
European Long-Term Investments in Détente
Considering such agitation against East-West contact by the Soviet general secretary Leonid Brezhnev over the unrest in Czechoslovakia,Brezhnev’s strong advocacy of trade with the West in his efforts to clinch a deal in the context of the Conference on Security and Cooperation seems all the more remarkable. Such vacillations between political confrontation and pro-trade approaches were not Brezhnev’s alone, but played out in Western capitals as well, and speak to the amorphous balance sheet trade with an adversary can have on a country’s foreign policy.
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