More Words, Deeper Hole

Originally published in 1986, the copy I have is the 25th edition from 2012. Context matters: when Rhodes began work on this in the 1970s, the US under Carter and the Soviet Union under whichever doddering old fool it was that week had cast aside the illusion of detente for franker rivalry.

About the breakdown of detente in the late 1970s - the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan was the event that definitively ended the thaw in the Cold War that Nixon and Kissinger initiated. But it was the Reagan administration and the push for the so-called "Star Wars" anti-ballistic missile system that plunged relations back into the Cold War again. It wasn't until Gorbachev assumed power that relations began to get better again, for the few years left of the Soviet Union's existence.