UC Berkeley - HIST 186 - 2012 Spring - Sargent - International and Global History Since 1945 - Lecture 15 - A Decade of Shocks - 01h 19m 53s

Preliminaries

Okay, good morning. Today we're going to be talking about the sort of high politics of the Cold War during the 1970s.

[00:09 ]

Let me just check that we have some volume. Okay, good. We need some volume for the podcast. On the subject of the podcast I should say I really appreciate all of you being here today. This is the first rainy day I think that we've had this semester and I can imagine on days like today the podcast creates some temptation to you know stay at home and listen to the lecture in bed.

[00:29 ]

And I appreciate the fact that none of you here succumb to that temptation so... so thank you for coming along.

[00:36 ]

Lecture Overview and Lectures Schedule

Today we're going to be focusing on mainly on political developments during the 1970s. We talked last week about the sort of expiration of opportunities for extensive growth and the associated political economic tumult that the 1970s brought not only in the West but also in the developing world.

[00:55 ]

Today the focus is going to be on geopolitics -- on the high diplomacy of the Cold War. On Thursday we're going to talk more about social and economic changes within the Communist world, and we'll be comparing and contrasting the experiences of China and of the Soviet Union during the 1970s.

[01:11 ]

Because it's during the '70s that important divergences in the Chinese and Soviet experiences really begin to emerge. Of course there's a prehistory involving the Sino-Soviet Split which we're already dealt with. But that's a subject for Thursday's lecture.

[01:26]

Today we're going to focus on the Great Powers and on their responses to the upheaval and uncertainty that came with the 1970s. The '70s was a decade of shocks, a decade not only of oil shocks but of diplomatic shocks, and it's sort of the relationships between these that we'll try to focus on and explain during the course of today's conversation.

[01:49 ]

Once again if you have questions please do raise your hands and we'll deal with them as we work through the lecture.

The Cold War and Relations Between the Superpowers in the 1970s

Détente

[01:56 ]

I'm going to start by talking about détente. Détente↗ -- what was détente? Well, if we go to the dictionary and look for a definition of détente we come up with a you know sort of fairly generic explanation of what this word means.

[02:10 ]

Détente -- the easing of hostility or strained relations especially between countries. So we could talk about détente as a process of relaxation in an adversary relationship. Two countries that are in a state of conflict, could be the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, could equally well be Egypt and Israel insofar as they improve their relations and move towards sort of expanded understanding, could be said to be engaging in a process of détente.

[02:41 ]

So détente has a generic meaning in the vocabulary of international relations. Détente is a easing of a conflictual or adversary relationship. But in the context of the 1970s détente has a specific meaning as well.

[02:57 ]

It has a generic meaning which can apply to any number of international relationships, but it also has a specific meaning. And this specific meaning has to do with the set of polcies that were pursued by the Nixon administration in the United States.

[03:10 ]

This is a specific policy of détente or strategy of détente if you will that was pursued by the United States during the first half of the 1970s. And this strategy of détente which began in the United States produced a set of relationships between the Cold War's three superpowers: the United States, China and the Soviet Union that could be said to constitute a set of détente relationships.

[03:35 ]

So when we use the détente it's important to differentiate between the generic meaning of the word which can be used to describe any easing and adversary relations in international relations and the specific strategy of détente that was developed and implemented by the United States in the early 1970s with all of the sort of consequences that would ensue.

[03:57 ]

So there's a sort of discrepancy of terms which is important to acknowledge at the outset. And just for the purposes of clarification when I talk about détente today I'm talking about the specific strategy that the Nixon administration implemented in the first half of the 1970s. But the term has also this generic meaning so it's important to acknowledge that at the beginning of the discussion.

[04:18 ]

To make matters even more complicated the détente that the Nixon administration and the United States pursues in the early 1970s is not the only experience of détente in the Cold War.

[04:31 ]

Th Cold War manifests, you know, tendencies towards détente, towards the relaxation of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union really as early as the mid-1950s. In 1955 there is a summit between Eisenhower and the leaders of the Soviet Union beginning with Premier Alexei Kosygin↗ at that time which represents a sort of diminution of the tensions which had emerged in the 1940s. It doesn't end the Cold War. But the spirit of Geneva marks the beginning of a sort of long history of détente in US-Soviet relations.

[05:06 ]

That détente process, détente in the generic sense, of course increases after the Cuban Missile Crisis↗: Kennedy pursues a treaty to limit the testing of nuclear weapons in the earth's atmosphere, a telephone hotline is installed between the Kremlin and the White House to facilitate negotiation in the moments of crisis such as the Missile Crisis.

[05:31 ]

In 1967 Lyndon Johnson, President now of the United States, meets with his Soviet counterpart, Alexei Kosygin, at Glassboro, New Jersey for a major East-West summit. The Glassboro Summit↗ doesn't produce any you know tangible accomplishments but it reflects a spirit of cooperation, even conciliation, in superpower relations.

[05:52 ]

This spirit of cooperation, which the 1960s fosters, will lead in 1968 to the Non-Proliferation Treaty↗. A treaty which is a multilateral treaty it's not just the United States and the Soviet Union who sign up to it but it's a treaty that the United States and the Soviet Union cooperate to develop and to promote in the larger world.

[06:13 ]

So by the late 1960s -- this is before Richard Nixon ever becomes President -- the United States is already engaged in a series of negotiations and discussions with the Soviet Union with the purpose of reducing tensions between the Cold War adversaries and of stabilizing a very dangerous relationship between two nuclear armed superpowers.

[06:33 ]

It's not only the United States and the Soviet Union that pursue moves towards sort of relaxation of Cold War tensions during the 1960s however. Moves towards détente, this is generic détente, come from other sources besides. Consider the experience of West Germany. Under Willy Brandt↗, who becomes the Foreign Minister of West Germany in 1966, and Chancellor of West Germany in 1969, West Germany makes moves to relax its relations with its neighbors to the east.

[07:05 ]

Willy Brandt pursues a policy known as Ostpolitik↗. It literally translates as Eastern Policy. This will involve reaching out to both the Soviet Union and perhaps even more surprisingly East Germany in an effort to expand trade relations, in an effort to expand human contacts, in an effort to overcome and surmount the divisions that Cold War hostility implies.

[07:29 ]

So Ostpolitik represents a sort of autonomous move towards Cold War relaxation on the part of East Germany. Now Ostpolitik is in some ways threatening to the established Cold War order.

[07:42 ]

Recall that the Cold War involves a fundamental division of the world into two hostile Cold War camps: the East Camp led by the Soviet Union and the West Camp led by the United States.

[07:55 ]

Well when West Germany, which is a central member of the Western alliance, gets involved in making independent approaches to the Soviet Union and to East Germany, that move is very threatening to the larger structure of Cold War bipolarity.

[08:09 ]

Insofar as the cohesion of the two alliances, East and West, depends to some extent upon their mutual hostility, moves to relax Cold War hostilities threaten the basic integrity of the Cold War alliance systems.

[08:23 ]

If Germany can reach an acceptable political settlement with the Soviet Union then what need will West Germany have for its close defense relationship with the United States? Détente, if its pursued, particularly if its pursued by subordinate members of the Western alliance, may be very threatening to the primacy of the United States within the Western world.

[08:46 ]

And this becomes a concern for American policymakers. Though American policymakers are prone to favor moves towards the relaxation of Cold War tensions that are led by the United States, American leaders are much more suspicious of moves that US allies in Europe might make to relax Cold War tensions, even to move beyond Cold War hostilities.

[09:08]

Because any relaxation of Cold War tensions within Europe that doesn't involve the United States as a central player may ultimately undermine and erode the central role of the United States in the politics of the West.

[09:22 ]

When Richard Nixon becomes President of the United States in 1969, he's inaugurated in January 1969 after winning election the previous November, he has a number of urgent sort of international tasks that he wants to accomplish.

[09:37 ]

The war in Vietnam is very much at its height in January 1969. At the same time by the beginning of 1969 it's self-evidently clear that the war in Vietnam is unwinnable. So Nixon as a new President has to try to figure out some way to dissolve the American commitment to South Vietnam.

[09:54 ]

How to end the South Vietnam, sorry, how to end the Vietnam War, on terms more or less acceptable to the United States. This is perhaps the most urgent dilemma that Nixon faces.

[10:06 ]

A second question that Nixon has to address is how to maintain the integrity of the Western alliance. Nixon is disturbed by West Germany's moves to implement an independent opening towards the Soviet Union. He's concerned that the whole structure of Cold War relationships might be breaking down -- with the consequence that the leadership of the United States, of the larger Western world may be imperiled.

[10:32 ]

So the fragmentation of the Western alliance is a major concern for Nixon as US President after 1969. And he will seek to maintain the basic integrity of the West, to reverse the tendencies towards fragmentation and disarray that seem to be you know manifest in the internal politics of the Western alliance by the end of the 1960s.

[10:54 ]

Third and perhaps most fundamentally of all Nixon is concerned with what he perceived as a relative decline in the power of the United States in world affairs. Remember that Nixon, who first is elected to Congress in 1946, sort of comes of intellectual and political maturity in a world in which American power is really preponderant.

[11:14 ]

The greatest you know sort of relative margin of advantage that the United States enjoys in global power politics comes at the immediate end of the Second World War. When the West -- when the rest of the world is devastated by the experience of the war.

[11:28]

The subsequent twenty-five years between 1945 and 1970, you know, could be characterized as a period of adjustment in which the rest of the world begins to catch up to the United States, catches up economically, it begins to catch up politically too. During the 1960s, as we discussed last week, or maybe the week before last, the Soviet Union undertakes an ambitious program of strategic missile construction that makes it by the end of the decade more or less equal to the United States in its ability to project nuclear force against its Cold War adversary.

[12:03 ]

So the United States experiences a long phase of adjustment that looks from an American standpoint like a relative decline. Now it may look from the perspective of other powers like catch up but from the United States point of view it looks like relative decline. And this is a major concern for Nixon.

[12:18 ]

Nixon is very worried that the interests of the United States will be imperiled by the loss of sort of absolute American preponderance both within the West and within the larger Cold War world. And he's determined to do something about this -- this process of decline. How to reverse it. How to stabilize the existing power position of the United States in world affairs. These are sort of fundamental questions for Nixon as he embarks upon his presidency.

[12:46]

So there are serious challenges, threats even in the world of the late 1960s, as Richard Nixon inherits the presidency.

Opportunities for the United States

[12:55 ]

But there are also opportunities in the world that Nixon perceives and will seek to act upon. Perhaps the most obvious opportunity is presented by the Sino-Soviet split↗. We've already talked at some length about the deterioration in relations between the Soviet Union and China during the 1960s. This is a really, really crucial development. The Sino-Soviet split makes clear that there is no Communist monolith in Eurasia.

[13:22 ]

And it was the threat of a Communist monolith in the early 1950s that had so terrified American policymakers. It had animated the American intervention in Vietnam for example. The idea that China and the Soviet Union were...locked together in a tight alliance and that this alliance might expand to include new states, new members, struck fear into the hearts of American policymakers. By the late 1960s it is self-evident that China and the Soviet Union are more antagonistic towards each other than they are to the United States.

[13:57 ]

So the idea that Communism as a coherent movement represents a strategic threat to the United States is by the end of the 1960s unsustainable. It defies reality. But this also creates diplomatic opportunities for the US.

[14:13 ]

Insofar as China and the Soviet Union are in some fundamental ways more hostile to each other than either is towards the United States there are opportunities for the United States to align with either the Chinese or the Soviets to sort of in a relationship of collusion against the other Communist power

[14:33 ]

This division within the Communist world opens up new diplomatic opportunities for the United States. By expanding relations with either China or with the Soviet Union the United States could potentially isolate and weaken the other Communist power. So the Sino-Soviet split transforms the geopolitics of the Cold War world. In a sense it transforms the Cold War world from having been a bipolar world into being a tripolar world -- a triangular balance of power in which there are three major participants.

[15:04 ]

And this creates opportunities for the United States to manipulate that balance of power so as to serve its own strategic self-interests over the long term. So the Sino-Soviet split is the major opportunity that presents itself at the end of the 1960s.

[15:19 ]

But there are other opportunities too. The psychological insecurity of Soviet leaders is an opportunity, a strategic opportunity for the United States.

[15:29 ]

For the first twenty-five years of the Cold War the Soviet Union was hardly the equal of the United States. Economically, the Soviet Union had been devastated by the Second World War, militarily the Soviet Union was playing catch up to the United States through the 1960s. And we've seen for example in our discussions of Nikita Khrushchev↗ just how powerfully a sense of psychological insecurity animated Soviet behavior.

[15:56 ]

You know Khrushchev was determined to prove himself the equal to his American counterparts. He was determined to catch up economically with the United States, to make the Soviet Union a power coequal to the United States -- perhaps ultimately a power economically and militarily greater than the United States. The Soviet desire for equality is very, very powerful. And it's a force that you know exerts great effect on the Soviet leadership throughout the era of the Cold War.

[16:25 ]

But that desire on the part of the Soviet Union to be a coequal superpower creates a strategic opportunity for the United States. Because if the United States is willing to treat the Soviet Union like an equal power than the Soviet Union may offer substantial concessions in return.

[16:45]

So the psychological aspect is very important. Soviet leaders crave equality with the United States. Acknowledging and recognizing the formal equality of the Soviet Union as a superpower equal in status in the international system to the United States is something that the American leadership under Nixon might be able to concede in return for specific Soviet concessions. And we'll talk more in just a few moments about what those concessions might be.

[17:13 ]

In this moment, in 1969, in which the United States faces both serious dilemmas and what we might characterize as structural opportunities, the Nixon administration led of course by President Nixon himself and by Henry Kissinger↗ his principle aide and collaborator in national security affairs, begins to construct a grand strategy of détente.

[17:38 ]

A grand strategy that will seek to manipulate the new balance of power in the tripolar Cold War to the advantage of the United States. Nixon and Kissinger concoct a sort of fairly coherent strategy for manipulating the two Communist superpowers, the Soviet Union and China, for balancing the two Communist powers against each other so as to achieve objectives that are in their view essential to the security interests of the United States of America.

[18:08 ]

This détente does not necessarily imply a wholesale relaxation of tensions. It's more complex than that. It's more cynical than that too. Détente for Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger will be a strategy, a self-conscious strategy, to advance the interests of the United States of America through an intricate diplomatic balancing of US adversaries -- specifically the Soviet Union and China.

[18:33 ]

As such we might see détente as an attempt to supplant diplomatic ingenuity for the waning sort of power resources that the United States you know has lost in relative terms since the end of the Second World War.

[18:50 ]

In relative terms you know the US share of world GDP, the US share of the world's stockpile of nuclear weapons, declines during the 1950s and 1960s. Détente represents an effort to stabilize the existing geopolitical status quo through diplomatic means -- to manipulate the Soviet Union and China diplomatically so as to lock in the existing sort of distribution of power in the international system. This is the sort of overarching purpose of détente as Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger conceive it.

[19:25 ]

As such this détente, which serves a sort of self-conscious set of self-interests, represents a you know sort of different kind of strategy, a different kind of you know project, from the more generic sense of détente which implies a sort of wholesale opening or relaxation of relations.

[19:44 ]

What concerns Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger is not so much a relaxation of conflictual relations for its own sake but rather a manipulation of superpower rivalries in such a way as to serve specific American self-interests.

The American Opening to the People's Republic of China

[20:00 ]

How is this détente pursued and implemented? The most dramatic move will involve an American opening towards the People's Republic of China.

[20:09 ]

Remember that the relationship between the United States and the People's Republic of China has for almost twenty-five years been so estranged as to be virtually nonexistent. Relations between the United States and the People's Republic, of course are you know, crystallized in the context of the Chinese Civil War.

[20:31 ]

The United States provides substantial assistance during the Chinese Civil War to the Kuomintang↗, the opponents of Mao Zedong's↗ Communist Party, and the United States following Mao's declaration of the People's Republic in October 1949 never establishes formal diplomatic relations with the PRC.

[20:49 ]

The United States continues to recognize Taiwan, the small part of China that is governed by the Chinese Nationalists, as the legitimate government of sort of the entire Chinese nation.

[21:02 ]

So the US refuses to recognize China for twenty years. Of course this policy of nonrecognition is on the face of things implausible and unsustainable. Taiwan is a small island just across the Taiwan Straits↗ from mainland China. It really doesn't make sense twenty years after the Chinese Civil War has ended with a Communist victory to continue to recognize Taiwan as the legitimate government of all of China and to refuse to recognize the People's Republic.

[21:31 ]

You know this policy seems you know both petulant and implausible. And it's clear to American diplomats both in the White House and in the State Department that the policy of nonrecognition has to be rethought. It's time Nixon declares, when he's running for the Presidency, to reintegrate China to the family of nations.

[21:52 ]

But as it is implemented in practice the outreach to China that the Nixon administration pursues doesn't represent a sort of organic normalization of Sino-American relations so much as a more elaborate ploy to establish a Chinese-American relationship that will advance American interests in the Cold War.

[22:17 ]

What Nixon tries to create is an implicit Sino-American understanding that will be directed against the Soviet Union. The opening, the rapprochement between the United States and China, occurs in part because estrangement by the end of the 1960s is you know no longer tenable. But also, and perhaps, more fundamentally, because opening relations with the People's Republic serves a specific set of American self-interests vis-à-vis the Soviet Union.

[22:45 ]

And here the Chinese background is really important. China during the 1960s becomes bitterly estranged from the Soviet Union. This is the Sino-Soviet split. It culminates in 1968 with the exchange of gunfire across the Ussuri River. The Ussuri River is the river that divides the Soviet Union from China in the north.

[23:05 ]

And in the late 1960s Chinese and Soviet military forces literally come very close to...war, over, you know, disputed, ter -- border, border regions. This is crucial context for American rapprochement with China insofar as Mao Zedong, leader of China, is by the early 1970s, deeply suspicious of China, eager to solidify, China's, sorry Mao, is deeply suspicious of the Soviet Union, not of China (laughter from the class), well, Mao, may have been suspicious of China too but that's a different, different topic.

[23:41 ]

Mao is suspicious of the Soviet Union and eager to secure and solidify alliances, understandings, with other powers that might bolster China's positions vis-à-vis the USSR.

[23:52 ]

There's also a domestic political aspect too here. And this is where Mao's possible fears of China may have some role in the Sino-Soviet split.

[24:02 ]

I'm not going to you know talk extensively about China's internal politics in the late 1960s and early 1970s. We'll go into that in a little bit more detail on Thursday. It should suffice today to say that in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution's↗ excesses. The Cultural Revolution reaches its peak in '66/'67 and begins to diminish though it doesn't go away in '68 and '69. Mao Zedong is eager to achieve a sort of stabilization of China's internal politics.

[24:38 ]

To accomplish this, it's important for Mao to solidify the political center and to marginalize the hard left. Opening China to the United States compliments this political move. The principle supporter within the Chinese government of the opening to the United States is Zhou Enlai↗ -- A sort of long time collaborator of Mao who is a relative liberal or centrist within the context of Chinese Revolutionary politics.

[25:09]

The left within the Chinese Communist Party, led by Lin Biao↗, is seriously opposed to any rapprochement with the United States.

[25:18 ]

Lin Biao as leader of the left faction is more inclined to sort of restore good working relations with the Soviet Union. So there's a domestic political aspect to the Sino-Soviet opening which is really important. Within a domestic Chinese political context opening China to the United States, or opening the United States to China as it might alternatively be construed, represents a decisive sort of choice on Mao's part to align with the political center and to marginalize the left.

[25:50 ]

And this was a shift that in the context of the sort of Cultural Revolution's excesses seems to Mao at the time to make a good deal of sense.

[25:59 ]

And we're going to talk more about Chinese politics on Thursday so we won't get too deep into China today.

[26:05 ]

But this is the context. In the early 1970s, by 1970, 1971, an opening between the United States and China seems to serve the interests of both parties. And it is implemented in fairly short order. Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security advisor travels secretly to China in July 1971.

[26:26 ]

In China he meets with Zhou Enlai and negotiates the terms on which President Nixon will visit China the following year -- in 1972. Nixon's visit to China is very carefully stage managed. It's televised and broadcast back to the United States in realtime. This of course serves a useful political purpose in an election year.

[26:48 ]

Insofar as China has for, you know over twenty years been isolated from the United States, Nixon's visit to China is a very dramatic move. And it's a move that wins Nixon particular acclaim at home as a foreign policy president -- as a man who is able to undertake these sort of dramatic and consequential moves.

[27:09 ]

To get some sense of how significant this is you'd have to think what the implications would be if Barack Obama were to go on television tonight and announce that he had sent an aide to Iran and this aide had negotiated terms on which Obama would himself visit Iran before November's election to sort of negotiate an end to US-Iranian hostilities.

[27:31 ]

This is...you know not a perfect analog but it gives you some sense of how dramatic the China opening was in American domestic politics at the time.

[27:41 ]

So in February 1972 Nixon is in, Nixon is in Beijing, he's not just in Beijing, he also goes to Shanghai and takes in some of the sights, like the Great Wall of China, you can see him here, pictured in the slide on the Great Wall.

[27:56 ]

But what in substance does Nixon's visit to China accomplish?

[28:01 ]

What it achieves most importantly is an implicit sort of rapprochement between the United States and China -- an implicit alignment of these two countries that has serious consequences for the Cold War.

[28:14 ]

With Nixon in China it sems clear that the United States will cooperate to some extent with China against Soviet designs for hegemony in East Asia. Indeed, the final sort of diplomatic statement that concludes Nixon's visit to China, the Shanghai Communique↗, includes specific language that commits both China and the United States to cooperate to oppose hegemony in East Asia.

[28:42 ]

Now this document, the Shanghai Communique, does not mention the Soviet Union by name. But it doesn't have to. Because it's implicitly obvious what opposing hegemony means. It means that both the United States and the People's Republic of China will commit to uphold the existing sort of international status quo in East Asia. They will collaborate where necessary to oppose any aggrandizement of Soviet power and influence.

[29:10 ]

The Taiwan Communique, also addresses, sorry, the Shanghai Communique, also addresses the issue of Taiwan. So you could call it the Taiwan Communique insofar as that's an important issue that it deals with. But that's not what it's called. It's called the Shanghai Communique because that's where it's negotiated.

[29:23 ]

But the communique includes language dealing with Taiwan. And this is important because Taiwan and Taiwan's dispute status is by far the thorniest issue that Kissinger and Nixon and Mao and Zhou Enlai have to navigate. The People's Republic of China does not consider Taiwan to be an independent country. It considers it to be a renegade province and by Beijing is in 1972, as it remains to the present day, anxious to reincorporate Taiwan within the Chinese nation.

[29:56 ]

The United States; however, has in 1972 a close defense relationship with Taiwan. The US stations military forces on Taiwan in 1972. It is Taiwan's major supplier of military assistance. In the context of the Cold War, in the early 1950s, and the Korean War, the United States became very closely entwined with Taiwan, with Nationalist China, so untangling this thicket of relations, to the extent that it can be sort of pushed aside in pursuit of a you know sort of Cold War realignment between the United States and China, is one of the most important tasks that the Shanghai Communique has to accomplish.

[30:37 ]

And the diplomatic language that Henry Kissinger devises to sort of obfuscate this issue is really terrific diplomatic language, so it's worth just considering momentarily. What Kissinger comes up with, and this is the sentence, that he sort of uses to finesse the issue is this:

[30:55 ]

The United States acknowledges that Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Straits maintain that there is but one China.

(laughter from the class)

[31:02]

So Kissinger sort of gets around the issue without having to either sort of renounce Taiwan or sort of endorse PRC ambitions for you know reincorporating Taiwan on Beijing's terms. So it's a very clever you know sort of linguistic formula that Kissinger comes up. Something that you should all consider if you ever find yourself negotiating sort of between implacable adversaries.

[31:32 ]

But for the time being it is the consequences for the Cold War and not the consequences for Taiwan that are the significant accomplishment of Nixon's 1972 China opening.

[31:43 ]

The opening between the United States and China seems to establish at least an implicit alignment between these two long time adversaries -- an alignment that has clear and obvious consequences for the Soviet Union. With the United States and China having committed to cooparatively oppose hegemony in East Asia is something akin to an informal Sino-American alliance developing?

[32:07 ]

This is how Soviet leaders perceive the China-US relationship -- as an implicit alliance directed against the Soviet Union. And this is really really consequential. You know China is a huge and...you know preemptively important country for the United States to establish a relationship of cooperation, even tacit alliance, with China signifies a tumultous shift in the Cold War's balance of power.

[32:34 ]

Recall how important the so-called loss of China was to the United States in 1949. It was the loss of China more than anything else that escalated and defined the Cold War in East Asia. For China to become a tacit ally of the United States is a huge development, a huge transformation in the history of the Cold War, and this is in essence what Nixon accomplishes.

[32:57 ]

How do the Soviets respond? The Soviets respond exactly as Nixon hoped that they would -- by declaring themselves open to a whole range of accommodations with the United States. In a sense the United States gets the Soviets in a position where they're willing to compete with the Chinese in order to conciliate the United States of America, which is the genius of the move.

[33:20 ]

Nixon in effect sort of leverages the two Communist powers against each other to the advantages of the United States. After the Sino-American opening is announced Brezhnev↗ quietly communicates, the Soviet Union quietly communicates to the United States, that it too wants to a summit meeting with Richard Nixon. And more than that the Soviet Union is prepared to put pressure on North Vietnam to resolve the Vietnam War on terms that will be acceptable to the United States.

[33:51 ]

So The Vietnam War is an important aspect of this too. Insofar as the Soviet Union and China are the two primary sort of great power sponsors of the Communist war effort in Vietnam manipulating China and the Soviet Union against each other gives the United States an indirect lever of influence over North Vietnam.

[34:11 ]

And after the Sino-American opening the Soviets communicate that they are willing to sort of push North Vietnam towards the peace table in exchange for a summit with Richard Nixon.

[34:25 ]

Who would have thought at the beginning of this lecture that world leaders would have been so eager to meet with Richard Nixon. But... (laughter from the class).

The Moscow Summit of May 1972

[34:31 ]

In 1972, in May 1972, just a few months after Nixon has gone to Beijing a summit between Nixon and Brezhnev is convened in Moscow. This summit produces a number of sort of important agreements. The first, and the one which attracts least attention in the United States, is the so-called Basic Principles Agreement. What the Basic Principles Agreement does is to lay down a basic sort of code of conduct for the waging of the Cold War.

[35:01 ]

It commits the powers you know to do a bunch of mundane things -- like notifying each other about military maneuvers such that military maneuvers cannot be misunderstood, misconstrued, as offensive escalatory moves.

[35:14 ]

It establishes a sort of framework for stabilizing the adversary relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. There's also a symbolic importance to the Basic Principles Agreement. It's very existence as a document suggests that the United States is willing to recognize the Soviet Union as a coequal superpower. That the United States is willing to accept you know the basic architecture of bipolarity as the defining attribute of the international system and to recognize the Soviet Union as the leader of a Cold War camp formally equal to the West.

[35:53 ]

So that's a concession in some ways to the USSR but the other agreements that are negotiated tend to favor the interests of the United States. And here none is more important that the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty or SALT↗ as it is often known.

[36:09 ]

SALT involves the mutual establishment of numerical limits on nuclear weapons fleets. Under the terms of the SALT Treaty both the United States and the Soviet Union commit not to expand their strategic nuclear arsenals above certain thresholds. This is really, really important.

[36:30 ]

Recall sort of the fact that during the 1960s the Soviet Union embarks on an aggressive program of missile construction that puts it by the end of the decade at least equal to if not ahead of the United States of America. In the military balance of power the trend lines by 1972 are already in the favor of the Soviet Union.

[36:53 ]

That the United States has fewer missiles, it has fewer nuclear warheads. Its missiles may be more accurate, which does give it some you know technical advantages but the big trend lines seem to be running in favor of the USSR.

[37:06 ]

By persuading the USSR to stop building more missiles the United States in effect stabilizes the military balance of power at a level that you know sort of prevents any further you know relative slippage, any further relative gains, for the Soviet Union.

[37:24 ]

Now you may be asking: why doesn't the United States just build more nuclear missiles of its own? After all the United States could have you know competed in this military arms race and it could have prevailed. The United States has a you know huge industrial capacity, a huge scientific and research base. It's certainly capable of building more and better nuclear weapons than the Soviet Union possesses.

[37:48 ]

Well, the reasons, sort of the answer to that question, has to do with both strategy and with politics. And the strategy is this: that American strategists in the 1960s conclude that they don't need any more nuclear weapons than they already have. Once the United States has enough nuclear weapons to be able to survive, or for another nuclear weapons to be able to survive a Soviet preemptive attack, so as to leave the United States after absorbing a Soviet preemptive attack with enough retaliatory power to inflict unacceptable damage on the USSR -- what's known in the nuclear strategic parlance of the day as a second strike capability -- once the United States has this -- people like McNamara argue in the 1960s -- then there's really no need for any additional nuclear weapons.

[38:32 ]

The United States will have a sufficient nuclear deterrent. So there's a strategic aspect which we've already discussed. But there's also a political aspect which is really important. The United States overspends on the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War is destabilizing to the federal deficit; it's destabilizing to the balance of payments. It's politically contentious.

[38:51 ]

In the context of Vietnam, an increasingly unpopular and divisive war, Nixon's not going to get any more appropriations through Congress to build extra nuclear weapons -- particularly not when there are a bunch of you know nuclear strategists associated with the Democratic party who will testify to Congress and say that the United States doesn't need any more nuclear weapons.

[39:11 ]

So Nixon being constrained by the you know American political system is unable to compete with the USSR in the strategic arms race. Thus, the need for an agreement to limit Soviet nuclear construction. And this is what SALT provides.

[39:28 ]

It also includes a treaty, an anti-ballistic missile treaty, that prevents the two superpowers from developing anything more than a very limited and very rudimentary ballistic missile defense system.

[39:40 ]

Now this is sort of important in terms of its implications for the Cold War military balance of power. Because by the end of the 1960s the Cold War, you know balance of power, has become a balance of terror. Neither side is going to launch an attack upon the other because to do so would bring down inevitable destruction and catastrophe upon all.

[40:00 ]

You know this is obvious enough. Now think about what the implications of an effective ballistic missile defense system would be for the Cold War balance of terror. If either the United States or the Soviet Union was able to develop a system that could offer reliable defense against incoming nuclear weapons what would the consequences be for the military balance of power?

[40:23 ]

Let's say the Soviets come up with a nuclear shield? What does that do?

(student response)

[40:30 ]

That's right. The Soviets would be able to strike against the United States without having to fear retaliation. It would transform the military balance very radically in favor of the USSR. It would effect neutralize the...American strategic offensive, with you know consequences that would lay the United States you know sort of wide open to military intimidation on the part of the USSR.

[40:57 ]

So the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty↗, like the SALT Treaty, plays a stabilizing function. It works to sort of regularize and preserve the existing status quo in the military relationship between the two superpowers.

[41:11 ]

Besides these you know kind of political and military stabilizing moves, Basic Principles, SALT and the ABM treaty, the Moscow summit produces a agreement to expand economic relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.

[41:25 ]

The expansion of economic relations is something that is favored by both sides -- the Soviet Union because trade presents a way to you know get one's hands on American high technology. American leaders favor an expansion of economic relations because the Soviet Union presents a big market for American commerce.

[41:45 ]

So the expansion of economic relations is fairly easily to agree upon because everybody wants it. And now that's one of the contributions of the Moscow Summit.

The Benefits of Détente

[41:56 ]

What are the benefits of this détente relationship as it develops? Well, the most obvious benefit is the one that I've already emphasized. By expanding relations with both the Soviet Union and China the United States gains leverage in the Cold War world.

[42:12 ]

It gains leverage against the Soviet Union and it gains leverage against China. It is able in effect to play the two Communist powers off against each other so as to achieve concessions, like the SALT Treaty, that serve the national security interests of the United States Of America.

[42:29 ]

But there are other benefits too. Insofar as détente involves the establishment of regular heads of states summits, it involves regular diplomatic negotiations between the three superpowers, détente brings a certain stability to the Cold War world -- a stability that makes the probability of actual conflict look less and less than at any other time in the history of the Cold War. Détente diminishes tensions and thereby makes the Cold War world safer: less prone to catastrophic nuclear war.

[43:03 ]

Détente also facilitates or enables reductions in military spending insofar as the United States and the Soviet Union are able to cap the nuclear arms race they can divert more national resources to consumer spending, to other forms of public spending. So it reduces the amount of money that both superpowers are sinking into...sort of nuclear weapons.

[43:26 ]

And there are may be some spin-off benefits from building nuclear weapons but economically building more and more nuclear weapons is a very, you know, poor way to spend national resources. Much better to spend national resources on you know higher education or elementary education or just about anything else will prove to be more economically remunerative over the long term than nuclear weapons.

[43:50 ]

Besides enabling reductions in military spending détente facilitates the return of the People's Republic of China to what you might call sort of the liberal world community: the world community of the West, the United States, and its allies.

[44:07 ]

Now it's important at this moment to emphasize the limits of Nixon's détente particularly vis-à-vis China. What Nixon accomplishes vis-a-vis China in the early 1970s is an implicit Soviet-American alignment that will be directed against the People's Republic -- against the Soviet Union.

[44:26 ]

Nixon does not normalize diplomatic relations with China. Diplomatic relations are not normalized until 1979 under two new leaders -- Jimmy Carter in the United States, and Deng Xiaoping↗ in the People's Republic.

[44:41 ]

What Nixon accomplishes is primarily diplomatic and geopolitical in its consequences. There is very little expansion of trade as a consequence of the 1972 China opening. The expansion of Soviet-American trade relations which will be very dramatic and profoundly consequential when it comes doesn't really begin until the end of the 1970s.

[45:05 ]

That will be Deng and Carter's accomplishment -- not Mao and Nixon's accomplishment. So China begins to expand its relations with the United States. But the nature of the Sino-American relationship, for most of the 1970s, will be primarily strategic and military rather than sort of economic, social and political.

[45:28 ]

Nonetheless détente stabilizes the Cold War. As a set of relations between three Cold War adversaries détente produces unprecedented stability and it seems to do so on terms that are basically favorable to the United States. The United States, through détente, locks in a set of relationships in which the United States represents sort of the balancing power between two adversarial Communist superpowers. The United States can lean a little bit to one side or the other. Lean a little bit towards China or towards the Soviet Union in order to accomplish specific American objectives.

[46:04 ]

So it's a set of relationships that serves the interests of the United States and that seems to stabilize the Cold War as a whole.

[46:14 ]

But new forces, and new pressures are by the mid-1970s, already beginning to intrude upon this project of Cold War stabilization. And it's to these sort of new forces that we should turn. But let me first take your question.

[46:26 ]

(student question)

[46:28 ]

Yeah.

[46:33 ]

Well, there is communication but the estrangement is really very profound, by the turn of the 1970s.

[46:41 ]

And this is a contested issue within both the Soviet Union and China. And as I mentioned there is a faction in the Chinese leadership, the Lin Biao faction, that wants to restore relations with the Soviet Union and to align sort of with China's fellow Communist power rather than the United States.

[46:59 ]

But what happens to Lin Biao?

(student response)

That's right. He dies. Under what kind of circumstance?

[47:05 ]

(student response)

[47:06 ]

Under mysterious circumstance. (laughter from the class). So -- it's difficult -- it would be difficult to overstate just how preoccupied Chinese officials present themselves as being with the Soviet Union in their conversations with American officials in the early 1970s.

[47:24 ]

And the reasons for this are sort of obvious enough. I mean think about all of the points of potential disagreement between the Soviet Union and China? These are two, you know superpowers, that share a very long land border, that dispute specific, you know, territories between them, that have a long history of animosity dating back to the pre-Communist era, you know, animosity, over, you know...over territorial claims like those in Manchuria.

[47:50 ]

The United States is far removed from either the Soviet Union or China. It doesn't have any territorial interests at stake with either. For both of the Communist powers national interests may push in the direction of an informal alignment with the United States rather than a sort of ideological alignment each other. So you might construe détente as the triumph of national interests over ideology.

[48:18 ]

That would be one I think very useful way to think about détente. And that's true on every side. The Chinese, by aligning with the United States implicitly against the Soviet Union, are allowing tangible national interests to surmount ideological claims.

[48:34 ]

Nixon, who had early in his career been a ferocious anti-Communist, makes peace with two Communist powers because he perceives it to be in the tangible national interests of the United States to do so.

[48:47 ]

So the stabilization of the Cold War is a stabilization that sort of relegates ideology to a role of peripheral importance and makes national interests tangible, even rational national interests, the basis for a geopolitical settlement.

The Helsinki Accords

[49:06 ]

But new forces are beginning to intrude. And we will see this you know very vividly in the Helsinki settlement↗. The Helsinki settlement is a you know term that is often applied to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe↗.

[49:21 ]

The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe which produces the Helsinki settlement or the Helsinki Final Act in 1975 is a long series of diplomatic negotiations that begins in 1972. The purpose of this negotiation is to produce a sort of political settlement in Europe that will finally end the Second World War with a sort of multilateral treaty that all of Europe's nation-states can agree to, a treaty that will recognize existing borders in Europe, that will confer legitimacy upon all of the states that sign it.

[50:00 ]

The Second World War, you should remember, I mean, was ended by a set of bilateral treaties between Germany and the victorious Grand Alliance↗, and Japan and the victorious Grand Alliance. But there was never at the end of the Second World War an overarching European peace treaty that you know ratified and validated the Europe wide postwar settlement.

[50:22 ]

You know similar to what the postwar settlements did after the First World War. So the Conference on Security and Cooperation tries to do this some you know thirty years almost after the Second World War has ended. It tries to establish a general sort of European settlement -- a settlement that will ratify Europe's sort of territorial status quo.

[50:42 ]

It's a pan-European conference. It involves some thirty-five nations. Everybody in Europe participates in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. And at such it represents sort of the biggest sort of diplomatic enterprise in European history in terms of the number of states that participate in it. You could see it as being you know sort of analogous to the Congress of Vienna↗ in 1815 just on a much larger scale.

[51:12 ]

Now what does the Soviet Union for its part want out of the CSCE -- out of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe?

[51:20 ]

What the CSCE does from a Soviet point of view is really simple. It ratifies the existence of a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. It ratifies the legitimacy of the East Bloc as it is presently constituted. The CSCE will confer Western recognition, Western legitimacy upon East Germany, upon the Communist governments of Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, and so on.

[51:47 ]

And this is what the Soviet Union craves. It craves Western recognition of the existing Cold War status quo. As a pan-European settlement in which the Soviet Union will participate the CSCE also gives the Soviet Union a formal role in European politics writ large.

[52:07 ]

So the Soviet Union will not just have a political role in the East but the CSCE also gives it a role in a European settlement that applies to the West as well. And this represents a sort of Western recognition of the Soviet Union as a legitimate player in European international relations.

[52:24 ]

So the Soviet Union craves the CSCE for all of the reasons that I've already discussed. It stabilizes the existing you know geopolitical status quo. It confers recognition and Western legitimacy upon the Soviet Union and upon its leaders.

[52:40 ]

You know Soviet leaders really like meeting with their Western counterparts. Just look at how happy Brezhnev is in this photograph (laughter from the class) where he's meeting with Gerald Ford.

[52:47 ]

You know it's great to be able to meet with the President of the United States and for the President of the United States to engage you as an equal. For a band of revolutionaries that seized power just you know what sixty years ago and never held any elections this is you know quite an accomplishment.

[53:05 ]

It's not...too hard to comprehend why Soviet leaders were so eager for you know diplomatic intercourse that conferred upon them the status of equality with the leaders of the United States of America.

[53:19 ]

Why does the West then want the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe? Here the reasons vary considerably. Henry Kissinger understands very well just why the Soviets want the CSCE. He knows what it means to the leaders of the Soviet Union. And insofar as Kissinger believes that détente has in general worked to the advantage of the United States and not to the advantage of the Soviet Union Kissinger is willingly to give the Soviets the CSCE, to give the Soviets the Helsinki Final Act, as a sort of quid pro quo in exchange for Soviet concessions in other areas, in exchange for Soviet restraint in the developing world and so on.

[54:01]

So Kissinger views CSCE as a sort of useless symbolic exercise which he is nonetheless prepared to participate in -- in order to grant the Soviet Union the recognition that it craves as a great power coequal to the United States.

[54:17 ]

The nation-states of Western Europe have a slightly different agenda however. The nation-states of Western Europe following sort of in the example of Willy Brandt's détente, Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik, in the 1960s, see the CSCE as an opportunity to establish basic norms, basic rules of conduct, basic expectations, that will shape the future of Eastern Europe's as well as Western Europe's political development. Specifically the West European countries see the CSCE as an opportunity to get the East European countries to sign up to a set of formal human rights standards.

[54:58 ]

Right after the Second World War the West European countries develop their own regional human rights apparatus -- the European Convention on Human Rights↗. The promotion of human rights becomes an important commitment for the nation-states of Western Europe after the Second World War.

[55:13 ]

And Helsinki represents an opportunity to impose, as it were, a set of formal human rights norms on the East. West European leaders don't expect that this is going to transform the East overnight into a sort of liberal, law-abiding place. But they hope, like Willy Brandt had hoped, that over the long term, you know, establishing, sort of, a new regime of openness in East-West relations, getting the East Europeans to go along with formal agreements to honor human rights, will produce an organic process of change within the East Bloc -- a process of change that will ultimately result in the liberalization and opening of Eastern Europe to the West.

[55:56]

So it's a very different kind of strategic agenda. The West Europeans approach the CSCE determined to insert within the language of the Helsinki Final Act a set of commitments to which the East European countries will have to adhere that will over the historical medium to long term help to encourage organic change -- liberalizing change within the East.

[56:19 ]

This is not at all what Henry Kissinger envisages. What Henry Kissinger envisages is that the CSCE will be a sort of carrot that he can extend to the Soviet Union in the larger you know sort of diplomatic game that is détente.

[56:34 ]

So the negotiation serves very different purposes for different Western constituencies. As a consequence the negotiation of the Helsinki Final Act, the treaty that brings the CSCE to an end, is a diplomatically fraught process. The West Europeans push very hard for the inclusion of ambitious human rights language within the Helsinki Treaty.

[56:55 ]

The Soviet Union opposes human rights language. The Soviet Union says that this doesn't have any place here. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe is an agreement between nation-states. This thing you call human rights: this is not the business of international relations. This thing you call human rights is the business for individual nation-states -- to determine as they will within their own borders. The idea that the international community should have any role in determining what is appropriate and what is not appropriate in terms of the treatment of human beings within nation-states is anathema to a Soviet Union that embraces sovereignty, legal sovereignty, as the bedrock principle of international relations.

[57:38 ]

But the West Europeans are very, very persistent. And as a consequence the Helsinki Final Act includes paradoxical elements. Basket I -- which lays out the basic principles of international relations -- this is the sort of basic principles part of Helsinki Agreement -- includes a number of commitments that reflect the expectations of the Soviet Union. It commits the signatories to the Final Act to a recognized national sovereignty, to observe the inviolability of borders, not to interfere in each other's domestic affairs. These commitments all serve a Soviet concept of international relations in which nation-states are sovereign and inviolable.

[58:20 ]

But Basket I also includes language to uphold basic human rights, which is not what the Soviet Union wants. Basket II includes a set of agreements to promote economic, social and technological cooperation. These are all things that the Soviet Union and its East European satellites want very badly.

[58:39 ]

Incapable of making high technology products for themselves they see importing them from the West as the only you know plausible alternative.

[58:47 ]

Basket III however deals with human contacts. It commits the signatories to the Helsinki Final Act to undertake over time specific measures to liberalize opportunities for human contacts across the Cold War's blocs. To enable you know journalists for example to move more freely across borders, to facilitate international travel on the part of ordinary citizens. And these are things that the West Europeans campaign for it because they believe that the more open the East Bloc becomes the greater the opportunities for organic political change within the East will be.

[59:26 ]

They gamble in effect that once East Europeans and West Europeans can travel more easily to each other's countries that East Europeans will be more impressed by the example of West European society than East Europeans will be by the example -- sorry than West Europeans will be by the example of East European society.

[59:44 ]

So this in essence is the Helsinki paradox. The agreement includes both stabilizing, you know sort of geopolitic elements, and...idealistic human rights elements. Over time dissidents within Eastern Europe will prove adept at using sort of aspects of the Helsinki Final Act, particularly the human rights commitments in Basket I and the agreements on human contacts in Basket III, as sort of rhetorical, discursive↗ and political weapons against the regimes that govern them.

[1:00:17 ]

We're going to talk much more about this when we talk about the end of the Cold War. But let me just point out that within a couple of years of the Helsinki Final Act being signed a group in Czechoslovakia, Charter 77↗, a sort of small group of intellectuals and artists has constituted itself with the express purpose of holding the Czechoslovakian government up to honor the formal commitments into which it has entered at Helsinki. But we'll talk more about that in due course.

Conclusion: The Limitations of Détente Internationally

[1:00:47 ]

Détente as a geopolitic project brought great even unprecedented stability to the Cold War world. But détente as a political project was limited. In a sense détente...privileged Cold War relationships at the expense of other kinds of international issue. The United States as it pursued a strategy of détente focused its energies as a great power upon the management of Cold War relations.

[1:01:22 ]

By consequence less attention was paid to issues that fell sort of outside of the orbis of Cold War affairs, of Cold War politics.

[1:01:30 ]

The Cold War remained in the 1970s an important national security challenge. But it was by no means the only challenge that the United States had to contend with. There were other things going on in the international relations of the 1970s besides Cold War rivalries, Cold War tensions.

[1:01:47 ]

One of the consequences of détente I would suggest is that insofar as détente privileged a you know sort of Cold War paradigm as the paradigm in which foreign policy had to be made and implemented it led American leaders to disregard and overlook other kinds of international issue -- issue falling outside of the Cold War box. And we'll see this if we turn to the issue of the Middle East in the context and aftermath of the oil crisis of 1973/1974.

Tumult in the Middle East During the 1970s

The 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the Oil Embargo

[1:02:18 ]

The Middle East is a really important region in the 1970s. The oil crisis sort of transforms the Middle East strategic significance to the world economy and its strategic significance to the superpowers besides. So by sort of situating ourselves in the Middle East, by looking at détente from this particular vantage, we can get some perspective on both the limits and you know perhaps also the accomplishments of Nixon and Kissinger's détente.

[1:02:46 ]

To do this we should start with the 1973 Arab-Israeli war↗ -- the third war to be fought between the state of Egypt and the state of Israel since the 1948 creation of Israel. How did the 1973 war come about? Over what was it fought?

[1:03:03 ]

We're not going to get into this too deep but it's worth emphasizing the point that the origins of the 1973 war lay in the previous war that the Egyptians and the Israelis had fought: the Six-Day War↗ of 1967. The 1967 Six-Day War began as a sort of preemptive Israeli action that was constructed to sort of prevent an Egyptian attack on Israel which looked likely and eminent at the time when Israel launched its sort of preemptive attack against Egypt.

[1:03:38 ]

That was the origin of the 1967 War. We're not going to get too deeply into it because it's contentious and it would take us the rest of the lecture.

[1:03:45 ]

What's important so far as 1973 is concerned is the territorial settlement that exists at the end of the 1967 War. The 1967 War is a very short war. That's why they call it the Six-Day War. But in the course of this short confrontation, Israel, as you can see in the slide, vastly expands the reach of its territorial control. Israel occupies the entire Sinai Desert, which had previously been part of Egypt, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

[1:04:19 ]

The West Bank was nominally, you know administered by Jordan, but inhabited of course by Palestinian citizens. Israel also secures the Golan Heights from Syria -- a territory which are very important as a sort of high sort of military point which offers Israel sort of better opportunities to defend itself against Syria.

[1:04:44 ]

So Israel secures stunning territorial gains in 1967. Egypt, is pretty unhappy at having lost all of this territory, the Sinai Desert, to Israel, and is determined to recapture what it has lost. In a sense the 1967 War never really ends. There's no satisfactory peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. Low level hostilities continue to persist even after the major fighting has ended. This is a phase that's known as the War of Attrition↗ -- a war of attrition↗ that follows the major military action in 1967.

[1:05:20 ]

So the Six-Day War sort of opens up the geopolitics of the Middle East and the wound doesn't heal. It remains open. Now at the same time as Egypt and Israel are you know sort of continuing after 1967 to wage a low-level conflict over the territorial settlement in the Sinai -- Egypt and Israel are both being drawn very tightly into larger Cold War conflicts.

[1:05:49 ]

Israel, as a consequence of the 1967 War, becomes very closely associated with the United States of America. The United States had not previously viewed Israel as its principle ally in the Middle East. Up until 1967 the United States tried to maintain a sort of broad based strategy in which it would maintain sort of political and military alliances with Arab countries as well as with the Israelis. American leaders viewed the Arab-Israeli conflict as a potential sort of impediment to the accomplishment of American national security interests in the region and tried to pursue as balanced a pollcy as possible.

[1:06:26 ]

Now this wasn't very easy to do. And during the 1960s the United States becomes more and more closely entwined with Israel. And 1967 you know sort of formalizes that dependence of the United States upon Israel. After the war, American leaders, you know, sort of conclude that Israel is their only reliable Cold War ally in the Western part of the Middle East region.

[1:06:49 ]

So this is really important. The Arab Israeli conflict becomes embroiled with the Cold War. On the other side Egypt moves very close to the Soviet Union during and after the Six-Day War. Becomes dependent upon the Soviet Union for military supplies, it becomes something very close to being a Soviet client.

[1:07:10 ]

And this is in essence how, how things remain until 1970 when General Abdel Nasser↗, Egypt's leader dies, and is replaced by a new leader, the man pictured in the slide: Anwar Sadat↗.

[1:07:25 ]

Sadat is one of those figures that we encounter in history that reminds us that individuals really do matter -- that individuals can make choices that change the course of larger events. Sadat was unhappy with the close relationship that his predecessor, Gamal Abdel Nasser, had forged between Egypt and the Soviet Union. Sadat did not believe that it served the interests of Egypt to become a Soviet client.

[1:07:51 ]

Moreover, Sadat viewed the long running, long festering conflict with Israel, as a drain on Egyptian resources, as an impediment to the modernization and development of the Egyptian economy, and ultimately of Egyptian politics and society as well.

[1:08:09 ]

So Sadat really from the very beginning was determined to accomplish two things. He wanted to achieve a permanent settlement with Egypt that would, sorry a permanent settlement with Israel, that would resolve the long running Egyptian-Israeli conflict and allow Egypt to develop itself on its own terms.

[1:08:28 ]

Sadat also wanted to pull Egypt out of the Soviet Union's Cold War camp. He didn't believe that it served Egypt's interests to be a client of the USSR and he wanted to develop a new relationship with the West, with the United States in particular.

[1:08:43 ]

How was this going to be accomplished? How was Sadat going to achieve these two you know, very difficult, very complex objectives? Well, in 1973 he decides to go to war for a third time with Israel. Egypt and Israel first went to war in 1948, then again in 1967, and in 1973 Sadat decides to launch a new war.

[1:09:08 ]

But he goes about this in a very peculiar way. He starts in early 1973 by expelling Soviet military advisors from Europe. Sadat concludes that this is going to be a war that Egypt wages on its own terms not as a proxy of the Soviet Union.

[1:09:24 ]

Then in October he attacks Israel. This is a move that nobody expected. It really catches Western intelligence unawares. Because Sadat had previously expelled Soviet military advisors. Why do that if you're just about to launch a preemptive war?

[1:09:39 ]

Well, Sadat went to war. But it was never his objective to destroy the state of Israel. It was never his objective to conquer Israeli territory. All that Sadat wanted to do was to seize...the desert, the Sinai Desert, so as to establish a sort of military position from which peace negotiations could be undertaken. The purposes of the 1973 War, as Anwar Sadat waged it, were primarily psychological. Sadat just wanted to shift the regional military balance of power in Egypt's favor so that Egypt would be able to negotiate a long-term peace settlement with Israel from a position of strength, rather than a position of weakness.

[1:10:24 ]

So with psychological purposes in mind, with the purposes ultimately of making peace in mind, Anwar Sadat in October 1973 went to war.

[1:10:37 ]

What was the role of the West in this conflict? What was the role in particular of the United States?

[1:10:43 ]

Nixon and Kissinger got it dead wrong. They concluded that Sadat was waging war against Israel as a Soviet client. They interpreted, or rather misinterpreted, the Egyptian attack on Israel not as a limited war being fought for political objectives, but rather as a Soviet attempt to topple America's closest regional ally in the Middle East.

TSS1:11:08

So rather than sort of looking at the 1973 conflict in regional terms, as a conflict that was being fought to serve regional objectives, they looked at it in global terms -- as a conflict that was being waged to serve the Soviet Union's Cold War purposes.

[1:11:23 ]

You know this sort of illustrated the power of the Cold War outlook over you know makers of American policy throughout the era of the Cold War.

[1:11:34]

Costruing Egypt's move as a Cold War offensive the United States undertook to supply Israel with vital military assistance. Beleaguered -- the Israelis you know facing the brunt of an Egyptian offensive -- turned to the United States for military aid.

[1:11:51]

They called on Washington to resupply Israeli forces with the weapons of war that would enable Israel to rebuff the Egyptian offensive. And this the United States did. It provided Israel with a resupply of weapons that enabled the Israelis after several weeks of hard fighting to turn the tide on the Egyptians. And eventually the fighting ends with a stalemate in the Sinai Desert.

[1:12:16 ]

But as a consequence of this US intervention the Arab members of OPEC, the Arab oil producers of the Middle East, initiate an oil embargo against the United States, which is something that we talked about last week. Now, as I emphasized last week, the oil embargo is by no means the only or even the primary cause of the oil crisis. It's the long-term relationship between supply and demand that determines than an oil crisis occurred in the 1970s.

[1:12:45]

But the Arab embargo exacerbates the oil crisis. It produces a further spike in the price of oil, as paid by Western motorists, and exacerbates the sort of economic consequences that the West experiences as the price of oil increases.

[1:13:03 ]

Still, as the fighting comes to an end in late October 1973, the opportunities to negotiate a peace settlement begin to you know sort of crack open. Egypt has not, does not achieve all that it wanted to achieve, in the offensive against Israel but Sadat was able to sort of make the Israelis feel militarily vulnerable in a way that they had not previously felt vulnerable.

[1:13:33 ]

And this subtlely shifts the political calculus of peacemaking. After the 1973 War the United States will play a central, even an instrumental role, in the orchestration of a political settlement between Egypt and Israel. Henry Kissinger, after the war, gets very quickly to work as a sort of negotiator and immediatory between Israel and the Egyptians.

[1:13:58 ]

Kissinger shuttles back and forth between Cairo and Jerusalem. This becomes known as shuttle diplomac↗y. Sort of...as he works to broker the terms for a military disennagement agreement and then ultimately for a political settlement. Kissinger is able to negotiate a disengagement agreement -- the Sinai Accord in 1975↗ but the achievement of a long term political solution will await the Carter administration which negotiates the Camp David Peace↗ in 1978.

[1:14:29 ]

And this is a peace treaty which comes into force between Egypt and Israel, since 1978 there has been no conflict, no interstate war between Egypt and Israel. So the...dramatic shifts that occurred in the 1970s marked a major turning point in the politics of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The conflict itself would endure but its nature would fundamentally change.

[1:14:51 ]

What had been until the 1970s primarily an interstate conflict fought between Egypt and Israel would become an asymmetric fought between Israel, the state of Israel, and the Palestinian movement, a movement which aspires to create a nation-state but which until it does is not a nation-state in sort of the international arena, so the war would become more complicated.

[1:15:17 ]

The conflict would become more diffuse in some ways but also potentially less catastrophic. Insofar as Egypt and Israel are both powerful nation-states the prospect of conflict between them could be you know catastrophic to both. So the normalization of Egyptian-Israeli relations is an important you know sort of accomplishment for which Sadat primarily, but secondarily American policymakers and Israeli's Prime Minister Begin↗ you know ought to be credited with some responsibility.

The Influx of Petrodollars and its Consequences

[1:15:51 ]

But the settlement of the Egyptian Israeli dispute is only one of the you know sort of consequences of the tumult that the Middle East experiences in the 1970s.

[1:16:02 ]

Insofar as the oil crisis transforms the balance of trade in the global energy economy it produces a massive sort of influx of capital, a petrodollar bonanza, for the countries that export oil to the world market.

[1:16:18 ]

Petrodollars come to define the politics as well as the economics of the Middle East during the 1970s. Here the major beneficiaries are the major oil exporting countries: Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Emirates, wherever they are, and Iran, these are the countries that receive the greatest you know sort of petrodollar influx as the price of world oil increases.

[1:16:41 ]

To what purposes are these monies put? Well, both Iran and Saudi Arabian purchase large amounts of weaponry from the United States of America. Arms spending booms in the Middle East following the oil crisis. Now this is not necessarily a bad thing from the perspective of the Nixon administration. Insofar as Nixon is eager to moderate and draw down American military commitments in the Cold War world, to make American Cold War expenditures more sustainable, the petrodollar influx to the Middle East serves American purposes.

[1:17:14 ]

Iran and Saudi Arabian purchase arms from the United States with which to defend themselves against aggressors -- presumably the Soviet Union. This is good for the US insofar as it means that the United States does not have to expend its own resources developing its regional allies in the Middle East against the USSR.

[1:17:31 ]

So...petrodollar financed military spending serves a strategic purpose for the West. But Iran takes this to a certain extreme. Under Shah Pahlavi, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi↗, the leader of Iran until 1979, Iran undertakes a massive armaments build up. It purchases enormous amounts of weaponry from the United States.

The Iranian Revolution

[1:17:55 ]

At the same time Iran's transformation in the context of its petrodollar bonanza is socially, economically and politically destabilizing. An influx of petrodollar money to Iran produces a debilitating inflation. It also produces social instability. Some Iranians get very rich as a consequence of the petrodollar influx. Others remain poor as they had always been.

[1:18:17 ]

This produces political tumult. Iran experiences catastrophic inflation during the 1970s. Inflation runs as high as you know 25% in 1977. This strains Iran's social fabric. It contributes to the rise of political instability -- political instability that produces an insurgent you know sort of revolutionary movement.

[1:18:42 ]

There is different aspects to this movement. Some of the Shah's critics are liberals. People who want to transform Iran into a democratic liberal society on the model of western Europe, or the United States. But many more of them are religious fundamentalists. And they rally to the call of the Ayatollah Khomeini↗.

[1:18:59]

A dissident extremist religious leader, exiled from Iran and resident in Paris, but who calls to the Iranian people to rise up against Shah Pahlavi, a man whom, Khomeini denounces as an American stoogy, and to transform Iran into an Islamic state -- to launch an Islamic revolution.

[1:19:20]

Thus the sort of geopolitic and geoeconomic transformations of the 1970s, the oil crisis, the diffusion of Cold War rivalries, will have serious consequences for Iran's internal affairs -- where this leads of course is obvious enough. The consequences of the Iranian Revolution↗ will be a theme that we discuss when we return to the history of the Cold War in the late 1970s and explain how Cold War tensions you know sort of resurge towards the end of the decade.