2R - The extent of Détente up to 1979: the SALT talks
Learn how arms control, European agreements and relations with China reduced some Cold War tensions while preserving competition, and judge the extent of détente by what actually changed.
SALT and the logic of deterrence
Détente meant a relaxation of tensions between rivals rather than an alliance or an end to ideological competition. By the early 1970s both superpowers had reasons to manage nuclear rivalry. The USSR wanted recognition of strategic parity and access to trade and technology. The USA wanted a less expensive and dangerous confrontation and greater freedom to address Vietnam. Neither needed to trust the other completely to recognise a shared interest in preventing nuclear war.
The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) began in 1969. Nixon and Brezhnev signed SALT I in Moscow in May 1972. Its interim agreement limited specified offensive missile launchers; the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty restricted systems intended to intercept incoming strategic missiles. This was a significant willingness to negotiate limits, but it left large arsenals intact. Office of the Historian, SALT agreements.
Limiting defence could help deterrence. If one side believed it could attack first and then stop the weakened enemy's retaliation, it might think nuclear war was survivable. Restricting missile defences preserved each side's vulnerability, reducing that incentive. This unsettling logic explains why an agreement allowing weapons to remain could nonetheless make war less attractive.
Deterrence
Preventing an adversary from attacking by making the expected costs unacceptable. Nuclear deterrence depended partly on retaining an effective capacity to retaliate.
Ostpolitik and practical European cooperation
European governments also shaped détente rather than simply following Washington and Moscow. West German Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik, pursued after 1969, sought practical improvement in relations with the East through accepting existing realities and negotiating. The aim was to make division less damaging and improve contact, while retaining West Germany's Western ties.
The Moscow and Warsaw treaties of 1970 renounced force and accepted existing European frontiers, including the Oder–Neisse border with Poland. The Four Power Agreement on Berlin in 1971 eased arrangements surrounding access and contacts. The Basic Treaty of 1972 established normal relations between the two German states, and both entered the UN in 1973. Recognition made transactions and negotiations easier; it did not create reunification or remove the Berlin Wall. University of Luxembourg CVCE, Ostpolitik.
Critics thought that accepting division legitimised communist control and weakened pressure for German unity. Supporters judged the policy by its immediate benefits: contact between families, trade and fewer confrontations over access. These positions use different criteria. If the question is whether East–West rivalry ended, Ostpolitik falls short; if it is whether people and governments could cooperate within a divided Europe, it represents meaningful change.
Brandt's example also shows how détente could rest on concessions. A leader sometimes surrendered an unachievable immediate demand to secure a practical benefit. Such compromises could stabilise the status quo while creating contacts that might change it in the longer term.
Helsinki: security and human rights
The Helsinki Final Act, signed by thirty-five states on 1 August 1975, joined several different concerns in one agreement. European security principles addressed sovereignty, the inviolability of frontiers and peaceful settlement. Other provisions promoted economic and scientific cooperation, human contacts and rights. It was a political commitment rather than an enforceable peace treaty. The combination allowed governments to emphasise different gains. OSCE, Final Act and English document.
Brezhnev could present acceptance of existing frontiers as greater security for the post-war order. Western governments could emphasise freedoms and human contacts. These commitments did not authorise forcible border change or make every existing border permanently unchangeable: the Act also allowed peaceful change by agreement. The settlement therefore stabilised relations without making the division of Europe an eternal requirement.
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