A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s by Daniel J. Sargent

Excerpt

While the 50 years of the Cold War were laden with ideological tension ranging from the genuine fear of outright nuclear war to dramatic political upheavals affecting the day-to-day lives of millions of people, the superpower détente of the 1970s offers a different set of questions for historical analysis. In this period of relative calm in the ideological conflict, a period which also saw the impact of globalization begin to truly affect the global political and economic order, how did the superpowers position themselves internationally? Did the relative calm open up new diplomatic channels, or were previous tensions exacerbated? Daniel Sargent’s A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s seeks to address this issue head on, attempting to understand and define the many changes that took place in U.S. foreign policy during the course of the 1970s. …