Primacy in Peril: American Grand Strategy Under Détente

Abstract

The previous chapter demonstrated how the US grand strategy of “containment” after 1945 was not simply designed to ensure an indefinite “balance of power” between the United States and the Soviet Union but rather to “win” the Cold War and achieve the full extension of the political and economic Open Door worlds as the best means of ensuring American national security. Under the Kennedy and Johnson administration’s this had resulted in American misadventure and over-commitment in Vietnam. The Nixon administration sought means to extricate the United States from Vietnam without undue damage to both its position in the competition with the Soviet Union and its credibility with allies. The chapter argues that Nixon and his National Security Advisor (and from 1973 Secretary of State), Henry Kissinger, conceived of détente as a means of withdrawing the United States from over-exposed positions geopolitically and militarily and establishing a new equilibrium that protected the country’s international position. As such it shared much with George F. Kennan’s original formulation of “containment” through its preeminent focus on US–Soviet relations, a “strong point” defence of American interests and desire for a stable international order.