End of detente

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  • Created by: miataylor
  • Created on: 12-05-15 19:43

Human Rights 

  • Basket 3 of Helsinki Accords (1975) (35 countries) - respect human rights of citezins - rights of speech, protest movement. Sakharov 'gave human rights groups in the Soviet Union an anchor in international law.' Gaddis, 'legal and moral trap.' 
  • Moscow Human Rights Committee (1970) in partnership with Amnesty International slowly reveals USSR violations. Plastic Peoples of the Universe. 
  • KGB suppress Yuri Olgav's Helsinki Watch Group. 
  • Jews persecuted - not allowed visas to Israel or US. 
  • Charter 77, Czech. Informal civic initiative. 
  • Sotzhenitsyn argues it is wrong to continue policy while there was still political repression. Taken up by 24 senators from both political parties. 
  • Carter (1977) human rights centre-piece of foreign policy. Warm letter to leading Soviet dissendent Sakharov clearly elicits disapproval from Brezhnev (renegade.) 
  • USSR for their part see human rights as an internal issue and deeply resent Western 'interference.' Isaacs 'horrified at the third basket' regarded as 'unnecessary and interfering.' Dobrynin 'we are masters in our own house.' 
  • US establish Jackson-Vandik Amendement (1975) because of restricted Jewish emigration rights. Ended US-USSR trade. 

Third World 

  • Yom Kuppar war (1973) Both supply respective allies. Takes on stronger East-West overtones when Brezhnev calls for immediate deployment of a joint US-Soviet Peace Keeping Force. Nixon rejects on the premises that wanted US to defend any threat to Israel, vital oil-rich region. 
  • Final stages of Vietnam War brought similar questions into the fore: (as McMahon asks, if the USSR and US could nearly come to blows over a regional dispute - Nixon steps nuclear forces up to international high alert during Yom Kuppar - what value did the basic agreement have? ( 'do utmost to avoid military confrontations; pledge 'restraint' in actions.) 
  • Angola. Cuban leftist movement MPLA (supported b Soviets) against more moderate factions, covertly supported by US. Involve superpowers in a sort of proxy war. Ford Administration call for stepped up aid. Legislators blanched at the prospect of a second Vietnam. Kissinger: detente couldn't survive 'any more Vietnams.' However, flushed by victory in Angola (Establishment of MPLA government February 1976) steps up aid to Ethiopia. 
  • Early 1978, Cuban troops routed US-backed Somali forces in fighting over strategic Ogaden peinsula. 
  • Overthrow of Nicaragua's authoritarian Somoza Debayle (longstanding US ally) by the Sandinistas (close ties to Cuba, Marxist-Leninist) further unsettled those fearing anti-Western Revolutionary forces surge. 
  • Iran, November 1979, Tehran Embassy, 52 Americans taken hostage. 
  • Afghanistan. 'detente's final death knell' McMahon. Invasion, 24 1979, 50 000 troops. Defensively? Islamic fundamentalist threatened Afghan Communist Regime, only in its infancy. Soviets fear global encirclement (China split, what if

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