This chapter contends that in the early 1970s there emerged a major ideological challenge to the very rationale of the American foreign-policy paradigm. A newly universalised discourse of human rights questioned the underpinning of a conservative international system, by disputing the notion that states should not interfere in the internal business of other states: instead, for human rights to have any meaning whatsoever, other states must be able to intervene in order to protect them.

The challenge took the form of an amendment, proposed in the Senate by Henry Jackson (D-WA) and in the House of Representatives by Charles Vanik (D-OH), and hence known as the Jackson–Vanik Amendment. It directly linked the granting of Most-Favoured-Nation status (MFN) to the Soviet Union with the number of citizens they allowed to emigrate. Though the planners carefully avoided any hint of it in the actual wording of the Amendment, it was clear that the motivation was the Soviet restriction on Jewish emigration. The contention here is that the debates surrounding this Amendment were debates within the American polity about the role it could play in international affairs.