Contesting détente : European challenge to the Yalta order in the late 1960s

This master’s thesis analyzes the tensions and anxieties that surrounded the term “détente,” particularly when it came to European affairs, in the late 1960s. It argues that during the last years of the 1960s, 1966-1969, different approaches to détente clashed and influenced each other to create a certain ambiguous atmosphere within the European space, which formed the overall understanding of Europe’s future at the time; Prague Spring, the ultimate geopolitical crisis of the time, was formed and resolved in accordance to these notions. On the one hand, there was a top-down movement, mostly dominated by policymakers from the United States and the Soviet Union, but sometimes embraced by Western European statesmen, to define détente through an entrenchment of the Yalta order. The idea was that mutual acknowledgment of the status quo in Europe would allow for a creation of a commonly accepted and controllable framework for states to cooperate. In parallel, a bottom-up movement consisting of Western and Eastern European believers in European unity as the most rational and effective possible manifestation of détente, existed to challenge and influence the prescriptive nature of détente that was embraced by the superpowers. These idealists sought to define détente as a drive towards the abandonment of the Yalta order and unification of the continent on European terms, thus diminishing the importance of the Iron Curtain, which was seen as the cause of global instability. Overall, this master’s thesis provides an insight into how a term that is widely used to describe a period of time, “détente,” was formed and conceptualized within the central arena of the Cold War – Europe. Its aim is to serve as a think piece that reevaluates the discourses surrounding détente and to position them not as mere products of Cold War bipolar international order, but as ideas rooted in thoughts on European unity and future. Different interpretations of the term “détente” that floated around the continent in the 1960s would later define European unification under the auspices of the European Union in the 1990s and early 2000s.