ABSTRACT

The introduction of the book presents its topic which can be summarized as the relations between the United States and Romania through the prism of the interaction of the US policy of differentiation towards Eastern Europe with détente in the seventies. It presents the analytical framework used in this study, pericentrism, and it places itself within the new Cold War Historiography. It discusses the main aim of this book which is to contribute to the study of a certain aspect of American foreign policy in Eastern Europe, namely the policy of ‘differentiation’ as it was implemented by the administrations of Nixon, Ford and Carter, respectively. The analysis in this study, based on the Romanian case, shows that American Eastern European policy during the Cold War was more nuanced than the common East vs. West narrative suggests. Finally, it provides a roadmap for the structure of the book.