Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2009 in the subject Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict, Security, grade: 2,0, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen (Institut für Politikwissenschaft), course: The East-West Conflict, language: English, abstract: The ideological division between East and West, communism and capitalism, culminated in a nuclear arms race, which had the potential to destroy the whole world. After going through various crises, which will be presented to you in this paper, like for example the extremely dangerous Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the involved states realized that without a rapprochement on governmental level a competition for global predominance would potentially destroy the whole world. One first step on the way to détente was the installation of the Moscow–Washington hotline. The “red telephone” or the “heiße Draht” how we call it in Germany, was approved by an agreement on June 20, 1963 in Geneva, Switzerland. Other reasons for a political approximation were to be found in the domestic affairs of the U.S.A and the Soviet Union: “From the American perspective, the debacle in Vietnam had, by the late 1960´s, proven costly in terms of life lost and the expenditures incurred, while it had simultaneously undermined the United States prestige around the globe. (…) Weaknesses in the Soviet economy – the need for access to Western markets and technology – provided an additional rationale for Moscow´s interest in Detènte”.