XVII. Meeting of the PCC, Warsaw, 14-15 May 1980
Editorial Note 

In trying to account for the recent precipitous collapse of US-Soviet relations, Brezhnev sought to explain it by citing a US "counter-offensive" started as much as two years earlier rather than the recent Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Reflecting on the fate of détente, Brezhnev characterized it as "no accidental phenomenon. It is an inevitable result of the new correlation of forces in the world and of the scientifically founded foreign policy conducted by our countries." Accordingly, in his view, the "turnabout" in US policy was a "class-conditioned reaction to the strengthening of positions of socialism"―an attempt to reverse the course of history by the threat of force.

Brezhnev singled out the adoption by NATO of the "double-track decision" as a turning point. He averred that the prospect of Western medium-range nuclear missiles being installed in Europe to counter the existing Soviet ones would upset the military equilibrium, since the planned Western missiles were presumably first-strike weapons.

Unlike other participants, Romania condemned the Afghanistan intervention and called for the withdrawal of Soviet forces.

Although, according to the Czechoslovak summary of the meeting, positions adopted by Romania meant "in effect confrontation with the foreign policy line of the USSR and other Warsaw Treaty nations," the Soviet Union nevertheless chose not to publicize its problems with the Romanians and tried to avoid pushing through documents against their opposition.

Vojtech Mastny