Dr Thomas Robb

Historians have long engaged in a spirited discussion as to explaining the factors that brought about the end of the Cold War. The literature that focuses on the role played by US President Ronald Reagan’s administration has been vehemently contested. Much of this literature, whether supportive or critical of the president’s role, is divided on whether the president actually created and pursued a grand strategy. Moreover, much of the literature, fails to stipulate what a grand strategy actually is conflating planning, actions, and goals. Informed by political science this article delineates between the various types of grand strategy and in doing so postulates that President Reagan did establish a grand plan. By drawing upon recently declassified materials and engaging more keenly the interconnections between domestic political considerations and national security factors this article sheds new light on how the president’s grand strategy came into being. As argued below, Reagan’s grand strategy was as much a product of internal bureaucratic politics and reflected broader internal domestic political pressures as much as it was predicated upon Reagan’s reading of the international strategic situation which confronted the United States. This work therefore builds upon the wider historiographical interpretation which champions the primacy of domestic politics in better understanding the driving forces behind US grand strategy.

The majority of scholarly accounts suggest that Anglo-Americans throughout the era of détente, 1969–1977, were often fraught with difficulties. In particular, the relationship between the Nixon administration and the British government of Edward Heath is often seen as the nadir for the Anglo-American relationship during the Cold War. Nonetheless, elements of the Anglo-American “special relationship,” particularly those related to intelligence and nuclear co-operation, are often seen by scholars to have operated outside of these wider political difficulties. By utilising recently declassified documentation from both U.S. and UK archives, it is shown that both intelligence and nuclear co-operation were continually used by the United States as a means of convincing London to follow more amenable policy lines. With Henry Kissinger very much to the fore, it is illustrated how this coercive diplomacy had mixed results in achieving what Washington desired. Ultimately, this policy line would not accomplish what its main adherent, Henry Kissinger, sought.