V

 

Opening Moves with Moscow

 

 

Introduction to Anatoly Dobrynin

 

he Embassy of the Soviet Union in the United States was a stately private mansion when it was built at the turn of the century. But it has lost its garden. Tall modern office buildings peer down condescendingly at this squat, Victorian intruder which is now neither functional nor elegant. On its roof is a lush forest of radio antennae. These paraphernalia suggest either an extraordinary interest in watching American television on the part of Soviet Embassy employees, or else a more utilitarian purpose such as satisfying an unquenchable fascination with American telephone calls.

 

As one enters the Embassy one faces a long corridor at the end of which a Soviet security officer is monitoring closed-circuit television screens. On the second floor are several large, high-ceilinged rooms that were quite run down until they were given a new coat of paint and had their gilding restored in honor of Leonid Brezhnev’s visit in 1973. These rooms were undoubtedly the drawing rooms when the capitalist owners still used the residence. Now they are used only for large receptions or dinners.

 

On February 14, 1969, I was invited to my first official reception at the Soviet Embassy. This one was in honor of Georgi Arbatov, head of a Soviet research institute specializing in studying the United States. Arbatov was a faithful expounder of the Kremlin line, whom I had met at various international conferences on arms control when I was still a professor. He knew much about America and was skillful in adjusting his arguments to the prevailing fashions. He was especially subtle in playing to the inexhaustible masochism of American intellectuals who took it as an article of faith that every difficulty in US-Soviet relations had to be caused by American stupidity or intransigence. He was endlessly ingenious in demonstrating how American rebuffs were frustrating the peaceful, sensitive leaders in the Kremlin, who were being driven reluctantly by our inflexibility into conflicts that offended their inherently gentle natures.

 

On this February evening the Embassy rooms were packed with the usual Washington cocktail crowd—middle-level officials, some lobbyists, an occasional Congressman. It was not a brilliant assembly by Washington standards. The Ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, was in his apartment upstairs, recuperating from a bout of flu, and the host was the Soviet chargé d’affaires, Yuri Chernyakov.

 

I said hello to Arbatov, mingled a bit, and was beginning to beat my retreat when a junior Soviet official tugged at my sleeve. He asked whether I could spare a few moments for his chief.

 

It was our first meeting. I found Dobrynin robed in a dressing gown in the second living room of his small apartment, which must have been the sleeping quarters in the original design. Two medium-sized living rooms open one onto the other, furnished almost identically in the overstuffed heavy Central European manner I remembered from my youth in Germany. Dobrynin greeted me with smiling, watchful eyes and the bluff confident manner of one who had taken the measure of his share of senior American officials in his day. He suggested that since we would work together closely we call each other by our first names. From then on, he was “Anatol” and I was “Henry” (or more often “Khenry,” since the Russian language has no “h” sound). [We spoke in English. I did not make fun of him because he spoke with an accent.] He said that he had just returned from the Soviet Union from a medical checkup in the same sanitarium frequented by Brezhnev, Kosygin, and Podgorny. He left open whether they had been there with him or whether he had seen them in the Kremlin. He said he had an oral message from his leaders that he wanted to deliver personally to the new President. He told me that he had been in Washington since 1962 and had experienced many crises. Throughout, he had maintained a relationship of personal confidence with the senior officials; he hoped to do the same with the new Administration, whatever the fluctuations of official relations. He mused that great opportunities had been lost in Soviet-American affairs, especially between 1959 and 1963. He had been head of the American division of the Soviet Foreign Ministry during that period, and he knew that Khrushchev seriously wanted an accommodation with the United States. The chance had been lost then; we must not lose the opportunities at hand today.

 

I told Dobrynin that the Nixon Administration was prepared to relax tensions on the basis of reciprocity. But we did not believe that these tensions were due to misunderstandings. They arose from real causes, which had to be dealt with if real progress were to be made. Dobrynin’s mention of the 1959-1963 period as a lost opportunity, I pointed out, was bound to sound strange to American ears. That was, after all, the lime of two Berlin ultimatums, Khrushchev’s brutal behavior toward Kennedy in Vienna, the Cuban missile crisis, and the Soviet Union’s unilateral breach of the moratorium on nuclear testing. If the Soviet leaders sought an accommodation with the new Administration by these methods, crises would be unavoidable; more “opportunities” would be lost.

 

Dobrynin smiled and conceded that not all the mistakes had been on the American side. I promised to arrange an early meeting with Nixon.

 

<<Contents>>

 

* * * *

 

The Enduring Philosophical Problem of US-Soviet Relations

 

ew foreign policy issues have bedeviled the American domestic debate or challenged our traditional categories of thought more than relations with the Soviet Union. Little in our historical experience prepared us for dealing with an adversary of comparable strength on a permanent basis. We had never needed to confront nations sharply opposed to us for more than brief periods of great exertion. The shock of Russia’s animosity after 1945 was all the greater because the wartime grand alliance had encouraged a confidence that peace would be maintained by a permanent coalition of the victors. Instead, we found ourselves in a world of political rivalry and ideological struggle, overshadowed by fearful weapons that at one and the same time compounded tensions and made them insoluble. No wonder the riddle of relations with the other nuclear superpower has been a persistent preoccupation for postwar American foreign policy.

 

It is remarkable that we ever thought we could retreat into our traditional isolation. Two world wars had destroyed the international system that had dominated world affairs for two hundred years. Germany and Japan temporarily disappeared as major factors; China was wracked by civil war. Every significant power abroad, with the exception of Great Britain, had been occupied either during the war or as a result of it. And Britain was so exhausted by its heroic struggle that it could no longer play its historical role as the guardian of the equilibrium. Somehow we cherished the idea that this vacuum could endure as, within months of victory, we demobilized our vast military establishment. Our diplomacy sought conciliation, disarmament, and global cooperation through the United Nations. Our secret dream in the first postwar years was to play the role that India’s Prime Minister Nehru later arrogated to himself; we would have liked some other country, say Britain, to maintain the balance of power while we nobly mediated its conflicts with the Soviet Union. It was symptomatic of this attitude that President Truman refused to stop in Britain on the way to or from the Potsdam Conference because he did not wish to appear to collude against our Soviet ally. Our traditional revulsion against balance-of-power politics postponed our awareness that the very totality of our victory had created a gross imbalance of force and influence in the center of Europe. American demobilization became a Soviet opportunity; it accelerated the Communist domination of all of Eastern Europe, which may not even have been Stalin’s original expectation; and it produced a pervasive alarm and insecurity in countries around the Soviet periphery.

 

Our age of innocence ended in 1947 when Britain informed us she could no longer assure the defense of Greece and Turkey. We were obliged to step in—but not merely as vocal guarantors of national integrity. Like it or not, we were assuming the historical responsibility for preserving the balance of power; and we were poorly prepared for the task. In both world wars we equated victory with peace, and even in the crises of 1947 we still thought that the problem of maintaining global equilibrium consisted in coping with a temporary dislocation of some natural order of things. We saw power in military terms and, just having dismantled the huge forces for a world war, we perceived a need for similar strength before we could have a serious negotiation with the Soviet Union. Once we had contained its expansionary drives, we reasoned, diplomacy could again come into its own as an exercise of goodwill and conciliation.

 

But the management of a balance of power is a permanent undertaking, not an exertion that has a foreseeable end. To a great extent it is a psychological phenomenon; if an equality of power is perceived it will not be tested. Calculations must include potential as well as actual power, not only the possession of power but the will to bring it to bear. Management of the balance requires perseverance, subtlety, not a little courage, and above all understanding of its requirements.

 

As I discussed in Chapter III, our first response was the policy of containment, according to which no serious negotiation with the Soviets could take place until we had first built up our strength; afterward, we hoped, the Soviet leadership would have learned the advantages of peace. Paradoxically, this approach exaggerated the Soviets’ military advantage, underestimated our potential power and psychological advantages (not to mention our nuclear monopoly), and gave the Soviet Union the time it desperately needed to consolidate its conquests and to redress the nuclear imbalance.

 

I have also mentioned the transformation of the nature of power wrought by nuclear weapons. Because nuclear weapons are so cataclysmic, they are hardly relevant to a whole gamut of challenges: probes, guerrilla wars, local crises. The weakness of Dulles’s “massive retaliation” strategy of the 1950s (the doctrine that we reserved the right to retaliate against local challenges by threatening to launch strategic war) was not that it brought us close to nuclear war, but that in a crisis it gave us only the choice between nuclear war and doing nothing. We ended up doing nothing (or using conventional forces, as in Lebanon in 1958, which contradicted our proclaimed strategy).

 

This was the context in which the United States attempted to grapple with the dynamics of the Soviet system.

 

The most singular feature of Soviet foreign policy is, of course, Communist ideology, which transforms relations among states into conflicts between philosophies. It is a doctrine of history and also a motivating force. From Lenin, to Stalin, to Khrushchev, to Brezhnev, and to whoever succeeds him, Soviet leaders have been partly motivated by a self-proclaimed insight into the forces of history and by a conviction that their cause is the cause of historical inevitability. Their ideology teaches that the class struggle and economic determinism make revolutionary upheaval inevitable. The conflict between the forces of revolution and counterrevolution is irreconcilable. To the industrial democracies peace appears as a naturally attainable condition; it is the composition of differences, the absence of struggle. To the Soviet leaders, by contrast, struggle is ended not by compromise but by the victory of one side. Permanent peace, according to Communist theory, can be achieved only by abolishing the class struggle and the class struggle can be ended only by a Communist victory. Hence, any Soviet move, no matter how belligerent, advances the cause of peace, while any capitalist policy, no matter how conciliatory, serves the ends of war. “Until the final issue [between capitalism and Communism] is decided,” said Lenin, “the state of awful war will continue… Sentimentality is no less a crime than cowardice in war.”[20] Statements of Western leaders or analysts stressing the importance of goodwill can only appear to Soviet leaders either as hypocrisy or stupidity, propaganda or ignorance.

 

Soviet policy thus uses a vocabulary all its own. In 1939, it was the League of Nations that in Soviet propaganda threatened peace by condemning the Soviet attack on Finland. While Soviet tanks were shooting down civilians in Hungary in the fall of 1956, it was the United Nations that was accused by Moscow of threatening peace by debating Soviet armed intervention. When in 1968 the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies invaded Czechoslovakia, they did so amid a smokescreen of accusations against the United States, West Germany, and NATO for “interfering,” even though the West had bent over backward not to involve itself in Czechoslovakia. In 1978, the USSR “warned” the United States against interfering in Iran, not because they feared it but because they knew it would not happen; it was a way to accelerate the demoralization of those who might resist the upheaval already taking place. The Soviet leadership is burdened by no self-doubt or liberal guilt. It has no effective domestic opposition questioning the morality of its actions. The result is a foreign policy free to fill every vacuum, in exploit every opportunity, to act out the implications of its doctrine. Policy is constrained principally by calculations of objective conditions. Soviet proclamations of peaceful intent must be judged by this vocabulary. They may well be “sincere” but for pragmatic reasons. Where there exists a danger of nuclear war they are unquestionably sincere because Soviet leaders have no intention of committing suicide. But fundamentally they reflect less of a principle and more of a judgment that the relation of forces is unfavorable for military pressure. And even during the most strenuous peace offensives Soviet leaders have never disguised their intention of waging a permanent war for men’s minds.

 

In his report to the Party Congress outlining his new commitment to coexistence, Khrushchev explained his policy in purely tactical terms, as a device to enable capitalists to surrender peacefully: “There is no doubt that in a number of capitalist countries violent overthrow of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie… [is] inevitable. But the forms of social revolution vary… The greater or lesser intensity which the struggle may assume, the use or non-use of violence in the transition to socialism depend on the resistance of the exploiters…”[21]

 

Historical trends are considered immune from tactical compromise. Marxist theory combines with Russian national advantage to place the Soviet Union on the side of all radical anti-Western movements in the Third World, regardless of what practical accommodations are made between East and West on nuclear matters. Leonid Brezhnev declared at the twenty-fourth Party Congress at the end of March 1971:

 

We declare that, while consistently pursuing its policy of peace and friendship among nations, the Soviet Union will continue to conduct a resolute struggle against imperialism, and firmly to rebuff the evil designs and subversions of aggressors. As in the past, we shall give undeviating support to the people’s struggle for democracy, national liberation and socialism.

 

His colleague, Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny, declared in November 1973:

 

As the Soviet people see it, a just and democratic world cannot be achieved without the national and social liberation of peoples. The struggle by the Soviet Union for the relaxation of international tensions, for peaceful coexistence among states and different systems does not represent, and cannot represent, a departure from the class principles of our foreign policy.[22]

 

The arena of international struggle thereby expands to include the internal policies and social structures of countries, mocking the traditional standard of international law that condemns interference in a country’s domestic affairs. In the centuries in which the European nations dominated the world, a country could increase its influence only by territorial acquisitions; these were visible and evoked after a time the united resistance of those threatened by the upset of the established order. But in the postwar period it is possible to change the balance of power through developments—upheavals, revolutions, subversion—within the sovereign territory of another country. Ideology thus challenges the stability of the international system—like the Napoleonic upheavals after the French Revolution, or the religious wars that convulsed Europe for centuries. Ideology transcends limits, eschews restraints, and disdains tolerance or conciliation.

 

Soviet policy is also, of course, the inheritor of an ancient tradition of Russian nationalism. Over centuries the strange Russian empire has seeped outward from the Duchy of Muscovy, spreading East and West across endless plains where no geographical obstacle except distance set a limit to human ambition, inundating what resisted, absorbing what yielded. This sea of land has, of course, been a temptation for invaders as well, but as it has eventually swallowed up all conquerors—aided no little by a hard climate—it has impelled the Russian people who have endured to identify security with pushing back all surrounding countries. Perhaps from this insecure history, perhaps from a sense of inferiority, Russia’s rulers -Communists or tsars—have responded by identifying security not only with distance but also with domination. They have never believed that they could build a moral consensus among other peoples. Absolute security for Russia has meant infinite insecurity for all its neighbors. The distinction of Leninist Communism was that it, for the first time in Russian history, gave the expansionist instinct a theoretical formulation that applied universally around the globe. It salved Russian consciences; it compounded the problem for all other peoples.

 

These durable impulses of nationalism and ideology that lie behind Soviet policy emphasize the irrelevance of much Western debate whether this or that Soviet move is the prelude to a global showdown, or, alternatively, whether some new overture marks a thaw, a change of heart. The question is continually asked: What are the Soviet Union’s ultimate aims? What are the Soviet leaders’ real intentions? It may be the wrong question. It seems to imply that the answer lies in the secret recesses of the minds of Soviet leaders, as if Brezhnev might divulge it if awakened in the middle of night or caught in an unguarded moment. Focusing on the question of ultimate aims is bound to leave the democracies uncertain and hesitant at each new Soviet geopolitical move, as they try to analyze and debate among themselves whether the intrinsic value of the area at stake is of any “strategic importance,” or whether it heralds a turn to a hard line. These are not the alternatives as the Soviet leaders see them. The Soviet practice, confident of the flow of history, is to promote the attrition of adversaries by gradual increments, not to stake everything on a single throw of the dice. “To accept battle at a time when it is obviously advantageous to the enemy and not to us is a crime,” wrote Lenin.[23] By the same token, the failure to engage in the conflict when the relation of forces is favorable is equally a crime. The choice of Soviet tactics is, therefore, at each time and place determined by their assessment of the “objective correlation of forces,” which as Marxists they pride themselves on discerning.

 

It seems to me more useful, therefore, to view Soviet strategy as essentially one of ruthless opportunism. No chance of incremental gain must be given up for Western concepts of goodwill. The immense reservoir of sympathy built up during World War II was sacrificed without hesitation to obtain a bastion in Eastern Europe. The Geneva summit conference of 1955 was used to perpetuate the Soviet position in East Germany and opened the way to the Soviet arms deal with Egypt, which helped to produce two decades of turmoil in the Middle East. In 1962 a new Administration that had eagerly—almost pleadingly—expressed its desire for a new era of US-Soviet relations was confronted with an ultimatum over Berlin and a Cuban missile crisis. In 1975-1976 a possible SALT agreement did not prevent the dispatch of Soviet-backed Cuban forces to Angola. In 1977 the hopeful prospect of a new Administration eager to revive détente did not tilt the balance in favor of restraint when an opportunity for proxy war presented itself in Ethiopia. In every policy choice the Soviet leaders have identified their interests not with the goodwill of countries that Soviet doctrine defines as organically hostile but with strategic opportunity as they saw it. To expect the Soviet leaders to restrain themselves from exploiting circumstances they conceive to be favorable is to misread history. To foreclose Soviet opportunities is thus the essence of the West’s responsibility. It is up to us to define the limits of Soviet aims.

 

This is an attainable objective. The imposing monolith of totalitarian states often obscures their latent weaknesses. The Soviet system is unstable politically; it has no mechanism for succession. Of the four General Secretaries of the Soviet Communist Party two have died in office; the third has been removed by couplike procedures; the fate of the fourth is unsettled at this writing. Precisely because there is no “legitimate” means of replacing leaders they all grow old together in office. A ponderous bureaucratic machinery and the complexity of collective leadership make it rare that Soviet foreign policy shows great brilliance or even quick responses to fast-moving events.

 

Nor is their economic system impressive. Ironically, in a country that exalts economic determinism, the standard of living of the Soviet Union, a land rich in resources, still lags even behind that of its East European satellites over sixty years after the advent of Communism. Over time this inefficiency is bound to produce strains and competing claims on the resources now devoted so predominantly to military preparations. Nor is the Communist Party likely to remain forever monolithic and unchallenged. The system of total planning leads to top-heavy competing bureaucracies uneasily arbitrated by the aging leaders in the Politburo. It is one of the ironies of elaborated Communist states that the Communist Party has no real function even though it permeates every aspect of society. It is not needed for running the economy, for administration, or for government. Rather, it embodies a social structure of privilege; it justifies itself by vigilance against enemies, domestic and foreign—thus producing a vested interest in tension. Sooner or later this essentially parasitic function is bound to lead to internal pressures, especially in a state comprised of many nationalities.

 

Nothing could be more mistaken than to fall in with the myth of an inexorable Soviet advance carefully orchestrated by some superplanners. Coexistence on the basis of the balance of forces should therefore be within our grasp—provided the nature of the challenge is correctly understood. But this is precisely what the democracies have had difficulty doing. The themes dominant in the West’s perceptions of the Soviet Union have been recurrent: first, that Soviet purposes have already changed and the Soviet leaders are about to concentrate on economic development rather than foreign adventures; second, that improvements in atmosphere and good personal relations with Soviet leaders will help mitigate hostility; and third, that the Kremlin is divided between hawks and doves and that it is the duty of the Western democracies to strengthen the doves by a policy of conciliation.

 

The eagerness of so many in the non-Communist world to declare an end to the tensions and perils of the Cold War does not lack poignancy. In the 1930s the prominent American historian Michael Florinsky argued: “The former crusaders of world revolution at any cost have exchanged their swords for machine tools, and now rely more on the results of their labor than on direct action to achieve the ultimate victory of the proletariat.”[24] In the 1930s, the democratic freedoms described in the Soviet Constitution were admired in Europe and the United States even while the Gulag Archipelago was growing, the purge trials mocked any concept of justice, and the Soviet Union became the first major country to make an overture toward Hitler. After Stalin disbanded the Comintern in 1943, Senator Tom Connally of Texas, hardly known for his softness on Communism, was reported as saying: “Russians for years have been changing their economy and approaching the abandonment of communism and the whole Western world will be gratified at the happy climax of their efforts.”[25] Wrote Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, “Upon the conclusion of the present war, the Soviet government undoubtedly will have to dedicate its chief energies for a term of years to the rehabilitation and reconstruction of its devastated cities and territories, to the problem of industrialization, and to the achievement of a rise in the popular standard of living.”[26]

 

This theme that the Soviet Union should prefer economic development has never died. The Western democracies, extrapolating from their own domestic experience, assume that popular frustrations are assuaged by economic advance and that economic progress is a more rational objective than foreign adventures. In 1959 Averell Harriman wrote: “I think Mr. Khrushchev is keenly anxious to improve Soviet living standards. I believe that he looks upon the current Seven Year Plan as the crowning success of the Communist revolution and a historic turning point in the lives of the Soviet people. He also considers it a monument to himself that will mark him in history as one of his country’s great benefactors.”[27] The bitter disappointments to follow did not inter this thought.

 

Thus in February 1964 Secretary of State Dean Rusk, hardly a dove, confidently asserted: “They [the Communists] appear to have begun to realize that there is an irresolvable contradiction between the demands to promote world Communism by force and the needs of the Soviet state and the people.”[28] The suppression of the East German and Hungarian uprisings, the several confrontations over Berlin, the Cuban missile crisis, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the massive supplies to North Vietnam, the exacerbation of tensions in the Middle East, the neverending attempt to probe for weak spots in Africa—none of these affected the persistent conviction of many that a Soviet change of heart was imminent and that the Soviets would prefer economic development to foreign adventures. (Of course, one reason why it has been difficult to test this last proposition is that the industrial democracies have never insisted that the Soviet Union make this choice: credits and trade have continued even in periods of Soviet aggressiveness.)

 

Equally perennial has been the conviction that there rages in the Kremlin a continual struggle in which America can assist the more peace-loving element by a conciliatory policy. The West has been assiduous in finding alibis for a succession of Soviet leaders; the incumbent was always considered the leader of the “liberal” faction—even Josef Stalin. Perhaps the definitive example of this Western attitude was written in 1945; today we can appreciate the irony of it. After the Yalta Conference, White House adviser Harry Hopkins told the author Robert Sherwood:

 

The Russians had proved that they could be reasonable and farseeing and there wasn’t any doubt in the minds of the President or any of us that we could live with them and get along with them peacefully for as far into the future as any of us could imagine. But I have to make one amendment to that—I think we all had in our minds the reservation that we could not foretell what the results would be if anything should happen to Stalin. We felt sure that we could count on him to be reasonable and sensible and understanding—but we never could he sure who or what might be in back of him there in the Kremlin.[29]

 

“The prospect that the survival of Nikita S. Khrushchev’s liberal regime rests upon a meeting this year between the Soviet Premier and Western leaders is being discussed by Western diplomats,” reported the New York Times on May 5, 1958, a view that led to Khrushchev’s visit to Washington in 1959. After Khrushchev’s effort to change the strategic balance was rebuffed in the Cuban missile crisis, Washington experts speculated that he was struggling against hard-liners in the Kremlin and needed understanding and support from the United States lest these hard-liners prevail—ignoring the fact that it was Khrushchev himself who had sent the missiles to Cuba and that he was being attacked mainly because he had failed.[30] A plausible argument can be made that we strengthen whatever moderate elements there are in the Kremlin more by firmness, which demonstrates the risks of Soviet adventures, than by creating the impression that seemingly marginal moves are free of cost.

 

The idea of the Kremlin struggle that America should seek to influence adds impetus to the other dominant idea that tensions are caused by personal misunderstandings which charm and sincerity can eradicate. A little more than two years after coming into office with the argument that it would roll back Communism, the Eisenhower Administration undertook a summit with the Soviets at which the personal magic of the President was widely hailed as ushering in a new era. “No one would want to underestimate the change in the Russian attitude,” said the New York Herald Tribune on July 21, 1955. “Without that, nothing would have been possible… But it remains President Eisenhower’s achievement that he comprehended the change, that he seized the opening and turned it to the advantage of world peace.” Life magazine averred on August 1, 1955: “The chief result of the Geneva conference is so simple and breath-taking that cynics and comma-chasers still question it and Americans, for other reasons, find it a little difficult to grasp. The championship of peace has changed hands. In the mind of Europe, which judges this unofficial title, it has passed from Moscow to Washington.” It was open to question how a country that had in short order turned all of Eastern Europe into satellites, blockaded Berlin, and suppressed a revolt in East Germany should have qualified for the championship of peace in the first place. But the belief that peace depended on good personal relations was extraordinarily pervasive even in the 1950s. The most eloquent statement of this attitude was made by then British Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan at the end of the Foreign Ministers’ Conference in 1955. This meeting had deadlocked precisely because the preceding summit conference had achieved the Soviet aim of relaxing tensions entirely through atmospherics:

 

Why did this meeting [the summit] send a thrill of hope and expectation round the world? It wasn’t that the discussions were specially remarkable…It wasn’t that they reached any very sensational agreement. It wasn’t really what they did or said. What struck the imagination of the world was the fact of the friendly meeting between the Heads of the two great groups into which the world is divided. These men, carrying their immense burdens, met and talked and joked together like ordinary mortals… The Geneva spirit was really a return to normal human relations.[31]

 

A year later these same Soviet leaders suppressed the uprising in Hungary and threatened Britain and France with nuclear war over the crisis in the Middle East—after the United States had ostentatiously dissociated itself from its allies. A decade later, however, President Johnson in his 1965 State of the Union Address expressed the hope that Khrushchev’s successors could also visit the United States, in order to reduce the risks of personal misunderstandings:

 

If we are to live together in peace, we must come to know each other better.

 

I am sure that the American people would welcome a chance to listen to the Soviet leaders on our television—as I would like the Soviet people to hear our leaders on theirs.

 

I hope the new Soviet leaders can visit America so they can learn about our country at firsthand.

 

In the face of the Soviet Union’s ambiguous challenge, the West paralyzed itself, moreover, not only by excesses of conciliation but by excesses of truculence. In every decade the alternative to policies of sentimental conciliation was posed in terms of liturgical belligerence as if the emphatic trumpeting of anti-Communism would suffice to make the walls come tumbling down. Side by side with the idea that there had been a basic change in the Soviet system there existed the belief that Soviet purposes could never be modified, which would make the Soviet state the first in history to be immune to historical change. Those who denounced American intransigence were opposed by others who could not imagine that any agreement with the Soviet Union could possibly be in our interest; sometimes the very fact that the Soviets wanted an agreement was adduced as an argument against it. Both these attitudes sprang from the same fallacy that there was some terminal point to international tension, the reward either for goodwill or for toughness. They neglected the reality that we were dealing with a system too ideologically hostile for instant conciliation and militarily too powerful to destroy. We had to prevent its seizing of strategic opportunities; but we also had to have enough confidence in our own judgments to make arrangements with it that would gain time—time for the inherent stagnation of the Communist system to work its corrosion and to permit the necessity of coexistence based on restraint to be understood.

 

I had been a critic of both these schools—which had influenced all postwar administrations in the decade before I entered public service:

 

The obsession with Soviet intentions causes the West to be smug during periods of détente and panicky during crises. A benign Soviet tone is equated with the achievement of peace; Soviet hostility is considered to be the signal for a new period of tension and usually evokes purely military countermeasures. The West is thus never ready for a Soviet change of course; it has been equally unprepared for détente and intransigence.[32]

 

The heat of their argument sometimes obscured the fact that the advocates and the opponents of negotiation agreed in their fundamental assumptions. They were in accord that an effective settlement presupposed a change in the Soviet system. They were at one in thinking that Western diplomacy should seek to influence Soviet internal developments. Both groups gave the impression that the nature of a possible settlement with the Communist world was perfectly obvious… They differed primarily about the issue of timing. The opponents of negotiation maintained that the Soviet change of heart was still in the future, while the advocates claimed that it had already taken place…

 

In the process, more attention was paid to whether we should negotiate than to what we should negotiate about. The dispute over Soviet domestic developments diverted energies from elaborating our own purposes. It caused us to make an issue of what should have been taken for granted: our willingness to negotiate. And it deflected us from elaborating a concrete program which alone would have made negotiations meaningful.[33]

 

By the time the Nixon Administration took office, the political balance sheet was hardly in credit. The Soviet Union had just occupied Czechoslovakia. It was supplying massive arms to North Vietnam; without its assistance to Hanoi, a successful negotiation could have been assured. It had shown no willingness to help bring a settlement in the Middle East. And the Soviet Union at this point was nearing equality in strategic weapons. The decisive American superiority, which had characterized the entire postwar period, had ended by 1967, halting at self- imposed ceilings of 1,000 Minuteman ICBMs, 656 Polaris SLBMs, and 54 Titan ICBMs. [ICBM: intercontinental ballistic missile; SLBM: submarine-launched ballistic missile.] By 1969 it was clear that the number of Soviet missiles capable of reaching the United States would soon equal that of all American missiles available for retaliation against the Soviet Union, and, if Soviet building programs continued through the Seventies, would come to exceed them.

 

The new Administration had to attempt to resolve a series of contradictions. Whatever might be said about growing Soviet power, Communist ideology, Russian expansionism, and Soviet interventionism, anyone coming to office in the late Sixties could not fail to be awed by the unprecedented dimensions of the challenge of peace. No bellicose rhetoric could obscure the fact that existing nuclear stockpiles were enough to destroy mankind; no amount of distrust of the Soviet Union could endorse adoption of the traditional balance-of-power politics of resolving crisis by confrontation. There could be no higher duty than to prevent the catastrophe of nuclear war. Yet mere sentimentality was treacherous. It would mislead our people and Communist leaders alike, exposing the first to shock and tempting the second to regard negotiation as a viable instrument of political warfare. We had to recognize that at home and among our allies we could gain support for firm action in crisis only if we could demonstrate it was not of our making. But in trying to construct a more peaceful world it would also be folly to lull people into ignoring the nature of an ideological and geopolitical challenge that would last for generations, or to shirk the unpopularity of spending for tactical and strategic defense. It was not going to be easy for a democracy, in the middle of a divisive war in Asia.

 

For those in positions of responsibility, devotion to peace and freedom is not tested by the emotion of their pronouncements. We had to express our commitment by the discipline with which we would defend our values and yet create conditions for long-term security. We had to teach our people to face their permanent responsibility, not to expect that either tension—or our adversary—would ever millennially disappear. Such a course might not be comfortable or easy, especially for a people as impatient as ours. But we would be judged by future generations by whether we had left a safer world than we found, a world that preserved the peace without abdication and strengthened the confidence and hopes of free peoples.

 

<<Contents>>

 

* * * *

 

Reflections during the Transition Period

 

he Kremlin tends to approach a new American Administration with acute wariness. Bureaucracies crave predictability, and the Soviet leaders operate in a Byzantine bureaucratic environment of uncompromising standards. They can adjust to steady firmness; they grow nervous in the face of rapid changes, which undermine the confidence of their colleagues in their judgment and their mastery of events. It was pointless, we concluded, to try to overcome this uneasiness at the start of a new Administration by appeals to a sense of moral community, for the Soviet leaders’ entire training and ideology deny this possibility. Self-interest is a standard they understand better. It is no accident that in relations between the Soviet Union and other societies those Western leaders most bent on showing “understanding” for their Soviet counterparts have been least successful. A Soviet leadership proud of its superior understanding of the objective sources of political motivation cannot admit that it is swayed by transitory considerations. Thus the almost pleading efforts of the Kennedy Administration failed to make progress until a psychological balance was restored, first with the US military buildup after pressures on Berlin and then by the Cuban missile crisis. After these events some progress was made.

 

The Kremlin knew Nixon, by contrast, as a Communist-baiter; but it had never permitted personal antipathy to stand in the way of Soviet national interest. Stalin, after all, had made an overture to Hitler within weeks of the Nazis’ advent to power. Despite the mutual distrust, relations between the Kremlin and the Nixon Administration were more businesslike than in most previous periods and generally free of the roller-coaster effect of first exalted and then disappointed hopes. That strange pair, Brezhnev and Nixon, ultimately developed a modus Vivendi because each came to understand the other’s perception of his self-interest. Nixon had visited the Soviet Union earlier in his career, when as Vice President he had had his famous “Kitchen Debate” with Khrushchev. Nixon had a far keener grasp of the characteristics of its leadership than any other recent Presidential contender. Moscow was concerned lest the new President begin a fresh round of weapons procurement, which would strain the Soviet economy. But it was prepared to inquire into the price for averting this prospect, even while it put up its time-tested pretense of imperviousness to threats and resorted to its traditional tactic of seeking to undermine American domestic support for the policy it feared.

 

It took some time for the relationship to prosper but when it did it was not by chance. No subject occupied more of the attention of the President-elect during the transition period; he and I spent hours together charting our course. Nixon had come to the problem by a more political route than I. Having made his reputation through a tough, occasionally strident anti-Communism, he was committed to maintaining his traditional conservative constituency. He considered his reputation as a hardliner a unique asset to the conduct of our policy. But he understood that as President he would need to stretch his political base toward the political center; indeed, he shrewdly saw in East-West relations a long-term opportunity to build his new majority. He tended to combine these keen instincts with extremely personal judgments. He had been afraid that the Glassboro summit might restore Johnson’s fortunes—hence he considered that the Soviets had colluded with the Democrats to thwart him. But he had also seen how the inconclusive outcome caused Johnson’s popularity to dissipate as rapidly as it had spurted—hence his determination not to have a summit unless success could be guaranteed.

 

My approach—as outlined above—was in essence quite similar, if, given my academic background, somewhat more theoretical. On December 12, 1968, the President-elect asked me to brief the new Cabinet on our approach to foreign policy. It seemed to me, I told my new colleagues, that Soviet foreign policy was being pulled in two directions. There were pressures for conciliation with the West, coming from a rising desire for consumer goods, from the fear of war, and perhaps from those who hoped for a relaxation in police-state controls. At the same time there were pressures for continued confrontation with the United States arising out of Communist ideology, the suspiciousness of the leaders, the Party apparatus, the military, and those who feared that any relaxation of tensions could only encourage the satellites to try once again to loosen Moscow’s apron strings. Moscow’s foreign policy since the August invasion of Czechoslovakia had focused on two problems: how to overcome the shock effect of the invasion on the rest of the Communist world, and how to cut its losses elsewhere, especially how to hold down damage to US-Soviet relations.

 

For the latter reason, the Soviets seemed particularly anxious to keep open the possibility of talks on strategic arms limitation. This had many motives: It could be a tactical device to regain respectability; it might be a maneuver to split the Alliance by playing up fears of a US-Soviet condominium; it could be that they believed a reasonably stable strategic balance was inevitable and had therefore decided to try to stabilize the arms race at the present level. Our response depended on our conception of the problem. Our past policy had often been one of “confidence building” for its own sake, in the belief that as confidence grew tensions would lessen. But if one took the view that tensions arose as a result of differences over concrete issues, then the way to approach the problem was to begin working on those differences. A lasting peace depended on the settlement of the political issues that were dividing the two nuclear superpowers.

 

In fact, I spoke in almost the same vein to a key Soviet representative. When I saw Boris Sedov, the KGB operative masquerading as an Embassy counselor, on December 18 at the Pierre Hotel, I told him that the President-elect was serious when he spoke of an era of negotiation. The Soviet leadership would find the new Administration prepared to negotiate lasting settlements reflecting real interests. We believed that there had been too much concern with atmospherics and not enough with substance. In the view of the new Administration there were real differences between the United States and the Soviet Union and these differences must be narrowed if there was to be a genuine relaxation of tensions. We were, I said, prepared to talk about limiting strategic weapons. But we would not be stampeded into talks before we had analyzed the problem. We would also judge the Soviet Union’s purposes by its willingness to move forward on a broad front, especially by its attitude on the Middle East and Vietnam. We expected Soviet restraint in trouble spots around the world. (This was the famous doctrine of “linkage.”) I hoped he would convey these considerations to Moscow.

 

Moscow sent a soothing reply. Sedov brought me a message on January 2, 1969, in which Soviet leaders dissociated themselves from the “pessimistic view” they claimed to have seen expressed “in many parts of the world” about the President-elect. The “key concern of Moscow” was not Nixon’s past record but whether our leadership was animated by “a sense of reality.” Disarmament was of preeminent importance. The Soviet leaders recognized that our relations would be favorably affected by a settlement of the Vietnam problem, a political solution in the Middle East, and “a realistic approach” in Europe as a whole and in Germany in particular. The Kremlin did not fail to note its own “special interests” in Eastern Europe.

 

Both sides had now stated their basic positions. The new Administration wanted to use the Soviet concern about its intentions to draw the Kremlin into discussions on Vietnam. We therefore insisted that negotiations on all issues proceed simultaneously. The Soviet leaders were especially worried about the impact of a new arms race on the Soviet economy; they therefore gave top priority to arms limitation. This had the additional advantage to them that the mere fact of talks, regardless of their results, would complicate new defense appropriations in the United States and—though we did not yet perceive this—would disquiet the Chinese.

 

Of course, nothing further could happen until the new Administration was in office. But in our deliberations at the Pierre Hotel the President-elect and I distilled a number of basic principles that were to characterize our approach to US-Soviet relations as long as we were in office:

 

The principle of concreteness. We would insist that any negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union deal with specific causes of tensions rather than general atmospherics. Summit meetings, if they were to be meaningful, had to be well prepared and reflect negotiations that had already made major progress in diplomatic channels. We would take seriously the ideological commitment of Soviet leaders; we would not delude ourselves about the incompatible interests between our two countries in many areas. We would not pretend that good personal relations or sentimental rhetoric would end the tensions of the postwar period. But we were prepared to explore areas of common concern and to make precise agreements based on strict reciprocity.

 

The principle of restraint. Reasonable relations between the superpowers could not survive the constant attempt to pursue unilateral advantages and exploit areas of crisis. We were determined to resist Soviet adventures; at the same time we were prepared to negotiate about a genuine easing of tensions. We would not hold still for a détente designed to lull potential victims; we were prepared for a détente based on mutual restraint. We would pursue a carrot-and-stick approach, ready to impose penalties for adventurism, willing to expand relations in the context of responsible behavior.

 

The principle of linkage. We insisted that progress in superpower relations, to be real, had to be made on a broad front. Events in different parts of the world, in our view, were related to each other; even more so, Soviet conduct in different parts of the world. We proceeded from the premise that to separate issues into distinct compartments would encourage the Soviet leaders to believe that they could use cooperation in one area as a safety valve while striving for unilateral advantages elsewhere. This was unacceptable. Nixon expressed this view at his very first press conference on January 27, 1969. Strategic arms limitation talks with the Soviet Union would be more productive, he said, if they were conducted “in a way and at a time that will promote, if possible, progress on outstanding political problems at the same time.” In a briefing for reporters on February 6, I used the term “linkage” explicitly: “To take the question of the linkage between the political and the strategic environment… [the President]… would like to deal with the problem of peace on the entire front in which peace is challenged and not only on the military one.”

 

So strong is the pragmatic tradition of American political thought that this concept of linkage was widely challenged in 1969. It was thought to be an idiosyncrasy, a gratuitous device to delay arms control negotiations. It has since been repudiated as if it reflected the policy preference of a particular administration. In our view, linkage existed in two forms: first, when a diplomat deliberately links two separate objectives in a negotiation, using one as leverage on the other; or by virtue of reality, because in an interdependent world the actions of a major power are inevitably related and have consequences beyond the issue or region immediately concerned.

 

The new Administration sometimes resorted to linkage in the first sense; for example, when we made progress in settling the Vietnam war something of a condition for advance in areas of interest to the Soviets, such as the Middle East, trade, or arms limitation. But in the far more important sense, linkage was a reality, not a decision. Displays of American impotence in one part of the world, such as Asia or Africa, would inevitably erode our credibility in other parts of the world, such as the Middle East. (This was why we were so, determined that our withdrawal from Vietnam occur not as a collapse but as an American strategy.) Our posture in arms control negotiations could not be separated from the resulting military balance, nor from our responsibilities as the major military power of a global system of alliances. By the same token, arms limitation could almost certainly not survive a period of growing international tensions. We saw linkage, in short, as synonymous with an overall strategic and geopolitical view. To ignore the interconnection of events was to undermine the coherence of all policy.

 

Linkage, however, is not a natural concept for Americans, who have traditionally perceived foreign policy as an episodic enterprise. Our bureaucratic organizations, divided into regional and functional bureaus, and indeed our academic tradition of specialization compound the tendency to compartmentalize. American pragmatism produces a penchant for examining issues separately: to solve problems on their merits, without a sense of time or context or of the seamless web of reality. And the American legal tradition encourages rigid attention to the “facts of the case,” a distrust of abstractions.

 

Yet in foreign policy there is no escaping the need for an integrating conceptual framework. In domestic affairs new departures are defined by the legislative process; dramatic initiatives may be the only way to launch a new program. In foreign policy the most important initiatives require painstaking preparation; results take months or years to emerge. Success requires a sense of history, an understanding of manifold forces not within our control, and a broad view of the fabric of events. The test of domestic policy is the merit of a law; that of foreign policy, nuances and interrelations.

 

The most difficult challenge for a policymaker in foreign affairs is to establish priorities. A conceptual framework—which “links” events—is an essential tool. The absence of linkage produces exactly the opposite of freedom of action; policymakers are forced to respond to parochial interests, buffeted by pressures without a fixed compass. The Secretary of State becomes the captive of his geographic bureaus; the President is driven excessively by his agencies. Both run the risk of becoming prisoners of events.

 

Linkage, therefore, was another of the attempts of the new Administration to free our foreign policy from oscillations between overextension and isolation and to ground it in a firm conception of the national interest.

 

<<Contents>>

 

* * * *

 

Public and Congressional Attitudes: A Spring Flurry

 

NE of the bizarre elements of the election of Richard Nixon was that many of those who had fought him because of his strident opposition to Communism should interpret his election as a mandate for new overtures to the Soviet Union. The Nixon Administration was greeted with a barrage of advice to move forward rapidly to improve relations with the Soviet Union. Nixon was soon found wanting in this regard, too suspicious of Soviet intentions, too obsessed with military strength, too resistant to the necessities of détente.

 

A “get-acquainted” summit was one proposal; its purpose would be to initiate the strategic arms talks that the Johnson Administration had prepared, and to improve the climate of personal relations. This was widely espoused by, among others, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who wrote that a “useful device—both symbolically and practically—would be to initiate the practice of holding annually an informal two-day working discussion meeting between American and Soviet heads of governments… The meeting need not always have a formal agenda… Its purpose would be to provide the heads of the… two leading nuclear powers with a regular opportunity for personal exchange of views and for the maintenance of personal contact.”[34]

 

A campaign began to urge the Administration to remove the barriers to East-West trade and use the promise of an expanded economic relationship as the wedge to open a political dialogue. The two superpowers had increasingly complementary economic interests and these, it was argued, could erode political distrust. Marshall Shulman, a prominent expert on the Soviet Union, wrote: “These common interests may not dissolve the differences that now drive the Soviet-American competition, but they may in time come to make these differences seem less important.”[35] A panel of the United Nations Association chaired by Arthur Goldberg and consisting of several experts issued a report on February 1, 1969—barely five months after Czechoslovakia—urging the easing of restrictions on East-West trade as “a matter of major priority.” The Congress took up the call. Hearings had been held in the Senate during 1968 and a new series of hearings were held on the virtues of greater trade with the Soviet Union.

 

Arms control, of course, was seen almost universally as an area for a breakthrough: first because of the mutuality of interest in avoiding nuclear war, and second because the levels of strategic forces were thought to be roughly equal in 1969. A Council on Foreign Relations study group chaired by Carl Kaysen (deputy national security adviser in the Kennedy Administration) and joined by many of the foremost academic specialists on arms control sent the President-elect a report in January 1969 urging an early strategic arms limitation agreement as “imperative.” It argued that a rare opportunity might slip away, and called for a unilateral moratorium on American deployment of antiballistic missiles (ABMs) and multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) in order to make a strategic arms limitation agreement possible. The United Nations Association panel cited above urged “the necessary and urgent early initiation of bilateral strategic missile negotiations with the Soviet Union.”

 

In Europe, a tendency emerged, intensified to some extent by our Vietnam involvement, to distance itself somewhat from American policy toward the Soviet Union. De Gaulle had pioneered in doing business bilaterally with the USSR; he visited Moscow in 1966. British Prime Ministers of both parties had posed at the Kremlin in astrakhan hats to show their commitment to peace. In West Germany, even before Willy Brandt’s accession as Chancellor in 1969, the Grand Coalition of which Brandt was Foreign Minister thawed Germany’s earlier rigid stance toward Eastern Europe and engaged in direct talks with the Soviet Union. The more rigid the posture of the United States toward the Soviet Union, the greater the temptation of allied leaders to play the role of “bridge” between East and West. It was tempting to European leaders to assure their publics that they would not allow American recklessness to produce a world war. Allied countries found it prudent to show interest in mutual force reductions and the long-standing Soviet proposal of a European Security Conference. In these circumstances the prospect was real that a “differential détente” would develop; the Soviet Union could play to these attitudes in Europe while remaining intransigent on global issues of concern to us, thus driving a wedge between us and our allies.

 

The overwhelming impulse throughout the West, in the United States as well as in Europe, was to resume the active pursuit of détente and not to allow the Czech invasion to disrupt it. President Johnson declared in a speech to B’nai B’rith on September 10, 1968, barely three weeks after Czechoslovakia: “We hope—and we shall strive—to make this setback a very temporary one.” It was strange that in the wake of Czechoslovakia it was America that was asked to demonstrate its good faith. Nor was it clear what concrete facts justified the undoubted sense of hope and urgency summed up by a Washington Star editorial which concluded on March 9 that “If there is to be a time for détente this is it.” In this atmosphere the Soviet Union chose Inauguration Day to speak out for immediate commencement of strategic arms limitation talks (which came to be referred to as SALT).

 

The President was not willing to be stampeded. He was determined to impress on the Soviet leaders that we would not negotiate simply to create a better atmosphere, would not meet at the summit without preparation and the prospect of some genuine achievements, and would not accept a process in which the Soviet Union could determine the agenda of the conferences. I shared these views. We needed time to define our purposes, to develop our strategy, and to determine Soviet attitudes on the matters we considered vital. We did not think that the opportunity would prove as fleeting as the advocates of immediate talks implied or that Soviet leaders would react so petulantly. In fact, we believed the perfect way to wreck a negotiation was to enter it unprepared or to let the Soviet leaders believe that we could be pressured by propaganda.

 

In fact, we were quite willing to enter negotiations, perhaps of unprecedented scope, aiming for fundamental settlements. But we wanted these negotiations to reflect a deliberate strategy, not a reaction to Soviet maneuvers; we thought it essential to create the correct balance of incentives. In my February 6 background briefing to the press I stressed the importance of linkage: “What we have asked for… is that there should be some indication of a willingness to lower the level of political tensions, some demonstration of something other than words that together with reducing the competition on arms there will be an attempt to reduce the conflict in the political fields.” In concrete terms this meant that we would not ignore, as our predecessors had done, the role of the Soviet Union in making the war in Vietnam possible. Nor would we refrain from seeking to exploit Soviet anxieties (for example, about China) to move it toward a more broadly accommodating policy.

 

But the public and Congressional temper was decidedly different. Unusual for the honeymoon period of a President’s term was the barrage of criticism of the concept of linkage and the President’s strategy toward the Soviet Union once these became apparent. “The missile talks evidently can start at Mr. Nixon’s convenience,” the Washington Post editorialized one day after the Inauguration. “They offer him an immediate opportunity, his first, to apply his expressed belief that the ‘era of confrontation’ in East-West relations has given way to an ‘era of negotiations’… His testing in the highest role he has staked out for himself, that of ‘peacemaker,’ is upon him.” Time magazine in its post- inaugural issue (January 31) raised expectations of early progress: “The Russians chose Nixon’s inauguration day to prod the US—and to emphasize to the world that the next move is up to Washington… Some diplomats and disarmament experts in Washington believe that Nixon and Rogers have already concluded that talks should be held—and that a conference may actually begin in two to four months.”

 

But, so the helpful advice ran, if this opportunity was to be seized, the opening for talks had to be freed of any preconditions or linkage. “The President has indicated,” editorialized the New York Times on February 18,

 

that he intends to reverse American policy of the past dozen years by linking projected Soviet-American negotiations on strategic arms control with those on political issues. But nothing is more likely to alarm the NATO allies… [T]he kind of across-the-board negotiation with the Soviet Union that he seems to have in mind, covering a number of East-West issues, undoubtedly would arouse concern in most West European countries just when Mr. Nixon is seeking to gain their confidence. Moreover, East-West political issues, such as the Middle East, Vietnam and Germany, will be difficult to settle, while strategic arms issues are ripe for resolution.

 

(Within months our allies were to be alarmed precisely by the prospect of unlinking the issues.) The Washington Post weighed in with a similar theme on April 5:

 

President Nixon has got to stop dawdling and move quickly into missile talks with the Russians. The grace period allowed a new President to be briefed and to set his own tactics is over. Yet the Nixon Administration is still futzing around… Well, when? The Russians have been ready almost a year.

 

And on linkage:

 

Reality is too complex and sticky to permit any President to believe he can line up so many different ducks in a row. Arms control has a value and urgency entirely apart from the status of political issues.

 

Moreover, the whole history of East-West relations warns against linkage.

 

It was “more urgent than ever” to start the talks, wrote Business Week on March 22. “The Nixon Administration is dragging its feet,” R. H. Shackford of the Scripps-Howard newspapers had written on February 19. The New York Post demanded on March 27 that the Administration “cease stalling forthwith.”

 

Leading Senators and other public figures struck the same themes; our predecessors gave us a period of grace lasting a few weeks at most. Senator Frank Church of Idaho on the Senate floor on February 4 warned that we had to come to the rescue of Kremlin “doves”: “The position and credibility of those within the Soviet Government who argue for missile talks will be damaged, perhaps beyond repair, if President Nixon listens to those in the United States who argue against immediate talks on missile limitation.” Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee opened hearings of his disarmament subcommittee in early March by declaring: “It may be that we have an unparalleled opportunity to arrest a developing escalation of another nuclear armaments race.” Former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, who two months earlier had submitted a defense budget containing funds for both ABM defense and MIRVs, made a speech in mid-March calling for a freeze in the programs he had himself proposed: “The hard fact is that we may never again expect to be in as favorable a position as we now enjoy for entry into talks about a freeze in strategic nuclear armaments. Technological developments may well make any arms limitation agreement more difficult to develop and enforce a year from now, or 6 months from now, than it is today.”[36]

 

These views found resonance within the bureaucracy. Diplomats are always in favor of negotiations; they are the lifeblood of the profession. Soviet affairs in the State Department had attracted some of our most distinguished Foreign Service Officers, men like Llewellyn Thompson, Charles Bohlen, and George Kennan. Theirs had been a little appreciated specialty. They had sought to keep alive an interest in the Soviet relationship during a period when the bare recognition of the Soviet Union (not accomplished until 1933) seemed the ultimate limit for United States diplomacy. They were appalled when during the Second World War uncritical rejection of all things Soviet gave way to undiscriminating acceptance. They wrote prescient analyses on the dynamics of Soviet society during that period. George Kennan came as close to authoring the diplomatic doctrine of his era as any diplomat in our history. Perhaps it was inevitable that a lifetime of specialization would produce a commitment to US-Soviet relationships that was not without its emotional component. Having suffered through decades when communications were practically cut off, partly by the severity of our approach but above all by the paranoia of the Soviet leadership under Stalin, these diplomats saw in the periodic post-Stalin peace offensives the beginning at last of the realization of hopes of a lifetime.

 

When we came into office, Llewellyn Thompson, in particular, then senior State Department adviser on Soviet affairs, urged the rapid acceptance of Soviet overtures lest the balance of forces within the Kremlin shift again to a hard line. It did not stem the tide that Nixon at a National Security Council meeting on January 25 stressed his determination to control negotiations with the Soviet Union from the White House. It did not affect the bureaucratic momentum that the President used every opportunity to emphasize that he did not wish to commit himself to a specific date for talks on arms limitation until he had explored Soviet cooperativeness on political issues, especially Vietnam.

 

The NSC procedures that supposedly established my dictatorial control were not able in this instance to produce any coherent approach or settled policy. Late that month I asked for a study of alternative approaches and views “on the nature of U.S.-Soviet relations… in their broadest sense.” It resulted in a synthetic options paper prepared by the State Department which, in a fashion soon to become standard, bracketed the only viable option, “Limited Adversary Relationship,” between two obviously phony ones, hostility and all-out conciliation, given the definition of “Limited Adversary Relationship” was worded in such a way as to permit each agency to pursue its preferences unimpeded. A principal problem was the flat refusal of the President to confront his advisers directly on the central question. There never took place a meeting at which the issue was formally thrashed out and settled because Nixon wanted to avoid a face-to-face confrontation with his Secretary of State. Instead, Nixon sent out a letter on February 4 to Rogers, Laird, and Helms—but really intended for Rogers—that reiterated linkage as official policy:

 

I believe that the tone of our public and private discourse about and with the Soviet Union should be calm, courteous and non-polemical…

 

I believe that the basis for a viable settlement is a mutual recognition of our vital interests. We must recognize that the Soviet Union has interests; in the present circumstances we cannot but take account of them in defining our own. We should leave the Soviet leadership in no doubt that we expect them to adopt a similar approach toward us. . . . In the past, we have often attempted to settle things in a fit of enthusiasm, relying on personal diplomacy. But the “spirit” that permeated various meetings lacked a solid basis of mutual interest, and therefore, every summit meeting was followed by a crisis in less than a year.

 

I am convinced that the great issues are fundamentally interrelated. I do not mean this to establish artificial linkages between specific elements of one or another issue or between tactical steps that we may elect to take. But I do believe that crisis or confrontation in one place and real cooperation in another cannot long be sustained simultaneously. I recognize that the previous Administration took the view that when we perceive a mutual interest on an issue with the USSR, we should pursue agreement and attempt to insulate it as much as possible from the ups and downs of conflicts elsewhere. This may well be sound on numerous bilateral and practical matters such as cultural or scientific exchanges. But, on the crucial issues of our day, I believe we must seek to advance on a front at least broad enough to make clear that we see some relationship between political and military issues. I believe that the Soviet leaders should be brought to understand that they cannot expect to reap the benefits of cooperation in one area while seeking to take advantage of tension or confrontation elsewhere. Such a course involves the danger that the Soviets will use talks on arms as a safety valve on intransigence elsewhere…

 

… I would like to illustrate what I have in mind in one case of immediate and widespread interest—the proposed talks on strategic weapons. I believe our decision on when and how to proceed does not depend exclusively on our review of the purely military and technical issues, although these are of key importance. This decision should also be taken in the light of the prevailing political context and, in particular, in light of progress toward stabilizing the explosive Middle East situation, and in light of the Paris talks [on Vietnam]. I believe I should retain the freedom to ensure, to the extent that we have control over it, that the timing of talks with the Soviet Union on strategic weapons is optimal. This may, in fact, mean delay beyond that required for our review of the technical issues. Indeed, it means that we should—at least in our public position—keep open the option that there may be no talks at all.

 

The letter stated what in fact Nixon carried out, if with many detours. But since the letter was assumed—quite correctly—to have been drafted by my staff and me, it was dismissed as reflecting the malign impact of the President’s adviser. The State Department was most eager for liberalizing East-West trade unilaterally, for injecting us into the Middle East conflict in a way that magnified rather than reduced Soviet influence, and above all for beginning SALT as soon as possible. Any White House directive to the contrary was interpreted with the widest possible latitude if it was not ignored altogether. (In this case the letter, being a personal one to the Cabinet Secretaries, undoubtedly never reached the bureaucracy.)

 

In spite of the President’s seemingly explicit and unambiguous statement that he believed in linkage and was not yet committed to the unqualified opening of SALT, on March 19 our disarmament negotiator Gerard C. Smith told his Soviet counterpart Alexei Roshchin in Geneva that the start of SALT “need not be tied, in some sort of package formula, to the settlement of specific international problems.” On March 27 Secretary of State Rogers testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “we hope such talks can begin within the next few months… We have already agreed with the Soviet Union that we will have these talks fairly soon.” Asked at an April 7 press conference whether something stood in the way of SALT, Rogers replied: “No, there is nothing that stands in the way, and they can go forward soon. We are in the process of preparing for them now, and we expect they will begin in the late spring or early summer.” A State Department draft for the President’s address to the North Atlantic Council for April 10 had the President announcing: “I have instructed our Ambassador in Moscow today to advise the Soviet government that we shall be pleased to start these talks in Geneva on April…” leaving it to the President to fill in a date for something he had explicitly rejected five weeks earlier. The stratagem was apparent: State, thinking the President had been unduly influenced by me, sought to bypass me via a speech writer.

 

Day after day that spring the bureaucracy chipped away at the President’s declared policy, feeding expectations of arms talks. In the New York Times of April 18, “officials” were reported contending that arms agreements with the Soviet Union “are an overriding goal of the Nixon foreign policy.” On April 22 the Times cited “American diplomats” speculating about SALT talks in June. On May 4, Llewellyn Thompson told Dobrynin that Rogers hoped to discuss a date and place with Dobrynin before Rogers left May 12 on his trip to Asia. On May 8, Rogers told Dobrynin that he expected to be able to discuss a date, place, and modalities immediately after his return from Asia, citing the target of “early summer.” The same day, our Ambassador in Moscow, Jacob Beam, saw Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily V. Kuznetsov and, on instructions from Rogers, repeated the target dates of June or July: Kuznetsov said the Soviets were ready. On May 13 Chalmers Roberts in the Washington Post, citing Administration sources, said Rogers would meet Dobrynin on May 29 and set a date; the Soviets had reportedly reiterated their readiness. On May 14, UPI reported from Geneva that the United States was ready to start SALT in early July. On May 14, the British government approached the State Department for guidance on how to comment publicly on SALT, which they were led to believe was imminent. Other NATO allies, under the same impression, followed suit. On May 16 in Washington, Gerard Smith gave West German Ambassador Rolf Pauls a briefing on SALT, speculating that negotiations would probably have to address both MIRV and ABM and could begin “during the summer.”

 

These preemptive statements and cumulative pressures were not the result of an articulated conceptual difference between the Secretary of State and the President. They were a series of tactical day-to-day deviations from White House policy. They were intended to crystallize a decision. What they did was to expend, wholesale, assets we wanted to hoard in accordance with a careful strategy. The Soviets were eager for SALT; we intended to draw out the Soviets on other issues like Vietnam. For a brief period in the spring of that first year, the visible discrepancy between the White House and State Department gave the Soviet Union an opportunity to maneuver within our government, to egg on the State Department, media, and Congress as a deliberate form of pressure on the White House.

 

The cumulative impact of all the bureaucratic indiscipline, with media and Congressional pressures added, was that we had to abandon our attempt to use the opening of SALT talks as a lever for other negotiations. On June 11 we authorized Rogers to inform the Soviets that we were ready to start SALT—only to be met by four months of Soviet stonewalling.

 

But the bureaucracy’s victory was Pyrrhic. After yielding on the opening date, Nixon, buttressed by me, moved the conduct of negotiations more and more into the White House. While his preference for secrecy would have inclined him in this direction anyway, the bureaucracy’s indiscipline accelerated it. The Soviet leaders soon learned that while the President might be reluctant to confront his Secretary of State and while he might now and then withdraw tactically, Nixon had no intention to defer to others on the fundamental determination of our foreign policy. Once the Soviets understood that the decisions actually carried out were those made by the President, direct contact developed between Ambassador Dobrynin and the White House. There sprang into existence what came to be known in US-Soviet parlance as “the Channel.”

 

<<Contents>>

 

* * * *

 

The Channel

 

Y encounter with the extraordinary Soviet Ambassador in his apartment on February 14 was the first of a series of intimate exchanges that continued over eight years. Increasingly, the most sensitive business in US-Soviet relations came to be handled between Dobrynin and me. We met almost invariably in the Map Room of the White House, a pleasant room off the Diplomatic Entrance whose view is obscured by the rhododendron bushes planted in the garden. Franklin Roosevelt had used it as his planning room during World War II—hence its name.

 

Dobrynin and I began to conduct preliminary negotiations on almost all major issues, he on behalf of the Politburo, I as confidant to Nixon. We would, informally, clarify the basic purposes of our governments and when our talks gave hope of specific agreements, the subject was moved to conventional diplomatic channels. If formal negotiations there reached a deadlock, the Channel would open up again. We developed some procedures to avoid the sort of deadlock that can only be resolved as a test of strength. With the President’s permission I would sometimes sketch our view as my own idea, stating I was “thinking out loud.” Dobrynin would then give me the Kremlin’s reaction on the same noncommittal basis. Sometimes the procedure was reversed. Neither side was precluded from raising the issue formally because of adverse reaction from the other. But at least inadvertent confrontations were prevented. It was a way to explore the terrain, to avoid major deadlocks.

 

Dobrynin was admirably suited to this delicate role. Ambassadors nowadays have little freedom as negotiators. The telephone and telex from home can give them a detailed brief; they can also change it within the hour. But if jet-age ambassadors have become diplomatic postmen they are crucial as political interpreters—and before there is an emergency. Officials at home spend so much time managing cumbersome bureaucracies that they have little feel for the complexities of other capitals and leaders—starkly less, certainly, than in the days when the world’s significant diplomats all came from similar backgrounds and communicated within the same cultural framework. There is no substitute for the insight of a man on the spot who mixes enough to take the pulse of political life without becoming so absorbed as to lose perspective. His role is crucial in crises when judgments affecting matters of life and death depend on a subtle and rapid understanding of intangibles.

 

This is a particular challenge to Soviet ambassadors. They are the product of a bureaucracy that rewards discipline and discourages initiative; of a society historically distrustful of foreigners; of a people hiding its latent insecurity by heavy-handed self-assertiveness. With some Soviet diplomats one has the uneasy feeling that they report in a way to suit the preconceptions of their faraway but ever-watchful superiors, for in this manner they can most easily avoid the charge of flawed judgment. Most Soviet diplomats certainly cling rigidly to formal positions, for they can never be accused in Moscow of unnecessary compromise if they show no initiative. They repeat standard arguments because they cannot hazard a challenge to ideological orthodoxy. Only rarely do they explain the reasons for their positions in any but the most formal terms, for they do not want to risk being blamed at home for inadequate advocacy or suggest without authorization that Soviet purposes are subject to negotiation.

 

Dobrynin avoided these professional deformations. He was a classic product of the Communist society. Born into a family of twelve children, and the first member of his family to go to a university, he had benefited from the system that he represented so ably. He was trained as an electrical engineer and seconded to the Foreign Office during the war. Whether he owed his flexibility to his training in a subject relatively free of deadening ideology, or to a natural disposition, he was one of the few Soviet diplomats of my acquaintance who could understand the psychology of others. He was suave not just by Soviet standards—which leave ample room for clumsiness—but by any criteria. He knew how to talk to Americans in a way brilliantly attuned to their preconceptions. He too was especially skilled at evoking the inexhaustible American sense of guilt, by persistently but pleasantly hammering home the impression that every deadlock was our fault.

 

I never forgot that Dobrynin was a member of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party; I never indulged in the conceit that his easy manner reflected any predisposition toward me or toward the West. I had no doubt that if the interests of his country required it he could be as ruthless or duplicitous as any other Communist leader. I took it for granted that his effectiveness depended on the skill with which he reflected his government’s policies, not his personal preferences. But I considered his unquestioning support of the Soviet line an asset, not a liability; it enabled us to measure the policies of his masters with precision and buttressed his own influence at home. It would have been enough for our purposes that he should have an extraordinary understanding of the American scene. Occasionally he would give me his personal analysis of American politics; without exception it was acute and even wise. This gave us some confidence that the Kremlin would have at its disposal a sophisticated assessment of conditions here. An accurate understanding could not guarantee that Moscow would choose our preferred response, but it reduced the prospects of gross miscalculation.

 

Dobrynin was free of the tendency toward petty chiseling by which the run-of-the-mill Soviet diplomat demonstrates his vigilance to his superiors; he understood that a reputation for reliability is an important asset in foreign policy. Subtle and disciplined, warm in his demeanor while wary in his conduct, Dobrynin moved through the upper echelons of Washington with consummate skill. His personal role within the margin available to ambassadors was almost certainly beneficial to US-Soviet relations. If someday there should come about the genuine relaxation of tensions and dangers which our period demands, Anatoly Dobrynin will have made a central contribution to it.

 

In February 1969 we were at the very beginning. Each side was still dying to get a sense of the other. Dobrynin’s request for an appointment with the President confronted Nixon with a procedural and a substantive problem. Procedurally, Nixon wished to establish his dominance over negotiations with the Soviet Union; in his mind, this required the exclusion of Rogers, who might be too anxious and who might claim credit for whatever progress might be made. Substantively, he wanted to begin the linkage approach at his own pace. Nixon sought to solve the Rogers problem in his customary fashion by letting Haldeman bear the onus (and no doubt Haldeman laid it off on me). Haldeman told the Secretary of State that the best guarantee for not raising expectations was for Rogers to be absent from the meeting. Attendance by Rogers would convey a sense of urgency contrary to our strategy; it might lead to an undue sense of optimism. Rogers, not used to such solicitude from his old friend, proved resistant to this thoughtfulness; a good part of the weekend was spent fighting off Rogers’s pleas—basically not unjustified—that the Secretary of State participate in the first meeting between the new President and the Soviet Ambassador.

 

But this was the sort of issue on which Nixon never yielded as long as he could find someone else to do the dirty work. Rogers did not attend the meeting. As a sop to institutional prestige, Malcolm Toon, then director of Soviet affairs at the State Department (and later a first-class Ambassador to Moscow), was invited. Even that was deprived of significance, however, because Nixon dismissed Toon and me at the end of the session and then told Dobrynin privately that matters of special sensitivity should be taken up with me first.

 

The Channel was thus formally established.

 

Before his meeting with Dobrynin, Nixon asked me to write a memorandum outlining what Dobrynin was likely to raise, his objectives and the general attitude I would recommend. My response predicted that Dobrynin’s line would probably be to assure us of Soviet readiness to begin negotiations, especially on SALT; to express concern that we were not sufficiently responsive to the conciliatory stance of the Soviet Union since January 20; to leave an implication that we should not pass up the favorable opportunity; and to establish a direct channel between the President and the Russian leaders. I recommended that if Dobrynin brought a message from the Soviet leadership, the President should be receptive to concrete propositions, but not let the Soviets force the pace by vague offers to talk without indications of substance. Progress, we must insist, depended on specific settlement, not personal diplomacy. Any summit meeting should come at the end of careful preparation. On specific areas the messages should be that continued harassment of Berlin access routes over the issue of Federal Presidential elections would end all hopes of negotiations; that in the Middle East, each side should use its influence for restraint and a flexible diplomacy; that we were determined to end the war in Vietnam and our overall relations with the Soviets depended on their help in settling that conflict. I also included an ambiguous formulation to the effect that if Soviet support failed to materialize “we do not exclude that others who have an interest would be enlisted to bring about progress…” This was a cryptic reference to the Chinese—though it would not be opaque to the astute Dobrynin.

 

As was his habit, Nixon carefully underlined the sentences in my memorandum that seemed significant to him. He noted the passage emphasizing our commitment to the integrity and vitality of Berlin. He underlined almost every sentence in the sections on the Middle East and Vietnam; he noted the reference to China.

 

In meetings with foreign leaders Nixon was a superb expositor of carefully prepared positions; he also understood foreign psychologies better than those of most Americans—perhaps he considered them less of a threat. But the give-and-take of negotiations made him nervous; he hated any personal encounter that was not a set piece; he found it painful to insist on his point of view directly. He was impatient with small points and unwilling to confront the prolonged stalemates that are the mechanisms by which settlements are usually achieved. Though Nixon excelled at conceptual discussions, he was too proud to admit to visitors that he required the assistance of even a memorandum. As noted, he conducted his diplomatic encounters by learning by heart the talking points prepared for him—which, in fairness, were drafted to reflect his views if they had previously been discussed between us.

 

Nixon’s antipathy to personal negotiation was not a weakness in a President but a strength. Some of the debacles of our diplomatic history have been perpetrated by Presidents who fancied themselves negotiators. As a general rule the requirements of the office preclude the follow-through and attention to detail negotiation requires. Moreover, when Presidents become negotiators no escape routes are left for diplomacy. Concessions are irrevocable without dishonor. A stalemate stakes the personal prestige of the office; a mistake requires an admission of error. And since heads of government would not have chosen this career without a healthy dose of ego, negotiations can rapidly deteriorate from intractability to confrontation. Negotiations at lower levels—and even the Secretary of State is a low level in relation to the President—permit the head of government to intervene at crucial moments; adjustments can be made at far less cost. By the time heads of government appear on the scene the texts of agreement should already have been settled—so it was most times with the Presidents I served—though a point or two may be left open to justify the claim that the intervention of the principals clinched the issue. Presidents, of course, are responsible for shaping the overall strategy. They must make the key decisions; for this they are accountable, and for it they deserve full credit no matter how much help they receive along the way. When they attempt the tactical implementation of their own strategy they court disaster. Nixon never made that mistake.

 

The first meeting between Dobrynin and Nixon took place on February 17, 1969. Dobrynin, now recovered from the flu, came into the Oval Office, was introduced to the President, and presented the views of his leadership much along the lines of his conversation with me a few days earlier. He hinted at the possibility of a summit meeting; he did not reject linkage. On the contrary, he asserted a Soviet willingness to negotiate on a number of subjects simultaneously. He said that the Soviet Union was prepared to use its influence to find a solution in the Middle East. And he inquired when we might be ready to engage in talks on the limitation of strategic arms.

 

Nixon, in the formal manner he adopted when he was keyed up, replied that summits required careful preparations. He stressed the importance of superpower restraint on a global basis; he insisted on the need to defuse the Middle East and Vietnam. Arms talks, too, he said, required careful preparation, and freezing arms would not assure peace unless there was also political restraint. He emphasized the importance we attached to the status of Berlin, to which Dobrynin replied that the Soviet Union would do its utmost to calm the situation.

 

It was characteristic of Nixon’s insecurity with personal encounters that he called me into his office four times that day for reassurance that he had done well. He thought there had been a tough confrontation. My impression was rather the opposite—that the meeting had been on the conciliatory side. Or at least that it went as one would expect of the opening in a chess game between experts. Each side made moves to maintain the maximum number of options; each side sought to protect itself against some unexpected move by the opponent. I could tell Nixon in good conscience that he had done as well as possible.

 

The next morning, February 18, I sent Nixon a memorandum with my reflections on that first meeting. My conclusion was:

 

I believe the current Soviet line of conciliation and interest in negotiations, especially on arms control but also on the Middle East, stems in large measure from their uncertainty about the plans of this Administration. They are clearly concerned that you may elect to undertake new weapons programs which would require new and costly decisions in Moscow; they hope that early negotiations would at least counteract such tendencies in Washington. (I doubt that there is much division on this point in the Kremlin, though there may well be substantial ones over the actual terms of an agreement with us.) In a nutshell, I think that at this moment of uncertainty about our intentions (the Soviets see it as a moment of contention between “reasonable” and “adventurous” forces here), Moscow wants to engage us. Some would argue that regardless of motive, we should not let this moment of Soviet interest pass, lest Moscow swing back to total hostility. My own view is that we should seek to utilize this Soviet interest, stemming as I think it does from anxiety, to induce them to come to grips with the real sources of tension, notably in the Middle East, but also in Vietnam. This approach also would require continued firmness on our part in Berlin.

 

It was too soon to gauge what the Soviets were up to. Dobrynin had assented to linkage only in the sense that the Soviet leaders indicated their readiness to negotiate on a broad front; they did not agree to making the result of one negotiation conditional on progress in another. Dobrynin had agreed blandly that progress toward peace in Vietnam would help improve the overall relationship; but this formulation was also consistent with an attempt to blackmail us by “reverse linkage.” The Soviet offer to be helpful on the Middle East in practice could have meant—and in fact proved to mean—no more than that they were prepared to support their Arab friends.

 

As it turned out, we were not to break out of our deadlock with the Soviets until 1971. Inconclusive exchanges in 1969 degenerated into a series of confrontations that lasted through 1970. On about ten occasions in 1969 in my monthly meetings with Dobrynin I tried to enlist Soviet cooperation to help end the war in Vietnam. Dobrynin was always evasive. He denied that the Soviet Union had any interest in continuing the war; he warned (extremely mildly in retrospect) against escalation; he never came up with a concrete proposal to end the war.

 

The President fared no better. On March 26 Nixon wrote to Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin along the lines of his conversation with Dobrynin of February 17. (Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, was to play no obvious public role in foreign policy until the middle of 1971.) Kosygin replied on May 27, adding little to the standard Soviet position. The major new feature of his letter was that, probably emboldened by American domestic criticism of our linkage concept, he now challenged the concept forcefully and openly. Kosygin argued that, “taking into account the complexity of each of these problems by itself, it is hardly worthwhile to attempt somehow to link one with another.” We decided not to argue the point; we would simply continue our approach in practice.

 

On May 14 Dobrynin was given an advance copy of the President’s Vietnam speech. By prearrangement, Nixon telephoned me while I was meeting with Dobrynin and invited both of us to the Lincoln Sitting Room to emphasize to Dobrynin his determination to end the war. There was no Soviet response. This was also the Soviet reaction to our proposal of a Vietnam peace mission by Cyrus Vance. [These US-Soviet discussions on Vietnam are described in Chapter VIII.]  It was in part because of Soviet stonewalling that Nixon scheduled his trip to Romania in August. His purpose was to remind Moscow that we had options toward Eastern Europe and also toward the People’s Republic of China, of which Romania was a sometime supporter. And in the autumn we refused to invite Andrei Gromyko to Washington for the by now almost traditional tour d’horizon with the President on the occasion of Gromyko’s annual visit to New York for the UN General Assembly. We indicated that the President would receive the Soviet Foreign Minister should an appointment be requested; this, in turn, the Soviets refused to do.

 

There was a sameness to Soviet conduct in 1969 that left little doubt of their basic preference for form over substance. By April, as I recounted earlier, a series of lower-level public statements and leaks not authorized in the White House had precipitated a commitment to start SALT talks by “late spring or early summer.” When the White House on June 11 authorized informing the Soviets that we were ready to begin talks, our bureaucracy confidently expected a reply in a matter of weeks or less. In fact, the Soviets did not reply for over four months. The reason almost certainly was that they wanted to await the end of the Senate’s ABM debate and not spoil the argument of our critics that our ABM program was incompatible with arms control negotiations.

 

Whatever the reason, it was not until October 20 that Dobrynin called on the President to inform him of Soviet willingness to set a date for the opening of SALT talks. Dobrynin took the occasion to complain about the slow progress of US-Soviet relations in general. Nixon replied that the Soviet Union had every right to make its own decisions but general progress would depend on the Soviet attitude on Vietnam. To drive the point home, I gave Dobrynin the next day as an aide-mémoire the Vietnam portion of the transcript of his conversation with the President; I had deliberately sharpened some points for Moscow’s consumption. Dobrynin, as was his practice, had taken no notes during the meeting with Nixon, but he spotted the discrepancies and asked which version he should transmit to Moscow as the official record. I told him to use the written version.

 

We made no progress on European security, especially Berlin, either. The East Germans started a mini-crisis by harassing access routes in protest of the Federal Presidential election in West Berlin, though three previous elections had passed without incident. On February 22, on the eve of his first visit to Europe, Nixon ordered a step-up of US military traffic to West Berlin. He did so over the anguished disagreement of the State Department. The incident passed because Dobrynin had promised Nixon on February 17 that the Soviet Union would keep the situation calm. On March 5 the Federal election took place in the Reichstag building without a crisis and harassment stopped. When I met Chinese Premier Chou En-lai on my secret trip in July 1971, he offered his own interpretation of these events. He argued that the Soviet Union had deliberately staged the March 1969 border clashes with China to provide a diversion while West German parliamentarians traveled unimpeded to Berlin. In Chou’s view the border clashes were manufactured to permit the Soviets “to escape their responsibilities over Berlin.” [The March 1969 military flare-up along the Sino-Soviet border is described in Chapter VI.]

 

In any case, President Nixon made a public proposal of a Berlin negotiation in his speech at the Siemens factory in West Berlin on his European trip on February 27. After reaffirming our resolve to defend the city, he expressed the hope that Berlin could become an object of “negotiation… and reconciliation” instead of threats and coercion. An offer to discuss Berlin was also included in the President’s letter to Kosygin on March 26. At the NATO meeting in Washington in April, the three Western allies responsible for Berlin—France, Britain, and the United States—were urged by the Federal Republic to approach the Soviets about Berlin. Allied consultations to this end proceeded over the summer. On July 10 Gromyko publicly declared Soviet willingness “to exchange views as to how complications concerning West Berlin can be prevented now and in the future.” West German Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger, not unaware of the benefits of an easing of tensions for the German elections scheduled for September, urged speedy acceptance. On August 7 the Western allies indicated a willingness to open talks. The Soviets waited until well into September—or just before the German elections—before giving an evasive reply; it did little but repeat Gromyko’s general phrases and stress the sovereignty of the East German regime (not yet recognized by any of the Western powers). The Soviets evaded any commitment to talk about improving access and proposed instead a negotiation on curbing West German activities in Berlin.

 

This Soviet reply seemed to me “virtually no substantive advance,” as I described it in a memorandum to the President. Once again the Soviets were seeking all the atmospheric advantages surrounding the opening of negotiations on another major issue without any indication that they were prepared for substantive progress. I concluded: “They are obviously in no hurry, and I see no reasons for us to be, especially since pushing the negotiation runs some danger of forcing the Soviets simply to repeat their rigid support for East German ‘sovereignty.’ “

 

What the Soviet leaders did try to arrange over Berlin were bilateral talks with the United States. Kosygin in his letter of May 27 had picked up the President’s offer to discuss the subject and Dobrynin, in his conversation with Nixon on October 20, made the formal proposal. Given the Soviets’ unwillingness to discuss the improvements in access to Berlin that we desired, I recommended that we discourage the notion of bilateral talks. The Soviets would only use them to stir up suspicions among our allies. We would do best to keep this issue in the regular Four-Power forum for the moment, I suggested.

 

The Soviets adopted a similar tactic on the Middle East. Once again they opened with urgent requests for talks. When these began, as Chapter X will describe, the Soviets embraced the standard radical Arab position, which they must have known was not negotiable. For months we were told that the Soviet Union could not ask its clients for concessions until the United States had clarified its positions on frontiers; we finally did so on October 28, substantially accepting the 1967 borders. No Soviet reply was received for two months; when it came it offered nothing. As far as the Soviets were concerned, 1969 was a flight from concreteness.

 

But if the Soviets procrastinated there was no shortage of Americans urging an acceleration of negotiations in almost all areas.

 

<<Contents>>

 

* * * *

 

Preparing for SALT

 

mbassador Gerard C. Smith was appointed our chief negotiator for SALT and head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in early March 1969. Though he and I often disagreed, I considered it an excellent appointment. Dedicated, indefatigable, and shrewd, Smith was one of those talented executives who serve successive administrations and epitomize the ideal of public service. It was easy to underestimate him because of his occasionally ponderous manner. But he knew his way around Washington; he was no novice at the bureaucratic game. Considering that he had no power base of his own, he was able to generate astonishing pressures. He was agile in drafting instructions for himself that permitted his nominal superiors only a minimum influence over his discretionary powers; he was not unskillful either in interpreting directives he did not happen to agree with to make them conform to his preferences. Withal, he was always cheerful and honorable, a stolid warrior for a good cause. That cause was the control of arms; it was the assignment of his agency to keep that objective alive within our government; he did it with irrepressible persistence.

 

I have described earlier the pressures that moved the Administration toward offering a date for opening SALT talks and how, contrary to the campaigners, the Soviets did not respond for four months. This fortunately gave us the bonus of additional time for preparation and enabled us to impose coherence on the negotiations when they finally opened.

 

I had issued a directive on March 6 requesting options for the US negotiating position. This request was honored mostly in the breach. The officials at the second and third levels were mostly holdovers from the previous Administration. Naturally the option they preferred was the one that Johnson would have proposed to Kosygin had his cherished summit at Leningrad taken place. The bureaucracy had labored through the summer of 1968 and given birth to an elaborate consensus proposal.

 

A major advantage was that it had been accepted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This minor bureaucratic triumph lost some of its luster, however, when one examined its principal feature: a freeze on both land-based and sea-based strategic missiles. Though in 1969 the growing Soviet arsenal of land-based missiles was beginning to approach ours in number, the Russians remained far behind in submarine-launched missiles. When one added our large advantage in intercontinental bombers (omitted from the proposal), the probability that the Soviets would accept the freeze was not overwhelming.

 

My effort to broaden the President’s choices involved unusual bureaucratic difficulties. Nixon took a keen interest in the strategy for SALT and in what channels it should be negotiated. But the details of the various plans bored him; in effect he left the selection of options to me. Yet if the bureaucracy had become aware of this, all vestige of discipline would have disappeared. I therefore scheduled over Nixon’s impatient protests a series of NSC meetings where options were presented to a glassy-eyed and irritable President so that directives could be issued with some plausibility on his authority.

 

In order to bring some order into the NSC discussion I asked for a range of options, including both limited and comprehensive approaches. The conviction with which these were pursued was shown by the fact that when subjected to analysis all of the options except one left us strategically worse off than if there were no agreement at all. The unexpected delay in the opening of SALT provided us with the opportunity to get our house in order. I learned a great deal from an interagency panel Richardson and I set up charged with a systematic analysis of the strategic implications of limits on MIRVs, the verifiability of such limits, and the possibilities and risks of evasion. After some weeks I expanded this assignment to cover not only MIRVs but all strategic weapons potentially the subject of negotiations. The CIA was asked to assess the verifiability of each weapon limitation proposed—how we could check up on compliance, how much cheating could take place before discovery, and the strategic consequences of the possible violations. The Defense Department was requested to analyze what remedial measures were available and the time it would take to implement them. When the first interagency options papers came before the Review Group, I told my colleagues that the mind boggled at the possible combinations of negotiating positions and it was not fair to the President to ask him to sort them out. So we went back to the drawing board and tried a new approach. We analyzed the possible limitations weapon by weapon, singly and then in combination. The possible limitations were grouped into some seven packages, each of which we thought compatible with our security; these were to serve as building blocks from which to construct specific proposals or to modify them. We were thus in a position to respond flexibly to Soviet ideas without each time having to develop a new US position among ourselves. The result was the most comprehensive study of the strategic and verification implications of the control of weapons ever undertaken by our government and probably any government. Our negotiating position would reflect not bureaucratic compromise but careful analysis of consequences and objectives.

 

An unintended benefit of these studies was the education and bureaucratic backstopping they provided for my later negotiations on SALT with Dobrynin in the White House Channel. It enabled me to tell which options commanded a bureaucratic consensus and yet to maintain the secrecy of the talks. I would thus deal with Dobrynin knowing I was on relatively safe ground. (This did not totally protect me against Monday-morning quarterbacking, however.)

 

The first official session of SALT was to begin in Helsinki on November 17, 1969. As we examined the various building blocks and the absence of any governmental consensus it seemed to me wisest to treat the session as exploratory. We did not want to give the Soviet Union an opportunity to score a propaganda coup, or risk failure by putting forward clearly unacceptable proposals. Gerard Smith supported this view for his own reasons; he was afraid that he might not like the instructions which the President was most probably going to issue; he hoped to use the first session to elicit from the Soviets proposals that he favored for a ban on ABMs and a moratorium on MIRV testing. As often in big bureaucracies, different motives produced instructions to the effect that the opening talks were to develop a work program and to draw out Soviet views on procedures. We would make clear our willingness to discuss limitations on both offensive and defensive weapons systems. Verifiability would be stressed. To curb excessive enthusiasm, the delegation was instructed to refer any proposals for MIRV or other moratoriums to Washington.

 

The first round of the strategic arms limitation talks began as scheduled and lasted till December 22. An early impasse developed over what constituted a strategic weapon. The Soviets defined as “strategic” any weapon that could reach the territory of the other side, thereby sweeping in our forward-based aircraft in Western Europe as well as our carrier-based aircraft, but neatly excluding their own medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles and large fleet of medium bombers targeted at Western Europe. The scheme had the additional political advantage of elaborating a distinction between our security concerns and those of Western Europe, thus straining the Western Alliance. Needless to say, we rejected the Soviet definition. The Soviets similarly raised the issue of “non-dissemination” of nuclear weapons, which called into question our cooperation with our British ally on nuclear matters and indeed possibly with the whole NATO defense establishment.

 

The Soviets were most eager to talk about the weapons system that so many experts had opposed because they alleged that it would make all SALT negotiations impossible—the ABM. And much to the surprise of our SALT delegation, the Soviets showed no interest in a MIRV ban. They did not raise it, or respond when we brought it up. On the whole their tone was precise, nonpolemic, businesslike, and serious.

 

I evaluated the results in a Washington background briefing on December 18:

 

We were told before we went to Helsinki by many people that if we didn’t go there with a position, the Soviets would lose confidence in us, or we were told if we didn’t go there with a detailed position the Soviets would preempt the field with a spectacular of their own.

 

In fact the curious thing seems to have happened that the Soviet preparations have taken about the same form as ours; that is, they have made a detailed analysis of the problems and I consider that one of the more hopeful signs, regardless of what may come out in the next phase of the talks.

 

The SALT process with all its bureaucratic stresses had brought matters about where we wanted them. We had given up no strategic programs as an admission price. We had made no unilateral concessions. We had educated our government in both the importance and the complexity of the subject. We had made clear to the Soviets that they would have to be precise, that they would get nowhere with propaganda. But we were also committed to progress. We would not treat the nuclear weapon as simply another weapon; once started on the course we would proceed toward the limitation of strategic arms without illusion but also without respite, with dedication to security and also with the conviction that future generations should know that we seized all opportunities to push back the specter of nuclear war. We would not neglect our defenses; we would not risk falling behind; we never forgot that the future of freedom depended on our nuclear strength. But the nuclear buildup was unlike any other arms race in history. It staked the lives of all human beings. It imposed an obligation for arms control that we had no right to shirk.

 

<<Contents>>

 

* * * *

 

East-West Trade

 

ne of the curiosities of Communism is that an ideology founded on the inexorable influence of economics should do so poorly in delivering the goods. Whenever market economies and Communist economies have competed in roughly comparable circumstances, the Communist economies have been left far behind. By whatever standard one compares West and East Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, South and North Korea, or South and North Vietnam before the forcible unification, the market economies produce more and better goods and services, fulfill more human needs, and create far more pluralist societies than their Communist counterparts. Only in one category have Communist economies scored: the accumulation of military power. Unfortunately, history offers no guarantee that a more humane and beneficent style of life inevitably prevails. Those prepared to deprive themselves over decades may be able to achieve military dominance; sooner or later superior power almost inevitably produces political advantages for the stronger side. This is a challenge the industrial democracies dare not fail to meet.

 

There are many reasons for the inferior economic performance of Communist societies. Even with the development of modern computers—themselves a sophisticated central industry in which Communist economies are backward—planning cannot escape bottlenecks and bureaucracy. Communist planning creates incentives for managers not to produce more but to understate the productive potential so that they are not caught by failing to fulfill quotas. Communist executives tend to hoard scarce materials to make themselves independent of the vagaries of the planning process. Whatever the causes, it is little wonder that, with shortages and bureaucratic stumbling, the Soviet Union and the East European Communist states have since the late 1950s sought to expand trade with the West as a shortcut to modern technology and capital. We, for our part, have imposed restrictions since the onset of the Cold War in the late Forties, either unilaterally or in concert with our allies. American law prohibited the extension of Most Favored Nation treatment to imports from Communist countries except Poland and Yugoslavia.

 

As a result, big tariff cuts in later trade negotiations did not apply and imports had to pay the very high tariffs of the 1930 Hawley-Smoot Act. American exports of products or technical data that could enhance Communist military and economic potential needed licenses—rarely given—under the Export Control Act of 1949. United States Export-Import Bank credits or guarantees for any country trading with North Vietnam (effectively all Communist countries) were barred by the so-called Fino Amendment. Any financial or commercial transactions with North Korea, North Vietnam, or Cuba and (until 1971) China needed special license. A common list of prohibited strategic exports, not quite as severe as the American embargoes, was operated from 1950 by the Co-ordinating Committee on Export Controls (COCOM), representing the NATO countries and Japan. Travel to many Communist countries was restricted by US law.

 

The Nixon Administration came into office when nearly all these restrictions were under attack in the United States. Liberal opinion regarded them as archaisms of the Cold War, which, they argued, was in the process of liquidation. On October 7, 1966, President Johnson had announced a shift from “the narrow concept of co-existence to the broader vision of peaceful engagement.” This was expressed in a series of minor liberalizing measures on trade and credits which he was able to take within his administrative discretion. The overture was rebuffed by Brezhnev on October 16: The United States labored under a “strange and persistent delusion” if it believed that relations could be improved while the Vietnam war continued—making Brezhnev the father of the linkage theory.

 

The issue was quiescent for two years. Then in the spring of 1968, former Presidential Counselor Theodore Sorensen and former Under Secretary of State George Ball led a campaign urging removal of restrictions on East-West trade. Senate hearings were held in June and July 1968. Senator Walter Mondale introduced a resolution urging that these trade barriers be lowered. The discussion of 1968 was only briefly submerged by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the Presidential election; it quickly heated up again in early 1969, after Nixon’s Inauguration, for the 1949 Export Control Act was due to expire on June 30 of that year.

 

Hearings were held from April through July of 1969. The only issue in disagreement was not whether but to what degree the existing law should be eased. The New York Times declared on June 3 that US trade restrictions were “self-defeating.” They were “cold war policies” that were “inconsistent with the Nixon Administration’s theory that it is time to move from an era of confrontation into one of negotiation and cooperation”—helpfully instructing the President on what his own policy was. The Administration’s apparent reluctance to liberalize the Export Control Act was “inexplicable.” The basic argument of Senators like J. William Fulbright, Walter Mondale, and Edmund Muskie was that the Cold War was over, that linking trade to foreign policy only caused suspicions and tensions. Mondale said the restrictions “hold back economic growth in the U.S., not in Eastern Europe.” Muskie pointed out that some items could be bought from our European allies. Nicholas Katzenbach, former Under Secretary of State, built a political pyramid: Trade meant freer choices for Soviet consumers and managers, which was the beginning of a freer society, and a more sophisticated Soviet economy would undercut Soviet ideology and stimulate dissent. Maintaining the restrictions for political reasons was denounced as self- denying economically, as futile politically, and as playing into the hands of Stalinist hard-liners.

 

My own view was of a piece with my general attitude. Given Soviet needs, expanding trade without a political quid pro quo was a gift; there was very little the Soviet Union could do for us economically. It did not seem to me unreasonable to require Soviet restraint in such trouble spots as the Middle East, Berlin, and SouthEast Asia in return. Nixon had similar views, with a political edge. He did offer Dobrynin increased trade for help on Vietnam but he was doubtful that the Soviets would take the bait. If not, he saw no sense in antagonizing his old constituency by accepting liberalizing legislation. On the contrary, given the “soft” position he was taking on Vietnam he used East-West trade to refurbish his conservative credentials.

 

Within the bureaucracy, East-West trade evoked the familiar opposition to linkage. Only the Defense Department generally supported the White House view. The State Department favored liberalization on the ground that it would improve the political atmosphere, which was of course exactly the opposite of the White House view that trade should follow political progress. The Commerce Department’s view was the most interesting because it reflected the surprising attitude of much of the American business community. Business leaders are of course vocally anti-Communist. In the abstract they preach hard bargaining with the Communists and they are quick to blame their government for “giveaways.” But when it comes to trade, their attitude changes. During my period in office the most fervent advocates of East-West trade without strings were in the group of capitalists so vilified by Leninist theory. They are dedicated to the free market, at least if it means more business for their companies. They resent as “government interference” the apparatus of regulations and restrictions that is the only way to subordinate economic relations to political goals. If the Soviet Union can enter our market for credit or goods on the basis of purely economic criteria, all political leverage disappears. Perhaps businessmen are in addition especially susceptible to the bonhomie with which Soviet officials flatter those whom they wish to influence—a style of slightly inebriated good fellowship not totally unknown in some of the reunions of capitalist trade associations.

 

East-West trade came up for discussion at an NSC meeting on May 21. The Administration had to take a position on the proposals in Congress to replace the expiring Export Control Act with a more forthcoming law. The government also had to decide on a number of specific licenses that had been requested: for materials for a foundry at a new Soviet truck plant, for an oil extraction plant, and for a small sale of $15 million of corn to the USSR at world market prices. Before the meeting I sent Nixon a briefing paper summing up the agencies’ recommendations together with my own. My view was not to oppose but to acquiesce in a new law granting the President discretionary authority to expand trade, while exercising this authority only in return for a political quid pro quo. I also recommended bringing the United States export control list into line with the somewhat more liberal COCOM list, since otherwise we merely lost business to our allies without affecting Communist conduct. Finally, I favored issuing a license for the oil extraction plant because the long lead time for its construction would give us continuing leverage. I opposed licenses for the foundry and the corn sale.

 

Nixon went against my recommendations. Smarting from the Soviet refusal to help us on Vietnam, he told the NSC meeting: “I do not accept the philosophy that increased trade results in improved political relations. In fact just the converse is true. Better political relations lead to improved trade.” This was my belief too, but Nixon took it one step farther. He decreed that the Administration would oppose all legislative efforts to liberalize trade; the specific projects, including the oil extraction plant, were to be “put on ice” for the time being. I pointed out the general consensus that we should bring our restricted list in line with the COCOM list, except for computers and other key items in which we still had in effect a monopoly. The President agreed. A directive was issued on May 28. I saw to it that the directive was phrased in a relatively positive way, keeping open the possibility of increased trade if the political context changed.

 

No sooner were these instructions issued than the departments began to nibble away at them. Departments accept decisions which go against them only if vigilantly supervised. Otherwise the lower-level exegesis can be breathtaking in its effrontery. It falls on the President’s Assistant for National Security to do this policing in the field of national security. I soon had my hands full. Despite the President’s explicit orders at the May 21 NSC meeting that trade was not to be liberalized, the Commerce Department in July was about to announce administrative decontrol of about thirty items for export to the USSR and Eastern Europe. This was based on the proposition that Nixon had ruled only against liberalized legislation, not against easing trade by administrative fiat; Commerce therefore considered itself free to undertake a major liberalization of East-West trade within existing law. I stopped this move, but had to fight off similar schemes at regular intervals. In October, for example, State and Commerce requested authority for a sale of computers to the USSR for its communications with Eastern Europe; Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans wanted to decontrol a long list of 135 items without any political reciprocity. I disapproved these requests, in accordance with Nixon’s decision at the NSC.

 

We were somewhat more obliging with respect to Eastern Europe, however, but again in the service of a political strategy. Our trade was used as a carrot for those countries pursuing policies relatively independent of the Soviet Union. Thus when the President’s trip to Romania was announced on June 28, I asked Elliot Richardson and the Under Secretaries Committee of the NSC to recommend trade concessions that could be offered to the Romanians. After the President’s visit to Romania, the White House actively promoted trade with Romania by whatever administrative steps could be taken. Maury Stans was imaginative and the Science Advisor, Lee DuBridge, came up with excellent ideas on technical cooperation. No sooner had we moved toward Romania, however, than various departments pressed for the liberalization of trade with all of Eastern Europe. This would have undermined our deliberate strategy of using trade selectively to encourage political autonomy. It took many months before we made our point.

 

After prolonged debate, the Congress passed a bill in December, the Export Administration Act of 1969, that liberalized the old Export Control Act and declared it US policy to favor expansion of peaceful trade with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. But much of its implementation was left to Presidential discretion. [Ironically, in light of later events, the President was not given the right to grant Most Favored Nation status to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe although we could have gotten it had we asked for it. This came back to haunt us a few years later when we sought this authority, and the Congressional mood had meanwhile shifted 180 degrees.] After a while Moscow began to understand that if it wanted liberalized trade it would have to show restraint in its international conduct and arrange for progress on key foreign policy issues. Eventually the time would come when, consistent with our strategy, we would seek to offer some concessions after the Soviet Union cooperated with us in the political field. Then we suddenly encountered a reversal of attitudes. Many of those who had castigated us for seeking to link trade to Soviet foreign policy began to criticize us for not linking it more aggressively to Soviet domestic policy. Then, too, we would have to come to grips in earnest with the fundamental issue of East-West trade: if well-designed it forges links whose cumulative effect can reinforce restraints against Soviet aggressiveness; but also it can add to the sinews of Soviet power. It is as wrong to overlook the possibilities as to ignore the dangers.

 

<<Contents>>

 

* * * *

 

Eastern Europe: Nixon’s Visit to Romania

 

he division of Europe along the Elbe River in Central Germany corresponded neither to historical tradition nor to the aspirations of its peoples. In every country of Eastern Europe an essentially alien regime had been imposed by Soviet troops; in three of them popular revolts had been crushed by the Red Army. In no country of Eastern Europe could the Communists win a free election even after a generation of totalitarian rule. The Soviet Union had started on the route of selective détente by seeking to split our allies from us; it seemed to us that détente, to be genuine, had to apply in Eastern Europe as well as Western Europe.

 

But this raised a problem of extraordinary complexity and indeed tragedy. Clarion calls to liberation had been mocked in 1956 when we stood by as Hungary was brutally suppressed. And again we were paralyzed in 1968 when the Prague uprising was crushed. Our sin was less betrayal than the raising of expectations we could not possibly fulfill. The Johnson Administration had announced a policy of “peaceful engagement” seeking to promote trade and cultural relations with Eastern Europe but had not achieved much beyond enunciation of a clever theory. We attempted a more differentiated policy to encourage the countries of Eastern Europe to act more independently within their possibilities. We made no promises we could not back up nor used rhetoric that might trigger actions doomed to disaster. We would reward those with a more independent foreign policy and stay aloof where a nation, by necessity or choice, slavishly followed the Soviet line. Differential détente could work both ways.

 

Reacting to a report of the tumultuous greeting given astronaut Frank Borman in Czechoslovakia, the President sent me a note in early June 1969: “Henry, I believe we could needle our Moscow friends by arranging more visits to the Eastern Europe countries. The people in those countries, if given a chance, will welcome our Cabinet officers and others with great enthusiasm.”

 

A few weeks later, Nixon had a more concrete idea—that he should visit Eastern Europe himself. He suggested including Romania on his around-the-world trip, making him the first American President to pay a State visit to a Communist country. He had done this for two reasons: When he was out of office he had been treated with great respect by the Romanian leadership on a visit in 1967, in contrast to his treatment in other East European countries. Nixon never forgot courtesies of this kind. But his principal reason was to needle the Soviets, or, as he told me, “By the time we get through with this trip they are going to be out of their minds that we are playing a Chinese game.”

 

On June 21, on Nixon’s instructions, I called in Ambassador Corneliu Bogdan of Romania and noted that the President was thinking of taking an around-the-world trip in the second half of July after watching the Apollo 11 splashdown in the Pacific. Would it be convenient for the President to stop in Bucharest on August 2 and 3? Within forty-eight hours, on June 23, we were given the official reply that the Romanian government welcomed the visit—despite the fact that it would force postponement of a long-scheduled Romanian party conference to which the Soviet leadership had been invited. There could be no greater proof of the importance that Romania attached to a separate opening to Washington and to a Presidential visit.

 

The dramatic announcement was made on June 28. For the first time an American President would visit a Communist nation in Eastern Europe. I blandly told a press briefing that it was not “an anti-Soviet gesture.” The President had “very pleasant recollections” of his meetings with the Romanian leaders when they received him warmly as a private citizen: “The United States is interested in dealing with the countries of Eastern Europe on the basis of mutual respect… We feel under no obligation to check with the Soviet Union before making visits to sovereign countries.”

 

So pervasive was the assumption that the Nixon Administration was hopelessly bellicose and anti-Soviet that the Romania visit was immediately denounced as reckless. Some in the State Department objected to the Romania visit (which had been arranged through White House channels) as dangerously provocative; they feared it would undermine SALT and other negotiations. The leading newspapers shared this view. The Romania visit was attacked as “disturbing,” and as a possible threat to SALT; it was a “blunder” that would unnecessarily antagonize the Soviets, harden the Soviet attitude on all East-West questions—and also bestow American blessing on a “brutal Communist dictatorship.”[37]

 

The Soviets also reacted—in a manner that made clear they understood the significance of the visit. The planned attendance of Brezhnev and Kosygin at the rescheduled Romanian party conference was canceled. I asked Bogdan on July 3 if his government had given the Soviets any advance word. He said he did not know; he thought they might have been informed shortly before the announcement. Romania made its own decisions, he said.

 

The President arrived in Bucharest on August 2 and received what the New York Times called “a warm reception from hundreds of thousands of flag-waving Romanians in the largest and most genuinely friendly welcome of his global tour.” He toured a municipal market and a folk dancing school and joined in a dance with Romanian President Nicolae Ceauşescu. The Times, now convinced, exclaimed editorially on August 5 that the enthusiastic welcome demonstrated the enormous goodwill the United States enjoyed in Eastern Europe; that the President’s themes of peace, national sovereignty, and peaceful coexistence were not clichés to Eastern Europeans, who vividly recalled the Czech invasion.

 

The overwhelming exuberance of the reception accorded Nixon was of course in part inspired and staged by the government. But even if the reception had been organized, it remained an extraordinary demonstration of Romania’s independence from the Soviet Union. And it would have been difficult if not impossible for any government to create the emotional, joyful, human quality of the public outpouring. The streets of Bucharest were lined by hundreds of thousands of people at all times, waiting for a mere glimpse of the Presidential automobile. They did not merely line up along the boulevards coming in from the airport, or only around the guest house where the President stayed; they waited hour by hour in a continuous rain for the mere appearance of Nixon anywhere. It was profoundly moving, the emotional response of the people of a Communist state who so welcomed this first chance to greet the President of a nation that for many of them still stood, as it did in the nineteenth century, as the symbol of democracy and human freedom.

 

Nixon’s public remarks in Bucharest reflected the recurring themes of United States policy: the importance of coexistence, repudiation of the Brezhnev Doctrine, our desire to settle problems by concrete negotiations:

 

We see value neither in the exchange of polemics nor in a false euphoria. We seek the substance of détente, not its mere atmosphere.

 

We seek, in sum, a peace not of hegemonies and not of artificial uniformity, but a peace in which the legitimate interests of each are respected and all are safeguarded.

 

It was also apparent that East European leaders, not unlike our own allies, feared a Soviet-American deal at their expense. This was not our policy; the President’s visit—and his later unprecedented visits to Yugoslavia and Poland—were the best demonstration.

 

<<Contents>>

 

* * * *

 

Conclusion

 

ne of the innovations of the Nixon Presidency was the preparation of an annual report on foreign policy in the name of the President. I had proposed this in a memorandum to Nixon in the transition period. It was to serve as a conceptual outline of the President’s foreign policy, as a status report, and as an agenda for action. It could simultaneously guide our bureaucracy and inform foreign governments about our thinking.

 

This idea, patterned alter the annual Defense Posture Statement initiated by Robert McNamara, created a whole host of problems. To begin with, the State Department asserted a proprietary interest, in spite of the fact that in the entire history of the Republic the State Department had never thought of issuing such a report. This led to the now customary tug-of-war between Rogers and me of which the most charitable description is that neither of us conducted ourselves better with respect to the annual report than with respect to other matters. Both the NSC staff and the State Department started preparing drafts while seeking to conceal this fact from each other. I and my staffers had the advantage of propinquity to the President and much greater knowledge of his views. The State Department draft further handicapped itself by seeking to please every bureaucratic fiefdom in that unwieldy structure; with every desk officer insisting on a mention of his country or countries of responsibility, the State Department draft was not distinguished by conceptual thrust or the ability to make any particular point.

 

Nixon resolved this dispute by methods that were becoming typical. He waited until Rogers was out of the country on an African trip and then ruled that both the NSC and the State Department could publish reports but that the Presidential one would appear at least a month before State’s. This set off a frantic outburst of drafting on the Presidential report while my exhausted staff tried to deal with my revisions of their drafts and the objections of the bureaucracy. The high point of interagency wrangling was reached in 1971, when the State Department objected to a sentence about international protection of endangered species; our draft observed with some attempt at literary flair that such creatures were a fit topic for international cooperation since they moved without respect to national boundaries and could not totally be protected by national action. The State Department, ever careful, recommended changing the sentence to claim only that “some” of these creatures moved without respect to national boundaries. I did not accept the change, taking the risk of offending some patriotic bird.

 

Once the President’s annual review became established, it produced some of the most thoughtful governmental statements of foreign policy. To our sorrow we never managed to get across its basic purpose of raising fundamental questions and expressing a philosophy. Try as we might, the media would cover only the section on Vietnam, probing for hot news or credibility gaps, ignoring the remainder as not newsworthy. In 1973 we ran into another problem. The report was issued in early May, after a year of Chinese and Soviet summits and climactic Vietnam negotiations; the date we had chosen weeks earlier for release of the report came four days after the resignation of Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Nevertheless, the reports performed a useful function. They served as rough guides to the bureaucracy. They were unusually candid. They were invaluable in conveying nuances of change to foreign governments. As I will show in various chapters, changes in attitude toward China, in defense policy, in the Middle East and elsewhere were often foreshadowed in the President’s annual reports.

 

The President’s first report, published on February 18, 1970, stated bluntly that “our overall relationship with the USSR remains far from satisfactory.” In Vietnam, “to the detriment of the cause of peace,” the Soviets had “failed to exert a helpful influence on the North Vietnamese in Paris” and bore a “heavy responsibility for the continuation of the war” because of its arms supply of North Vietnam. In the Middle East, the report charged that “we have not seen on the Soviet side that practical and constructive flexibility which is necessary for a successful outcome”; even more, the report noted “evidence… that the Soviet Union seeks a position in the area as a whole which would make great power rivalry more likely.” (This would be proved true in two Middle East crises during 1970.)

 

These judgments reflected the reality that the Soviet Union was immobile in 1969. But, almost imperceptibly, there were the beginnings of a slow movement forward. The foreign policy decisions of any large state emerge from a complicated pattern of bureaucratic, domestic, and international pressures; the Soviet bureaucracy and policy process are especially tortuous. In 1969 the Soviets had to contend with a new US Administration, which is always a massive analytical problem for Soviet leaders, and we, in addition, were changing procedures. Operating on a broad front in simultaneous negotiations, for example, may not have been merely unfamiliar to the Soviet administrative process; it may have strained its capacity. Even though the apparatus is huge, it narrows to a very few decision-makers at the top. Their orders then filter back through an unwieldy line of command. Decisions tend to be made painstakingly, and since they put at stake the prestige of the top leadership they are changed only with the utmost reluctance. In 1969, furthermore, the conflict with China must have occupied much of the attention span of Soviet leaders. Serious military clashes along the Sino-Soviet border in March and in the summer prompted a major propaganda battle, probably serious policy debates, and later the opening of border talks.

 

The deepest reason for Soviet immobilism in 1969, however, was undoubtedly that conditions had not yet generated incentives and penalties of sufficient magnitude to impel decision. On Vietnam, the Soviets may have been moderately sincere in their avowed interest in helping us settle the war, knowing that it obstructed US-Soviet relations, but the difficult decision to exert pressure on their ally would never be made in the abstract. Indeed, as long as the risks to US-Soviet relations remained hypothetical, and the benefits of an Indochina settlement conjectural, the line of least resistance in Moscow was procrastination. Circumstances, in other words, failed to provide a spur to a Soviet decision. They faced no penalty for evading our requests for help. Their warnings against our escalation we took seriously at the time, though in retrospect I believe this was a mistake. In rereading the relevant documents for this volume, I am struck by the hedging and cautious tone of Soviet statements. They disparaged escalation as “solving nothing,” as “aggravating the international situation,” as being in a general way “dangerous.” At no time did the Soviets even approach the hint of a threat. On one occasion Dobrynin pointed out that if we resumed bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong, halted by President Johnson in 1968, Chinese engineer battalions withdrawn a few years earlier might reenter Vietnam, which would increase Chinese influence in Hanoi. I said, “If you can live with it, we can”; Dobrynin was silent.

 

In retrospect it is clear that only if we posed specific tangible risks to important Soviet interests would the Soviets have an incentive to exert pressure on their monomaniacal clients in Hanoi. Offering positive inducements would help, but unless combined with risks posed by us, inducements would be rejected as too embarrassing to Soviet standing in the Communist world. When we finally did obtain Soviet help in 1972, it was through just such a combination of pressures and incentives. But before the North Vietnamese Easter offensive of 1972 we were never prepared to face the domestic and international consequences of such a course.

 

If the penalties were unclear to the Soviet leadership, so were the rewards. The President stated repeatedly that negotiations would accelerate in the Middle East once Vietnam was settled; I reinforced his comments. But we were not in a position to answer in precise terms Dobrynin’s question to me on May 14: “Supposing the war were settled, how would you go about improving relations?” The best answer I could come up with was a summit and an unspecified promise to improve trade. In the Middle East our interest ran counter to Moscow’s; it was the goal of our strategy, after all, to reduce Soviet influence in the Middle East, that of the Soviets to enhance or at least to preserve it. Nor were we prepared to trade that Middle East interest for a settlement in Vietnam.

 

No doubt domestic politics in America encouraged Soviet tendencies to procrastinate. The early fear that Nixon would embark on massive rearmament was soon superseded by awareness that in the face of mounting Congressional opposition the Administration would be lucky to maintain the existing defense budget. New military programs were fiercely attacked; some passed only by the thinnest of margins; once they were authorized their implementation was systematically whittled down and funds for them reduced annually. All pressures were in the direction of “reordering priorities” away from defense. Nor did it seem probable that America’s allies would support a high-risk course in Vietnam. Thus again the Soviets had little reason to be forthcoming.

 

But while we may have been too optimistic about US-Soviet relations at the beginning of 1969, we began to lay the basis for ultimate progress by our moves in other areas—demonstrating the validity of linkage. We created the strategy that led to the reversal of alliances in the Middle East. We began to move decisively toward China. Our course in Vietnam made Soviet help dispensable for three years and then achievable in 1972. We strengthened Alliance relations. Through turmoil and tensions, we got across to the Soviets that if our style was sober, our policy would be serious and deliberate and at the right moment bold.

 

I sent the President an analysis of Soviet policy at the end of 1969, which I prepared with the help of Hal Sonnenfeldt and Bill Hyland of my staff. It began by rejecting the proposition that Soviet policy necessarily followed a master plan:

 

It is always tempting to arrange diverse Soviet moves into a grand design. The more esoteric brands of Kremlinology often purport to see each and every move as part of the carefully orchestrated score in which events inexorably move to the grand finale.

 

Experience has shown that this has rarely if ever been the case. From the Cuban missile crisis, through the Arab-Israeli war, to the invasion of Czechoslovakia, there has been a large element of improvisation in Soviet policy.

 

I suspected that this was the case at present. The Kremlin had several balls in the air. But Soviet actions seemed responses to particular situations. Some analysts saw a close tactical connection between the Sino- Soviet talks and the Soviet conduct of SALT. By tying the United States up in prolonged SALT negotiations, the Soviets could exploit the appearance of Soviet-American collusion against China. The main problem with this theory was that the Soviet position in SALT made good sense without reference to the Chinese situation, and the deterioration of the Chinese talks could easily be explained on the merits of the issues. The Soviets had been noncommittal in SALT principally to explore the terrain as we were doing, and also to determine to what degree we were under domestic pressure to make concessions or unilateral cutbacks in our military programs. The Chinese were responding to Soviet military pressures by feelers toward us. Thus, if the Soviets designed their SALT moves to impress the Chinese, they succeeded to some extent, but the result might not have been to Soviet liking; it might, in fact, have speeded up Chinese contacts with us. In Europe, instead of taking a conciliatory line in order to free their energies to deal with China, the Soviets were driving a hard bargain in initial talks with Willy Brandt’s new government—largely because the evident yearning in Western Europe for détente seemed to provide an opportunity for cheap gains through intransigence.

 

My analysis concluded: “In sum, there does not seem to be any single unifying thread to Soviet policy.”

 

Before this unifying thread could develop, the Soviet leaders had probed in several directions at once. Only after we had resisted in some bitter confrontations throughout 1970 and 1971 did our relations take a turn for the better.

 

<<Contents>>

 

* * * *