Détente
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Détente (/deɪˈtɒnt/ day-TAUNT; French for 'relaxation', French pronunciation: [detɑ̃t])[1] is the relaxation of strained relations, especially political ones, through verbal communication. The diplomacy term originates from around 1912, when France and Germany tried unsuccessfully to reduce tensions.[2]
The term is often used to refer to a period of general easing of geopolitical tensions between the
Cold War
While the recognized era of détente formally began under the
The period of détente in the Cold War saw the ratification of major disarmament treaties such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the creation of more symbolic pacts such as the Helsinki Accords. An ongoing debate among historians exists as to how successful the détente period was in achieving peace.[4][5]
Détente is considered to have ended after the
Relation had been continued to increasingly sour through the
In response to the heightening tensions, U.S. secretary of state
According to Eric Grynaviski, "Soviet and U.S. decision-makers had two very different understandings about what détente meant" while simultaneously holding "an inaccurate belief that both sides shared principles and expectations for future behaviour."[12]
Summits and treaties
Before Richard Nixon became president, the foundations of détente were developed through multilateral arms-limitation treaties in the early to middle 1960s. These included the August 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the January 1967 Outer Space Treaty, and the July 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Historical developments such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and technological advancements such as the development of the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) spurred these agreements.[13]
When Nixon came into office in 1969, several important détente treaties were developed. The Political Consultative Committee of the Warsaw Pact sent an offer to the U.S. and the rest of the West that urged a summit on "security and cooperation in Europe"[This quote needs a citation] to be held. The West agreed, and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks began towards actual limits on the nuclear capabilities of both superpowers, which ultimately led to the signing of the SALT I treaty in 1972. It limited each power's nuclear arsenals but was quickly rendered outdated as a result of the development of MIRVs. Also in 1972, the Biological Weapons Convention and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty were concluded, and talks on SALT II began the same year. The Washington Summit of 1973 further advanced mutual and international relations through discussion of diplomatic cooperation and continued discussion regarding limitations on nuclear weaponry.[citation needed]
In 1975, the
The
In July 1975, the
Trade relations between both blocs increased substantially during the era of détente. Most significant were the vast shipments of grain that were sent from the West to the Soviet Union each year and helped to make up for the failure of the
At the same time, the
End of Vietnam War
Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, moved toward détente with the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. They hoped, in return, for Soviets to help the U.S. extricate or remove itself from Vietnam. People then started to notice the consciousness with which US politicians started to act.[17]
Strategic Arms Limitations Talks
Nixon and Brezhnev signed an ABM treaty in Moscow on 26 May 1972 as well as
The goal of Nixon and Kissinger was to use arms control to promote a much broader policy of détente, which could then allow the resolution of other urgent problems through what Nixon called "linkage." David Tal argued:[19]
The linkage between strategic arms limitations and outstanding issues such as the Middle East, Berlin and, foremost, Vietnam thus became central to Nixon's and Kissinger's policy of détente. Through employment of linkage, they hoped to change the nature and course of U.S. foreign policy, including U.S. nuclear disarmament and arms control policy, and to separate them from those practiced by Nixon's predecessors. They also intended, through linkage, to make U.S. arms control policy part of détente. ... His policy of linkage had in fact failed. It failed mainly because it was based on flawed assumptions and false premises, the foremost of which was that the Soviet Union wanted strategic arms limitation agreement much more than the United States did.
Apollo–Soyuz handshake
A significant example of an event contributing to détente was the handshake that took place in space. In July 1975, the first Soviet-American joint space flight was conducted, the ASTP.[20] Its primary goal was the creation of an international docking system, which would allow two different spacecraft to join in orbit. That would allow both crews on board to collaborate on space exploration.[21] The project marked the end of the Space Race, which had started in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik 1, and allowed tensions between the Americans and the Soviets to decrease significantly.[22]
Concurrent conflicts
As direct relations thawed, increased tensions continued between both superpowers through their
During much of the early détente period, the
Both sides continued aiming thousands of nuclear warheads atop intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) at each other's cities, maintaining submarines with long-range nuclear weapon capability (submarine-launched ballistic missiles, or SLBMs) in the world's oceans, keeping hundreds of nuclear-armed aircraft on constant alert, and guarding contentious borders in Korea and Europe with large ground forces. Espionage efforts remained a high priority, and defectors, reconnaissance satellites, and signal intercepts measured each other's intentions to try to gain a strategic advantage.[citation needed]
Reignited tensions and the end of the first détente
The 1979
Another contributing factor in the decline in the popularity of détente as a desirable U.S. policy was the
In response to the stranglehold of influence by Kissinger in the Nixon and Ford administrations and the later decline in influence over foreign policy by the Department of Defense, Richardson, Schlesinger, and Rumsfeld all used the growing antipathy in the U.S. for the Soviet Union to undermine Kissinger's attempts to achieve a comprehensive arms reduction treaty. That helped to portray the entire notion of détente as an untenable policy.[27]
The 1980 U.S. presidential election saw Reagan elected on a platform opposed to the concessions of détente. Negotiations on SALT II were abandoned as a result. However, during the later years of his presidency, Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev pursued a policy that was considered to be détente.
Cuban thaw
On 17 December 2014, U.S. president Barack Obama and Cuba president Raúl Castro resolved to restore diplomatic relations between Cuba and the U.S. The restoration agreement had been negotiated in secret in the preceding months. The negotiations were facilitated by Pope Francis and hosted mostly by the Canadian government, which had warmer relations with Cuba at that time. Meetings were held in both Canada and the Vatican City.[30] The agreement would see some U.S. travel restrictions lifted, fewer restrictions on remittances, greater access to the Cuban financial system for U.S. banks, and the reopening of the U.S. embassy in Havana and the Cuban embassy in Washington, which both closed in 1961 after the breakup of diplomatic relations as a result of Cuba's alliance with the Soviet Union.[31]
On 14 April 2015, the
See also
References
- ^ "détente – traduction". Dictionnaire Français-Anglais WordReference.com (in French).
- ^ Keiger 1983, pp. 69–70.
- ^ a b Hunt 2015, pp. 269–274.
- ^ "The Rise and Fall of Détente, Professor Branislav L. Slantchev, Department of Political Science, University of California – San Diego 2014" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 October 2014. Retrieved 22 July 2014.
- ^ Nuti 2008, p. 53.
- ^ "Ronald Reagan, radio broadcast on August 7th, 1978" (PDF). Retrieved 22 July 2014.
- ^ "Ronald Reagan. January 29, 1981 press conference". Presidency.ucsb.edu. 29 January 1981. Retrieved 22 July 2014.
- ^ "Detente Wanes as Soviets Quarantine Satellites from Polish Fever". Washington Post. 19 October 1980.
- ^ Simes 1980, p. [page needed].
- ^ Cannon, Lou (29 May 1988). "Reagan, Gorbachev Two Paths to Detente". Washington Post.
- ^ "The Cold War Heats up – New Documents Reveal the "Able Archer" War Scare of 1983". Military History Now. 20 May 2013.
- ^ "Limited or Partial Test Ban Treaty (LTBT/PTBT)". Nuclear Museum. Retrieved 4 May 2023.
- ^ Lapennal 1977, p. 1.
- ^ a b c Lapennal 1977, pp. 14–15.
- ^ Kissinger 1995, p. [page needed].
- ^ Rhodes 2008, p. 61.
- ^ Rhodes 2008, p. 112.
- ^ Tal 2013, pp. 1091–1092.
- ^ "NASA – Handshake in Space". Nasa.gov. 1 March 2010. Archived from the original on 1 April 2016. Retrieved 30 September 2018.
- ^ Morgan, Kellie (15 July 2015). "Celebrating historic handshake in space, 40 years later". CNN. Retrieved 30 September 2018.
- ^ Samuels 2005, p. 669.
- ^ "The Long Arm of the October War" History News Network, 12 September 2013.
- ^ Garthoff 1985, p. [page needed].
- ^ Poole 2015, p. viii.
- ^ Poole 2015, p. 23.
- ^ Poole 2015.
- ^ "Reagan, Gorbachev two paths of Détente". Washington Post. Washington Post, 29 May 1988. 29 May 1988.
- ^ Norman Podhoretz (January 1984). "The First Term: The Reagan Road to Détente". Foreign Affairs (America and the World 1984).
- ^ Nadeau, Barbie Latza (17 December 2014). "The Pope's Diplomatic Miracle: Ending the U.S.-Cuba Cold War". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
- ^ Schwartz, Felicia (20 July 2015). "As Embassies Open, a Further Thaw in Cuban-U. S. ties Faces Hurdles in Congress". WSJ. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
- ^ "FACT SHEET: Charting a New Course on Cuba". whitehouse.gov. 17 December 2014. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
- ^ Michaels, Allison (21 March 2016). "The Last Time a President Visited Cuba Was 1928. It Was a Very Big Deal Back Then, Too". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 24 March 2016. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
- ^ "Trump rolls back parts of what he calls 'terrible' Obama Cuba policy". Reuters. 16 June 2017. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
Works cited
- Garthoff, Raymond L. (1985). Detente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations From Nixon to Reagan. ISBN 978-0-8157-3044-6.
- Grynaviski, Eric (2014). Constructive Illusions: Misperceiving the Origins of International Cooperation. Cornell University Press. JSTOR 10.7591/j.ctt1287f2s.
- Hunt, Michael (2015). The World Transformed: 1945 to the Present: A Documentary Reader. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. OCLC 870439207.
- Keiger, John F. V. (1983). France and the Origins of the First World War. ISBN 9781349172092.
- OCLC 32350622.
- Lapennal, Ivo (1977). Human Rights: Soviet Theory and Practice, Helsinki and International Law. Eastern Press.
- Nuti, Leopoldo (2008). The Crisis of Détente in Europe. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9780203887165.
- Poole, Walter S. (2015). The Decline of Détente: Elliot Richardson, James Schlesinger, and Donald Rumsfeld 1973-1977 (PDF). Cold War Foreign Policy Series: Special Study 7. Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense.
- Rhodes, Richard (2008). Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-375-71394-1.
- Samuels, Richard J., ed. (2005). Encyclopedia of United States National Security. Vol. 1. ISBN 978-0-7619-2927-7.
- Simes, Dimitri K. (1980). "The Death of Detente?". International Security. 5 (1): 3–25. S2CID 154098316.
- Tal, David (2013). ""Absolutes" and "Stages" in the Making and Application of Nixon's SALT Policy". Diplomatic History. 37 (5): 1090–1116.
Further reading
- Bell, Coral (1977). The Diplomacy of Detente: The Kissinger Era. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-21122-6.
- Bowker, Mike; Williams, Phil (1988). Superpower Detente: A Reappraisal. SAGE Publications. ISBN 978-0-8039-8041-9.
- Daigle, Craig (2012). The Limits of Détente: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1969-1973. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-18334-4.
- Gaddis, John Lewis (2006). The Cold War: A New History. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-303827-6.
- ISBN 0-8157-3041-1.
- ISBN 978-1-59797-076-1.
- Jackson, Galen (2020). "Who Killed Détente? The Superpowers and the Cold War in the Middle East, 1969–77". International Security. 44 (3). MIT Press - Journals: 129–162. S2CID 209892087.
- Litwak, Robert S. (1986). Détente and the Nixon Doctrine: American Foreign Policy and the Pursuit of Stability, 1969–1976. CUP Archive. ISBN 978-0-521-33834-9.
- McAdams, A. James (19 December 1985). East Germany and Detente: Building Authority After the Wall. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-26835-6.
- Suri, Jeremi (2003). Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-01031-4.
- Sarotte, M. E. (2001). Dealing with the Devil: East Germany, Détente, and Ostpolitik, 1969-1973. Univ of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-4915-6.