The Fall of Detente: Soviet-American Relations During the Carter Years

The relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States at the end of the 1970s was dominated by a series of conflicts over arms control issues and interventions in the Third World. In the end, the sum of these conflicts destroyed the framework of relaxation of superpower tension known as detente and ushered in a period of renewed Cold war rivalry in the early 1980s. It is now possible to look more closely at what happened in the relationship between Washington and Moscow in this era through recently declassified Soviet and American documents. This volume contains a number of interpretative essays from leading Cold War historians, as well as some of the more important documents from Eastern Bloc and American archives. It centres on the SALT II negotiations, on conflicts in Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan and on bilateral issues, such as trade and human rights.