ABSTRACT
Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger envisioned a restructuring of the international order that, inter alia, would relieve the United States of the excessive responsibilities it had undertaken in the years following World War II and would create new, stable relationships among the major powers of the world. When Nixon assumed office in January 1969, American prestige and power were sapped by the misadventure in Vietnam, and the domestic consensus that had underlain American policy since World War II was unraveling rapidly. Nixon brought with him Henry Kissinger as national security adviser, an academic who had long-standing ties to Washington and soon mastered arts of politics and publicity that are the road to power there. For Kissinger and Nixon Ford the nuclear test was simply a fact of life, readily explainable in their concept of power politics. In India, the economy was faltering, and political system that had brought the country so effectively through the first years of independence was unraveling.
