"A Moment to Be Seized"

AFTER dropping directly onto Capitol Hill by helicopter following a 13-day journey that covered 16,000 miles, President Nixon strode purposefully through Washington's fading twilight and toward the beckoning cameras of prime television time to report to Congress and the people. He had returned from the camp of the enemy bearing spoils of peace rather than war, but he did not speak in terms of triumph. Confident and businesslike, he displayed a rare restraint, claiming only that his trip to Moscow was "the beginning of a process that can lead to a lasting peace." Appropriate to the achievement, it was the most effective speech of his presidency.

The homecoming was a warm one for the President, especially the booming cheers from the Republican side of the House chamber. Yet partly because the report was so hastily scheduled at Nixon's request, partly because some Democrats felt they have been used as a foil for Nixon as he scores political points on television, an appalling three-fifths of the Congressmen were absent. Only 22 Democratic Senators and 66 Democratic Representatives attended. Rows of empty seats were filled by Government employees, hastily rounded up to minimize the embarrassment.

Nixon's speech was carefully calculated to dampen any irrational euphoria over the new Washington-Moscow detente. "The threat of war has not been eliminated," Nixon cautioned. "It has been reduced." Appealing to Congress to endorse the agreements signed in Moscow, he added: "Never has there been a time when hope was more justified or when complacency was more dangerous. We can seize this moment or we can lose it." Nixon was, rightly, most intent upon saving the treaty limiting anti-ballistic systems and the agreement freezing the deployment of offensive nuclear weapons.

Nixon sought to calm critics, mostly conservatives, who fear that the two pacts will permit the Russians to gain a decisive nuclear advantage. Democratic Senator Henry Jackson and Conservative-Republican Senator James Buckley both contend that the Russians could use the freeze, which does not limit technological improvement of existing systems, to overcome the huge present U.S. lead (5,700 to 2,500) in deliverable warheads. "I have studied the strategic balance in great detail for more than three years," Nixon said. "I can assure you that the present and planned strategic forces of the United States are without question sufficient for the maintenance of our security." But he then implied that the U.S. might be interested in more than "sufficiency" and was determined at least to maintain nuclear parity. "No power on earth is stronger than the United States of America today," he declared. "And none will be stronger than the United States in the future." Taking aim at his critics on the left, Nixon drew loud applause by praising the Congress for its refusal to "unilaterally abandon the ABM, unilaterally pulling back our forces from Europe and drastically cutting the defense budget."

Nixon was less forceful on the other main controversy over the summit results: the failure to make any public progress toward a settlement of the Viet Nam War. He said the war was "one of the most extensively discussed subjects" at Moscow, and he seemed to suggest that some undisclosed gain might have been made, by cryptically saying: "It would only jeopardize the search for peace if I were to review here all that was said on that subject."

The specter of Viet Nam loomed, by omission, in an otherwise highly effective television speech Nixon had made earlier from the Great Kremlin Palace to the Russian people. "We, like you, are an open, natural and friendly people," he said. Americans "cherish personal liberty" and "would fight to defend it if necessary as we have done before." Yet, "however much we like our own system for ourselves, we have no desire to impose it on anyone else." Appealing for "a world free of fear," Nixon drew tears from some listeners by recalling the words of Tanya, a Russian girl whose entire family died during the siege of Leningrad in World War II and who wrote in her diary: "All are dead. Only Tanya is left."

Russians generally reacted warmly to Nixon's address. "He hit the right tone and the right note," said a Soviet journalist. "He doesn't sound like an imperialist at all," said a pretty young girl. Yet many Russians noticed his failure to mention Viet Nam even once. "There are kids like Tanya in Viet Nam," complained a Moscow hotel porter. It was the first time a U.S. President had ever addressed the Russian people.

After the summit elevation of Moscow, Nixon's visits to Iran and Poland were inevitably anticlimactic. The Nixon party was received by some 500,000 cheering, flag-waving spectators in Teheran, and a smaller but animated crowd in Warsaw. For the first time on his trip, Nixon got out of his car in Warsaw to shake hands with onlookers. The Polish people responded by surging around him and singing "Sto Lat, Sto Lat," from the song May You Live to Be a Hundred. In Iran, Nixon conferred with Shah Reza Pahlevi, attended an elaborate white-tie dinner in the Niavaran Palace--and was far from three exploding bombs set by terrorists.

Even before Nixon arrived home, the world of course reacted to the Moscow summit. Milan's respected columnist Enzo Bettiza said that the summit marked the start "of a new era of clarification, of ideological realism, of diplomatic maturity in international relations." Never again, he predicted, would a local event, such as "the assassination of an archduke in the Balkans, unleash a world conflict." Yet while the two powers refrain from attacking each other, Bonn's pro-government paper Neue Rhein Zeitung contended, they "tacitly reserve the right to continue beating, tormenting and destroying the other partner's little brother."

The Times of India argued that the Soviet leadership had given up more at the summit, since it had not insisted that the U.S. lift "its wholly illegal blockade of North Vietnamese harbors." While Israelis were pleased that Nixon had raised with Soviet Communist Boss Leonid Brezhnev the issue of Soviet treatment of Jews, the Egyptian press was happy because Moscow and Washington had suggested that peace in the Middle East be based on a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories. Elsewhere, the summit was mostly welcomed, but with little elation and with disappointment that there had been no agreement on Viet Nam.

For Americans, after all the coverage and the Nixon report, questions about the summit still lingered:

P: Was there an understanding reached on Viet Nam? TIME Correspondent Jerrold Schecter, who covered the Nixon odyssey, believes that the Russians tacitly agreed to limit future shipment of offensive weapons to Hanoi on condition that the U.S. would continue to withdraw its troops from Viet Nam and give the negotiating route in Paris another try. Brezhnev probably in effect conceded that the Kremlin could not tightly control Hanoi's war moves. The Russians learned this when the supplies they gave Hanoi were not used for an offensive in February, when Nixon was in Peking, as the Kremlin had wished. The attack came in May, thus threatening the Moscow summit. By not running the mine fields or North Viet Nam's coastline, the Russians have left the North Vietnamese on their own, at least until the present offensive runs its uncertain course. Yet a general hope persisted that the new Washington-Moscow friendliness might yet lead Hanoi to ease its conditions for a political solution to the war.

P: How did Nixon impress the Russian leaders? They came to respect his professionalism, says Schecter. They found him totally prepared for tough negotiations, and they admired his oratorical restraint. But they retained a certain distrust, based on Nixon's unemotional and dry behavior. In nearly 42 hours of talks, however, they came to understand thoroughly the primary U.S. policy concerns in world affairs.

P: How did Nixon find Brezhnev?

The top Soviet leader emerged as forceful, elemental and quite human, something like a tough union boss who can be charming personally, but negotiate cunningly behind a blunt bargaining exterior. He was self-assured, candid and, like Nixon, more concerned with results than with philosophical points.

P: Why was there no deal on trade?

There was disagreement over the Soviet obligation to repay its World War II Lend-Lease debts to the U.S., over the interest rates on U.S.S.R. credit to buy grain from the U.S., and on how much of all goods would be carried in American ships. Creation of a commission to pursue trade agreements was a step forward, with results probable later this year. The Russians had also hoped to get U.S. funds for developing Siberian gas fields, in exchange for granting the U.S. rights to import some of the natural gas; but the Russians insisted on retaining 80% of the gas despite huge U.S. financing.

P: What happens next? The next major move will be a resumption of the SALT talks, which will concentrate on the possibility of wrapping into one full-scale treaty all new offensive nuclear systems, perhaps including bombers. The stickiest point may be whether various improvements in existing weapons, especially the expanded deployment of multiple warheads within missiles, should and can be controlled.

While not directly dependent upon the summit, the new spirit in East-West relations was evident last week in two developments in West Germany. The first was aimed at eliminating the tensions that for more than 25 years have made the isolated city of West Berlin the focal point of the cold war. Secretary of State William Rogers joined the Soviet Union's Andrei Gromyko, Britain's Sir Alec Douglas-Home and France's Maurice Schumann in signing an agreement that should guarantee free access to West Berlin and more movement among residents of the two sectors of divided Berlin. After the signing, Rogers made the first visit into East Berlin by a U.S. official in a car bearing an American flag. He was saluted by East German border guards as he crossed Checkpoint Charlie. Second, the Foreign Ministers of NATO, briefed on the summit by Rogers, selected Helsinki as the site to begin exploratory talks in the fall that will precede a 33-nation conference on European security, probably in 1973. It would presumably legitimize the Russian seizure of Polish and German lands in World War II. But the NATO Ministers insist that progress be made simultaneously toward a reduction of forces in Europe by both sides.

A far more idealistic goal of the two major powers, as stated in a declaration of principles drawn up at the summit, remains more distant. It is no less than "the achievement of general and complete disarmament." Despite the hopeful beginnings in Moscow, that goal only demonstrates how far the big powers still must travel to fulfill the visions of the tough-minded men who faced each other across the bargaining tables in the Kremlin.

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