<P> In 1964, Khrushchev's Kremlin colleagues managed to oust him, but allowed him a peaceful retirement . Accused of rudeness and incompetence, he was also credited with ruining Soviet agriculture and bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war . Khrushchev had become an international embarrassment when he authorized construction of the Berlin Wall, a public humiliation for Marxism--Leninism . </P> <P> In the course of the 1960s and 1970s, Cold War participants struggled to adjust to a new, more complicated pattern of international relations in which the world was no longer divided into two clearly opposed blocs . From the beginning of the post-war period, Western Europe and Japan rapidly recovered from the destruction of World War II and sustained strong economic growth through the 1950s and 1960s, with per capita GDPs approaching those of the United States, while Eastern Bloc economies stagnated . </P> <P> As a result of the 1973 oil crisis, combined with the growing influence of Third World alignments such as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the Non-Aligned Movement, less - powerful countries had more room to assert their independence and often showed themselves resistant to pressure from either superpower . Meanwhile, Moscow was forced to turn its attention inward to deal with the Soviet Union's deep - seated domestic economic problems . During this period, Soviet leaders such as Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin embraced the notion of détente . </P> <P> The unity of NATO was breached early in its history, with a crisis occurring during Charles de Gaulle's presidency of France from 1958 onwards . De Gaulle protested at the United States' strong role in the organization and what he perceived as a special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom . In a memorandum sent to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan on 17 September 1958, he argued for the creation of a tripartite directorate that would put France on an equal footing with the United States and the United Kingdom, and also for the expansion of NATO's coverage to include geographical areas of interest to France, most notably French Algeria, where France was waging a counter-insurgency and sought NATO assistance . </P>

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