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Detente Or Razryadka? The Kissinger-Dobrynin Telephone Transcripts And Relaxing American-Soviet Tensions, 1969-1977., Daniel S. Stackhouse Jr.

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation argues that through a secret backchannel, US National Security Adviser and later Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Soviet Ambassador to the US Anatoly Dobrynin formed a relationship which provided the empathy needed to bridge many of the ideological differences between their two countries. It examines transcripts of their telephone conversations from 1969-1977 when the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in detente, or a relaxation of tensions, during the Cold War. The dissertation concludes that the Kissinger-Dobrynin backchannel serves as a case study of the effectiveness of back channels in international diplomacy.