The Cold War and the Policy of Detente
There is no clear and important threat to United States as can be seen directly now, and that had been the major determinant of foreign policy for United States for many years, after the Second World War. This has led to a situation where there are many impressions about the policies that are best suited for America and those originate from different philosophies about the fundamental national interests and values. Issues and problems that were not being considered earlier are now attracting the attention, debate and scrutiny of policy makers since the position has changed since the fall of communism. It is true that United States had to bear the biggest burden for the defeat of Communism, and this is leading to the pursuance of a lot of other priorities that had not been considered then. (Bring Back the Laxalt Doctrine)At the beginning of this argument it is essential to accept a new logic that there are no threats to United States in the form of further spread of weapons of mass destruction or getting certain classic enemies like People's Republic of China more powerful. The policies of today are being decided through the resolution of minor issues which are felt to have the potential of becoming large issues l
It has to be realized that concepts of a nation change from time to time and are often dependant on the "power" of the nation at that time. The relationship between United States and Soviet Union was determined by their "power" status at that stage. This is what led to detente, so that both could exist together and rule the world. Then Soviet Union collapsed due to the reactions of its people. A new equation has to come in United States due to this change and there are now feelings of a threat from terrorists or rogue nations as can be seen from the statement. Yet the opinions regarding detente were different between USA and USSR. The US view was that detente was a method for the maintenance of American superiority for longer periods, while USSR viewed detente as a method to keep the competition in nuclear arms from increasing to a nuclear war. Then the Soviet Union collapsed, but before that the cooperation between President HW Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev during German unification as also the Gulf War in 1992, gave us all hopes that an agreement between Russia and United States would be achieved easily later. (The United States and Russia) This policy continued for sometime but as both the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact collapsed and it is now felt that the regular threat to America's allies in Europe and Asia has ended. This phase continued till 1972 -73. Both the major superpowers won and lost in different territories. United States had to withdraw from the very expensive war in Vietnam and there was a requirement for the crises that occurred from time to time into nuclear war. This led Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev to pursue detente. This did not mean that the competition ended between the two sides, the process was to put limits to the competition. Thus detente was not taken up as a desirable foreign policy by any of the two governments of US
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1252
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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