The Cold War rivalry between East and West had emerged in earnest by around 1947, with Washington's enunciation of the ‘Truman Doctrine’ pledging economic and military support for allies facing a communist-inspired uprising. By the time President Johnson entered office in 1963, a mixture of crises such as that over Berlin, and more relaxed periods, had come to characterise the Soviet–American relationship. In particular, the experience of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 led both sides to reflect especially hard on the value of less adversarial policies. As was evident in relation to Vietnam, Johnson was very much a supporter of the Cold War consensus that the chief international aim of the United States was to inhibit the spread of communism, but he did recognise that in the nuclear age the superpowers bore a special responsibility to the world. Despite the Vietnam War, the failure to initiate arms control talks and the fact that Johnson focused on the relationship with the Soviet Union only sporadically, his Presidency proved to be a constructive period for the Soviet–American relationship, as was shown by a range of accords.

The relationship with the People's Republic of China (PRC) saw less tangible progress. China had become communist when Mao Zedong secured power in 1949 after years of civil war in which Washington had supported the Nationalists. The so-called ‘loss’ of China was seen as a profound setback for American Cold War interests.