State Department Releases New History Volumes: European Security; Germany and Berlin

The State Department's Office of the Historian on February 21 released two new volumes in the Foreign Relations of the United States series:
o European Security
o Germany and Berlin
Following are the Department's press releases on the new volumes, which review their contents and include links to the electronic texts as well as purchase information for printed versions.

European Security
TThe Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Vol. XXXIX, European Security. This volume documents U.S. efforts to negotiate multilateral agreements with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies and the Soviet Bloc, which would allow for greater European security. This volume has a broader scope than most, since it covers the entire span of both the Nixon and Ford administrations, 1969-1976. The volume is centered around two basic questions the U.S. Government faced: how best to achieve security and cooperation in Europe, and how to reduce both NATO and Warsaw Pact forces in Europe. While the general focus is on European security, the specific focus is on two overriding issues that faced the Nixon and Ford administrations: 1) whether to hold a conference on European security attended by the United States and its NATO allies, and the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies; and 2) whether the United States and its European allies would negotiate an agreement with the Soviet Union and its European allies on mutual and balanced force reductions (MBFR) in Europe, which would ensure security but reduce the costs of defending Europe.

Both President Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger (Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and, after September 1973, Secretary of State) were skeptical that a conference on European security would achieve very much. They believed that the Europeans were overestimating its potential impact. Kissinger and Nixon were not convinced that proposals for humanitarian improvements and human rights-what came to be called “Basket III”-would compel the Soviets to change their domestic system. The Europeans were more optimistic.

Also covered in the volume are related issues, such as whether to combine the security conference with negotiations on force reductions. In addition, the question of negotiations with the NATO allies looms large in the volume, which includes many memoranda of conversation between U.S. officials and their NATO counterparts. Kissinger carried on parallel negotiations with Soviet officials on both a European security conference and MBFR, which are also documented in this volume.

After the Moscow Summit in May 1972, at which President Nixon and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev discussed mutual and balanced force reductions and a conference on security in Europe (CES), the two leaders agreed to conferences on both security and cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and MBFR. The Soviet Union and the United States agreed to open the formal CSCE talks on June 30, 1973, and to begin the MBFR talks 1 month after the conclusion of the CSCE conference, which was expected to end in September 1973. As the volume makes clear, this timetable was overly optimistic. The formal CSCE conference was not held until July and August 1975, in Helsinki, after many months of preparatory talks and informal negotiations. The Ford administration faced domestic opposition to the potential Helsinki accords, especially from East European émigrés who were opposed to recognition of Soviet annexation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, or who believed that the accords would legitimize Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe. To defuse this criticism, President Gerald Ford met with émigré groups in the United States and expanded his visit to Finland to include stops in Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia. The final results of the conference were the formal Helsinki Accords, adopted in August 1975 by the 35-nation conference in Finland's capital. The accords provided recognition of borders in Europe (a major Soviet objective), with a compromise provision that allowed peaceful change (a major objective of the Federal Republic of Germany) and non-interference in the internal affairs of states (a major objective of the Soviet Union). The accords also created confidence-building measures to reduce potential military tensions and possible misperceptions between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, arranged for scientific and cultural exchanges, and established a set of principles on human rights and freedom for all of Europe. Although it was not obvious at the time, many observers believe that the Helsinki Accords put in motion forces that eventually helped to end the Cold War and transform the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The final chapter of the volume returns to MBFR. It picks up that issue from July 1973 and carries the negotiations forward to the end of the Ford administration, which left office without achieving success on mutual and balanced force reductions in Europe.

The volume and this press release are available on the Office of the Historian website at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/nixon/xxxix. Copies of the volume will be available for purchase from the U.S. Government Printing Office online at http://bookstore.gpo.gov (GPO S/N 044-000-02611-2; ISBN 978-0-16-077109-5), or by calling toll-free 1-866-512-1800 (D.C. area 202-512-1800). For further information contact Edward Keefer, General Editor of the Foreign Relations series, at (202) 663-1131 or by e-mail to history@state.gov.

Germany
The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Vol. XL, Germany and Berlin, 1969-1972. The volume represents a departure in coverage on Germany in the Foreign Relations series. Previous volumes covered bilateral relations between the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany in breadth, including documentation on economic and military issues, as well as on matters of politics and diplomacy. Although this volume covers such issues, especially when decision-making was at a high level, more extensive documentation on discussions between Washington and Bonn on international economics and national security has been-and will be-published in other volumes. Instead, this volume examines key issues in German-American relations in more depth, emphasizing two issues in particular: the response of the Nixon administration to Chancellor Willy Brandt and his Eastern policy (Ostpolitik), and the secret negotiations leading to signature of the Berlin quadripartite agreement in September 1971. Moscow was a key player in the diplomacy behind both Bonn's Ostpolitik and the Berlin agreement. This volume, therefore, also focuses on the Soviet Union, and places bilateral relations between the United States and the Federal Republic in the context of the competition between the two superpowers. This is, in other words, a “cold war” volume-or perhaps, more accurately, a “détente” volume.

President Richard Nixon and his Assistant for National Security Affairs, Henry A. Kissinger, were initially wary both of Brandt and of his foreign policy. Their suspicions were reflected not only in informal discussions, but also in the formal decision-making process. The White House eventually played an important role in the execution of U.S. policy on Berlin, practicing “backchannel” diplomacy with Moscow and Bonn to negotiate the terms of a Berlin agreement, while pursuing agreements with the Soviets on SALT, a summit meeting, and the Middle East. Kissinger established both a “confidential channel” in Washington with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, and a “special channel” in Bonn with Ambassador Kenneth Rush and German State Secretary Egon Bahr (through a U.S. naval officer in Frankfurt). These secret communications allowed the White House to discuss Berlin-and to link progress on a quadripartite agreement to progress with the Soviets on other bilateral and multilateral issues-and to do so without participation from the Department of State. The substance of the agreement was too complicated, however, to ignore completely the political, legal, and diplomatic expertise of the Department's officials on Germany and Berlin. This volume, therefore, presents documentation on “front channel” decision-making, as well as on “backchannel” diplomacy, examining the respective roles of the White House and the Department of State in negotiating the terms of the 1971 quadripartite agreement.

The volume and this press release are available on the Office of the Historian website at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/nixon/xl. Copies of the volume will be available for purchase from the U.S. Government Printing Office online at http://bookstore.gpo.gov (GPO S/N 044-000-02598-1; ISBN 978-0-16-079016-4), or by calling toll-free 1-866-512-1800 (D.C. area 202-512-1800). For further information, contact Edward Keefer, General Editor of the Foreign Relations series, at (202) 663-1131 or by e-mail to history@state.gov.