A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s by Daniel J. Sargent (review)

Historians of the United States have produced many excellent domestic histories of the 1970s. In-depth studies of US foreign policy during the same decade are few because key government documents remained classified. The recent opening of these archives, however, has allowed Daniel Sargent to produce a masterful, sweeping examination of US policymaking during the 1970s. Sargent persuasively argues that the nature of US global power changed dramatically during that decade, not by design, but because of how US policymakers reacted to global changes. In the end, Sargent asserts, despite US policymakers’ continued preoccupation with the Soviet Union, “the Cold War ceased to define world politics.”¹ Instead, the structural forces of globalization and transnationalism competed with and disrupted the older international systems of the nation-state and the Cold War. Sargent concludes that “[t]he Cold War did not end in the seventies, but the decade confirmed the advent of a distinctive post-Cold War era,” one characterized by economic globalization, increasing interdependence of nations, and the transnational human rights movement.²

In some ways, A Superpower Transformed is fairly traditional. Sargent’s central players are a small group of US policymaking elites, primarily Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter, as well as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Additionally he focuses largely on traditional policy issues, such as economics and geostrategy. The book is about the perspective from Washington and is based squarely upon US-based archival sources. The book’s structure is also straightforward, moving chronologically from the Nixon through the Carter administrations. This approach however allows Sargent to provide a deep analysis of US engagement with the world during the 1970s, and Sargent’s argument that US policy was largely driven by structural forces is fairly novel and important. Moreover, the book’s fusing of diplomatic history with the emerging literature on globalization is a major strength. A Superpower Transformed provides a compelling argument and offers a significant contribution to historical understanding of late twentieth century US foreign relations.

The three fundamental structural issues that dominate Sargent’s narrative are the chaotic global financial system, which led to the collapse of Bretton Woods, the rise of OPEC and the ensuing oil shocks, and the growing influence of the global human rights movement. Sargent argues cogently that the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations struggled to adapt to the changing international system. US policymakers were hobbled by their Cold War mindsets and adherence to traditional policy goals, which included a devotion to upholding what Sargent calls the “Pax Americana.” In short, American policymakers recognized the difficulties their nation faced in the 1970s, but they were not fully equipped to understand them. They “encountered the challenges of an emerging post-Cold War era even as the Cold War endured.” As a consequence, the three administrations “flailed between competing imperatives” and were “frustrated by complexity and surprised by events.” Viewed in this light, policy initiatives such as détente and the opening with China were not indicative of a bold new approach to the world, but rather were new tactics to support an old policy. Sargent concludes that American leaders “aimed to subject history to clear-sighted strategies,” but they failed because their vision was clouded.³ Ultimately, Sargent’s narrative is about irony: “Actions wrought consequences, but the effects were seldom those that American decision-makers sought to achieve.”⁴

While Sargent’s analysis of the global financial and economic systems contribute much to historical understanding, his examination of the US response to the growing influence of the transnational human rights movement would be of the greatest interest to readers of this journal. According to Sargent, the global human rights movement represented one of the many consequences of globalization. The movement “challenged decision-makers . . . to consider anew whether or not foreign policy’s exclusive purpose was to serve the national interest.”⁵ While Nixon and Kissinger preferred to...