ABSTRACT
The first cycle might be called the Truman-Stalin duel. It begins with US weakness and confusion in 1945–1946 and progressive movement toward the division of Europe in the latter year. But, as in the first cycle, there was a second round, which focused on a conventional war in Indochina in 1964 and 1965, the Malaysian confrontation, and the attempted Communist coup in Indonesia. The second round concerned extremely important but perhaps not quite such basic issues: Berlin and the diplomatic threat to Western Europe via nuclear missiles; the acceptance or rejection of Soviet missiles in the Western Hemisphere; the future of Southeast Asia. The third cycle triggered by the convergence of the self-destruction of a US president via Watergate, throwing the whole political system out of balance for the better part of the 1970s.
