ENGL 583 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Ussuri River, Brezhnev Doctrine, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty
Document Summary
This leads to an agreement between the us and the soviets : the d tente = improved relations but the two powers have different ideas of what it means. The americans are tired of fighting communism everywhere in the world : lot of energy, resources and political capital. The americans emerge defeated from the vietnam war. But it is an opportunistic time for the d tente especially because of sino-soviet relationship. Ussuri river incident march-september 1969 : the ussuri river somewhere marked the border between russia and china. But it was unclear who would control the islands in the river. March 1969 : shootings between the two countries for the damansky/zhenbao island. The official russian death toll is 69 troops. This small war shows how tense their relations are. Nixon is hoping the chinese and russians would go against each other so they would make concessions to the americans.