Helsinki Agreements Cold War

Each side considered itself “responsible,” but the more countries with nuclear capabilities, the less the superpowers could control events. There was also the fear of nuclear accidents. During the period of détente, a number of political agreements were reached. READ MORE: Cold War: Summary, Combatants – chronology Wanted by the Soviet Union of the 1950s, a European security conference was proposed by the Warsaw Pact in 1966 and accepted in principle by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In 1972, preparatory discussions on the level of ambassadors began in Helsinki. Over the next few months, an agenda consisting of four general themes or “baskets” has been prepared: (1) European security issues, (2) economic, scientific and technological cooperation and the environment, (3) humanitarian and cultural cooperation and (4) monitoring the conference. The People`s Republic of Albania refused to participate in the agreements, its leader Enver Hoxha argued: “All Soviet satellites, with the possible exception of Bulgarians, want to break the chains of the Warsaw Treaty, but they cannot. Second, their only hope is that the Helsinki document allows them, that is to say to strengthen their friendship with the United States of America and the West, to seek investments from them in the form of unrestricted loans and imports of their technology, to enable the Church to occupy its previous place, to deepen moral degeneration, to strengthen anti-Sovietism, and the Treaty of Warsaw will remain an empty shell. [16] In 1971, the Warsaw Pact countries proposed a conference with NATO to discuss European security. The conference began in 1973 in Helsinki with 33 countries.

In the months that followed, a series of meetings with an agreement were held in 1975. The agreement included three Helsinki “baskets” also known as the Helsinki Final Act (August 1, 1975), an important diplomatic agreement signed in Helsinki, Finland, after the first conference on security and cooperation in Europe (CSCE, now the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe). The Helsinki Accords were primarily an attempt to ease tensions between the Soviet and Western blocs, ensuring their common acceptance of the status quo in Europe after the Second World War. The agreements were signed by all European countries (except Albania, which was signed in September 1991), as well as by the United States and Canada. The agreement recognized the inviolability of borders in Europe after the Second World War and obliged the 35 signatory states to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms and to cooperate in economic, scientific, humanitarian and other fields.