The Foreign Relations of the United States series presents the official documentary historical record of major foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity of the United States Government. This volume is part of a subseries of the Foreign Relations of the United States that documents the most significant foreign policy issues and major decisions of the administrations of Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford. Five volumes in this subseries, volumes XII through XVI, cover U.S. relations with the Soviet Union. This specific volume documents United States policy toward Soviet Union from June 1972 until August 1974, following closely the development of the administration's policy of Détente and culminating with President Nixon's resignation in August 1974. This volume continues the practice of covering U.S.-Soviet relations in a global context, highlighting conflict and collaboration between the two superpowers in the era of Détente. Chronologically, it follows volume XIV, Soviet Union, October 1971- May 1972, which documents the May 1972 Moscow Summit between President Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. This volume includes numerous direct personal communications between Nixon and Brezhnev covering a host of issues, including clarifying the practical application of the SALT I and ABM agreements signed in Moscow. Other major themes covered include the war in Indochina, arms control, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSE), commercial relations and most-favored-nation status, grain sales, the emigration of Soviet Jews, Jackson-Vanik legislation, and the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

Using editorial notes to highlight key instances of U.S.-Soviet conflict or collaboration, this volume documents the first Nixon administration's global confrontation, competition, and cooperation with the Soviet Union.

After being sworn in as president, Richard Nixon told the assembled crowd that “government will listen. ... Those who have been left out, we will try to bring in.” But that same day, he obliterated those pledges of greater citizen control of government by signing National Security Decision Memorandum 2, a document that made sweeping changes to the national security power structure. Nixon’s signature erased the influence that the departments of State and Defense, as well as the CIA, had over Vietnam and the course of the Cold War. The new structure put Nixon at the center, surrounded by loyal aides and a new national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, who coordinated policy through the National Security Council under Nixon’s command. Using years of research and revelations from newly released documents, USA Today reporter Ray Locker upends much of the conventional wisdom about the Nixon administration and its impact and shows how the creation of this secret, unprecedented, extra-constitutional government undermined U.S. policy and values. In doing so, Nixon sowed the seeds of his own destruction by creating a climate of secrecy, paranoia, and reprisal that still affects Washington today.

Since the advent of the contemporary US national security apparatus in 1947, entrepreneurial public officials have tried to reorient the course of the nation's foreign policy. Acting inside the National Security Council system, some principals and high-ranking officials have worked tirelessly to generate policy change and innovation on the issues they care about. These entrepreneurs attempt to set the foreign policy agenda, frame policy problems and solutions, and orient the decision-making process to convince the president and other decision makers to choose the course they advocate. In National Security Entrepreneurs and the Making of American Foreign Policy Vincent Boucher, Charles-Philippe David, and Karine Prémont develop a new concept to study entrepreneurial behaviour among foreign policy advisers and offer the first comprehensive framework of analysis to answer this crucial question: why do some entrepreneurs succeed in guaranteeing the adoption of novel policies while others fail? They explore case studies of attempts to reorient US foreign policy waged by National Security Council entrepreneurs, examining the key factors enabling success and the main forces preventing the adoption of a preferred option: the entrepreneur's profile, presidential leadership, major players involved in the policy formulation and decision-making processes, the national political context, and the presence or absence of significant opportunities. By carefully analyzing significant diplomatic and military decisions of the Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton administrations, and offering a preliminary account of contemporary national security entrepreneurship under presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, this book makes the case for an agent-based explanation of foreign policy change and continuity.

A study of the emerging politics of peace, both as an ideal and as a pragmatic aspect of international relations during the early Cold War, this book argues that a transnational politics of peace emerged through the dynamic interaction among three global actors: Cold War states, peace advocacy groups, and anti-colonial liberationists.

The Book-3 of the series; based on recently declassified documents by the CIA , U.S. State Department, KGB after the end of Cold War and other international agencies; takes-off at the onset of the 1970s decade, when, after having developed deployed hundreds of ICBMs & SLBMs armed to the teeth with megaton-class thermonuclear warheads, both the U.S. as well as the U.S.S.R were faced with the urgent need to invest billions of dollars, once again, towards the development of Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Systems to protect themselves against the ICBMs. The Soviets, incredibly, had deployed around 1,000 heavy ICBMs hosting a massive & insane 6,000+ megatons worth of thermonuclear warheads, collectively posing a grave danger to the U.S. homeland as well as NATO allies while the U.S. had a clear overmatch in Heavy Bombers and SLBMs over the Soviets. The cost of development of a comprehensive ABM System to secure the entire U.S. had been pegged at $40 billion in the mid-1960s, equivalent of almost $400 billion today, which, still would have sparked another arms race between them. Both the superpowers, however, chose to instead negotiate to mutually limit the scope of the threat and shake hands which paved the way for détente and arms control agreements under SALT-I in 1972, a groundbreaking event, followed by the Helsinki Accords in 1975, which briefly altered the course of the Cold War...

How did the United States move from a position of nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1960s to one of nuclear parity under the doctrine of mutual assured destruction in 1972? Drawing on declassified records of conversations three presidents had with their most trusted advisors, James Cameron offers an original answer to this question. John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon struggled to reconcile their personal convictions about the nuclear arms race with the views of the public and Congress. In doing so they engaged in a double game, hiding their true beliefs behind a fa ade of strategic language while grappling in private with the complex realities of the nuclear age. Cameron shows how, despite reservations about the nuclear buildup, Kennedy and Johnson pushed ahead with an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system for the United States, fearing the domestic political consequences of scrapping both the system and the popular doctrine of strategic superiority that underpinned it. By contrast, the abrupt decline in US public and congressional support in 1969 forced Nixon to give up America's first ABM and the US lead in offensive ballistic missiles through agreements with the Soviet Union, despite his conviction that the US needed a nuclear edge to maintain the security of the West. By placing this dynamic at the center of the story, The Double Game provides a new overarching interpretation of this pivotal period in the development of US nuclear policy and a window onto current debates over nuclear superiority, deterrence, and the future of American grand strategy.

This collection of essays makes a significant contribution to the historiography of the end of the Cold War. Research on the causes and consequences of the end of the Cold War is constantly growing. Initially, it was dominated by fairly simplistic, and often politically motivated, debates revolving around the role played by major "winners" and "losers". This volume addresses a number of diverse issues and seeks to challenge several "common wisdoms" about the end of the Cold War. Together, the contributions provide insights on the role of personalities as well as the impact of transnational movements and forces on the unexpected political transformations of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Geographically, the chapters largely focus on the United States, Europe, with special emphasis on Germany, and the Soviet Union. The individual chapters are drawn together by the overarching theme relating to a particular "common wisdom": were the transformations that occurred truly "unexpected"? This collection of essays will make an important contribution to the growing literature on the developments that produced the collapse of the Iron Curtain, the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. This volume will be of much interest to students of Cold War Studies, International History, European Politics and International Relations in general.