The Wars of Watergate (118 page)

The War Powers Act probably is moot if a President will show an appearance of shared governance. In April 1988, President Reagan used American forces to retaliate when Iranian mines imperiled U.S. vessels in the Persian Gulf. Reports then indicated that congressional leaders had no intention of pressing the Administration to invoke the act; instead, those leaders expressed satisfaction that they had been consulted in advance. For nearly two terms, the Reagan Administration and Congress had disputed the efficacy of the law; after the Persian Gulf attacks, a White House official said: “Maybe after eight years we’ve finally gotten it right.”

A month later, however, prominent congressmen admitted that the formal machinery of the War Powers Act never had worked, probably was unworkable, and perhaps was unwise. Senator George Mitchell (D–ME), a vocal
critic of Reagan’s adventurist foreign and military policies, acknowledged that the law had “failed.” Senator Sam Nunn (D–GA) criticized the time constraints of the act, contending that it offered foreign governments a lever for influencing policy debates in the United States. Finally, Democratic Majority Leader Byrd frankly conceded that “if I were president, I would thumb my nose” at the law. “Reform” proposals circulated to institutionalize congressional consultations and abrogate the automatic troop-recall proviso, substituting instead a stipulation that troops would be removed if a majority of Congress so demanded.
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Whatever the mechanism, there is no substitute for political will. Well before the passage of the War Powers Act, Richard Nixon realized that Congress would no longer support the Vietnam war. Congress’s shared powers are inherent in the governmental apparatus, and the choice to use them rests largely with that body.

Foreign-policy achievements are the historical touchstone for Nixon Administration partisans and will doubtless attract the attention of future historians. Henry Kissinger argued that the Administration attempted to strike a balance between the extremes of crusading and escapism—a “symmetry between the twin pillars of containment and cooexistence.” Kissinger conceded failure, but he insisted the fault was in the stars: “History will forever debate,” he wrote, “whether without Watergate Nixon could have achieved this goal.” The necessary discipline and calculation for such a course, Kissinger contended, “fell prey to the passions of the Watergate era.”

Clearly, Kissinger believed that Watergate had prevented that balance in Indochina. In addition, however, beyond the “bitter divisions” engendered by Vietnam, Kissinger complained that “the ugly suspicions” of the “Watergate purgatory” corroded the Administration’s pursuit of détente with the Soviet Union. A “rare convergence” of conservatives who despised the Soviet Union and liberals who equally despised Nixon combined, Kissinger lamented, “to dismantle” policies that sought a relaxation of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union.
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Watergate’s role in aborting détente is more subtle, more complex, and more consequential than its connection to the outcome of the Vietnam war; but like Vietnam, détente aroused opposition for reasons that had nothing to do with Watergate.

Nixon’s first inaugural address set the stage for a new era in superpower relations, emphasizing peaceful negotiations: “Let us take as our goal: Where peace is unknown, make it welcome; where peace is fragile, make it strong; where peace is temporary, make it permanent. After a period of confrontation, we are entering an era of negotiation.” Remembering his roots and the need to maintain his traditional constituency, the new President also emphasized the need to maintain national strength. In the speech that
Nixon did not deliver in March 1968 when Johnson withdrew from the presidential race, he described “a new era in our relations with the Soviets, a new round of summit meetings and other negotiations.”

Nixon himself first used the word “détente” in a 1970 address to the United Nations. But evidence abounds, as Raymond Garthoff has demonstrated, that détente always remained a strategy, not an objective; a means, not a goal, of the Nixon Administration. Another scholar found détente “ambiguous,” a characteristic that led to the breakdown of a domestic consensus for its support. The policy essentially spelled
ad hoc
actions and was often subservient to other aims, as witnessed by Nixon’s willingness to sacrifice a summit conference and a strategic arms limitation (SALT) agreement rather than halt the bombing of North Vietnam.
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By 1973 the Administration’s relations with the Soviets had made enormous strides in the direction Nixon had promised, from expanded trade dealings to the 1972 SALT agreement. That agreement produced both a limitation on antiballistic weapons and a more limited deal to contain the number of strategic offensive missile launchers and weapons. Nixon and Soviet leader Brezhnev held summit meetings in 1972 and 1973. The second produced the Prevention of Nuclear War Agreement, but more notably it resounded with chords of amicability and presented images of warm embrace. That meeting occurred during the Senate investigation of Watergate, just prior to John Dean’s testimony. Richard Nixon was at the pinnacle of his power and prestige in his dealings with foreign adversaries. But his vulnerability over Watergate soon chipped away at that lofty status.

The traumatic moments of October 1973 are crucial to an understanding of the decline, or what one writer has called the “stall,” of détente. That month, of course, was Nixon’s cruelest. The Agnew resignation and the dismissal of Cox combined to focus the Watergate crisis on him personally and gave impetus to an impeachment inquiry. Amid those mishaps, the President confronted the Yom Kippur War and the ambiguous competitive policies of the Soviets. Those events sparked the first congressional rejection of détente and laid the groundwork for a decade-long challenge to that policy.

Assaults on the policy had begun earlier. Senator Henry Jackson (D–WA) was a traditional liberal Democrat on domestic issues, but a hard-liner toward the Soviets and an advocate of new weapons systems. Jackson pushed for legislation conditioning the Soviet Union’s access to most-favored-nation trading status with the United States on its willingness to ease its restraints on emigration, particularly of Soviet Jews. Détente had emboldened Soviet dissidents. Brezhnev and the Kremlin leaders found no linkage between maintaining détente and internal policies toward their own citizens, but American opponents of détente insisted on that connection. The bill Jackson
advocated (with Charles Vanik [D–OH]) finally passed the House in December and the Senate several months later.

Perceptions of Soviet machinations during the Yom Kippur War significantly enhanced Jackson’s appeal. Jackson raised public and private doubts as to Kissinger’s real motives toward Israel. His attacks cut several ways. For some, his concerns provoked a haunting specter of a U.S.–Soviet condominium that would impose a settlement on the Middle East contrary to the interests of the immediate parties. More important, Jackson accused the Soviets of undermining détente, as he characterized Brezhnev’s suggestion to dispatch a Soviet-American combat team to the Suez Canal as “brutal” and “threatening.” For Jackson and other foreign-policy conservatives, Soviet diplomacy in the Middle East amounted to an attempt to expand their influence among the Arab nations. Competition, the critics contended, not détente, remained at the center of Soviet intentions. The Administration’s rather dubious staging of a military alert at the time of the Yom Kippur War offered its own contribution to the heightening of suspicions toward the Soviets—an action that had its own tenuous links to the Watergate situation.
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After 1973 the Center/Right in the Democratic Party converged with the Republican conservative Right in open alliance against the President’s policies. Emboldened by Nixon’s deteriorating strength, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger and the Joint Chiefs of Staff worked closely with Jackson, his aides, and the sympathetic staff on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Nixon’s pursuit of détente increasingly aroused the ire of precisely those elements most likely to support his struggle to preserve his presidency; he could not afford to alienate them. At the same time, if he appeased the Right by backing away from détente, he ran the risk of alienating J. William Fulbright and liberals on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who generally supported the Nixon-Kissinger global designs once the Vietnam war was ended. Watergate certainly complicated Nixon’s task.
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Kissinger acidly assailed Jackson in later years, accusing him of implementing legislative obstacles that “gradually paralyzed” policy toward the Soviet Union. According to Kissinger, Jackson’s staff was one of the “ablest—and most ruthless” he had encountered, ascribing invidious interpretations to Administration motives and masterfully leaking information. Jackson and the opposition to détente, Kissinger concluded, elevated “confrontation into a principle of policy,” and they did so during the nation’s “worst domestic crisis” in a century and against the “most hobbled Chief Executive” since World War II. In Kissinger’s ultimate estimation, Jackson “sought to destroy our policy, not to ameliorate it.”

The President himself thought that Jackson was “in the pocket of Jews.” He considered going public against Jackson, charging that he and “professional Jews” would “torpedo” chances for disarmament agreements with
the Soviets. Nixon believed that “a storm” would hit American Jews once he exposed what he saw as their position.
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By 1974 Nixon’s position had deteriorated rapidly, and détente was embroiled in the maelstrom of ideological politics. The President seemed to have little interest in the SALT negotiations; Kissinger meanwhile was overwhelmed by the technical complexities of arms-control problems and by the determined opponents of agreements with the Soviets. For Nixon, the June 1974 summit in Moscow was little more than ceremonial. Jackson and the congressional opposition charged that secret deals had been made in SALT I negotiations and that the Soviets had cheated. He also made clear his determination to thwart the Administration’s attempts to expand East–West trade. The President and his entourage were so wary of the attacks from the Right that his spokesmen insisted Nixon had
not
visited Yalta, a place that conjured so much negative symbolism, but rather Oreanda, a nearby area. During the summit meeting, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Chief of Naval Operations, resigned and denounced the Administration’s policies. Despite explicit orders from Haig, Schlesinger attended Zumwalt’s retirement ceremonies and presented him with a medal.
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Richard Nixon had lost control of his Administration.

In subsequent years, Soviet commentators noted the Watergate affair, acknowledging belatedly that the President fell victim to his own abuses of power—after long insisting (when they were not ignoring it) that Watergate was a right-wing plot. Interestingly, they blamed the collapse of détente on the counteroffensive of the military-industrial complex, rightist forces, and Zionist groups. Another Soviet diplomat lamented that Watergate had so preoccupied liberals that the urgent problems of foreign policy and arms control eluded them.

At the end of his presidency, Nixon proudly noted his association with détente: “This, more than anything,” he said on the night preceding his resignation, “is what I hope will be my legacy to you, to our country, as I leave the presidency.” But in a diary entry approximately one month earlier, he cynically noted that the Moscow Summit had come out “about right.” To have gone further would have alienated “good conservative supporters, and we did just about what the traffic would bear.” He would not do anything to antagonize “some of our best friends prior to the impeachment vote.” (Thirteen years later, Nixon in his elder-statesman role still appeased those friends, as he and Kissinger attacked the Reagan Administration for its proposed nuclear-weapons treaty with the Soviet Union.)

Did Watergate abort the full flowering of that legacy of détente that Nixon so proudly hailed as he took his leave? In his memoirs, a more reflective Richard Nixon thought not: “domestic political fluctuations,” preceding and apart from Watergate, had impaired his ability to deliver fully on détente.
The opposition of Henry Jackson on trade and Soviet emigration, Nixon believed, had undermined Brezhnev’s credibility with Jackson’s conservatives. Finally, “the military establishments of both countries” bridled at the prospect of real arms control. “These problems,” Nixon concluded, “would have existed regardless of Watergate.” Even without Watergate, Gerald Ford later ordered his aides to delete “détente” from the White House political vocabulary, as he sought to neutralize the Right in 1976. In truth, the opposition had swung the pendulum away from détente, almost wholly without help from Watergate.
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In an immediate sense, Watergate altered public perception of the presidency and the relationship between the executive and other institutions. How much of those changes has endured, however, is questionable. Watergate transformed and reshaped American attitudes toward government, and especially the presidency, more than any single event since the Great Depression of the 1930s, when Americans looked to the President as a Moses to lead them out of the economic wilderness. World War II and the Cold War, with all their attendant dangers to the physical and ideological security of the nation, only exalted that faith. Professor Woodrow Wilson, who often expressed his low opinion of Congress, wrote in 1908 that the presidency “must always, henceforth, be one of the great powers of the world.… We have but begun to see the presidential office in this light; but it is the light which will more and more beat upon it.”

Intellectuals, liberal and conservative alike, celebrated Wilson’s prophecy. “The President is not a Gulliver immobilized by ten thousand tiny cords, nor even a Prometheus chained to a rock of frustration,” political scientist Clinton Rossiter wrote in the late 1950s. “He is rather a kind of magnificent lion, who can roam widely and do great deeds, so long as he does not try to break loose from his broad reservation.… He will feel few checks upon his power if he uses that power as he should.” John F. Kennedy’s election in 1960 made that a canonical doctrine of the liberal faith. But by the end of the decade, such glorifications of the presidency seemed embarrassing (when they were not forgotten), and Rossiter’s restraints, largely written in as an afterthought, became the new gospel.
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