain and its EC partners also refused to assist the US in the re-supply of arms to a temporarily beleaguered Israel. Even more disconcerting was Washington's announcement on 25 October that US forces were being placed on a 'low-level military alert' in response to reports that the Soviet Union was planning to send contingents to Egypt to reinforce a three-day-old ceasefire. To the alarm of America's allies, Donald Rumsfeld's formal communication of this information to NATO followed reports of the move in the press.

Inter-Allied Relations and the Energy Crisis

The Fourth Arab-Israeli war brought into sharp focus the dependency of the major industrialised nations of Europe and North America on supplies of oil from the Middle East. The ever-expanding demand for oil coupled with the increased readiness of the producer states to flex their economic muscle, raised the real prospect of an energy shortfall. This fear soon became reality. In the autumn of 1973, the Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries announced their decision to quadruple the price of oil on the world market. This followed an announcement in October 1973 that member-states would be reducing oil production by 5% per month until the Israelis had withdrawn from occupied territories. A selective embargo on oil supplies to countries deemed sympathetic to Israel created divisions amongst the Europeans, more particularly between the Netherlands, and to a lesser extent the West Germans, and their partners.

To alleviate the impact of the energy crisis, Britain sought to improve relations with the Arab states. British and French efforts to promote a Euro-Arab dialogue were greeted with apprehension in Washington. Wary of splitting the alliance, Kissinger favoured a common effort on the part of the Western powers to solve the energy crisis: a policy that would ultimately separate Britain from France. The British shared with the French a desire to develop new relationships between the EC and oil-producing states, but were also convinced that only the Americans had sufficient diplomatic clout to bring about a settlement in the Middle East and an easing of the oil crisis.

Ultimately, despite French reservations, Britain and its European partners agreed to participate in the US-sponsored Washington Energy Conference of February 1974. The gathering exposed profound differences between France and the other Europeans over American proposals for continuing consultations on the energy problem. More particularly, as Sir Edward Tomkins, Britain's Ambassador in Paris had predicted, it brought 'to a point of uncomfortable focus the central problem of our convergences and divergences with the French over the position of Europe vis-à-vis the United States and over the balance of our European and Atlantic connections'.

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