(6 of 7)
As it turned out, the absence of an agreement soon turned into fantasy the ceiling of 360 proposed by some Administration officials for MIRVed Soviet intercontinental missiles. The Soviets have since exceeded the limit of 1,000 we thought intolerable in 1974. The current SALT II ceiling is 1,200, or 200 above Brezhnev's offer, and the gap against us in overall delivery vehicles has increased as a result of voluntary decisions by successor Administrations, including the current one. So much for the argument that SALT is responsible for the strategic dilemmas we face today.
I cannot prove what would have happened had negotiations evolved in normal circumstances with a functioning President and a united American Government. I am convinced that in the spring of 1974 SALT turned into an end in itself for its votaries; for its opponents it was a danger to be combatted at any cost.
Missed opportunities can never be proved. But the sober teaching of 1973-74 is that idealism did not enhance the human rights of Jews in the Soviet Union (emigration for 1975 was less than 40% of that for 1973); that the undermining of SALT did not improve our military posture; and that the confusion over East-West policy produced perverse consequences. Soviet expansion increased, and the domestic divisions that had spawned the confrontation prevented an effective response.
Even during the summer of the visible disintegration of the Nixon Administration, however, Brezhnev proved most reluctant to give up his attempt to ease East-West relations. What he abandoned was any major commitment to expand the existing framework. For that he needed what the French call an inter-locuteur valable—an opposite number who could deliver. That is exactly what Nixon more and more had lost the power to do.
THE 1974 MOSCOW SUMMIT
It was in a mood of tension, anguish and premonition that the Moscow summit began. Petty squabbles sometimes took absurd forms. There was an unworthy dispute between Al Haig and me about whose suite in the Kremlin would be closest to Nixon's—a status symbol of debatable value under the circumstances. Haig won the battle. It was like fighting over seats at the captain's table on the Titanic after it had struck the iceberg.
The biggest obstacle to serious negotiations was the Soviet conviction that if Nixon survived politically he would lack authority, but in all likelihood he would not survive. Thus the Soviets finessed controversial items by scheduling many meetings between the leaders on subjects normally left to the foreign ministers: arcane technical discussions on agreements that had long since been prepared for signature at the summit. Most interesting of these was a draft treaty to prohibit underground nuclear tests over a certain "threshold" of explosive power.