New Online Exhibit Looks at the 50th Anniversary of Richard Nixon’s 1969 Trip to Europe

Fifty years ago today, Richard Nixon embarked on the first foreign trip of his presidency. The North Atlantic Treaty of 1949 was within months of potentially unraveling, U.S.-Franco relations were at an all-time low, and no President had made a substantive trip to Europe in seven years.

President Nixon’s grand strategy for a new foreign policy in a post-war world —developed during his “Wilderness Years” and previewed in a seminal article in Foreign Affairs magazine entitled “Asia After Vietnam”— began with Europe, where he reemphasized and reestablished important Atlantic alliances, and begin a strategic pivot to the Pacific among the NATO countries.

The exhibit is curated by Dr. Luke Nichter, professor of history at Texas A&M University, Central Texas and author of Nixon and Europe: The Reshaping of the Postwar Atlantic World.