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[[File:1149px-Kitchen debate.jpg|thumbnail|300px|Debate between Nikita Khrushchev and Richard Nixon in 1959 in American model kitchen in Moscow.]]
Detente was a period lasting approximately from 1972 to 1981 in which there was a thaw in relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was punctuated by major and surprising events, including the end of American involvement in the Vietnam War, a large economic downturn in the West, and the opening of relations with China. This period proved to be starkly different than the escalations in Cold War tensions in the 1960s and 1980s and is generally credited as a major function of Richard Nixon's diplomacy.
