Nixon and Israel

Geopolitics alone, Noam Kochavi argues, cannot explain how Richard Nixon came to see Israel during the early 1970s. Drawing on recently declassified American and Israeli documents, he looks at the emotional and psychological side of the relationship: how choices Israel made outside the Middle East registered with senior American leaders, and how alert Israel proved to Nixon's own preoccupations, an honourable exit from Vietnam and winning re-election.

Kochavi also challenges a contested claim, that Israeli and American Jewish leaders worked together to steer American foreign policy in Israel's favour. His reading of the archives points the other way: Israel's policies did shift Nixon's view of the country, but they were pursued despite American Jewish disapproval rather than in concert with it. A concise, carefully argued study for anyone interested in Cold War diplomacy and the inner workings of the Nixon White House.