The relations between identity and foreign policy are brought out well by the 1969-1975 detente and the end of the Cold War, and to compare them brings us back to the asymmetry between the Soviet and American identities. What is most important for my analysis is the decline of detente, but this cannot be examined without some discussion of its origins and course. As usual, we know more about the American side, for which Vietnam was central. Nixon inherited a bloody and unpopular war and, like Lyndon B. Johnson before him, could neither win it nor afford a defeat. For Johnson and Nixon, what was at stake was the credibility of American commitments around the world, and the importance of credibility was greatly enhanced by a nuclear strategy that stressed the role of resolve and signals in producing deterrence in an era when nuclear war meant total destruction. This also meant that it was not so much defeat that was unacceptable as it was defeat of a type that would produce these unfortunate effects. Thus, if the Communists won not by pushing out American troops, but only after a decent interval following their removal, the harm to the United States would be less and the domino effects could be greatly attenuated. Furthermore, if the Soviet Union could be pressured into helping end the war, it might not take the American actions as indications of weakness.32
Such a "soft landing" was also needed for reasons more closely related to identity, as an open defeat in Vietnam could undermine the self-confidence of the American public, and perhaps of US leaders. From the start of the Cold
War, the US elite worried that the public lacked the steady nerves that the struggle required and was prone to vacillate between defeatism and excess fear on the one hand and unwise bellicosity on the other. Defeats were particularly dangerous because they could lead to an over-reaction in either direction, and if the United States was to keep on track, the war had to be ended in a way that minimized its adverse consequences.
The Nixon administration also sought to limit Soviet advances in the Third World through the policy of linkage - i. e., making arms-control agreements, treaties formalizing the European settlement, and access to American economic resources contingent on Soviet restraint in the Third World. This assumed that the United States could afford to withhold these benefits if the Soviet Union did not cooperate. And that, of course, was the problem. Although in earlier periods the United States had resisted negotiating from a perceived position of weakness, Nixon and Kissinger had no choice. American opinion had turned against the war in Vietnam and it simply had to be ended. Furthermore, the war had undercut the domestic support for vigorous defense programs and measures to counter Soviet penetration of the Third World.
Soviet motives for detente both overlapped and differed, and also in part related to identity. For them, Vietnam was both a danger and an opportunity. The danger was that the war could spread, Chinese influence could grow, and chances for economic relations with the West would decline. (In fact, Soviet-American relations entered such a deep freeze that President Johnson and Soviet ambassador Dobrynin were reduced to discussing whether the Broadway musical Hello Dolly would be permitted to travel to the USSR.) The benefits of the war were equally obvious: the United States was wasting its efforts, dividing its alliances, and alienating much of the Third World. Furthermore, for the Soviets, Vietnam had intrinsic value as a revolutionary movement, and they had the duty to support it as this was the raison d’etre for the Soviet existence. Even had it not been for competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), it would have been very difficult for the Soviets to cooperate with the United States in a way that kept South Vietnam nonCommunist.
For them, as for the Americans, the Third World was also important, but in a quite different way. As Brezhnev explained in 1976: detente did "not abolish or alter the laws of class struggle."33 The Soviets hoped that by stabilizing the central issues of arms and Europe, detente would allow them to proceed with competition in the Third World from a position of equality. Being treated as an equal was both a necessary part of a robust policy in the Third World and a valued end in itself. The Revolution had truly arrived: Moscow was recognized as a power equal to Washington; the capitalists finally realized that Communism was permanent; this would now set the stage for its eventual triumph. For the Soviets, detente offered a great opportunity to confirm what they were.34
World History
