Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  The Soviets’ task was eased because no governmental monitoring system existed; the event dramatized the difficulty of relating a market economy to foreign policy objectives. If any buyer can enter the market, the sole restraint on him is his ability to pay. Therefore to achieve foreign policy goals the government must be able to interfere with the market to hold up sales, regardless of economic conditions, until its political terms are met. A system of licenses or similar restraints is inevitable — which is anathema to many entrepreneurs, including some who consider themselves fiercely anti-Communist.

  Early in 1973, we became aware of another potential shortfall in the Soviet harvest. As a quid pro quo for our help we sought to force the Soviets to spread their purchases over several years. The White House insisted on a five-year agreement with a ceiling on permitted purchases that would enable our farmers to plan, prevent disruption of our markets, and give us extended foreign policy leverage. But this was possible only if we held up the grain sales until our terms were met. Our farmers were happy enough about the objective of a long-term agreement. They were much less keen on postponing immediate sales in order to achieve it; and they had acquired in Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz a wily, passionate, and indefatigable advocate. He had been schooled in the deadliest of bureacratic arenas, as the dean of a university. When I asked Butz to study whether he had the legal authority to delay sales (by ordering that grain sales be reported to the Department of Agriculture), he evaded a clear-cut answer. Several weeks later, on May 3, I jogged his memory:

  My concern in this matter is that we should not permit the Soviets to corner, quietly, a large part of this year’s grain crop, leaving the U.S. consumer and our other international customers to bid up the price on the remainder.

  But Butz had no intention of facing the wrath of the farmers. Much better to blame the striped-pants boys of diplomacy. He therefore suggested that I induce the Soviets to limit their purchases. This was great advice: Instead of using our agricultural strength as leverage on the Soviets, he was suggesting that we ask the Soviets to do us the favor of buying less than market conditions allowed. In the real world this would work only if I implied that otherwise we would find another way of limiting sales. Butz’s approach was an elegant way of preventing foreign policy criteria from interfering with Soviet grain purchases.

  The pro-trade coalition of liberals and entrepreneurs was gradually overtaken by another grouping of conservatives and liberals who sought to hold East-West trade as hostage to changes in Soviet emigration policy. They accepted our doctrine of linkage but gave it its most extreme formulation — far beyond the original intention. Concessions on trade were now related not to Soviet foreign policy, with which we agreed, but to Soviet domestic practices. East-West trade thereby turned into a political issue in America that over time seriously jolted our relationship with the Soviet Union without supplying a strategy for handling the resulting tension. Ironically, the vehicle for this challenge was a measure that liberals had been pressing on us since early in the Nixon Administration: the extension of Most Favored Nation (MFN) status to the Soviet Union.

  Most Favored Nation status is, of course, a misnomer. It grants no special favors; it extends to the recipient country only the tariff treatment already afforded to all other nations (over a hundred) with which we have normal commercial relations. In other words, MFN treatment ends discrimination against the country that receives it. It allows normal trade to develop as commercial conditions warrant. It benefits our traders as well as foreign ones. Even with MFN, Soviet exports to the United States were not expected to grow rapidly or significantly. The MFN status was important to the Soviets for symbolic rather than for commercial reasons; it conveyed the appearance of equality in the economic field.

  In September 1972, we concluded the negotiations on the Soviet Lend-Lease debt (dormant for twenty-five years) that had been conducted with skill and ingenuity by Secretary of Commerce Peter G. Peterson. This cleared the way for the trade agreement with the USSR, of which MFN was a key part. On April 10, 1973 — as Watergate was about to explode — Nixon submitted the agreement to the Congress. And thereby, just as he was faltering, he sparked a debate that blighted US–Soviet relations ever after.

  It was galling that the issue chosen by our critics was a subject in which we had every reason to take pride: Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union. Early in Nixon’s first term we had decided to raise this in the special Channel we maintained through Anatoly Dobrynin to the Soviet leadership. We proceeded without publicity, calculating that the Soviets could alter practices within their domestic jurisdiction more easily if they were not overtly challenged. Starting in 1969, I approached Dobrynin with the proposition that we would take note of any voluntary Soviet regard for the moral concerns of our people with respect to Soviet emigration practices. The effort was low-key but persistent; we sought action, not acclaim. Whether as a result of our representations or for reasons of its own that it did not divulge to us, Moscow changed its emigration policy. Whereas only 400 Soviet Jews had been allowed to emigrate in 1968, the number rose to nearly 35,000 in 1973.

  In addition, I periodically handed over lists of hardship cases: individuals who were barred from emigration by some technicality of security regulations or for other difficulties with Soviet authorities. I told Dobrynin if the Soviets heeded our humanitarian appeals we would not as a government exploit the propaganda value of those released. Dobrynin accepted the lists without comment. But we noted that a majority of the hardship names we submitted were permitted to leave. In one instance, Dobrynin formally gave us statistics summarizing the Soviet treatment of hardship cases.

  Why the Soviet Union interrupted the process right after the Moscow summit will have to be left to the publication of the Soviet archives or the memoirs of Soviet leaders. Whatever the reason, on August 3, 1972, an administrative decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet imposed a substantial “exit tax” on emigrants. The tax was theoretically designed to refund the Soviet state for the expenses of the emigrants’ education; the practical consequence was to slow emigration to a trickle. The decision was nearly inexplicable in light of the generally improved state of US–Soviet relations and the goodwill the Soviets had acquired from liberalizing emigration.

  The least plausible explanation was the one advanced by Dobrynin: that some middle-level functionary had made a routine decision mechanically ratified by the relevant minister who himself was a technician. The Soviet system does not work that way, expecially on an issue of demonstrated foreign policy sensitivity. My guess is that the exit tax was a panicky reaction to Sadat’s expulsion of Soviet troops from Egypt. Afraid for their position in the Arab world, the Soviet leaders sought for some way to refurbish their credentials (since most of the Jewish emigrants settled in Israel). But I took Dobrynin’s lame explanation to indicate that the Kremlin was having second thoughts; it was looking for both a scapegoat and an exit.

  By then the genie was out of the bottle. On October 4, 1972, the redoubtable Senator Henry Jackson sponsored an amendment to the trade bill that precluded granting Most Favored Nation status to any Communist country restricting emigration. Senator Jackson had a long record of opposition to Soviet tyranny. He had courageously warned of the Soviet military buildup when it was highly unfashionable to do so. He had cooperated closely with the Administration during Nixon’s first term on the struggle for an adequate defense budget, an honorable exit from Vietnam, and a strong foreign policy. To my astonishment, I found myself in confrontation with a former ally in what became an increasingly tense relationship. What made the conflict both strange and painful was that I felt more comfortable with Jackson on most issues than with many newfound allies who questioned his amendment from a different philosophical perspective.

  Up to a point Jackson’s efforts and ours complemented each other. But gradually his amendment became for him an end in itself. Once it was passed, it was no longer useful as leverage; the Soviets could not possibl
y change their policies in response to the act of a capitalist legislature; they were more likely to move in the opposite direction. Far from spurring emigration, the Jackson amendment in fact wound up substantially reducing it.

  But the times were not propitious for a rational dialogue. Jackson suddenly found supporters among liberals who had consistently fought his views on national defense and foreign policy. The New York Times, which in 1969 and 1970 had castigated us for what it considered the outrageous proposition that trade should be linked to Soviet foreign policy conduct, suddenly discovered the importance of using it to accomplish the domestic transformation of Soviet society. In an editorial on November 25, 1972, the Times began its conversion to its own definition of linkage:

  Russia’s brutal repression of the civil rights of many of its own people, the imposition of a head tax on Jews to prevent them from leaving the Soviet Union and the threat of more serious restrictions still to come, the encouragement of other countries to expropriate American interests — all such actions are calculated to inflame American public opinion and to jeopardize the future growth of Soviet-American economic relations.

  On February 21, 1973, the Washington Post, another long-time advocate of East-West trade, turned a hard-won and tacit change in Soviet practice into a nonexistent formal Soviet pledge:

  The strong Hill sentiment to tie trade and emigration gives the President the solid practical ground he needs to inform the Russians that in order for him to make good his pledge on tariff equality, they must make good their pledge on Jewish emigration.

  Later in 1973 this debate, like many others, became mired in Watergate. On September 3 the New York Times professed to see no difference between Watergate and Soviet police-state repression of dissidents; indeed, it made its own contribution to the prevailing paranoia by discovering a Nixon-Brezhnev alliance to suppress opposition in both countries:

  The administration announced that Treasury Secretary Shultz will soon lead a high level delegation to Moscow to renew discussions on expanding Soviet-American trade. Soviet repression apparently disturbs the White House as little as Watergate bothers the Kremlin. The world now sees a de facto Nixon-Brezhnev alliance against dissent in each other’s country.

  On October 10, 1972, Representative Charles Vanik of Ohio introduced an amendment similar to Jackson’s in the House. He was supported by such previous stalwart defenders of East-West trade as Representatives Donald M. Fraser of Minnesota and Benjamin S. Rosenthal of New York, who joined Representative John H. Buchanan, Jr., of Alabama on a visit to the Soviet Union in December 1972. They published in April 1973 a report on “Tension and Detente” that concluded in hitherto most uncharacteristic fashion:

  We are convinced that improved relations with the Soviet Union — and, specifically, improved trade ties — are useful to both countries and to the cause of world peace. But both the President and Soviets must understand that normal relations between our countries cannot proceed while Jews and others in the Soviet Union are harassed and prevented, by whatever means, from exercising their right of emigration.9

  On the one hand, we were being pushed to do what we had already largely accomplished: to spur Soviet emigration. On the other, it was becoming clear that the pressure hid a deeper purpose: to extend the conventional criticism of Nixon’s alleged moral insensitivity into new areas of policy, including foreign affairs, in which Nixon’s competence had heretofore gone unchallenged. It was not free of recklessness, for while Jackson was prepared to face the consequences of a confrontation with the Soviet Union, many of his supporters, as they were soon to prove, were not. If baiting Moscow led to increased Soviet adventurism, which of the crusaders for human rights would support our determination to resist it? Within two years many of the rhetorical hard-liners had a chance to answer that question over the issue of Soviet-Cuban intervention in Angola. Most of the members of the liberal-conservative coalition that had spoiled for a confrontation over human rights avoided it over a blatant threat to international security.

  At the beginning of the campaign on Soviet emigration practices, it was luckily not yet apparent that we were facing a fundamental challenge to one of the pillars of our foreign policy. We dealt with it on its merits, as an attempt to lift the newly imposed exit tax. And the threat of the Jackson amendment undoubtedly helped to convince the Soviet leaders that a change of course was indicated. On March 30, Dobrynin came to see me with a statement labeled “confidential for the President.” It proclaimed, naturally enough, that emigration policy fell exclusively within the jurisdiction of the Soviet state; it complained of the “noisy campaign” on emigration that it denounced as “artificial and ill-meaning.” But the upshot of all the tough talk was the good news that the tax was being lifted. The Soviet note claimed that the new law had always been intended to be discretionary; it would be applied only in “unusual” circumstances of state security. Accordingly, only such “usual and insignificant duties which were also being collected before the decree of August 3, 1972 are being collected. . . .”

  Private messages from Brezhnev were generally not communicated to the Congress; hence, unless the Soviets made an exception, the note would not help us in dealing with Jackson. Moreover, the emphasis on the discretionary nature of the law did not preclude a future sudden tightening of the regulations. I therefore asked for permission to transmit the communication to the Congress; going far beyond diplomatic custom, I inquired whether I might inform the government of Israel. I also asked for more specific assurances than the mere statement that discretionary authority would not be applied — specifically a de facto ending of the tax.

  The Soviets replied on April 10 in a manner that underlined how much importance they attached to US–Soviet relations; they authorized us to communicate Brezhnev’s message to the Congress as an official statement. As for informing Israel, Moscow stressed that Israel had no standing to discuss Soviet emigration policies, especially via the United States. Still, this was only bravado: “It is a matter for the President to decide how to use our communication and whom he will inform about its contents.” To avoid any misunderstanding, I worked out a formal statement of the Soviet position, including a proviso that the tax would not be reintroduced. I cleared it with Dobrynin for submission to the Congress. Dobrynin agreed to it on April 16. (The full text is reprinted in the backnotes.)10

  Once the Soviet Union agreed formally to drop the exit tax, I informed Dobrynin that no outstanding issues stood in the way of implementing the US–Soviet trade agreement of 1972. I proved wildly off the mark.

  For the growing enfeeblement of the President had changed all previous assumptions. Nixon expected to celebrate a great achievement when he called the Congressional leaders, including Senator Jackson, to the White House on April 18, to inform them of the Soviet note. The Soviet Union under American pressure had repealed domestic legislation and given written assurances to that effect, which we could transmit to the Congress. Nixon had removed the major obstacle to the granting of MFN and had proved the advantage of quiet diplomacy on human rights. Or so he thought.

  By then Nixon was badly wounded. The day before, he had acknowledged the possibility that Watergate involved high levels of his Administration. In these circumstances the Congress was not seeking a collaboration; it was looking for opportunities to prove its independence. The legislators assembled in the Roosevelt Room of the White House listened politely. None had thought such a Soviet collapse possible. Yet it was difficult to avoid the impression that a few of them up for reelection in 1974 preferred to have the issue rather than its resolution. They sat in grumbling silence at another of Nixon’s coups when they were rallied by the redoubtable Jackson. What the Soviets had done was not enough, he said coolly. The Soviets would have to give assurances not only as to the exit tax; they had to guarantee a minimum number of exit visas; and they had to ease emigration not only for Jews but for all nationalities.

  It was an amazing demand. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the So
viet system knew that there was no chance whatever that such terms would be met. The Soviet Union could not commit itself publicly to a fixed number, which implied that there was an unlimited mass of Soviet citizens eager to emigrate. And if it made that concession to all nationalities, there was literally no telling what would happen to the Soviet system. Yet in the prevailing public mood in America, no legislator could afford to dissociate himself from the demand and risk charges of being “soft” on Soviet emigration. And if Congressional pressures led to deadlock, one could always blame the Administration for not having pursued a Congressionally mandated objective with adequate energy and conviction. So Jackson’s colleagues remained silent and we were left to sort out the confusion. It was our first exposure to what came to be a staple of Watergate and its aftermath: a Congressional mandate for an unfulfillable course that sapped our credibility abroad without giving us the tools to deal with the consequences of the resulting tension.

  No doubt Communist nations are prepared to pay some price for increased trade; indeed, this theory lay behind our own linkage approach. But in our view concessions were more likely to be obtainable in the field of international conduct, with respect to which foreign countries have a defined interest and legal standing, than over matters traditionally considered within the domestic jurisdiction of a state, particularly a state historically and ideologically so obsessed with internal security. For the Soviet Union to alter its domestic practices in response to a frontal public assault by a foreign nation would be perceived by its already nearly paranoid rulers as a direct impairment of their authority. And it was likely to be resisted all the more strenuously because the Soviet Union had modified its emigration policy as a result of our private diplomacy.