In 1976, Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev promised to reduce East-West tensions. But within four years those promises turned to anger and mistrust. The Cold War was far from over.

Jimmy Carter, a Georgia governor and peanut farmer, rose to the U.S. presidency in 1976 as an unknown Washington outsider -- and a national panacea for the post-Watergate era. Aiming to restore U.S. leadership abroad, Carter sought to promote respect for human rights and pressed for major nuclear arms cuts with the Soviet Union. Although the two nations had reached an interim agreement in 1974 to establish limits for their strategic arsenals, Carter wanted to go further -- and put the arms race in reverse.

Secretary of State Cyrus Vance went to Moscow with a set of proposals -- one which called for radical cuts in arsenals well below the 1974 levels. But the Soviets bluntly rejected the initiative. At home, Carter and Vance promoted the talks as a positive move. But the public wondered whether the new White House team was up to the task of managing U.S.-Soviet affairs. Carter's proposed 3 percent increase in defense spending did little to deter the view among some that America was losing the arms race -- especially since the Soviets were still pouring resources into their military build-up.
Next