r during the Kennedy Administration. The fear and tension that arose from this conflict led to a series of efforts to increase detent and decrease nuclear stockpiles on behalf of both Russia and the U.S.
During the Cold War era, nuclear weapons did act as a deterrent to full-scale war between the superpowers. During the Richard Nixon administration, Whitney argues that Nixon made progress in creating what was labeled ôa new structure of peace in the world,ö (p. 330). When he first took office, the world was still sharply divided by Cold War tensions between communists and anti-communist nations and fears of the possibility of a nuclear war still troubled the world. Although Nixon built a reputation as a hard-line anti-communist, he reversed the twenty-year-old official policy of the U.S. that had refused to recognize the communist rule of mainland China. Nixon flew to Moscow where he signed agreements with the Soviets which provided the first limitations of the production and deployment of atomic weapons. This was followed by later summits in both the U.S. and Soviet Union that officially brought the Cold War to an end. The Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) remains an unparalleled achievement for a president who by nature
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