ABSTRACT
Jimmy Carter and his national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, confronted the Soviet Union with pressure, assuming that the USSR would assimilate itself into the new world the Carter administration sought. In 1978, Ambassador Dobrynin told Averell Harriman that "Moscow was emotional in their doubts what the President's position really was." Two priorities defined Carter's foreign policy in 1977. His SALT proposal for deep cuts drove the Soviet leadership up against the wall. Brezhnev perceived it as an attempt to cut the heavy missiles that they most depended upon for deterrence. The permanence in Brzezinski's rejection of meaningful US-Soviet cooperation dated back to the 1960. Back at that time, he was not as intimately involved in the formulation of the Johnson administration's détente policies as he claimed to be. The purpose of Arthur Hartman's scheme was to merge the American focus on human rights and the West European eagerness for progress in terms of military détente.
