Diplomacy: Reassurance in Washington

West German Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger had a very special reason for traveling to Washington. She is blonde, cherubic and four years old. Cecilia is the child of Kiesinger's daughter Viola and Photographer Volkmar Wentzel, and she welcomed the Chancellor in the Wentzels' backyard in Washington with her own sign: a large red heart with "Welcome Opa [Grandpa]" written on it.

Kiesinger's chief reason for visiting the U.S. was less personal. West Germany is the most anxious country in Western Europe, and the Chancellor came to seek reassurance on a number of subjects. President Nixon had his own message to get across. Reviewing his stopover in Bucharest during his round-the-world trip, the President stressed that he would not allow the Soviet Union's Brezhnev Doctrine and its claim of hegemony in Eastern Europe to deter U.S. efforts to establish better relations with those countries. Then the talk turned to Germany. As he sat in the White House's Oval Office with Richard Nixon, Kiesinger was heartened by the President's words.

SALT Fears. The West Germans have an abiding fear that the two superpowers will strike a secret agreement, as in Yalta, that will seal Germany's fate —without consulting the Germans themselves. At present, that anxiety centers on impending SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) between the U.S. and the Soviets. The Germans worry that the Soviets may persuade the U.S. to reduce its nuclear umbrella of U.S.-based intercontinental missiles without a matching reduction in the hundreds of Soviet Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs) that are pointing at Western Europe. The joint communique issued near the end of the two-day official visit contained Nixon's reassurance: "The President assured the Chancellor that the United States would take full account of the interests of its allies in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks."

Another German worry is that the U.S. may be entering a new period of isolationism in which it may seek to disengage in Europe just as it already is lessening its commitment to Asia. Both men agreed, however, that it would be a mistake for the U.S. to make any unilateral troop withdrawals from Europe before the SALT get under way. Nixon vowed to Kiesinger that in America, "we proudly stand with you as friends and allies." As a symbol of even closer bonds of German-American relations, Nixon and Kiesinger agreed to set up a Bonn-Washington "hot line," similar to the one that links the White House and the Kremlin.