Dtente EXTRACT 1. What is the meaning? Four way intention/ reduction in strange nature of relations.

We can date dtente from roughly 1968 when Richard Nixon was elected president of united states. No precise date when it ends. Died a slow death in late 1970s. Charactersitic of late 60s Missing out Vietnam war. Important feature of cold war. Vietnam war. Dont include Vietnam war but good to know. Second cold war is early 80s. dtente not end of cold war but relavent to it. Important to understand the cold war could have ended in the 1970s if dtente had been successful, but why did dtente failed and why was reagen eventually successful in brning cold war to end, commonly referred to as an American victory Dtente attributed to two man. Richard Nixon. Always associate republicans with anti-communist extremist, and he had reputation for being a hard liner but nonetheless he was one of the key architects of dtente. Kissinger and Nixon have vision but Kissinger was the one who implemented it. Main themes of dtente. First of all Vietnam, nixons decision to seek a settlement htat would allow him to withdraw the American troops. Wanted south Vietnam to survive as a non-communist astate, didnt achieve that. 1973 american troops pulled out. 1975, south Vietnam over-run by communist forces. Clearly withdraw of American troops from vietname important to dtente. Vietnam is a cold war conflict, one of the most dangerous of the cold war conflicts Ping pong diplomacy, then china go united nations 1971, 1972 nixon himself went to china, improving relation with china. Way of pressuring the soviet union to improve its relationship with America. Triangle relationship. American policy of jimmy carter was pro Chinese and anti soviet. Early stages of dtente, intiatieives made teo improve relationships with china so as to improve relations with soviet. Relationship with china was seen in tandem with relationship with soviets. As far as ussr are concerned, two main themes of improving relationship 1) arms control. There was a summit in 1962 which produced 2 significant agreements on arms control which was known as SALT 1 and the ABM (anti-ballistic missile treaty) economic agreement between the two countries. Derived from soviet need to import grain, deal struck where America will sell wheat to soviet union. Going to be part of a more general economic agreement and will have to be ratified by congress and that did run into trouble. What America want to do is tie soviet union with more normalized contact with the west. Contact which will be more mutually benefitical which the soviet union is keen not to jepordise. Modify future soviet behavior through these contact. Not just economic agreement, cutlureal, educational, scientific agreements as well. All these points of contact act as apparatus of dtente. Nixon able to achieve all this while remaining domestically strong. Think back to how domestic situation force government to take a harder line towards communists than they wantd due to their vulnerability to attacks by republican. One of thereasons why in early stages, dtente was successful. Quite important thiking in terms of cold war being manifested by different relationships. Nixon was able to strike up a good realionship with the soviet leader, berenzhev, establish faily close personal relaithionship with him and Nixon gave him a good car and they drive tgt having fun.

Krushov and kennedy prior to Cuban not good. Now later on, we have reagon and Brezhnev. Active American soviet cooperation in terms of American- soviet cooperation. In particular 1973, preceeding that was the yom kipper war Prove possible for American and soviet union to come tgt to solve the problems of middle esast. This sort of bilaterial dealing only possible due to dtente. 1974, Syria dtente. Watergate. Given that Nixon was personally impt to dtente this was clearly a significant event. 1974-1976 succeed ed by ford who did not have as much vision as Nixon had. Notnheless Kissinger still secretary of state still some continuity despite resignination of dtente. Notheless dtente detoreriorates. And later in carters regime, dtente COLLAPSES Why did this happen? Must think in generalized terms. Might be asked to explain time of cold war, why didnt cold war end in 1970s, why did it end when it did. Seeds of dtentes failure could be found quite early on. Even before Nixon fell from grace. One of the seeds of the failure of dtente was American suspicion of soviet union. Soviet union was not genuine, was taking advantage. Certainly true for SALT talks, end in 1972, then you have ongoing salt talks, which was supposed to produce second salt agreement As it continued, feel that America did not get a good deal and Russians did, increasing resetnlyment. American unhappiness about wheat agreement, what soviets did was to exploit this agreement and buy up much more wheat than Americans had anticipated and resulted in inflation. Procuded quite a lot of domestic discontent along the lines of sneaky Russians. This is what happens when you are nice to the Russians. Growing sense in usa that Americans had been duped. Extract 1. Soviet action, especially soviet intervention in the third world, felt correctly ,soviet interventsions, agfresive expansionist and not in spiriti of dtente. See soviet union giving aid to Marxist in angola cibil war and substantial aid to Marxists in ehtiopia in the form of military advisors. Many stages. Soviet try to increase infkuence. Latin America, soviets intervented in support of communist insurgency, nicargua and el savaldor. Another area that was of concerne to them was Vietnam. They felt that according to spirit of dtente, the SU could have restrained north Vietnamese, in other words prevented them from occupying the south and taking siagon, in fact the soviets took advantage of the communist advance into south Vietnam to take over various amreican facilities. i.e. canranh bay. Soviets then went on to encourage vietname to invate Cambodia in 1978 and 1979. Reason for America to think that soviet union was not acting in spirit of dtente. Finally 1979, soviets invaded Afghanistan. Reason they did so was primarily defensive, it was on soviet border and an unrealiable, violate ally. Worried about spread of Islamic fundamentalism from afghanistand into its own asian centreals states. Try to intervene to control own domestic situation. US interprete this in a diff way. Simply part of soviets aggressive expansionism. Soviet intervention in third world most impt cause of fail detetned

Soviet clampoing down even more firmly on eastern Europe. Reason for this, soviet was challenged to some extent about what happening in eastern Europe, especially Poland , some organization called solidarity, challenging totalitarian state. Demanding right of free trade union. Lots of pressure from Moscow to clamp down on solidarity. Made it quite difficult for dtente to survive. Look at developments in America. Must understand in terms of domestic policy. 1950 maccartythim. 1970s increasingly dtente was attacked from both left and right. Democrat and republican. Interesting that democratic centres should attack it. Man like henry Jackson. Assume democrats would have been in favour of this, but they do attack detete and they attack the economic arrangements and congress has to ratify trade deal and deal to democrat opposition, it doesnt get ratitifed. Economic trade agreement one of the props of dtente, incentive for them to have good relation with USA torn down. Also have ooppiostiuon from convservative republican despite presense of republican president. These are led by Ronald reagon who would eventually become president. His attacks on dtente were very popular. Starting to talk about personality. Individual leadership. Do it in terms of negative nad positive. Failures of ford and carter were to a large extrente responsible for ultimate failure of dtente itself.