ABSTRACT
during the course of the Nixon administration American diplomacy has given priority to its relations with the Soviet Union, and this tendency has been accelerated by the evident desire of the Soviet leadership to settle world affairs on a bi-polar basis. While the Nixon doctrine implies the acceptance and even the encouragement of a 'multi-polar world', in practice – the Vietnam war once over – all other external relationships of the United States have been subordinated to the need to keep this central axis stable, although, as will be shown below, resistance to this conception of American foreign policy has been growing.
