Following the missile crisis, detente started to gain ground between the United States and the Soviet Union, so the international political climate improved after that.
I don't know why you use a fancy French word like detente when there's a good English phrase for it - cold war.
Kissinger celebrants inevitably point to two things to justify their admiration: an opening to China - 'rapprochement' - and improved relations with the Soviet Union - detente - which included SALT, a historic arms-limitation treaty.
And I think detente had manifestly failed, and that the pursuit of it was encouraging Soviet expansion and rendering the world more dangerous, and especially rendering the Western world in greater peril.
I believe that detente was having almost the opposite effect of what was intended. What was intended was to sort of end the contest for power and to stop Soviet expansion, especially by military means and the military build-up, the military contest.
In the years just before... during the Carter years, the Soviets regularly violated, if you will, both the spirit and theletter of arms control agreements, I think, that they had negotiated during the period of detente.
I see a direct line between Kennedy and Richard Nixon and the opening to China and the detente with the Soviet Union.
No step the United States could take anywhere in the world would bring strategic benefits as great as detente with Iran.
