It is not a mere coincidence that the Soviet Union should have renewed its offer of talks on offensive and defensive missile systems with the United States on the day of Mr. Nixon’s inauguration. This is an earnest of Moscow’s desire to begin serious negotiations with the new Administration as soon as possible.
Mr. Nixon has not referred to the Soviet move in his inaugural address. This can be said to lend some credence to earlier reports that the new President would not like to rush into negotiations with the Soviet Union on vital issues till he has had time to consult with America’s more important allies. This may well turn out to be the case. But Mr. Nixon is too well versed in international relations not to realise that the establishment of an effective dialogue with the men in the Kremlin is vital for him, his Administration and stability in the world.
The missile issue is by itself not particularly urgent. After the false alarms of last year it is evident that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union is over anxious to go in for anti-ballistic missile systems. The cost is truly prohibitive – $50 billion and more for each of them over a period of five years or so. Moreover this massive investment will neither add to their security nor give them any other advantage against each other. The present Soviet initiative is relevant because it can pave the way for an exchange of views on other and more pressing problems like Viet Nam and West Asia.
Old Threads
The dialogue between the United States and the Soviet Union was interrupted last August because of Moscow’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. Mr. Johnson was still anxious to resume it if only because he wanted to go down in history as a man of peace. But since his days in the White House were numbered and the Russians calculated that his nominee, Mr. Humphrey, was unlikely to get elected, they chose to mark time. Since the new Administration has now taken over in Washington the Kremlin would like to pick up the old threads. That is why it first mooted some proposals for a settlement in West Asia and then proposed direct talks with Washington on missile systems.
It is a hopeful sign that in his inaugural address Mr. Nixon has played down the dangerous talk of a “survival gap” and “negotiating from strength.” The survival gap was a product of his advisers’ fevered imagination as the then Defence Secretary, Mr. Clifford, was quick to point out during the election campaign. As for negotiating from strength, the United States has never been stronger in both quantitative and relative terms. In spite of the nuclear stalemate and the continuing Russo-American competition in space, it is incontestible, as Mr. George Liska has put it in his book “Imperial America,” that “in respect of internationally usable economic and military-technological power, the trend has been seemingly away from parity – real or anticipated – towards growing disparity.” The problem for Mr. Nixon is not to maintain an edge over the Soviet Union; it is to avoid adding to the latter’s feeling of inferiority and insecurity and thereby compelling it to seek compensation in bellicosity abroad and neo-Stalinism at home.
If Mr. Nixon’s “consecration” of his life and energies to the cause of peace among nations means anything it is that he realises that understanding with the Soviet Union must remain the cornerstone of America’s foreign policy as it has been since the confrontation over Cuba in October 1962. It will be sheer madness for the two super-powers to jeopardise the detente that has been reached with great difficulty since.
The importance of the Russo-American detente is only too obvious. The explosive situation in West Asia cannot be brought and kept under control except by the United States and the Soviet Union acting together in concert. Moscow can play an important role in persuading Hanoi to accept a reasonable settlement in respect of South Viet Nam. What is even more important from the long-term point of view Washington cannot cope with the problem of containing and accommodating nuclear China except on the basis of fullest cooperation from Moscow.
Russia has to provide the countervailing power against China and it can do so best if it feels sufficiently secure in Europe. The need for Soviet involvement in the effort to contain Chinese expansionism will be all the greater if the United States has to withdraw all or even bulk of its forces from South Viet Nam as a result of a settlement. From the American point of view it will be ideal if a self-rectifying balance of power is established on the Eurasian landmass without its own military involvement and Russia and China more or less neutralise each other.
Another Facet
There is another facet to this problem. Once China has developed submarines and has equipped them with missiles carrying nuclear warheads, the present structure of deterrence between Washington and Moscow will collapse because, as one American commentator has put it, “neither will be able to determine the origin of any missile which comes in at relatively short-range from the ocean.” Even if President Nixon does not face this problem in the next one year or two it cannot be shrugged off. The solution calls for extending the area of understanding and co-operation with the Soviet Union.
This is not to suggest that a dialogue with the Kremlin can be a substitute for progress towards a settlement in Viet Nam. That nasty war broke Mr. Johnson and it can do the same to Mr. Nixon. It aggravates every form of tension and conflict in American society. Since the civil war perhaps no issue has divided the American people as deeply and sharply as the Viet Nam war. The least that a vast body of Americans expect of Mr. Nixon is that the cost of the war in terms of men and money is substantially reduced fairly quickly.
Hopefully for him Hanoi appears to be equally anxious to de-escalate the conflict and it may therefore be possible to work out over a period of time an agreement on matching withdrawals of Americans and North Vietnamese troops. A glimmer can be seen at the end of the dark tunnel. But there is little ground for easy optimism yet.
If the hope of at least a limited agreement in Viet Nam does not turn out to be a mirage, it should in course of time become possible for the Nixon Administration to attend to urgent domestic problems which threaten to divide America into two nations and to disrupt its social fabric.
Figures speak for themselves. Nearly 50 per cent of Negroes are poor according to a survey by the Council of Economic Advisers. They are relegated to the lowest rungs of the occupational ladder because of poor education. Even college educated Negroes earn on an average only 47 per cent of their white colleagues’ salaries. The rate of unemployment at 10 per cent in the Negro ghettos is three times the national average. It is estimated that Mr. Johnson’s war on poverty has not benefited more than 15 per cent of the poor; some experts place the figure as low as six per cent, or about 1.8 million persons.
Minorities
It is not only the Negroes who feel discriminated against. The Mexican-Americans and Red Indians are equally badly off. Nearly four million persons of Mexican ancestry live in the south-west and west. After the Negroes they are America’s largest under-privileged minority. Similarly about 400,000 Red Indians live in or near federal reservations in utter squalor.
It was these weak and poor minorities that saw in Mr. Robert Kennedy their one hope. Almost to a man they voted against Mr. Nixon. He needs to win their confidence. The middle class white Americans who have elected him to the presidency may cry for law and order and Mr. Nixon may echo the cry. But however well armed, the police cannot quell a social revolution. A stagnant society can tolerate and contain gross social and economic inequalities. They can tear a dynamic and ebullient society like America apart.
Americans themselves say that violence has had a fascination for them for generations. The bloodstained lives of Al Capone and other underworld figures have been paralleled by the activities of frontier heroes and industrial magnates. Yet Americans are appalled at the steady growth of crime and violence. More than 100 million firearms in private hands account for 17,000 deaths a year by the bullet, among them men like President Kennedy, Mr. Robert Kennedy and Mr. Martin Luther King. Crime has risen by 88 per cent in the last eight years and the process has yet to be reversed. Hundreds of thousands of people in cities keep off streets at night for fear of being assaulted, robbed and worse. The Federal Government itself pays its employees doing overtime work taxi fare home because women employees are afraid to walk on the streets of Washington after dark.
Mr. Nixon has to reduce these problems to manageable proportions if they are not to overwhelm him. On the first day itself in the White House he must be having the gnawing feeling that the time at his disposal is short.
The Times of India, 22 January 1969
