Divergent Channels

Although Nixon and Kissinger superimposed a Cold War distortion on a regional situation, tried to spin stories in the media, and allowed personal biases to flavor their responses, they responded logically and perhaps justifiably when seen in the broader context of U.S.-Soviet relations. The Nixon administration steadily escalated diplomatic signals, and the top policymakers sincerely believed that India had launched external aggression—not Pakistan—with its support for Mukthi Bahini (liberation force) raids into what was then East Pakistan. Several additional themes run through Nixon and Kissinger’s response to the Indo-Pakistani War, many of which were also reflected in U.S.-Soviet back-channel communications and in the taped conversations. Not surprisingly, Nixon’s and Kissinger’s policy perceptions were clearly colored by their personal experiences with Indira Gandhi and Yahya Khan. The White House was unwilling to dismiss Yahya’s role as an honest broker in Sino-American rapprochement and likewise saw duplicity on the part of Indira Gandhi after she visited Washington, D.C., in early November 1971 and claimed that India had no desire for war with Pakistan. In addition, the surreptitiously recorded conversations between the president and his advisors are rife with gendered speech and appeals to masculine “toughness” that colored Nixon’s actions. Significantly, the frequent contact with the Soviets during the war mitigates some of the criticism of recklessness.

Precedents and Back-Channel Games, 1968–1970

This chapter traces the development of the Nixon administration’s foreign policy structure, early back-channel overtures to the Soviets, the evolution of bureaucratic rivalries within the administration, and the early development of the Channel between Kissinger and Dobrynin. In a vicious and destructive cycle, leaks by officials of highly classified documents deepened Nixon’s longtime hatred of the press, exacerbated his fears, and reaffirmed the use of back channels to shelter sensitive negotiations. Before his narrow victory in the November 1968 election, Nixon used two back channels to message the Soviets. The first overture and the closest precedent to the Kissinger-Dobrynin channel developed during the presidential campaign and went active immediately after the election, when Nixon dispatched his longtime aide and personal friend Robert Ellsworth to make contact with Ambassador Dobrynin and Soviet chargé d’affaires Yuri Tcherniakov. The second channel, between Kissinger and a KGB intelligence officer, Boris Sedov, functioned informally during the presidential campaign and petered out shortly after Nixon’s inauguration.

Khenry and Anatol

Richard Nixon endorsed the use of a back channel between Henry Kissinger, as his personal representative, and Anatoly Dobrynin, as the intermediary to the Kremlin. Over time, the relationship came to be known as “the Channel” and was the primary back channel in U.S.-Soviet relations during the Nixon administration. Long before Nixon became president, the executive branch had utilized private correspondence with foreign leaders, presidential emissaries, confidential channels, and other types of communication beyond the purview of the normal foreign policy bureaucracy. Despite the earlier precedents, the Dobrynin-Kissinger channel was novel in its breadth, its sweeping exclusion of the State Department, and most significantly for its central role in shaping détente. Back-channel diplomacy with the Soviets was not dominant until 1971, when the Channel became “operational,” as Kissinger later wrote, to cover the Berlin negotiations, break an impasse in SALT, and begin tentative planning for a summit meeting.

At the Summit, Achieving Détente

The Moscow Summit ushered in a period of détente, and the summit itself was a product of the Kissinger-Dobrynin back channel. The back channel became both a brake and an accelerator to moderate the pace of negotiations and to link unrelated areas. The back channel also served as a tool that each side used to play on the other’s anxieties or desires—and as an inadvertent means of signaling those fears or concerns in the first place. Ultimately, the story of achieving détente involved more than back channels; it was about the ambitions of the concerned parties and the policies they pursued. Back channels were not a panacea. Long-term success ultimately depended on some fundamental basis for agreement, and the areas for agreement had begun to dwindle before 1974.

Cancellation Crises

Nixon considered canceling the Moscow summit even as Kissinger finalized plans to go on a secret trip to the Soviet Union in April 1972 to discuss Vietnam and the summit planning. Nixon was concerned with the deteriorating military situation in South Vietnam, and he worried that the Soviets would cancel the summit in solidarity with their ally Hanoi after the United States responded with force against North Vietnam. However, the Nixon White House laid the groundwork to encourage the Soviets to consider détente separately from Vietnam, conveying a tacit modus vivendi via the confidential channel with Dobrynin. While Nixon pondered the possibility of canceling the summit, the administration also used back channels to read Soviet intentions. Ultimately, Treasury Secretary John Connally convinced Nixon to leave the onus of any cancellation or postponement of the summit to the Soviets. Domestic opinion polls buttressed the president’s decision since the American public did not see the Moscow summit as interrelated to the situation in Vietnam. In the Kremlin, Brezhnev, Gromyko, and Kosygin blocked hard-liners’ attempts and consolidated control in favor of the summit while rhetorically condemning the American bombing-mining campaign against North Vietnam. The summit thus became the successful product of U.S.-Soviet back-channel diplomacy.

“Playing a Game,” Finding a “Lever”

The Sino-Soviet conflict, which first surfaced in the late 1950s and degenerated into armed border clashes in 1969, proved to be the main catalyst for Sino-American rapprochement. The China question almost immediately entered into the dialogue of the Kissinger-Dobrynin channel. Publicly, the Nixon administration said it would pursue relationships with both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. Privately, Nixon and Kissinger hoped to play the Soviets and the Chinese off each other—the concept of triangular diplomacy. Triangular diplomacy had less to do with the concrete and crude move of playing the powers off each other than it did with trying to influence the perceptions and emotions of Communist leaders. The documentary record suggests that it was only after Sino-American rapprochement had been set in motion in April-May 1971, with the Chinese Ping Pong diplomacy and the secret traffic through the Pakistani channel, that U.S. policymakers began to talk of playing the Communist powers off one another for American advantage.

At a Crossroads

This chapter examines the moribund state of U.S.-Soviet relations during 1970 and how the White House used back channels to break the SALT impasse, delay the negotiations and ratification of the Quadripartite Agreement, and push for a summit meeting in 1970–1971. Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union used linkage in the back channel, and domestic political considerations increasingly affected the White House policy calculus. In 1970, the back channel was only one means of communications with the Soviet leadership in addition to regular diplomacy through Foggy Bottom. As Kissinger outmaneuvered Secretary of State William Rogers in bureaucratic struggles within the Nixon administration, however, the use of the Channel became the primary mechanism for U.S.-Soviet relations and in shaping superpower détente by resolving matters of concern for both sides.

Vietnam in U.S.-Soviet Back Channels, November 1971–April 1972

This chapter examines the centrality of Vietnam in U.S.-Soviet back channels. By 1971, the White House had used a combination of private and public channels to convey to the Kremlin the deadlocked status of the secret negotiations in Paris between the United States and North Vietnam. The Channel became the primary means to telegraph American intentions, simultaneously applying pressure on the Soviets to restrain the North Vietnamese while warning that there would be serious consequences and drastic action on the part of the United States in the event of a North Vietnamese offensive. In early 1972, Nixon further consolidated the control of the entire U.S.-Soviet relationship, to the point of preparing sanitized versions of communications with the Soviets for Secretary of State Rogers. The Channel and the Nixon-Brezhnev exchanges allowed both sides to preview, state, and reinforce policy goals. Back channels also ensured that Kissinger and Dobrynin became personally vested in the détente policy of their respective governments, to the point of consulting each other to mitigate the adverse impact of decisions and public pronouncements. Despite attempts to link a Vietnam settlement to U.S.-Soviet détente, Nixon’s and Brezhnev’s eventual willingness to consider Vietnam outside of U.S.-Soviet relations allowed détente to proceed.