At the Summit, Achieving Détente
The Moscow Summit ushered in a period of détente, and the summit itself was a product of the Kissinger-Dobrynin back channel. The back channel became both a brake and an accelerator to moderate the pace of negotiations and to link unrelated areas. The back channel also served as a tool that each side used to play on the other’s anxieties or desires—and as an inadvertent means of signaling those fears or concerns in the first place. Ultimately, the story of achieving détente involved more than back channels; it was about the ambitions of the concerned parties and the policies they pursued. Back channels were not a panacea. Long-term success ultimately depended on some fundamental basis for agreement, and the areas for agreement had begun to dwindle before 1974.