What year was detente created?

Answer 1

1969, it was adopted due to a combination of financial insecurity of both the USA and USSR, for the USA it was due to the economic strains caused by their involvement in Vietnam and a deepening need to improve the Welfare system. On the side of the USSR it was generally because of the vast production of armaments, this was true also for America but the Russian economy was worse off so it had a higher impact.

The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 had also highlighted the dangers of nuclear annihilation for both sides, by 1969 Russia had matched the capability of the USA for Mutually Assured Destruction and so detente was made more necessary by the fact that both nations could easily destroy the other. There is the notion that this parity (equality/ equal amounts) of nuclear weapons would act as a deterrent as both sides knew that they were well matched and could equally destroy the other. However, as both nations strove forward to improve and invent new weapons this parity was made unstable and so could not form a good basis for the future. This instability and inability to retain parity made detente even more necessary.

The Sino-Soviet

Split (friendship of The People's Republic of China and the USSR) also created political instability between China, Russia and America. As relations between China and America improved, Russia began to feel insecure and realised that what had been a bi-polar

world ( two nations of great strength and importance) had become a multi-polar

one with China developing to match the strength of the USA and USSR. Russia now had to participate in triangular diplomacy which would be much more complex,

also as Russia was no longer the only other powerful nation that America could go to, their importance was diminished. Improving relations between the USA and China also meant that Chinese support in political conflict or otherwise could not be relied on. This weakened Russian position also played a part in bringing Russia to the negotiating table and once there to make concessions.

It was also a matter of geographical considerations, though by 1969 Russia had dominated a large part of Eastern Europe, the hold was tenuous

and did not have the legitimacy of ownership that came from negotiation and agreement. The USSR hoped to gain recognition that the countries it had dominated were officially theirs, this had not come from forcibly

imposing communism on many regions of the Eastern Bloc as they had done so after

WW2. Russia's control was also wavering of many of the countries they had taken, Romania had developed a more independent foreign policy than the one favoured within Soviet Russia and the Czechoslovakian Crisis of 1968 and Strikes in the Polish city of Gdansk in 1970 were all signs that the Soviet hold over Eastern Europe needed strengthening. The USA was so not unhappy about this, the Russians coming to the negotiating table over the legitimacy of territory allowed them to try and get Russia to make concessions or even reduce Russia's influence in some areas of Eastern Europe.

The USA's

failure toacheive victory in the Vietnam War had presented them as weakened and not the invinsible

superpower they had been viewed as since 1945. America's economy

was weakened byit and it had caused high inflation and a large budget deficit. It had also resulted in a large decline in popular opinion for foreign intervention in Eastern Europe, but America still wanted to intervene without it being obvious, aggressive or controling.

Negotiations and detente would allow this, it could also bee viewed as the American attempt to contain yet get along with Russia and so was seen by many in America as a fight against communism without bloodshed. As the image of American strength was weakened by the Vietnam war, Russia felt that it was a good chance to negotiate as America was in a weaker position and would be more inclined to accept American concessions and reduce Russian one's.

Willy Brandt's (German chancellor of West Germany) policy of Ostpolitik

(eastern policy) also promoted links between democratic and communist countries and saw the stabilization of European relations as essential to the interests of the continent as a whole. By establishing links and reducing tensions the scars that had been left by the conflict of the 'early Cold War) were slowly fading. There isn't solid evidence that Ostpolitik

significantly impacted US-Soviet

relations but it certainly influenced the actions and feelings of the superpower leaders and opened the possibility of better relations and detente.

The Fear of Nuclear annihilation had also been felt across Europe and so there was pressure from all sides to improve US-Soviet relations.

Hope this has helped.