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An important factor in the deterioration of superpower relations is what might be called the Great Misunderstanding of détente. The Kremlin saw détente as a way to gain access to Western markets and technology. Through negotiations, Moscow also hoped to limit the development of troublesome new U.S. weapons systems. But the Soviets also saw détente as a way ultimately to secure equal standing with the U.S. as a superpower. The high point came in Moscow in May 1972, when Richard Nixon and Brezhnev signed a declaration of principles that committed the superpowers to the principle of "equality" and to the promise not to seek "unilateral advantage at the expense of the other."
For Moscow that meant the right to cultivate client states in the developing world just as Washington had. But that was not the U.S. intepretation. When the Soviets and their Cuban proxies became involved in Ethiopia and Angola, the U.S. charged them with violating their pledge not to make geopolitical gains at Washington's expense. In addition, some Americans naively believed that détente meant the Soviets would change their behavior at home. That hope began to go sour as early as 1974, when Congress passed the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which tied preferential trade terms to freedom of emigration from the U.S.S.R. The Soviets angrily rejected the demand as interference in their internal affairs.
Gromyko was intimately involved in the formulation of détente, though he was then clearly subservient to Brezhnev. Thus Gromyko, perhaps even more than his Politburo colleagues, feels betrayed by what Moscow perceives as Washington's repudiation of the sacred principle of superpower equality. In various ways and at various times, Gromyko has asked rhetorically and sarcastically of the U.S., "Are you going to allow us to have any foreign policy at all?"
Many experts conclude that détente could never have lasted, considering the different interpretations of it by the two superpowers. Says French Kremlinologist Hélène Carrère d'Encausse: "We keep asking ourselves if the hardening of Moscow's attitude is a parenthesis in a period of détente. I think we've got it backwards. Détente was the parenthesis." Other analysts argue that détente might have been stabilized and institutionalized had it not been for the collapse of the Nixon Administration, which had sponsored the policy.