THE HELSINKI ACCORDS, 1975 term paper

The Helsinki Accords or the Helsinki Final Act signed on 1 August 1975 concluded the first Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). Thirty-five nations signed the document, including every country in Europe (except Albania) and the United States and Canada. It may be seen as the high point of détente, the efforts by countries involved in the Cold War to find areas of agreement and ways of lessening tension.

The members of the Warsaw Treaty Organization, the alliance dominated by the Soviet Union, had pressed for a conference on security issues since the 1960s. In 1973, after preparatory talks, foreign ministers met in Helsinki to begin negotiations. Between 1973 and 1975 committees met in Geneva to work out agreements in three areas or “baskets.” The first basket concerned security interests and resulted in a declaration that the borders of each European nation were “inviolable.” The principle of noninterference in the internal affairs of each nation was also recognized. Additionally, plans were made for Confidence and Security Building Measures (CSBMs), which might involve, for example, exchanging military observers. The second basket, the least controversial, called for cooperation in the areas of trade, technology, science, and the environment, and for cultural exchanges. Basket III, the most controversial, concerned human rights and the free exchange of ideas and people. For the Soviet Union, the Helsinki Accords furnished an implicit recognition of the postwar settlement in eastern Europe and existing borders. The United States emphasized respect for human rights and the free flow of information. In follow-up meetings of the CSCE, the United States criticized the human rights records of the Soviet Union and its WTO allies. The Soviet Union complained that the United States was violating its pledge of nonintervention in internal affairs of sovereign nations. After the revolutions in eastern Europe in 1989 and the unification of Germany in 1990, the CSCE summit in Paris that year declared a formal end to the Cold War in the Charter of Paris for a New Europe. In the 1990s the CSCE transformed itself into the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) with headquarters in Prague. While it has played an important role in European affairs in the 1990s, particularly in the area of human rights, it has lost ground in comparison with the central positions of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU).
Suggestions for Term Papers
1. Trace the development of détente in the 1970s up to the Helsinki Accords. Discuss the most important developments that led to the calling of the first Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.
2. Compare the motives of the Soviet Union and the United States in agreeing to the Helsinki Accords.
3. Investigate the activities of groups that formed in Czechoslovakia (Charter ’77) or the Soviet Union (Helsinki Watch Group) to monitor their government’s compliance with the Helsinki Accords. 4. Do a research project on the follow-up meeting of the CSCE at Madrid between 1980 and 1983. In particular, examine the use of the human rights issue by the United States.
5. Write a paper assessing the Charter of Paris for a New Europe (see Suggested Sources).
6. Evaluate the activities of the OSCE in the 1990s and its prospects in the twenty-first century.

Research Suggestions

In addition to the boldfaced items, look under the entries for the “SALT I Agreement, 1972” (#74), “Vaclav Havel and the ‘Velvet Revolution,’ 1989” (#89), “German Reunification, 1989–1990” (#90), and “The Breakup of the Soviet Union, 1991” (#91). Search under Ostpolitik, Richard M. Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Andrei Sahkarov, Helsinki Watch Group, Vaclav Havel, and Charter ’77.

SUGGESTED SOURCES

Primary Sources

Dobrynin, Anatoly. In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents. New York: Times Books, 1995. A useful perspective from a participant who was thoroughly familiar with all the issues taken up in the Helsinki Accords.

Nixon, Richard M. RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1978. Invaluable for establishing the political and diplomatic context within which the Helsinki Accords were negotiated.

Secondary Sources

Bundy, William. A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency. New York: Hill and Wang, 1998. A recent book by a Washington insider that is critical of U.S. foreign policy as practiced by Kissinger and Nixon.

Frankel, Benjamin, ed. The Cold War, 1945–1991. 3 vols. Detroit: Gale Research, 1992. A good reference source, particularly for biographies of people who participated in the Cold War.

Froman, Michael B. The Development of the Idea of Détente: Coming to Terms. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991. A good introduction to the topic of détente.

Krieger, Joel, ed. The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Brief but authoritative and up-to-date articles on various aspects of the Helsinki Accords and CSCE. Mastny, Vojtech, ed. Helsinki, Human Rights, and European Security. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1986. A useful collection of essays on the most important aspects of the Helsinki Accords.

Ulam, Adam. Dangerous Relations: The Soviet Union in World Politics, 1970–1982. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. An overview of Soviet activities in the international arena by a well-infomed and longtime observer.

Young, John W., ed. The Longman Companion to Cold War and Deétente, 1941–1991. New York: Longman, 1993. A useful reference work.

World Wide Web

“Homepage of the OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe].” http://www.osce.org. A well-organized site with valuable links to CSCE and OSCE documents, including the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, 1990.