ABSTRACT
We have been told so often that détente failed and that its failure was marked by the coming of the ‘second cold war’ in the early 1980s that it is often forgotten that to a considerable degree détente had become institutionalized – in the form of continuing arms negotiations, both nuclear and conventional, in trade links, and more generally in patterns of expectations and behaviour established in the negotiations and agreements of 1971 to 1975.1 Clearly these did not override the basically competitive nature of East-West relations, and equally clearly by the end of the decade many of the specific results of détente looked hollow.
