Just a few months after Brezhnev returned to Russia, détente was tested by reality. They had also signed a measure to limit the development of defenses against nuclear missile attacks, reasoning that if mutual vulnerability were ratified into the framework for further reductions, the actual advent of war would be a remote possibility at best. The American president’s secret friendly gestures to China had given the Kremlin a chance to counter with open overtures to the United States, and so, Nixon and Brezhnev had agreed in May 1972 to the first treaty that limited the use of strategic weapons in the nuclear age: the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT). The enduring image from the summit was that of a Russian premiere playfully whispering into Richard Nixon’s ear. Three years before this exercise, in June 1973, Brezhnev had visited the White House. To enhance realism, Brezhnev was given an actual button to push. He was “visibly terrified,” Danilevich remembered.ĭuring the exercise, three launches of ICBMs with dummy warheads were scheduled. Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, watched this happen.
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