The major unknown is whether the Soviets will become a disruptive force in the next phase: whether they will . . . block any serious negotiations or complicate them, for example, by pressing the Palestinians into Geneva. In any case, there are a wide variety of tactical moves they could initiate to ensure that the more fundamental issues remain stalemated. The risk for Moscow is that the negotiations will become a confrontation, with a new risk of war. It is for this reason that the Soviets probably support disengagement which complicates the resort to arms by either side, but leaves the basic questions open for Soviet manipulation.
Gromyko was in an especially dour mood when he met Nixon at 4:30 P.M. on February 4. The President and the scowling Soviet diplomat sat in straight-backed easy chairs flanking the fireplace of the Oval Office. State Department Counselor Helmut Sonnenfeldt, Ambassador Walter Stoessel, and I were on the sofa by Nixon’s chair. Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin and the interpreter Viktor Sukhodrev were on the opposite sofa. Gromyko accused the United States of systematically violating the understanding, reached on my trip to Moscow in October only a few months earlier, that Mideast negotiations would proceed under joint US–Soviet “auspices.” The Soviet Union had its own capacity to act unilaterally in the Middle East, he claimed; it could be obstructive if it chose; it had so far avoided doing so. If we had acted jointly, he added, more progress would already have been made.
Gromyko’s version of the meaning of US–Soviet “auspices” was bizarre. We had agreed to joint auspices in Moscow in order to make it more palatable for the Arab states to negotiate directly with Israel; even then we had limited American and Soviet participation to the opening phase and other “key” moments. It had never occurred to anyone that “auspices” should be imposed on parties that might prefer a different procedure or that the understanding should be invoked as a brake on negotiations that were making progress. At the time, it was beyond our imagination that countries that we considered Soviet allies would ultimately prefer to proceed without the Soviets. But this is what happened.
Gromyko’s claim that Soviet participation would have advanced matters happened to be the opposite of our assessment. If Gromyko became a full participant in negotiations, he was certain to follow the by-now stereotyped, formalistic Soviet methods: He would put forward a detailed program for comprehensive peace starting from general principles and working down into minute detail. He would then slog his way through this agenda, session after weary session, deepening the stalemate with each round. Such tactics were effective in exhausting peace-loving middle-class societies of the West but they would raise tensions unbearably in the volatile Middle East. Moreover, Soviet policy had shown itself to be wedded to a one-sided version of the Arab position, adding rigidity, not flexibility, to the process. Soviet negotiating methods were paralyzing even if one assumed Soviet good faith; in its absence all the dangerous trends would be accelerated. That view was shared by Sadat as well — not to speak of Israel, which, since Moscow’s cutoff of diplomatic relations in 1967, had no interest whatever in Soviet participation.
As for Gromyko’s threat that Moscow had the capacity to line up other Arab states against the peace process, we considered it a vast exaggeration — at least during the early phase of the negotiations. Algerian President Houari Boumedienne had told me that he favored our strategy; Syria, Moscow’s ally, was insisting on an American role on the Sinai model, that is to say, without the USSR. That left the Soviets with such consorts as Iraq and Libya — hardly enough of a base from which to thwart our efforts, especially while Iran was our ally and was keeping Iraq’s armed forces occupied on its eastern frontier, far away from Syria.
We were not prepared to change our strategy, therefore, but we also did not want a blowup with the Soviet Union. It had a capacity for mischief; an all-out Soviet assault on our policy would make our own effort more difficult; in the middle of Watergate, we could not be sure of our domestic support. We wanted to play it cool and get through the Gromyko visit with the minimum of strain.
The Oval Office meeting was made to order for Nixon’s skills at obfuscation; he was a master of the philosophical explanation that explained nothing but created the impression that he was sharing a confidence with his interlocutor. So Nixon blithely expressed his satisfaction with the diplomatic progress that had been made. The United States had been active because the parties wanted it that way. There was no record that we had discouraged this development, but that did not keep Nixon from avowing his general preference for cooperative endeavors with the USSR. On the other hand, the concrete circumstances differed for each superpower: “Some areas we can get into where you can’t. We must consider this.” In other words, Nixon favored superpower cooperation in the Middle East except where it did not serve his purpose. Where and how to work jointly, mused Nixon, was a tactical problem to be solved by Gromyko and me — thus neatly getting himself out of the line of fire. All this was presented in Nixon’s best country-boy manner, as if there had been some terrible misunderstanding about a subject too trivial for him to focus on. He was all for US–Soviet cooperation in the Middle East and elsewhere, but he could not be expected to bother with the details. Nixon cheerfully concluded the encounter by expressing his confidence that Gromyko and I would figure out a way to solve the problem.
Gromyko was nobody’s fool. He realized very well that Nixon had given him nothing tangible; indeed, at the end of his talk with the President he was right back to where he had started. On the other hand, Nixon had thrown out enough tantalizing hints to tempt an old professional like Gromyko to press me for precision. This he did at a private meeting on February 5. My evasive footwork was generally less nimble than Nixon’s; in any event, Gromyko would not accept from me the degree of empty generality that protocol permitted a head of state. It served Gromyko’s purpose to pretend that Nixon had agreed in principle never to proceed in the Middle East except on the basis of accord between the Soviet Union and the United States. Of course, I knew my wily chief’s mind better than he and I doubt that Gromyko seriously held this view. The extremity of the proposition merely masked the extent of the Soviet predicament. Gromyko had no other options. He wanted to join a diplomacy to which he had little to contribute and, what was more significant, was seeking a role that no Arab client of his was advocating.
Our purpose was not to embarrass the Soviet Union but to obtain freedom of maneuver. If Moscow were genuinely interested in stability in the Middle East, our central negotiating role would prick its vanity but not undermine its interests. Syrian disengagement was needed to defuse the Middle East and to keep open the option of peace. Our helping to mediate it would give us few lasting benefits. Nations rarely pay for services already rendered; our long-term influence would depend on what we could contribute afterward. Gromyko nevertheless put me through the paces. I offered a vague assurance that the United States was prepared in principle to exchange information with the Soviet Union and, when appropriate, act in coordination. He pressed me for specificity. I hid behind the parties concerned; I answered that in fairness we had to ask their views. The nub of the problem, of course, was not simply the absence of diplomatic relations between Moscow and Jerusalem but the Soviets’ one-sided commitment to an Arab program that experience had shown to be unfulfillable. It was precisely the realization that the Soviets could produce no progress that was driving the Soviets’ best friends in the area — like Syria — in our direction, as it had already convinced Sadat to change course.
While Gromyko sought to determine how far we were prepared to go in joint action, I wanted to find out just what flexibility the Soviet Union might help elicit from the Arab side. It soon became apparent that the Soviets saw their principal contribution to the negotiations as a US–Soviet “guarantee” that peace agreements would not be violated. In Gromyko’s interpretation this would authorize superpower intervention in the case of perceived violations, jointly if we agreed, and presumably unilaterally if not — just as Moscow had attempte
d at the time of the October alert. We could not have any interest in such an arrangement. I probed him for specificity: Would the Mideast parties have to agree to it, or request it? What did he have in mind? We did not exclude participation in guarantees if the parties requested it, but we would not be part of an arrangement by which it could be imposed on them against their will. Gromyko commented wryly that he detected “a lack of enthusiasm.” In truth, he and I were sparring, both too professional to have any illusions about the implications of our actions yet still too committed to the US–Soviet relationship to court an open break.
Our strategy sought to reduce the Soviet role in the Middle East because our respective interests in the area (and our different diplomatic styles) could not be reconciled, at least as long as the Soviet Union identified itself only with a maximum Arab program and did nothing to induce compromise on the part of its clients. In these circumstances, the best that could be accomplished by US–Soviet diplomacy was to soften the impact of the clashing Mideast approaches by maintaining enough of a Soviet stake in other areas of our relationship. And we succeeded. The Soviets did not dare risk a deterioration in other dimensions of US–Soviet relations. In that sense, then, it was détente that enabled the United States to bring about a diplomatic revolution in the Middle East. We would not have had such a margin for unopposed action in a period of open, across-the-board confrontation with the Soviet Union. The Mideast is an important refutation of the facile slogan that détente was a “one-way street.”
I kept my promise to Gromyko to check with the parties on the Soviet proposal, which I described in a message to the Syrians of February 6:
that in [the] future all our Middle East diplomatic activities should be carried out on a joint U.S.–Soviet basis and that modalities should be joint. They also want all activities to be carried out in Geneva and to have U.S. and Soviet participation in all Geneva meetings between the parties.
The obligation to check with Damascus was reinforced because it was near-certain that Gromyko would convey some version of his Washington conversation to Asad and it seemed likely that the Kremlin would learn from the Syrians what, if anything, we conveyed. The Israeli reaction was predictable; it would never agree to a Soviet veto or Soviet participation in every negotiating session.
The Syrians’ response was more interesting and ambiguous. They put two questions: First, had we told Moscow that we were soliciting Asad’s views? And second, had we confided to Moscow the substance of my various exchanges with Asad, including our February 5 plan to start negotiations? This had to mean that Moscow and Damascus were not in such close contact as we thought; specifically, the plan on the basis of which we were proceeding appeared not to have been conveyed to Syria’s ally. The Syrians were obviously nervous about Moscow’s learning from us what they had failed to communicate. Their queries raised the fascinating possibility that they wanted to exclude the Soviets, despite the alliance, and were attempting to assess what they risked. In fact, the queries implied the answer, for if Syria were going to insist on Soviet participation it would welcome our having told Moscow that it was being consulted. On February 8 we returned a careful reply: We had told Gromyko only that we would solicit Syrian views; we had not specified the level. We had not given the Soviets the details of our February 5 plan.
Asad lost no time in acting on our information. On February 9, we received an extremely careful and subtle formal reply directly from Asad. The Syrian President thanked me for informing him of the US–Soviet talks on the Middle East. Syria had no objection to US–Soviet coordination, he said, but did not have enough information to suggest any practical plan for accomplishing it. If that meant anything, it was that Syria would acquiesce in joint US–Soviet mediation if such was our desire; that Syria would not jeopardize its ties with Moscow to thwart it, but also would make no effort to encourage it.
Clearly, Asad was reluctant about Soviet participation; he was at pains to emphasize that Moscow enjoyed no preferential consultative status in Damascus. He would not even comment on the Soviet proposal for coordination that I had communicated to him. Residual doubts were removed when in the same message Asad accepted the procedures in our plan of February 5 — which excluded Moscow and assigned to the United States the function of mediator.
This sequence dramatized how far Syria had come in the three weeks since the Egyptian disengagement agreement. It had disclosed the number of prisoners it held; it had promised to turn over a list of the prisoners to us and to permit Red Cross visits; and it had agreed to a procedure for American mediation. In return, we were now bound to deliver an Israeli reply to Asad’s ideas of what a Golan Heights disengagement should look like. But first we had to make clear that the Golan negotiations would not proceed in isolation. The next day, therefore, I expressed my appreciation for Asad’s positive attitude but made clear that the negotiations would not move ahead while the oil embargo continued:
As the Secretary indicated in his February 5 letter to President Asad, as soon as the oil embargo question has been resolved he will initiate with the Israelis the steps outlined in our procedural proposal. . . . Further steps on our part must await a solution of the embargo question.
Similar messages went to Sadat, Boumedienne, and Faisal, who were about to join Asad in an Arab mini-summit meeting in Algiers beginning on February 12. During the Washington Energy Conference we were awaiting the results of this Arab meeting.
Fahmy and Saqqaf Visit Washington
AT the Washington Energy Conference, it was a byword that a confrontation with the oil producers had to be avoided. References to the need for a consumer dialogue with the producers bordered on the liturgical. Suspicion that the United States did not share these objectives with equal fervor was rampant. Yet the Arab oil-producing countries hardly complained to us, the organizers of the conference. The Arab leaders meeting in Algiers took no special note of the Washington conclave. Our threats of withdrawing from negotiation led not to the brandishing of the oil weapon but to a new appeal to the United States to engage itself in a Syrian negotiation.
This was not apparent immediately, because of the way the real preferences of the key leaders were submerged in an Arab consensus whose rhetoric was heavily influenced by the radicals. I was by now convinced that those who went to Algiers — Sadat, Boumedienne, Faisal, and even Asad — considered the embargo an encumbrance. But none of them wanted to risk being accused of insufficient militance. Each was happy enough to agree to a decision of his brethren but — except for Sadat — each was reluctant to be perceived as the instigator. This was a particular problem for Saudi Arabia, whose defense of overall Arab interests both accorded with its convictions and gave it protection against rapacious radical neighbors. The ambivalence was reflected in a bewildering series of developments.
The Algiers meeting was supposed to be followed by a meeting of Arab oil ministers in Tripoli, Libya, on February 14 to consider lifting the embargo. The first news from Algiers was that the Tripoli meeting was canceled, which meant that the four leaders at the mini-summit were unsure of how much backing they had in the rest of the Arab world. This was followed by a communiqué reaffirming with “total unanimity” the requirement of complete Israeli withdrawal and the “guarantee of the rights of the Arab Palestinian people in their territories and their nation.”
It was explained that this hard-line response was a reaction to Israeli intransigence. And to be sure, on February 9, Prime Minister Golda Meir had let herself be tempted into making some highly contentious and unwise statements to a group of Israeli settlers on the Golan Heights. She was much too intelligent not to understand the diplomatic risks but she was being assailed by opposition leader Menachem Begin for being too accommodating — mind-boggling to those who had negotiated with her — and urged by potential coalition partners of the religious parties to be tougher. She had declared that she regarded the Golan Heights with its settlements as an inseparable part of Israel and could not conceive of any withdrawal f
rom the 1967 cease-fire lines with Syria, including the town of Quneitra. On February 11 I told Dinitz that Golda’s remarks could not have been more untimely. On February 14 we informed Damascus that we had “taken up Mrs. Meir’s statement on the Golan with the Israelis through diplomatic channels.”
It turned out, however, that the Algiers communiqué was like a conjurer’s movement of the hands. While radicals were being diverted by the tough language, Foreign Ministers Omar Saqqaf and Ismail Fahmy, from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, were being dispatched to Washington to tell us the “secret” conclusions. No one bothered to forewarn us of that happy event, forcing me to turn right around from Key Biscayne, where I had just arrived to spend a quiet weekend with the President.
Meanwhile, I was receiving separate reports from various participants at Algiers. Boumedienne’s chief aide told us that the embargo would indeed be lifted at another oil ministers’ meeting; that the Syrians would soon give us the list of Israeli prisoners to implement the procedure I had laid down on February 5; and that the four leaders thought I should come to the Middle East immediately to get the negotiating process started. But then we heard from Saudi Oil Minister Yamani, who told Ambassador James Akins that the mini-summit had failed. Asad had been “adamant”; only Israel had been helped by disengagement in the Sinai; we would have to bring about an initial Israeli withdrawal on the Golan Heights before the embargo could be lifted. Was Yamani relaying general gossip or inside information? In Akins’s report of a subsequent meeting with King Faisal, the King’s exposition was as usual ambiguous: Lifting the embargo would be difficult in the absence of some progress on Syria. The King felt I should go to the Middle East personally as an earnest of our good faith.
Years of Upheaval Page 139