From internationalism to globalism

This dissertation reinterprets the 1970s as a period of significant and enduring change in the United States' relations with the larger world. It proposes that we can understand the decade in terms of the impact that large-scale, integrative changes in the international system had on the foreign policy of the superpower. Often described by contemporaries as symptoms of "interdependence," these system-level changes included the integration of capital markets and the spread of multinational enterprises, the rise of human rights politics and the dwindling of territorial sovereignty, and the new visibility of "transnational" issues such as environmental protection; cumulatively, this thesis proposes, these processes marked a "globalization" of international relations. Drawing on newly-released primary sources, this dissertation explains how the transformation of international politics affected U.S. foreign policy in the 1970s, blurring the distinction between "domestic" and "foreign" affairs and bringing new issues, such as global human rights and energy interdependence, to the fore. To understand the shortcomings and eventual obsolescence of Nixon and Kissinger's policy of Cold War détente, which was their strategy for stabilizing East-West relations, this dissertation contends that we need to look beyond the Cold War and understand the ways in which larger changes in the international system were affecting the conduct of diplomacy and the parameters of foreign-policy choice. This dissertation utilizes a combination of interpretive synthesis and original case-study research. Besides making a larger argument about the evolution of U.S. relations with the larger world in the 1970s, this project provides original accounts of a number of significant episodes. These include the 1971-1973 breakdown of the Bretton Woods monetary system, the American responses to civil wars in Nigeria and Pakistan in 1968-1969 and 1971, the Middle East crisis of 1973 and the related "oil shocks," the congressional insurgency on human rights after 1974, and the domestic backlash against Henry Kissinger's détente in 1975-1976. Through these episodes, this dissertation demonstrates how themes and events beyond the scope of traditional "Cold War" history have enduringly changed the United States and its international relations.