Preview
  • Nixon's Back Channel to Moscow

  • Confidential Diplomacy and Detente (Studies In Conflict Diplomacy Peace)
  • By: Richard A. Moss
  • Narrated by: Richard Peterson
  • Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins

Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Nixon's Back Channel to Moscow

By: Richard A. Moss
Narrated by: Richard Peterson
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $24.95

Buy for $24.95

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

Most Americans consider détente, the reduction of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, to be among the Nixon administration's most significant foreign policy successes. The diplomatic back channel that national security advisor Henry Kissinger established with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, became the most important method of achieving this thaw in the Cold War. Kissinger praised back channels for preventing leaks, streamlining communications, and circumventing what he perceived to be the US State Department's unresponsive and self-interested bureaucracy. Nixon and Kissinger's methods however, were widely criticized by State Department officials left out of the loop, and by an American press and public weary of executive branch prevarication and secrecy.

Richard A. Moss's penetrating study documents and analyzes US-Soviet back channels from Nixon's inauguration, through what has widely been heralded as the apex of détente, the May 1972 Moscow Summit. He traces the evolution of confidential-channel diplomacy and examines major flashpoints, including the 1970 crisis over Cienfuegos, Cuba, the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT), US dealings with China, deescalating tensions in Berlin, and the Vietnam War. Moss argues that while the back channels improved US-Soviet relations in the short term, the Nixon-Kissinger methods provided a poor foundation for lasting policy.

The audiobook is published by The University Press of Kentucky.

©2017 The University Press of Kentucky (P)2017 Redwood Audiobooks
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Critic reviews

"Will become an instant classic. ...It is a must listen to understand the era." (Luke Nichter, author of Richard Nixon and Europe: The Reshaping of the Postwar Atlantic World)
"This narrative is often quite gripping, with wonderfully revealing quotations from the key actors." (Jeremi Suri, author of Liberty's Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama)

What listeners say about Nixon's Back Channel to Moscow

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.