In early 1969, at the beginning of the Nixon administration, National Security Adviser Kissinger informed the Soviet ambassador, Anatolii Dobrynin, that the president wanted to conduct business with the Soviet Union personally and directly through a “back channel" line of communication. Kissinger explained that he had the authority to speak for the US government regardless of what other officials said. The back channel became the principal means through which the United States and the Soviet Union communicated over the next five and one-half years. The back channel’s advantages were that it gave Kissinger and Nixon control over the setting of foreign policy, and its secrecy enabled them to make dramatic announcements which captured public attention. The disadvantage of conducting foreign affairs through the back channel was that it was far too personal. By ignoring and undermining the professionals within the State Department, Nixon and Kissinger lost out on important technical advice. Their penchant for secrecy and their distrust of professional advice also made it harder than necessary for them to build support for their policies. When domestic opposition to elements of detente intensified, Nixon became vulnerable to complaints that the agreements he had signed were deeply flawed.
In the mid - and late 1960s, the race between the United States and the Soviet Union to deploy more intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and to develop anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs) provoked worldwide public anxiety. As soon as he became president, Nixon tried to dampen these fears when he announced within days of taking office that US policy was to have "sufficiency" not "superiority" in nuclear weapons. He downsized the Johnson administration’s plan for a large ABM system directed against the Soviet Union, called Sentinel, to a smaller Safeguard system intended to be deployed against a possible threat from China.
In 1970 and 1971, Kissinger negotiated with Ambassador Dobyrnin and Foreign Minister Gromyko through the back channel. In a series of discussions with Dobrynin, Kissinger argued that the Soviet Union and the United States should try to reach an agreement, first, on limiting the potential deployment of ABMs and call a freeze on further deployment of ICBMs. In May 1971, Kissinger and Dobrynin reached what Kissinger called a "conceptual breakthrough" by separating ABM and Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) negotiations. They promised to reach an agreement on an ABM treaty within the next year and make "progress" on SALT.539
Nixon announced in May 1971 that he would attend a Moscow summit meeting in May 1972. He and the Soviet Communist Party general secretary, Leonid Brezhnev, would sign arms-control agreements worked out between the two sides over the previous year. During the fall and winter of 1971 and 1972, Kissinger used the back channel without the knowledge of the official US arms-negotiating team meeting with their Soviet counterparts in Helsinki. Kissinger told Dobrynin, "the main problem is to get concrete about something. "540 He believed that the fact of an agreement would do more than anything to persuade the public that the United States had not been paralyzed by Vietnam; the actual details of an agreement were less important.
As Nixon and Kissinger prepared for the late-May summit in Moscow, they agreed to steer clear of discussions of human rights. Kissinger told Nixon, "I don’t think it is proper for you to start lecturing them about freedom of speech." Nixon concurred: "oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no."541 Nixon’s insistence that he personally negotiate the final terms of agreements to provide dramatic impact lent a frenzied and improvised tone to the Moscow summit meetings from May 23 to 29, 1972. Kissinger, Nixon, Gromyko, and Brezhnev hammered out the final details of several treaties, agreements, and statements in late-night bargaining sessions in the Kremlin and Brezhnev’s country house. Nixon told Kissinger that Congress "will watch every line of the agreement to see if we were placed at a disadvantage," but like the national security adviser, he believed the fact of having reached an agreement was more important than the details of it.542
Nixon and Brezhnev signed the Interim Agreement on the Limitation of Strategic Arms (SALT I) at an elaborate late-night ceremony on May 26. This agreement was a framework document in which each side froze the number of missiles it had as of the date of its signing. The United States would be allowed 1,054 ICBMs and 656 SLBMs, and the Soviets would be permitted 1,618 ICBMs and 950 SLBMs. Despite what appeared to be a Soviet advantage in SALT, the United States had no plans to increase the number of missiles in its current arsenal. While the Soviets were permitted to increase the number of their ICBMs to about 50 percent more than Americans had in 1972, the United States had an advantage in multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs). This emerging MIRV technology allowed missiles to carry multiple warheads that would be easier to evade an enemy’s defenses. SALT I had a term of five years, during which time the two sides agreed to work to develop a full-fledged treaty limiting, and possibly reducing, offensive nuclear arms.
Nixon and Brezhnev also signed an Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. They agreed that each party would construct no more than two ABM sites. One of them would protect the capital and the other would protect a missile base. These provisions allowed for each side to maintain a credible deterrent against a first strike that would permit national governments to continue to function in the event of war.
27. US president Richard Nixon (left) and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev at Nixon's home in San Clemente, California, in June 1973. Nixon saw detente as a key breakthrough in relations with the Soviet Union.
The United States and the Soviet Union reached several other understandings that expanded detente. They signed agreements on reducing pollution and enhancing environmental quality, on cooperation in medicine, science, and technology, and on space exploration. They set up a joint commercial commission that would negotiate a comprehensive trade agreement. They agreed to convene a Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), a meeting the Soviets had long advocated as a way of finally acknowledging the international borders established in Europe after World War II. CSCE gained little attention when it was announced, but as it developed it became a major element in eroding public support for US-Soviet detente.
The two leaders issued a twelve-point statement of Basic Principles of Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, a document which broadly defined the ways in which they would treat each other in an era of detente. The Basic Principles committed each power to conduct "normal relations" on the basis of "peaceful coexistence" and the principles of "sovereignty, equality, non-interference in internal affairs, and mutual advantage."543
Kissinger and Nixon thought the Basic Principles had at most a symbolic value. In a press briefing immediately after Nixon and Brezhnev signed the Basic Principles, Kissinger said the document represented "an aspiration and an attitude, and if either the aspiration or the attitude changes, then _ either side can change its course."544 Unfortunately for the future of detente, Kissinger’s attitude toward the Basic Principles proved to be far too nonchalant. Domestic opponents of detente soon used the principle of equality to undermine support for several of the agreements Nixon had signed.
World History
