DÉTENTE - REALITY AND MYTH
Pachter, Henry
When the devil is seen in conversation with the pope, one may wonder who is converting whom. And when both the governments of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. profess an ardent desire for detente, one...
...The Russians are going to use the sweetest language of detente to persuade the West Europeans that they need fear nothing from them 3 but, on the contrary, are welcome to seize the great opportunities of trade and investment in the vast Soviet empire...
...Moreover, as Kissinger made clear, the detente is never final but a continued process of piecemeal accommodations...
...we may soon be back to 1964, when Adlai Stevenson tried to have the French and Russian memberships suspended for the same reason...
...nor is Henry's chummy reference to "my friend Le Duc Tho...
...a condominium of two superpowers...
...democratic controls of army and intelligence establishments...
...and U.S.S.R...
...The Russian dissenters seem divided on the question whether external sanctions may help them...
...Kissinger's performance seems to be so dazzling precisely because he does not stand on firm ground and lacks any overall conception...
...Vice versa, it needs to 22 HENRY PACHTER be remembered that Stalin allowed the smashing of the Greek revolution and, later, his successors conceded United States hegemony in the Western hemisphere...
...I for one would not propose that the U.S...
...It no longer believes that peace is indivisible...
...We can no longer play the role of international policeman and expect other nations to accept our solutions quasi-automatically...
...most of all they abhor, liberation, we have scorned John Foster Dulles's boast to "roll back the Iron Curtain," we have pleaded for the recognition not only of the GDR and the Chinese People's Republic but of all existing borders and governments...
...As a practical statesman, he wishes to follow an entirely pragmatic routine, meeting crises when they arise but not seeking confrontations, engaging the might of the United States only where necessary...
...This is not the first time that the Communists have addressed themselves to capitalism for funds...
...This lesson should be twofold...
...Department of State, on the contrary, has taken a troubled view of the whole proposition...
...This indeed is meant bythose who take detente seriously as an ideology for their own conduct, which they would like to see adopted by the powers...
...Still less do we need to justify and idealize the new situation, to conceal its dangers and calamities, or even to praise it as a more desirable and possibly more ethical way of conducting foreign policy...
...The credit the Russians are requesting amounts to billions of dollars, more than the GNP of many members of the United Nations...
...troops from Central Europe...
...Germany's trade was most intense with the countries it attacked in 1914...
...The Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) were scheduled to begin and the Spring of Prague had raised hopes for a humanized Communism—when Soviet troops suddenly marched into Czechoslovakia, and President Johnson had to postpone the rapprochement thereby also prolonging his (and our) agony in Vietnam...
...Kissinger has specifically repudiated the idea of "balance of power"—.or rather, the illusion that equilibrium is always stable or, when disturbed, adjusts itself...
...Thus we are forced to agree not just to one detente, that with the Soviet Union, but to a second one, that with our allies...
...For a while there lurked the terrible prospect of a dozen nuclear powers, each hell-bent on thwarting any attempt to give peace a structure...
...freedom of exchanges, travel, and information...
...Unfortunately, it is also true that Brezhnev's peace offensives bear an embarrassing resemblance to those of the late Joseph V. Stalin...
...Realistically, the detente has been applied only to Central Europe, while Asia and Africa still are subject to Khrushchev's amendment to the Doctrine of Coexistence: thus "wars of liberation" may be supported by a superpower that supposes that in so doing it can shift the balance in its favor...
...Perhaps in recognition of the greater vulnerability and lesser effectiveness of U.S...
...Some have been so imprudent as to advertise their belief that economic cooperation will lead to some kind of "convergence...
...Johnson's decision may have been necessary for emotional reasons, which play a great role in domestic politics...
...At best it is a procedural proposal leaving the participants obligated to explain what the procedure will lead to...
...Despite its successful crash programs in rocketry and weaponry, it still is an underdeveloped country...
...Now it was also possible to begin talks about the mutual withdrawal of troops from Central Europe...
...a better system of alliances...
...The question is even more difficult to answer if relations with the allies are taken into account...
...in return, the Soviet Union promises to deliver perishable goods, such as natural gas, over a long period of redemption...
...it offers no positive framework for the organization of peace...
...Any new crisis is likely to take us back quickly to a bipolar confrontation...
...This policy, or the principle that inspires it, might be called disengagement in the sense of a refusal to be committed...
...Willy-nilly, therefore, America has recognized Russia's "parity" and abandoned the race...
...Western Europe still needs and indeed wants America's atomic umbrella and the presence of American troops, for under this shield alone can the smaller states hope to wield their own swords...
...There is little prospect for any limitation on conventional arms (which by now are more deadly than any used in World War II) or for a ban on the sale or transfer of highly sophisticated weaponry to client states...
...But, rather than a new policy, we are offered a new word...
...At least some of this money would free Soviet funds for distribution to client states: why should the United States finance Russian military aid to Egypt or Russian credits to India...
...In the recent Sinai war, the West German, Spanish, and Greek governments, in less than edyifyi,ng unity, concealed their subservience to the oil interests by hypocritically proclaiming their "neutrality...
...but such confrontation immediately will bring into play the need for the two rivals to cooperate in order to keep the crisis from escalating and involving them directly...
...It accepts necessity but fails to create new conditions for a more permanent organization of peace 4—hardly a record to justify a Nobie Peace award...
...Disengagement as proposed by its devotees is first a policy renouncing military means in the pursuit of national aims...
...Collective security may be utopian, but there can be no mistake about its meaning...
...And no matter how bitter the superpowers' rivalry, in times of crisis they must set a limit to that rivalry...
...It endows our policy-makers (and those of others nations) with a halo of peacefulness and it is difficult to gainsay...
...government, press, and public proclaim it as the new way of international life...
...each influences or interferes with the other...
...In that equilibristic exercise, however, some boundaries were not agreed upon but tacitly accepted...
...The Russians, however, consider this privilege a test of our sincerity...
...Some of these modern weapons have been made idiot-proof, so that even illiterate fellahin can operate them, with the computer doing all the work...
...It is much harder to say what we and other leading powers could or should do to make the detente meaningful...
...and the U.S.S.R., to increase their influence in each other's orbits...
...It requires strong international organs of distributive justice and, in their absence, machinery of regional security and arbitration.' One cannot be "neutral" without being neutral "against" the more just cause or without being unfair to one side...
...Retrenchment presupposes a sort of resignation...
...This latter contention can easily be disproved by statistics...
...We almost have no other choice, because it has become near-impossible to continue the language of confrontation...
...The crisis demonstrated strikingly that (1) the conflict could not have become acute but for the commitment of the superpowers to their client states...
...Could a more united Europe, as it may emerge one day, act as a third superpower...
...General Assembly, that small powers are not warlike...
...A critic is always liable to the rejoinder, And what do you propose...
...the continuation of the maneuvers, by both the U.S...
...Coexistence not only tolerates the arming of satellites, it even calls for the cold-war equilibrium of strategic arms...
...Both America and the Soviet Union seem to prefer the old cold-war pattern of antagonistic cooperation to the risk inherent in a more fluid situation...
...What we can anticipate to happen there can only be described as "Cold War," i.e...
...Wall Street bankers also have reasoned that closer business relations might mollify the Russians...
...Such weapons in the hands of "national-revolutionary" governments become all the more dangerous as the nuclear powers are stalemated.' l I cannot agree with Willy Brandt's statement at the U.N...
...THE PRESENT DETENTE between the United States and Russia was first planned in 1968, or even earlier...
...The word "detente" seems to be both reassuring and affirmative...
...Second, the credits and supplies requested by the Soviet Union would build permanent installations and production units inside Russia...
...These examples point up the dilemma faced by any statesman in working toward a detente: shall he start with piecemeal measures he hopes will lead up to a more solid, overall friendship—from detente to rapprochement to entente...
...Today the Soviet Union needs sophisticated machinery and capital to satisfy its pressing consumer needs...
...All that the three words have in common is a French root...
...They resent, nay fear, any kind of interference in their domestic policies...
...But 26 HENRY PACHTER Dr...
...in diplomacy, a fait accompli must be acknowledged, a crime forgotten, and an illegitimate regime sooner or later has to be legitimized...
...But they also desire more autonomous policies for themselves, more consultation in NATO councils with the Americans, and in the end perhaps an independent role either within or outside NATO...
...acceptance of European autonomy implies European acceptance of American autonomy with respect to areas in which European concern has lessened...
...Even supposing that some of these causes are worthy, do they concern the man in Duluth...
...The maneuvers to "stabilize" this situation are usually referred to as "Cold War...
...The picture that emerges reminds one of a Chinese juggler who has to balance a dozen rotating dishes on so many rods while riding a bicycle...
...We have seen recently how in the Mideast crisis the United States practices it, in antagonistic collusion with the Soviet Union, but in disregard of its allies...
...The latter cannot be entrusted to governments anyway, but must and will remain the cause of private persons and their free associations...
...Detente si, detentism no...
...cessation of ideological warfare, of wars of liberation and police actions abroad, of arms deliveries to client states...
...Indeed, the SALT talks were resumed later on, and at about that time Professor Kissinger, then still at Harvard, discerned no fewer than five distinct periods of "detente" between the U.S...
...some indeed may diminish the chances of peace...
...This means both the abolition of military means— for it is futile to display power and !at the same time foreswear its use—and the renunciation of national goals—for it is futile to pursue goals one cannot secure without the means of power...
...he may believe that a country whose bankers lend their money to Russia would not attack her for fear of losing it...
...detente"—an ideology where we need concrete relations...
...Characteristically, they are bilateral only, while the United Nations Disarmament Conference languishes in irrelevance...
...State Department is not alone in regarding these developments with apprehension...
...DETENTE — REALITY AND MYTH 29...
...To keep military engagement out of conflicts, there must be an engagement of other forces and institutions...
...The Mansfield resolution and dwindling army enrollments may force the liquidation of overseas bases and the withdrawal of U.S...
...We have revived it now and suggested the Russians withdraw more troops than the Western powers because they started out with more and are closer to the scene...
...Isolationism may be a mistaken policy, but at least it was a clear conception of America's relationship to the world...
...Largely because the Moscow-Washington rapprochement has made the NATO governments suspicious, the U.S...
...These maneuvers have earned the epithet "detente," although the tension between the warring parties has not been removed...
...When conceptions are wanting, you can quickly invent a clever word," says Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust...
...A "thinning out" of forces on both sides of the Iron Curtain was first proposed by British Foreign Minister Eden in 1954, then by Polish Foreign Minister Rapacki in 1956-57...
...I guess one must welcome the diplomatic profession's return to the tradition of hypocrisy (see footnote 3...
...In the new SALT talks, the U.S...
...instead of considering any change of the status quo anywhere as a threat to its own security, it defines its perimeter of defense unilaterally and makes unilateral decisions on when and where to intervene...
...But, basically, it is a philosophy of laissez-faire...
...Why die for Diem and Thieu...
...Why guarantee Israel's frontier or the statute of Berlin...
...Kissinger's admirers, who apparently have not read his books, do him a disfavor by comparing him with Metternich, of whom he has written that the brilliance of his per4 "Structure of peace" is Kissinger's favorite expression...
...its people have less to spend individually for their food, clothing, housing, education, and recreation than some of the peoples in satellite countries...
...It is the nature of the new policy that it provides no inspirational uplift...
...Besides, strings of this kind normally are not attached to diplomatic transactions because DETENTE — REALITY AND MYTH 25 they are counterproductive or produce retaliation in kind...
...As a poli-scientist, Professor Kissinger has rejected the ideological rigidities of the Cold War and the academic conceptions of visionaries such as "global police," "collective security," or "balance of power...
...Also, detente in one area does not imply detente in all others...
...he rather sees it as a series of negotiations designed to remove points of friction or actual risks of conflict...
...This is the opposite of isolationism...
...a new balance of powers with three, four, or perhaps five players in the game...
...The trouble with this demand is that the Russians cannot reciprocate...
...The Russians have countered with a demand for numerically equal withdrawals of troops along with their atomic weapons...
...The relationship between "Cold War" and "coexistence" has always been dialectical...
...Since we see nothing of the kind, and since the defusing of conflicts is not gathering momentum, I fear that the present detente, at best, is a diplomatic technique—and perhaps a means to cover up a gigantic loss of control that may still result in utter chaos, with a dozen nuclear powers racing toward doomsday...
...A nation that trades with so many others, invests its surplus capital and knowhow in their development, and is concerned with their independence and well-being cannot pretend that it is doing nothing but watch peacefully...
...for they still suffer from the inferiority complex of the nouveau riche who does not really believe that he has arrived until the establishment has admitted him to its most exclusive club...
...Here are some of the measures that, in ensemble, might constitute a criterium of deescalation: disarmament under inspection, abandonment of foreign bases, and disclosure of military resources...
...And he supported Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik that put an official end to World War II and the so-called Cold War in Central Europe: in return for a guarantee of the liberty of West Berlin, the West recognized the existing borders between the two German states, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, ratified Stalin's conquests, and thereby prepared a rapprochement between the NATO and Warsaw Pact countries...
...The ensemble of these maneuvers is called the "detente" or, in Kissinger's words, spoken by Nixon, a shift from confrontation to negotiation...
...No matter what the merits of the European position in this case, I am using the example only to show that one cannot be neutral in a conflict involving others, especially if one side does not accept the doctrine of "business as usual...
...The Soviet rulers, by contrast, always displayed great touchiness on such matters...
...Those who thought this way must have been deeply disappointed by the course of events in October...
...and whatever one's estimate of the bipolar system that reigned between 1945 and approximately 1965, one cannot deny that there was a conception of world politics and that it corresponded to the reality of power relations...
...Whether America "won" or "lost" the Cold War, it is indisputable that the dominant conception with which this country conducted the Cold War has not emerged triumphant...
...Incidentally, German and Japanese creditors find themselves cheated as Russian gas deliveries fall short of the specified, contracted quantities...
...If America intends to play its cards alone, or with minimal concern for its allies, we shall soon have neither bipolarity nor multipolarity but simply chaos...
...Detente may be an illusion or a deception, a tactic or an attitude...
...The Russians even like the existence of NATO, insofar as it isolates Germany from its eastern neighbors...
...3) the secondary powers, including permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, had to accept, under vociferous protest, the dictates of the superpowers...
...The real hero of Kissinger's book is Castelereagh, who knew how to roll with the punches, tried to reconcile France after the Napoleonic wars, kept Russia at bay, and furthered the Greek fight for liberation...
...4) even China, that paragon of polycentrism, did not dare exercise its veto in the Security Council...
...After many disappointing experiences, the American people understandably do not wish any longer to be responsible, with their 28 HENRY PACHTER lives and money, for the maintenance of the status quo all over the world...
...They wish to "disengage" themselves from the many trouble spots in faraway countries...
...Kissinger himself would not pretend that he is eagerly looking forward to the European Security Conference...
...It is easy to show that neither of these conceptions is realistic or will work over a longer period of time...
...Its apparent superiority in Polaris should give it retaliatory power, but its greater density of population makes it more vulnerable than the Soviet Union to a first strike...
...Germany's permanent partition was the admitted purpose of the "detente...
...agreed that each should keep a few antimissile missile systems but should refrain from building the "thick" ABM systems that are costly and (for technical reasons I cannot explain here) tend to destabilize the system...
...politically, it was shown to be unrealistic, tradition-bound, and needlessly inflexible...
...As early as in 1920, Chicherin, Lenin's foreign minister, told the World Economic Conference at Genoa that Russia's markets and "concessions" (investment opportunities) might save capitalism from its postwar recession...
...Only when de facto observance was converted into de jure recognition did the powers speak of "detente"—the removal of a source of possible friction, a relaxation of international tension in a specific area...
...There also is the pseudo-Marxist superstition, shared by both the Kremlin rand American capitalists, that a detente needs an economic underpinning besides the exchanges of ballet troupes and orchestras...
...the wrecking of that pillar of Cold War shame, the Berlin Wall...
...Kissinger therefore has offered our allies a new "Atlantic Charter" which would guarantee that we continue to speak in their name...
...What has been said of the previous U.S...
...As early as in his foreign-policy message of 1970, President Nixon warned that in each case of possible intervention the United States would "weigh its interests and the contribution of its allies...
...I may now have to warn not to underestimate the technical possibilities of detente...
...policy, the so-called Cold War, also applies to its so-called policy of detente: it merely reacts to the initiatives of other powers...
...Balance of Powers may be elusive or vulnerable, but at least it implies instructions to the policymaker...
...The superpowers then were rivals, but they respected each other's territories, and they were jointly responsible for maintaining the status quo, especially in Europe...
...the latter is sought to avoid the former...
...His own idea of detente is neither that of a blissful state of mind where one trusts that his partner is similarly innocent of bad intentions, nor that of unilateral abandonment of national goals...
...their job was only to balance one bear...
...Yet, as presidential adviser, Henry Kissinger tried again...
...Yet this policy is justified by the philosophy of detente, which thereby is revealed to be a mere ideology, an illusion people think they are pursuing while world politics in reality proceeds as usual...
...To admit our concern is the first step toward its right use...
...On the contrary, coexistence is held to be consistent with ideological warfare, with efforts to build better, i.e., more destructive arms, with the continuation of regimes that have aptly been called "mobilization states," with those physical and institutional barriers that prevent communication between peoples, such as restrictions of travel and trade, such as censorship and the uncouth symbol of a whole nation's captivity, the Berlin Wall...
...Liberalization in the Soviet Union and foreign participation in its modernization program are alternatives...
...Moreover, he has specifically repudiated the ideologies on which the policy of the previous 33 years had been based—collective security and containment of the Communist advance...
...Dissenters in the Soviet Union propose to cut the defense and foreign-aid budgets, to liberalize the economy, and to grant the people more freedom of expression...
...Since it must avoid escalation, it cannot credibly assure its allies automatic support in case of a crisis...
...to seek a detente in the West...
...They marched into the Cold War under the banner of collective security...
...Admittedly, Acheson, Dulles, and Rusk had it easier...
...But we cannot simply have one detente with Russia, another with China, and a third with Europe...
...power, the American public seems to have gotten tired of world politics and the imperial role...
...But diplomatic practice and the doctrine of coexistence prescribe that governments should deal with each other without regard to one another's morals...
...Detente, on the contrary, is at best a code of good behavior...
...What if the Russians were to refuse to do business with us until we had assured civil rights to every last Black Panther...
...It is useless, therefore, to try what some Western politicians would like to do: demand liberalization in the name of detente, or even to make Western aid dependent upon domestic liberalization...
...The new confrontation in the Middle East shattered not only the illusion of detente but also the underlying theory, which first had been urged by critics of U.S...
...Having said this, however, I do not think we have to feel obliged to like the state of affairs that we have to recognize as a dire reality...
...Or is not the overall entente, a basic change in the character of the relationship between the two countries, required as a precondition for a detente which alone makes individual measures of relaxation and accommodation meaningful and possible...
...The Nixon court may be Byzantine, but other nations no longer live with the ancien regime...
...Rather, it should be called unilateralism...
...Parity, the outcome of the Cold War, seems to be the real inner reason for detente...
...or a system of collective security...
...While no one who desires peace will refuse such a limited detente, it is useful to remember that detente is not necessarily rapprochement (the East Germans have not agreed to that, for instance) nor should it be confused with entente...
...The first requirement of a policy of true disengagement, therefore, would be renunciation of sovereignty, both militarily and politically, not to speak of economic interests...
...In so fluid a situation, any attempt to stem the tide could only result in defeat...
...This is the plight of all sensitive 21 people involved in the political life of states...
...The United States must now face further losses of prestige, influence, and power...
...Emotionally, the bipolar confrontation was dubbed "cold war...
...Or there might be a European nuclear power holding the balance between the United States and the Soviet Union...
...peace-keeping operations...
...Of 90 war actions since 1945, 80 involved Third World nations...
...Next to their apprehensions of China, the need for Western capital and know-how is the most serious reason for the Soviet Union 8 Brezhnev had the nerve to say that the Conference members should undertake not to interfere in other nations' domestic affairs...
...Negotiation and confrontation, therefore, are not alternatives but complements...
...I believe that there are domestic as well as diplomatic reasons for advertising this new philosophy...
...Hard as it may be for some of us to acknowledge, in the atomic age the preservation of peace has priority over the fight for liberties...
...profess an ardent desire for detente, one may feel entitled to a definition of that concept...
...also needs to be suspicious of their relations with Moscow...
...Detente requires not a new isolationism but a new internationalism...
...It implies not only good faith on our part, but reasonableness on the other side, too...
...we can hold them in the fold only by helping them to see how far they can go on that tricky road...
...Their not too polite "No" was presented to him by the Danish foreign minister, who, for the first time, spoke in the name of all of Western Europe...
...But structure is precisely the one guarantee that is missing in his conception of peace...
...History will say that Kissinger recognized the need for a more flexible American policy and possibly even a retrenchment...
...Our allies are seeking a relaxation of the rigid NATO frame...
...policy when new forces assert themselves in world politics...
...It may be true that Brezhnev considers capitalistic investment in the Soviet Union a kind of hostage...
...he saved what there was to be saved of a bad bargain, and in both cases substituted a semblance of peace for a war that could not go on much longer...
...We have not advocated wars of The insecurity of the new balance has been felt by the Europeans for about 10 years and, beginning with General de Gaulle, they have tried to find accommodations of their own with the Soviet Union...
...Principles, of course, result in confrontations with unprincipled, self-seeking opponents as well as with forces pursuing other principles...
...2) it could not have been settled without the quickly established cooperation of the same superpower rivals...
...foreign policy and then been accepted by its makers: that world politics has moved from an era of bipolar hegemony to an era of multilateral relations...
...to endow it with virtue, Kissinger had to borrow an ideology from thinkers on foreign policy with whom he otherwise had nothing in common...
...No matter how much freedom the smaller powers may enjoy between times of crisis, in the last resort the big powers will reestablish their hegemony, even their condominium...
...The brilliance of his performance at the Vietnam negotiations and the Sinai cease-fire negotiations can hardly conceal the fact that in both cases his assignment was to cover a rescue-and-retreat operation...
...While the exchange may be advantageous to U.S...
...The meaning of that second detente was spelled out by Dr...
...Nixon's self-advertised "personal relationship with Brezhnev" is not much of a structure to rely on...
...One nation's deterrent assured the other's respect for agreed-upon boundaries...
...DETENTE — REALITY AND MYTH 23 These two developments—parity among the superpowers and the arms race among the small countries—may alter the power relations under conditions of detente...
...If this analysis is correct, two points are in order...
...The larger the number of missiles and the greater their effectiveness, the smaller becomes the difference between the stronger and the weaker force...
...He skillfully negotiated a truce for Vietnam...
...But it has little to do with detente...
...5 At this writing, the Chinese refuse to pay their share of U.N...
...Therefore I believe that nothing short of the abandonment of large areas of sovereignty by all powers can assure peace...
...While Soviet supply planes flew to Cairo over Yugoslavia at the rate of 15 per hour, U.S...
...In the light of what has been said about the recurrence of bipolarity, this casts an ominous shadow on any possible era of good feelings...
...These talks will continue and, with any luck, produce further agreements limiting multiple warheads and regulating the deployment of other strategic weapons...
...if mistaken for a policy, it is a source of confusion and danger...
...In articles published before 1969, he called for liquidation of the Vietnam war, for recognition of the People's Republic of China, for adjustments in the NATO structure to the greater independence and growing stature of our allies, for abandonment of the idea that the United States had to police every trouble spot in the world—and also for abandonment of the vanity that causes Americans to conceive their foreign policy in terms of fulfilling an idea or realizing a principle...
...and the U.S.S.R., each introduced with great hopes for a world without anxiety, and each followed by a thumping letdown...
...Americans do, it seems, need a sense of mission if they are to support a policy...
...Defense of the status quo can no longer be the principle of U.S...
...The failure of this attempt, alas, will not result in abrogation of the doctrine...
...Two U.S...
...On entering the United Nations, Willy Brandt put everybody on notice that Germany has not abandoned her claim to reunification—which to others seems a threat...
...ships to Israel were barred from most NATO ports...
...Here, indeed, is something to negotiate about, for the whole situation is fraught with danger and anxiety...
...To be sure, we are using the language of detente, cooperation, and negotiation...
...This was a favorite theory of Europeans (and of their friends in the United States) ; for, obviously, if this was true, they ought to free themselves from their American tutelage...
...Czechs and Poles agree with the Russians that two Germanys are preferable to one...
...Individual gestures of detente, and even material concessions, will serve the goal of peace only if they lead to an eventual surrender of sovereignty to an This article was first drafted last May, as a warning not to overestimate the benefits of detente...
...For who could be against a policy that wraps itself in the mantle of peacefulness...
...Collective security suffered a severe setback when President Johnson failed to support this demand...
...firms in -terms of profits, it certainly would shift the balance of production capacity, and thereby of power, to the Soviet Union...
...secretaries of state who were not known for being soft on Communism, John Foster Dulles and Dean Rusk, looked on when Russian tanks crushed freedom in Hungary and Czechoslovakia...
...But with all that "limitation," we shall not see a single missile dismantled (except, of course, where an obsolete one is to be replaced by a more modern one) . These negotiations are intended to freeze the results of the Cold War arms race, and they follow the spirit of the limited Test Ban of 1963 and the Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968, which attempted to stabilize the balance not only between the two superpowers but also between the superpowers on the one hand and all others on the other...
...Since their foreign trade is a state monopoly, which places its orders not with the lowest bidder but according to the political needs of the Soviet government, the United States would get a worthless quid for its valuable quo...
...The remedy against interventionism is not its abolition but a different kind of intervention...
...It fears that an overall detente would loosen the NATO ties too much, and therefore it has given the impression that it must be dragged to the conference table instead of adopting detente as its own sovereign decision...
...After the recent Yom Kippur war, too, the NATO allies dissociated themselves from the United States—and, one guesses, not just over the procedural question of being consulted...
...The hypocrisy of detentism is the enemy of any real detente...
...It is precisely to avoid such a course that the Soviet government desires a detente and foreign capital...
...That may be true in the very long run, but for the moment it has provoked an added watchfulness in Moscow and new repression in the satellite capitals...
...Paradoxically, therefore, the U.S.S.R...
...Kissinger even before he joined the government: "U.S...
...It was brought up-to-date after the Yom Kippur war...
...has indicated that the Americans should stay in West Germany—.to keep an eye on their allies, so to speak...
...Strangely enough, the U.S...
...but of course they like a weak NATO better than a strong one, and they hope to achieve both goals—maintaining the division of Europe as well as loosening of NATO's cohesion—at the coming European Conference on Security and Cooperation...
...Above all, the fear that asymmetrical reductions of forces might destabilize the equilibrium characterizes a coldwar relationship and indicates scant detente in any more profound or reassuring sense.° 2 To avoid possible misunderstandings, I must refer to earlier articles in DISSENT which have argued that this outcome of the Cold War, distasteful as it may be for anyone who cares for freedom, had to be accepted...
...Will it be a neater partition of the world into two camps...
...international body...
...In practical terms, the United States was being asked to pay more heed to the advice given by smaller partners who were getting increasingly independent and self-confident...
...The Russians, too, have shown signs of nervousness at the prospect of Eureopean unity...
...He went to China...
...But hardly had Kissinger assumed the title of secretary of state and received the Nobel Peace Prize, when he was reminded of Solon's advice to King Croesus that no one should be deemed happy as long as he is in office...
...there are the same promises of verbal benevolence in return for material concessions...
...This had been the situation throughout the period of the so-called Cold War, too...
...24 HENRY PACHTER of course, the possibility that adynamic German leadership might use such a European force to fulfill its national aspirations...
...The U.S...
...DETENTE — REALITY AND MYTH 27 formance failed to conceal the futility of his effort...
...It seems to indicate that there is no danger any more in relaxing one's guard...
...but one thing it is not—a conception of international relations, an institutional framework for peace...
...But if detente is so uncertain, so precarious, and so elusive, why then does the U.S...
...A third choice is a Confederation of Europe, allied with the United States in a new kind of relationship...
...There are the same "peace congresses" where dissent from the Soviet line is shouted down, the same demagogic appeals to the peoples, over the heads of their governments, to disarm coupled with the same refusal to allow inspection...
...Between the Scylla of a United Europe and the Charybdis of a Europe split so badly that Soviet diplomacy can pick the countries up one by one, the United States tries to find a new framework for the NATO alliance...
...The United States will in the future try to maintain good relations with governments of all descriptions, and it will not intervene except where its own direct interests would be endangered...
...it was almost nil with Russia and with Japan in 1939...
...On the other hand, the Soviet Union requests, as a measure of detente, thestatus of a "most favored" nation, which means that its goods benefit from the lowest customs duties on entering the United States...
...This past October we saw that amendment applied...
...To him detente means that you can have no preconceived idea about who will be your adversary or your friend in the next round...
...and Soviet governments, neither of which has clean hands in matters of civil rights, should make their mutual relations dependent upon the other's conduct vis-a-vis its racial, ethnic, religious, and philosophical minorities...
Vol. 21 • January 1974 • No. 1
