ABSTRACT
The leaders who formulated and implemented United States (US) foreign policy during the two decades following World War II had witnessed the bitter consequences of post-Versailles isolationism, of beggar-thy-neighbor international economic policies, of military restraint in the face of rearmament by those committed to destruction of the existing international order, and of efforts to conciliate expansionist dictatorships by offering concessions. The picture that emerges from these data, then, is neither unquestioning acceptance nor wholesale rejection of the cold war axioms. Beliefs about the international system are closely related to images of adversaries and their intentions. Cold war beliefs about US opponents centered on the expansionist motivations harbored in Moscow and Peking. The post-Vietnam debate on US foreign policy has not been limited to the substance or content of policy. The foregoing results reveal a mixed pattern of support for important elements of both the cold war and post-cold war axioms.
