Superpower disengagement is a foreign policy

Foreign policy

A country's foreign policy, also called the foreign relations policy, consists of self-interest strategies chosen by the state to safeguard its national interests and to achieve its goals within international relations milieu. The approaches are strategically employed to interact with other countries...

 option whereby the most powerful nations, the superpower

Superpower

A superpower is a state with a dominant position in the international system which has the ability to influence events and its own interests and project power on a worldwide scale to protect those interests...

s, reduce their interventions in an area. Such disengagement could be multilateral among superpowers or lesser powers, or bilateral between two superpowers, or unilateral. It could mean an end to either direct or indirect interventions. For instance, disengagement could mean that the superpowers remove their support of proxies in proxy war

Proxy war

A proxy war or proxy warfare is a war that results when opposing powers use third parties as substitutes for fighting each other directly. While powers have sometimes used governments as proxies, violent non-state actors, mercenaries, or other third parties are more often employed...

s in order to de-escalate a superpower conflict back to a local problem based on local disputes. Disengagement can create buffers between superpowers that might prevent conflicts or reduce the intensity of conflicts.

The term usually refers to various policy proposals during the Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

 which attempted to defuse tensions between the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 and the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, largely because of the risk of any superpower conflict to escalate to nuclear war

Nuclear warfare

Nuclear warfare, or atomic warfare, is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weaponry is detonated on an opponent. Compared to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can be vastly more destructive in range and extent of damage...

. Examples of one-sided disengagement include when Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

 decided to end Soviet support for the communist guerrillas in Greece

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

 during the Greek Civil War

Greek Civil War

The Greek Civil War was fought from 1946 to 1949 between the Greek governmental army, backed by the United Kingdom and United States, and the Democratic Army of Greece , the military branch of the Greek Communist Party , backed by Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania...

, and when Richard Nixon

Richard Nixon

Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...

 withdrew US troops from Vietnam in the early 1970s.

The more important candidates for disengagement were where Soviet and US forces faced each other directly such as in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 and Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

. The Austrian State Treaty

Austrian State Treaty

The Austrian State Treaty or Austrian Independence Treaty re-established Austria as a sovereign state. It was signed on May 15, 1955, in Vienna at the Schloss Belvedere among the Allied occupying powers and the Austrian government...

 is an example of formal, multilateral, superpower disengagement which left Austria as neutral for the duration of the Cold War, with Austria staying out of the Warsaw Pact

Warsaw Pact

The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance , or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe...

, NATO, and the European Economic Community

European Economic Community

The European Economic Community The European Economic Community (EEC) The European Economic Community (EEC) (also known as the Common Market in the English-speaking world, renamed the European Community (EC) in 1993The information in this article primarily covers the EEC's time as an independent...

. The 1952 Stalin Note

Stalin Note

The Stalin Note, also known as the March Note, was a document delivered to the representatives of the Western allied powers from the Soviet Occupation in Germany on March 10, 1952...

is perhaps the most controversial proposal of superpower disengagement from Germany.