- conducting quiet negotiations with other countries
- preserving international power balances
- building up military arms
The nation's economic troubles pointed increasingly toward global developments and international relations, areas where Nixon's ambitions and interests lay. Kissinger, who served in Nixon's first term as national security adviser, guided Nixon away from hard-line Cold War positions. Eager to avoid further disastrous entanglements like Vietnam and to reduce the costs and dangers of a nuclear arms race, Kissinger promoted a new foreign-policy approach. Kissinger's realism, as it was sometimes called, deemphasized ideological saber-rattling in favor of quiet negotiations and manipulations designed to preserve a balance of international power in an increasingly multipower world and to promote the United States' practical political interests around the globe.