In the week before Easter this year, US and Soviet leaders confronted each other across the negotiating table in Moscow for three days for negotiations on a number of issues. The most important were the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). SALT 1 expires later this year so a new agreement needs to be signed soon if the two superpowers are to keep up the appearance of limiting their arms expansion. No progress had been made in the SALT II negotiations since 1974, when President Ford and Brezhnev made a preliminary agreement on missile limitation.

It is now history that no progress has been made in the latest round of talks either. This is hardly surprising since the proposals tabled by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance involved an actual increase in US strategic weapons coupled with substantial cuts in Soviet Weapons.

The failure of the talks has provoked considerable anxiety in the US government and press. "Is detente dead or dying?" "US-Soviet relations are the coldest for years".: These are typical comments. An agreement that Vance and Brezhnev will meet again in May, and Carter's meeting with the Soviet Ambassador in Washington has done something to ease the atmosphere, but the worried questions are still there.

In view of the current coolness in US-Soviet relations — caused by the failure of the SALT talks, Carters 'human rights' crusade against the Soviet Union and contention over the question of Soviet fishing near the US coasts — it is a good time to make an assessment of Detente What is detente? Does it in fact exist? Is the danger of war between the US and the USSR decreasing? Is the arms race being curbed? Would the signing of a new SALT agreement contribute towards the maintenance of peace?

'Detente' means, literally, a reduction in tensions; and both the US and Soviet leaders claim that it exists. If they were right, we would be seeing less political and military contention between the two superpowers around the world. In fact this is not what we see at all. Instead, there is a constant build-up in both nuclear and conventional weapons and the two superpowers confront each other in all parts of the world: in Southern Africa, in Asia, in Europe, in the Middle East and even in the South Pacific. The Soviet Union has been the most: vociferous advocate of detente while at the same time building up its arms at the fastest rate.