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Drawing on newly declassified documents that reveal the central role of energy in the unraveling of détente, Guy Laron explores how escalating energy crises in the 1970s transformed US-Soviet energy cooperation into strategic competition.
The 1970s was a decade marked by growing concerns over energy. Such concerns were driven by two major crises in the Middle East: the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and the Iranian revolution of 1979. These geopolitical upheavals blocked the pathways of oil from the Persian Gulf to Europe. In the aftermath of the 1973 war, the Arab oil-producing nations implemented a punitive embargo against Western countries perceived as supportive of Israel. Similarly, the Iranian revolution culminated in strikes by oil workers that shut down Iranian oil exports.
Concerns about oil embargoes and energy shortages crept into the dialogues between Anatoly Dobrynin, the long-time Soviet ambassador to Washington, and senior American officials in the 1970s. A new collection of documents on the Wilson Center Digital Archive illuminates the profound importance of energy in the fall of détente.
The exchange on this topic begins with a conversation between Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State, and Dobrynin on December 18, 1974. The Soviet diplomat complains that plans for cooperation on energy projects in 1972 were never initiated. Furthermore, Dobrynin noticed that Congress was preparing legislation to limit the amount of credit that the Soviet Union could loan from the export-import bank. This legislation would also make it next to impossible for the President to enter into major deals with the Soviet Union on oil and gas.
The project that Dobrynin was referring to was known as “Project North Star,” a response to the already high energy prices in the early 1970s. The project was meant to diversify US energy supplies by opening trade deals with the Soviet Union. Developing an energy dependency on the Soviet Union, the archenemy, was an unusual step for the United States, but such was the spirit of the Soviet-American détente. Both nations sought to lower tensions and increase cooperation in places where it was mutually beneficial. Taking advantage of this window of opportunity, three American companies – Brown & Root, Texas Eastern, and Tenneco – planned to liquefy gas in northwestern Siberia and ship 55 million cubic meters each year to the East Coast of the United States. They also drew up plans to export some Soviet gas to Japan, while another American company, El Passo, was interested in importing gas from the Yakutsk field in Siberia to California.
These deals were first discussed between Soviet and American officials in 1971, and the following year, Kissinger, then as National Security Advisor, endorsed the projects. However, the October 1973 war in the Middle East suddenly threw a wrench in the plans. The American public believed that the Soviet Union betrayed the spirit of détente by supporting its Arab allies during the war. Worse still, the war caused American consumers to pay higher prices at gas stations. Domestic support for détente weakened and its critics in Congress used the change in public mood to enact laws limiting economic cooperation between Washington and Moscow. As Dobrynin discovered, to his chagrin, this meant the Soviet deal with the American gas companies was off the table.
About a month later, in mid-January 1975, Dobrynin had a frank talk with Kissinger and Nelson Rockefeller, the US Vice President. That conversation revealed more about US plans to deal with the post-1973 energy crisis. Rather than importing gas from the Soviet Union, Washington chose to threaten Arab oil-producing countries with military intervention. Dobrynin came to protest. Kissinger and Rockefeller assured him the threat was a bluff. Still, they believed it worked. Iran and some unnamed Arab countries responded to the threat by assuring the US that they would not deny it oil. Then Rockefeller revealed the administration’s long-term plan to solve America’s energy predicament: ramp up domestic production of coal, oil, and gas and expand the construction of nuclear power plants. If successful, Washington could lend a helping hand to Western Europe and Japan, which were also chafing under onerous energy prices.
Nevertheless, despite its plans to lessen its dependence on Mid-East oil, the US still needed to secure access to it. Kissinger spent the months between March and August 1975 trying to bring about a more comprehensive agreement between Israel and Egypt. If the two countries ever resumed warfare, the US could find itself in dire straits again. One sticking point was Israeli reluctance to withdraw from oil fields in the Sinai. Indeed, the Israeli government at the time was no less concerned about its energy security (eventually the Israelis did make this concession).
When the issue of energy comes up again in Dobrynin’s reports, it’s already 1978. By then, energy had become a cause of friction rather than cooperation between the superpowers. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Advisor, stubbornly clung to the theory that the Soviet Union was intervening in the Horn of Africa with nefarious intentions: block the Red Straits to American tankers. Brzezinski maintained that Moscow was fomenting an “arc of crisis” stretching from Afghanistan, where a Communist revolution occurred, through Iran, which was going through the first stages of the Islamic revolution, to Ethiopia, where the Mengistu regime turned toward Moscow.
Many observers doubted the soundness of Brzezinski’s analysis at the time, and according to Dobrynin’s reports, Cyrus Vance, the Secretary of State, was among them. While Brzezinski saw the men in the Kremlin as crafty chess players maneuvering to implement their well-thought geostrategic designs, Vance saw the Soviets as lucky opportunists. A report from March 1978, shows that Dobrynin himself tried to convince Brzezinski that the Soviet Union had no intention to use its presence in Ethiopia to cut off America’s oil supply. Moscow, explained Dobrynin, had no desire to start a nuclear war with the U.S.
However, when Kissinger, now out of office, and Dobrynin met again in November 1979 to discuss the state of Soviet-American relations, they both agreed that there was a complete lack of trust. Kissinger was worried that instability in Saudi Arabia would cause another energy crisis. How could the superpowers coordinate their response when they did not speak with each other? asked Kissinger. Dobrynin answered that the Soviet Union would never agree to an American intervention in Saudi Arabia. The meeting underscored how energy had functioned as a factor that exacerbated superpower tensions in the 1970s. While at the beginning of that decade, Moscow and Washington were gingerly walking toward mutually benefitting energy cooperation, by the end of it, both countries were envisaging a confrontation caused by struggles over that precious resource.
Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (AVP RF), f. 0129, op. 59, p. 449, d. 4, ll. 24-36. Contributed by Sergey Radchenko and translated by Gary Goldberg.
Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (AVP RF), f. 0129, op. 59, p. 449, d. 4, ll. 89-96. Contributed by Sergey Radchenko and translated by Angela Greenfield.
Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (AVP RF), f. 0129, op. 62, p. 474, d. 5, ll. 132-134. Contributed by Sergey Radchenko and translated by Gary Goldberg.
Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (AVP RF), f. 0129, op. 63, p. 482, d. 7, ll. 151-156. Contributed by Sergey Radchenko and translated by Gary Goldberg.
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