CNN Cold War Set 2_04of14_Detente 1969-1975
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00:00Once upon a time, there lived two neighbors. One of them bought a shotgun.
00:05Aha, thought the other. All right, I'll buy myself a bigger gun.
00:10What could this mean, thought the first neighbor?
00:15I'll buy myself something bigger.
00:20By the end of the 1960s, the Soviet Union seemed likely to match America's nuclear arsenal.
00:28The two superpowers faced a choice. Slow down their competition,
00:33the process that would be called detente,
00:37or continue an arms race that could end in all-out war.
00:57The Soviet Union's arms race
01:02The Soviet Union's arms race
01:07The Soviet Union's arms race
01:12The Soviet Union's arms race
01:17The Soviet Union's arms race
01:22The Soviet Union's arms race
01:341969, a new American president came to power.
01:41Richard Nixon had new ideas about how to make the Cold War less dangerous.
01:47He was ready to accept the Soviet Union as America's nuclear equal.
01:54When President Nixon came into office, the conventional wisdom of all the media
02:03and the people who thought of themselves as intellectuals was that he was a warmonger
02:08and that they had to moderate him, and we were under enormous pressure
02:13from the Soviet Union on trade, on salt, on a whole complex of things.
02:19This was not a foreign policy politician, particularly in his early years.
02:24He had gained notoriety and power, as you know, on the wave of the Great Red Scare,
02:29the great McCarthy period in American politics.
02:34He also knew, and this was very important, the bureaucracy.
02:39The most difficult belligerent powers with which he had to deal were not the Soviet Union or China,
02:44but the Department of State, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon, the Department of Defense.
02:49Those belligerents arrayed along the Potomac.
03:02Although Nixon wanted to revise America's Cold War strategy,
03:07he wanted to get American troops out of the war in Vietnam.
03:16By 1969, this war had cost the lives of 30,000 G.I.s, and there was still no end.
03:28When I became Secretary of Defense, there were 550,000 men on the ground in Vietnam,
03:33another 1,200,000 in Asia, in the Navy, in the Air Force, supporting this operation.
03:38It was a big war.
03:43America's ally, President Thieu of South Vietnam, met Nixon on Midway Island.
03:52Nixon told Thieu he planned to pull out American troops
03:57and hand over the ground war to the South Vietnamese.
04:02That was the term that I coined in order to get people thinking about the responsibilities
04:07the Vietnamese had there.
04:12So we came in and said, that's fine as long as you leave behind a well-trained South Vietnamese army
04:17and equip us so that we could tear our own destiny.
04:25In July 1969, the first American troops were pulled out.
04:33Both Nixon and Kissinger knew what it was doing to our society,
04:41the controversy, the distractions, the financial costs that cost the terrible human toll
04:46in terms of lives lost and wounded, not only of Americans, but Vietnamese and others,
04:51and also the distractions from other foreign policy initiatives.
04:56It's one reason that Nixon and Kissinger wanted to open up with China
05:01and with Russia, partly to try to bring pressure on the Vietnamese to negotiate a settlement,
05:06partly to show a dramatic forward movement of our foreign policy
05:11that we were not crippled and paralyzed by the Vietnam War.
05:16Hanoi had put on its own pressure with an offensive in the South.
05:21American generals proposed bombing North Vietnam's bases in neutral Cambodia.
05:26Nixon agreed to the bombing, but insisted the raids in Cambodia be kept secret.
05:56I was all for bombing the sanctuaries in Cambodia,
06:07but I could not tell the President of the United States, the Secretary of State,
06:12or the National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, that I could keep it secret,
06:17and I thought it would be a very bad thing if that came out at a later time,
06:22and I knew it would because we had 12,000 people that had all that information,
06:27and you just can't keep secrets.
06:32Laird was right. Anti-war demonstrators protested.
06:43They called out the names of soldiers killed in Vietnam.
06:48Richard Nixon could look out the window of the White House and see a mob of people
06:53marching in the street protesting the war in Vietnam, for instance.
06:58He could take a three-by-five card out of his pocket and take a look,
07:03and the polls showed him, with the confidence of 70, 75 percent of the American people,
07:08and he'd say, I'm not going to let those people in the street make foreign policy for this country.
07:14And so tonight, to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans,
07:22I ask for your support. I pledged in my campaign for the presidency to end the war
07:28in a way that we could win the peace.
07:33I have initiated a plan of action which will enable me to keep that pledge.
07:38The more support I can have from the American people, the sooner that pledge can be redeemed,
07:44for the more divided we are at home, the less likely the enemy is to negotiate.
07:50Nixon believed, I think correctly, that the opposition to the war was mostly about the draft
07:56and the casualties and not about the American presence.
08:01The Americans didn't care if we were bombing Hanoi.
08:06All they cared about was the fact that young American men were being drafted, sent to Vietnam and being killed.
08:14The bombing of communist bases in Cambodia was no miracle cure.
08:29American G.I.s still came under attack in South Vietnam.
08:37Gunfire
09:01Nixon now ordered a ground assault into Cambodia.
09:06Gunfire
09:30Leave this country immediately.
09:37Nixon's invasion of Cambodia produced violent protests on American campuses.
09:52At Kent State University, National Guardsmen shot four students dead.
09:59Gunfire
10:07Music
10:20Every year, in the early spring and late autumn, the Soviet Army gets its new recruits.
10:26The forces are inconceivable without strong, agile men possessing stamina.
10:37These are fighting men.
10:45Fighting men alone could not guarantee security.
10:51Soviet leaders wanted arms agreements that recognized their nuclear parity with America.
10:57They also wanted American understanding in their quarrel with China.
11:03The Communist Party chief, Leonid Brezhnev, championed relaxation of Cold War tension with America,
11:09the policy that would be called détente.
11:16He was on his way to the very top of Soviet power.
11:22Brezhnev was a sincere person in many ways.
11:27The war was only beginning to end.
11:33He returned with the very strong conviction that he had to do his best to prevent war.
11:39This was illustrated every time he went to a collective farm or factory.
11:45He would ask people, how are things?
11:51They would complain, but then they would say, well, we can put up with it as long as there is no war.
11:57Every leader in any country has the need to express his character
12:03and to leave his mark in history.
12:09He wanted to become the leader of the Soviet government.
12:15One of the ways he had of strengthening his position was making foreign policy his priority.
12:21American-Soviet relations were always at the center of our diplomacy.
12:27I would say that basically, whether the West believed it or not,
12:33our attitude was to have a more constructive relationship with the United States.
12:39In Europe, the Cold War showed itself most painfully
12:45in the iron curtain that divided the two Germanies.
12:57West Germany's new chancellor, the Social Democrat Willy Brandt,
13:03had his own ideas for improving relations with the Soviet bloc.
13:09The Germans called it Ostpolitik.
13:15The main thing that got the ball rolling
13:21was the decision of the chancellor to call East Germany a state.
13:27This was a fundamental change in our position,
13:33which led to fierce criticism of the West.
13:38In Moscow, people were all ears.
13:44In our opinion, there were more sober voices among the Social Democrats,
13:50those who would seek common points of interest with us.
13:56Not similarities in our outlook,
14:02but similarities in our interests,
14:08I would like to stress the difference.
14:14If we found points in common which would preserve a balance of interests,
14:20this could lead relations between the Soviet Union and West Germany out of a dead end.
14:30Willy Brandt became the first West German chancellor to visit East Germany.
14:38I wish you a pleasant stay.
14:44Thank you for the welcome and for the good weather.
14:50Brandt's visit was a triumph.
14:56To ordinary East Germans, he seemed to bring hope of change.
15:02But the Americans were worried.
15:08They were afraid of nationalism,
15:14that if Germany operated on its own vis-Ã -vis the East,
15:20it would emphasize its own national concerns,
15:26if not immediately, then over a period of time.
15:32The response we got from Nixon and Kissinger was one of doubt and suspicion.
15:38I asked Kissinger shortly before we got into office what we planned to do.
15:44He asked a lot of questions.
15:50We reached the point where I said,
15:56I am not here to consult, but to inform.
16:02This was a tone unheard of in Washington.
16:08Our intent was not to fight it and then be accused
16:14of being the cause of permanent German partition,
16:20but rather to help guide it in a direction that was compatible with Allied policy.
16:26So we established another back channel to Brandt
16:32through his associate Egon Bahr,
16:38where anything could be concluded with respect to Germany.
16:44Absolute assurances had to exist with respect to our position in Berlin.
16:50Brandt's next destination was Moscow.
16:56He hoped to remove Russia's fear of its old German enemy.
17:02Brandt was willing to recognize Europe's post-war borders
17:08as a place of peace.
17:14The Moscow Accords were the key
17:20to our bilateral treaty system with the East.
17:26The Federal Republic ceased being an excuse
17:32for the Soviet Union to keep the Eastern Bloc in line.
17:38In the desire to create permanent basis for a peaceful coexistence
17:44between the Federal Republic of Germany and Poland,
17:50Chancellor Brandt and Foreign Minister Scheel traveled to Warsaw.
17:56Brandt had come to recognize Poland's western border,
18:02carved out of territory seized from Nazi Germany in 1945.
18:08Words failed him.
18:14He knelt at the memorial to Jewish fighters who resisted the Nazis.
18:20Brandt was a stroke of luck for German history.
18:26For the Americans, he symbolized reliability.
18:32He had proved himself the defender of Berlin
18:38and of the East.
18:44And for the East, he was a resistance fighter
18:50against the Nazis without any doubt.
18:56In a divided Germany, these steps towards détente
19:02brought welcome cracks in the Berlin Wall.
19:08Richard Nixon
19:14The architects of America's new approach to the Cold War
19:20were Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger.
19:26Henry was very temperamental, very bright, very territorial, very insecure.
19:32You could say the same thing about Richard Nixon.
19:38They were rivals. They fought with one another.
19:44They fought not with one another, but behind one another's backs.
19:50They were devious.
19:56The two men preferred to work in secret.
20:02Through back channels, they set up summit meetings in Beijing and Moscow.
20:08None of them totally reliable.
20:14Nixon and Kissinger wanted the summits in China and the Soviet Union
20:20to help America get out of Vietnam.
20:26They also hoped to bring China into their diplomatic game.
20:32The principal reason for seeking a rapprochement with China
20:38was that it produces rigidity.
20:44Secondly, we wanted to demonstrate to the American public
20:50that Vietnam was an aberration, that we had ideas
20:56for the construction of peace on a global scale.
21:02Soviet leaders were alarmed after Kissinger
21:08and Kissinger's speech.
21:14He said,
21:20We have demonstrated that nations with very deep and fundamental differences
21:26can learn to discuss those differences calmly, rationally, and frankly
21:32without compromising their principles.
21:38We were being surrounded.
21:44The Moscow reaction was that a summit which we had tried to achieve
21:50before the trip to China, and in which they had been stonewalling us
21:56and tried to use it to kindly blackmail us into untoward concessions
22:02or concessions we thought were untoward,
22:08would not be acceptable.
22:14In March 1972, North Vietnam launched a new offensive in the south.
22:20Nixon responded with more air attacks.
22:26Would the Soviets receive Nixon in Moscow
22:32while his planes were bombing their North Vietnamese ally?
22:38Which is more important, the Vietnam front or the Moscow front?
22:44And Nixon was the only important person that I can recall who said,
22:50We can have both. I'm willing to lose the Moscow summit,
22:56but I predict the Russians will go ahead even if we bomb Hanoi and mine Haiphong.
23:02Nixon and Henry Kissinger played sort of good cop, bad cop
23:08and said, Look, I work for this crazy man. There's no telling what he might do.
23:14So, Anatoly, you and I, as reasonable men, must work together
23:20to an accommodation between our countries.
23:26Kissinger was uncertain whether Moscow would allow the summit to go ahead.
23:32I went to see Kissinger. He was nervous but tried to hide it.
23:38He said, Let's have a bet.
23:44Because he knew I had a piece of paper with the official Soviet reply.
23:50He said, Let's bet whether I can guess the answer.
23:56So we bet a crate of champagne.
24:02I asked him, So what do you think the Soviet answer is?
24:08He said, The summit is going ahead as planned.
24:14May 22, 1972.
24:20Richard Nixon became the first serving American president to be received in the Kremlin.
24:26The summit reached agreements to limit offensive and defensive nuclear weapons
24:32and it laid the foundation of détente.
24:38For Brezhnev and Nixon, this was the most dramatic proof yet
24:44of the new relationship between their two countries.
24:50But first, the Soviets had to make their point on Vietnam.
24:56President Nixon, Dr. Kissinger, myself and one other officer, four of us,
25:02went out to Brezhnev's country dacha.
25:08We sat for three hours in a dacha in which each of the Russian leaders
25:14took an hour to blast the United States for its Vietnam policy,
25:20absolutely attacking Nixon and the United States.
25:26Nixon knew what they were doing.
25:32Namely, they were writing a transcript to send to Hanoi.
25:38It was three and a half hours of Soviet diatribe,
25:44sort of a tag team match among the Soviet leaders.
25:50We then went upstairs for dinner and the entire mood changed.
25:56Brezhnev broke out the vodka.
26:02There was singing and jokes and toasts.
26:08We were quite aggressive in view of Nixon's actions on Vietnam,
26:14but we made sure it didn't overshadow the summit
26:20because the issues that Nixon was going to raise
26:26had already been agreed through the confidential channel.
26:32These were very important nuclear issues.
26:38So if we gave in to our emotions,
26:44we would ruin everything that had already been achieved.
26:50The President of the United States.
26:56The American Congress gave Nixon a hero's welcome.
27:08Last Friday in Moscow,
27:14we witnessed the beginning of the end of that era,
27:20which began in 1945.
27:26We took the first step toward a new era
27:32of mutually agreed restraint and arms limitation
27:38and to check the wasteful and dangerous spiral of nuclear arms
27:44which has dominated relations between our two countries for a generation.
27:50We have begun to reduce the level of fear
27:56by reducing the causes of fear for our two peoples
28:02and for all peoples in the world.
28:08It was the start of a major scandal, Watergate.
28:14As election day approached,
28:20Kissinger returned from one of his many negotiating rounds
28:26with the North Vietnamese.
28:32He told Nixon he at last had a deal on Vietnam.
28:38He presented to Dr. Kissinger a draft agreement
28:44on restoring peace and ending the war in Vietnam.
28:50The first thing he said when he presented that document to Dr. Kissinger was,
28:56you are in a hurry, are you not?
29:02I recall Dr. Kissinger nodding affirmatively
29:08when he came on October 19 and gave us the text in English, mind you.
29:14He asked us, we've got four days to sign.
29:20This is the first time we have been given this text,
29:26so we would like to have time to study it.
29:32When I see the widows, the orphans,
29:38I affirm again that the whole people of South Vietnam
29:44will resist again any peace which demands the rendition of South Vietnam
29:50and which will give South Vietnam to the communist aggressors.
29:56I have great sympathy for Chu,
30:02and at the same time I have great sympathy for our problem.
30:08And Dr. Kissinger said, well, if we sign this we're going to bring peace,
30:14South Vietnam will be developed, people will be happy,
30:20at which President Chu said, listen, we have the interest and the future of our country,
30:25we are not looking for Nobel Prize.
30:29South Vietnam refused to sign.
30:33With his deal facing collapse, Kissinger hastily reassured Hanoi
30:38We believe that peace is at hand.
30:44We believe that an agreement is within sight.
30:52It is inevitable that in a war of such complexity
31:02that there should be occasional difficulties in reaching a final solution.
31:13This latest setback in the Vietnam peace talks did not damage Nixon.
31:19He was easily re-elected for a second term.
31:25Back in Paris, Kissinger had to put Chu's objections to the North Vietnamese.
31:32How do I get out of here?
31:36We thought you weren't having a meeting today, sir.
31:39Well, we do something surprising.
31:42It's getting to be difficult to have a secret rendezvous in Paris.
31:46It certainly is.
31:48Will you be meeting again tomorrow, sir?
31:51We expect to, yes.
31:54One day we were on the verge of finalizing the text.
31:59The next day, there were suddenly 10 or 12 different issues that popped up
32:05and were unresolved.
32:08And then Le Duc Tho said that he had to go back to Hanoi for consultations.
32:16Le Duc Tho left Paris and the talks broke down.
32:23Nixon ordered air raids on North Vietnam,
32:26hoping to bludgeon Hanoi into agreement and at the same time bolster the South.
32:42Over 12 days, Hanoi and Haiphong came under the most sustained bombing campaign of the war.
32:51The bombing served its purpose.
32:53North and South Vietnam were ready to agree to the deal that Kissinger put together.
33:03Under the peace accords, American troops would leave Vietnam,
33:08the Saigon government would remain in power,
33:11but North Vietnam's troops would stay in the South.
33:18Nixon called it peace with honor.
33:21It so happened that with Mr. Kissinger, who had wanted to play the triangular,
33:27to do the detente, and Vietnam had to go in order for detente to happen.
33:32This is my own analysis, and then that, unfortunately,
33:36was not very good for the South Vietnamese people.
33:39This evening, the biggest White House scandal in a century.
33:43The Watergate scandal broke wide open today.
33:45The Attorney General, Richard Kleindienst, has resigned because, in his own words,
33:50he had close personal and professional associations with people who may have broken the law.
33:55The two closest men to the President, H.R. Haldeman, his Chief of Staff,
34:00and John Ehrlichman, his Chief Domestic Advisor, have resigned.
34:04Last week, both men were fighting hard to keep their jobs.
34:08We had a great staff system in the White House for dealing with crises.
34:12We didn't apply that system to Watergate.
34:16I think part of the reason was we didn't consider it a crisis.
34:20It was a very small potatoes episode.
34:24I had no prior knowledge of the Watergate break-in.
34:28I neither took part in, nor knew about any of the subsequent cover-up activities.
34:34I neither authorized, nor encouraged, subordinates to engage
34:38in illegal or improper campaign tactics.
34:42That was, and that is, the simple truth.
34:47Regardless of Watergate, the process of détente continued.
34:54Brezhnev came to America for a second summit with Nixon.
35:01In California, the Soviet leader partied with Hollywood stars.
35:06The Russians were still keen to deal with the American President.
35:11Before our meeting with you,
35:14we have already spent more than one hour in business talks.
35:24Goodbye!
35:27Goodbye!
35:30Goodbye!
35:32Goodbye!
35:39In spite of Nixon's denial of guilt over Watergate,
35:43he was accused of obstructing justice and faced impeachment by Congress.
35:49In August 1974, Richard Nixon, the man who took America into détente,
35:55gave up the fight and resigned.
36:03His successor was Gerald Ford.
36:18The Soviet leadership was astonished by Nixon's downfall.
36:25They thought, how can a president be so powerful?
36:29They thought, how could the most powerful person in the United States,
36:34the most important person in the world,
36:37be legally forced to step down for stealing some silly documents?
36:42It was so contrary to the mentality of the Soviet leaders
36:46that a person in such a senior position could be removed by legal means.
36:51They simply couldn't understand it.
36:55There were various suspicions.
36:58One of those suspicions was that it was done deliberately
37:02by the enemies of rapprochement between America and the Soviet Union.
37:14In Vietnam, the 1973 peace accords had not stopped the fighting.
37:19By April 1975, South Vietnamese troops were struggling
37:23to defend Saigon against Hanoi's final offensive.
37:27They could expect little help from the Americans.
37:32The Congress of the United States refused to supply
37:39the kind of military assistance that was necessary
37:43to keep the South Vietnamese military forces strong.
37:54South Vietnamese who had fought and worked alongside the Americans
37:58against the communists besieged the U.S. embassy.
38:14The Americans were getting away, but they had lost the war
38:19and now they could not even save thousands of their South Vietnamese friends.
38:25The American experience in Vietnam, and particularly my own,
38:29had been like a B-52 strike from 60,000 feet up.
38:33Oh, we'd done a lot of damage.
38:36But very seldom did you have to gaze upon the consequences of that damage.
38:41That last day was like being in a B-52 strike right on the deck.
38:48You saw what our actions had wrought.
38:53And the horror and the shame was almost more than you could bear.
39:10The Soviet Union proclaimed itself confident.
39:14It believed it was a superpower equal to America
39:18and boasted history was on its side.
39:22The Soviet Union was the only country in the world
39:26to have a nuclear weapon.
39:29The Soviet Union was the only country in the world
39:33to have a nuclear weapon.
39:36It believed itself confident.
39:40It believed itself confident.
39:44This rosy view ignored one problem.
39:48The treatment of Soviet dissidents like the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn
39:52threatened to derail détente.
40:02Mr. Kendall?
40:04Go home!
40:11American passions flared over restrictions on the emigration of Soviet Jews.
40:20The questions of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union
40:24and of human rights were a very strong irritant.
40:28These issues were raised regularly by the U.S. Congress
40:31and by demonstrations organized by pro-Israeli activists
40:35and sometimes by hooligans.
40:39There was at the outset, of course, a genuine backlash
40:43in the Congress of the United States against the policy of détente.
40:47Not in the first instance from where one might expect it,
40:51from the right-wing pews of the Republican Party.
40:55It came instead from the traditionally right-wing Democrats,
40:58the hard lines of cold warrior Democrats like Scoop Jackson.
41:02When we have something we feel strongly about,
41:06and in this case it is civil liberties and freedom
41:10and what this nation was founded upon,
41:14that we should do something to implement international law,
41:18and it is international law now, the right to leave a country freely and return freely,
41:22that we should put that issue of principle on the table
41:25knowing that the Russians are not going to agree to it.
41:30The debate about détente took a very curious form
41:35because some liberals seemed to take the view
41:39that maybe tension wasn't all that bad,
41:43and they suddenly developed theories of the need to intervene
41:47in human rights procedures that we never heard before
41:51and that were strenuously rejected before.
41:55In the Soviet Union, where memorials kept alive
41:59the remembrance of a terrible war, détente had few enemies.
42:08Soviet leaders hoped to guarantee their country's status and security
42:13with a treaty to be signed in Helsinki
42:17which would recognize the post-war division of Europe.
42:21But this treaty had a stumbling block, human rights.
42:25The members of the Politburo read the full text.
42:29They had no objections when they read the first and second articles.
42:33When they got to the third, humanitarian article,
42:37their hair stood on end.
42:40Suslov said it was a complete betrayal of communist ideology.
42:47Gromyko then came up with the following argument.
42:51The main thing about the Helsinki Treaty is the recognition of the borders.
42:55That's what we shed our blood for in the great patriotic war.
42:59All 35 signatory states are now saying these are the borders of Europe.
43:05As for human rights, Gromyko said,
43:08well, who's the master of this house?
43:11We are the masters of this house,
43:14and each time it will be up to us to decide how to act.
43:17Who can force us?
43:20If Gromyko doesn't agree, who can force us?
43:28After overcoming the doubts of his colleagues,
43:31Brezhnev arrived in Helsinki,
43:34keen to cut a figure among leaders from East and West.
43:38To the people of the generation
43:41that experienced the horrors of World War II,
43:44the historical meaning of this meeting is particularly clear.
43:51The right to peace
43:54should be provided to all the peoples of Europe.
44:00Both sides believed they had the agreement they wanted.
44:04The Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations
44:08did not recognize that the human rights provision was a time bomb.
44:15We, the United States, believed
44:19that if we could get the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations
44:25to respect human rights,
44:29that was worth whatever else was agreed to in the Helsinki Accords.
44:36Three, two, one, zero.
44:40Launch commit. We have a liftoff.
44:42All engines building up thrust.
44:45Thanks to detente, rockets could now point the way
44:49to coexistence rather than war.
44:56Apollo, Houston, I got two messages for you.
44:59Moscow is go for docking. Houston is go for docking.
45:02It's up to you guys.
45:05Soviet and American spacecraft made history,
45:08docking together 140 miles above the Earth.
45:12Contact.
45:15All right.
45:18In space, cooperation was replacing years of Cold War confrontation.
45:25Glad to see you.
45:28When we went to the United States for training,
45:31we met the Americans.
45:34I remember one of them saying to me,
45:36since this international project, I've begun to sleep better at night.
45:40I'm no longer afraid of nuclear war,
45:43because we are working together.
46:06NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology