The emphasis on human rights would prompt people living under communist rule to rise up and insist on the rights promised in the Helsinki Final Act.
The Helsinki Final Act was signed by the US and the USSR and all nations of Europe (except Albania), as well as Canada.
In an interview in August, 1997, former president Gerald Ford said this about the 1975 Helsinki Accords / Helsinki Final Act:
The Soviet Union and the Warsaw pact nations did not recognize that the human rights provision was a time bomb. We in the United States and our western allies were hopeful that that provision would bring about the kind of uprisings that did take place. ... History is going to recognize that the Helsinki Accord was one of the great diplomatic achievements in the past, in this current century.
