Competing Visions

Abstract

This chapter tackles the collapse of the bipartisan Cold War consensus in the late 1960s after the Vietnam War. It also explores the subsequent impact of the Cold War on US foreign relations. During the détente era, domestic critics and liberal internationalists contested the Nixon and Ford administrations' realist approach to international relations. Even though Jimmy Carter embraced human rights late in the campaign, the issue fit neatly with his administration's vision of forging a new approach. The chapter cites that the Carter administration's commitment to human rights, noninterventionism, and multilateralism underpinned the thirty-ninth president's signal achievements in foreign affairs and Ronald Reagan's 1980 election victory.