In May 1973, the Senate began televised hearings on the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex. As public interest in Watergate intensified, General Secretary Brezhnev came to the United States for another summit meeting with Nixon from June 16 to June 24, 1973. They met at the White House, Camp David, and at the president’s summer house in San Clemente, California. Nixon extended lavish hospitality for his Soviet guest, but the two men’s conversations lacked the drama of the Moscow summit of May 1972, and they were overshadowed by the growing Watergate scandal.
At their meetings the leaders discussed nuclear arms, the status ofthe SALT negotiations, and the Middle East. They made little progress on nuclear arms or SALT. Much to Nixon’s and Kissinger’s discomfort, Brezhnev raised the issue of the Middle East. The Soviet leader said that his allies in Egypt and Syria found the continued Israeli occupation of the Sinai Peninsula (Egyptian territory) and the Golan Heights (Syrian territory) increasingly galling. He urged the United States to apply pressure on Israel to withdraw. "If we agree on Israeli withdrawals, everything will fall in place," Brezhnev said. He added that he was "categorically opposed to a resumption of the war. But without agreed principles" of what a settlement should look like, Brezhnev said, he could not guarantee that a new war would not erupt. 549
The two leaders signed an agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War (PNW). The PNW agreement was of indefinite duration and it committed the two countries to conduct themselves in ways "to prevent the development of situations capable of causing a dangerous exacerbation of their relations." They promised to avoid threats against each other and each other’s allies. They also agreed that if it appeared as if relations between them or other countries risked a nuclear conflict, they would "immediately enter into urgent consultations with each other and make every effort to avert this risk."550
Like the Basic Principles of US-Soviet relations signed at the Moscow summit of 1972, the PNW agreement set forward the aspirations of both sides to work together in an era of detente. Each document held hidden dangers, not fully appreciated by their authors at the time of the signing. As
Raymond L. Garthoff, one of the American arms-control negotiators, noted in Detente and Confrontation, "the Basic Principles in 1972 and the PNW agreement of 1973 contributed to the launching and development of detente, but before long they also contributed to its failure.”2°
The United States and the Soviet Union collaborated, but they also approached a confrontation as they backed opposing belligerents during the war between Israel and Egypt and Syria that began on October 6, 1973. The two nuclear superpowers worked together at the United Nations to call for a ceasefire, but it was slow in coming. The Egyptian and Syrian forces made great gains in the first five days of the war, capturing Israeli soldiers and driving scores of kilometers into Israeli-occupied positions. The Soviet Union sent arms to Egypt and Syria as a way of assuring its Arab allies of its support, and also to gain leverage with them to accept a ceasefire.
Israel’s government, shocked by the success of the Arab armies, ran low on war materiel, and desperately applied to the United States to resupply its losses in planes, tanks, and ammunition. The United States airlifted military equipment on October 12. Once Israel was assured of American arms, it launched a counterattack.
Brezhnev then proposed to Nixon that the two sides jointly sponsor a ceasefire. Nixon sent Kissinger, who in September had become secretary of state in addition to continuing as national security adviser, to Moscow to work out the details. By the time Kissinger began meetings in the Kremlin on October 20, Israel’s armed forces were threatening to advance on the Egyptian and Syrian capital cities. Kissinger’s visit coincided with a climactic moment in the Watergate scandal. Nixon refused to turn over tapes of conversations he had had with aides discussing the break-in and the cover-up. He fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. This "Saturday Night massacre" provoked an outraged public to demand Nixon’s impeachment.
Kissinger, Gromyko, and Brezhnev developed a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire and negotiations for a peaceful solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel delayed implementing the ceasefire until its forces had pressed their advantage against the Egyptian army. Egypt’s president, Anwar Sadat, asked the Soviet Union and the United States jointly to send troops to enforce the ceasefire. The Soviets stepped up their airlift of supplies, and the United States responded by putting its Mediterranean forces on the highest level of alert. Kissinger eventually persuaded Israel to agree to a ceasefire on October 27. 551
Over the next several months, Kissinger traveled between the capitals of Israel and Egypt and Israel and Syria to arrange an Israeli withdrawal from the territory it had captured at the end of the war. He convinced Israel to withdraw from the east bank of the Suez Canal, enabling Egypt to reopen that waterway, and from some Syrian territory on the Golan Heights.
Soviet-American cooperation during the October War demonstrated the ways detente operated. Both sides recognized that their need to avoid a confrontation that could lead to a catastrophic nuclear war took precedence over their commitments to their allies. Insofar as the two nuclear superpowers had followed through on their commitments to consult in the Basic Principles and PNW agreements, detente had worked. On the other hand, each side had threatened the other and had armed its allies. Supporters of Israel were especially distressed by the way in which the United States had cooperated with the Soviet Union to deny Israel the opportunity to rout the Egyptian and Syrian armed forces. As Garthoff observes, "many politically significant supporters of Israeli interests thus became disenchanted with the policy of detente."552
Congressional opponents of detente stepped up their campaign against Nixon’s and Kissinger’s efforts to cooperate with the Soviet Union in the winter and spring of 1973 and 1974. Kissinger told his staff on March 18, 1974, that "the Soviets are getting nothing out of detente and what can I deliver in Moscow?" The Jackson-Vanik amendment to the trade bill had proven to be a far greater irritant to the development of detente than Kissinger had expected. Kissinger lamented that "Jackson has obviously been convinced that I am a hostile country." Kissinger derided Jackson as one of "these bastards on [Capitol] Hill who ignore the fact that 400 Jews were leaving the Soviet Union in 1969 and now say that 30,000 a year is inconsequential." Since the trade relationship with the Soviet Union now "is no good, SALT can’t go down the drain," because if that happened detente would end.553
Kissinger traveled to Moscow in March 1974 to try to make progress on SALT before Nixon’s June visit to the Soviet Union. The Soviets rejected his proposal that they allow equality in warheads by granting the Americans superiority in MIRVs. He also did not get Soviet agreement to a proposal for "offsetting symmetries," in which the Soviet Union would have the advantage in ICBMs and the United States would have more MIRVs.
When Nixon visited the Soviet Union in late June, the days ofhis presidency were numbered as the Watergate scandal reached a crescendo. Nixon told Brezhnev not to worry about the Jackson-Vanik amendment. "On MFN," Nixon said, "we will get it." Brezhnev called his statement "a good sign."554 But SALT II was garnering serious criticism in the United States. Before Nixon left for Moscow, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger endorsed Senator Jackson’s position on equality ofweapons systems in SALT, thereby publicly undercutting Nixon’s and Kissinger’s policy of sufficiency. Paul Nitze, a veteran foreign-policy adviser who deeply distrusted the Soviet Union’s military intentions, resigned from the US SALT negotiating team. He said that "the traumatic events now unfolding" in the Watergate scandal might encourage Nixon to agree to a disadvantageous SALT treaty with the Soviets just to obtain favorable publicity.555
Nixon and Brezhnev made no progress on the details of offensive weapons systems. They amended the ABM Treaty, reducing the number of sites each side could have from two to one. They also signed agreements on commercial, technological, energy, housing, and medical research cooperation, but these accords generated little of the earlier excitement over improving US-Soviet relations. The public was not impressed with their work. Commentators considered the trip to be part of a clumsy effort by Nixon to revive his fading fortunes as a foreign-policy leader. On August 9,1974, five weeks after Nixon returned from the Soviet Union, he was forced to resign the presidency rather than be convicted in the Senate on three articles of impeachment likely to be approved by the House of Representatives.
World History
