ABSTRACT
Recent United States foreign policy has been a search to find solutions for a series of problems that erupted between 1971 and 1974. These problems, of course, did not suddenly appear during those years; they had deep historical roots running back into the 1960s and beyond. By 1974, however, they were so obvious and dangerous that they shaped the political agenda for the next generation. The foreign policies of presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush can be interpreted as varied responses to these dangers. The dangers, however, were ultimately removed neither by these policies nor even by the collapse of the communist bloc in 1989-91.
