The Politics of Meaning: The Helsinki Final Act and the Legacy of UN Human Rights Diplomacy, 1960–75

Following the signing of the Helsinki Final Act of August 1975 superpower detente faced a crisis, one that continued until 1985 when relations improved anew. It was, however, not only East-West detente that faced a crisis in this period. In his outline of the relationship between the US and Western Europe since 1945, historian Geir Lundestad has highlighted that criticism of the US flourished in Western Europe between 1977 and 1984, with some exceptions made for Margaret Thatcher's UK. To date, no study has compared similarities and differences in Northern European labour parties public statements on security issues from the late 1970s until the early 1980s. In order to elucidate these ambiguities this chapter compares social democratic security discussions in West Germany, the UK, Denmark and Norway between 1976 and 1983 from the election of Willy Brandt as President of the SI until NATO's incipient deployment of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe.