ABSTRACT
On 21 July 1975, only days before the Helsinki Final Act was to be signed, a New York Times editorial insisted that the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), the meeting that had produced the landmark document, “should not have happened.”1 The newspaper urged the US government to withhold its signature because the negotiations had given the Soviets everything they had demanded in exchange for precious little. Too often, the solidarity within NATO that was essential for success had proved elusive, putting the Western alliance under strain and allowing the Soviets to advance their agenda with ease.2 In the editorial’s view, the US government had failed to defend Western interests and preserve the integrity of the alliance.
