1973: Arab-Israeli War, And The First Oil Shock

The latest volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series publishes the foreign policy documentation surrounding the Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1973:

This volume documents U.S. policymaking toward the Arab-Israeli conflict between January and December 1973, i.e., during the months before, during, and immediately after the Arab-Israeli war of October 1973. Documentation in the volume includes memoranda; records of discussions both within the U.S. policy-making community, as well as with foreign officials; cables to and from U.S. diplomatic posts; and papers that set forth policy issues and options, and which show decisions or actions taken.

This volume covers an important period in the history of the U.S. engagement with the Arab-Israeli dispute. The October 1973 War represented not only a renewed clash of Arab and Israeli forces, it ignited an energy crisis brought on by an Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) oil embargo against the United States, and led to the threat of a direct superpower confrontation. The war also prompted the United States to undertake an unprecedented role in the pursuit of a negotiated settlement to the dispute.

Leaks, Politics, And State Department Documents, Long Before Julian Assange Was Born

The State Department's Office of the Historian is Commemorating 150 Years of Foreign Relations at the moment, and has posted several academic papers on the topic with surprising takes on how the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series - the world's gold standard for diplomatic history - has been used to influence domestic and international politics:

Did you know that…

the 1955 release of the official records of the Yalta conference was headline news around the world? [And] the U.S. Government used its own diplomatic correspondence as a weapon against the Confederacy during the Civil War?

I did not know that.

The paper on the politics of the Yalta FRUS is here, and I highly recommend it. A few excerpts:

Throughout the 20th century, the Foreign Relations series evolved in response to broader transformations in American foreign relations, government institutions, and political culture. The most enduring of these transformations occurred in the 1950s, when the series adapted to the development of the national security state and the globalization of U.S. power. The intense bureaucratic, partisan, and international controversies generated by the 1955 FRUS volume for the 1945 Yalta conference helped define the series for the Cold War.

The Yalta volume precipitated the transformation of FRUS, though the controversies that it sparked also imperiled the existence of the series ... In the short run, however, the Yalta FRUS also emboldened officials in the U.S. Government skeptical of the value of transparency in a dangerous world.

The Yalta volume began as a classified policy study for official use within the U.S. Government in November 1947 ... In 1950, the question of wider publication arose as partisan debate over the conference intensified. Bernard Noble, head of the Historical Policy Research Division ... warned [SecState Dean Acheson] that portions of conference minutes might embarrass the U.S. and Britain, that the lack of agreed minutes might allow the Soviet Union to release an “alternate” version of the conference to galvanize world opinion against the West, and that the Department’s poor wartime record-keeping left it incapable of satisfying inevitable public demands for releasing the records of the other conferences. Choosing security over transparency, the Department kept the Yalta records secret.

After Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1952 election, the new, conservative Congressional majority urged a different choice. On April 22, Senate Majority Leader William Knowland ... requested a special series on secret Allied wartime conferences. “If Democratic holdovers in the Division of Historical Policy Research are prevented from excluding key documents,” Knowland predicted, “these publications would be of tremendous value.”

-- snip --

The continued sensitivity of many of the issues discussed at the wartime conferences and the partisan aura of the accelerated production of FRUS alarmed other government agencies and former officials. It took years for [the Historical Division] to gain access to Truman’s papers for the Potsdam compilation, and the office was denied permission to examine the papers of the deceased Yalta Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius. Even some bureaucracies that had cooperated with the original policy study resisted additional requests. The most consequential bureaucratic opposition to releasing the Yalta volume came from the Pentagon.

-- snip --

In an August 1954 review of the first galley proofs of the volume, Winnacker expressed “a sense of shock when reading in the present EDC atmosphere the actual 1945 plans for the postwar treatment of Germany, its dismemberment, reparations, and standard of living” and thought “the cavalier disposal of smaller countries or the attitude toward France” were “not likely to facilitate our foreign relations.” Winnacker warned that gaps and the selective inclusion of pre-conference documents would discredit the publication. He suggested either abandoning the project, allowing the Senate to publish a revised version in exchange for increased mutual assistance funds to “undo the damage” abroad, or “prohibiting” the volume’s “export or republication in foreign languages.” Although conceding that final authority rested with State, Winnacker ardently believed that publication would harm the national interest.

The Bureau of European Affairs within the State Department itself also considered the Yalta volume too sensitive to release. To officials responsible for U.S. policy toward Germany, releasing the Yalta compilation seemed recklessly irresponsible.

-- snip --

[Foreign Minister] Anthony Eden [who had to clear the release of joint Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff papers] explained his “very real concern over the publication of all these documents so soon after the event.” He argued that “publication now of such detailed records may cause misunderstanding or create controversy without significantly increasing public knowledge of the events” and warned that British “anxieties about this project and our fear that the publication of such detailed records in the political lifetime of so many of the participants may make it difficult for us to be as frank as we should wish in future conferences.”

-- snip --

[The new SecState John Foster] Dulles grew increasingly frustrated, and when, in late January, McCardle worried that the intense interest in the Yalta volume made leaks inevitable, the Secretary confessed he “wouldn’t mind that.” In the same conversation, he pointed out that Senator Knowland and his conservative colleagues had pushed the State Department to expedite FRUS because “they thought there was a lot of stuff which would be useful. Actually there is nothing.” After several weeks of debate, Dulles accepted Noble’s suggestion of limiting access to the galleys (and responsibility for leaks) to Congress.

But, with the Democrats back in power, this strategy backfired. Congress refused to accept responsibility for classified documents and demanded to know why State didn’t publish the volume itself.

--snip --

As rumors swirled about the contents of the Yalta papers and the true reasons they could not be released, New York Times reporter James Reston approached McCardle and offered to publish the Yalta records in full to prevent damage from their piecemeal release. On March 15, 1955, McCardle gave Reston a copy of the Yalta galleys. The Chicago Tribune quickly caught wind of the scoop and enlisted Illinois Senate Republican Everett Dirksen to demand that Dulles release the volume to everyone. Backed into a corner, Dulles cabled London to explain that he had no choice but to release the volume. Eden accepted the fait accompli.

There is much more, but that's enough to convince me of something I had thought about before. The WikiLeaks release of State Department cables was a reckless and juvenile imitation of the more mature high drama that has accompanied the FRUS series.

FYI, that Yalta FRUS volume is available here

WikiLeaks? More Like Late'nWeak

WikiLeaks is a latecomer to the business of publishing U.S. diplomatic documents, and an amateurish one.

As the Office of the Historian reminds us in a DipNote post today, the State Department has been publishing its own official diplomatic documents for all the world to see for 150 years now. And, unlike WikiLeaks, it adds scholarly value to the raw documents via a documentary editorial process, and also gets them declassified. There's really no comparison.

The WikiLeaks controversy highlights a whole set of important questions about how the United States, or any government, conducts its affairs in the international arena. Similarly, the ongoing challenges of the day attest to the sweep of issues that must be negotiated among states. What, exactly, do diplomats do? How, precisely, is diplomacy conducted? How are particularly thorny diplomatic issues negotiated? How much information should be kept secret, and how much should be shared? What is the goal of foreign policy? What does “national security” mean, and who defines it?

-- snip --

The Civil War marked a key turning point in this tradition of public disclosure [which began in the 1790s], because the Department of State began disseminating foreign policy records on a regular basis. Documents have been published continuously since 1861, selected for their importance, annotated for accuracy, and bound into book-length volumes. Now called the Foreign Relations of the United States (or FRUS), this series celebrates its 150th year of publication in 2011. They are not stories written by historians who have digested the material and presented it in narrative form. Rather, after a thoroughgoing process that combines scholarly principles of documentary editing and responsible procedures for declassification review, the documents are allowed to speak for themselves, giving the reader the opportunity to experience the “you were there” feeling that comes from encountering the original material yourself.

-- snip --

By reading FRUS, anyone can gain insight into how diplomacy actually happens. Sometimes the negotiations become intense, with messages flying about the world on an hourly basis, multiple meetings, hushed corridor conversations, and deals struck after much bargaining. Some problems are resolved, while others are not. In some cases, long-held secrets are revealed. At other times the documents confirm what has long been believed but not previously proven ...... Mostly, however, one encounters the dilemmas facing ordinary people who must make immediate decisions with incomplete information, fearful of worst-case scenarios, and hopeful that they can craft a better world than they inherited. It is the stuff of mundane routine and high drama; taken altogether, it is a story of great consequence for the peoples of the world.

Read the whole thing here: “Foreign Relations of the United States” Series Tells the Story of U.S. Diplomacy.

A New FRUS Volume Is Released

This one is on the topic of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). Here's the press release:

The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XXXII, SALT I, 1969–1972. This volume documents United States policy toward the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks from January 1969 until October 1972.

The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks produced a series of comprehensive arms control agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union that for the first time limited the deployment of ballistic missiles and anti-ballistic missile systems. Commonly referred to as “SALT I,” the agreements were signed by President Richard Nixon and the General Secretary of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev at the Moscow Summit in May 1972. This volume documents the negotiations leading up to the agreement, the internal deliberations among U.S. policy makers, and reveals the play of political and national security considerations that factored into U.S. policy decisions.

The volume is organized chronologically covering the period of analytical preparation before SALT began, the various rounds of negotiations with the Soviet Union alternating among the cities of Helsinki, Geneva and Vienna, the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs Henry Kissinger's secret trip to Moscow in April 1972, discussions between President Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev at the Moscow Summit in May 1972, and the Nixon administration's efforts to secure congressional approval of the SALT agreement and ratification of the ABM treaty.

Sources for this volume include documents generated in the White House, the National Security Council, the Department of State, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. The editor included extracts from memorandums of conversation between Henry Kissinger, and Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, telephone transcripts and meeting memoranda prepared by chief SALT negotiator, Gerard Smith, and a significant number of backchannel messages among Smith, Kissinger and Alexander Haig, Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs. Additionally, the editor transcribed specifically for this volume more than twenty excerpts from conversations recorded among the President and his advisors on the secret White House taping system.

Download it here.

"X" Marks the Spot of Latest FRUS Volume

Another day, another new FRUS volume:

The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume X, Vietnam, January 1973–July 1975. This specific volume covers U.S. policy towards Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from the signing of the Paris Peace Accords on January 27, 1973, to the fall of Phnom Penh and Saigon in April 1975. The final chapter covers the May 1975 SS Mayaguez incident.

This volume addresses the ending of the Vietnam war; a story central to the U.S. experience in the 20th century. Similar to other Foreign Relations volumes, this collection of documents emphasizes the formation of policy over day-to-day diplomacy. Several themes dominated U.S. policy and policy objectives in Indochina during this period: the relationship between force and diplomacy, the struggle between the President and Congress in the formation and implementation of U.S. policy, U.S. credibility in the world, and the limits of American power. These themes dictated the selection of documents in this volume. Soon after the fall of Saigon in April 1975, American officials in several agencies began looking back at U.S. policy toward, and political and military actions, in Vietnam in an effort to understand and learn from the American experience in Indochina beginning in the early 1960s. This volume places those analyses within the broader documentary context.

This volume concludes with documentation covering the May 1975 seizure by Cambodia of the SS Mayaguez and the successful recovery by U.S. forces of the ship and its crew. The documents cover the crisis deliberations in Washington among civilian and military officials that led to President Ford’s decision to use military force to recover the ship.

You can download Volume X (here) courtesy of the Office of the Historian's website, and read it from the comfort of your own home or favorite Wi-Fi hotspot. Is that the greatest thing ever, or what?

Diplomatic End Game of the Vietnam War

The Department of State's Office of the Historian released today a new Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) volume, one that documents U.S. policy toward the war in Vietnam from October 8, 1972, to January 27, 1973. From today's press release:

This volume documents the marathon four-day negotiating session between Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Le Duc Tho in Paris (October 8-11, 1972). The peace agreement they reached was rejected by South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu. The United States attempted to convince Thieu that he was wrong, and in November Nixon sent Kissinger back to Paris to renegotiate 69 points on behalf of the South Vietnamese. The North Vietnamese, fiercely disagreeing with the U.S. move, decided that they too would renegotiate issues previously agreed to. By mid-November, the talks were on the verge of collapse. Consequently, the central goals of U.S. foreign policy over the next few weeks were to compel both South Vietnam and North Vietnam to accept, in its main tenets, the agreement that the United States had negotiated with the latter in October.

A cynic might say that the central goal of our policy was to compel the South to accept terms that would more or less ensure it's eventual destruction, while also compelling the North to wait a decent interval after the withdrawal of U.S. forces before continuing its war against the South.

This was high drama. Our special negotiator was Secretary of State Kissinger (who was dual-hatted, serving simultaneously as both SecState and the President's National Security Adviser). His meetings with delegates from the North were conducted secretly in Paris. And the tools of persuasion he employed included thousands of naval mines dropped in North Vietnam's harbors to interdict Sino-Soviet bloc merchant shipping, and 741 sorties by B-52 Stratofortress bombers that dropped 15,237 tons of ordnance on 18 industrial and 14 military targets.

I remember being a high school student with a draft card in my wallet in 1972, absorbing every bit of news I could get about the last act of the Vietnam War, including listening to the reports put out by Radio Hanoi. It was exciting stuff then, and it's even better now that I can read the internal documents.

You can download the new FRUS material here. Well worth reading.

Another New FRUS Volume is Released

The Office of the Historian has announced the release of another volume in the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, this one Volume VII, Vietnam, July 1970-January 1972:

The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume VII, Vietnam, July 1970–January 1972. This volume documents U.S. policy towards the war in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from July 1970 to January 1972. It is the second of five volumes covering the end of the Vietnam war under Presidents Nixon and Ford, 1969–1975.

During the period covered by this volume, July 1970–January 1972, the Nixon administration expanded the Vietnam war into Cambodia and Laos as part of its strategy. This volume covers South Vietnam in the context of this larger war in Southeast Asia; therefore, the volume begins in July 1970 in the aftermath of the Cambodian incursion.

-- snip --

In late 1970 and early 1971, the focus shifted to decision making regarding plans to implement a major South Vietnamese out-of-country operation called Lam Son 719, launched in early February 1971.

-- snip --

In the waning months of the period covered by this volume, deadlock had set in. Neither side appeared able to win militarily, or even to weaken his adversary sufficiently to make him negotiate in good faith. There were signs, however, that Hanoi might be preparing to mount a major military effort in 1972. Its purpose would be to break through this impasse without having to travel a diplomatic path. The volume concludes at this point.

Reading this description gives me the funny feeling of realizing that events I lived through when they were daily news are now bona fide history. Wow, am I old!

FRUS Volume on Vietnam - Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

Last week I posted about the publication of a new volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, this one concentrating on high policy formulation and decision-making during the period January 20 to October 7, 1972. The best of the volume's documentation came from the transcription of telephone conversations by President Nixon, Secretary of State Kissenger, and Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff Admiral Moorer.

As the Office of the Historian's press released noted:

Sources for this volume include messages and memoranda that illuminate the decision-making process in a bureaucracy. They can be found in Nixon’s papers, in Kissinger’s papers, in military and diplomatic records in the National Archives, and in other repositories. Transcripts of Nixon’s taped conversations with senior policy advisers, as well as a collection of transcripts of Kissinger’s telephone conversations, provide an additional level of detail. A third collection, less well known than the other two but almost as significant, is that of Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and includes diary excerpts and telephone conversations. This volume, therefore, documents the implementation of U.S. policy toward Vietnam during the Easter Offensive more thoroughly than ever before.

More thorough documentation than ever before. That's great. Left unsaid was who did the painstaking transcription of those telephone conversations that are at the heart of this interesting volume.

I received the following comment today from someone who wants to recognize the contract historians who spent so much time wearing earphones in an HO cubicle.

Curious that the Department's Historian -- probably on the advice of volume compiler John Carland and supervisor Dr. David Geyer -- has omitted any mention of the fact that Anand Toprani played a key role in transcribing and editing tapes transcripts for this volume. Even more curious that current Acting General Editor Susan Weetman would allow this omission, given her constant interaction with Mr. Toprani as the tapes for this volume were finalized.

As a result of that comment, I discovered an article in State Magazine from back in May 2008, one that I had overlooked before, but which describes the transcription effort. See Department Historians Dig Into the Nixon Tapes.

It looks like we can thank both Anand Toprani and Richard Moss, graduate students who were - and I think no longer are? - contract historians with HO, and co-authors of the linked article.

You can find out more about the transcription effort, and even read the transcripts and listen to the audio of those conversations for yourself, here.

Another FRUS Volume: Korea, 1969-1972

The State Department's Office of the Historian announced today that HO has released the latest volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, Volume XIX, Part 1, Korea, 1969-1972.

The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XIX, Part 1, Korea, 1969–1972. (Part 2 of the volume on U.S. bilateral relations with Japan, 1969–1972 will be published at a later date.) During the first Nixon administration, Washington confronted an array of difficult foreign policy questions concerning the Korean peninsula. The preponderance of documents published in this volume concern security issues. As in earlier years, U.S. policymakers continued to deal with North Korean provocations between 1969 and 1972, the most serious being the North Korean Air Force’s destruction of a U.S. surveillance (EC–121) airplane over the Sea of Japan in April 1969. The U.S. military presence in South Korea also surfaced as an important topic. During Nixon’s first term, the United States reduced its forces in Korea from 63,000 to 43,000 soldiers. Although President Park was unable to prevent the U.S. drawdown, he did extract aid with which to modernize the South Korean military. Other records in this publication relate to the deployment of South Korean combat forces in Vietnam.

This volume documents U.S. satisfaction with the Republic of Korea’s increasing confidence as an international actor, a result of the South’s burgeoning economic prosperity and its (uneven) growth in political stability. Park successfully thwarted efforts to improve the relationship between Japan and North Korea. Instead, South Korea made its own contacts with the North Korean Government, an initiative that yielded few tangible results but did promote regional stability. Nonetheless, the Nixon administration was not fully successful at allaying Seoul’s misgivings about two of Nixon’s most important foreign policy initiatives: the improvement in relations between the United States and China, and the U.S. departure from Vietnam. Park’s fears about U.S. reliability added to tensions that resulted from economic competition, especially in the textile trade.

The Republic of Korea’s skepticism of the U.S. security guarantee was used to justify authoritarian domestic policies. In 1970 Park and his party amended the Korean Constitution to permit his election to a third term as the country’s president. The following year, the two titans of late 20th century South Korean politics, Park Chung Hee and Kim Dae Jung, competed for the presidency. Department of State officials endeavored to demonstrate balance by making themselves available to both candidates. When Park, victorious in the 1971 election, declared martial law in October 1972, the U.S. Government expressed frustration with this blow to the Republic of Korea’s political institutions. U.S. officials feared that alliance with South Korea could be seen by some as implicating them in Park’s actions. Given Park’s determination to adopt anti-democratic measures, U.S. efforts to respond by punishing South Korea would likely be either ineffective or create instability there, either outcome potentially damaging the U.S.-Korean relationship.

The volume and this press release are available on the Office of the Historian website at http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v19p1. Copies of the volume will be available for purchase from the U.S. Government Printing Office online at http://bookstore.gpo.gov (GPO S/N 044–000–02610–4; ISBN 978–0–16–077108–8), or by calling toll-free 1–866–512–1800 (D.C. area 202–512–1800). For further information, contact Susan Weetman, Acting General Editor of the Foreign Relations series, at (202) 663–1276 or by e-mail to history@state.gov.

Free Poodle Blanket!

I mean, free the information that still remains secret about the 1961 contingency plan for a possible U.S. - Russian confrontation over West Berlin, a plan that goes by the name "Poodle Blanket." That's what the National Security Archive (NSA) urges the Defense Department to do in a post named Why is "Poodle Blanket" Classified?

In a response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the Pentagon claims that "Poodle Blanket" contingency plans from 1961 for a possible confrontation over West Berlin (no longer divided) with the Soviet Union (no longer a country) still need to be secret for fear of damage to current U.S. national security, according to documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (here).

It's hard to believe that we still have a national security interest in keeping Poodle Blanket under wraps, especially because many key documents about it were declassified and published almost twenty years ago. As the NSA post continues:

In the early 1990s, the State Department's historical series, Foreign Relations of the United States, published a number of documents on "Poodle Blanket" -- including the highest level National Security Action Memorandum 109.

You can read the whole post, as well as those State Department documents, here.