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In 1971, the dominant fact of national life in the U.S. was the emergence of Richard M. Nixon as a highly visible, activist chief executive. In July, he astonished the world by announcing his plans to visit the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union the following year. In 1972, an election year, the war in Vietnam remained a paramount issue in both domestic and foreign affairs. The Watergate affair, during which five burglars were arrested inside the Democratic party's offices and later became increasingly linked to high governmental authorities, appeared to have little impact on voter opinion. In addition to his sweeping victory in the presidential election of 1972, Nixon scored by his unprecedented visits to Peking and Moscow. While any Democratic president would have faced strong opponents in initiating a new China policy, Nixon's longstanding Cold War credentials were unchallengeable. Washington had a variety of reasons for wanting to plant some doubts in Moscow and Tokyo. Moreover, such a shift in U.S. policy reflected the administration's interest in reducing the ideological components of U.S. foreign policy in favor of traditional balance-of-power politics. China's motives for inviting Nixon were far more transparent. Caught between the increasingly hostile Soviet Union and a dynamic Japan once again bidding for leadership, at least economically, throughout East Asia, even the Chinese Communists were interested in old-style balance-of-power diplomacy.
When Air Force One touched down in Peking on February 21, 1972, Nixon became the first American president to visit China while in office. What was unclear after his visit was whether it constituted a postlude to the Cold War or a prelude to a new foreign policy outlook. Those who took the former view pointed to the continuing war in Vietnam which smoldered during these years and finally flared up again in December 1972 when peace negotiations reached a new impasse. Those who argued that the visit to China was a prelude to a new foreign policy could point to several developments: the signing of a Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) agreement with the Soviet Union, new contacts throughout Eastern Europe, the reduction of Soviet-American tensions in the Middle East, and the remarkable trade agreements signed with both the Soviet Union and China. Nixon told Congress a central purpose of his China policy was to encourage the People's Republic of China to "play its appropriate role in shaping international arrangements that affect its concerns. Only then will that great nation have a stake in such arrangements; only then will they endure." Nixon's visit had several immediate advantages for the administration's foreign policy goals, including the ability to take greater advantage of the Sino-Soviet split. The Soviet Union concluded no less than six major treaties in 1971. Four of these were designed to lessen international tension: a Soviet-British-American pact banning nuclear explosives and other weapons of mass destruction on the bed of all seas and oceans; a Soviet-British-French-American agreement guaranteeing the security of West Berlin; a treaty modernizing the direct radiotelegraph communication, the hot line, between the Kremlin and the White House; and another Soviet-American pact providing for each of the two countries to instantly warn the other of any missile or nuclear mishap that might erroneously be interpreted as the start of a war. By contrast, a Soviet-Egyptian treaty provided for the USSR to train the Egyptian armed forces for the next 15 years. The USSR also concluded a non-aggression pact with India that was so strongly worded that the Indian government described it as a 20-year military alliance. Within the USSR, the first Communist party congress in five years brought no significant change in the Soviet leadership. However, it made the party rules less democratic and increased party control over cultural life and government ministries. Furthermore, because of official disrespect, no state funeral was held for Nikita Krushchev, the former Soviet premier, who died of a heart attack in September in a Moscow hospital. In addition to the aforementioned treaties, other conciliatory gestures toward Western Europe came during 1971 in the form of a West German-Soviet pact providing for the opening of a Soviet consulate in Hamburg and a West German one in Leningrad, and significantly increased economic and technological cooperation with other European nations (see other sections). These various agreements occurred against a background of anti-Soviet incidents, such as a bomb explosion at the Soviet trade mission in Amsterdam and the harassment of Soviet missions in London by militant anti-Soviet Jews. The most dramatic event, however, was the British expulsion, in 1971, of 90 employees of the Soviet embassy and commercial missions and the denial of reentry to 15 others, on the grounds that all 105 were spies. The USSR retaliated rather mildly by expelling four British diplomats and four British businessmen from Moscow. Finally, Nixon's visit to the Soviet Union in late May of 1972, the first by a sitting U.S. president, served as the background for increased cooperation on many fronts between the nations. In particular, the SALT agreements, signed by Nixon and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev, were historic pacts. Under these agreements the U.S. and the USSR were to maintain approximate parity in nuclear and missile armament, with the USSR leading in the number of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM's) and the U.S. superior in the quantity of missile warheads. Neither treaty provided for on-the-ground inspection, but both sides presumed that spy satellites would reveal any treaty violations. When Nixon presented the two agreements to Congress, he received a loud ovation from the legislators. The U.S. Senate approved the SALT agreements by a vote of 88-2. |
