Détente was a tactical success, but it had a strategic downside for which we paid fairly heavily. It was not a fundamental change in the East-West relationship but rather a kind of understanding that we ought to live together to minimize the chances of something going wrong. We were having trouble maintaining defense expenditures, and, strangely enough, détente enabled us to keep ahead of the Soviet Union strategically. But psychologically, détente finally persuaded the American people that the threat had receded. This led to further defense cuts in the 1970s, which Vietnam and Watergate accentuated.

By the end of the decade the Soviets had decided the correlation of forces was moving irrevocably in their direction. They concluded that the U.S. had had it, that America was weak and in decline. The Soviets started a wave of movements around the world that culminated in Afghanistan. It took Ronald Reagan and a massive increase in U.S. defense expenditures to turn things around.