decline of detente

• European needs and Ostpolitik:

  • development in EU in late 1960s saw links between the East and West develop
  • political disorder across EU
  • substantial student demonstrations against President de Gaulle and French system of government
  • Willy Brandt (West German politician) promoted links across iron curtain
  • Ostpolitik was Brandt’s attempt at removing barriers between the East and West
• Consequences of Detente:

  • achievement came as superpowers were prepares to accept compromises needed to secure agreements on mutually concerned issues
  • treaties had limited success (SALT I and Helsinki Accords)
• Assessment of European Detente:

  • recognised the reality of a divided Europe
  • did not abandon principle of reunification
  • Basic Treaty 1972 - West Germany accepted existence of East Germany as separate state and increased trade
  • Ostpolitik gave the Soviet Union legal recognition over its control on East Germany
• Assessment of Detente:

  • welcomed as a reduction in tensions
  • superpower relations stabilised
  • armaments increased during time peiod
  • signed agreements ignored
  • tensions between USSR and China increased
  • conflict intensified in the Third World
  • detente ended in 1979
• End of Detente: (1979-81)

  • beginning of the end was Soviet of invasion of Afghanistan
  • West viewed it as evidence of Soviet expansion
  • Soviet expansion policy evidence in Third World
  • Soviets violating Hisinki Accord troubled the US
  • SALT II did not have US support
  • late 1970s - Brezhnev had failing health and left USSR
  • invasion of Afghanisation condemned by US President Carter who withdrew from SALT II
  • Thatcher and Reagan viewed communism as morally evil and unprepared to negotiate with the USSR
• ‘Thatcherism’ and ‘Reaganomics’:

  • encourage free enterprise by ‘rolling back the state’ - they believed that high taxes and big government were damaging to private enterprise
  • defence spending - committed to expanding government spending on defence
  • dedicated to new generation of nuclear missiles (Trident)
  • growing imabalance of economic power → USSR could not keep pace with defence spending
  • standing up to the ‘Evil Empire’
• Reagan’s policy was designed to assert US strength and weaken USSR’s position via

  • restricting trade with USSR to deny them access to superior Western technology
  • committed US government to massive defence project (Strategic Defence Initiative) which proposed satellites armed with lasers to shoot Soviet missiles