The Road To Camp David

The summit at Camp David between the United States and the Soviet is the first private meeting since the beginning of the cold war as well as the Soviet head first visiting America after the Soviet Union established. The greatest result of this meeting is that the Soviet Union agreed to give up the deadline for the Second Berlin crisis which then eased the crisis during the Eisenhower administration. The beginning of the U.S.-Soviet summit had experienced a hard and difficult process since the Soviet appealing to hold the great nations' talks since 1953.Soon after the end of the Second World War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union claimed the end of cooperate relationship established on Yalta system. During the Truman administration, the rival between the United States and the Soviet was intensified strongly in politician, economy and military. They abandoned the diplomatic negotiations dealing with the international politics.After Stalin' death, the U.S.-Soviet realized simultaneously that the cold war was a competition of socialism and capitalism in the nuclear era. At last, they dropped the rigid confrontation policy. In 1953,the Soviet Union began to appeal the great nations' talks. However, the U.S was afraid of affecting the rearming of the West German, and refused it. Considering the East German uprising in June 1953 and allies' desire for summit, the U.S. agreed to begin the foreign ministers talks. The Berlin Conference and the Geneva Conference opened in 1954. In 1955, EDU (European Defense Community) was expected to get success. With the consideration of the unity of the allies as well as Khrushchev's concluding the treaty to Austria and the plan of establishing the WTO (Warsaw Treaty Organization), the meeting of four heads was finally held in Geneva in July 1955. Though there were not any effective agreements signed, all the participants expressed their standpoint to the German issue, the disarmament and other problems, which pushed the process of the great nations' talks.In February 1956, the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union further confirmed the importance of peaceful coexistence strategy. Khrushchev improved foreign relations with the United Kingdom, West Germany, Yugoslavia and other countries, but failed with the United States. During this period, the United States established a program of exchange of information and persons with the Soviet Bloc. This program was the peaceful evolution strategy to the Soviet Union, which was also the response to the Soviet existence policy. In October 1956, the Hungary events and the Suez crisis destroyed the U.S.-Soviet relations and the exchange program suspended.With the increasing in economy and military of the Soviet Union from 1957 to 1958, Khrushchev wanted to meet with American president. Besides the improvement in cultural exchange, however, American only agreed to negotiate the nuclear test within the experts group. In November 1958, the Soviet Union suddenly changed peaceful coexistent principle with the Berlin issue and delivered an ultimatum to the west, which made the international situation tensioned suddenly. This time, American changed its attitude and explored the diplomatic methods to ease the crisis. In 1959, U.S.-Soviet top leaders communicated each other frequently. Finally, Eisenhower made the decision of inviting Khrushchev to visit America. In September 1959, the two heads had a summit in Camp David and the Berlin crisis eased as a result during the Eisenhower administration..In 1950s, the Soviet Union and America experienced a tough and progressive process from refusing talks to choosing. Both wanted to ease bilateral relationship, but also faced many obstacles. Firstly, the two sides pursued peaceful coexistence, which itself is the means to fight. But in fact, each side would not make fundamental concessions. Secondly, the issues in Germany, disarmament, the ban on nuclear tests and others were on the contradictions. Mutual suspicion, fear, different political views within the government and its allies brought great pressure. The bankruptcy of the Paris summit after Camp David talks in 1960 proved the detente fragile.Although the results can not explain the relaxation of the Cold War, all kinds of dialogue forms'accumulation showed that both sides were willing to ease the situation. In this sense, U.S.-Soviet summit during the Eisenhower administration was a first step towards the detente of the cold war.