Word: brezhnevs
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...well as the current Secretary of State, Alexander Haig; and tells of the dramatic death throes of Nixon's Administration. The third and last excerpt covers the dual dilemmas of competition and coexistence with the Soviet Union; memorable Kissinger encounters with the leaders of America's principal adversaries, Leonid Brezhnev and Mao Tse-tung; and some maxims culled from a career in statecraft...
...Friday morning, Oct. 19, the Israelis had 300 tanks on the west bank of the Canal. Minutes after 11 a.m., Dobrynin called with an urgent message from Brezhnev to Nixon. It spoke of the increasing danger in the Middle East...
None of this was communicated to our plane. I did, however, receive an urgent cable from Scowcroft transmitting the draft of a letter that Nixon intended to send to Brezhnev. Its essence was that Nixon was granting me "full authority." I was horrified. I would be deprived of any capacity to stall. Full authority made it impossible for me to refer any tentative agreement to the President for his approval?if only to buy time. I flashed a message to Scowcroft uncharacteristically objecting to the grant: "I must be in a position to insist to the Russians that I must...
...message arrived too late. Nixon had the letter prepared for his signature without waiting for my comments. What made the final typed letter irreversible was that Nixon added to it a handwritten postscript: "Mrs. Nixon joins me in sending our best personal regards to Mrs. Brezhnev and to you." In its absence the letter might have been retyped with my suggested changes. The Soviets recognize a windfall when they see it; within hours an acknowledgement from Brezhnev arrived in Washington. History will not record that I resisted many grants of authority. This one I resented bitterly; "full powers" can inhibit...
...Moscow, we had just finished a substantial meal at the state guest house when Brezhnev invited us to a "private" dinner late Saturday night in his Politburo office in the Kremlin. Never mind that we had just eaten?a social invitation by the General Secretary could not be refused. Our minds addled by a 15-hour plane trip and our bellies distended by a Russian dinner, we sped to the Kremlin. Brezhnev received us in what looked like a Churchill jumpsuit in sky blue. He did not neglect to remind me that...