The Road To Helsinki

On August 1, 1975 thirty-three European states and the United States and Canada met in Helsinki, Finland to sign the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).  Among the communist states the document was hailed as a milestone in European international relations.  Eastern analysts stressed that after thirty years of obstinacy the Western states had finally recognized the legitimacy of the post-war borders in Europe and they had disavowed any attempts to change those borders by force or by subverting the communist regimes in Eastern Europe.  Western opinion of the agreement signed at Helsinki was divided.  Officially, the governments of the Western states approved the Final Act of the CSCE.  They described it as a step in the process of détente and they pointed with satisfaction to the provision forbidding the use of force in European international relations.  In particular, Western proponents argued that the section of the Final Act dealing with human rights would improve the human condition of millions of East Europeans oppressed by their governments.  If those governments did not allow more freedom for their citizens as called for in the Final Act, then, the CSCE proponents argued, the West would have the document as a tangible basis from which to criticize the Eastern regimes.  However, many Western observers labeled the Helsinki agreements as a “sell-out” of the East European states to Soviet hegemony since the agreements seemed to imply that the West formally accepted the Soviet control over the regimes in those states.  From this point of view the West should have had much more in the way of tangible changes in the relations between East and West, such as in arms control, rather than symbolic expressions of intent of human rights before agreeing to the Final Act.

The thesis supported in this study is that Western states made the correct decision in adopting a positive attitude toward the CSCE, that the process of détente which led to Western acceptance of the CSCE proposal was beneficial to Western interests and European security generally, and that the CSCE itself opened up new possibilities for East-West cooperation.

Of course, there were risks for both sides in the process of détente just as there were risks for both sides during the years of the Cold War.  Western confrontations with “monolithic communism” from Berlin to Korea convinced the West of the implacability of the Soviet threat.  NATO was created to meet that threat.  When West Germany was formally included in the NATO alliance the communist countries created the Warsaw Pact in response.  The relations between the communist and non-communist halves of Europe became frozen into a “logic of confrontation” against which events and policies were evaluated.  The danger of the situation was that it magnified small frictions between the blocs thus encouraging mutual paranoia and an expensive arms race.  Ironically however, the atmosphere of confrontation also had the effect of stabilizing the chaotic post-war political situation in Europe, particularly in relation to Germany.   From the stability conferred by the opposed alliances the two sides eventually felt safe enough to look out from behind their defenses.  They gradually became more confident that carefully controlled contacts and negotiations with each other would not risk a dangerous change in the status quo.