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European Security after Helsinki: Some American views

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

John C. Campbell
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Extract

INTERPRETATIONS OF THE MEANING AND THE EFFECTS OF THE CONFERence on Security and Cooporation in Europe (CSCE) and its product, the Final Act signed at Helsinki in August 1975, are of sufficient variety to suit anybody's taste. Governments on both sides have hailed the Final Act as a great landmark, the opening of a new era of international relations in Europe based on high principle. Some of the same governments and their spokesmen, mainly on the Eastern side, have also called it the ineluctable result of the changed balance of forces in Europe; and among observers in the West who have agreed with that proposition some have argued that the Soviet Union has by Helsinki prepared the way for the domination or ‘Finlandization’ of the nations of Western Europe, and that the latter are too stupid or too complaisant or too scared to do anything about it. Then there are those in the West who feel neither satisfaction nor alarm but see the whole negotiation as much ado about nothing, changing neither the existing balance nor the outstanding differences.

Type
Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1976 , pp. 322 - 336
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1976

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References

1 Johnson’s principal statement of policy on this subject was his speech of 7 October 1966, Department of State Bulletin, 24 October 1977, pp. 622–5.

2 Department of State Bulletin, 3 November 1975, pp. 641–2. For a good discussion of American policy in historical perspective, see Robert F. Byrnes, ‘United States Policy towards Eastern Europe: Before and After Helsinki’, The Review of Politics, October 1975, pp. 435–63.

3 See Priedland, Edward, Seabury, Paul, Wildavsky, Aaron, The Great Detente Disaster, New York: Basic Books, 1975 Google Scholar.

4 The sober views of Paul Nitze, a former member of the SALT delegation (see his article, ‘Assuring Strategic Stability in an Era of Detente’, Foreign Affairs, January 1976) carried considerable influence.