Word: brezhnevs
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...immediate task facing the Ministers is to explore Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev's call for NATO to "taste the wine" of Russian intentions on mutual force reductions in Central Europe-or, as NATO prefers to call it, Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions.* Two weeks ago, President Nixon and the Soviets agreed on a framework for proceeding with Strategic Arms Limitation Talks covering both defensive and offensive weapons. Last week, SALT negotiators wound up their fourth round of talks in Vienna (they will reconvene in Helsinki in July) on what one U.S. observer called "a substantially positive note...
...Russians have enough reasons to do so. With the recent slight thaw in Sino-American relations, Moscow is worried anew that a Washington-Peking rapprochement may threaten its interests; force reductions in Europe would allow the Soviets to move more troops to the Chinese border. Another factor, which Brezhnev stressed to visiting Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau two weeks ago, is the economic drain of maintaining massive forces in Eastern Europe. Perhaps the most compelling reason of all is that a détente would further the old Soviet goal of loosening the military ties between the U.S. and Europe...
Illogical Decision. On hand to receive this plaudit was Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev, the man who in 1968 ordered troops from Russia and four other Warsaw Pact nations to invade Czechoslovakia. Confronted then by a popular, heavily publicized deviation from the socialist norm in Czechoslovakia, the Russians misjudged it. They let the Prague Spring reach full blossom, then felt compelled to crush it. Now, three years afterward, outside criticism of Soviet ham-handedness has largely faded. Thus last week's congress turned into a Brezhnev victory: he responded beamingly to Husák's "sincere thanks...
Happily for Nixon, Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev inadvertently came to the rescue of the Administration. He made a speech calling for serious discussion of mutual reduction of forces in Europe. Then he hit the point even harder when Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau went to Moscow last week to sign a pact of mutual cooperation with the Soviets. Both Brezhnev and Kosygin suggested to Trudeau that they wanted to pare their swollen defense budget and put the money into sorely needed housing. Thus they helped kill whatever chance the Mansfield amendment may once have had. It was handily defeated...
...optimistic plan, the White House hopes to reach an agreement by the end of this year that will definitely put some limit on ABMs and SS-9s. After that, who can say? Maybe a triumphant pre-election trip to Moscow to sign a historic disarmament treaty with Brezhnev and Kosygin...