The Quest against Détente: Eugene Rostow, the October War, and the Origins of the Anti-Détente Movement, 1969–1976

Abstract

This article argues that the October War of 1973 between Egypt, Syria, and Israel had a profound impact on the right wing campaign against détente in the United States. It focuses on Eugene Rostow’s leading role in the anti-détente movement of the 1970s, revealing how Rostow, who had previously supported détente, interpreted the October War as a Soviet plot to destroy Israel and separate Europe from the United States. Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, he concluded, were deceiving the American people to maintain the “myth” of détente. Race profoundly influenced Rostow’s reasoning. He rendered Arab peoples irrational, emotional, and childlike, wholly under the control of Soviet leaders. Rostow launched what one historian has referred to as the “first head-on assault of détente,” through his leadership of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority and later his founding of the Committee on the Present Danger. While the article highlights the conflicting views between Rostow and Kissinger, it emphasizes that the two men shared a Cold War worldview.