ABSTRACT
It is sometimes claimed that nostalgia is not what it used to be. The same could be said about the East-West Détente of the 1970s. 1 Détente looks very different now from the way it appeared in the early 1970s. In 1972 and 1973, it was the United States, under Nixon and Kissinger, that was most enthusiastic about Détente. The West Europeans, in contrast, were more cautious and more sceptical. Although the Federal Republic pursued its Ostpolitik with considerable vigour and enthusiasm, elsewhere in Europe there was greater ambivalence. Europeans welcomed the reduction of tensions, but there was apprehension about the improvement in superpower relations. It was feared, especially in France, that Soviet-American Détente might lead to superpower condominium - at the expense of America’s allies. This concern over collusion was perhaps most evident in the European reaction to the Prevention of Nuclear War Agreement of 1973. Critics of the accord claimed that the United States was subordinating its obligations to allies to the desire to establish agreed codes of behaviour with Moscow. The French, in particular, castigated the agreement as an attempt by the superpowers to ensure that if an East-West conflict occurred in Europe it would be limited in ways that maintained both the Soviet and American homelands as sanctuaries. Such fears tended to caricature an agreement that had been drafted in part by a senior official in the British Foreign Office, Thomas Brimelow (Kissinger, 1982, pp. 278-82). Nevertheless, they symbolized the ambivalence that existed in Europe about Détente. This ambivalence continued even during the latter half of the 1970s, when many Europeans expressed reservations about certain aspects of the proposed SALT II Treaty, and it took a major effort by the Carter administration to assuage Allied concerns.
