Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. [Vol. 5.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 25)

Studies - Tamás Magyarics: From the Rollback of Communism to Building Bridges: The U.S. and the Soviet Block Countries from the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 to the Prague Spring in 1968

to you that there are more shades of /color/ than black and white ..." 1(1 The last sentence of the speech has special relevance: it meant a departure from the bipolar world view which characterized the first phase of the Cold War (1946-1961) and pointed toward the concept of a "multipolar world", which was elaborated on and implemented by the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy leadership in the early 1970s. Because of this bipolar approach and the doctrines like the "massive retaliation", the Eisenhower Administration was forced into a passivity in the East-West relations. The Administration was not able to carry out a total face-about in the Polish-question either: the agreements signed with Poland in June and August 1957 provided a 30 million dollars loan to Poland through the Export-Import Bank and allowed Poland —with the rather liberal interpretation of PL 480—to purchase agricultural suplus in the U.S. in the value of 46.1 million dollars; both sums were considerably lower than the ones the Polish asked for. However, by 1961 Polamd had receiced the MFN-status for the second time in the face of only weak Congressional opposition and the real question was whether this liberalization of the East-West relations would be continued and extended to the other satellite countries in Eastern Europe. 2. "Great expectations" and meager results (1961-1963) a. The Kennan-Brzezinski Doctrine The ideological underpinning of the policies of the Democratic administrations for the better part of the 1960s is said to be determined by Zbigniew Brzezinski by a number of contemporaries and historians. It is a fact that the historian-politician became one of the most prominent members of the Policy Planning Staff of the State Department by the second half of the 1960s and later, in the Carter Administration, became the national security adviser. Brzezinski's starting point was the criticism of the foreign policy of Jogn Foster Dulles: he believed that the "verbal hostility" took the place of real political ideas in the years of 1953-1957. 1 7 He argued that the political shift in 1957 was only symbolic: the relatively small credit extended Brzezinski, Zbigniew, "Competitive Relationship"; In: Gati, Charles, ed. Caging the Bear: Containment and the Cold War. Indianapolis and New York, 1974. 121. ! Brzezinski, Zbigniew and William E. Griffith, "Peaceful Engagement in Europe". Foreign Affairs, Vol. 39, No. 4 (July 1961). 642. 74

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