Cause Impact And Outcome Of The Cuban Missile Crisis

Cause impact and outcome of the détente.

The third phase of the Cuban missile crisis which took place in the mid 1960s to the end of the 70s gave rise to the Détente. The French word meant “easing of tensions’ in literal words and was basically the thawing of relationship and strategic parity between the nuclear superpowers of the world in particular the United States and the USSR. This thaw in international relations lasted a full decade and is known around the world by various names, in the West it is called detente, in Soviet Russia it was known as Razryadka and in West Germany it was generally referred to as Ostpolitik. In the period of the one decade the Détente had given rise to some significant achievements even though it did not end

There was new political recognition of communist nations, Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to Maoist China is a good example of this. The détente resulted in an improvement in diplomatic communications and also promoted economic and trade agreements between the countries of the east and the west during this period. This was a period of mutual acceptance and understanding between the United states and the USSR. Even though the economic systems and the ideologies of these nations many have differed in the past and caused incompatibility between them, the détente had urged the two nations to communicate and work together. The détente was made between the US and the USSR as a result of the gravity and the extent of the threat posed by the ownership of atomic and nuclear technology by each of these nations. The nuclear arms between the US and USSR begun in 1945 after the USA detonated the nuclear bombs little boy (6th august) and fat man(9th august) in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. The US in spite of being an ally of the USSR kept the development of the nuclear bombs hidden and did not reveal the development of the nuclear bomb formally to the USSR till July 1945 in the Potsdam conference

Over time, nuclear powers were under international pressure to reduce stockpiles of nuclear warheads and missile systems. Pressure groups like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND, formed 1957) and Greenpeace (formed 1971) lobbied against the further production and proliferation of nuclear weapons. American stockpiles of nuclear weapons had peaked at more than 30,000 in the mid-1960s, and then slowly declined. In July 1968 Great Britain, the USA and the USSR signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which was an international agreement to limit the spread of nuclear weapons to make sure that other countries don’t acquire nuclear technology and imperil the larger global security, while working towards nuclear