| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article will examine the effectiveness of the Carter administration's efforts to promote human rights in the Soviet Union. It will pay particular attention to how human rights promotion fit into a larger approach to transforming Superpower relations in ways favorable to U.S. interests called "reciprocal accommodation [détente]." The use of this framework provides an excellent way to tease out the complexities of how the administration balanced the promotion of human rights in the USSR with other important objectives such as concluding the SALT II treaty. It also helps reveal how executive branch worked to reduce Soviet human rights violations by citing the provisions of the Final Act and working with private citizens to raise international awareness about human rights issues. Without losing sight of his administration's inability to protect Soviet dissenters from arrest and harassment, this article will demonstrate that Carter had every intention of making the issue of human rights an important element of Cold War competition and implementing a new approach to détente that at least in part aimed at transforming Soviet internal behavior.
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