Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XIV, Soviet Union

132. Research Memorandum From the Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (Hughes) to Acting Secretary of State Ball¹

RSB-112

Washington, October 7, 1965.

SUBJECT

• Gromyko’s New York Conversations

We have examined Gromyko’s remarks to the Secretary on September 29 and October 1² in the light of recent Soviet policy trends manifest elsewhere.

Conclusions

1. Gromyko’s conversations leave the impression that the USSR is not ready either to increase tensions or take steps to ease them. Moscow seems to want to buy itself a little time to see what directions events take and sort out its interests and objectives.

2. Gromyko’s business-as-usual tone in his annual tour d’horizon suggests that Moscow is less willing to see a further deterioration in US-Soviet relations over Vietnam than Brezhnev implied in his September 29 speech.³ Gromyko does not, of course, reverse policy views enunciated by Brezhnev, but he makes it clear that both in private talks with American leaders and on certain policy matters of interest to it, Moscow is unwilling to take nearly so hard a line as it does in public statements chiefly addressed to communists at home and abroad.

3. The Soviets presumably see their relations with the US as their principal source of leverage in efforts to restrain American actions in Southeast Asia. If so, they may be cautious about using up their diplomatic capital too quickly. At the same time, Moscow may wish to use continuing contacts with the US to convey a warning to Hanoi and Peking that the Soviet Union’s global interests impose limits on how far the USSR can be cajoled into supporting Asian communist intransigence.

4. Gromyko’s continuing interest in the topic of military budgets and his restraint in not renewing reproaches that the US had reneged on an understanding about them suggests that the USSR hopes to weather the Vietnam crisis without substantial increases in military spending which might upset its domestic economic calculations.

5. Hence, to a remarkable degree Gromyko (unlike Kosygin in his talks with Governor Harriman),⁴ avoided explicitly linking Vietnam to other issues. He agreed to start negotiations on a new cultural agreement (these may prove to be difficult), and on the less controversial aspects of the US and Soviet draft treaties on nonproliferation, but he gave no hint of any Soviet change on the issue of NATO nuclear arrangements, and there is a danger that he may have misread the conversations as indicating that a US shift is in the offing.

6. In keeping with his generally restrained approach, Gromyko did not air current Soviet views on support for national liberation movements. But he was not responsive to hints that coincidence of US-Soviet interests in the India-Pakistan situation might extend to the third world generally. On the contrary he drew a distinction between partial measures, which he favored, and regional approaches to disarmament, about which he was skeptical. Moscow’s efforts to use the issue of American imperialism as a rallying point for communists and the nonaligned, as well as specific differences in particular areas, remains a major barrier to cooperation in third areas despite Gromyko’s mildness of manner.

7. Reading Gromyko against the background of other Soviet moves and statements, we foresee no change in the orientation in Soviet foreign policy. While some increased sharpness toward Communist China seems to be creeping into Soviet pronouncements, Moscow apparently intends to maintain a public posture of hostility toward US policies in Vietnam and elsewhere. But public hostility toward the US will be tempered by restraint in what the Soviets actually do about it, and relieved by a modicum of cordiality in such private talks as Governor Harriman’s in Moscow and the Secretary’s in New York and by a degree of cooperativeness on some specific issues.

[Here follow a table of contents and 6 pages of discussion.]

1. Source: National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Central Files 1964–66, POL 1 USSR. Secret; Exdis. No drafting information appears on the memorandum, but it was signed by Hughes.
2. A memorandum of the conversation on September 29, primarily devoted to the India-Pakistan dispute is ibid., Conference Files: Lot 66 D 347, CF 2547; a memorandum of the October 1 conversation on arms control is printed in Foreign Relations, 1964–1968, vol. XI, Document 97.
3. For text of Brezhnev’s September 29 comments on U.S.-Soviet relations and Vietnam, see Current Digest of the Soviet Press, October 20, 1965, p. 8.
4. See Documents 118 and 119.