Cold Dawn and the Mind of Kissinger

Let us “discontinue talking so specifically about Soviet military hardware; such matters need not concern our civilian colleagues.” So Colonel-General Nikolai Ogarkov, the senior military representative on the Soviet negotiating team, urged a ranking American delegate at the outset of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT).

Ogarkov’s plea was triggered by an incident at one of the formal negotiating sessions. The chairman of the Soviet delegation, Vladimir Semenov, became confused about which of two strategic missiles was the larger: U. S. Minuteman or Soviet SS-9. Departing from Russian protocol, Ogarkov broke in and set the matter straight.

That the chairman of the Soviet delegation, who had been a Deputy Foreign Minister for a decade, could make this elementary mistake-confusing the mammoth SS-9 with the rather small Minuteman-is puzzling. That a Soviet military representative could suggest to an American delegate the possibility of negotiating such “military matters” as Minuteman and SS-9 without involving his civilian colleagues seems hardly conceivable. Such extraordinary happenings, however, are the stuff of the SALT negotiations and treaty, which President Nixon’s Foreign Policy Report identifies as a central pillar in the emerging structure of peace.

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