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Nixon's Soviet Union.

Nixon was a Cold Warrior. Détente with the Soviet Union was not exactly his idea. After he took office and talked of an “era of negotiations” in his Inaugural Address, Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin called him to offer discussing Berlin, Vietnam and the Middle East. Nixon stressed the concept of linkage, meaning that there could only be progress with one problem when there was progress with another. They agreed on establishing a hotline between the foreign ministers Gromyko and Kissinger, which they used frequently. The Soviet Union was eager to improve its relationship with the U.S., as it saw greater danger in China than in the USA. The prospect of an Sino-American approach further upset Soviet leaders.

But although the U.S. and the Soviet Union began to develop a more constructive relationship, they still were the two dominant rivalry super powers. And in the major issues, the two had different interests. In the Middle East the Soviet Union supported Egypt and Syria. Although their ties were not nearly as close as those the USA had to Israel, they nevertheless were their only or at least largest arms supplier. The same is true of North Vietnam.

In 1970, Nixon and Brezhnev started to plan a summit. Nixon was eager to conduct it before the midterm elections, but Breshnev delayed it to 1971. Nixon did not forget this setback. And when chances grew to finally have a Sino-American Summit, it was Nixon who delayed the summit once more, to meet Mao before and humiliate Breshnev.

The USA and the Soviet Union had a common interest in not starting a nuclear war, although they threatened each other to deploy nuclear weapons. When during the Yom Kippur War, Breshnev indicated that the Soviets might take steps including military ones, the U.S. (maybe on Kissinger initiative) gave the DEFCON III alarm to their forces, which made the super powers stay uninvolved in the actual fighting.

On the whole, détente was not a friendly relationship, but one means to win the Cold War. Maybe that is one reason why détente did not last long. However, there were positive signals, one is that the USA and the Soviet Union got to talk over certain issues and tried to influence the other side not to escalate the situation.

Nixon made the Soviet Union a normal member of the international system. “Although”, Melvin Small concludes, “Nixon oversold détente and failed to achieve agreements on rules of engagement on the periphery, in the long run, his Soviet diplomacy was a success.”