Office of the Historian

262. Memorandum From the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon1

Washington, June 21, 1971.
  • SUBJECT
    • Russian Suggestions to Use the International Monetary Crisis to Separate the United States and Western Europe

Arthur Burns has written to you at Tab A2 to report a conversation with Dr. Wolfgang Schmitz, President of the Austrian National Bank.

Schmitz reported that the Russians have recently suggested a package of three proposals in the monetary sphere:

  • —to convene a European economic conference without the U.S.;
  • —to revise the international monetary system by a new Bretton Woods conference;
  • —to find a substitute for the dollar as the world’s key currency.

Schmitz is opposed, and Burns thinks these proposals have no practical significance, but they are important as an indication that the Russians would like to use monetary questions to separate the U.S. and Western Europe.

  1. Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, Box 715, Country Files, Europe, USSR, Vol. XIII. Confidential. Sent for information. Johnston forwarded this memorandum with a memorandum to Kissinger on June 15. The memorandum from Johnston, which Sonnenfeldt cleared, recommended against forwarding Burns’s letter to Nixon. A notation and attached correspondence profile indicate that the President saw the memorandum from Kissinger on June 24.↩
  2. Attached but not printed; dated June 15.↩