–1964 INTRODUCTION

Of all the phases of post-war US-Soviet relations the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s is the least susceptible of easy categorization. One suggestion, that the period is characterized by ‘oscillatory antagonism’, has the merit that it captures the contrary motions of events and processes but it leaves us with the problem of understanding the dynamics which underlay them (Halliday 1983: 6). Unlike the formative period of cold war which preceded it and the shift towards détente which followed it, the Eisenhower/Kennedy-Khrushchev years do not obviously lend themselves to generalization.