The distraction of Watergate
Analysts with a sufficiently historical point of view tended to see in the Watergate affair and Nixon’s 1974 resignation the culmination of a 30-year trend by which war and the Cold War had greatly expanded, and ultimately corrupted, executive power. Liberals who, in Eisenhower’s time, had called for strong presidential leadership now bemoaned “the imperial presidency.” With what were widely understood to be the lessons of Vietnam fresh in the nation’s mind, and a majority in Congress and the press hostile to the sitting president, the moment arrived for a legislative counterattack on the executive. This interpretation is borne out by the subsequent congressional acts designed to limit executive freedom in foreign policy. The War Powers Act of 1973 restrained the president’s ability to commit U.S. forces overseas. The Stevenson and Jackson–Vanik amendments imposed conditions (regarding Soviet policy on Jewish emigration) on administration plans to expand trade with the U.S.S.R. In 1974–75 Congress prevented the President from involving the United States in a crisis in Cyprus or aiding anti-Communist forces in Angola and passed the Arms Export Control Act, removing presidential discretion in supplying arms overseas. New financial controls limited the president’s ability to conclude executive agreements with foreign powers, of which some 6,300 had been signed between 1946 and 1974 as compared with only 411 treaties requiring the Senate’s advice and consent. Finally, revelations of past CIA covert operations, including schemes to assassinate Fidel Castro, inspired complicated congressional oversight procedures for U.S. intelligence agencies. These assaults on executive prerogative were meant to prevent future Vietnams, prevent unelected presidential aides from engaging in secret diplomacy, and restore to Congress an “appropriate” role in foreign policy. Critics of the limitations held that no great power could conduct a coherent or effective foreign policy under such a combination of openness and restrictions, especially in a world populated increasingly by totalitarian regimes, guerrilla movements, and terrorists.
The Nixon–Brezhnev summits of 1973–74 produced only minor follow-ons in the area of arms control—the uncontroversial Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War and an agreement to reduce the number of ABM sites from the two permitted in 1972 to one. Gerald Ford, president from August 1974, and Henry Kissinger, who remained as secretary of state, attempted to restore the momentum of détente through a new SALT agreement regulating the dangerous race in MIRVed missiles, which SALT I had not prevented. The United States proposed strict equality in nuclear delivery systems and total throw weight, which meant that the United States would be allowed to MIRV more of its missiles to offset the greater size of Soviet missiles. Since the United States had no plans for a unilateral buildup in any case, however, the Soviets had no incentive to make such a concession. Instead, Ford and Brezhnev signed an Interim Agreement at Vladivostok in November 1974 that limited each side to 2,400 delivery vehicles, of which 1,320 could be MIRVed. While the Soviets claimed that this was a concession, since they declined to count the 90 British and French missiles aimed at them, the Soviets’ giant SS-18s, able to deliver up to 10 MIRVs, ensured the U.S.S.R. an advantage in ICBM warheads. The repeated failure to restrain the growth of Soviet offensive systems soon sparked fears that the United States might become vulnerable to preemptive attack.
Meanwhile, the mid-1970s brought to a logical conclusion the process of détente in Europe. Nixon and Kissinger, aware that the United States had seemed to ignore its European allies during the 10 years of Vietnam, declared 1973 “the year of Europe” and hoped to forestall NATO governments from bargaining with Moscow on their own. Watergate and the Arab–Israeli war of that year (the Yom Kippur War) turned this initiative into a public-relations failure, however. Instead, the United States was obliged to follow the European lead in the ongoing Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and negotiations toward a “mutual and balanced force reduction” treaty covering NATO and Warsaw Pact forces in central Europe. The climax of the security talks was the Helsinki summit of 35 nations in the summer of 1975 and an agglomeration of proposals divided into three “baskets.” (A fourth basket dealt with the question of a follow-up conference.) In Basket I the signatories accepted the inviolability of Europe’s existing borders and the principle of noninterference in the internal affairs of other states—thereby recognizing formally the Soviet gains in World War II and the Soviet-bloc states. Basket II promoted exchanges in science, technology, and commerce, expanding Soviet access to Western technology and opening the Soviet market to western European industry. Basket III, the apparent Soviet concession, aimed at expanding cultural and humanitarian cooperation among all states on the basis of respect for human rights. Not surprisingly, Western opinion of the Helsinki Accords, and of détente in general, came to rest heavily on whether the U.S.S.R. would voluntarily comply with Basket III. American leaders of both parties considered Helsinki misguided and empty, especially after Moscow stepped up the persecution of dissidents and jailed those of their citizens engaged in a “Helsinki watch” on Soviet compliance. In sum, Helsinki (and U.S. demands on behalf of Soviet Jews) pointed up another contradiction in détente, this time between American insistence on Soviet liberalization and Soviet insistence on noninterference in the domestic politics of other states.