Word: summits
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...China initiative could easily be wrecked by the appearance of collusion with the Soviets. A summit might thus easily fail; or, to rescue it, we would be induced to agreements we might later regret...
Fortunately, notes Kissinger, though Nixon was eager for a summit in 1970, the Soviets overreached themselves and Nixon "did not need it as desperately as Moscow reckoned." The U.S. bided its time, and soon the pendulum was swinging its way. In December 1970, trouble erupted on the Soviets' own doorstep with food-price riots in Poland. In July 1971 came the announcement of Nixon's trip to China. Less than four weeks later, the Soviets formally invited the U.S. President to visit Moscow in the spring of 1972. Kissinger served as a kind of diplomatic advance...
...many of them interwoven, would be tested on my trip to Moscow. But overshadowing them all, when the time came for departure, was the offensive launched on March 30 by the North Vietnamese army. Could the Soviet Union be induced to pressure its client for the sake of the summit? Or were we ourselves in danger of being manipulated by the Soviet Union so that we would hesitate in responding militarily to North Viet Nam's challenges...
...Soviet summit never developed the uniform texture of the one in Peking; it was more random and jagged. The discussions between Nixon and the Soviet leaders lacked a central theme. On the whole what emerged were formal expressions of standard positions not significantly different from the written exchanges that had gone back and forth through the Channel...
...summit's jagged rhythm was compounded by the fact that schedules in the Soviet Union seem to have at best an approximate quality. We would sometimes be kept waiting for hours while the Soviet leaders caucused, attended Politburo sessions, or simply disappeared. It was never clear whether the numerous delays and the constant switching of topics were a form of psychological warfare or simply reflected the Soviet working style. When Brezhnev visited the U.S. in 1973, he sat on his veranda at Camp David in full view of Nixon's cabin, talking with his advisers right through...