The Policy and Period of Dtente: the Midst of the Cold War - Research Paper Example

Running Head: THAWING THE ICE Thawing the Ice of the Cold War: Reasons Behind the Policy of Dtente The term dtente is used to describe a period that began in the 1970s and went through the 1990s during Gorbachev's administration, when tensions between the Soviet Union and the West began to relax. This was not one continuous period of lowered tension, but rather involved a series of dtentes, each of which experienced their own obstacles and conflicts. One of the main motivations for all sides concerned within the international arena, was the continuing nuclear armament build up that had both sides concerned about a potential crisis situation. The horrors of the Vietnam War had convinced world leaders that a dtente was necessary to divert an unforeseen conflict that could not end well for any nation. The Soviet Union, led at the beginning stages of dtente by Leonid Brezhnev and Alexey Kosygin, had additional reasons to feel the need for this policy that effectively saw a thaw in the ongoing Cold War. The early 1970s saw political unrest increase to worrying levels throughout the USSR and its satellite states, particularly in Poland, mainly due to low living standards and widespread economic hardships. In order to be able to attend to bettering the bloc's economic situation and to the people's grievances, the Soviet Union needed to divert funds away from the overwhelming defense spending. A dtente was needed to allow the administration of Brezhnev and Kosygin to ease up on the ongoing nuclear competition with the United States, that was hard to sustain in any case, in order to focus more of their resources on domestic policy. Important pieces of this policy included the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT 1) between the USSR and the USA, which administered what the appropriate levels of nuclear arms were that each side was allowed to possess, effectively slowing down the build up, but did not end it. Another important result of dtente was the Helsinki Agreement signed three years later between the two aforementioned powers, as well as Canada and most of Europe, which solidified the borders of Europe as they had been since the end of World War II, including the division of Germany between East and West (Lowe, 1997). European nations themselves were also cognizant of the rising risk that the nuclear arms race created, particularly for them, as they feared becoming the front line of a potential nuclear crisis or a traditional war, which was also a possibility if a conflict arose that pushed for direct aggression. With Western European security in mind, the foreign minister and then chancellor of Western Germany, Willy Brandt, pursued better relations with the Soviet Union by accepting the division of his country and the continent. Brandt felt this was a necessary concession to make at a time that rising tensions could jeopardize the uneasy peace of the time. This was convenient for the communist bloc that feared German reunification, which would mean a much stronger threat on the West. Better relations with the West also opened up the door for the Soviet Union to promote certain forums for East-West trade, something that benefited Russia that needed Western technology to help deal with the economic difficulties that it was experiencing (Vadney, 1998). Beyond the inability of the Soviet Union to continue to viably maintain the arms race with the United States, while trying to resolve its economic woes, the strain on its relations with China offered further incentive in pursuing the policy of dtente. This strain was occurring at the same time as relations between China and the USA were improving, and the Soviet Union faced the possibility of becoming increasingly isolated. Brezhnev and Kosygin did not wish to deal with a hostile United States at a time when their security was in question on the East. This was evidenced by the shift in the 1980s in the stationing of more Russian divisions on their eastern borders than on the west, fourty-four versus thirty-one respectively. Dtente was essentially seen as an insurance policy against creating an alliance between the East and the West that did not include and could be hostile towards the Soviet Union (Vadney, 1998). To further understand Brezhnev's motives in pursuing dtente, it must be said that, according to Juviler and Zawadzka (1978), as a centrist Brezhnev had moved away from his predecessors' rhetoric of the inherent evil of Western leadership, and wished to acknowledge that not all in the West aimed at destroying the Soviet Union or at spreading their own imperialist goals across the globe. This sort of mindset made dtente easier to accomplish as a policy. Furthermore as a centrist, Brezhnev came to represent a growing privileged elite within the Soviet Union that had much to gain from this policy of rapprochement. Dtente offered the centrists, as well as the liberals, that did not adhere to the conservatives' view that isolationist policies were better for the strengthening of the Soviet Union, occupational opportunities that allowed them to extend themselves beyond their own borders, as well as opening up gateways for intellectual exchange for scientists, technicians, managers and scholars. Wallensteen (1989) might however disagree with Juviler and Zawadzka's (1978) aforementioned assessment that Brezhnev did not consider the West, specifically the United States, as an imperialist threat. Wallensteen would deduce that Brezhnev's desire for dtente was precisely because of his mistrust of the US, and that in order to force the US to negotiate with the Soviet Union, the latter needed to no longer be inferior to the Americans' nuclear power. Thus Brezhnev sought dtente in order to slow down the nuclear arms race, not just for security reasons, but also to undermine an aspect of American superiority. This theory is further backed up by Stewart, Warhola and Blough (1984), who offer as one possible explanation of Soviet interest in dtente, a belief by some Western critics at the time that this policy was merely a "smoke screen" (p. 3) designed to allow the USSR to pursue further expansionist interests in Europe and the Third World. Therefore it seems difficult to conclude whether dtente was motivated by a sinister desire to divert the West's attention away from the Soviet Union's designs on spreading socialism further or whether it was because of a relaxing of suspicions of the West's imperialist goals. In any case, Ulam (1976) argues that Brezhnev and Kosygin never saw dtente as appeasement towards the West, that they would essentially adhere to American-approved policies, or that they would back away from opportunities of expansion if they did not create conflict with the West. Rather, dtente was "a new type of relationship" (p. 147), which created the conditions that allowed the two superpowers to negotiate with each other without having to resort to war to settle differences. The policy and period of dtente has been seen by historians as instrumental in bringing down the levels of tension between the West and the East in the midst of the Cold War. Brezhnev and Kosygin's pursuits created the conditions that deterred a potentially catastrophic global conflict that seemed unavoidable at the height of the nuclear arms race. It further put the European powers at ease, as they feared being the primary casualties of a war, whether nuclear or traditional. In addition, dtente increased opportunities for material and intellectual exchange between the Soviet Union and the West, at a time when economic instability became a consistent threat in the overall stability of the USSR. Dtente was necessary to reallocate limited resources towards improving those economic conditions and resisting unrest in the satellite states. Finally, dtente was a strategic decision that sought to proactively avoid a strengthening of Sino-West relations that could be detrimental to Soviet security. All these factors acted as motivating forces for Brezhnev and Kosygin for rapprochement with the West, the period referred to as dtente. References Juviler, P.H.& Zawadzka, H.J. (1978). Dtente and Soviet domestic politics. Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 33(1), 158-167. Lowe, N. (1997). Mastering modern world history (3rd Ed.). Great Britain: MacMillan Press Ltd. Stewart, P.D., Warhola, J.W. & Blough, R.A. (February 1984). Issue salience and foreign policy role specialization in the Soviet Politburo of the 1970s. American Journal of Political Science, 28(1), 1-22. Ulam, A.B. (Autumn 1976). Dtente under Soviet eyes. Foreign Policy, 24, 145-159. Vadney, T.E. (1998). The world since 1945: The complete history of global change from 1945 to the end of the twentieth century (3rd Ed.). London: Penguin Books. Wallensteen, P. (August 1989). Recurrent dtentes. Journal of Peace Research, 26(3), 225-231. Read More