Nixon, Kissinger and Trump: Europe as a "Frankenstein Monster"
This is the slightly revised and expanded English version of an essay first published in the German daily newspaper 'Koelner Stadtanzeiger' in German on January 31, 2026.
By now it has been widely recognized that U.S. President Donald Trump holds a deeply skeptical, often openly hostile view of the European Union. He has described Europeans as adversaries who have taken advantage of the United States for decades. While the bluntness of Trump’s rhetoric is unusual, American unease about European integration is not new. Similar concerns date back to the 1960s and 1970s, when Western Europe began emerging as a serious economic competitor to the United States.
A central figure in this earlier period was the German-born Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon’s most influential foreign-policy adviser. Kissinger’s attitude toward European integration was marked by deep ambivalence and, at times, outright hostility. The sentiments which Trump often expresses in public today, Kissinger and Nixon already discussed confidentially within the walls of the Oval Office.
Kissinger in particular feared that a politically unified Western Europe could ultimately weaken American global leadership. His thinking drew heavily on 19th-century balance-of-power politics, which he had explored in his doctoral thesis A World Restored. There he praised the diplomatic system shaped by Austrian statesman Klemens von Metternich and British Foreign Secretary Viscount Castlereagh, who stabilized Europe through cooperation among sovereign states led by experienced conservative statesmen rather than through supranational institutions. Kissinger admired this model and throughout his entire career remained deeply skeptical of federalist or multilateral structures that might dilute national authority.
Henry Kissinger’s Concern about Europe as a “Third Force” in World Affairs
Kissinger’s 1965 book The Troubled Partnership served as an intellectual blueprint for the Nixon administration’s European policy. He argued that the Atlantic Alliance had become a “dialogue of the deaf,” with diverging interests. Contrary to the optimism common in Washington during the 1950s and early 1960s, Kissinger doubted that European integration would automatically produce harmonious transatlantic relations. Instead, he predicted that a truly unified Europe would eventually collide with U.S. interests. In my various conversations with him over the years, before he passed away in November 2023 at the age of 100, Kissinger reiterated this conviction, maintaining that a united Europe would almost invevitably pursue a course of confrontation with the U.S. in the long run.
When Kissinger entered office as Nixon’s National Security Adviser in January 1969, his ideas led to a shift in U.S. policy. Nixon and Kissinger publicly declared that European unity was “a task for Europeans,” suggesting Washington did not really care much whether or not a united Europe would develop. Privately, however, both men were deeply mistrustful. They feared that an economically and politically integrated Europe would become an independent “third force” in world affairs, challenging U.S. predominance.
Kissinger showed little patience for the complex institutions of the European Community and preferred direct dealings with individual national leaders. His famous complaint — “Who do I call when I want to talk to Europe?” — indicated both frustration and strategic intent. Bilateral relations allowed Washington greater leverage and the opportunity to play European states off against one another, a tactic later taken on board by Trump’s own diplomatic style.
Transatlantic Monetary Disputes: was Europe decoupling from the U.S.?
Transatlantic monetary conflicts in the early 1970s intensified these concerns. The collapse of the Bretton Woods system, currency instability, and Nixon’s nationalist economic measures pushed European governments toward closer monetary coordination. Cooperation between West German Finance Minister Helmut Schmidt and French Finance Minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing particularly unsettled Washington. Early discussions of a European monetary framework were viewed by the White House as an attempt to decouple Europe economically from the United States.
In internal debates throughout 1973, Kissinger even suggested that the administration should seek ways to undermine European unity. Nixon agreed, privately referring to the European Community as a potential “Frankenstein monster” that might one day harm American interests. The goal, as they saw it, was to tame and contain rather than encourage deeper integration. This outlook marked a significant departure from earlier U.S. policies that had actively supported European cooperation after World War II. By the early 1970s Nixon and Kissinger perceived the potential economic, monetary and political unity of Europe as a direct competitive threat, which needed to be taken very seriously and nipped in the bud.
Nevertheless, Nixon and Kissinger continued to back Western solidarity in the security sphere. During the Cold War, a strong Atlantic alliance reinforced Europe’s military dependence on American leadership and was therefore welcomed. Then, as now, Europe was deeply dependent on U.S. military protection, including Washington’s nuclear umbrella. What Nixon and Kissinger opposed was European financial and political autonomy that could dilute U.S. influence. The underlying logic was consistent: European integration was acceptable only insofar as it strengthened America’s leadership of the western alliance, not if it challenged it. A fully equal and cooperative partnership between the United States and a sovereign, unified Europe was unacceptable to Nixon and Kissinger.
This historical pattern helps illuminate later developments. Like Nixon and Kissinger before him, Trump is willing to cooperate with the EU as long as Europe submissively recognizes the supremacy of the U.S. president and does not talk back too assertively. Despite the occassional rhetoric to the contrary, under Donald Trump no truly sovereign and independent European foreign policy will be tolerated by the U.S. Still, the EU is currently a long way from being able to become a truly independent actor in global affairs in any case.
For much more information about the above and the transatlantic clashes of the 1960s and 1970s, please have a look at my book Uncertain Allies: Nixon, Kissinger and the Threat of a United Europe (Yale UP, 2022).
