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Treaty, and then would be ready to continue that we in Moscow were a little put on guard other members of the Politburo, including
negotiations on an agreement on substantial by the remark in Carter s message of 1 Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov, to whom
reductions in strategic weapons. December 1976 that he could not, of course, the draft speech was sent for review in accor-
Of course, not everything Carter said in be bound by previous negotiations on limit- dance with established procedure.
the election campaign pleased Moscow, in ing strategic weapons ; this was a bad omen, Since it was important that Washington
particular the stress he put on human rights which was, unfortunately, soon to be more correctly understand the signal from Mos-
internationally, first of all regarding the than borne out.4 But at that time we wanted cow contained in Brezhnev s Tula speech,
Soviet Union. But with regard to his state- to hope for the best. Mendelevich and I supplied TASS and APN
ments on arms control and disarmament, I The Soviet side did not simply hope for in advance with an accurate English transla-
repeat, they gave cause for hope. the best, but for its part tried to create condi- tion of the relevant section of the speech.
In any case, there were no regrets in tions as favorable as possible for the suc- The first letter from President Carter
Moscow over Ford s defeat and Carter s cessful development of a dialogue with Presi- after assuming office, dated 26 January 1977,
victory in the elections on 2 November dent Carter after his taking office. One of the was taken in Moscow as reinforcement of
1976. In congratulating the latter on his important steps in this regard was the inclu- the hope for successful development of a
victory, L.I. Brezhnev immediately ex- sion of a series of important formulations Soviet-American dialogue on disarmament
pressed the hope for an early meeting. Carter regarding Soviet military policy in a speech issues. [This letter, and the rest of the Carter-
was not slow in replying. Already on No- in Tula, on the occasion of its designation as Brezhnev correspondence described here,
vember 4, Harriman sent through the Soviet Hero-city, given by Brezhnev on 18 January are printed beginning on page 144--ed.]
Ambassador in Washington an oral com- 1977, two days before Carter s inaugura- Carter first of all noted as extremely impor-
munication for Brezhnev from Carter, say- tion. The essence was the following: tant Brezhnev s speech in Tula and specifi-
ing that the newly elected President consid- there is no basis whatsoever for cally the position that the USSR does not
ered it important to have a personal meeting attributing to the Soviet Union a striving strive for superiority in armaments and that
with Brezhnev with the aim of preserving for superiority in armaments with the it only needs defenses sufficient to deter any
and supporting peace throughout the world, aim of achieving the capability for a potential opponent. Reaffirming his cam-
142 COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT BULLETIN
paign statements that the final aim in disar- only because of the unacceptable nature of Therefore it could be foreseen that the
mament must be the abolition of all nuclear the new American proposals but also as an Vance mission to Moscow at the end of
weapons on our planet, Carter characterized antagonistic act toward him personally. Con- March, as regards the SALT-2 Treaty, was
as a critically important first step on the sequently, Brezhnev s response was marked destined for failure. And in fact the new
road to this aim the achievement of the by a hard, and in places sharp, tone. American proposals presented by Vance sig-
SALT-2 Treaty without delay and agree- A similar tone was maintained in Carter s naled an obvious retreat from everything
ment after that on movement toward further message to Brezhnev of March 4, which achieved in negotiations on SALT-2 under
limitations and reductions of strategic weap- arrived in Moscow not through the usual Nixon and Ford and were immediately re-
ons. In the context of previous public and diplomatic channels but via the hot line jected by the Soviet side without discussion
private statements by Carter, these formula- between the White House and the Kremlin, and without putting forward counterpropos-
tions were understood in Moscow as signi- which was reserved for use in emergency als; our previous positions, based on the
fying his readiness first to quickly conclude situations. As Carter s national security ad- Vladivostok accords, were simply reaf-
and sign the SALT-2 Treaty, based on the viser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, wrote in his mem- firmed.
Vladivostok accords of 1974 and made con- oirs,5 this was done at his initiative, in order It should be noted that, unlike many
crete in subsequent negotiations still under that the President s message would go im- other occasions, this time there was com-
Ford. Such an approach was fully in accord mediately to Brezhnev, bypassing the For- plete unanimity regarding the new Ameri-
with the intentions of the Soviet leadership, eign Ministry. But the result turned out can proposals not only at the top in the
as was the proposal of the President to send worse, since at the Moscow end of the hot Soviet leadership, but also among profes-
Secretary of State Cyrus Vance to Moscow line, maintained by the KGB, translators sionals working on these problems. And not
at an early date to discuss these questions. were on duty who were far from highly because we were all against significant re-
Consequently, Brezhnev s reply of Febru- qualified, and were moreover unfamiliar with ductions in offensive strategic weapons. Not
ary 4 to Carter maintained an extremely the subject matter of the strategic arms nego- at all. But we considered it absolutely illogi-
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