In the early 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union passed through a period of intense rivalry. The Soviets built the Berlin Wall. A nuclear war almost broke out over Soviet plans to deploy missiles to Cuba. But surprisingly, within a few years relations started to thaw. President Richard Nixon, although a devout anti-communist, announced in his 1969 inaugural address: “After a period of confrontation, we are entering an era of negotiation.” By the end of Nixon’s first term in office, Washington and Moscow had signed historic arms control and other cooperative agreements. The mood had changed, moreover, and the risk of nuclear war was markedly reduced.
This was détente, a conscious effort to relax tensions between the superpowers. Although the diplomacy of détente would not survive the end of the 1970s,it fundamentally altered the course of the Cold War. Without it, the Cold War might have gone on indefinitely or turned to catastrophe. Instead, superpower diplomacy kept it from blowing up and set the stage for the even more historic statecraft of the late 1980s that brought down the Berlin Wall.
Could the United States and China eventually find a way to their own détente? Most assessments today are pessimistic. Donald Trump’s inauguration has created further uncertainty about the trajectory the United States and China are on. The deterioration of the last few years could accelerate toward economic decoupling or even war. But the history of superpower détente offers a different scenario—and insights into how it might be achieved.
In the 1970s, nuclear arms control was détente’s centerpiece. Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in Moscow in 1972. Additional agreements were later signed on pollution, medicine, science, technology, space, and trade. Both sides also accepted a set of Basic Principles acknowledging each other’s legitimacy as states and agreeing to pursue “normal relations” based on “peaceful coexistence” and “sovereignty, equality, non-interference in internal affairs, and mutual advantage.” In 1975 they both signed the Helsinki Accords, which settled several outstanding issues from World War II and in which the Soviets accepted the universality of human rights.
But the signing of these treaties by no means ended the tensions generated by the strategic competition of the superpowers. On the contrary, détente was tough. It always seemed to teeter on the edge of collapse, with many different domestic and international forces working against it. Washington and Moscow continued to seek strategic advantage globally, fighting proxy wars in Vietnam, the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. Global pain points like these were a constant.
Mutual suspicions also ran deep, and there were loud and powerful critics of détente on both sides. Conservatives in Moscow fought against the efforts of a new guard seeking to “de-Stalinize” Soviet foreign policy. The Soviet military resisted arms reductions. In Washington, hawks hated the arms control agreements and warned that Nixon was handing the Soviets nuclear superiority. U.S. human rights advocates, meanwhile, derided détente, especially when the Soviets began to restrict the emigration of Soviet Jews and when Alexander Solzhenitsyn appeared on the scene with his harrowing depictions of the Soviet gulags. Nixon’s, Ford’s, and Carter’s political opponents meanwhile had their own reasons to make superpower diplomacy into political football.
Despite all the blocking and tackling, détente turned the Cold War toward a managed competition with guardrails. Relations were much different in the 1970s than in the 1950s and 1960s. Now the superpowers competed with a tacit understanding of the need to keep that competition within certain boundaries. There were even efforts at cooperation on common interests.
We should want to see the same from the U.S.-China relations if the opportunity should emerge. What might bring this about?
In the 1960s and 1970s, several factors had helped to create an environment conducive to détente. Soviet parity in nuclear weapons and the costly military buildup was one. As Brezhnev told President Ford at a meeting in Vladivostok in 1974, “We are spending billions on all these things [i.e. nuclear weapons], billions that would be much better spent for the benefit of the people.” Meanwhile, the Vietnam War weighed on Washington, and Europe was growing more independent from it, with German Chancellor Willy Brandt pursuing his own eastward outreach. On the American side, the business community favored a thaw in relations in hope that it might open up new opportunities for trade and investment with Eastern Europe, while the Soviets wanted to alleviate their economic problems through increased trade with the West.
One must take care, of course, in drawing historical analogies from the Cold War. But the period does suggest some factors that might help move U.S.-China relations toward firmer ground. A stabilization of the military balance in East Asia, a mutual recognition of the economic value of the relationship, a deepening external crisis that puts new pressures on either side as the Vietnam War once did, and genuine concern about the possibility of nuclear exchange could all contribute to a change in atmosphere. U.S. allies, such as Japan or even South Korea, might also lead the way by initiating outreach of their own to Beijing.
But superpower leadership will also be important. Historians of détente have emphasized the extent to which the personal conviction of leaders on both sides drove the process. Brezhnev, who despised what Hitler had done to Europe, was genuinely concerned about the possibility of superpower war and felt a responsibility to embrace diplomacy. Richard Nixon put aside his long-standing ideological objections to communism when he extended his hand toward Moscow. Leaders in Washington and Beijing might do the same—and they need not have been elected on a platform of détente to do so. Nixon, after all, was a conservative who had no predilection for communism, and Brezhnev was an ideologically committed chairman of the Politburo who had just crushed a liberal uprising in Prague, Czechoslovakia.
Some analysts have rightly observed that a costly military confrontation over Taiwan or another flashpoint could also generate momentum for détente in U.S.-China relations. Nobody wants such a crisis, but if it occurred and war were averted, it might usher in a period of cool heads and relative calm. But crisis is not a necessary condition for détente. Détente in the 1970s did take place with still-fresh memories of the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis, but that episode was not the only, or even the most important factor, in the thaw. Nor was a domestic consensus about the value of détente necessary—or even a consensus within either government itself. Top officials in the Defense and State Departments, as well as senior members of Congress, were strongly opposed. Some level of public support turned out to be sufficient, provided leadership from the top.
Any future détente between the United States and China would probably also require both parties to agree not to interfere in one another’s internal politics or attack each other’s basic legitimacy. What this meant in the 1970s was that the United States would treat the USSR as an ordinary state and cut back on anti-Soviet rhetoric and human rights criticisms. This was one of the most controversial aspects of the policy, but in return, the Soviets toned down their war of words on the West and refrained from attacking capitalism or fomenting revolution at every opportunity. In today’s environment, Beijing would have to tone down its own frequent and self-serving portrayals of America as the source of global injustice and instability and cease its interference in U.S. domestic politics.
This foundation for cooperation could be complemented with arms control talks. Beijing’s willingness to engage in serious arms talks may increase as its own nuclear arsenal pulls closer to parity with America’s. Controls on cyber warfare, space warfare, and missile defenses could accompany these. In a world where the potential for a new arms race looms large given the waning of existing arms control agreements, such steps would be especially beneficial. Steps toward détente would also help reduce pressure on U.S. budgets, reduce China’s support to Russia, and alleviate strains that have arisen between Europe and the United States over China strategy. The latter might also be beneficial for China if it stabilized European trade and investment.
Developments like these seem a way off, but so did détente in the early 1960s, when the world was on the brink of nuclear war over Moscow’s missile deployments to Cuba. Now, as then, détente would not be a panacea or end the underlying frictions between the two powers. The number of global points of friction between the United States and China has not reached the level that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1969, but there would be many pitfalls on the way to a thaw. Global crises or third parties such as North Korea or Russia might still reignite tensions. Domestic critics on both sides are a given. Changes in leadership in either capital could derail the process, which would almost certainly be pervaded by mutual suspicion throughout.
Détente was imperfect and the era ended when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. It certainly did not bring about an immediate end to the Cold War. Decline in relations between the Soviets and the West that began during the Carter years accelerated after the invasion of Afghanistan and deployment of Euromissiles. The world again came to the brink of nuclear war in 1983 when the Soviets mistook a NATO exercise for a nuclear strike.
Nevertheless, the threads of détente survived these crises and went on to contribute to Soviets’ later demise. The fact that human rights was accepted in principle by the Soviets as part of the Helsinki final agreement helped bring about an end to their empire by opening space for dissidents in the Eastern Bloc. The arms control process that was set in motion outlasted the end of the Cold War.
Détente also elevated a number of new thinkers in the Soviet system, who were encouraged to break with doctrine and explore new approaches to foreign policy. Many of these thinkers then went on to staff Gorbachev during his negotiations with Reagan a decade later. Rather than force the Soviet empire to liberalize through superpower confrontation, the United States established a more stable relationship with the Soviets that enabled them to elevate internal reformers, who in turn brought the system down. Indeed, the power of détente to change could become the main reason why Beijing would resist it.
Most of all, détente reduced the risk of nuclear war during the years when it operated. Both sides exercised greater restraint in recognition of the commitment that they had jointly made. This did not mean that there was no friction, or that either side ceased to seek advantage, but it did mean that the overall risk of a direct conflict and nuclear war was reduced. This was a good thing for both sides and for humanity. A détente with China probably will not happen in 2025, but when the opportunity arises, we should seize it. It would be a good thing for America, China, and the world.