"Russian Federation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, History and Records Department" -- p [vi].

In the 1970s, the United States faced challenges on a number of fronts. By nearly every measure, American power was no longer unrivalled. The task of managing America's relative decline fell to President Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Gerald Ford. From 1969 to 1977, Nixon, Kissinger, and Ford reoriented U.S. foreign policy from its traditional poles of liberal interventionism and conservative isolationism into a policy of active but conservative engagement. In Nixon in the World, seventeen leading historians of the Cold War and U.S. foreign policy show how they did it, where they succeeded, and where they took their new strategy too far. Drawing on newly declassified materials, they provide authoritative and compelling analyses of issues such as Vietnam, détente, arms control, and the U.S.-China rapprochement, creating the first comprehensive volume on American foreign policy in this pivotal era.

Examines American foreign policy and diplomacy in the decade following World War II.

Relations between China and the United States have been of central importance to both countries over the past half century. Offers the first multinational, multi archival review of the history of Chinese-American conflict and cooperation in the 1970s.

An important new cultural study of the Cold War, Guolin Yi’s The Media and Sino-American Rapprochement, 1963–1972 analyzes how the media in both countries shaped public perceptions of the changing relations between China and the United States in the decade prior to Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing. This book offers the first systematic study of Cankao Xiaoxi (Reference News), an internal Chinese newspaper that carried relatively objective stories the Xinhua News Agency translated from world news media for circulation among Communist cadres. As the main channel for the cadres to learn about the outside world, this newspaper provides a window into China’s evolving foreign policy, including the reception of signals from the Nixon administration. Yi compares this internal communications channel with the public accounts contained in the more widely circulated newspaper People’s Daily, a chief propaganda outlet of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) directed at its own people and China watchers all over the world. A third level of communication emerges in classified CCP instructions and government documents. By approaching the Chinese communication system on three levels—internal, public, and classified—Yi’s analysis demonstrates how people at different positions in the political hierarchy accessed varying types of information, allowing him to chart the development of Beijing’s approach to the U.S. government. In a corresponding analysis of the defining features of American reporting on China, Yi considers the impact of government-media relationships in the United States during the Cold War. Alongside prominent magazines and newspapers, particularly the New York Times and the Washington Post in their differing coverage of key events, Yi discusses television networks, which proved vital for promoting the success of Ping-Pong Diplomacy and the impact of Nixon’s visit in 1972. With its comparative study of news outlets in the two countries, The Media and Sino-American Rapprochement, 1963–1972 presents a thorough and comprehensive perspective on the role of the media in influencing domestic Chinese and American public opinion during a critical decade.

During the 2008 election season, the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates both aspired to be understood as foreign policy "realists" in the mold of Henry Kissinger. Kissinger, who is distrusted on the neoconservative right for his skepticism about American exceptionalism and on the liberal left for his amoral, realpolitik approach, once again stood as the sage of foreign relations and the wise man who rises above partisan politics. In The Eccentric Realist, Mario Del Pero questions this depiction of Kissinger. Lauded as the foreign policy realist par excellence, Kissinger, as Del Pero shows, has been far more ideological and inconsistent in his policy formulations than is commonly realized.Del Pero considers the rise and fall of Kissinger's foreign policy doctrine over the course of the 1970s—beginning with his role as National Security Advisor to Nixon and ending with the collapse of détente with the Soviet Union after Kissinger left the scene as Ford's outgoing Secretary of State. Del Pero shows that realism then (not unlike realism now) was as much a response to domestic politics as it was a cold, hard assessment of the facts of international relations. In the early 1970s, Americans were weary of ideological forays abroad; Kissinger provided them with a doctrine that translated that political weariness into foreign policy. Del Pero argues that Kissinger was keenly aware that realism could win elections and generate consensus. Moreover, over the course of the 1970s it became clear that realism, as practiced by Kissinger, was as rigid as the neoconservativism that came to replace it.In the end, the failure of the détente forged by the realists was not the defeat of cool reason at the hands of ideologically motivated and politically savvy neoconservatives. Rather, the force of American exceptionalism, the touchstone of the neocons, overcame Kissinger's political skills and ideological commitments. The fate of realism in the 1970s raises interesting questions regarding its prospects in the early years of the twenty-first century.

Originally published in 1957—years before he was Secretary of State and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize—, Henry Kissinger wrote A World Restored, to understand and explain one of history’s most important and dramatic periods; a time when Europe went from political chaos to a balanced peace that lasted for almost a hundred years. After the fall of Napoleon, European diplomats gathered in a festive Vienna with the task of restoring stability following the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. The central figures at the Congress of Vienna were the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, Viscount Castlereagh and the Foreign Minister of Austria Klemens Wenzel von Mettern Metternich. Castlereagh was primarily concerned with maintaining balanced powers, while Metternich based his diplomacy on the idea of legitimacy—that is, establishing and working with governments that citizens accept without force. The peace they brokered lasted until the outbreak of World War I. Through trenchant analysis of the history and forces that create stability, A World Restored gives insight into how to create long-lasting geopolitical peace-lessons that Kissinger saw as applicable to the period immediately following World War II, when he was writing this book. But the lessons don’t stop there. Like all good insights, the book’s wisdom transcends any single political period. Kissinger’s understanding of coalitions and balance of power can be applied to personal and professional situations, such as dealing with a tyrannical boss or co-worker or formulating business or organizational tactics. Regardless of his ideology, Henry Kissinger has had an important impact on modern politics and few would dispute his brilliance as a strategist. For anyone interested in Western history, the tactics of diplomacy, or political strategy, this volume will provide deep understanding of a pivotal time.