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States involvement in Vietnam—centered in the city so long defended by the American military, West Berlin. The Free University, established with Washington’s support in the midst of the 1948 Berlin blockade, had become a beehive of revolutionary activity, while America House, created to encourage cultural contacts with the United States, was now the regular target of hostile demonstrations, often physical attacks. The
The Cold War
John Lewis Gaddis
For just as the Cold War had frozen the results of World War II in place, so détente sought to freeze the Cold War in place. Its purpose was not to end that conflict—the differences dividing its antagonists were still too deep for that—but rather to establish rules by which
The Cold War
John Lewis Gaddis
reason to doubt that claim. To have consulted the Departments of State and Defense, the C.I.A., the appropriate Congressional committees, and all allies whose interests would have been affected prior to Kissinger’s 1971 Beijing trip would only have ensured that it not take place. To have attempted arms control negotiations with Moscow in the absence of a “back channel” that allowed testing positions before taking them would probably have guaranteed failure. And the only way Nixon saw to break the long stalemate in the Vietnamese peace talks—short of accepting Hanoi’s demands for an immediate withdrawal of American forces and the removal from power of the South Vietnamese government—was to increase military and diplomatic pressure on North Vietnam while simultaneously decreasing pressures from within Congress, the anti-war movement, and even former members of the Johnson administration to accept Hanoi’s terms. That too required operating both openly and invisibly.
The Cold War
John Lewis Gaddis
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