Between the Bear and the Dragon: Nixon, Kissinger and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Era of Detente

THEForeign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series has long served as an indispensable source for the study of US diplomatic history and foreign policy, and the latest publications to emerge from the Historian's Office at the State Department take the documentary record into the early years of President Richard M. Nixon's administration as some of the most dramatic events of the era of détente unfolded. The series as a whole has now undergone a number of changes since the mid-1990s, which represent, if not a full-scale renaissance, at least a significant enhancement of a major resource for modern historians.

Much of this was made possible by the decision of the Historian's Office at that time to hire additional staff, permitting an expansion of activities and an intensification of research effort in ways which the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's equivalent operation can only dream of. Moreover, as the volumes covering the Lyndon B. Johnson presidency were brought to a conclusion, there was an appreciation that the volume and scope of documentation now available required a rethink of the standard publication format.

Electronic versions of the print volumes would now be generated as a matter of course, and the older volumes of the Kennedy administration would also be offered in this form to any visitor to the Office of the Historian's website. Looking ahead to coverage of the Nixon-Ford years between 1969 and 1976, there would now be additional electronic-only document collections (sixteen in all) to supplement the planned forty-one print volumes—again all available free for use over the internet. The topics dealt with in the e-volumes for the early 1969–72 period include Iran and Iraq, North Africa, and Arms Control and Disarmament (excluding coverage of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty [SALT] talks, which is to be published in a print volume), while there has also been an opportunity to produce a compilation of additional documents to complement those contained in the print volume for China.1 It is also to be hoped that the microfiche supplements that were at one time generated for several earlier volumes in the FRUS series can also be provided in electronic form for internet use, as they are rarely cited by scholars but contain much invaluable material.

One reason why a wider range of publication is needed than simply the print volumes is the huge number of documents that the FRUS editors now have to deal with, and the desire to maintain momentum with the series through more rapid production of compilations. It is in the former area that the greatest change in the nature of FRUS volumes such as those under review is perhaps most evident. Whereas earlier volumes in the series were largely based on the records of the State Department, many of which were available at the US National Archives, with perhaps a few White House documents, current selections come from a far more extensive range of sources.

These include records from the Department of Defense, National Security Council (NSC), the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the private papers of key officials, and also a huge amount of documentation from the presidential libraries. Coverage of intelligence issues is now facilitated by greater use of Central Intelligence Agency records, though this is still evidently a problematic area, with many key files still unavailable or those released heavily sanitised. In the sensitive field of CIA covert action, the new sources have suggested the possibility of retrospective volumes which could fill in the gaps from earlier publications.

Perhaps most challenging of all, however, is the phenomenon of presidential and personal tape recordings. Release of recordings from the Kennedy and Johnson periods was in many cases too late for the FRUS series dealing with these presidencies, though efforts were made to incorporate some transcripts (many of which had to be compiled by the laborious efforts of the Historian's Office itself).2 For the Nixon period, there is an abundance of material drawn from taped telephone calls, and the voice-activated taping system that the President had had installed in the Oval Office in February 1971, and which was extended to other locations such as Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland. The FRUS editors concerned with the Nixon administration have also been able to use the voluminous personal papers of the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs, Henry Kissinger, which are housed at the Library of Congress (though not open to general research), and include numerous transcripts of telephone calls and records of meetings.

All of this raises the complex problems of selection common to all editors of large documentary projects: the desire to be comprehensive has to be reconciled with the physical limitations of space and a scholarly sense of what constitutes a digestible feast of information. Using the electronic volumes as a supplement to the printed volumes (as was the practice with the microfiche collections) is an obvious help here, and in the China volume under review it is often imperative to switch between the two in order to gain a comprehensive flavour of the discussions. For example, the full records of Kissinger's conversations during his second trip to Beijing in October 1971 are provided in the e-volume (with his summary reports in the print version), while for the previous ‘secret’ visit in July 1971 the reverse procedure seems to have been followed.

In the reviewed volumes, the huge efforts of the editors to include newly transcribed material from tape recordings can only be commended, for without this source there would be much lacking in the tone and substance of foreign policy-making in the Nixon years. In fact, these sources are crucial, as so much of the decision-making of the administration revolved around the relationship and understanding between Nixon and Kissinger. A few problems with the series remain, however.

One is the lengthy declassification procedures which have acted to slow publication schedules, despite the best efforts of the academic community of foreign-relations scholars in the United States and of the Historian's Office itself. Multiple agency review of documents, the tardy response of certain government departments, and the more restrictive freedom of information environment that has developed since the events of September 2001, have all frustrated the ambitions of the series both to maintain a moving 25-year wall of coverage and to provide as complete and reliable a historical record of US foreign relations as is possible. For example, the China compilation was completed in 1999, and the Organization volume in 2001, but it has taken several years for them to be cleared for release, though the number of documents withheld in full is relatively small and compares well with the previous record of FRUS volumes.

Another issue, and one explicitly acknowledged in the editorial comments that accompany all of the volumes, is the difficulty of clustering documents around a particular theme or country as the focus for US foreign policy, without being forced to reproduce the same documentation in different places. Thus, a separate volume is allocated in the series to SALT, negotiations for which were first convened at Helsinki in November 1969, but there is much of obvious bearing on this key subject in the three volumes on the Soviet Union leading up to the eventual SALT I Agreement and Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, the crowning achievements of Nixon's Moscow summit with Brezhnev in May 1972. This overlap represents an even greater difficulty for the editors, because Nixon and Kissinger constructed their diplomacy around the simultaneous linkage of different issues between the principal actors in the international system.

Hence, the separate country volumes create the danger that the crucial connections between, for example, developments in Sino-US relations across a certain period and US-Soviet relations might be lost. This makes the editorial task of cross-referencing documents and providing explanatory notes absolutely essential, and there is ample evidence here to show that this has been accomplished. Indeed, for the volumes covering the Soviet Union, there is explicit recognition that, as the USSR was the United States's major adversary in the Cold War, where instances of conflict and collaboration were to be found on a global scale, pure coverage of bilateral relations is complemented with frequent reference to issues and policies other than the immediate subject at hand (good illustrations being the search for a peace settlement in the Middle East, or progress on the Paris peace talks over Vietnam).

As the preface to these volumes notes, ‘the Foreign Relations series must be viewed and used as an integrated publication of many volumes’.3 The story of the Nixon-Kissinger approach to handling US foreign policy is, of course, one of perennial interest to diplomatic historians, and it comes as no surprise that their characters, preferences and beliefs dominate these volumes. The essential bureaucratic context within which policy was framed and executed is provided by Volume II, with sections dealing with the organisation of the NSC system, relations with the intelligence community, and the management of the State Department. Beneath it all, there is an atmosphere that can only be described as poisonous, with back-biting, perennial suspicion and mistrust, as over-bearing egos competed within a Washington bureaucracy that was profoundly dysfunctional.

It seems ironic that Kissinger put a great deal of thought and effort into devising a well-formulated structure of decision-making at the NSC level, when in practice he reserved the most important consideration of issues (as, for example, regarding policy toward the Soviet Union) for his numerous informal meetings with the President. Under the previous Johnson administration, elaborate NSC meetings had been rare, with the prime focus of policy discussion instead being handled at the ‘Tuesday lunch’ meetings, where the President, his National Security Adviser, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, would confer in tight conclave, with no formal record of the discussion kept, and no follow-up to ensure that decisions were being properly communicated and implemented lower down the bureaucracy.4 With advice from General Andrew Goodpaster, Kissinger signalled in January 1969 that he wanted to return to the more orderly ways of conducting business that had been used by President Eisenhower in the 1950s (when Goodpaster had served the president as a personal assistant primarily handling national security issues), with a new NSC (later Senior) Review Group which would prepare papers for the more formal and regular NSC meetings. The emphasis in the Group's contributions, Nixon and Kissinger maintained, should be on presenting sharply defined policy options for discussion, but focused on choices which were realistic.

Quite soon the NSC Review Group became the scene of conflict between Kissinger (as its chair) and ‘orthodox’ State Department views which were, it was charged, often too general to be of use when making decisions.5 The aspiration to return to a formal system of decision-making was soon frustrated by the preferences of Nixon and Kissinger themselves. Determined to control the main currents of US policy, including relations with China and the Soviet Union, the President had little time for long and unwieldy meetings at which the objections of the State Department, or other bureaucratic actors, to the path he wanted to follow could be raised. Moreover, both Nixon and Kissinger were outraged when NSC policy-debates soon found their way into the newspapers.

Placing a premium on secrecy in the conduct of his diplomacy, Kissinger was furious that he could not depend on the discretion of his staff, and, in May 1969, and with help from that éminence grise, Alexander Haig (the President's Military Assistant, and then from June 1970 Kissinger's deputy), the FBI was approached to arrange for the wire-tapping of several possible suspects.6 The inconclusive outcome of this invasion of personal privacy (no leaker was ever firmly to the of several including the a an from on Kissinger's was by the decision to in and Volume the of the of would as President first National Security in the early and and as well as being by of the and foreign policy of the administration, the for the atmosphere of and which have over the this the of should an and, in some have been by in fact, the NSC system, as was into In 1969 there had been a meetings of the full NSC (though of the aspiration of a in 1970 this to in 1971 to and in there were a three The one which to show the administration was the Washington Group which under Kissinger's in May 1969 as a management it to review and for as well as current and to a in policy over and the of The most to the problems of US foreign policy-making was the relationship between Kissinger and the Secretary of Kissinger's to control policy from the White which had the full of was in obvious conflict with of his while was not of and Nixon and Kissinger found to be far too in his and lacking the that they had to be if the United States was to from both its and The White House in of policy, including the SALT talks with the Soviet Union, and the in relations with and in his would the of State Department dealing with of policy without presidential particular over the Middle East, where was in Volume is full of of the and on all that this from an early in the administration, with both and Kissinger if their was not by the of Nixon's response his with Kissinger's all, the of foreign policy-making to be from the State and his to as this would the the documents here also that, despite the bureaucratic Nixon found the of the to be a of a Kissinger in which the State Department were a of Nixon and Kissinger in their The most of all was that by Kissinger with the Soviet to the United The two regular private meetings the period, to be to the Soviet Kissinger also had the State Secretary the US to at the peace negotiations in and the US to the of these essential, of course, in up Kissinger's first visit to the of China in July 1971, the for which were made of the State the Moscow summit of Nixon and Kissinger even had to little the State Department the the White House had taken in the field of relations that these might not be to and in a way the had to be not to to the State Department the President to Beijing in February many of the that had been over the of the previous Nixon in 1971 have been more in this administration than any in history because the State with the State Department are in many of the of Nixon and Kissinger, but there is also documentation in these volumes of the of suspicion toward the White House on the of both the Department and Joint Chiefs of This was in late 1971 when it was that the had even a operation on the NSC one of its had and documents from Kissinger and Volume also into Nixon's of the intelligence the CIA to be by the he and that the he was were through personal or as he in July the a of on intelligence and it to a more for its than it has been the time be when he have to the to the intelligence In November 1971, much the administration a which the of the CIA a greater in the intelligence community as a and making it more to the of the NSC system, including control over and resource but by it was that there had been progress in this In his Nixon had the of an era of which could the period of that had in US-Soviet relations since the of the he was in no to with the Soviet his in up the of the SALT that had been by his but had been in to the Soviet invasion of and also with at his main and would remain, a of the in which had Lyndon Johnson and would be the key by which his presidency would be through which his in might be The a through volumes and and records of all their meetings, by (though with an of are however, are based on Kissinger's reports to Moscow have now been published the US records in a volume by the Historian's Office and the of Foreign by the of the North in the Paris peace talks to on key such as the of their in the a and that the government be as of any Nixon and Kissinger that Soviet on would be key to moving these negotiations to a The was to progress with SALT to the and also to use the Soviet as a for the that a frustrated Nixon might the if North In September 1969, Kissinger that was the were to other but the Soviet Union should not any was should also have no the with which to the of the President as soon as was of the way and if the an understanding would the that in the and of 1969 to of the for Nixon they also the possibility of into a with and additional on with Kissinger's the China had its much in Nixon's of the of international As the for between China and the Soviet Union was within the administration, in 1969 Nixon was that, have that the are and the are more I this is open to must at China on a long China China the with for to the are more One of the that Washington put to the during this time was that talks in were been in the standard practice in the Johnson administration, Nixon and Kissinger that no record of these talks was to be to as a way to Soviet and this seems to have had the in January 1970 when the any by the to China as a Nixon wanted the talks to be used to his desire for a US to be to The invasion of in 1970 any immediate of for such a but were used in late 1970 to a which to Kissinger's trip to Beijing the As with of Kissinger's major diplomatic Nixon his that, in his talks with the Kissinger should on three of what the President might in the of in the the of a and and the of the Soviet on their Kissinger's meetings with many different not least the of the of but one area of as Nixon had was over a of on the based on that could into one Kissinger even had to that the would with the Soviet Union and to and up a China between This Kissinger to that the of US and the security with was an important for Beijing that it would be by Nixon made his visit to Beijing in February he too had to to that the relationship would Washington to if the of an In one discussion in October 1971, on the taping system, Kissinger to Nixon that his trip would be the of foreign and a in China with an would ensure the of the Moscow summit which was then being the subject of the where reference to the would have to be Kissinger was of the that not to not the way they not the The by little The they for the Indeed, Kissinger was in of and the conduct of diplomacy in being to to their general and for their would to State Department Kissinger was in his to Nixon that was both foreign and policy in the the of Kissinger to Beijing in the way that he and Nixon had to with the Soviet and to of the that hoped could and the Soviet Union wanted to As Kissinger to Nixon his October 1971 follow-up to on its can it to help the for a settlement if the other toward a The in July 1971 that Nixon would visit Beijing May had the of for a summit with the Soviet which had first been during a in The Soviet it was were to a understanding with Washington and the for a détente the first in relations had been the by the in the Middle and toward in the of late 1971, a in late May for a presidential visit to Moscow which would also for Nixon without it being as too a The documents in Volume however, provide a of the North which on across the into and which to around and the of in the of the summit with Nixon could not the of being to be and he was not to put the of détente ahead of his that Moscow should more to the North and that should be for to the by In this he at with Kissinger, though all in of to on was more to put at the structure of relations that he had so many to Hence, Kissinger was to a visit to Moscow in he had to be in no by the President that should be the principal of with the Soviet and not the of the summit to in a of the between the Kissinger largely to his Indeed, these talks in were to the of the more summit that and this volume to the full records of Kissinger's meetings with the Soviet and the that was on an over Kissinger for example, that many of his in the bureaucracy hoped that he would to Kissinger of his time in Moscow the of the on relations which was to be by Nixon and Brezhnev the and which the Soviet were to as the crowning of the while there were also crucial over the SALT and Kissinger from his trip with the that Moscow could not on and to that the linkage that had been hoped for at the of the relationship in 1969 had been on a In many what these volumes to show is that, than a one the in the early Nixon and Kissinger toward an which would to and put on the Soviet Union to its in the international system, and, most its in to to a peace settlement in which a government in that could still be by in Kissinger's the that made this both possible and would not Nixon's trip to he the President in February in years if as as up the the For the years have to the the have to the of the to the and to the As an of there could be little of Kissinger's approach to the management of