The strength of conviction held in containment by the U.S. was tested in Vietnam. One of the most important results of the Vietnam war, for diplomats, was that it exposed the weakest link in the chain of American foreign policy: if communism could not be contained once, then it was possible that communism might spread again, perhaps on a larger scale. It was at this point that American policy shifted toward reconciling differences with communist sympathizers, rather than trying always to do battle with them.

I would tend to disagree with Spanier that there was a period of detente strategy, followed by renewed, if less prolonged, cold war strategy. Although the United States has come a long way toward accepting communism as a valid form of government, it has most certainly not come full circle. If anything, the breaking down of the symbolic Berlin Wall, the crumbling of the Soviet Union, and the transforming of the world into a capitalist bowl has meant to the West the defeat of communism, the victory of America, and the righteousness of the west. So it would appear that the U.S. was until the "end" (if indeed it does not still

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