ABSTRACT
The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) originated in a proposal made by the Warsaw Pact in 1969. It came to life in the era of Ostpolitik in West Germany under Willy Brandt, the 1971 agreement on Berlin, and detente in the United States, under the leadership of President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger to move East-West relations “from confrontation to negotiation.” The West saw CSCE as a broad multilateral negotiating process aimed at lessening tensions with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and gradually opening up possibilities for strengthening currents of freedom and democracy across the totalitarian East. For the U.S.S.R., CSCE was a means to obtain political acceptance of the status quo in Europe-especially the borders established after World War II.
