Sold Out: Strategic Arms Control and the Neoconservative Turn against Superpower Détente, 1969–72

The neoconservatives’ discontent with U.S.-Soviet détente did not emerge immediately, but was the result of a gradual process of alienation that unfolded during Richard Nixon’s first term in office. In fact, Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, initially courted Cold War hawks in both Congress and the media in order to shore up collapsing public support for nuclear weapons programs, such as a planned anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system. Nixon and Kissinger believed they needed ABM as a bargaining chip in order to extract concessions on the Soviet Union’s offensive weapons at the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). When ABM failed to garner the hoped-for concessions, the Nixon administration continued to promise hawks results in order to maintain their backing for SALT. When eventually forced to choose between failure at SALT and alienating its erstwhile supporters, the White House decided it could live with opposition from what Nixon privately referred to as “the nut right,” which he ultimately considered an increasingly embattled minority in Congress and the wider public debate. The revelations regarding the flimsiness of Soviet concessions injected animosity into relations between the White House and its former allies, shortening the lifespan of détente.

Crossing the increasingly untenable divide between the study of American foreign relations and domestic politics, the paper adds to our understanding of the rise and demise of U.S.-Soviet détente by shedding new light on the origins of the neoconservatives’ campaign against the policy. In showing how opposition to détente was motivated by a sense of Nixon and Kissinger’s personal perfidy as well as ideological misgivings, it provides a new explanation for the passion with which figures as Senator Henry Jackson and columnist William F. Buckley attacked the process.