The fighting stopped in 1975 with Hanois victory. But the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people continued and was propelled by politicians manipulating the mythical cause of POWs/MIAs. Postwar movies filled out the scenario of a war lost because of poor leadership in Washington combined with the baleful influence of the anti-war movement. Presidents wrestled with the legacy of Vietnam, including the controversy over the national Vietnam Memorial. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter both attempted to move the nation beyond the grasp of the Vietnam Specter. Both failed. Ronald Reagan used it to help him win the presidency in 1980, after the debacle that followed the occupation of the American Embassy in Tehran, which only seemed to emphasize the nations lost claims to world leadership after Vietnam. George H. W. Bush claimed that it had been buried in the sands of Iraq after the rapid victory in Gulf War I. Bill Clinton succeeded in establishing diplomatic and economic relations with Vietnam. But it re-emerged with renewed force during the Second Gulf War and the never-ending war in Afghanistan. Even today it shapes much thinking about military interventionism.

This chapter describes the immediate aftermath of the Vietnamese invasion. Apart from the ongoing war in Cambodia, the immediate, violent response to the Vietnamese invasion was the February 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war.

Today the average lifespan in the US approaches 80 years old. However, the average health span—the number of healthy years we live—is much shorter. In the US it is 63 years old. This means we are living much longer than we are healthy. Disparity in health span is substantial in the US. The most privileged have a health span that approaches their lifespan. We must ensure that everyone has the opportunity to match their health span to their lifespan. Offering realistic guide posts on what to expect with normal aging. Crucial to put aging well at the center of policy internationally to harness the power of older people and move forward globally.

The standard explanation for Trump’s 2016 victory is that it was the culmination of a long-term right-wing capture of the Republican Party. However, in 2016, the most consistently right-wing candidate was Ted Cruz. Trump was unusual in that he was the candidate of no faction. Rather, Trump’s low-cost populist strategy, in which he relied on mass rallies and social media, was effective because the factions who backed his opponents could not coalesce to keep him out. Trump won the GOP primary with an historically low share of the vote. This chapter also shows that Trump was not the first to successfully pursue such a strategy. In the wake of the reforms of the early 1970s, a little-known Jimmy Carter was similarly able to capture the Democratic nomination in 1976 on the basis of a low-cost direct-communication strategy. The Democratic Party adapted then to keep future populists out. Whether the Republican Party will do so after Trump remains unclear.

If the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia helped to shatter an already ailing anti-imperialist internationalism, a concomitant refugee crisis offered the rival vision of human rights internationalism a remarkable opportunity to fill the void. What remained of the anti-imperialist left contributed little to resolving the issue, yet the human rights internationalists stepped into the breach. Former French radicals turned humanitarians worked with Vietnamese refugees, Eastern European dissidents, and human rights groups such as Doctors Without Borders to organize a campaign against human rights violations in Vietnam. They chartered a hospital ship to rescue the refugees, which amounted to interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation-state, showcasing a new kind of humanitarian interventionism. At the same time, they internationalized the campaign, even winning the support of the US government, which was only too happy to use the crisis to rewrite the history of the war, rebrand itself as a virtuous nation, and shine a harsh spotlight on the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Despite efforts to deflect charges of rights violations, the SRV could do little to explain itself in the face of undeniable evidence of repression. If anti-imperialism helped secure their international victory in the 1960s, human rights sealed their defeat a decade later. The remaining radicals in the North Atlantic fought back but had little to offer as an alternative. With the core notions of the Leninist problematic in question, the radical left’s vision of internationalism lost its appeal, particularly among a new generation of activists looking for a way to do good in the world. And with anti-imperialism’s influence over the wider progressive milieu slipping, human rights internationalism made a giant leap in consolidating its hegemony, so much so that even some committed anti-imperialists ended up accepting its terms as the least bad option.

This chapter analyzes how diplomacy over Sino-American scientific cooperation was central to the final agreement for China and the United States to establish official diplomatic relations, finally reached in December 1978. In the wake of Mao Zedong’s death in September 1976, China’s emerging post-Mao leadership prioritized the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s scientific development, believing that drawing on scientific knowledge from outside of China – including from the United States – was critical to the country’s development. The Committee on Scholarly Communication with the PRC had long been arguing that China’s interest in US science provided leverage to the United States and, after President Jimmy Carter recruited the top leadership of the CSCPRC into his administration, utilizing this leverage became a critical part of US China policy. Thus, Chinese and US leaders, working hand-in-glove with the nongovernmental CSCPRC, achieved a simultaneous upgrading of the Sino-American scientific and diplomatic relationship in 1978 that offered a final demonstration of the symbiotic relationship between exchange and high-level Sino-American diplomacy in the pre-normalization era.

During the 1960s, the effects of the Cuban Revolution – especially in terms of support for guerrilla warfare against U.S. allies – became all too evident, and the United States pursued interventionism with new vigor. This renewed use of power included economic and diplomatic pressures, veiled threats, covert operations, and even invasion. U.S. officials framed the Cold War as a valiant struggle to protect freedom in the hemisphere, and the cases of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Guatemala epitomized the lengths to which the United States would go to fight what it considered to be security threats. In Latin America, many elites supported U.S. policy, but a growing undercurrent of discontent also emerged, which pushed for negotiated conclusions to war and protested against the treatment of so many citizens caught in the middle. They did not share the notion that leftist or even Marxist governments necessarily constituted a threat to national security and global order. This chapter ends with a discussion of the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989.

The protection and promotion of human rights and democracy in Latin America, a region historically beset by civil strife, military actions, and foreign intervention, is a difficult task. Before World War II, human rights and democracy promotion were not factors in U.S.–Latin American relations (or, in fact, international relations in general). When the United States or regional governments invoked concerns about human rights or democracy during the Cold War, they did so based on narrow security interests rather than any serious commitment to human rights or democracy. However, there has been a renewed commitment to human rights and democracy in the twenty-first century. This chapter addresses human rights and democracy promotion in the context of the construction of norms and agreements by U.S. and Latin American governments.

The two decades from 1969 marked the tightening of Israel–US strategic ties. With the Cold War becoming more and more predominant in the America view of the Arab–Israeli conflict, American presidents, from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan, justified the tightening strategic relations between the two nations in the role Israel would ostensibly play in the defence of the Middle East against Soviet expansion. It did not really matter that Israel would not play that role; for Israel, the idealism that was prevalent in the relations between the two nations was not solid enough, and Israeli leaders gladly recited the Cold War rhetoric in their communication with American officials. Visually, the Arab–Israel conflict played a significant role in the conduct of the relations between the two countries, from the attempts to deal with the consequences of the 1967 June War to the 1982 Lebanon War. These, though, were only a minor irritation in what became deeper and closer ties, encompassing economic and industrial ties, the deepening of cultural connections and intensification of strategic cooperation, mainly in intelligence sharing and development of technologies.

Despite promises to the contrary, Jimmy Carter largely continues the same policy toward Iran and the authoritarian Shah as in years past. However, with the outbreak of large protests just weeks after his visit to Tehran at the end of 1977, US policymakers find themselves poorly informed and positioned to react to the changing situation in Iran. The documents in this chapter map the process of Washington’s initial misjudgment of the near future for its ally through the slow realization that the Shah is not going to see out the year, let alone the decade. In his place rises a new force, utterly unfamiliar to the White House, and led by an enigmatic figure, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whose fiery rhetoric and anachronistic beliefs leave Carter and his advisors scrambling for a response. After the US agrees to take in the ailing Shah for medical treatment, students acting in Khomeini’s name storm the US Embassy in Tehran and forever alter the world's perception of the nascent Islamic Republic. The chapter ends by documenting the scramble in the White House to free the American hostages and Carter handing over the presidency to Ronald Reagan as the hostages finally return home.

At least 18 months before each presidential election, prospective candidates for the highest office in the United States have, since 1972, flocked to the otherwise unsung midwestern state of Iowa. All of these challengers hope to jumpstart their campaigns with a victory in the Iowa Caucus, held on a single frigid winter evening prior to the upcoming November election. It must have taken astonishing foresight and planning for a small state like Iowa to wangle the first-in-the-nation presidential contest, right? On the contrary! The origin of the Iowa Caucus turns out to be a case study in circumstance and happenstance rather than foresight and planning. Furthermore, the subsequent evolution and likely demise of the Iowa Caucus appear to be highly subject to the influence of accidental and unintended consequences.

This chapter analyzes the political debates in the United States about arms sales to Iran and Saudi Arabia in the late 1970s and early 1980s. When the United States “lost Iran” in 1979, the presidential administrations of Jimmy Carter and then Ronald Reagan identified regional instability as a threat to the security of the oil-rich Persian Gulf and “global economic health.” Both administrations turned to arms sales as a means to secure alliances in the face of American vulnerability. In this context, the burgeoning military sales relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia arrived through an Iranian workshop. Congressional debates about the sale of fighter jets and AWACS to both nations, as well as the corporate lobbying of the Bechtel Corporation, reveal important logical columns in this shift to a more aggressive foreign policy based on military relationships: the link between economic growth and US Cold War legitimacy, the importance of military sales to the US domestic economy, and the crucial place of weapons transfers in good relations with the ruling monarchies in Iran and then Saudi Arabia. When it came to the regional security of the Middle East and secure flows of its oil, this was the time when military force began to become the premier instrument of US diplomacy for a new global age.

The epilogue provides an overview of the end of the Cold War. It discusses the Reagan–Gorbachev relationship, their efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons at a remarkable summit in Reykjavik (1986), and the INF Treaty of 1987. The chapter analyzes the reasons for the end of the Cold War and the change in Soviet policy. I argue that although SDI was an important part in Soviet thinking, the key changes effected from 1989 were primarily the result of factors originating in the USSR and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. These were factors largely (but not entirely) independent of the policies pursued by US administrations. They include Gorbachev’s own evolving predilections (reinforced by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster); Soviet high politics; long-term structural problems besetting the Soviet economy; the role of non-state actors; and the courageous efforts of citizens and peace groups across Eastern Europe. The epilogue concludes by highlighting the foreign policy turns of Carter and Reagan, and their significance for the Cold War. I argue that only by examining the full landscape – international and domestic – can we truly understand how US foreign policy is crafted.

Chapter 3 covers the period from November 1979 through to the end of Carter’s presidency. On December 24, 1979, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan brought détente to a final, shuddering halt. Together with the US response (the force of which would surprise Moscow), it marked the beginning of a “second” Cold War. It was a conflict that grew more tense, dangerous, and unpredictable over the next four years. Afghanistan followed on the heels of one of the most humiliating episodes in modern US history. The Iran hostage crisis became headline news and struck an emotional chord with the American public. As election season began, Iran and Afghanistan played into the hands of Carter’s critics, who accused him of “weakness.” The world’s number one power, so they argued, could neither stem the tide of Soviet expansion nor bring home the captive Americans. The setbacks allowed political opponents such as Ronald Reagan to declare that the pursuit of SALT had been misguided all along. With criticism mounting, Carter would stake his credibility on a vigorous, alarmist response to the Soviet invasion. It was, he claimed, “the most serious threat to world peace since the Second World War.”

Chapter 2 examines the period from January to October 1979. Domestic troubles spiralled during Carter’s third year at the White House. An economic recession, mounting inflation (resulting from a new oil crisis), and intraparty disagreements all undermined support for the president. Together they conjured images of an administration in turmoil. As the year progressed, the idea of “national weakness” gained traction – invoked by opponents of Carter’s foreign and defense policies. In 1979 Carter came under further pressure to align foreign policy with his political needs. His decision to approve the production of the MX program appeared perverse in light of everything that had preceded it. Here was a notable policy departure, veering well beyond the sort of compromise or rhetorical device that Carter had been forced to deploy earlier in his presidency. Soon after, the bungled US response to the “discovery” of a Soviet brigade in Cuba undermined relations with Moscow, just weeks after the Vienna summit. The political maneuvering, and the administration’s mishandling of the episode, damaged the prospects for ratification of the SALT II Treaty.

Chapter 1 explores the first half of Jimmy Carter’s term as president, from January 1977 through to late 1978. The end of the “imperial presidency,” increased Congressional powers, and the rise of special interest groups complicated life for the new administration. Carter entered the White House amid wide conservative opposition to détente and his pursuit of a new SALT Treaty with the Soviet Union. He began placating critics of the SALT I agreement, particularly Henry Jackson, who had the potential to mobilize discontented, conservative Democrats and independents against a second SALT agreement, as well as Carter’s bid for a second term. The president courted Jackson and acted on his advice in 1977 as he pursued arms control negotiations with Moscow. When Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev rejected the US proposals, Carter changed his approach in order to straddle the demands of his conservative critics and the need to maintain a working relationship with the Kremlin. The chapter also discusses Carter’s decision to promote the cause of human rights in Eastern Europe, the normalization of relations with China, and the quest to ratify the Panama Canal treaties in Congress.

The introduction outlines the period known as the Second Cold War, circa 1979–85. It marked the end of the détente, and escalated into the most dangerous phase of the conflict since the Cuban Missile Crisis. As fears of nuclear war were raised, so the domestic schisms deepened. The largest peacetime military buildup was challenged by the largest peacetime peace movement. I discuss the reasons for the rise in US–Soviet tensions and explain how they were eased – even before the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985. The preface highlights the role of domestic politics in shaping American foreign policy during the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Both presidents changed course – Carter becoming more hawkish; Reagan more open to negotiation – by the end of their first terms, pushed by international affairs yet simultaneously incentivized by potential domestic gains to be found within their transformation. These dramatic “reversals” helped lead to the rise and fall of the last great Cold War struggle. I argue that the convergence of the international and domestic agendas (the “intermestic”) is the key to understanding US decision-making.

During the late 1970s, US policymakers attempted to resume formal relations with China and Vietnam, respond to the Indochinese diaspora, and institutionalize human rights into US foreign policy. These efforts all became deeply enmeshed. Although attempts to normalize relations with Hanoi failed, they cast a long shadow. Thereafter, US policymakers demanded a withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Cambodia and a “full accounting” of missing American servicemen were before Washington and Hanoi could resume official talks. These conditions tabled formal negotiations for nearly a decade.

Human rights and humanitarianism became increasingly entangled in this fluid environment. US policymakers described the Indochinese diaspora as both a human rights and humanitarian concern and implemented the Refugee Act of 1980, which codified a human rights definition of refugee with a humanitarian exception clause. The advocacy of the Citizens Commission on Indochinese Refugees (CCIR), select congressmen, and growing Holocaust awareness helped solidify these connections in American thought and law. Nonexecutive actors also created significant momentum for expanded admission opportunities for Indochinese refugees. Because the White House remained preoccupied with other issues, the information, pressure, and publicity the CCIR and its governmental allies garnered were instrumental to creating a broad base of support for refugee admissions.

This chapter examines the historical and normative contribution of Latin American theologians and religious actors attentive to the neoliberal underside of the human rights breakthrough associated with the Carter administration and the Trilateral Commission. By tilting the axis to the global South, this chapter charts the emergence of an alternative liberationist discourse and praxis of human rights for the Catholic Church in Latin America centered on the concrete struggles of oppressed peoples and the preferential option for the poor. In contrast to the global human rights politics of the 1970s, the liberationist praxis of human rights critically analyzed socioeconomic inequalities as part of the Church’s effort to resist the overreaching powers of the national security state and the global market. The chapter turns to the case of El Salvador from the 1970s to the 1990s and the examples of Archbishop Óscar Romero and theologian Ignacio Ellacuría to illustrate this alternative liberationist praxis of human rights. Their life-giving opposition to structural violence embedded in old and new forms of colonialism injuring poor campesinos brought them into direct conflict with the moral doctrine of human rights from the global North linked to US interventionism supportive of national securitization and later neoliberal policies.

Chapter 1 offers a survey of human rights concerns in American foreign relations in the 1980s. First, it traces the human rights breakthrough in US foreign policy during the 1970s, emphasizing the important role individual members of Congress played in this development. The chapter notes the varied motivations behind congressional human rights activism and the selective adoption of human rights concerns. The chapter then examines the role of human rights in the 1980 presidential election between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, noting the candidates’ different visions for human rights concerns in US foreign policy. Aside from putting Reagan in the White House, the 1980 election also altered the composition of Congress, with Republicans winning control of the Senate. The chapter explores the implications this new political landscape had for congressional attention to human rights and summarizes the measures members of Congress employed to address human rights issues. Surveying American attention to human rights in the 1980s, the chapter examines liberal and conservative visions of human rights. Finally, the chapter situates human rights concerns within the context of other expressions of morality in American foreign relations.