The United States foreign policy during the 1974–1977 presidency of Gerald Ford was marked by efforts to de-escalate the Cold War. Ford focused on maintaining stability and promoting détente with the Soviet Union. One of Ford's key foreign policy achievements was the signing of the Helsinki Accords in 1975. The accords were a series of agreements between the US, Soviet Union, and other European countries that aimed to promote human rights, economic cooperation, and peaceful relations between East and West. Ford met with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev several times, and the two countries signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in 1979, which aimed to limit the number of nuclear weapons held by the two superpowers.

Henry Alfred Kissinger was an American diplomat and political scientist who served as the United States secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 and national security advisor from 1969 to 1975, in the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.