[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Although they made some progress, the real agenda was being shaped privately in the back channel.(Nixon’s embittered principal arms negotiator, Gerard Smith, argued that this uncoordinated“double-track” negotiating process resulted in “doubletalk.”28) Dobrynin found Kissinger evasive about a summit, seeking to link this to progress on other issues including Vietnam and Berlin.As we have seen, Nixon was skeptical about the value of summitry in resolving issues and, temperamentally, he shied away from face-to-face confrontation.He had also watched Johnson’s poll ratings soar at the time of Glassboro and then slump dramatically when nothing significant came of the meeting.For all these reasons there was no rush to a summit in 1969.29During 1970 the frustrated Soviets pursued détente in Europe,taking advantage of the new center-left coalition in Bonn headed by the Social Democrat leader Willy Brandt.Hitherto the Christian Democrats (CDU) had followed Adenauer’s policy of ignoring the East German (GDR) regime and waiting for the day when Germany reunified on Western terms.But Brandt, formerly mayor of West Berlin, had watched impotently as the Wall went up in 1961: he believed that, without abandoning hopes of eventual unity,bridges should now be built across the Cold War divide.The object, declared his foreign policy advisor Egon Bahr, was “change233reynolds_02.qxd 8/31/07 10:29 AM Page 234sum m i t sthrough rapprochement”; “small steps are better than none” (a pun in German: kleine Schritte sind besser als keine).30In dramatic minisummits during 1970, Brandt reached out tothe leaders of Poland, East Germany and the Soviet Union; hesigned agreements that accepted in practice the truncated 1945borders of his country and negotiated a natural gas pipeline from Siberia, using West German technology and credits.Particularly momentous was Brandt’s visit to the East German town of Erfurt on March 19, 1970, to meet the GDR premier Willi Stoph.Despite the efforts of the secret police, a crowd of more than fifteen hundred people broke through barriers to surround Brandt’s hotel, chanting his name.The Erfurt meeting was a spectacular public relations disaster for the East German leaders and a graphic reminder of how unpopular their regime really was.31In the winter of 1970–1 the four occupying powers and the twoGermanys started to negotiate agreements to open up access be-tween West Germany and West Berlin.They also wanted to allowcontrolled visits by West Berliners to the eastern half of the city.These would mark a milestone in the Cold War, finally removing the danger of war over Berlin.Yet Kissinger was unhappy about Brandt’s enthusiastic Ostpolitik.Not only did his initiatives breach the administration’s principle of linkage—tying the resolution of German problems to progress on America’s global agenda—it also seemed the thin end of a dangerous Soviet wedge.One of theKremlin’s great aims was formal acknowledgment of the division of Europe into two blocs.The Soviets wanted a European securityconference, rounding off Yalta and Potsdam, to accept the borders of 1945 and renounce the use of force as a means of changingthem.“This is a nightmare,” Kissinger warned the president.He feared the Soviets would “use the climate of détente to argue that NATO is unnecessary.”32Nixon was also unsettled by the pace of détente in Europe be-cause it contrasted jarringly with the escalating war in Vietnam.Kissinger’s secret talks with the North Vietnamese in Paris were getting nowhere.In the spring of 1970 the president sent troops into neighboring Cambodia to neutralize communist sanctuaries.234reynolds_02.qxd 8/31/07 10:29 AM Page 235mo scow 1972His announcement on April 30 stressed that this was a short-term operation to sap North Vietnam’s resistance at the negotiating table, but the invasion of Cambodia provoked new waves of protestacross America.On May 4 four students were shot dead by Na-tional Guardsmen at Kent State University in Ohio.And the following weekend protestors descended en masse on Washington,clearly visible (and audible) from the White House [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]