This volume features a detailed examination of the perspectives and actions of both the United States and the Soviet Union and their interactions, including the inter-relationships of domestic factors with foreign and security policies in both countries, and the involvements of both powers with allies and other countries around the world, that infringed on their direct relationship. Besides analyzing the turn from confrontation to detente and beyond, over the years of the Reagan and Bush administrations, and from Brezhnev through Gorbachev, it reflects on the significance of the great transition from the Cold War to a new era. It thus illuminates the very relevant history that underlines and informs American-Russian relations and the new situation of a post-Soviet, post-Cold War world.