He is concerned to thwart Soviet expansionism, but sees US containment policy as excessively ideological, based too much on a military, rather than political, concept of the balance of power. Growing Soviet power had destroyed the earlier strategic equilibrium- ‘an eroding of strategic equilibrium was bound to have geopolitical consequences’ (p. 205) -and with US relative power declining (as exemplified by the Vietnam agony), Kissinger’s aim was to restore a balance of power, but retain political flexibility.