Notes on Detente – Features & Consequences Of Detente

Resource Description

After taking over leadership of the Soviet Union from Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev soon became conscious of the economic weakness of the Soviet Union and the urgent need for reform. To help bring about domestic change, he needed a break from the arms race. Détente made that possible. Less money spent on arms meant that more money could be spent on domestic needs.

In the United States, Nixon and his National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, followed the policy of ‘linkage’ – dealing with each aspect of the relationship with the Soviet Union on its merits, while linking cooperation in one area to progress in another. The Americans hoped that their improved links or relations with China would pressure the Soviet Union into also seeking better links with the United States. Once better links or relations were set up with China and the Soviet Union, it was further hoped that the two communist countries would help put pressure on the North Vietnamese to end the Vietnam War. However, linkage only worked in part, and while relations between the United States and both China and the Soviet Union improved, the North Vietnamese displayed their independence and refused to be influenced.