'Khorosho,' Said Brezhnev
Jimmy Carter bounded exuberantly up a long staircase and burst into a gilded anteroom of Vienna's elaborate Hofburg Palace. But the long-awaited moment of encounter--Carter had been asking for it since he took office more than two years ago--had still not quite arrived. Five more minutes passed, and then Soviet Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev shuffled slowly from an elevator into the room. He looked slightly ill at ease, his left hand in his coat pocket, his right hand clutching his spectacle case. The delay in meeting, said Carter, had been "too long." "Da," replied Brezhnev. Then the two most powerful men in the world walked side by side down a long red carpet to an ornate 16th century receiving room, where they chatted good-naturedly while sitting in the same silk-brocade chairs that were used by John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev in 1961. When photographers shouted for handshakes, Brezhnev firmly grasped the American President's hand. They both smiled broadly at each other. "Was it a good beginning?" reporters asked. "Yes," Carter said, "it was very good."
On this amiable note began the Vienna summit of 1979, and Carter's spirits were still soaring when he left the palace. Nearly a thousand Austrians surged toward him, shouting "Jimmy! Jimmy!" Grinning happily, the President clambered onto the back bumper of his armored Cadillac limousine and waved jubilantly.
Next morning the two men got down to business in the baroque U.S. Embassy. Each gave a formal 35-min. presentation of his country's global views. After breaking for lunch, and a recuperative nap for the ailing Soviet leader, the two men met again at the U.S. Embassy for almost two hours of discussion on the subject that had brought them together in the first place, the SALT II treaty to restrict long-range weapons. The Americans were struck by Brezhnev's stamina during the talks. Said one top U.S. official: "He really seemed to be thoroughly in control, of both the situation and himself."
On Sunday Carter and Brezhnev met at the Soviet Embassy for more discussions, morning and afternoon, about arms and the international situation, including China, the Middle East and southern Africa. Again they spoke from prepared notes. In fact, the only scheduled opportunity for a prolonged private exchange between them was a 60-min. meeting, with only two interpreters present, on Monday morning.
With both leaders essentially sticking to the scripts that had been worked out in advance, the summit was not expected to alter basic policies. But every summit is a historic event, and this one included significant gains. Among them: >The signing of SALT II, in the gold and white Redoutensaal ballroom, committed both nations to important restrictions on their strategic nuclear forces. Carter and Brezhnev also opened the talks on SALT III, which are designed to bring major reductions in nuclear weapons.
>The extensive talks between the two leaders showed that Soviet-American detente is very much alive, despite recent Soviet maneuvering and the new American relationship with Peking. To the Soviets, standing on an equal footing with the U.S. is of tremendous importance, even in its purely symbolic forms. Thus the Kremlin, to the Americans' surprise, requested that Carter and Brezhnev spend as much time together as possible.
>The opportunity for each leader to take the measure of the other may head off future misunderstandings. This was especially important for Carter, who has had no face-to-face dealings with Soviet officials except for brief meetings in Washington with Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin. Still, the Administration carefully played down the benefits of personal diplomacy. Said a Carter adviser: "Personal relations do little but smooth rough edges. What is important are binding agreements." Beyond the signing of SALT II, agreements between the two nations were not on the agenda at Vienna. Even so, the fact that Carter and Brezhnev exchanged views on the issues that divide East and West constituted progress.
It was the first Soviet-American summit since Brezhnev and Gerald Ford met at Vladivostok in 1974. Clearly another one was overdue. Detente, launched in 1972 by Richard Nixon and Brezhnev to the clink of champagne glasses under the crystal chandeliers at the Kremlin, had eroded badly. There were strains over the huge buildup of Soviet nuclear and conventional arms, Soviet intervention in Africa, the fall of the pro-Western regime in Iran. Brezhnev, on the other hand, had been enraged by Carter's human rights campaign, which the Soviets viewed as interference with their internal affairs, the Americans' surprise proposal in 1977 that both sides make deep cuts in their nuclear arsenals, and the U.S. normalization of relations with China. The Kremlin had come to view Carter as anti-Soviet; worse, Brezhnev seemed to regard him as weak and confused. Conversely, Washington could not be sure of Brezhnev: how his physical condition was affecting his abilities, how long he would rule, or who might succeed him.
The summit was designed to help clear away misconceptions on both sides. The participants knew, however, that they were going to Vienna somewhat impaired, Brezhnev by his age (72) and ailments; Carter by his loss of political support (the latest polls show him with only 30% approval). Neither leader had any illusions about making major breakthroughs. At a Kremlin dinner before his departure, Brezhnev expressed only the hope that the summit would "become an important stage of further development of Soviet-American relations." As Carter left Washington, he warned that progress toward peace is "often measured in inches and not in miles."
Despite the forecast of modest achievements, Carter went to Vienna visibly excited. He told aides that he had looked forward to meeting Brezhnev more than almost anything else during his years as President, and he spent an unprecedented amount of time preparing for the encounter. He phoned Richard Nixon, who had signed SALT I in Moscow in 1972, for advice on how to deal with Brezhnev. Gerald Ford came by the White House to suggest that if Brezhnev became blustery, as he did at Vladivostok in 1974, Carter should respond politely but firmly and not retreat an inch. CIA Director Stansfield Turner showed Carter some video tapes of Nixon's and Ford's meetings with Brezhnev so that the President could observe the Soviet leader's mannerisms.
While Carter was preparing for Brezhnev and the SALT signing, the President's foes at home were hitting him with harsh attacks and stinging defeats. The Senate bluntly defied Carter by voting to lift economic sanctions against Rhodesia. House conservatives stunned him by mustering so much opposition to legislation setting up the administrative machinery to carry out the Panama Canal treaties that he had to ask Democratic leaders to postpone the vote.
Two days before Carter boarded the plane for Vienna, Democrat Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, the Senate's leading SALT critic, launched a blistering attack on SALT itself. In a speech to the hardline Coalition for a Democratic Majority, Jackson accused Carter--and Ford and Nixon too--of following an "appeasement" policy toward Moscow. In the seven years since SALT I was signed, Jackson said, "we have been making too many gratuitous concessions. We have silenced too many officials, bent too many laws and traditions and apologized too often. In the area of trade and technology, the right to emigrate and strategic arms, the signs of appeasement are all too evident." Of the Administration's arguments for SALT II, the Senator declared: "To enter a treaty which favors the Soviets as this one does, on the ground that we will be in a worse position without it, is appeasement in its purest form."
White House officials were enraged both by Jackson's biting tone and his timing. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance called Jackson "misguided and simply wrong." White House Press Secretary Jody Powell described Jackson's views as "grossly misleading." Said Powell: "I think there are few people with any illusions that it would be possible to negotiate any SALT treaty that the Senator would support."
Then came more bad news: Lieut. General Edward Rowny, 62, a Jackson protege and the Joint Chiefs of Staffs representative on the U.S. SALT negotiating team in Geneva, announced that he was resigning from the Army. Rowny has made no secret of his disapproval of SALT II, and he is expected to provide the treaty's opponents with ammunition, since he can speak authoritatively about the swaps that went on at the bargaining table
This disarray among U.S. officials naturally interests the Soviets. "We read closely what is written in your country about the state of Carter's presidency," a Soviet official said in Vienna. "We follow the polls. We read all your eminent columnists who write about the political ineptitude of the White House. Of course, it is not without precedent for us to deal with a U.S. President who is politically wounded." The mischievous reference was to Nixon and his second summit with Brezhnev in Moscow in 1974. If the Soviets had followed normal protocol, the SALT II signing would have taken place in Washington, but Moscow insisted on the neutral ground of Vienna. The usual reason given was Brezhnev's health, but the Soviet diplomat seemed also to be suggesting that the Kremlin wanted to distance itself, physically and symbolically, from Carter's problems in the U.S. and the Senate's possible repudiation of the treaty. In addition, the Kremlin insisted that the language of the summit's final communique be limited to generalities--a gesture that also was reminiscent of 1974.
Despite all these wary precautions, a summit conference is a momentous event. Finally Thursday came, and it was time for Carter to head for Vienna. At precisely 8:10 a.m., he emerged from the White House with Rosalynn and Amy. He was going to the summit, Carter said, "with hope but without false expectations." To well-wishers led by Vice President Walter Mondale, the President added: "I'll certainly do the best I can." Then the Carters boarded a helicopter on the South Lawn and choppered to the gleaming blue and white Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base for the flight to Vienna. The President was accompanied by Vance; Defense Secretary Harold Brown; National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski; General George Seignicus, Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; General David Jones, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and four Georgians from the White House: Hamilton Jordan, Frank Moore, Jody Powell and Gerald Rafshoon. All of them carried under their arms black, 3-in.-thick briefing books, stamped in gold with the presidential seal and the legend: PRESIDENT CARTER'S MEETING WITH SOVIET PRESIDENT BREZHNEV.
Eight hours later, Carter arrived for his first visit to the ancient and graceful city that for 2,000 years has been at the crossroads of East and West. Vienna was the seat of the Holy Roman Empire and capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Here, at the 1814-15 Congress of Vienna, Prince Metternich organized a balance of forces that lasted for a century, until World War I.
But not since the Kennedy-Khrushchev meeting of 1961 had Vienna been the site of a modern superpower summit, and the Austrians were determined that this one would go smoothly. Reinforcements from the provinces increased the police force to 6,000 men. Armed guards were assigned to Carter and Brezhnev, even though both brought phalanxes of their own. More than 100 taxis were diverted to summit duty, chiefly because the press corps of more than 2,000 had reserved long in advance nearly all of Vienna's chauffeured limousines. The summit principals had brought their own transportation: a black Cadillac and Lincoln Continental for the Americans, a black Rolls-Royce and Zil limousine for the Soviets. They were gas-guzzlers all, in a country where premium fuel costs $2.57 per gal.
The Viennese tried to act with aplomb, but there was considerable excitement at their city's being once again the center of world diplomacy. In the window of the world-famous Demel pastry shop, life-size likenesses of Carter and Brezhnev, made of papier-mache and marzipan, sat playing chess with marzipan missiles.
Carter was welcomed at the airport by a trumpet fanfare followed by almost complete silence as he shook hands with his official host, President Rudolf Kirchschlaeger. "We have no right and no wish to influence your deliberations," said Kirchschlaeger, "but we hope and we wish and we trust from the bottom of our hearts that the meeting . . . will contribute toward the further process of detente and toward a reduction of armaments." Carter went directly to the American ambassador's residence, a three-story mansion that was built in the early 1930s for Coal Baron Karl Broda, who fled" to the U.S. in 1938.
Friday morning, Brezhnev flew into Vienna aboard a blue and white Ilyushin 11-62, accompanied by Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov, Chief of Staff Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov and Konstantin Chernenko, a Brezhnev protege who acts as the Politburo's executive officer. Resplendent in a blue suit studded with medals, including four Orders of Lenin, Brezhnev descended to the tarmac, gripping the handrail and stepping carefully but steadily. To a roll of drims, he warmly greeted Kirchschlaeger, walked with a slight limp by the honor guard and then was driven straight to his quarters in the Soviet embassy, a tree-shaded stone building that was built in the 19th century. Members of the Soviet advance team had taken great pains to portray Brezhnev as alert and eager for the summit and in no way hampered by ill health. Still, Austrian officials took no chances. They quietly ordered several hospitals throughout the city to keep beds and life-support equipment at the ready in case Brezhnev needed them.
Last to arrive in Vienna was the summit's centerpiece, the 78-page SALT II treaty. Its remaining details were still being negotiated for most of the week in Geneva by teams of U.S. and Soviet diplomats. The final issue was minor, and the butt of much diplomatic banter. The chief CIA man on the U.S. delegation had presented his KGB counterpart with a T shirt emblazoned: FREE THE TYURATAM EIGHTEEN! The gift was one of those arcane jokes that are best appreciated by SALT technicians. It referred to 18 heavy-missile launchers at the Soviets' Tyuratam test site in central Asia, which the Soviets claim are used only for tests and therefore do not count as strategic weapons. Well past the eleventh hour, the Soviets agreed to dismantle twelve of the launchers and to guarantee that the remaining six would be plainly marked as test silos.
The final marathon negotiating session ended at 2 a.m. Thursday, but the treaty documents could not be taken to Vienna until midday Friday. One reason: the Soviets in Geneva had to make do with primitive manual typewriters, cumbersome paper almost as thick as cardboard and a 1950s-vintage copying machine. If a typist made a single error, the page had to be retyped. The Americans used a high-speed word-processing machine; errors could be corrected almost instantaneously.
In a final diplomatic nicety, the negotiating teams prepared four official copies of the treaties, two in English by the Americans and two in Russian by the Soviets. Each delegation drew up one socalled original, in which its country was named first at each mention, and one so-called alternat, in which the other country was named first. In this way, neither side establishes even the most symbolic sort of primacy in either language. The documents were hand delivered to Vienna by the chief negotiators, Robert Earle of the U.S. and Victor Karpov of the U.S.S.R.
All was finally in order for the summit by midday Friday. But first, both of the principals changed their plans to take advantage of the cloudless, mid-70s day and do some sightseeing. Carter, accompanied by Rosalynn, Amy, Cyrus Vance and his wife Grace, motored west of Vienna to the town of Klosterneuburg, where the Vienna woods give way to vineyards along the Danube. There they lunched on the sun-dappled patio of a restaurant at a 12th century abbey. Brezhnev took a drive through downtown Vienna, traversing the Ring, passing the Hofburg, and winding up in the courtyard of the Schoenbrunn Palace, formerly the Habsburgs' summer residence, which he had asked especially to see. Brezhnev stepped out of his Zil only once, to lay a wreath at the Soviet war memorial (known to Viennese as the tomb of the "unknown plunderer").
That evening Carter and Brezhnev rejoined each other at the State Opera House for a performance of Mozart's The Abduction from the Seraglio. The crowd applauded as Carter entered the presidential box, clapped louder when Brezhnev and Kirchschlaeger arrived and roared with approval when Carter and Brezhnev returned the applause. At one point, Brezhnev leaned forward and murmured "Ochen khorosho" (very good). Carter nodded in agreement. Carter and Brezhnev left after the second act, presumably to get a full night's sleep before beginning their formal discussions next day.
Bright and early Saturday, Carter jogged five laps around a garden path at the American ambassador's residence, then left for the embassy. Soon afterward, Brezhnev emerged from the Soviet embassy. He stumbled momentarily and was steadied by aides, then helped into his Zil limousine. At the U.S. Embassy he was welcomed by Carter with a grin and a handshake.
Inside the U.S. Embassy's cramped and dreary conference room, the leaders arranged themselves and their aides at either side of a gleaming 25-ft. table. Brezhnev brought with him nine aides, including Chernenko, Gromyko, Ogarkov and Ustinov; Carter was accompanied by the same number, including Brown, Brzezinski and Vance. As guest, Brezhnev led off. He put on his rimless spectacles and stolidly read aloud from his sheaf of prepared remarks. He was followed by Carter, who talked from several pages of notes handwritten on yellow legal paper. Among them was a sentence he had noted on hearing Brezhnev utter it the day before: "God will not forgive us if we fail."
The first session was scheduled for two hours but broke up after only 85 min., since the two leaders needed less time than expected to spell out their differing world views. There was also what Powell called "a good deal of back-and-forth." At one point, Brezhnev and Carter engaged in a spirited exchange over which nation is spending more for weapons. The two leaders also expressed sharply opposed views about the world's trouble spots, including who was responsible for the turbulence in the Middle East and southern Africa. Finally, Brezhnev pushed his chair back from the table and the first session was over. Said Carter curtly afterward: "A good meeting."
That afternoon Carter and Brezhnev talked 2 1/4 hrs. about SALT II and related arms issues. The Soviet leader objected to U.S. plans to build the MX missile, which will be movable to make it less vulnerable to attack. Said Brezhnev: "I don't understand why you're building this missile." He warned that if the missile cannot be verified by the Soviets "this will plant a mine under further negotiations." Carter replied that the missile would indeed be verifiable and therefore within the SALT II limits. The two leaders also exchanged views on the Soviet Backfire bomber, U.S. cruise missiles and the coming negotiations on SALT III. They agreed on the difficulties posed by medium-range weapons, which are not covered by SALT II but which they would like to limit.
Carter and Brezhnev seemed to get along well. The U.S. President was polite and restrained, but not as relaxed as the Soviet leader. Brezhnev hammed it up by pretending to leave the room from time to time. At one point he declared: "We think everybody is for detente and good relations except for some people." He then jokingly pointed at Vance. Everyone at the table laughed. Brzezinski, who is usually the Administration's hard-liner on Soviet policy, pointed to himself, and everyone laughed again.
According to a Soviet participant, Brezhnev told Carter that the Kremlin, much like the hawks in the U.S. Senate, is not entirely happy with all of SALT li's provisions, but that the treaty reflects "everything that is realistically obtainable at the present moment." On the whole, he said, it is "a mutually acceptable balance of interests." He reaffirmed the Soviet commitment to detente, saying, "It is impossible for one of us to push the other off the surface of the earth or for one of us to remodel the other."
Carter picked up the same theme at dinner that evening in the U.S. residence, a relaxed affair attended by the two leaders and their closest aides. In one of the numerous toasts with Russian vodka, the President defined the U.S. world role as "one that supports change toward greater pluralism in and among societies." Moreover, he said, "that we have the power to destroy other nations does not mean we have a right or a need to control them." Brezhnev continued to be in good humor. Imbibing freely, he told stories about hunting in Siberia and the Georgian Republic for deer, elk and rabbits. "I'm a very good shot," he boasted. His colleagues nodded in agreement, murmuring "Da, pravilno [yes, that's right]."
On Sunday morning, the Carters decided to skip Protestant services and go instead to the Catholic chapel of the Hofburg to hear the Vienna Boys Choir. The President then joined Brezhnev at the Soviet embassy for more talks on various military issues, including SALT III, the stalled negotiations on troop reductions in Europe and treaties to ban chemical warfare and all nuclear weapons tests. On parting, Brezhnev again stumbled on the embassy steps but was soon steadied by Carter and an aide.
Finally would come the last and most memorable day of the summit. On Monday morning Carter and Brezhnev were to have their first and only scheduled private meeting, at the U.S. Embassy. To be discussed were Soviet emigration policy and U.S. restrictions on Soviet goods. Both leaders would like to make a deal: freer trade for freer emigration, particularly of Soviet Jews. Next the two leaders were supposed to move on to the Soviet embassy for their fifth and last session of formal talks, again focusing on trade. From the Soviet embassy, they were to drive separately to the Redoutensaal for the summit's climactic moment. There, seated side by side, Brezhnev and Carter were to sign the SALT II agreement. First Brezhnev was to write his name on Russian and English copies of the treaty. His copies would be contained in a red binder, Carter's in a blue binder. Then it would be Carter's turn to sign. The ceremony was to be watched by about 200 dignitaries and about 250 reporters, meaning that most of the journalists in Vienna would miss the main event.
The ink would hardly be dry before Brezhnev would head for Moscow and Carter for Washington. Carter planned a televised address to a joint session of Congress, exactly as Nixon had done after signing the SALT I treaty in Moscow. But there the parallel ended. For Carter, the selling of SALT to the Senate will be a much more difficult proposition than it was for Nixon. The Senate's hawks are organized and ready to fight. They believe they have the strength either to block ratification or to add such restrictive amendments that the agreement signed amid all the panoply in Vienna will be undone. If that happens, the Carter presidency will face its severest test.
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