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The Korean War (article) | 1950s America | Khan Academy

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The Vietnam War was ostensibly a civil war between the communist North and pro-Western South. Yet the Vietnamese didn't do all the fighting. The United States and many other countries intervened, propping up both sides-but especially South Vietnam-with troops, weapons and supplies and turning what started as a small guerrilla uprising into a major Cold War-era conflict.

Below is a list of nations that played a role in the Vietnam War, and details on what motivated them to get involved.
READ MORE: Vietnam War Timeline
France
France had been a long-time occupier of Vietnam before 1954. It wanted no part of the new conflict.
After World War II, France reoccupied Vietnam as part of its attempt to reclaim its prewar empire. "The French had controlled Vietnam for a couple of generations," explains Ed Moise, a professor of history at Clemson University and author of Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War. "They were determined to go on holding it, both as a matter of national pride and because if they let one colony go loose, then the others might get ideas."

Most Vietnamese, however, opposed colonial rule, and a rebellion broke out led by communist and pro-independence leader Ho Chi Minh. In 1954, Ho's forces won a decisive victory at Dien Bien Phu and succeeded in evicting the French once and for all.

When the Second Indochina War, or Vietnam War, as it's known in the United States, began soon after, France stayed well away. In fact, French President Charles de Gaulle warned his U.S. counterpart, John F. Kennedy Jr., that Vietnam would be a " bottomless military and political swamp." Though prescient, the advice ultimately went unheeded.

United States
The United States got involved to prevent South Vietnam from falling into communist hands. At first, the U.S. operated behind the scenes, but after 1964, sent combat troops and became more deeply mired in the war.
Following France's defeat in the First Indochina War, an international agreement divided Vietnam in two. Ho led the North, whereas the U.S.-backed Ngo Dinh Diem took charge of the South. Elections were planned to reunite the country within two years, but Diem, with U.S. approval, never submitted to a vote that he feared losing. Instead, a communist insurgency broke out, pitting the so-called Viet Cong, who were sponsored by North Vietnam, against Diem's forces.

Determined to prevent South Vietnam from falling into communist hands, the United States propped up Diem with billions of dollars in aid, as well as increasing numbers of military advisers. As the Pentagon Papers later revealed, "the Diem regime certainly, and an independent South Vietnam almost as certainly, could not have survived" without U.S. help.

U.S. officials eventually soured on Diem, tacitly approving a 1963 coup that resulted in his death. Yet their support for South Vietnam never wavered, no matter who occupied the White House.

After a while, "no one thinks they're going to win," says James McAllister, a political science professor at Williams College, "but they're damn sure a loss is not going to take place under their watch."
READ MORE: How the Vietnam War Ratcheted Up Under 5 US Presidents
At first, the United States largely operated behind the scenes. In 1964, however, the so-called Gulf of Tonkin incident prompted President Lyndon B. Johnson to commit combat troops and launch a massive bombing campaign, and U.S. involvement only deepened from there.

By the time American forces finally withdrew in 1973, about 2.7 million U.S. soldiers had served in Vietnam, more than 58,000 had died, and the nation had racked up a staggering bill of at least $111 billion (plus billions more in non-military costs).
READ MORE: Why Were Vietnam War Vets Treated Poorly When They Returned?
The French and American experiences in Vietnam differed in many respects. Yet, as Moise points out, they both learned one important lesson: "It's dangerous to get in a fight when the other side cares about winning more than you do."

China
Newly communist China had supported Ho Chi Minh during the war with the French, and continued to do so during the war with the U.S. by providing weapons, expertise and manpower.
Despite being in bad economic shape at the time, newly Communist China aided Ho during the war with the French, and did so again during the war with the Americans, providing weapons, expertise, and manpower. All told, the Chinese claimed to have spent over $20 billion in support of North Vietnam and deployed 320,000 military personnel, more than 4,000 of whom died.

For the most part, the Chinese stayed in the background, rebuilding areas destroyed by U.S. bombs and manning anti-aircraft batteries. But perhaps their biggest role was preemptive: They made it clear that if U.S. ground troops invaded North Vietnam, then they would respond in kind.

Unlike during the Korean War, the United States yielded to this threat. "Their function is as a tripwire," Moise says, "a warning to the Americans: 'Don't go too far... or you'll be fighting us.'"
As the original communist state, the Soviet Union aided North Vietnam, with increasing support in the late 1960s. While the U.S.S.R. supplied some troops, their biggest contribution was in weaponry.
China and the Soviet Union didn't have to do as much as the Americans, Moise explains, because they were buttressing the stronger side. Nonetheless, "if there had been no Chinese or Soviet support, the North Vietnamese could not have won," he says, pointing out that the U.S. military budget was roughly 30 times greater than the entire gross national product of North Vietnam.

Soviet Union

Though it originally took little interest in the Vietnam War, the Soviet Union secretly ramped up its aid to North Vietnam following Nikita Khrushchev 's fall from power. The Soviets wanted to "make life difficult for the United States," McAllister says, "but they didn't want to do it in a way that got them in a conflict with the United States."

Soviet involvement in the war increased in the late 1960s, just as China's influence was lessening. (The two countries were undergoing a bitter split at the time.)
Laos was originally neutral in the conflict, but the North Vietnamese moved troops through the country and supported a communist insurgency. That insurgency drew heavy U.S. bombing.
Among other weapons, the USSR provided surface-to-air missiles that the Chinese weren't yet technologically capable of producing. The Soviets even allegedly shot down some U.S. planes. Overall, though, they pumped only about 3,000 troops into the conflict, far fewer than the Chinese.

Laos

In 1962, the United States, both Vietnams, and several other nations agreed to respect the neutrality of and not interfere in the affairs of Laos, which borders Vietnam to the west. North Vietnam immediately broke the accord, however, moving troops and supplies through Laos rather than traversing the heavily guarded demilitarized zone that separated it from South Vietnam.

The North Vietnamese also came to dominate a communist insurgency against the royalist government of Prince Souvanna Phouma, relegating the local Laotian Communists to what Moise describes as "junior partners."

In response to these North Vietnamese transgressions, the Americans covertly rained down billions of pounds of bombs on Laos. The nine-year campaign was so intense that, on average, a planeload of explosives fell every eight minutes, making Laos, per capita, the most heavily bombed nation on earth. Unexploded munitions from the Vietnam War-era continue to kill Laotians (and Vietnamese and Cambodians) to this day.
Cambodia, while officially neutral, tolerated communist intrusions-and was bombed by the United States for those intrusions.
Meanwhile, President Richard Nixon authorized a cross-border invasion of Laos in 1971. Yet, no matter what they tried, the Americans never succeeded in seriously disrupting North Vietnamese supply lines, nor did they prevent the fall of Laos to the communists in 1975.

Cambodia

Unsurprisingly, the North Vietnamese likewise moved troops and supplies through neighboring Cambodia, which, though officially neutral, tolerated the communist intrusions.

Prince Norodom Sihanouk "basically felt that he was surrounded by dangerous enemies, and he had to make nice with some of them," Moise says, adding that "he could not afford to offend" the North Vietnamese despite being "anti-communist in Cambodian politics."

The United States responded with a secret bombing campaign that Nixon drastically ramped up in 1969. Nixon then sent troops across the border in 1970, taking advantage of a coup that ousted Sihanouk in favor of a pro-American general.

U.S. bombs killed tens of thousands of Cambodians, which, some historians contend, may have increased popular support for the Khmer Rouge, a communist insurgency group that initiated a brutal genocide upon taking power in 1975.
South Korea was the main U.S. and South Vietnamese partner, contributing more than 300,000 troops to the war.
Though Vietnamese communists allied with the Khmer Rouge during the Vietnam War, they eventually deposed the regime in 1979.

South Korea and Other U.S. Allies

Not wanting to be seen as going it alone, the Johnson administration pressured other countries to join in the Vietnam War, much as George W. Bush would later form a " coalition of the willing" to fight in the Iraq War.

South Korea was the main U.S. and South Vietnamese partner, providing over 300,000 troops and suffering some 5,000 deaths. "The Koreans sent more troops and much more aggressive troops [than other U.S. allies]," Moise says.

He explains that they were partially motivated by a sense of obligation and ideological sympathy: After all, they could not help but notice the historical parallels between themselves and South Vietnam. However, they were also being paid off by the United States in the form of economic and military assistance.

Financial aid, along with a desire to curry favor with the United States, drew in additional countries as well. So, too, did a legitimate fear of Communism, Moise says.
The Vietnam War was described as a civil war within South Vietnam, although it became a proxy war between Cold War powers. As a result, the Vietnamese suffered the highest casualties in the conflict.
In the end, almost 60,000 Australians served (521 of whom died), about 40,000 Thais served (321 of whom died), and over 3,000 New Zealanders served (37 of whom died). The Philippines, Taiwan and Spain likewise aided the U.S. war effort, whereas on the communist side North Korea and Cuba purportedly sent token support.

Vietnam

Brutal tactics were the norm during the Vietnam War, and no one suffered more than the Vietnamese themselves, both in the North and the South. By 1975, when North Vietnamese troops took Saigon and reunified the nation under communist rule, an estimated 1 million to 3 million Vietnamese had perished, many of them civilians.

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Which Countries Were Involved in the Vietnam War?

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The Vietnam War was ostensibly a civil war between the communist North and pro-Western South. Yet the Vietnamese didn't do all the fighting. The United States and many other countries intervened, propping up both sides-but especially South Vietnam-with troops, weapons and supplies and turning what started as a small guerrilla uprising into a major Cold War-era conflict.

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Similar to U.S.'s Vietnam War

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Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History

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Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, American History. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 12 May 2021

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The United States and the Soviet-Afghan War, 1979-1989

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In December 1979, Soviet troops entered the small, poor, landlocked, Islamic nation of Afghanistan, assassinated the communist president, Hafizullah Amin, and installed a more compliant Afghan leader. For almost ten years, Soviet troops remained entrenched in Afghanistan before finally withdrawing in February 1989.

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During his few weeks as Vice President, Harry Truman scarcely saw President Franklin Roosevelt, and received no briefing on the development of the atomic bomb or the unfolding difficulties with Soviet Russia. Suddenly these and a host of other wartime problems became Truman's to solve when, on April 12, 1945, he became America's 33rd President.

During his few weeks as Vice President, Harry S. Truman scarcely saw President Roosevelt, and received no briefing on the development of the atomic bomb or the unfolding difficulties with Soviet Russia. Suddenly these and a host of other wartime problems became Truman's to solve when, on April 12, 1945, he became President. He told reporters, "I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me."

Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri, in 1884. He grew up in Independence, and for 12 years prospered as a Missouri farmer.

He went to France during World War I as a captain in the Field Artillery. Returning, he married Elizabeth Virginia Wallace, and opened a haberdashery in Kansas City.

Active in the Democratic Party, Truman was elected a judge of the Jackson County Court (an administrative position) in 1922. He became a Senator in 1934. During World War II he headed the Senate war investigating committee, checking into waste and corruption and saving perhaps as much as 15 billion dollars.

As President, Truman made some of the most crucial decisions in history. Soon after V-E Day, the war against Japan had reached its final stage. An urgent plea to Japan to surrender was rejected. Truman, after consultations with his advisers, ordered atomic bombs dropped on cities devoted to war work. Two were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japanese surrender quickly followed.

In June 1945 Truman witnessed the signing of the charter of the United Nations, hopefully established to preserve peace.

Thus far, he had followed his predecessor's policies, but he soon developed his own. He presented to Congress a 21-point program, proposing the expansion of Social Security, a full-employment program, a permanent Fair Employment Practices Act, and public housing and slum clearance. The program, Truman wrote, "symbolizes for me my assumption of the office of President in my own right." It became known as the Fair Deal.

Dangers and crises marked the foreign scene as Truman campaigned successfully in 1948. In foreign affairs he was already providing his most effective leadership.

In 1947 as the Soviet Union pressured Turkey and, through guerrillas, threatened to take over Greece, he asked Congress to aid the two countries, enunciating the program that bears his name-the Truman Doctrine. The Marshall Plan, named for his Secretary of State, stimulated spectacular economic recovery in war-torn western Europe.

When the Russians blockaded the western sectors of Berlin in 1948, Truman created a massive airlift to supply Berliners until the Russians backed down. Meanwhile, he was negotiating a military alliance to protect Western nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, established in 1949.

In June 1950, when the Communist government of North Korea attacked South Korea, Truman conferred promptly with his military advisers. There was, he wrote, "complete, almost unspoken acceptance on the part of everyone that whatever had to be done to meet this aggression had to be done. There was no suggestion from anyone that either the United Nations or the United States could back away from it."

A long, discouraging struggle ensued as U.N. forces held a line above the old boundary of South Korea. Truman kept the war a limited one, rather than risk a major conflict with China and perhaps Russia.

Deciding not to run again, he retired to Independence; at age 88, he died December 26, 1972, after a stubborn fight for life.

For more information about President Truman, please visit the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum.

Learn more about Harry S. Truman's spouse, Elizabeth Virginia Wallace Truman.

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During his few weeks as Vice President, Harry Truman scarcely saw President Franklin Roosevelt, and received no briefing on the development of the atomic bomb or the unfolding difficulties with Soviet Russia. Suddenly these and a host of other wartime problems became Truman's to solve when, on April 12, 1945, he became America's 33rd President.

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Photo: NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images

Quick Facts
"For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past, or the present, are certain to miss the future."[stated during an address in the assembly hall at Paulskirche in Frankfurt on June 25, 1963.]""Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.""We need men who can dream of things that never were and not ask why.""If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.""Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.""A man does what he must-in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers, and pressures-and that is the basis of all human morality.""The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high-to permit the customary passions of political debate. We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future. ... For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.""If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.""The cost of freedom is always high-and Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission.""We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.""The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.""Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.""Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.""[O]ur most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."

The Choate School, Harvard College

John F. Kennedy, the 35th U.S. president, negotiated the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and initiated the Alliance for Progress. He was assassinated in 1963.

Who Was John F. Kennedy?

John F. Kennedy served in both the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate before becoming the 35th president in 1961. As president, Kennedy faced a number of foreign crises, especially in Cuba and Berlin, but managed to secure such achievements as the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and the Alliance for Progress. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas.

Early Life

Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts. Both the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys were wealthy and prominent Irish Catholic Boston families. Kennedy's paternal grandfather, P.J. Kennedy, was a wealthy banker and liquor trader, and his maternal grandfather, John E. Fitzgerald, nicknamed "Honey Fitz," was a skilled politician who served as a congressman and as the mayor of Boston. Kennedy's mother, Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald, was a Boston debutante, and his father, Joseph Kennedy Sr., was a successful banker who made a fortune on the stock market after World War I. Joe Kennedy Sr. went on to a government career as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and as an ambassador to Great Britain.

John, nicknamed "Jack," was the second oldest of a group of nine extraordinary siblings. His brothers and sisters include Eunice, the founder of the Special Olympics; Robert, a U.S. Attorney General, and Ted, one of the most powerful senators in American history. The Kennedy children remained close-knit and supportive of each other throughout their entire lives.

Joseph and Rose largely spurned the world of Boston socialites into which they had been born to focus instead on their children's education. Joe Sr. in particular obsessed over every detail of his kids' lives, a rarity for a father at that time. As a family friend noted, "Most fathers in those days simply weren't that interested in what their children did. But Joe Kennedy knew what his kids were up to all the time." Joe Sr. had great expectations for his children, and he sought to instill in them a fierce competitive fire and the belief that winning was everything. He entered his children in swimming and sailing competitions and chided them for finishing in anything but first place. John's sister, Eunice, later recalled, "I was twenty-four before I knew I didn't have to win something every day." John bought into his father's philosophy that winning was everything. "He hates to lose at anything," Eunice said. "That's the only thing Jack gets really emotional about - when he loses."

Education

Despite his father's constant reprimands, young Kennedy was a poor student and a mischievous boy. He attended a Catholic boys' boarding school in Connecticut called Canterbury, where he excelled at English and history, the subjects he enjoyed, but nearly flunked Latin, in which he had no interest. Despite his poor grades, Kennedy continued on to Choate, an elite Connecticut preparatory school. Although he was obviously brilliant - evidenced by the extraordinary thoughtfulness and nuance of his work on the rare occasions when he applied himself - Kennedy remained at best a mediocre student, preferring sports, girls and practical jokes to coursework.

His father wrote to him by way of encouragement, "If I didn't really feel you had the goods I would be most charitable in my attitude toward your failings ... I am not expecting too much, and I will not be disappointed if you don't turn out to be a real genius, but I think you can be a really worthwhile citizen with good judgment and understanding." Kennedy was in fact very bookish in high school, reading ceaselessly but not the books his teachers assigned. He was also chronically ill during his childhood and adolescence; he suffered from severe colds, the flu, scarlet fever and even more severe, undiagnosed diseases that forced him to miss months of school at a time and occasionally brought him to the brink of death.

After graduating from Choate and spending one semester at Princeton, Kennedy transferred to Harvard University in 1936. There, he repeated his by then well-established academic pattern, excelling occasionally in the classes he enjoyed but proving only an average student due to the omnipresent diversions of sports and women. Handsome, charming and blessed with a radiant smile, Kennedy was incredibly popular with his Harvard classmates. His friend Lem Billings recalled, "Jack was more fun than anyone I've ever known, and I think most people who knew him felt the same way about him." Kennedy was also an incorrigible womanizer. He wrote to Billings during his sophomore year, "I can now get tail as often and as free as I want which is a step in the right direction."

Nevertheless, as an upperclassman, Kennedy finally grew serious about his studies and began to realize his potential. His father had been appointed Ambassador to Great Britain, and on an extended visit in 1939, Kennedy decided to research and write a senior thesis on why Britain was so unprepared to fight Germany in World War II. An incisive analysis of Britain's failures to meet the Nazi challenge, the paper was so well-received that upon Kennedy's graduation in 1940 it was published as a book, Why England Slept, selling more than 80,000 copies. Kennedy's father sent him a cablegram in the aftermath of the book's publication: "Two things I always knew about you one that you are smart two that you are a swell guy love dad."

Shortly after graduating from Harvard, Kennedy joined the U.S. Navy and was assigned to command a patrol torpedo boat in the South Pacific. On August 2, 1943, his boat, PT-109, was rammed by a Japanese warship and split in two. Two sailors died and Kennedy badly injured his back. Hauling another wounded sailor by the strap of his life vest, Kennedy led the survivors to a nearby island, where they were rescued six days later. The incident earned him the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for "extremely heroic conduct" and a Purple Heart for the injuries he suffered.

However, Kennedy's older brother, Joe Jr., who had also joined the Navy, was not so fortunate. A pilot, he died when his plane blew up in August 1944. Handsome, athletic, intelligent and ambitious, Joseph Kennedy Jr. had been pegged by his father as the one among his children who would some day become president of the United States. In the aftermath of Joe Jr.'s death, Kennedy took his family's hopes and aspirations for his older brother upon himself.

Upon his discharge from the Navy, Kennedy worked briefly as a reporter for Hearst Newspapers. Then in 1946, at the age of 29, he decided to run for the U.S. House of Representatives from a working-class district of Boston, a seat being vacated by Democrat James Michael Curly. Bolstered by his status as a war hero, his family connections and his father's money, Kennedy won the election handily. However, after the glory and excitement of publishing his first book and serving in World War II, Kennedy found his work in Congress incredibly dull. Despite serving three terms, from 1946 to 1952, Kennedy remained frustrated by what he saw as stifling rules and procedures that prevented a young, inexperienced representative from making an impact. "We were just worms in the House," he later recalled. "Nobody paid attention to us nationally."

Congressman and Senator

In 1952, seeking greater influence and a larger platform, Kennedy challenged Republican incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge for his seat in the U.S. Senate. Once again backed by his father's vast financial resources, Kennedy hired his younger brother Robert as his campaign manager. Robert Kennedy put together what one journalist called "the most methodical, the most scientific, the most thoroughly detailed, the most intricate, the most disciplined and smoothly working state-wide campaign in Massachusetts history - and possibly anywhere else." In an election year in which Republicans gained control of both Houses of Congress, Kennedy nevertheless won a narrow victory, giving him considerable clout within the Democratic Party. According to one of his aides, the decisive factor in Kennedy's victory was his personality: "He was the new kind of political figure that people were looking for that year, dignified and gentlemanly and well-educated and intelligent, without the air of superior condescension."

Shortly after his election, Kennedy met a beautiful young woman named Jacqueline Bouvier at a dinner party and, in his own words, "leaned across the asparagus and asked her for a date." They were married on September 12, 1953. John and Jackie had three children: Caroline, John Jr. and Patrick Kennedy.

Kennedy continued to suffer frequent illnesses during his career in the Senate. While recovering from one surgery, he wrote another book, profiling eight senators who had taken courageous but unpopular stances. Profiles in Courage won the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for biography, and Kennedy remains the only American president to win a Pulitzer Prize.

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"For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past, or the present, are certain to miss the future."[stated during an address in the assembly hall at Paulskirche in Frankfurt on June 25, 1963.]" "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."

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See U.S. president Richard M. Nixon speaking about the Watergate scandal Public Domain

Transcript

PRESIDENT RICHARD M. NIXON: . . . in all of my years of public life, I have never profited--never profited from public service. I've earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. And I think, too, that I could say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their president's a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got.

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See U.S. president Richard M. Nixon speaking about the Watergate scandal

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PRESIDENT RICHARD M. NIXON: . . . in all of my years of public life, I have never profited--never profited from public service. I've earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice.

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Joseph Stalin's forced industrialization of the Soviet Union caused the worst man-made famine in history. Find out more about his life and rise to power in this

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What is Marxism? (Karl Marx + Super Mario Bros.) – 8-Bit Philosophy

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Détente (a French word meaning release from tension) is the name given to a period of improved relations between the United States and the Soviet Union that began tentatively in 1971 and took decisive form when President Richard M. Nixon visited the secretary-general of the Soviet Communist party, Leonid I. Brezhnev, in Moscow, May 1972.

Both countries stood to gain if trade could be increased and the danger of nuclear warfare reduced. In addition, Nixon-a candidate for reelection-was under fire at home from those demanding social change, racial equality, and an end to the Vietnam War. The trip to Russia, like his historic trip to China a few months earlier, permitted him to keep public attention focused on his foreign policy achievements rather than his domestic problems. Nixon's trip to China had also heightened the Soviets' interest in détente; given the growing antagonism between Russia and China, Brezhnev had no wish to see his most potent rivals close ranks against him.

On May 22 Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit Moscow. He and Brezhnev signed seven agreements covering the prevention of accidental military clashes; arms control, as recommended by the recent Strategic Arms Limitation Talks ( salt); cooperative research in a variety of areas, including space exploration; and expanded commerce. The salt treaty was approved by Congress later that summer, as was a three-year agreement on the sale of grain to the Soviets. In June 1973, Brezhnev visited the United States for Summit II; this meeting added few new agreements, but did symbolize the two countries' continuing commitment to peace. Summit III, in June 1974, was the least productive; by then, the salt talks had ground to a halt, several commercial agreements had been blocked in Congress because of Soviet treatment of Jews, and the Watergate investigation was approaching a climax. Nixon's successor in the talks, President Jimmy Carter, supported salt ii, but also pressed a military buildup and a human rights campaign, which cooled relations between the countries. With the election of Ronald Reagan, who emphasized military preparedness as the key to Soviet-American relations, détente as Nixon had envisioned it came to an end.

The Reader's Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors. Copyright © 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Détente (a French word meaning release from tension) is the name given to a period of improved relations between the United States and the Soviet Union that began tentatively in 1971 and took decisive form in 1972 when President Richard Nixon visited Secretary General of the Soviet Communist party, Leonid Brezhnev, in Moscow.

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Glasnost ("openness") was a series of reforms passed by Communist Party of the Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev from 1985 to 1987 that increased government transparency, reformed the judicial system, loosened travel restrictions, and decentralized the government.

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Gorbachev's Perestroika - History of Russia in 100 Minutes (Part 33 of 36)

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Strategic Arms Limitation Talks