UC Berkeley - HIST 186 - 2012 Spring - Sargent - International and Global History Since 1945 - Lecture 17 - Embracing the Market - 01h 19m 20s

Lecture Overview: The Resurgence of the Cold War in the Late 1970s and early 1980s

[0:00]

We have a slight change from the scheduled agenda. Today's scheduled lecture was going to be on sort of globalization but I wanted to complete the story of the Cold War and its resurgence. As I sort of you know have developed these lectures doing it this way made a little bit more sense to me than doing it the way that was laid out in the syllabus.

[00:21]

So we're going to come to the story of globalization on Thursday. And what we'll do then we'll be to then sort of juxtapose the story of political economic integration during the 1970s with the story about the Cold War's deescalation and then re-escalation which we're going to cover today.

[00:36]

Of course this makes it imperative that we get through the Cold War's resurgence today so I'll be mindful of that as we proceed.

[00:44]

But the purpose of today's lecture you know then is take the story of the Cold War from the accomplishments of détente in the early 1970s through to the reinvigoration of Cold War tensions in the early 1980s.

[00:58]

You know how do we get from a circumstance in 1972 in which Nixon and Brezhnev are chinking champagne glasses in Moscow to a situation in the early 1980s in which you know ordinary men and women on both sides of the iron curtain are fearful of nuclear conflict.

The Overall Course of the Cold War

[01:21]

Posing these question requires us to think about the periodization of the Cold War. How do we situate détente as a sort of distinctive era or phase within the larger history of the Cold War? You know that's the question that I would like to begin with today. What does détente sort of represent as a particular phase of Cold War history?

[01:44]

Posing this question requires us to ask you know big and difficult questions about the nature of the Cold War as a you know sort of distinctive unit of historical analysis. What was the Cold War? Was it just a series of unconnected episodes and crisis which we in retrospect sort of characterize as a you know period of coherent Cold War.

[02:06]

Or did the conflict have an inner dynamic, even a logic, perhaps a logic that changed over time? To what extent were you know Cold War leaders, Cold War decision-makers, constrained by circumstance beyond their control? Thinking about sort of the relationship between political and military structure in the Cold War and the agency of individual decision-makers is one way to you know sort of think about how the dynamics of the Cold War evolve over time.

[02:35]

You know obviously the options that are available to you know sort of Cold War statesman in the very early phase of the Cold War at a time when the military technologies of nuclear weapons are much less developed than they would become in the 1960s.

[02:47]

You know sort of illustrates the ways in which you know evolving structural forces, in this case nuclear weapons, shape the politics and diplomacy of Soviet-American relations.

[03:02 ]

Individuals, you know Cold War leaders as it may be, operate within the context of structural constraints that affect their choices. You know this is really clear, right, when we think about the geopolitics of détente. We see Cold War statesmen an both sides of the Cold War in the early 1970s making choices that are framed by the structural circumstances that they inhabit. To be specific the structural circumstance of nuclear bipolarity, you might even call it nuclear stalemate by the 1960s, now that's an evolving dynamic.

[03:36]

The number of nuclear weapons that both sides possess and the capacity of those nuclear weapons to you know wreck unacceptable devastation on the adversary -- that's something that evolves over time. And thinking about how sort of the Cold War divides into distinctive phases requires us to you know sort of reflect upon the ways in which evolving Cold War structures shape the options that are available to individual decision-makers.

[04:03]

So let's use sort of try to recapitulate and situate you know the period of détente in this larger framework.

[04:10]

The Cold War begins you know obviously with a dynamic of division. This is something that we've covered. Division is not necessarily commensurate with militarization, right. The division of Europe and the division of East Asia precede in some key respects the militarization of the Cold War's politics which proceeds from sort of late 1949 with the Soviet atomic bomb and continues into the early 1950s.

[04:37]

And the Korean War is sort of the key event that drives the Cold War's militarization. At the end of the Korean War the Cold War looks you know very different from what it had looked like in 1947 when it had you know been more of an economic and sort of ideological conflict than a military one.

[04:52]

Militarization does not, you know, continue, at least while the arms race continues the Cold War is not waged through military means into the second half of the 1950s. Rather it undergoes a sort of process of stabilization. So we could think about the Cold War as stabilizing from the mid-1950s. After the Cuban Missile Crisis stabilization begins to look something more like relaxation as early moves to reduce tensions are made by leaders on both sides.

[05:24]

Détente as we discussed last week represents a distinctive phase within the history of Cold War relaxation. Détente as I explained is not just about a relaxation about tensions. Rather détente represents a set of purposeful strategies that leaders on both sides but, especially on the United States side, utilize to serve specific national purposes.

[05:48]

For Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger who are the architects of US détente policies détente represents a sort of response to the predicament of strategic decline. Détente is an effort to stabilize the existing balance of power, the existing geopolitical status quo on terms more or less favorable to the United States.

[06:07]

Détente will be followed by a phase of Cold War resurgence. Ultimately détente does not produce a stable and durable political settlement between East and West. Rather that settlement begins to disintegrate and the last years of the last 1970s prefiguring a resurgence of Cold War rivalry in the 1980s.

[06:29]

Finally this rivalry ends not with, you know nuclear conflict between the two superpowers, thankfully, but with the resolution of the Cold War in the last years of the late 1980s. Really the period after 1986 could be seen as a phase of Cold War resolution or denouement -- a period in which the bipolar division of the postwar world is finally overcome.

[06:52]

And we're going to come to the phase of resolution in the lecture that is scheduled, I think for the first week after spring break, on the end of the Cold War.

The Movements of the Doomsday Clock During the Cold War

[07:00]

But today we're really concerned with resurgence -- in particular with the transition from détente to resurgence. How do we get from a state of relative stability, peaceability, even cooperation to a circumstance in which Cold War tensions, at least to a judge by the Doomsday Clock↗, seem to be as...serious as at any time in the Cold War's history?

[07:26]

Let me just describe to you once again what this chart illustrates. This chart shows...the sort of findings of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a major sort of policy journal that was founded by the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project during the Second World War.

[07:48]

And what this you know chart shows is the judgment of those scientists as to how close the world is to a catastrophic nuclear war. And the proximity is illustrated by the movement of hands on a clock face. The closer the hands are to midnight the closer the world is to thermonuclear apocalypse.

[08:09]

I've already explained this but just in case anybody wasn't there I'll recapitulate. So when you read this chart it's important to remember that the lower the number, the lower the numbers are, then the more urgent the prospect of catastrophic destruction seems to be -- to contemporary observers.

[08:27]

So in the 1950s the hands on the Doomsday Clock are stuck at two minutes to midnight. The nuclear equipoise that develops after Korea seems to the editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to be a really dangerous state of affairs -- a state of affairs in which conflict is very likely.

[08:44]

After the Cuban Missile Crisis as the two sides take steps to you know stabilize their relationship to begin to sort of control the dynamic of the nuclear arms race through the Non-Proliferation Treaty↗ the hands on the Doomsday Clock will be moved backwards -- apocalypse seems less urgent.

[09:02]

Well, the story of the second half of the 1970s is a story of escalating tension. A story of escalating tension that seems in the eyes of informed contemporary observers to make actual conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union more likely than it had been in the heyday of détente.

[09:19]

So this you know in a sense is the question that we're trying to answer today. How do we get from a situation in the early 1970s in which the the hands on the Doomsday Clock are at what twelve, thirteen, minutes to midnight? This in the context of the Cold War makes actual conflict look fairly remote. And how do we get from there to a situation in the early 1980s when the prospects of actual conflict seem to the editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to be as serious as they had been in the 1950s. So that's really the question.

The Components of Détente

[09:52]

To answer that question let's start by you know sort of returning to the state of détente-- the state of the stabilization that is achieved in the early 1970s and we'll ask what characterizes détente? What is détente as a particular you know state of affairs in the Soviet-American Cold War?

[10:13]

Well, I would argue that there are three basic attributes to détente that are important to bear in mind when you want to explain détente's unraveling from the you know mid-1970s onwards.

[10:24]

And the first of these is that détente institutionalizes cooperation between the superpowers. And this is really important. When Richard Nixon travels to Moscow in 1972, in May 1972, to meet with Brezhnev he's the first American President to travel to Russia. I mean period. Not just the first American President in the Cold War but he's the first American President to travel to the Soviet Union.

[10:50]

Nixon's journey to Russia in May 1972 is the first in a series of bilateral heads of state summit -- which are quite unique and distinctive in the you know context of the Cold War for their frequency. The fact that Soviet and American leaders are meeting on a annual basis at the very highest levels is in and of itself remarkable. This provides an opportunity to dialog, to reconcile differences, to...produce you know agreements regulating the Cold War from the SALT Agreement to the ABM Agreement to the Basic Principles Agreement and so on.

[11:26]

The institutionalization of consultation is really key. It's a very distinctive attribute of the détente era.

[11:35]

What does it accomplish? Here we come to the geopolitical stability that détente achieves. Détente seems to at least for a period of time stabilize the Cold War's you know geopolitical rivalry. The Soviet Union and the United States in effect agree to respect each other's fears of influence they...agree to limit their respective nuclear weapons programs so as to stabilize the strategic military balance between the two sides.

[12:08]

The introduction of China to the sort of bipolar balance which becomes more tripolar in the 1970s is, at least for a period of time, a source of stability in the East-West Cold War. The United States at least construes China's involvement in the Cold War balance as a source of stability. The United States can now sort of lean between Beijing and Moscow as its particular needs dictate all in the purposes of orchestrating stability.

[12:34]

So geopolitical stabilization is a key accomplishment. But when we think about détente's accomplishments we should also think about what détente's fails to accomplish. Détente does not produce something akin to an ideological convergence between the two sides. And this is really striking.

[12:49]

If we think back to the 1960s and to the processes of relaxation that set in during the '60s, during the Khrushchev years and the early Brezhnev years, on both sides of the Cold War, there is a perception that the basic ideological rivalry between the two sides is mellowing during the 1960s. The United States during the 1960s, for example, develops sort of new and more expansive social programs. Under the Johnson administration Medicare and Medicaid are introduced.

[13:22]

Social Security expands particularly for indigent people in the United States. This has the effect of you know sort of softening capitalism's harsh edges -- of making it look like the United States might you know through democratic processes be turning itself into something more like a social democracy.

[13:39]

Conversely on the other side of the Cold War the Soviet Union liberalizes somewhat under Khrushchev. Khrushchev allows Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn↗ to publish A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich↗. Restrictions on you know sort of political and civil freedom are somewhat lessened in the era of Khrushchev's thaw.

[13:59]

This makes it look from an American point of view that the Soviet Union might be headed you know very slowly, glacially even, in the direction of political reform. So in the 1960s it's possible to construe relaxation of Cold War tensions as a process that has some you know sort of counterpoint in a narrowing of ideological differences between the two sides.

[14:22]

Perhaps in a convergence that may ultimately result in the overcoming of Cold War rivalries. And that's really important. Convergence is a idea that is talked about quite a lot in the 1960s -- convergence of societies, convergence of ideologies, around a sort of common model of regulated democracy, of regulated capitalism, call it what you will.

[14:46]

In the 1970s the story is really different. Brezhnev is politically more authoritarian at home than Khrushchev had been. The rise of sort of Soviet human rights as an issue of global concern makes it very clear to the larger world that the Soviet Union is really not reforming itself. That it's really not liberalizing. It's not becoming more like the West.

[15:07]

Conversely the expansion of you know what you might call social democratic sort of welfare policies in the West ceases during the 1970s. This is what we're going to turn to on Friday. Rather than becoming more social democratic the 1970s for the West are a period in which the accomplishments of the welfare state will begin to be rolled back somewhat.

[15:29]

We see the early stirrings of processes that have since become known as globalization. We see the rise of you know what some what today call neoliberal economics↗ -- as distinct from the sort of more regulatory Keynesian liberalism↗ of the 1960s.

[15:42]

This all happens in the 1970s. We're going to talk about this on Thursday, so I'm not get into a description of those changes for you today. But the basic point is that liberalization in the West you know counterposed with the stagnation and you know sort of ossification of Soviet society...obliterates the idea that there is some kind of convergence taking place.

[16:05]

On the contrary it seems very clear during the 1970s that the basic difference between the systems is widening.

[16:13]

And this inflects détente, détente in the 1970s unlike sort of the processes of relaxation that set in during the 1960s, does not seem to be transcending the basic ideological differences that animate the Cold War from its very outset. Rather détente represents a sort of agreement on the part of superpower elites on both sides to put ideology to one side and to forge a geopolitical settlement on the basis of compatible national interests.

[16:41]

So détente involves a sort of willful setting aside of ideology in order to forge conciliation on the basis of compatible national interests. Despite these limitations; however, both superpowers believe that détente serves their interests.

[17:00]

Around 1975, let's take the midpoint of the 1970s as our vantage point, both the Soviet Union and the United States concur that détente is a good thing. At least the leaders of both the Soviet Union and the United States concur that détente is a good thing.

[17:17]

The view from Washington suggests that détente has served as a source of stability in the Cold War. More than that American leaders, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in particular, believe that détente has led the Soviet Union to modify its behavior in the larger world, that in the context of détente the Soviet Union has exercised you know greater capacity for restraint than it you know was previously capable of exercising.

[17:43]

This is really important. One of the key things that détente tries to accomplish is, from an American standpoint, to domesticate the Soviet Union as it were, to the existing sort of international order -- the existing international status quo. We just, let me just ask you to remind me, have I already discussed with you the distinction that Kissinger makes between revolutionary and status quo powers? Or not? Is that new?

[18:13]

(student response)

Okay, let me talk about just for a moment because it's a useful distinction to probe if we want to understand what Kissinger and Nixon tried to accomplish through détente.

[18:23]

Kissinger, in his early academic writing, this is a book that he writes on the post-1815 settlement, the settlement that follows the Napoleonic War, makes a very basic and very categorical distinction between what he calls revolutionary and status quo powers in international relations.

[18:40]

For Kissinger status quo powers are powers that accept the existing distribution of resources in the international system. They're powers that accept the legitimacy of the existing international status quo. And that can be a status quo that involves a distribution of power as well as international institutions, international law, and so on.

[19:04]

But they're powers that exist, that accept the legitimacy of the international system, as it is presently constituted. Revolutionary powers on the other hand do not accept the legitimacy of the status quo. They do not the accept the international order as it presently stands. Rather they seek to overthrow and transform the existing international order so as to create some new state of being, some new state of affairs.

[19:28]

And what détente tries to accomplish, from that standpoint, is to transform the Soviet Union from being a revolutionary power, which the Soviet Union clearly is at the beginning of the Cold War, into a...you know a power that will play the role of a status quo power.

[19:48]

And that's a key goal for détente. And it looks by the mid-1970s as if the United States has substantially accomplished this objective. The Soviet Union by the mid-1970s is more or less behaving, at least in most areas of the world, as a status quo power -- as a power that accepts the international system as it is presently constituted, that does not challenge its basic legitimacy, and that will even work to defend and uphold the existing sort of distribution of power and institutionalization of international order.

[20:20]

So from an American standpoint détente accomplishes by the mid-1970s much of what it promises to achieve.

[20:27]

So too from a Soviet standpoint does détente look from the perspective of the mid-1970s like a good thing. Soviet leaders are particularly...impressed by what détente has delivered in terms of sort of reputational coequality to the Soviet Union.

[20:46]

It's very, very important for Soviet leaders, and for Leonid Brezhnev↗ in particular, to be treated by their American counterparts as equals.

[20:55]

And in the context of détente the United States treats the Soviet Union as a coequal superpower. And this is a novelty in the larger panorama of Cold War history. The détente era is the first era in which the United States signs a series of agreements with the Soviet Union that acknowledge the Soviet Union to be a superpower coequal with the United States equally responsible for the sustenance of international order.

[21:20]

The Basic Principles Agreement of 1972 is the agreement that most explicitly makes that acknowledgment but it's an acknowledgement this is implicit in a host of détente's other you know sort of particular treaties and accords. That's essentially what the council, the Helsinki Act↗ acknowledges too.

[21:40]

So from a Soviet perspective détente achieves a great deal. It affirms the equality of the Soviet Union in world affairs and it also enables the Soviet Union to sort of...stabilize or assure its military situation in world affairs. The SALT Agreement locks in the military balance of power as it is constituted in the early 1970s.

[22:05]

For technical reasons that we don't really need to get into Soviet leaders are very confident at sort of the moment of the SALT II Agreement's signing in May 1972 that the SALT II Agreement works to the military advantage of the Soviet Union, not to the United States.

[22:20]

It enables

It enables the Soviet Union to have more heavy missiles than does the United States. So Soviet leaders are pretty confident that SALT II works to the military advantage of the Soviet Union even as it affirms the basic equality of the two superpowers.

[22:36]

So this is a you know set of relationships, détente relationships, that both sides by the mid-1970s want to defend and uphold. So the question that we have to explain then is why does détente come to an end? If the leaders of both the United States and the Soviet Union are sincerely committed to upholding détente's relationship, to sustaining détente, why does it end? Why couldn't détente just continued?

(student response)

[23:05]

Yeah, that makes a big difference, SALT II gets held up in Congress, there are domestic politics that intrude particularly on the American side.

[23:12]

(student comment)

[23:15]

That's right. The Soviet Union will invade Afghanistan and that's really the final nail in détente's coffin. So we're going to get to that by the conclusion of today's lecture. I hope.

The Collapse of Détente

[23:26]

Well, let's get there then. Why did détente end? Look -- as we pose that question we might contemplate you know a series of alternative hypotheses. Did détente end because the project was fatally flawed from the outset? You know this is one possible explanation. Détente failed because you know the very notion that the Soviet Union and the United States could forge an accommodation on the basis of compatible national interests was you know sort of quixotic and unrealistic from the beginning.

[23:56]

So that's one possible explanation that the concept is flawed. A second possible explanation would posit that the problem lay not in the initial concept but in the implementation of it. That either one or both of the parties in the détente settlement reneged upon the agreements that constituted détente. Did one or both sides cheat? This is a second possible explanation for the failures of détente.

[24:24]

Answers to the you know question of why détente failed that...emphasize you know sort of cheating or defection from agreement on one side or the other are frequently politically inflected. Right, neoconservatives↗ in the United States will consistently argue from the mid-1970s that the Soviet Union is not abiding by the spirit of détente.

[24:49]

That the Soviet Union is in violation of détente's you know implicit sort of quid pro quo. Conversely Soviet leaders, and to some extent Soviet sympathizer in the West, argue that the United States is not abiding by the rules of détente. That the United States is continuing to pursue sort of aggrandizing militaristic policies in the world. And that this is responsible for the failure of détente.

[25:15]

So this is a different kind of explanation -- an explanation that sees détente as perhaps being you know potentially stable had it been implemented correctly but which would fault the political leaders of the late-1970s for their inability to sustain the détente relationships that were forged in the first half of the decade.

[25:36]

A third category of explanation would see détente as ultimately insufficient to tame sort of the larger you know sort of structural forces of contestation that are ever present in the Cold War world. If you're a realist, a kind of person who believes that international relations reflect basic you know realities in distribution of international power, you're likely going to be skeptical about the ability of you know political agreements such as those that Nixon and Brezhnev signed, to overcome and tame you know sort of fundamental divergences of interest that are deeply rooted in the distribution of international power.

[26:19]

If you believe that the natural...condition of international relations is conflict, that nations are by disposition inclined to aggrandize their own interests, then you are likely going to be skeptical about the ability of diplomacy to produce sort of a permanent settlement, a permanent peace in the affairs of nations.

[26:44]

The question of whether bipolarity is for realists a stable state of affairs or not is a contentious question amongst you know theoreticians of international relations and it's a question that I'd rather not get into because it just goes on and on and there's no resolution to it.

[26:59]

Is an international system with two great powers more stable or less stable than an international system with four or five great powers? Well, you know political scientists can argue over that but we don't have time to argue over it today.

[27:12]

But if you see conflict as hard wired into the bipolar international system then you're likely going to be skeptical about the capacity of diplomacy to subdue conflict over the long term. So one approach to the failure of détente would see détente as simply you know implausible as a long term sort of settlement of Cold War differences. The Cold War in this view could only be settled by victory for one side or the other.

[27:47]

Alternatively you might see the ideological confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States as being so deeply rooted and so profound that...diplomacy was fated to be unable to overcome it.

[28:02]

This is a point of view which is communicated for example in Arne Westad's chapters which some of you have had a chance to read because of the part of the reading package for this class -- the Cold War was such a you know bitter ideological struggle that it really could not be resolved until either one side or the other gave up the ideological fight which would happen in the 1980s with the Soviet Union sort of moving away from Marxism-Leninism as an ideological system but it certainly didn't happen in the 1970s.

[28:32]

So if you see the Cold War as being animated from the beginning through to the end by insurmountable ideological differences then you're likely to be you know sort of skeptical as to whether any set of political agreements, détente or some other plausible set of political agreements between the two sides, might be able to overcome and stabilize you know conflict.

[28:54]

So these are different you know kinds of explanation for the failure of détente. The first would emphasize sort of flaws in the détente's design, the second would emphasize cheating on you know defection on the part of one side or the other, and the third would see the entire project of sort of political settlement as...unequal to the structurally determined conflicts between the two sides.

[29:23]

So what happened in practice? Let's try to tell this as narrative history and then we can return to the question of explanations at the end and see where we stand.

Human Rights and Détente

[29:32]

I'm going to talk first of all about human rights and the politics of détente. This is a theme that has to do really with American domestic politics. Of course if we're to emphasize domestic politics as an explanation in détente's demise we're going to focus primarily on the United States, not on the Soviet Union, for the simple explanation that the Soviet Union doesn't have so much by the way of domestic politics as the United States has.

[29:58]

Human rights become a divisive issue in the Cold War world of the 1970s. Fundamentally this is because human rights inflect the ideological divide between the Soviet Union and the United States. It's easy for Americans to identify with the human rights project as it develops during the 1970s.

[30:23]

We've talked already a little bit about human rights in the 1970s. I'll return to the theme later on. But the '70s are a moment sort of in the history of the world when human rights experience a takeoff. This is a discursive development. Human rights are talked about a great deal more as the 1970s progress. It's also a political development

[30:43]

During the 1970s new organizations like Amnesty International constitute themselves to fight for human rights in the global arena. The human rights moment of the 1970s is a sort of consequential legacy of the era and it's easy for Americans to identify with the cause of human rights. Because human rights looks to Americans quite a lot like what Americans have been waging the Cold War over since the very beginning -- human rights as a sort of synonym for political freedom, political liberty and so on and so forth.

[31:16]

These for Americans are familiar slogans. For the Soviet Union on the other hand the human rights moment of the 1970s, the sort of rise of human rights activism, the rising attention that is paid to human rights in sort of the councils of the United Nations is much more troubling.

[31:34]

The Soviet Union does not accept the legitimacy of international human rights as an aspirational standard. For the Soviet Union what really matters in international relations is sovereignty. And the idea that there are certain sort of normative standards, call them human rights, that all nations must abide by, is anathema.

[31:55]

The Soviet Union believes that, you know, so-called human rights are essentially a domestic issue. Whether the Soviet Union gives you know dissidents you know freedom to speak their minds or not, whether the Soviet Union you know punishes political critics by locking them up in the gulag, this is really a domestic matter. It's not an international human rights issue. So...the human rights issue has sort of consequences for the ideological Cold War because Americans are prone to engage with human rights constructively -- the Soviet leaders see human rights as far more threatening.

[32:31]

In the context of détente the United States does not put particular pressure on the Soviet Union over human rights issues within the USSR. Rather Nixon forthrightly declares that he has no intention of changing Soviet society -- that he doesn't want to interfere within the domestic affairs of the Soviet Union.

[32:54]

Indeed crucial aspects of the détente settlement affirm nonintervention as a basic principle of international relations. The Basic Principles Agreement in 1972 commits both the Soviet Union and the United States to respect the inviolablity of each other's domestic spheres. The Helsinki Final Act as we've talked about establishes and enshrines nonintervention and sovereignty as basic operational principles.

[33:20]

And this meets with the satisfaction of Soviet leaders -- leaders who are very defensive of the integrity of their internal domestic politics. But during the first half of the 1970s dissident currents within the Soviet Union are beginning to stir. Something resembling a Soviet human rights movement emerges in the early 1970s.

[33:43]

A human rights committee is formed in Moscow by you know several sort of influential Soviet dissidents. These dissidents receive support from international organizations -- from NGOs. Amnesty International for example provides formal affiliation and logistical support to the Moscow Human Rights Committee↗ from 1972 onwards.

[34:05]

So even as détente is being constituted as a political settlement that accepts the Soviet Union as it is and doesn't try to change the Soviet Union ordinary Western citizens and Western nongovernmental organizations are engaging with Soviet dissidents in ways that you know sort of encourage dissident aspirations for expanded political and civil freedom within the USSR.

[34:33]

So that's you know a really, really important development. Sort of there's a transnational history of human rights activism, of political engagement, that parallels the sort of diplomatic history of détente in the early 1970s.

[34:47]

Who are these Soviet dissidents? Who are the men and women who are engaging with Amnesty International and other Western human rights organizations in the 1970s? You know for the most part these are a tiny, tiny minority. These are educated affluent people, affluent by Soviet standards. One of the most important of the Soviet dissidents is Andrei Sakharov↗.

[35:11]

Soviet physicist, and Nobel Prize winner, actually, he wins the Nobel Prize for his human rights activism not for his physics. But he could plausibly have won the Nobel Prize for either. Sakharov becomes probably the best known Soviet human rights activist outside of the Soviet Union. A man who is the symbolic you know sort of center and leader of the Moscow human rights community.

[35:35]

This is a very small community but it's a community that has great international visibility because of the reputation and profile of the people who get involved with it.

[35:43]

Besides Andrei Sakharov who's a physicist by trade and a political liberal by ideology the other sort of really, renowned, really influential spokesperson for human rights in the Soviet Union in the early 1970s is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn↗ pictured in the slide.

[36:01]

Solzhenitsyn is very different from Sakharov in terms of his politics. He's really a conservative. Not a liberal. He...hearkens back to Czarist Russia as a model for the kind of society that the Soviet Union should be. He doesn't necessarily take the West as his exemplar which Sakharov did. I mean Sakharov is very Western, very liberal, in his orientation. Solzhenitsyn is very different, he's very religious, and really conservative.

[36:32]

He's also a ferocious critic of the Soviet state, and of the Soviet Union's abuses of human rights. Sakharov, sorry, not Sakharov, Solzhenitsyn, Solzhenitsyn is exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974. He comes to the United States.

[36:47]

In the United States Solzhenitsyn becomes a sort of rallying point for détente's critics. For people in the United States who argue that détente is immoral because it you know sort of disregards the issue of human rights abuses within the USSR.

[37:04]

So there's a sort of dialog, a transnational dialog, about human rights that goes on simultaneous to the accomplishments of geopolitical détente. And this dialog, this human rights dialog, as it develops will become a sort of powerful political move against détente within the United States, in US domestic politics.

[37:26]

One of the key figures in this political insurgency against détente, a insurgency that embraces the language and the concerns of human rights, is Senator Scoop Jackson↗ from Washington State.

[37:39]

His real name is Henry M. Jackson but he's known as Scoop Jackson because that was his childhood nickname. So Scoop Jackson is a key figure in this domestic insurgency against détente.

[37:51]

After Nixon and Brezhnev sign an agreement in 1972 to normalize trade relations between the Soviet Union and the United States Jackson you know discovers an opportunity to introduce the language and concerns of human rights to the politics of détente. He introduces in the Senate an amendment to the Soviet-American trade bill that will make the normalization of trade relations conditional upon the Soviet Union agreeing to recognize and abide by specific human rights conditions.

[38:24]

And this is a move that is not at all in the spirit of détente. Nixon's détente made no attempt to change sort of internal human rights conditions within the Soviet Union. Indeed Nixon disavowed any intent of wanting to do that. But Scoop Jackson seizes upon the Soviet-American trade bill as an opportunity to do precisely that -- as on opportunity to foist specific human rights terms upon the USSR.

[38:48]

Specifically Scoop Jackson makes the normalization of trade relations conditional upon the Soviet Union allowing its citizens to emigrate freely. The fact that the Soviet Union imposed sort of severe restrictions upon people who wanted to emigrate, specifically upon Jewish Soviet citizens who wanted to emigrate to Israel becomes a sort of major international controversy in the early 1970s.

[39:12]

And what Scoop Jackson does, which is a very astute move, is to use détente as an opportunity to sort of galvanize action on this issue.

[39:23]

Scoop Jackson also embraces Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as do other of détente's critics. Here you see Solzhenitsyn with an array of American senators. Henry Jackson pictured on the right of the slide, Jesse Helms↗, and Clifford Case↗. This is a sort of interesting slide because it tells us something about the breadth of the political appeal that human rights has in the you know context of the mid-1970s.

[39:55]

These three senators, Jackson, Helms, and Case represent three you know very different ideological types. Jackson is a sort of Democrat, but he's a hawkish Cold War Democrat. Jesse Helms, you probably know about Jesse Helms politics, Jesse Helms is a conservative Republican -- like a right-wing Republican. Clifford Case is a Republican of the kind that doesn't really exist anymore -- a very liberal Republican.

[40:21]

So these three represent you know very different you know sorts of ideological position. Jackson the Cold War hawk, Jesse Helms, the conservative and Clifford Case the liberal. But they can all agree that promoting human rights in the Soviet Union is an urgent concern.

[40:39]

And that breadth of appeal, that breadth of ideological appeal, within the United States that human rights have, is something that helps to explain their success. Why does Jackson succeed in his effort to tether human rights to the Soviet-American trade bill? Well, it's because a majority of senators agree with what he's trying to do.

[40:59]

Nixon and Kissinger will make the argument on the other hand that doing this subverts détente. It's a plausible argument because it does subvert détente. But ultimately it's Jackson who is able to command the votes. Human rights are popular and this has consequences for the high politics of détente.

The Rise of Neoconservatism

[41:19]

But human rights are not the only issue that erode the political basis for détente policies within the United States. We might also think about the rise of a sort of political movement, an ideological movement perhaps, which has subsequently become known as neoconservativism↗. It was actually known as neoconservativism at the time. The term becomes familiar from the early 1970s.

[41:42]

What is neoconservativism? Who are the neoconservatives? It might be easier to begin with the second question. Who are the neoconservatives? The neocons, as they become known, are often former liberals. People who were you know Democrats through and through in the 1960s but who shift to the right as a consequence of the New Left's↗ ascendancy in the United States.

[42:04]

The McGovern↗ campaign in 1972, which is a sort of moment of arrival for the New Left within the Democratic party, is something which is very alienating to sort of moderate liberals who then sort of move rightwards and become you know so-called neoconservatives.

[42:23]

These are often individuals for whom national security is very important. People who are fearful of national decline. Some representative individuals would include people like Pat Moynihan↗. Have any of you heard of Pat Moynihan?

[42:36]

Okay, a few of you. Pat Moynihan is an intellectual, he's a Harvard, former Harvard professor, who goes to work for the Nixon administration as a diplomat. Moynihan is a Democrat. He remains a Democrat through to the very end. But he's a centrist Democrat. As is evidenced by the fact that he goes to work for the Nixon White House.

[42:57]

And Moynihan is sort of an exemplary neoconservative in some ways. I mean he's a Democrat for whom national strength in the context of the Cold War is very important. He's an old school Democrat who's not afraid of drawing you know harsh moral distinctions about the Cold War. Moynihan sees the Cold War much as Harry Truman did as a conflict between totalitarianism↗ and liberal democracy.

[43:23]

The New Left in the 1960s, right, in the context of the Vietnam War, sort of substantially repudiates that Manichaean way of looking at the Cold War world. New Left leaders like George McGovern↗ are just as likely to point the finger at the United States and say, look at all the you know things we're doing in the world, is that really commensurate with the commitment to liberal democracy and human freedom?

[43:43]

But Moynihan is an old school liberal and he thinks that there's a profound distinction to be made betwen Soviet totalitarianism and American freedom. And that's it important for Americans to stand up for their principles and to stand up for themselves in sort of international affairs.

[44:00]

And that conviction, that it's time for the United States to stand up for its values, that it's time for the United States to stand up for itself is powerfully animating in the sort of neoconservative moment of arrival in the 1970s.

[44:15]

Neoconservatives hark upon the immorality of détente. They argue that détente represents an accommodation with Soviet totalitarianism that is both strategically imprudent and morally unacceptable.

[44:31]

This basic distinction between Soviet totalitarianism and American freedom is crucial to the neoconservative project. From a certain point of view it's simply marks a return to the more ideological Cold War discourse of the 1950s. You can look back to Harry Truman and you know John Foster Dulles↗ and find passages denouncing Soviet totalitarianism that you know are very similar to the kinds of things that you know people like Henry Jackson and Pat Moynihan have to say in the mid-1970s.

[45:02]

But what makes the neoconservative moment you know sort of distinctive is the fact that the United States by the mid-1970s is in a very different sort of power political situation vis-à-vis the USSR from what it had been in the early 1950s.

[45:17]

By the mid-1970s neoconservatives like Jackson are very concerned that the US is in decline. That the Soviet Union has through the détente settlement sort of institutionalized at least parity, perhaps even superiority, vis-à-vis the United States.

[45:36]

So the neocons are concerned about relative decline and they seek to reverse it. They want to restore the military standing of the United States in the world. They want to build up American military capacities vis-à-vis the Soviet Union.

[45:50]

And this necessarily implies breaking out of the restraints that détente has imposed upon American military power. So the neocons are reluctant to accept the basic you know sort of restraining framework that détente establishes. They instead want to rebuild American power, to rebuild American military capacities, in the world.

[46:10]

The neoconservatives emphasize defense spending as a major issue, very concerned by the reductions in defense spending that have set in under Nixon and they want to restore defend spending to higher levels, to levels that will sustain sort of American advantages over the long term.

[46:27]

And they also emphasize human rights. Human rights becomes a sort of focal point of the neoconservative you know political or moral imagination. As an issue that draws a stark line of demarcation between Soviet freedom, sorry, of Soviet totalitarianism and American freedom human rights are a you know sort of compelling issue for neoconservatives.

[46:51]

The neoconservative movement, let me just emphasize, is a fairly narrow movement in terms of its base of support. The neocons are intellectuals. They're people like Moynihan who are really engaged with ideas. Jackson is a neoconservative of sorts but he's something a little broader than that. He's a you know traditional Cold Warrior.

[47:14]

The neoconservative movement in its purest form is a movement about ideas. But it's a movement about ideas that while, you know sort of relatively small-scale in terms of its direct participants, is able to command broad public support when it comes to the key issues.

[47:33]

And the key issues are defense, and having more of it, on the one hand, and human rights or sort of the ideological crusade on the other. So neocons emphasize the need for the United States to bolster its military resources and to be more aggressive in pushing human rights and you know individual freedom as...kind of ideological issues with the Soviet Union.

[48:02]

This is really important because the rise of sort of neoconservative ideas and the popular support that they command in American domestic politics will help to erode the domestic political basis of support for détente policies.

Forces Pushing Against Détente Internationally

[48:21]

Meanwhile things are going on the larger Cold War world this are corrosive of the détente settlement. We've talked a little about developments in the United States. Let's talk now about the larger world. What is going on in the world of the mid-1970s that undermines and erodes the détente settlement?

The Vietnam War

[48:41]

Vietnam, is really, really important. Let's think about what happens to end the Vietnam War and what the consequences of the Vietnam War ending as it did were for the United States and the Soviet Union and the Cold War?

[48:56]

Richard Nixon, who's elected in 1969, ends the Vietnam War. It's one of his accomplishments of the President of the United States. How does he end the war? After 1969 Nixon pursues three basic policy thrusts that are designed to bring the Vietnam War to an end -- at least so far as the United States is concerned.

[49:16]

The first of those policy thrusts is known as Vietnamization, and its logic is simple enough. When Nixon is inaugurated the United States has about half a million fighting men in South Vietnam. Vietnamization is simply a policy for getting the South Vietnamese to do more of their own fighting for themselves.

[49:36]

As you Vietnamize the war, which is say as you get South Vietnamese soldiers to take over fighting responsibilities from American soldiers, you can bring American soldiers home and draw down the American war effort.

[49:49]

Vietnamization is a strategic concept you know ought to be familiar to anybody who's paid much attention to the Afghan War↗ today.

[49:58]

What the Obama administration is trying to do in Afghanistan is to prepare and equip the Afghan government to continue to fight a successful counterinsurgency war against you know the Taliban and other disruptive elements in Afghanistan today. Vietnamization follows exactly the same logic. It's a logic that tries to bolster South Vietnam in order that South Vietnamese soldiers can wage their own war for themselves.

[50:26]

At the same time as Nixon tries to Vietnamize the war he implements a series of tactical escalations. He bombs Cambodia and then invades Cambodia and then unleashes a very brutal round of bombing against North Vietnam all of which is intended to facilitate an American withdraw from the Vietnam War.

[50:47]

By using massive military force so as to escalate the war's...you know...so as to achieve tactical escalation in the war -- Nixon hopes to aid the process of Vietnamization, to signal America's commitment to defend South Vietnam through air power for example, to bolster the confidence of the South Vietnamese government that the United States will continue to stand by it using military methods other than sort of deployment of American ground forces. So the tactical escalations are a accompaniment to Nixon's effort to Vietnamize the war.

[51:24]

Finally Nixon tries to leverage geopolitics to his side in order to resolve the Vietnam War. By triangulating the Cold War, by opening the United States to China, Nixon seeks to leverage the Cold War balance of power to achieve or to facilitate the removal of American ground forces from Vietnam.

[51:47]

Specifically, one of the things that Nixon wants from both China and the Soviet Union in the détente relationship that he is trying to build, is for those two countries, for the Soviet Union and China, to put pressure on North Vietnam to help bring the Vietnam War to an end.

[52:05]

So Nixon sort of uses superpower relationships as a source of leverage vis-à-vis the Vietnamese Communists so as to facilitate a diplomatic resolution of the war.

[52:16]

This is what Nixon achieves in 1973. The Paris Peace↗ is a diplomatic resolution of the American Vietnam War. It provides for a withdraw of US ground forces from Vietnam within 60 days. There are also subsidiary agreements that have to do with the repatriation of prisoners of war and so on.

[52:35]

But the Paris Peace basically achieves an American withdraw from Vietnam. Or at least a withdraw of American ground forces. American air battalions continue to fly combat missions until mid-1973. But with the Paris Peace the Vietnam War ends so far as the American forces who have been fighting it are mostly concerned.

[52:58]

What the Paris Peace does not do is to assure the long-term survival and prosperity of South Vietnam. And this is really important. Because the United States went to war in Vietnam in order to protect and defend South Vietnam. In order to make South Vietnamese independence secure over the long term.

[53:17]

And in this respect the Paris Peace does not accomplish anything. Two years after it is signed North Vietnam invades South Vietnam. And Saigon falls to South -- to North Vietnamese forces in April 1975. This is a really dramatic moment because defending South Vietnam, bolstering South Vietnam, protecting South Vietnam, these had been the goals for which the United States had been fighting in Vietnam for over a decade.

[53:46]

And in April 1975 American forces have to flee Saigon in a humiliating retreat. I mean American forces are literally leaving the Saigon embassy, which was at the time the largest American embassy in the world, by helicopter.

[54:00]

Think about what it would look like in a couple of years time if some government that was very hostile to the United States came to power in Iraq. And the residual American forces and American diplomats in Iraq ended up being evacuated from the roof of the American embassy in Baghdad as you know regime tanks were you know at the gates.

[54:22]

This is a humiliating spectacle. It's a spectacle of a superpower in retreat. And it has a you know sort of powerful domestic political resonance. Americans, you know, fear as Saigon falls that the Third World is not going their way. That the developing world is falling to Communist influence -- which is exactly what the United States went to war in Vietnam to prevent.

[54:45]

Of course Vietnam has also been very harrowing and Americans are hardly eager to repeat the experience. The Soviet Union on the other hand senses an opportunity. As the United States is dragged down, into the quagmire in Vietnam, as American domestic politics turns against the war, the Soviet Union sees an opportunity to advance the cause of socialism, to advance the interests of Soviet power in the developing world.

Soviet Expansionism

[55:12]

And during the 1970s the Soviet Union will act upon this insight. The insight that the opportunity, that a moment of opportunity has arrived.

[55:21]

Let me just talk a little more about some of the differences of outlook that exist within the Soviet state because these are important to acknowledge. When we talk about the Soviet Union, as when we talk about any nation-state in world affairs, we're not talking about a unitary actor. We're talking about an agglomeration of bureaucracies of personalities and of interests.

[55:46]

So to say the Soviet Union does this or does that. The Soviet Union thought that or thought this is a gross oversimplification.

[55:55]

Just as it's a oversimplification to say that the United States is...you know pursuing a particular policy or is beholden to a particular concept.

[56:03]

There are divergences of opinion, divergences of interest, within the state. And the Soviet Union during the 1970s, when it comes to the sort of issue of Soviet power in the developing world, is bitterly divided.

[56:16]

The Politburo under Leonid Brezhnev is fairly cautious about the deployment of Soviet power in the Third World. Brezhnev is very committed to détente; Brezhnev is very committed to maintaining a good relationship with the Americans. He doesn't want to jeopardize that over you know the developing world, over the Global South.

[56:34]

But there are others within the Soviet state who are much more inclined to seize the opportunity that the American embroilment in Vietnam seems to prevent, seems to present.

[56:46]

The KGB for example wants to pursue an ambitious agenda in the Global South. So too does the international department of the Communist Party -- want to pursue an aggressive forward policy in the developing world. So there are basic differences between the state institutions, the foreign ministry, and the party institutions, the international department, that help to explain why the Soviet Union in the 1970s pursues a somewhat schizoid foreign policy.

[57:14]

A foreign policy that aims both to make peace with the Americans in terms of the bilateral relationship between Washington and Moscow and which aims to advance the interests of the Soviet Union in the developing world at the same time. So this is important.

[57:30]

It's also important to acknowledge the role that Soviet allies play in pushing the Soviet Union towards a more aggressive posture in the developing world during the 1970s. No ally is more important here than Cuba. Cuba during the 1960s develops an ambitious program to provide assistance to Third World revolutionaries.

[57:52]

Che Guevara↗ is of course the sort of figurehead of this revolutionary agenda. Che is a...you know proponent of global revolution. He believes that is is Cuba's opportunity, perhaps even Cuba's responsibility, to export the model of the Cuban revolution to new contexts -- to help other peoples you know revolutionize their circumstance. Though Che Guevara is killed in 1967 the Cuban state remains committed to the promotion of worldwide revolution as a foreign policy goal.

[58:25]

And Cuba develops certain resources, you know military resources, as well as developmental resources, that it provides to sort of revolutionary movements elsewhere in the developing world. In one of the cases that we're going to look at, the case of the Angolan Civil War↗, Cuba sends some 35,000 fighting troops to support the Angolan Revolution.

[58:49]

So Cuba, is in its own right, an interventionary power, an interventionist power, in the you know global Cold War of the 1970s, and this has consequences for the Soviet Union.

The Angolan Civil War

[58:59]

As we'll become clear in the case of Angola. The Angolan Civil War follows the Portuguese revolution↗. Portugal was the colonial power that ruled Angola, Angola's a country in Southwest Africa, just north of South Africa, the Portuguese revolution in 1974 opens up the question of Angola's postcolonial political future.

[59:23]

Insofar as the Portuguese revolution pushes Portugal towards rapid decolonization, the question what will become of Angola, as well as Portugal's other colonies, sort of presents itself very quickly and urgently.

[59:36]

Angola is divided, or at least the domestic politics of Angola are bitterly divided, between two rival anticolonial political movements -- the MPLA↗ -- the Angolan People's Movement, led by , and the FNLA↗, or the Angolan National Front, led by These are two rival sort of nationalist political organizations. With the Portuguese revolution and the draw down of Portuguese colonial power the question of which of these movements, the MPLA or the FNLA, is going to prevail becomes a very bitterly contested question.

[1:00:15]

Ultimately it's a question that assumes a sort of Cold War dimension. The MPLA is backed by the Soviet Union and China. The FLNA which is...not so revolutionary a movement, it's a nationalist movement, but not a socially revolutionary movement receives support from the United States and China intriguely. The fact that China comes down on the same side as the United States is evidence of just how bitter the Sino-Soviet struggle for the developing world has become by the mid-1970s.

[1:00:48]

These external powers all intervene. The Soviet Union sends military hardware to support the MPLA in what becomes in 1975 an Angolan civil war. Cuba sends troops: some 35,000 of them. South Africa acting as a sort of proxy for the United States invades Angola to support the FNLA of .

[1:01:13]

What does the United States do? Kissinger and Nixon want to send material support. They want to send sort of military hardware to help the FNLA to prevail against the Soviet backed MPLA. But Congress puts its foot down. Says we're not going to do this. There is an insurgency in the Congress which is animated in large part by Congressional fears that the Nixon administration, actually it's the Ford administration now...which is animate...and the insurgency in Congress is animated by the fear that the Ford administration might be leading the United States into a second Vietnam War.

[1:01:45]

Ultimately the Soviet backed MPLA prevails. American observers take this as further proof of the Soviet Union's ambition in the developing world. An ambition is seen by American observers to be incompatible with the spirit of détente. Conversely, the refusal of the US Congress to support an assistance package for and the FNLA is interpreted by American sort of Cold War strategists as another symptom of American decline.

[1:02:18]

Angola by consequence, a civil war that lasts two years and that ends with the victory of the Soviet backed client, marks an important moment in the decline of détente. Angola indicates to American leaders that the Soviet Union is not holding up its end of the bargain. It is not exercising restraint in the developing world.

[1:02:41]

Rather the Soviet Union is using détente as an opportunity, or so it seems, to press for advantage in the Global South.

The Carter Administration and Détente

[1:02:48]

These you know sort of basic dynamics, the rise of discontent with détente within American politics, and the unraveling of détente within the developing world, will define sort of the final phase of détente's collapse, which occurs under a new President: Jimmy Carter.

[1:03:08]

Jimmy Carter is elected in 1976 after an election campaign in which détente becomes a charged issue. Carter alleges that détente is immoral and moreover that the Ford administration is allowing the United States to become a runner-up in the Cold War.

[1:03:26]

That the Ford administration is failing to sort of press for American advantage in the Cold War. This is a critique that Carter makes as the Democratic party's candidate for President running against Gerald Ford the Republican incumbent. But it's also a critique that is made by Ronald Reagan who challenges Gerald Ford for the Republican party's nomination in the first half of 1976.

[1:03:50]

So this, these basic questions of whether the United States is allowing itself to decline, and of whether the United States has accepted an amoral sort of political solution, détente, a solution that abjures human rights and that accepts a sort of tacit cooperation with a totalitarian Soviet superpower, resonates very powerfully in the domestic politics of 1976.

[1:04:16]

Both Carter and Reagan accuse the Ford administration of having settled for second place in the Cold War and of you know failing to uphold America's historical responsibility to promote human rights in the world.

[1:04:32]

As President Carter will aim to restore sort of a moral ambition to American foreign policy. Carter makes human rights a central issue in his larger foreign policy agenda. At the same time however Carter is also deeply committed to reducing the danger of the nuclear arms race -- to safeguarding world peace.

[1:04:52]

When it comes to the Soviet Union this, you know sort of bifocal set of commitments, to moral transformation and to the preservation of peace, leads Carter to embrace somewhat contradictory policy objectives vis-à-vis the Soviet Union.

[1:05:09]

Within months of taking office Carter makes a proposal to his Soviet counterpart, Leonid Brezhnev for a unprecedented reduction in the two sides nuclear stockpiles. This becomes known as the deep cuts proposal. Whereas Nixon's SALT Agreement had simply tried to stabilize the nuclear arsenals of the two sides, Carter in March 1977, proposes deep cuts in the nuclear forces of the Soviet Union and the United States.

[1:05:38]

This would represent, if realized, a radical sort of departure in the politics of détente. Carter proposes to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles rather than simply to stabilize them. At the same time Carter makes a big issue out of human rights in the Soviet Union. He does so primarily because he really believes in human rights and in part because he's not really cognizant of how provocative that move will look from a Soviet standpoint.

[1:06:08]

Soviet leaders are very affronted by Carter's willingness to host for example Soviet dissidents at the White House. But Carter doesn't quite get, at least not initially, how disruptive this will be to the sustenance of good working relations with his Soviet counterparts.

[1:06:26]

The Soviet Union does not much like Carter from the outset. Carter's inauguration seems to Soviet diplomats and Soviet leaders to be a setback -- to mark a sort of moment of disjuncture in the good relationship which the Politburo had developed with Carter's Republican predecessors. Soviet leaders take umbrage at Carter's emphasis on human rights and they are disdainful of his proposal for deep cuts in the nuclear arms race. Carter's inauguration then immediately plunges the future of détente into sort of question.

The Ogaden War

[1:07:00]

At the same time there are things going on in the developing world that seem to augur a further unraveling of détente. The most important developing world crisis of the Carter era, at least of the first years of the Carter era, takes place in Africa, but this time in East Africa not in Southwest Africa.

[1:07:21]

Somalia and Ethiopia fight a bloody border war for control of the Ogaden↗ desert in 1977 and 1978. This is a war that quickly assumes a Cold War dimension. The Soviet Union supports Ethiopia. The United States supports Somalia. From a certain point of view this is just another tawdry Cold War proxy struggle in the developing world.

[1:07:44]

A conflict in which the superpowers provide aid and in which poor people perish in the fighting. To what extent is it a conflict in which the interests of the superpowers are deeply implicated? This is you know the sort of the perhaps more ungent question so far as the United States is concerned.

[1:08:02]

It matters that the struggle is taking place in the Horn of Africa. Now let me just show you on a map whereabouts the Horn of Africa is. The Horn of Africa is a protrusion of Africa sort of into the Indian Ocean and it's a area that is by virtue of it geographical positioning consequential for the geopolitics and military affairs of the Middle East.

[1:08:26]

Somalia and Ethiopia border respectively the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. Should the Soviet Union be able to establish a military base in this area it would provide the Soviet Union with the opportunity to interdict tanker shipping carrying oil through the Gulf of Aden.

[1:08:44]

So American strategists correctly perceive the Somalian-Ethiopian War, the war for the Horn of Africa, as a war that may in its outcome have Cold War consequences.

[1:08:56]

Moreover, Carter's National Security Advisor, a man by the name of Zbigniew Brzezinski↗, is convinced that Soviet support for the Ethiopian effort in the Ogaden desert war is part of a coherent Soviet strategy to insert Soviet power throughout the developing world.

[1:09:16]

Brezezinski talks from sort of 1977/78 onwards about the existence of an arc of crisis, an arc of instability and regional conflict in the Global South, that the Soviet Union is poised to exploit.

[1:09:28]

So confronting Soviet expansion, stopping Soviet ambition in the Horn of Africa, is for hardliners like Brezezinski in the Carter administration, imperative if the advance of Soviet influence more broadly in the developing world is to be prevented.

Carter, Brezhnev and SALT II

[1:09:45]

Even as the Carter administration provides support to Somalia that embroils the United States more deeply in a Cold War proxy struggle in Africa Carter continues to pursue an arms control agenda. He does not secure the deep cuts agreement that he wants to achieve. But he meets with Brezhnev in June 1979 in Vienna.

[1:10:06]

It's their only bilateral heads of state meeting that occurs in the Carter administration. And signs an agreement, the SALT II agreement, that essentially takes an agreement that Ford and Brezhnev achieved in 1975, dusts it off, and you know sort of uses it as the basis for an agreement that builds upon the accomplishments of SALT I but does not radically transform or alter the basic dynamic and purposes of arms control negotiations between the two sides.

[1:10:41]

What SALT II proposes to do is just to cap the nuclear weapons that both -- it proposes to cap the delivery vehicles that both sides have to deliver nuclear weapons to targets at 2250 delivery vehicles per side. So it's a fairly simple agreement in terms of what it proposes to do, just to limit all kinds of delivery vehicles, not just intercontinental ballistic missiles, but also submarine launch missiles and bomber launched cruise missiles and so on.

[1:11:13]

SALT II is nonetheless the high point of détente in the Carter years. It represents you know the sort of zenith of Carter's efforts to sustain and preserve the accomplishments of Nixon's détente. It unravels very quickly at the end of 1979.

The Soviet Union's Invasion of Afghanistan

[1:11:30]

The cause is the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. You have as part of your reading packet a really terrific article on the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan so I won't belabor my discussion of it because I'd simply refer you to the article instead if you want a more cogent explanation.

[1:11:47]

But to answer the question why the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan at the end of 1979 it's important to look at what happens in Afghanistan in the two years preceding the invasion.

[1:11:59]

Afghanistan...experiences a socialist revolution of sorts in 1978. Seizure of power in Kabul brings to power a socialist government, a government that is nominally loyal to the Soviet Union. This is a regime however that doesn't really exercise power far beyond Kabul, and which is bitterly divided by internal factional and personality differences.

[1:12:25]

It's also a regime that is confronted by well entrenched sort of Islamist opposition in the countryside. As all of you know, from the experience of you know the United States recent conflict in Afghanistan, Afghan territory is very hard to control, whether for an external invading power or for an Afghan government in Kabul, sitting in Kabul

[1:12:48]

This is a country that is very mountainous, that is not necessarily conducive to the exercise of central political power.

[1:12:56]

An Afghan civil war↗ begins in 1979, in March 1979, with an insurgency by Islamist forces at Herat. It's an insurgency that is successfully suppressed by the government in Kabul but the internal power struggle that develops in the course of the suppression of the Herat insurgency↗ erodes the legitimacy of the constituted government sitting in Kabul.

[1:13:21]

Ultimately the government collapses in a power struggle between two predominant leaders. One called Amin↗ and the other called Taraki↗. It's not important to sort of parse the minutiae of this factional conflict. What's important is to remember that the Soviet Union is principally identified with one of the two protagonists in this internal power struggle.

[1:13:41]

The Soviet Union is identified with Taraki, supports Taraki; he is the Soviet Union's client. When Taraki is overthrown by an internal rival, Amin, the Soviet Union is very concerned about what this means for the future of Afghanistan. The Soviet Union is concerned that Amin may have been engaging in clandestine discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency. The Soviet Union is concerned that Amin may sort of defect from the Soviet camp to the Western camp in the Cold War.

[1:14:13]

This is sort of on the face of things an exaggerated, even somewhat ridiculous concern, but the memory of Egypt's defection under Anwar Sadat↗ exerts a powerful hold on Soviet leaders. Soviet leaders recall that Egypt had been a very good, a very loyal Soviet client, but that under a new leader, Anwar Sadat, it in effect defected to the West's Cold War camp after the 1973 War.

[1:14:36]

And that analogy weighs heavily on Soviet decision-making. Soviet leaders are also fearful of political Islam, and they're very concerned that if their client regime in Afghanistan crumbles, and a Islamist regime comes to power, that political Islamism may afflict not only Afghanistan, but also regions of the Southern Soviet Union that are populated by sort of you know, that are densely populated by Muslims.

[1:15:02]

So the fears of the sort of regional Islamism tide also exert a powerful pull on Soviet decision-making.

[1:15:10]

Fearful of the consequences of not acting, Soviet leaders in December 1979, decide to invade Afghanistan in order to bolster a client regime of their own making. This move is interpreted by American decision-makers, by American strategists, as a very threatening departure.

[1:15:31]

After all Afghanistan though located in central Asia, you can see Afghanistan here on the map, it's located in central Asia, is nonetheless geographically proximate to the Middle East.

[1:15:45]

Should the Soviet Union establish military bases in Afghanistan then it would be well poised to attack oil fields in Iran, and even in Saudi Arabia. Afghanistan seems to the Americans to be the first stage in a Soviet strategic thrust towards the Middle East. There's really not any evidence to back this up.

[1:16:07]

Now that we have much you know greater access since the Cold War's end to documents that elucidate Soviet decision-making the idea that the Soviet leadership was really intending for Afghanistan to be the first stage in a strategic thrust towards the Middle East falls apart. There's simply not the evidence to corroborate it.

[1:16:24]

The Soviet Union is pulled into Afghanistan much more than it inserts itself into Afghanistan. But American leaders at the time perceive the Persian Gulf to be threatened by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

[1:16:38]

Moreover they also perceive an opportunity. American leaders understand from their own experience in Vietnam just how difficult Third World conflicts can be particularly when you intervene in them with your own military forces.

[1:16:53]

So from the very outset American decision-makers, notably Zbigniew Brzezinski, recognize that Afghanistan presents the United States with an opportunity. Can the United States do to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan what happened to the United States in Vietnam? Can Afghanistan be turned into the Soviet Union's Vietnam? This is the tantalizing opportunity that the Soviet invasion presents.

[1:17:18]

After 1979, after December 1979, the United States will develop a program of military and tactical assistance to the anti-Soviet forces, the so-called Afghan Mujahideen↗, in Afghanistan, which is conceived to wear down the Soviet war effort, and to transform the Afghan War into a, you know, sort of Vietnam like struggle that will erode the Soviet Union's global power.

[1:17:47]

The United States also proclaims it commitment to defending the Middle East. The Carter Doctrine↗, which President Carter articulates in January 1980, commits the United States to defend the Middle East against all external adversaries -- to use American power if necessary to thwart any effort by an external power to seize control of the Middle East, and its oil fields.

[1:18:09]

So the Carter administration, you know, marks this sort of significant shift in American grand strategy towards the Middle East, with the promulgation of the doctrine that will bear President Carter's name. The détente relationship withers very quickly and dies after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

[1:18:27]

Carter imposes a host of retaliatory measures -- an embargo on American grain deliveries to the Soviet Union is imposed. The United States withdraws the SALT treaty from consideration by the Senate and even boycotts the Olympics which are to be held in the summer of 1980 in Moscow in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

[1:18:47]

Thus, you know, by the early months of 1980, it's unambiguously clear that the Cold War is back, that the state of object hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union that had characterized the high Cold War of the 1950s has returned.

[1:19:04]

Of course how we get from this state of high Cold War, redux in the early 1980s, to the resolution of the Cold War in the 1970s, is a different question and that's a question that we'll come to after spring break when we talk about the end of the Cold War.