Essay: Systemic reasons why the US, Soviet Union and China all supported Détente

This essay will explain the reasons that permitted Détente from the realist perspective of the Balance of Power theory (see for example Waltz, 1985; Gellman, 1989; Mearsheimer, 2001). Particularly, it will focus on systemic reasons why United States, the Soviet Union and China all supported Détente. The main argument of this essay is that Détente was possible because the power (understood in realist terms as material capabilities) of the two central poles of the system converged, due to a decay of American power, which lead foreign policy makers –particularly president Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger—to prioritize an approach to China to counteract the Soviet power.
Firstly, let’s observe to material capabilities through the Composite Index of National Capabilities (CINC), compiled by the Correlates of War project. This index is created using six measures of power: percentage of urban population, total population, iron and steel production, energy consumption, military budget and military personnel. This index is a good approximation to what Waltz (2000) understood by national power (figure 1).
Figure 1: Material capabilities measured through the CINC index.
Source: Correlates of War.
Many authors (cite all we read) have analysed the factors contributing to the context that permitted Détente.  Firstly, the impact of the Cuban Crisis (1962) had a central role in making it possible. The intensity of the event had been so great and the spectre of the nuclear holocaust perceived so broadly that profound lessons had been impressed upon the participants. Since mutual destruction was assured, and the survival of the species at stake, a key concept to understand nuclear proliferation was deterrence (de Mesquita, 1982). A second factor to Détente was the dramatic shift in the power balance caused by the growing Sino-Soviet split (see figure 1). A third factor, concerning domestic American politics, has to do with increasing Anti-War demonstrations which waxed larger and more violent, demands for a change in American foreign policy. The next major factor involved the mutual policy decisions to pursue arms control negotiations with renewed vigour; In November 1969, both poles of the system met for preliminary Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) discussions in Helsinki, favouring the relaxation of the mutual assured destruction.
It is clear then that Détente can be studied as a triangular process. In the intersection between the United States and China is the Ping Pong Diplomacy that permitted an approach between these two countries that formerly had been apart. Of course, this approach was a consequence of a previous tension, and detachment, between the Soviet Union and China, particularly because of Mao´s disdain for Nikita Khrushchev. Thirdly, in the intersection of United States and the Soviet Union one could highlight SALT negotiations, which put temporary end to the mutual suspiciousness that the Cuban Missile Crisis had started. These three intersections, which are depicted in Figure 2, will be further analysed in the next sections of the essay.
Figure 2: Venn Diagram of triangular relations during Détente.
Source: Elaborated by the author.
United States and the Soviets: on the importance of SALT negotiations
Despite high levels of tension, the cold war was in some ways remarkably restrained during the 60s. While the United States clashed with Soviet-backed forces in Korea, the war demonstrated the limits that were placed on the conflict. Despite a series of provocations, neither side broke diplomatic relations with the other nor was there a serious move to close the channel of access and communication through the United Nations. Then, the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred and the fear of a nuclear war was stronger than ever. Both superpowers knew that a nuclear war could bring about a total destruction of the world and this led to arms limitation talks held between them. Furthermore, the burden of military expenditure was getting stronger. Both the US and USSR wanted to use their own resources to develop their home economy and to solve the problems of home poverty. The new strategic thinking of President Richard Nixon and his adviser Henry Kissinger became key to change the American strategy towards the Soviets.
The main strategy adopted by Henry Kissinger was to integrate the USSR in West system through diplomacy. On the one hand, he created the Sufficiency doctrine, which called for enough nuclear force to damage a potential aggressor. On the other, the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) System, a system for destroying incoming ballistic missiles before they reach their target, permitted the development of a defensive approach towards nuclear war. Through the ABM system Nixon and Brezhnev agreed that each party would construct no more than two ABM sites. One of them would protect the capital and the other would protect a missile base. The United States and the Soviet Union reached several other understandings that expanded détente. They signed agreements on reducing pollution and enhancing environmental quality, on cooperation in medicine, science, and technology, and on space exploration. They set up a joint commercial commission that would negotiate a comprehensive trade agreement.
The Pentagon fielded growing numbers of theatre and tactical nuclear weapons during the 1960s to support security guarantees and reinforce deterrence. In 1960, the United States had deployed only a few hundred weapons in NATO Europe; by 1967, it had stockpiled over 7000. Despite Kissinger’s warnings that the world stood on the brink of annihilation, it is worth mentioning that if Congress did not support the Nixon administration’s approach to arms control, Détente would have faced serious challenges from domestic critics in the months and years following the summit. But geopolitics succeeded. Concerns about West Germany and China motivated the Soviet Union and the United States to seek a common stance in limiting the spread of nuclear weapons.
The complex Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) negotiations produced agreements, signed at the Moscow summit (May 1972), which confirmed each side’s strategic advantages. An “Interim Agreement” had less consequence; it froze US and Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) at 1054 and 1618 respectively, but the Soviet lead in missiles was offset by the US advantage in multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs), a type of ballistic missile payload containing several warheads, each capable of being aimed to hit one of a group of targets. The protracted SALT II negotiations reflected a more complex political context for arms control, especially in Washington. After two years of difficult negotiations, at the November 1974 Vladivostok summit, Brezhnev and Gerald Ford, Nixon’s successor after the Watergate scandal, reached an understanding that sought to limit the drive for strategic advantage. For the United States, Détente did not signal an American retreat from world affairs but was a new – and necessary – tactic for carrying on traditional containment policy – overall the power of the U.S economy and military remained dominant on the globe. For the Soviet Union, Détente had a diplomatic aim: to freeze the status quo in Central Europe to cement their hold on Eastern Europe and make the West officially recognize the borders.
The crisis within the Communist block: The Sino-Soviet split
The Sino-Soviet split concerned the leadership of world communism. While the material capabilities of the USSR grew, the leadership believed they no longer needed China to make communism become a reality in the world. Furthermore, Khrushchev´s approach towards the Western capitalist countries, and his disdain for Stalinism, was strongly seen by Maoist China as a treason to truly Marxism-Leninism.
By 1962, the once robust Sino-Soviet alliance had cracked up, revealing serious conflicts beneath the façade of Communist solidarity (Leffler, 2010). Between 1958 and 1962, Khrushchev’s disastrous handling of the Soviet relationship with China had seriously exacerbated the tensions in the alliance. In late 1962, Khrushchev was portrayed in internal Chinese assessments as “a traitor, not a proletarian.” In the fall of 1962, Mao’s perceptions exerted a decisive impact on China’s foreign-policy rhetoric. Mao announced that the Soviet retreat from class struggle amounted to revisionism and to the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. That year China and India went to war over their disputed mountain frontier. The borderline was less of an issue in the conflict, perhaps, than Beijing’s determination to show India who was the greater power in Asia. In July 1963, a high-level Chinese party delegation arrived in Moscow for talks with Soviet leaders. None of the outstanding issues in Sino-Soviet relations were resolved, or even profitably discussed. The delegations talked past each other.
The Vietnam war was also key to produce the Sino-Soviet split. The Soviet proposal of 1964 for an air force base in Kunming (a Chinese city) triggered a storm of indignation. Chinese leaders claimed that the real purpose of the twelve planes was not to cover the Sino-Vietnamese border against US incursions but to put China under Soviet military control. Mao’s resistance to a united front with the Soviets in spite of the Vietnam War reveals his strategic calculations. US involvement in Vietnam posed a potential security threat to China however he preferred to avoid becoming dependent of soviet military power.
Fearing that China would evolve into a “soft” type of communism as the USSR was, Mao launched a Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) during which the anti-Soviet feelings grew strongly. By 1969 the clash between these two was so strong that the rhetoric evolved into territorial disputes and frontier issues. By March 1969, Sino-Russian border politics became the Sino-Soviet border conflict at the Ussuri River in which the two armies exchanged gunshots, leading to 59 Soviets dead and 94 wounded and 71 Chinese deaths. Since that moment, the bilateral relations remain sour. By the end of the 1960s, the Sino-Soviet split transformed international politics. Fear of facing conflict on both the Western and Eastern fronts prompted Soviet leaders to choose the lesser of two evils, and by the turn of the decade the United States was seen as a more limited threat. On the Chinese side, an approach to the United States was seen as an alternative to balance the Soviet influence.
United States and China: Kissinger and the Ping Pong diplomacy
In the years since Mao Zedong’s communist revolution in 1949, relations between the People’s Republic of China and the United States had been clouded by Cold War propaganda, trade embargos and diplomatic silence. However, as I explained in the previous section, as relations within the communist block became tense, the shifts in alliances became an open alternative. If we look at figure 1, in 1970, when material capabilities of the Soviet Union and the USA were almost equal, having China on the American side meant it could still lead the power race. This was a major diplomatic conquer.
Whoever has watched the movie Forrest Gump portraying Tom Hanks, remember how after suffering injuries in battle during the Vietnam War, Forrest develops an aptitude for the sport and joins the American Army team—eventually competing against Chinese teams on a goodwill tour. Nixon first publicly advocated for a change in U.S. policy toward the PRC in an October 1967 article in the influential journal Foreign Affairs (Tudda, 2013). The main ideologue of the American approach to China was Henry Kissinger, Nixon´s Secretary of State.
The Chinese felt that by opening a door to the United States, they could put their mostly hostile neighbors on notice about a possible shift in alliances. Nixon, not wanting to lose momentum, secretly sent Kissinger to Peking to arrange a Presidential visit to China. Nixon’s journey seven months later, in February 1972, would become one of the most important events in U.S. postwar history. “Never before in history has a sport been used so effectively as a tool of international diplomacy,” said Chinese Premier Chou Enlai. For Nixon, it was “the week that changed the world” (cite)
A Realist approach to Détente
Overall, the Balance of Power theory may be considered a useful way to control study how alliances shift and how changes in power capabilities affect international systems.  In practice its successes as it allows countries to feel safer, as they come to agreements on how many arms they are allowed, for example.  Overall, I think the Balance of Power, allowed Détente to happen and was a major success. The reasons of its failure, which authors (cite) identify mainly to the Soviet invasion to Afghanistan is probably a result of an overestimation of Soviet power.