ABSTRACT
As the summer of 1971 was drawing near, prospects for US foreign policy seemed brighter: the negotiations on Berlin moved ahead, may be even a bit too fast – Kissinger wanted to use the Berlin agreement as a leverage to encourage the Soviets to agree to a summit. The problem of the summit linkage with the negotiations over Berlin had been solved with Kissinger's promise to Dobrynin that the president was well aware of the "great" importance the Soviet government attached to the question of Berlin. To make things worse, the way the statement was articulated led many in the United States to understand that the administration was meaning to reach an agreement on ABM limitation only. Another issue was the location of the ABM sites, and Kissinger leaned toward the Moscow-ICBM sites' deployment. While Kissinger and Dobrynin were acting to solve the remaining problems on SALT, the Pentagon came, with a new demand, that could practically break-up the negotiations.
