THE CARTER-BREZHNEV PROJECT

"The Collapse of Détente: From the March 1977 Moscow Meetings to the December 1979 Invasion of Afghanistan," Pocantico Hills, NY, 22-24 October 1992.

This opening gathering of the Carter-Brezhnev Project in October 1992 brought together a small group of former U.S. and Soviet officials as well as academics to discuss how to organize a systematic scholarly approach to studying the development of superpower relations in the late 1970s, and specifically to assess the dramatic decline of détente that took place during those years. By no means all the key figures in the project participated at this inaugural session, nor would everyone at the table at Pocantico Hills be present at subsequent meetings. But the session was crucial in identifying the main issues that defined the Carter-Brezhnev period and offered an early, fascinating opportunity to gauge how individual policy makers and implementers from both sides viewed the world at the time of the events in question, and in retrospect.