THE SOVIET RIDDLE

By Henry Kissinger

"The riddle of relations with the other nuclear superpower has been a persistent preoccupation for postwar American foreign policy," Kissinger writes. And, difficult as it was to deal with the Soviets, the new Administration had no real choice but to give summitry with Moscow a reasonable try.

The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision. Each side should know that frequently uncertainty, compromise and incoherence are the essence of policymaking. Yet each tends to ascribe to the other side a consistency, foresight and coherence that its own experience belies.

Of course, over time even two armed blind men in a room can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room.

The problem with U.S.-Soviet relations is not only that there are two competing bureaucracies with their assumptions and guesses; there are also conflicting conceptions of negotiation. Americans tend to believe that each negotiation has its own logic, that its outcome depends importantly on bargaining skill, good will and facility for compromise. Critics demand greater flexibility. No position is ever final. The other side has the maximum inducement to stand rigid to discover what else we may offer.

These attributes of American negotiators had complicated our efforts in 1969. Within the Administration we had to fight a seemingly endless battle against those who wanted to fuel the momentum of negotiations with unreciprocated gestures of good will. Not a few argued, for example, that we should forgo our programs on antiballistic missiles (ABM) and multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRV) lest we doom the prospects of strategic arms limitation -- though, in fact, ABM and MIRV turned out to be among our few playable cards. Similarly, we were warned that an opening to China would cause relations with the Soviet Union to regress; in fact, the opening would break a logjam on several issues with the U.S.S.R.

Our internal divisions handed the Soviet leadership an irresistible opportunity to whipsaw us. The Kremlin would stress its eagerness to begin negotiations on SALT, for example. While the White House would try to gear our response to overall Soviet conduct, the rest of our Government would find innumerable ways, from press leaks to informal hints, to let it be known that it was ready, nay eager, to start talking. Thus the better part of our first year was spent in convincing both the Soviets and our own bureaucracy that we intended to base our negotiations on a calculation of the national interest, not abstract slogans, and on strict reciprocity, not "gestures" or "signals." By the end of 1969 it seemed that the careful fencing was about to end. My talks with Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin--what came to be known as the Channel--had become increasingly active, usually on Soviet initiative. We had succeeded in making it clear to the Soviets, and with a little time lag to the bureaucracy, that the President's view was the decisive one.

Face to Face

Sooner or later every President since Roosevelt has become convinced that he should take a personal hand in East-West relations through face-to-face meetings with the Soviet leaders. It is human to yearn to make a decisive breakthrough toward peace. Presidents are strengthened in this temptation by an American public that finds it difficult to accept the existence of irreconcilable hostility and tends to see international relations in terms of the play of individual personalities.

Nixon was less given to these tendencies than most. He was too skeptical to believe that one meeting could alter the course of events. He was too experienced in international politics not to appreciate that decades-long tensions between great powers are not the result of personal animosities. He did not much like face-to-face negotiating.

And yet in 1970, for one of the few times in his presidency, Nixon threw sober calculation to the winds and pressed for a summit. Tormented by antiwar agitators, he thought he could paralyze them by a dramatic peace move. Meeting the Soviet leaders in the wake of our offensive against the sanctuaries in Cambodia might show Hanoi that it could prove expendable in a larger game. He foresaw benefits for the congressional elections in the fall as well. As the year proceeded, what started as a maneuver reached a point of near obsession.

This was to be one of the rare times that I totally disagreed with Nixon on a major foreign policy question. The Soviets had given us no help in Viet Nam. SALT was still substantially deadlocked. The Soviets had introduced combat personnel into the Middle East--the first such Soviet action in the postwar period.

Our China initiative could easily be wrecked by the appearance of collusion with the Soviets. A summit might thus easily fail; or, to rescue it, we would be induced to agreements we might later regret.

Mission to Moscow

Fortunately, notes Kissinger, though Nixon was eager for a summit in 1970, the Soviets overreached themselves and Nixon "did not need it as desperately as Moscow reckoned." The U.S. bided its time, and soon the pendulum was swinging its way. In December 1970, trouble erupted on the Soviets' own doorstep with food-price riots in Poland. In July 1971 came the announcement of Nixon's trip to China. Less than four weeks later, the Soviets formally invited the U.S. President to visit Moscow in the spring of 1972. Kissinger served as a kind of diplomatic advance man.

I departed for Moscow on a presidential aircraft shortly after 1 a.m. on Thursday, April 20, 1972. My trip was secret; it was to be announced only after I had returned. The Soviets had pressed for months for a clandestine visit, almost certainly for the simple reason that Peking had had a secret trip and they were entitled to equality!

Several strands of policy, many of them interwoven, would be tested on my trip to Moscow. But overshadowing them all, when the time came for departure, was the offensive launched on March 30 by the North Vietnamese army. Could the Soviet Union be induced to pressure its client for the sake of the summit? Or were we ourselves in danger of being manipulated by the Soviet Union so that we would hesitate in responding militarily to North Viet Nam's challenges?

My first meeting with Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev was scheduled for 11 a.m. on April 21. He was awaiting us in the largest guesthouse of the complex of villas where we were staying. Obviously torn between the advice he must have received to behave discreetly and his own gregarious impulse, he alternated between pummeling me and wearing a grave mien. I thanked him for the warmth of the welcome. Brezhnev joked that they hoped to make me feel warmer still. I asked whether this was a threat or a pleasant prospect. Brezhnev replied that the Soviet Union did not believe in threats--a welcome piece of information that struck me as new.

Appearances meant a lot to Brezhnev. On my secret visit, he arranged with great pride a tour of the spacious and elegant Tsars' Apartments in the Kremlin, where Nixon would live.

Along the corridor marble pedestals bearing huge vases stood between every two windows. All the vases were draped except one, which was shown to me as an example of the high polish that patient labors had achieved; the shrouds would stay on to preserve the sheen, it was explained, until an hour before Nixon's arrival. All this suggested an uneasy, quite touching meld of defensiveness and vulnerability. At this point the personalities of Nixon and Brezhnev intersected.

During our first encounter Brezhnev seemed nervous, probably because he felt insecure dealing with senior American officials for the first time, and partly because of his copious consumption of tobacco and alcohol, his history of heart disease and the pressure of his job. His hands were perpetually in motion: twisting his watch; flicking ashes from his ever-present cigarette (until he was put on the regimen of a locked cigarette case that would open only at preset intervals, which he found ingenious ways to get around); clanging his cigarette holder against an ashtray. He could not keep still. While his remarks were being translated he would restlessly bound up, walk around, engage in loud conversations with his colleagues or even leave the room without explanation and then return. Negotiations with Brezhnev thus included the bizarre feature that he might disappear at any moment; or while you were being most persuasive, he could be concentrating not on your remarks but on forcing food on you.

Nixon in the Kremlin

In their talks Brezhnev and Kissinger prepared the ground for Nixon's visit, reaching agreement on several SALT provisions and on a mutual declaration of principles. A month after Kissinger's trip, on May 20, 1972, Nixon and his party set out for Moscow aboard Air Force One. The summit was on.

The mood was one of optimism, even elation. Despite the assaults by both Hanoi and our critics we had stood our ground. We had behind us a rare public consensus produced by the stunning events of the preceding month. Conservatives reveled in the mining of North Viet Nam's harbors; they interpreted the summit as a Soviet retreat. Liberals were relieved that the summit was taking place at all.

We had a somewhat different perspective from either liberals or conservatives. In a memorandum for the President before leaving, I summarized Soviet policies and described the outlook starkly:

"For reasons deeply rooted in the ideology of the regime and the structure of internal Soviet politics, Soviet foreign policy will remain antagonistic to the West and especially the U.S. The world-power ambitions of the Soviet leaders, and any likely successors, plus their confidence in their capability to support their ambitions with material resources, suggest that the U.S.S.R. will press their challenge to Western interests with increasing vigor and in certain situations assume risks which heretofore would have seemed excessively dangerous."

The Soviet summit never developed the uniform texture of the one in Peking; it was more random and jagged. The discussions between Nixon and the Soviet leaders lacked a central theme. On the whole what emerged were formal expressions of standard positions not significantly different from the written exchanges that had gone back and forth through the Channel.

The summit's jagged rhythm was compounded by the fact that schedules in the Soviet Union seem to have at best an approximate quality. We would sometimes be kept waiting for hours while the Soviet leaders caucused, attended Politburo sessions, or simply disappeared. It was never clear whether the numerous delays and the constant switching of topics were a form of psychological warfare or simply reflected the Soviet working style. When Brezhnev visited the U.S. in 1973, he sat on his veranda at Camp David in full view of Nixon's cabin, talking with his advisers right through a scheduled meeting with the President, whom he kept waiting for two hours without explanation or apology.

There was one dramatic session during the summit--on Viet Nam. Held at Brezhnev's dacha outside Moscow, it pitted Nixon against a troika of Soviet leaders: Party Boss Brezhnev, Premier Aleksei Kosygin and President Nikolai Podgorny.

The dacha, a 40-minute drive from the Kremlin, was set on a little rise in a heavily wooded area along the Moscow River. It was two stories high, comfortable without either appearing lavish or rising to elegance. On the ground floor was a small conference room furnished very sparsely with an oval table and a grandfather clock.

The Soviet leaders and Nixon faced each other across the oval table. The discussion started harmlessly enough but finally Nixon decided to put Viet Nam squarely on the table. If he had not, the Soviet leaders surely would have; they were loaded for bear.

Nixon began by arguing that the "collateral issue" of Viet Nam should not interrupt the basic progress in our relations which was being achieved. He was aware that the Soviet Union had an ideological affinity with Hanoi. But we did not choose this moment for the "flare-up" in Viet Nam [he was referring to Hanoi's 1972 Easter offensive]. We could not reconsider our policy unless Hanoi indicated new flexibility in its negotiating stance. Moscow, he needled, should use the influence it acquired through supplying military equipment to make Hanoi think again.

Now that the subject was Viet Nam, the atmosphere clouded suddenly. Each of the three Soviet leaders in turn unleashed a diatribe against Nixon, who, except for two one-sentence interruptions, endured it in dignified silence. Not only was the substance tough but the tone was crudely hectoring. Brezhnev complained not only about our "cruel" bombing but about the whole history of our involvement in Viet Nam. He denied that military actions were needed to end the war. Hanoi was eager to negotiate; all we had to do was to get rid of South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu and accept Hanoi's "reasonable" political program.

There were several not too subtle allusions that barely stopped short of comparing American policy with Hitler's.

Where Brezhnev had been emotional, Kosygin was analytical; where Brezhnev had pounded the table, he was glacially correct, though in substance the most aggressive of the troika. He recalled his conversations with Lyndon Johnson, who had first predicted victory and failed. He implied the same fate for Nixon. He hinted that Hanoi might reconsider its previous refusal to permit forces of other countries to fight on its side--prompting Nixon to retort that we were not frightened by that threat.

Kosygin suggested that we get rid of Thieu; he was reasonably sure such a proposal would be accepted by Hanoi. (So were we. We did not think we required Soviet help to surrender.) Podgorny concluded the presentations. His epithets were the equal of his colleagues', though his delivery was blander and his tone actually milder.

Suddenly the thought struck me that for all the bombast and rudeness, we were participants in a charade. While the tone was bellicose and the manner extremely rough, the Soviet leaders were speaking for the record, and when they had said enough to have a transcript to send to Hanoi, they would stop.

And so it was.

Balancing Act

The summit was back on the track. With some difficulty, a SALT understanding was concluded that limited defensive weapons like the ABM and put an outright freeze on deployment of new offensive missiles. The agreement quickly came under attack in the U.S. as too generous to the Soviets, who at the time enjoyed an advantage in certain categories of strategic missiles.

It seemed to be inherent in Nixon's life--it was his tragedy --that he was unable to find acceptance with any new departure. Every step he took was immediately subsumed again in the controversies and distrust he had accumulated over a lifetime. He soon found himself in the paradoxical position of a former cold warrior accused of being too committed to easing relations with the Soviet Union. What was the reality?

The context as well as the content of the summit made it a major success for American policy. The fact that we had faced down Hanoi and yet completed major negotiations with Moscow (three months after the spectacular in Peking) evoked the prospect of a more hopeful future and thus put Viet Nam into perspective. But the fundamental achievement was to sketch the outline on which coexistence between the democracies and the Soviet system must be based. SALT embodied our conviction that a wildly spiraling nuclear arms race was in no country's interest and enhanced no one's security; a statement of "Basic Principles," agreed to with Brezhnev, gave at least verbal expression to the necessity of responsible political conduct. The two elements symbolized our conviction that a relaxation of tensions could not be based exclusively on arms control; the ultimate test would be restrained international behavior.

For as far ahead as we can see, America's task will be to recreate and maintain the two pillars of our policy toward the Soviet Union that we began to build in Moscow: a willingness to confront Soviet expansionism and a simultaneous readiness to mark out a cooperative future. A more peaceful world is prevented if we lean too far in either direction.

Unfortunately, the erosion of Nixon's domestic base prevented us from fully implementing our vision or our strategy. Relations with the Soviet Union grew increasingly controversial under an attack by both liberals and conservatives. Liberals who for three years had assaulted Nixon for bellicosity and intransigence now found it convenient to criticize, if not detente itself, then its "overselling" in America. Conservatives feared that the American people, in its historical alternation between optimism and gloom about Soviet purposes, was swinging too far toward a euphoria that over time would sap its will. They doubted whether America could sustain both the willingness to confront and the readiness to cooperate at the same time.

They had a point; they had the historical record on their side. No period of coexistence with the Soviet system has proved permanent. Each has been used by the Kremlin as a springboard for a new advance. But we would not accept that the American people could maintain their vigilance only by a strident militance that conceded to our adversaries a monopoly on the global yearning for peace, and that would gradually maneuver the U.S. Government into isolation. We were determined to resist Soviet aggressiveness, but we thought the chances better if our policy also gave expression to hope. It remains to be seen whether, given our historical experience and the bitterness of our recent past, it is possible to walk this narrow path; whether we are doomed to oscillate erratically between excessive conciliation and excessive bellicosity. It continues as the fundamental task of any Administration.

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