Quick questions on Detente, SALT and Helsinki 1972-1979: HSC Modern History Cold War

Five conditions made detente possible. First, strategic parity: by 1969 Soviet ICBM numbers (1,028) exceeded American (1,054 by 1970), ending the American superiority that had let Kennedy use it as leverage in 1962. Mutual Assured Destruction made arms control rational.

The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks began in Helsinki on 17 November 1969. Nixon, Kissinger, Brezhnev, Gromyko, and Defence Minister Grechko reached agreement at the Moscow Summit of 22 to 30 May 1972.

The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe began in 1972, drawing 35 countries (all European states except Albania, plus the United States and Canada). The Final Act was signed at Helsinki on 1 August 1975.

SALT II negotiations resumed at Geneva from late 1972. The Vladivostok Accord (Ford-Brezhnev, 23 to 24 November 1974) set framework limits. The Carter administration proposed deeper cuts in March 1977; the Soviets rejected and negotiations resumed on the Vladivostok basis.

Six factors collapsed detente. First, Soviet adventurism in the Third World: Angola (1975 to 1976, with Cuban troops), the Horn of Africa (1977 to 1978), Vietnam-Cambodia, Nicaragua (1979).

Raymond Garthoff's Detente and Confrontation (1985, revised 1994) is the standard scholarly account. John Lewis Gaddis's Strategies of Containment (1982, revised 2005) places detente within American strategic doctrine. Vladislav Zubok's A Failed Empire (2007) covers the Soviet side. Odd Arne Westad's The Global Cold War (2005) emphasises Third World causes of collapse.

It was managed competition. SS-20s were deployed during detente; proxy wars continued in Angola.

1 August 1975, not 1972 or 1977.

12 December 1979 NATO commitment to deploy Pershing II reshaped European security before Reagan.