Aleksandr Bovin was a Soviet journalist, a speechwriter for Leonid Brezhnev, and a diplomat who served as Soviet and Russian ambassador to Israel. He offers Soviet reactions (Brezhnev's in particular) to President Nixon and the policy of detente, then discusses the effects of various issues on that policy for example, the Soviet military buildup of the 1960s, the Vietnam war, and U.S.-China relations. He later talks about detente's effect on Soviet-European relations and the various developments that helped undermine the policy. Other individuals discussed are Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Other topics include the effect of the Third World on U.S.-Soviet relations, the importance of SALT II, the lack of a window of vulnerability, and unrealistic conceptions about the possibility for limited nuclear war.
