The Setting for Détente

Abstract

In this prophetic passage from Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville predicted the rise of the United States and Russia to the apex of the hierarchy of nation-states. What Tocqueville did not foresee was the emergence of two antithetical ideologies whose basic tenets involved ‘swaying the destinies of “the whole of” the globe’. Furthermore, Tocqueville did not foresee the creation of nuclear weapons, which would enable each superpower to hold the destiny of the other in its own hands. In this chapter, we will consider the consequences of US-Soviet rivalry when it first surfaced in the immediate post-war years (1947–53). More particularly, we shall explore the extent to which the US-Soviet ‘cold war’ was restrained or unrestrained. If we are to assess periods of d’tente, it is essential to contrast with them the period from which d’tente emerged.

There are, at the present time, two great nations in the world which seem to tend towards the same end, although they started from different points: I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and whilst the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly assumed a most prominent place among nations …

Their starting point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems to be marked by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.¹

Alexis de Tocqueville