Europe: The End of World War II

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In the meantime, the Bonn-Moscow accord in all likelihood will lead to a European security conference, which the Soviets wish to convene—possibly in Helsinki—as a means of gaining full international endorsement of the status quo in Europe. In such a conference, which would be attended by the U.S. and Canada as well as all European countries, the participants would pledge to respect each other's boundaries; they would also discuss a mutual reduction of forces between NATO and the Warsaw Pact nations. The security conference would be, in fact, an updated version of the 19th century Congress of Vienna, in which the nations of Europe and North America would seek to work out new security arrangements, even as the diplomats of Metternich's day sought to put together a new European order following the dislocations of the Napoleonic era.