Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
A new era in space begins with a handshake.
“We seek a stable structure,
not a classical balance of power…”
— President Nixon’s Fourth Annual Report to the Congress on U.S. Foreign Policy, May 1973
Leonid Brezhnev (left) and Richard Nixon (right) during Brezhnev's June 1973 visit to Washington, DC, a high-water mark in détente between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Détente and the Thawing of the Cold War
With his “Cold Warrior” reputation, President Richard Nixon promoted détente as his foreign policy, meaning an easing of tension with the Soviet Union through talks and summits
In the 1970s, détente brought a thawing of the Cold War and provided the setting for the first joint mission between the two great cold war rivals, the U.S. and U.S.S.R.