THE predicament: A president wants to end an unpopular war. A potential solution: Negotiate with enemies.  WHERES THE EXIT? Nixon and Kissinger head for Moscow, hoping Brezhnev would point to a way out of Vietnam. He didnt.  Links to newly declassified documents and telephone transcripts from the time of former national security adviser Henry A. Kissinger's secret trip to Moscow in 1972, which were released last Tuesday.*  *The Foreign Relations of the United States series presents the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity. The series, which is produced by the State Department's Office of the Historian, began in 1861 and now comprises more than 350 individual volumes. The volumes published over the last two decades increasingly contain declassified records from all the foreign affairs agencies. Foreign Relations of the United States  The question confronts President Bush today, in the case of Iraq. The question challenged President Richard Nixon in 1972, when he and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, secretly arranged a summit meeting with Leonid I. Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, in the hope that a grand bargain with Moscow might help the United States negotiate an end to the war in Vietnam.  Newly declassified documents and transcripts, some from White House tapes, published by the State Department in an official diplomatic history on Tuesday, show how hard it can be to talk peace with the friends of your enemies. TIM WEINER  The Oval Office, April 19, 1972: Mr. Kissinger is about to begin a secret trip to Moscow. President Nixon is intensifying the bombing of Vietnam after an Easter offensive by Hanoi.  Nixon: Im the last president... Im the only president... who had the guts to do what were doing.... Reagan never could make president to begin with, and he couldnt handle it.... Im going to destroy the [expletive] country, believe me, I mean destroy it if necessary.... We will bomb the living [expletive] out of North Vietnam. ...  Kissinger: I believe, Mr. President, if the Soviets deliver this package, that the North Vietnamese will settle during the summit. Theyll settle because they will have to figure, having thrown their Sunday punch and having been in effect not supported by the Chinese, not supported by the Russians, in fact squeezed by the Russians, and bombed by us. Why would they be better off next year at this time than this year?  Nixon: Right.... Say that President Nixon wants to talk to Chairman Brezhnev about ourselves and our children.... He said politics be damned.... He can deliver what the so-called liberals promise because he has the confidence of the right in our country. And theres no [other] president who could go to Moscow at this time, at a time Moscow is fueling a war that has cost 50,000 Americans.  Moscow, April 21, 1972: Mr. Kissinger meets Mr. Brezhnev at noon, and their conversation turns to the World War II.  Brezhnev: Try this candy. It is very good; it is plums in chocolate....  Kissinger: Peace in the world and progress in the world depends on the relations between our two countries. Every time there are conflicts in parts of the world we will remember what unites us rather than what divides us. That could be the greatest achievement of the summit. (Mr. Brezhnev then offered the Americans some pie that had been brought in).... We have two principal objectives. One is to bring about an honorable withdrawal of all our forces; secondly, to put a time interval between our withdrawal and the political process which would then start. We are prepared to let the real balance of forces in Vietnam determine the future of Vietnam.  Brezhnev: ...You werent actually in the war, were you?  Kissinger: First, I was in the infantry, and then I was in intelligence.  Brezhnev: Thats something I experienced from beginning to end. ... It was an awesome thing. ...  Kissinger: The deaths of the Soviet people were unbelievable....  Brezhnev: I am sure, God forbid, if your people had had to suffer anything like the Russian people did, the postwar American foreign policy would have been different. The average American is just not familiar with this, has not gone through this, and his mind is conditioned entirely differently.... Americans find life too dull. Rock and roll is dull, and there are no domestic problems, so lets start a war in Vietnam.  Kissinger: With the most difficult people in the world.  Brezhnev: Now you complain.... I doubt anyone would understand that the United States is truly defending that country. The war has been going on eight years, but for what sake? For what sake is money being squandered, for what sake are so many Americans being killed and thousands of Vietnamese? Has the war brought the United States anything positive? Surely nothing.  That night, Kissinger sent a message to the White House. His deputy, Alexander M. Haig Jr., read it to Nixon.  Haig: Brezhnev is very forceful, extremely nervous, highly unsubtle. His mood can best be summed up in the following concluding quote: I would like very much for you to convey to President Nixon that I can confirm and reconfirm our views and the desire of our government to hold the Soviet-American summit. ...  Nixon: That is [expletive]. ...Henry is so easily taken in by flattery. He is great but   Haig: He thinks the summit is more important to you than Vietnam.  Nixon: It is not. We have got to give up the summit in order to get a settlement in Vietnam and he has got to have that tomorrow!... Tell him in not subtle terms I have decided that Vietnam is 10 times more important than the summit. Vietnam tomorrow; summit is not to be discussed further until Vietnam is settled.  Oval Office, May 2, 1972: Nixon broods about negotiating with the enemys armorer.  Nixon: How can you possibly go to the Soviet Union and toast Brezhnev and Kosygin ... when Russian tanks and guns are kicking the hell out of our allies in Vietnam? ... Do you see any other way out? ... We just cant let Vietnam bring down a second President. ...  Haig: There isnt much worse ... than the thought of your not being here.  Nixon: So you say that youd find a graceful way to get out of Vietnam? ...Is that what youd say? ...We cant find a graceful way out. Thats the point.  Nixon and Brezhnev met in the Kremlin for the first of a week of talks on May 22, 1972. When the subject of Vietnam arose, camaraderie vanished, Mr. Kissinger wrote in his memoirs. It came up on May 24 at Brezhnevs dacha.  Brezhnev: You say you want to end this war and quite calmly put forward the idea. But this is at a time when you are carrying out ... a deliberate effort to destroy a country and kill off thousands, millions of innocent people. For what sake is this, by what right is this being done? It would certainly be interesting to hear for the sake of what the U.S. invaded Vietnam.... I dont want to hurl more epithets on you. There have been quite enough epithets heaped on you as it is. But how can the methods you use now be called a method of ending the war in Vietnam?  Nixon: ...This is just a small war. But it has cost the U.S. 50,000 dead and 200,000 wounded. ...We are not trying to impose a settlement, government, on anybody. We are trying by a simple cease-fire to end the war  in other words, to impose a peace.  In handwritten notes set down at the close of the summit meeting, dated 3 a.m., May 29, 1972, President Nixon wrote:  We must redouble efforts to remove every possible trouble spot which might draw us into conflict. ...We must not have any more Vietnams.... No peaceful nation fears America  all nations respect us. Let us be worthy of this trust.  The summit meeting did not end the Vietnam War; South Vietnam fell during a final attack from the North in April 1975, after a long series of American withdrawals. The meetings biggest achievement was a treaty banning an arms race in antiballistic missiles; it remained in force for nearly 30 years, until the United States withdrew from it in December 2001.
In 1972, President Richard Nixon tried to use the Soviets to help solve the Vietnam problem. Will President Bush heed the lessons of his predecessor?