#ThisDayInHistory US - Russia Detente Ends
On This Day In 1980, in a strong reaction to the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter asked the Senate to postpone the SALT II nuclear weapons treaty and recalled the U.S. ambassador to Moscow.
These actions signaled that the age of detente and the friendlier diplomatic and economic relations between the United States and the Soviet Union during President Richard Nixon’s administration (1969-74) had ended.
Signing treaties such as SALT I and the Helsinki Accords characterized the period. Another treaty, SALT II, was discussed but never ratified by the US. There is still an ongoing debate among historians as to how successful the détente period was in achieving peace.
After the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, both the superpowers agreed to install a direct hotline between Washington, DC, and Moscow.
The so-called red telephone enabled leaders of both countries to communicate quickly in times of urgency and reduce the chances of future crises escalating into an all-out war.
The American-Soviet détente was presented as an applied extension of that thinking.
SALT II, in the late 1970s, continued the work of the SALT I talks by ensuring further reduction in arms by the Soviet Union and by the US. The Helsinki Accords, in which the Soviets promised to grant free elections in Europe, were called a significant concession to ensure peace by the Soviets
Détente ended after the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, which led to the United States boycott of the 1980 Olympics, held in Moscow.
Ronald Reagan's election as president in 1980, based largely on an anti-détente campaign, marked the end of détente and a return to Cold War tensions.
Reagan said in his first press conference, "Détente's been a one-way street that the Soviet Union has used to pursue its aims."
Relations continued to turn increasingly sour with the unrest in Poland, the end of the SALT II negotiations, and the NATO exercise in 1983, the last of which brought the superpowers almost to the brink of nuclear war.
However, The State Department under George P. Shultz took a more diplomatic approach beginning in 1983, purging anti-détente advocates from its leadership, with the strong support of Reagan and the Foreign Service. Formal negotiations for what was then known as "SALT III" began in 1983 and culminated in START I.
According to Eric Grynaviski, "Soviet and US decision-makers had two very different understandings about what détente meant" while simultaneously holding "an inaccurate belief that both sides shared principles and expectations for future behavior.”
#ThisDayInHistory
January 2, 1980