1999

by Richard Nixon

  We must begin by defining the kinds of issues we should negotiate about and the kinds of goals we should set. There are two basic types of U.S–Soviet issues. The first are those in which our interests conflict and therefore cannot be resolved through negotiations. For these, the only realistic purpose of negotiation is to reduce the chance that our differences will erupt into armed conflict. The second are those on which our interests run parallel. In these cases, negotiations can potentially produce agreements that will serve our common interests.

  In the first category, the key issues are arms control and the political conflicts, like the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Central America, that could lead to the use of arms. Soviet objectives on these issues are military superiority and geopolitical expansion, and ours are military stability and political self-determination for the peoples of those regions. There is no middle ground—no difference to split—between those propositions. Our differences are simply irreconcilable. With or without negotiations, the Soviets will pursue their goals with their characteristic relentlessness, and we must be sure that we do so as well.

  On these issues, we must seek to negotiate not permanent solutions—such goals are unachievable—but to restrain the means by which both sides pursue their conflicting goals. We will never succeed in negotiating a once-and-for-all arms-control agreement and certainly never succeed in eliminating nuclear weapons from the face of the earth. But we can succeed, through tough, skillful diplomacy, in striking an arms deal that will stabilize the strategic balance so that neither side stands vulnerable to a first-strike attack. We will never succeed in negotiating a permanent settlement in the world’s flashpoints. But we can arrive at a common understanding of the rules of engagement by which we conduct our continuing competition without resorting to nuclear war.

  Human rights also fall into the first category. We seek to promote respect for human rights in the Soviet Union, but Kremlin leaders will never willingly grant their peoples freedoms that would result in opposition to and eventual overthrow of communist rule. No communist regime will agree to commit suicide. A leak in the dike of censorship would produce a flood of recriminations against the party and the state. A crack in the door barring emigration would result in a tide of humanity seeking a better life abroad. We therefore cannot realistically demand in our negotiations that the Soviet Union adopt Western-style democracy or respect all the freedoms embodied in the Bill of Rights. But that does not mean that we should abandon the issue. In our private negotiations, we should press the Soviets to increase emigration, to release specific dissidents, to increase the flow of information from Western sources, and to live up to its obligations as a signatory of the Helsinki agreements. We cannot expect to achieve all that we want, but what we do achieve can mean a lot in the lives of the oppressed peoples of the Soviet Union.

  In the second category of issues, there are important ones like increasing commercial ties, controlling the proliferation of nuclear weapons, reducing risks of accidental war, creating means for resolving incidents at sea, opening up cooperation to protect the environment. There are also less important but still significant issues, like expanding cultural exchanges. On these matters, the United States and the Soviet Union can reach agreements that will serve our mutual interests.

  We might even be able to cooperate in combatting terrorism. While Kremlin leaders have actively aided terrorist groups over the last twenty years, the time may soon come when Moscow itself becomes a victim, and the rapid advance of technology may make that cooperation imperative. We live in an age when technological miniaturization could someday make it possible for not only countries but also individuals to break the nuclear threshold—a sobering thought for any country in which an unarmed Cessna airplane could land in the front yard of the Kremlin.

  It would be a mistake to underestimate the number of possibilities for greater cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union. But it would be a far greater mistake to overestimate the significance of that cooperation for the U.S.–Soviet relationship. In the 1970s, the fact that the renowned Bolshoi Ballet danced in Washington did not stop the Red Army from waltzing into Afghanistan.

  Our track record of negotiating with the Soviets is not good. They are the best in the business at extracting the most from their adversaries while giving up the least in return. Churchill might have said about them that never have diplomats won so much for so little. It is therefore imperative that we develop a better understanding of how to negotiate, on both the strategic and the tactical levels.

  To understand the strategic importance of negotiation requires an understanding of statecraft. Statecraft is something that Americans have traditionally failed to appreciate. None of the graduate schools that train our foreign-service officers, military leaders, and intelligence analysts teach comprehensive courses on statecraft. They produce graduates who know everything about small details and nothing about the big picture. None of our foreign-policy bureaucracies have any talent for statecraft. They are long on expert specialists but short on expert generalists. Yet in the years ahead no capability will be as important as statecraft.

  What statecraft involves is not simply the intricacies of patching together a diplomatic communiqué or striking a trade deal, or the complexities of the military science needed to maintain deterrence at all levels of a potential conflict. Instead, statecraft is the capacity to integrate all our capabilities—military power, economic clout, covert action, propaganda, and diplomacy—into a policy that serves our overall strategy. As an element of statecraft, negotiation is the art of political maneuver at the highest level.

  No administration, including my own, has ever explicitly developed—on paper—an American strategy encompassing our military, economic, and political instruments of power. Whenever we have articulated a national strategy, it has tended to be in terms of military power, slighting or ignoring our economic and political assets. Some Presidents have done better than others in shaping a more comprehensive strategy in practice. But we need to create a process for systematically developing American statecraft.

  In negotiating with Moscow, we need to develop the capacity to craft proposals that both achieve our goals and create political pressures on the Soviets to accept our terms. In essence, it involves making an offer the other side does not want to accept but feels it cannot refuse. We need to present the Kremlin with choices structured so that rejecting them would hurt the Soviet Union politically but accepting them would run against Moscow’s instincts. If Kremlin leaders turn us down, we gain in the political competition; if they take up our offer, we gain our objectives.

  In the recent arms-control agreement on intermediate-range nuclear forces, Gorbachev proved to be a master at this kind of maneuver. When the United States proposed the zero option in November 1981, it did so not because policy-makers thought that such a solution served Western interests but because they expected the Soviets to reject the idea and be hurt politically for doing so. It was assumed that the proposal would score political points in Europe and would enable the United States to station INF forces in NATO countries. That tactic worked as long as the Soviet Union fell into the trap and remained obstinate at the negotiating table.

  But Gorbachev soon figured out that a zero–zero solution ultimately favored Moscow, eliminating U.S. capabilities to retaliate from Europe without affecting Soviet capabilities to hit Europe. When he accepted the American offer, the Reagan administration felt it had no choice but to proceed with the agreement, despite the serious reservations of the Department of Defense, former NATO commander Bernard Rogers, and the allies in Europe. One of the principal reasons reluctant supporters of the accord used to rationalize their position was that refusing our own offer would be too costly politically in terms of public opinion in Western Europe. Through Gorbachev’s shrewd negotiations, Moscow won its objective.

  A bare-bones analysis of how to integrate negotiation into our overall strategy requires us to answer three b
asic questions:

  1. What do we want from the Soviets? We should not enter negotiations willy-nilly. Instead, we need to define in very specific terms what we would like to bring about. In talks on strategic weapons, it makes no sense to pursue an across-the-board reduction of 50 percent in the arsenals of the two superpowers. Our primary goal should be to achieve a large cutback in Soviet first-strike weapons so that Moscow does not ever have enough for a credible first-strike capability. In negotiations on the balance of forces in Europe, it makes no sense to pursue an elimination of tactical nuclear weapons, because they are needed to counter the Warsaw Pact superiority in conventional weapons. We should instead pursue reductions in their conventional forces to the point where NATO could, if necessary, defend itself without nuclear weapons.

  2. What are we willing to give up to get what we want? Gorbachev is neither a philanthropist nor a fool. It is a waste of time to try to convince the Soviets that we should both pursue an abstract concept like strategic stability. They do not think in those terms. Gorbachev is not interested in what we think is “good”—but rather in what he thinks he gets. In order to achieve the zero–zero INF deal he wanted, he was willing to give up several times as many warheads as we did. If we do not have something to offer, it is a waste of time even to enter into negotiations. Kremlin leaders will strike deals, but they will never give anyone something for nothing.

  3. What moves can we make to put political pressure on Soviet leaders to make the deal we want at the price we want to pay? That is not easy, but it is possible. It requires, first, that American policy-makers understand Soviet motivations and vulnerabilities. It also requires a keen sense of gamesmanship. Most of all, it requires an ability to package our proposals with a sense for public relations. We cannot negotiate successfully unless the peoples of the West support our initiatives. Otherwise, the pressure to make a deal at any price can overwhelm the better judgment of policymakers. At the same time, a united front of Western powers—which a politically attuned proposal can galvanize—places maximum pressure for the Soviet Union to negotiate on our terms.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski has spelled out an idea for conventional arms control—a deep reduction in tank forces in Europe and a tank-free zone in Central Europe—that fits the bill. While military experts need to flesh out the specifics of an actual proposal, it has great potential. It isolates the key problem, the offensive threat inherent in Moscow’s overwhelming superiority in tank armies, and proposes a diplomatic response capable of mobilizing public support. It educates Western public opinion about the real threat we face on the conventional level. Most important, it puts the heat on the Soviets by focusing attention on the Soviet policies that threaten peace and that need to be changed. If Moscow rejects the idea of a tank-free zone, we should not back off from it. Instead, we should point out at every turn that Soviet leaders refuse to take steps to lessen the danger of a major war. We should constantly emphasize that as far as Europe is concerned the only reason we need nuclear weapons is because the Soviets have superiority in conventional weapons.

  We should quickly move in that direction to take advantage of Gorbachev’s statements at the Washington summit in December 1987 to the effect that the Soviet Union accepts the principle of asymmetrical reductions. He said that in areas where Moscow held an edge he would be willing to make greater reductions to reach a balance. We should use these statements for political leverage. President Reagan should tell Gorbachev about the American aphorism about “putting your money where your mouth is” and suggest that he put his tanks where his mouth is. The fundamental premise of an acceptable conventional arms-control agreement is that the Soviet Union must reduce its offensive tank forces so that a balance exists between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

  Unfortunately, such strategic thinking almost never surfaces in our foreign-policy bureaucracies. George F. Kennan’s containment policy, which led to the Marshall Plan and NATO, was a notable exception. As President, I met many very able individuals who worked in the State Department, the Defense Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency, but I do not recall a single instance when those bureaucracies generated a truly innovative approach on a major issue. That is why we had to develop our initiatives in the White House. When presented with a problem, the bureaucracies dust off their folders and trot out their standard school solution. Their thinking is dominated by a curator’s mentality. They treat current policy as if it were a museum piece to be preserved at all costs, and they view a new idea as a mortal threat to their prized artifacts. They are experts on tactics but neophytes on strategy. We must not fall victim to this fossilized thinking. It is a deadly prescription for competing with Moscow in a rapidly changing world.

  It is not possible to implement good strategy without good tactics. But good tactics are useless unless they are part of a good strategy. Our strategy determines what negotiations we should go into, and our tactics determine what kind of deal we come out with.

  An administration will never succeed in negotiations at the tactical level without establishing a solid foreign-policy process. Above all, this requires a President who understands the essentials of foreign policy in enough detail so that he can make an informed decision among the available options. Most of America’s foreign-policy disasters in this century—for example, Wilson at Versailles in 1919 and Roosevelt at Yalta in 1944—have resulted when the President was naive about those with whom he was negotiating or was not adequately informed about policies vital to our national security. In the presidential election this year, Americans should make competence in foreign affairs the prime consideration in deciding for whom they will vote.

  When we choose our leaders, we must remember that they are not candidates for sainthood. Personal character should always be a proper subject for debate and examination, but it is far more important to know whether a candidate has the strength and intelligence to hold his own across the table from Gorbachev than whether he might have smoked marijuana in college. If in the past sainthood had been a job requirement for high office in the United States, we would have denied ourselves outstanding military and political leaders. Cleveland had a child out of wedlock but served ably as President. Grant had been an alcoholic, but he was the general who led the Union armies to victory in the War Between the States. Lincoln suffered bouts with mental depression but freed the slaves and preserved the Union. Political pundits forever deride the quality of our leaders. But American politics has deteriorated to the point where any man who cherishes his private life has to think twice before stepping into public life and submitting himself and his family to murderous vendettas by sensation-crazed reporters and inquisitions by senators posturing for the television cameras.

  Our foreign-policy process requires three key elements to function properly. First, it needs a strong central leader—a President who can draw the best from his advisers, who can glean the key information from his departments, and who can exercise independent judgment on foreign-policy questions. It may have been possible in the nineteenth century for a President to delegate foreign policy totally to his Secretary of State. But in that era the level of tariffs, not survival, was the big foreign-policy issue. With so much at stake, the President must be a hands-on leader.

  A President must have a sense of history. Sir Robert Menzies, who served brilliantly as Prime Minister of Australia, aptly observed that in a leader an obsession with the “verdict of history” can “only serve to distract the statesman’s attention from the stern need for decision and action.” What was vital, in his eyes, was that a leader possess “a sense of history, a phrase which I use to describe a state of mind which draws inspiration and light from the recorded past, not a state of mind which is anxious to be regarded well in the unrecorded future.” In negotiating with Kremlin leaders, we will never get where we want to go unless we have a keen understanding of where we have been and how we have gotten there.

  Second, the President must appoint to the key posts of Secretary of State, Secretar
y of Defense, and Director of Central Intelligence individuals who have the background to lead, not follow, their departments. Those who make up the permanent bureaucracies in State, Defense and the CIA have ingrained ways of thinking that bias their analyses and recommendations. And they are experts at buttering up the boss. It is inevitable that an inexperienced appointee, no matter how able, will be captured—taken in by the departmental line—and will lose his usefulness to the President. He will become the bureaucracy’s representative to the President rather than the President’s representative in the bureaucracy.

  Third, the President must retain a strong National Security Council system. After the Iran-contra hearings, it was the common wisdom among Washington’s political pundits that the national-security adviser and his staff had grown too strong and should be demoted to the status of mere paper-pushers. Some put it bluntly: “Put the State Department back in charge of foreign policy.” The next President could not make a greater mistake than to follow this advice. A President needs more than a clerk as his national-security adviser. He needs a strong individual who can organize the decision-making process, crystallize the policy options, and ride herd on the bureaucracies to keep them in line. While the President steers policy with his decisions, it is in the bureaucracies that the rubber meets the road. Without a national-security adviser to exercise hawk-eyed vigilance over the implementation of presidential decisions, the President will see a great deal of slippage between what he wants done and what in fact gets done.