101. Editorial Note
On January 9, 1971, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Henry A. Kissinger met with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to discuss, among other things, the situation in Southeast Asia, its impact on U.S.-Soviet relations, and the possibility of the Soviets acting as an intermediary to restart the U.S.-North Vietnamese negotiations. Kissinger asked Dobrynin whether the Soviet Union would be willing to take a more active role in the negotiations. The memorandum of conversation reads in part:
“We then turned to Vietnam. I said to Dobrynin that we had read Kosygin’s interview with the Japanese newspaper with great interest. We had noticed that Kosygin had listed the usual unacceptable Hanoi demands, but he had also indicated a Soviet willingness to engage itself in the process of a settlement. This was stated, it seemed to me, more emphatically than had been said in the past. Was I correct?
“Dobrynin merely said that he noticed that sentence also. I asked whether the two statements were linked; in other words, whether the Soviet willingness to engage itself was linked to our prior acceptance of Hanoi’s demands. Dobrynin then said he wanted to ask me a hypothetical question. If Hanoi dropped its demands for a coalition government, would we be prepared to discuss withdrawal separately. I said as long as the matter was hypothetical, it was very hard to form a judgment, but I could imagine that the issue of withdrawals was a lot easier to deal with than the future composition of a government in South Vietnam. Indeed, if he remembered an article I had written in 1968, I had proposed exactly this procedure. Dobrynin asked whether I still believed that this was a possible approach. I said it certainly was a possible approach and, indeed, I had been of the view that it would be the one that would speed up matters. Dobrynin said he would report this to Moscow.”
Kissinger forwarded a copy of the January 9 memorandum of conversation to the President under a covering memorandum on January 25. (National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, Box 490, President’s Trip Files, Dobrynin–Kissinger, 1970, Vol. 4 (Part 2)) The memorandum of conversation is printed in full in Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, volume XIII, Soviet Union, October 1970–October 1971, Document 90.
Kosygin’s interview was with the Japanese newspaper, Asahi Shimbun, on January 2, 1971. The Washington Post reported that during the interview: “Kosygin warned that the United States would ‘achieve nothing in Vietnam by acting from positions of strength,’ and said, ‘there can be no doubt that neither the ‘expansion of American aggression in Indochina nor a Vietnamization of the war will bring the United States victory.’” Later, according to the Post, Kosygin made the [Page 254] following offer: “‘The Soviet Union is ready, on its part, to further facilitate the attainment of a political settlement in Indochina which, of course, should meet the lawful interests and aspirations of the peoples of that area.’” (The Washington Post, January 3, 1971, p. A 1) Kissinger’s article, “The Vietnam Negotiations,” was published in January 1969 in Foreign Affairs (Volume 47, No. 2, pages 211–234).
On January 23, Dobrynin and Kissinger returned to their discussion of Vietnam. Kissinger described the exchange as follows:
“Dobrynin then turned to Vietnam briefly. He said he wanted me to know that the general observations about the possibility of separating military and political issues had been transmitted to Hanoi without comment and without recommendation, but they had been transmitted. It had occurred only a few days ago, however, and no answer had as yet been received. I said that I hoped he understood that the President was deadly serious when he said that we would protect our interests in Vietnam and that we would handle those matters separately. He responded that Soviet leaders understood this up to a certain point, but beyond that the Soviet leaders would have to react whether they liked it or not. I said I understood that if we landed troops in Haiphong the Soviet Union would have to protest. He responded that we could be sure they would have to protest. I said that they could be sure that we were not going to land U.S. troops in Haiphong. Dobrynin smiled and said that he hoped that Indochina would not be an obstacle. He implied strongly that in its present framework it would not be.”
Kissinger sent a copy of the memorandum of conversation to the President under a covering memorandum on January 27 in which he provided his summary of the key points. (National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, Box 490, President’s Trip Files, Dobrynin–Kissinger, 1970, Vol. 4 (Part 2)) The memorandum of conversation is printed in full in Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, volume XIII, Soviet Union, October 1970–October 1971, Document 103.