A Warm Handshake in the Cold War

U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union has always been based on a conviction that the interests of the two countries would always remain competing and partly clashing. It has been recognized, however, that there might be an area in which the two countries' interests largely coincided and cooperation was possible on a certain scale. Such an area was indeed identified: manned cosmonautics. The most striking element in space cooperation remains the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) from half a century ago. The article describes the diplomatic preparations for the flight, the role of engineering diplomacy, and the search for technical mutual understanding.