In writings on international affairs in the 1960s, historians naturally focused on the Cold War. The decade had witnessed dangerous confrontations between the United States and the Soviet Union over Berlin and Cuba, the massive accumulation of nuclear stockpiles, the escalating war in Vietnam, and bitter East-West rivalry across the developing world.

Only in recent years have researchers begun to realize that there is another history of international affairs in the 1960s. With the accelerating pace of global historical globalization, historians have come to believe that many of the global challenges we face today - inequality, terrorism, demographic instability, energy dependence, pandemics, huge increases in trade and cash flows - are just a few examples - During the contract. President Lyndon Johnson's administration faced tectonic transitions in the international environment and perhaps even the beginning of the post-Cold War world.

While the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union has become crucial, the new powers and new actors have changed international relations in deep and lasting ways. This book asks how the Johnson administration reacted to this changing landscape.

To what extent have American leaders understood the changes that we can now see clearly by taking advantage of hindsight? How did they prioritize these issues along with the geostrategic concerns that dominated their daily agendas and news headlines? How successful are Americans in dealing with these long-term problems, and what are the implications for the future? What are the lessons of Johnson and his aides' efforts to deal with a new and problematic agenda? This book revisits the 1960s and suggests a new research agenda based on the idea that the Cold War was not the only - or perhaps most important - advantage of international life in the period following World War II.