National Curriculum Learning Pack
Détente
Introduction
Détente is a term used to describe the reduction in tension between the
Soviet Union and the United States of America that occurred in the late 1960’s
and lasted for around ten years.
This decade provided an opportunity to meet and talk. These sessions
resulted in agreements that attempted to limit the nuclear arms race and
ensured that meaningful links were established across the Iron Curtain.
Causes
The leaders of both ‘super powers’ – Leonid Brezhnev (Russia), Lyndon
Johnson and later Richard Nixon (USA) had financial reasons for wanting to
reduce defence spending. Brezhnev felt that the economic burden was
unsustainable and the Vietnam War had drained the American economy and
Johnson needed to expand the American welfare state.
This coupled with the realisation that each side had the capability of mutually
assured destruction led to a growing awareness of the need for dialogue.
The policy of the West German leader Willy Brant – Ostpolitik – was helping
to decrease tension in Europe. The Soviet Union hoped that this would lead to
greater trade opportunities with the West and thought that perhaps a less
aggressive policy towards Western Europe may encourage them to detach
themselves from their American ally.
The Sino-Soviet Split c\used concern within the Soviet Union. It was felt that
this rift would encourage the Chinese to look to Americas as an ally and so
create a Sino-American alliance that would work against them. The
Americans were keen to foster a relationship with the Chinese as this was
viewed as a way to drive apart two of America’s enemies.
The three great powers – United States, Russia and China each had their
own motives for being a part of this détente. Pressures at home and abroad
encouraged the three leaders to look for ways of co-operate with each other
whilst at the same time maintain their political views.
Throughout the seventies, the American government fostered relationships
with China and opened a dialogue with Russia that led to the signing of SALT
1; SALT 2 and the Helsinki Accords. By the end of the seventies this
détente was over for several reasons. The most fundamental of these was
each side’s interpretation of the definition and purpose of détente.
The Soviets were prepared to come to an agreement on arms control as a
reduction in arms spending would have economic and social benefits for the
Soviet leadership. The other aspects of détente – human rights and trade
issues - were of minor consequence to them and only acceptable if they were
of benefit to Russia.
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The Americans and her Western allies became increasingly concerned that
despite all the agreements Russia was still increasing her military forces. As a
consequence America increased her spending on arms and stationed
intercontinental ballistic missiles in Europe, a move that angered the Soviets.
During the 1980’s the situation worsened with Western leaders referring to
Russia as the ‘evil empire’. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979) and her
attitude towards dissidents served to support this view. However, the whole
arms race became destabilised when President Reagan (USA) announced
the ‘Strategic Defence Initiative’ or ‘Star Wars’ project. The creation of this
defensive shield would make Russia more vulnerable to attack from America
with the shield making retaliation difficult. Other incidents such as the shooting
down of the Korean airliner KAL 007 (September 1983) ensured that détente
was not considered as a relevant topic. It was not until the fall of the Berlin
Wall in 1989 that the dialogue between East and West was fully reopened.
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OSTPOLITIK
In the early seventies, one of the first steps towards détente was taken by
Willy Brandt – leader of West Germany. He wanted to improve relations with
East Germany and Eastern Europe. Discussions between Brandt and the
East German leader Willi Stoph began quickly, but no formal agreement was
reached as Brandt would not recognise East Germany as a sovereign state.
Initially, this initiative was greeted with suspicion in the East and enthusiasm
in the West. In 1970, Brandt signed the Treaty of Moscow with Brezhnev and
soon afterwards the Treaty of Warsaw with Poland. The latter was an
agreement to respect existing frontiers in Central Europe.
The polices of Willy Brandt took a more lenient line towards the East than
those of his predecessors and so this helped to relieve some of the tension
that existed. The signing of the Basic Treaty in 1972 gave both East and West
the opportunity to ‘develop normal good-neighbourly relations with each other
on the basis of equal rights’. Further trade, cultural and sporting contacts
followed and East Germany made concessions on Berlin.
By the time Brandt retired in 1974, the city of Berlin and the two Germany’s
had achieved some stability.
Sino-Soviet Split
The Sino-Soviet split began in the late 1950’s and became a major diplomatic
conflict between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) whose leader was
Mao Zedong and the USSR whose leader at that time was Joseph Stalin.
During the 1950’s China worked with a large number of Soviet advisers who
encouraged the Chinese leaders to follow the Russian model of development
with an emphasis on heavy industry funded by taxes and levies from the
peasantry whilst making consumer goods a low priority.
When Stalin died in 1953, Mao felt he was now the senior leader and was
resentful when the new Soviet leaders Malenkov and Khrushchev did not
recognise this. Mao had ignored many of Stalin’s requests but he had
respected him as a world leader. In 1956 Khrushchev denounced Stalin
during his Secret Speech and although Mao didn’t react publicly he was
infuriated.
In 1959, Khrushchev held a summit meeting with US President Dwight
Eisenhower. The Soviets were alarmed by developments within China and
sought to appease the West. They also refused to honour their earlier
commitment to help China develop nuclear weapons and support Mao in his
border dispute with India. Mao was offended by these actions he felt
Khrushchev was being to accommodating to Western demands. However, the
Soviet leadership were well aware that the Americans could match their
nuclear power and so sought to engage them in dialogue and negotiations
that would avoid the outbreak of war and were determined not to give Mao
nuclear weapons. By June 1990 the spilt between Russia and China became
public when Khrushchev and Peng Zhen (China) openly clashed.
During 1962, international events caused the final split between the Soviet
Union and China. Mao criticised Khrushchev for backing down in the Cuban
Missile Crisis and Khrushchev responded by declaring that Mao’s policies
would lead to nuclear war.
By 1965, the Sino-Soviet split was an established fact, and the onset of Mao’s
Cultural Revolution severed all contact between not only the two countries but
between China and most of the rest of the world.
By 1970, Mao realised that he could not simultaneously confront the Soviet
Union, United States and suppress internal disorder. Mao decided that
because of their geographical proximity the Soviets were a greater threat and
so he decide to open a dialogue with America and so confront the USSR.
In July 1971 Henry Kissinger (Security adviser to Richard Nixon) made a
secret visit to Beijing to make the arrangements for a visit by President Nixon
in the following year. The Soviets retaliated by organising their own summit
with Nixon. This paved the way to creating a triangular relationship between
Washington, Beijing and Moscow and so ended the worst period of
confrontation between the USSR and China.
Sino-American Alliance
The Peoples Republic of China (PRC) was established in 1949. For the next
thirty years this regime was not recognised by the United States who instead,
maintained diplomatic relations with the Republic of China government who
were in exile on Taiwan.
Despite this the Americans retained a consular presence on mainland China
until the personnel were withdrawn in 1950.
Any hope of a reopening a dialogue between the PRC and America was
dashed when the military forces of the two countries fought against each other
in the Korean War.
The United States continued to work to prevent the PRC from taking China’s
seat in the United Nations Assembly. America placed an embargo on trade
and encouraged her allies not to deal with the PRC. Despite this a series of
meeting did take place between the two governments beginning in 1954 and
continuing until 1970. One of the outcomes of these meetings was that by the
late 1960’s the United States began to relax trade restrictions with China and
was looking for ways to develop a more open dialogue.
An incident involving the table tennis teams of America and China is seen by
many as a catalyst for the ensuing change in the relationship between the two
countries. In April 1971, at the World table tennis championships in Nagoya
Japan, Glenn Cowan, a member of the American team boarded the Chinese
team bus. At that time it was a serious offence for a Chinese citizen to speak
to a foreigner. The Chinese player Zhuang Zedong felt that to ignore Cowan
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was contrary to the Chinese tradition of hospitality and so he offered the
American a gift.
This broke the ice and subsequently due to the intervention of Mao, the
American team were invited to compete in a competition held in Beijing.
In April 1971, the United States lifted its trade embargo with China and in
June of that year Henry Kissinger (Security Adviser to Richard Nixon) made a
secret visit to Beijing to make arrangements for a visit by President Nixon the
following year.
The visit took place in February 1972 amid great media coverage. This visit
symbolised the way forward and although few concrete achievements were
made at the time, the visit helped to ease the tensions between the two
powers. Further visits followed in subsequent years -President Ford in 1975
and President Carter in 1977. All this activity finally led to the establishing of
diplomatic relations between the United States and China on 1 January 1979.
SALT 1
Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty
A series of meetings began in November 1969 and continued until May 1972
when agreement was reached between Richard Nixon (USA) and Leonid
Brezhnev (Soviet Union) on the limitation of strategic ballistic missiles.
One of the key stumbling blocks to agreement was how arms should be
limited and which types of weapons should be included in the arrangements.
The differing weapon structure of each side made comparison difficult.
Nixon’s visit to China in February 1972 seemed to exert pressure on the
Soviet Union to reach an agreement and sign the treaty.
The SALT 1 treaty outlined agreement in three areas:
a) The ABM Treaty - (anti ballistic missile defences).
Each side was allowed to have only 100 ABMs on each of two sites,
one for their capital city and one to protect their nuclear missiles.
b) The Interim Treaty
Limits were placed on the number of ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic
Missiles) 1618 for USSR and 1054 USA; SLBMs (submarine launched
Ballistic Missiles) 740 for both countries. The Soviet Union was allowed
more as America had greater capacity in other areas e.g. strategic
bombers. However this treaty did not cover developments such as
MIRVs (Multiple Independently target able Re-entry Vehicle) which
were capable of carrying a collection of nuclear weapons on a single
missile. In reality the Russian MIRV and the American Cruise Missile
were being built whilst SALT 1 was finalised.
c) The Basic Principles Agreement
This laid down some important rules for the conduct of nuclear warfare.
The USA and the USSR pledged ‘ to do their utmost to avoid military
confrontation ‘ and ‘ to exercise restraint’ in international relations.
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The SALT 1 agreement was to last for five years therefore SALT 2 talks
began in November 1972.
SALT II
As SALT I had been an interim agreement the intention was to negotiate
further, however SALT II ran into difficulties. An outline agreement was
proposed in 1974 at the Vladivostok summit between Leonid Brezhnev
(Soviet Union) and US President Gerald Ford. This agreement set equal limits
for missile launchers and strategic bombs but left out Cruise missiles. The
American Senate, in particular the right wing senators, saw all arms control as
a mechanism for allowing the USSR ‘to catch up with America’ and so the
agreement stalled.
In 1977, Jimmy Carter, the newly elected American President, attempted to
renegotiate the SALT II Treaty in order to reduce the number of Soviet
Missiles. It took until 1979 for precise figures to be agreed and the SALT II
treaty was signed by Brezhnev and Carter in June of that year. Despite
reassurance from President Carter, the American Senate were growing very
uneasy about the Soviet violation of previous agreements and in response
refused to ratify the treaty in 1980.
Helsinki Agreement
In 1971, the Warsaw pact countries proposed a conference with NATO to
discuss European Security. The conference began in Helsinki in 1973 with
thirty three countries attending. A series of meeting followed over the
successive months with an agreement reached in 1975.
This agreement covered three ‘baskets’ –
Basket One
This contained an acceptance that the borders of European countries were
‘inviolable’; they could not be altered by force.
Basket Two
This promoted links and exchanges across the Iron curtain in the areas of
trade and technology.
Basket Three
This included an agreement to respect human rights such as freedom of
speech and freedom of movement across Europe. The West saw the
acceptance of these issues by the communist states of Eastern Europe as a
significant step forward. In reality, the Soviet bloc governments ignored or
paid lip service to the human rights agreement.
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SDI: Strategic Defense Initiative
The Strategic Defense Initiative was commonly referred to as Star Wars after
the popular science fiction films of the time. This initiative was proposed by
the American President Ronald Reagan in 1983.
The intention was to use ground based and space based systems to protect
the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. The focus
was strategic defence rather than the previous strategic offence of Mutually
Assured Destruction.
The vision was to have the ability to create a curtain in space of x-ray lasers
powered by nuclear explosions. This curtain would be able to deflect and so
negate any nuclear ballistic attack from the Soviet Union on America.
The initiative was never fully developed or deployed but the research and
technological development that took place has influenced some of the missile
systems in use today.