V o L u m e I : a d

weapons within NATO, de Gaulle nonetheless withdrew France from NATO

military command.

West Germany was the next country to venture into détente. In the late

1960s, Foreign Minister Willy Brandt instituted what became known as Ost-

politik. This reflected a shift in attitude in West Germany regarding relations

with East Germany. Under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, West Germany

had embraced the Hallstein Doctrine, refusing diplomatic relations with any

nation that recognized East Germany. This policy had in part isolated West

Germany as well as East Germany, however, and it had cost West Germany

trading opportunities with East Germany. Brandt believed that trade and

recognition would help facilitate rather than impede German reunification.

The Czech government also attempted to take advantage of the new,

more flexible attitudes brought by détente in 1968. Under the leadership of

Alexander Dubchek, the regime introduced “socialism with a human face,” a

host of reforms that ultimately included free elections and an end to censor-

ship. Dubchek, himself a communist, claimed that these steps would in fact

preserve communism.

The Soviet reaction was swift and decisive. In August 1968, an esti-

mated 500,000 Warsaw Pact troops (primarily Soviet Army but including

units from East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria) invaded Czecho-

slovakia, where they met only minimal resistance from a stunned population.

The so-called Prague Spring was over. The Czechs did not fight, for to do

so would have been futile.

To justify the action, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev announced what

became known as the Brezhnev Doctrine. This held that whenever a com-

munist regime was threatened, other communist states had the right and

indeed the obligation to intervene. This doctrine would later be invoked to

justify the Soviets’ 1979 invasion of Afghanistan as well.

The Brezhnev Doctrine understandably alarmed the People’s Republic

of China. Strictly interpreted, the Brezhnev Doctrine could be applied against

the People’s Republic of China itself, for it had “strayed from the path” of

Soviet-style communism. Indeed, at the end of the 1960s the Soviets assem-

bled considerable forces along their long common border with China, and

Moscow did nothing to dampen rumors that it was contemplating a preemp-

tive nuclear strike against China. In 1969 and 1970 there were actually armed

clashes along the border that easily could have escalated into full-scale war.

Such Chinese concerns were a key factor leading to a thaw in relations

with the United States. Since the communist victory in China in 1949, the

People’s Republic of China, even more than the Soviet Union, had been

the bête noire of the conservative right in the United States, which regarded

the “loss” of China as nothing short of a “sellout.” The United States and the

People’s Republic of China did not have formal diplomatic ties, and their only

talking ground was the UN or through third parties. That ended in February

1972 with the dramatic state visit of President Nixon to Beijing. Nixon, with

impeccable Cold Warrior credentials from the 1950s, was perhaps the only

U.S. president of the era who could have carried this off. The United States

Course of the Cold War (1950–1991)

43

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nonetheless moved cautiously, fearful of alarming the Soviet Union and dis-

turbing détente. U.S. negotiators also ran up against the stone wall of Chi-

nese insistence on the return of Taiwan, which Washington had, since the

Chinese Civil War and in defiance of most of the world’s states, regarded as

the true representative of China. Finally, in 1978 under President Jimmy

Carter, the United States established full diplomatic ties with the People’s

Republic of China, necessitating a severing of diplomatic ties with Taiwan

although not an end to U.S. support. The U.S.-People’s Republic of China

thaw was one of the more interesting events of the Cold War and served

somewhat to inhibit Soviet aggressive behavior.

Another significant part of détente was the extension of Ostpolitik by

Brandt. When he became chancellor of West Germany in 1969, he decisively

changed relations with the Soviet bloc nations. Brandt jettisoned the Hall-

stein Doctrine and in 1970 concluded a treaty with Moscow whereby West

Germany recognized the existing border between East Germany and Poland,

implicitly recognizing East Germany itself. West Germany also extended con-

siderable loans to the states of Central and Eastern Europe.

At the same time, even as the war in Vietnam continued, U.S. Presidents

Johnson and Nixon endeavored to engage the Soviets in a range of discus-

sions. They even raised the possibility of improved relations with the Soviets,

to include access to Western technology, if the Vietnam War could be settled.

Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger went so far as to declare the

world to be multipolar, with East-West relations no longer the central issue

in international affairs.

Nixon did not let substantial Soviet aid to North Vietnam interfere with

efforts to strengthen détente. Traveling to Moscow in May 1972, he signed two

major agreements with Brezhnev: the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, which

came to be known as SALT I, and an agreement of principles to regularize rela-

tions between the two superpowers. The document held that as each power

possessed the capability to destroy the other and much of the rest of the world

besides, there was no alternative to the two powers conducting their relations

on the basis of “peaceful coexistence.” The two powers pledged to do their

“utmost to avoid military confrontations and to prevent the outbreak of nuclear

war.” They also pledged to resolve their differences “by peaceful means.”

To no one’s surprise, this agreement did not usher in an era of perpetual

peace. The Soviet side, for one thing, had entered into the agreement in the

hopes of securing Western trade, investment, and badly needed technology.

In the new era of détente, the Soviet leadership hoped to achieve its ends

while also supporting communist expansion in the developing world by

means of proxy forces. Nixon, for his part, announced the Nixon Doctrine

in 1973, a rough parallel to Soviet policy whereby the United States would

assist other nations in defending themselves against communist aggression

but would no longer commit American troops to this effort.

Following the end of the Vietnam War, the United States reduced defense

spending to about 5 percent of gross national product (GNP), while the

Soviet Union’s defense expenditures rose to more than 15 percent of GNP.

The Soviet Union also obtained less for its defense spending than the United

44

Course of the Cold War (1950–1991)

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