page_title: Vladivostok Summit Meeting on Arms Control
section_title: Day one: November 23
hierarchical_section_title: Vladivostok Summit Meeting on Arms Control / Day one: November 23
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of the first meeting between President Gerald Ford, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, and the Delegations in the Conference Hall at Okeansky Sanatorium, Vladivostok, U.S.S.R.
context_page_description: The Vladivostok Summit Meeting on Arms Control was a two-day summit held on November 23 and 24, 1974 in Vladivostok for the purpose of extending arms control provisions between the Soviet Union and the United States. After a series of talks between American President Gerald Ford and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in Washington and American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's visit to Moscow, Ford traveled to Vladivostok to meet with Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev directly. The two heads of state agreed to terms that would limit both nations an "equal aggregate number" of various weapons, including strategic nuclear delivery vehicles, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles fitted with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles.
context_section_description: According to Kissinger, the first day of negotiations were held in the Sanatorium's winter garden. Before the actual negotiations began, Kissinger conferred with Ford about strategy, suggesting that the American position should be "polite but firm". In regards to negotiating with Brezhnev, Kissinger advised Ford that the "best approach is to lay out frankly and soberly our position and let him absorb it". They both prepared for a confrontational stance presented by Brezhnev and his aides, which Ford believed would be a calculated effort "to see if I would bend or fight back". According to Dobrynin, "Kissinger played the leading role in the deliberations because Ford did not yet know all the details". Kissinger himself, however, referred to Ford's involvement in the negotiations as "technical", contrasting Ford's approach with Nixon's tendency to let Kissinger handle the intricacies of negotiating.
  After both sides gave their opening statements at the beginning of negotiations proper, they quickly began agreeing on arms control measures that limited each country to 2,400 ballistic missiles and 1,320 MIRVs. Because many of the key points had already been agreed to before the Summit began, Kissinger likened the developments to a Kabuki play: "extremely stylized with a near-traditional script and a foreordained outcome". Dobrynin referred to these agreements as a "compromise" from the Soviet perspective, but noted that it "eliminated what in our view had been the principal deficiency of the SALT I agreement".
  The negotiations, which at times became extremely technical (Kissinger, for instance, noted a lengthy discussion of the implications of enlarging missile silos by 15%), slowed down as more contentious topics came up. The first of these involved the United States, including its Forward Base System with F-4, F-111, and FB-111 fighters, its nuclear weapons deployed in Western Europe, its production of Trident-equipped Ohio-class submarines, and its plans to build the B-1 bomber. While the Soviet Union was concerned by all of these American weapons, the United States was able to negotiate from a position of strength and preserved all of these advantages: regarding the submarines and the B-1, Ford successfully convinced his Soviet counterparts that his country's "national security...demanded that we push forward with both."
  Conversely, the American delegation "wanted the USSR to relinquish a significant number of so-called heavy, land-based ICBMs", in the words of Gromyko. According to him, Brezhnev urged his American counterparts to "adopt a realistic approach", stating that the "Soviet Union is not happy that the USA has nuclear weapons in forward positions in Europe and in other regions close to our country. Yet the American leaders will not even discuss this. In such circumstances, the American request concerning Soviet ICBMs cannot be discussed either." Ford then finally withdrew on this issue after consulting his aides and military advisors, a decision that according to Gromyko greatly enhanced the possibility for agreement on SALT II and contributed "to a climate of moderation in Soviet-US relations in which each side took account of the other's interests".
  According to Kissinger, Brezhnev also brought up "his pet scheme of nuclear condominium between the United States and the Soviet Union" during negotiations. Kissinger described the American position as one "determined to avoid any impression of a Soviet-American condominium", although Ford tempered this stance to a declaration of "we never know where we might go".
  After this somewhat strained but greatly productive discussion concerning arms, the negotiations between the two delegations became more general, with Ford admitting the challenge posed by economic difficulties in the United States and Brezhnev explaining that some members of his Politburo did not think détente was a prudent strategy, whom he knew would be highly critical of him if he made too many concessions to the Americans. Then, somewhat to Ford's surprise, Brezhnev began talking in considerable deta
caption: Negotiations on the first day of the Summit took place in the conference hall at the Okeanskaya Sanatorium.
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