ABSTRACT
The Warsaw Pact renewed calls for a European security conference in its Budapest Declaration of March 1969. Milder in tone than its predecessor, it was still fundamentally hostile to the US presence in Europe. Nato offered conditional approval provided the conference included the United States and did not ratify the post-war division of Europe. This important proviso set it up for conflict with Brezhnev’s vision of détente. The Warsaw Pact eventually accepted the participation of the US and Brezhnev agreed to talks on force reductions. A Berlin agreement removed another blockage. Western Europe put human rights on the agenda. Nixon diverged from Europe at the Moscow summit in 1972 but Nato was still able to agree on the start of multilateral preparatory talks.
