The Foreign Service Journal, June 2011

SALT, through Dobrynin rather than via the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Briefing after briefing produced ex- amples of Toon’s seething resentment on this topic. “It’s the primary job of the American ambassador in Moscow to interpret Soviet motives and actions — not for the Soviet ambassador in Washington to do this direct[ly],” is one typical quote from the period. In June 1978, following the trial of Soviet dissident Anatoly Shcharansky, Toon upbraided Dobrynin for shirking “his share of joint responsibility” for limiting the ensuing tension in bilateral relations. Then, as the SALT negotia- tions reached their climax, he let slip that he had been “overruled” in his op- position to Dobrynin’s involvement. “There should be double-tracking,” he observed pointedly. As the Vienna Summit of June 1979 drew near, Toon continued his offen- sive, saying straight out that Vance’s re- liance on Dobrynin had weakened the American negotiating position. “It was a mistake,” he argued. “It led to errors in presentation of the American posi- tion and to the Soviets downgrading the U.S. embassy in Moscow deliberately. If this trend deepens and broadens, we won’t need an embassy here at all.” He added that he planned to tell Vance this in Vienna. Whether he did is not recorded. Throughout these years the health, competence and intellectual capacity of the aging Soviet leadership fascinated all Western analysts based in Moscow. Toon set out to use his position to pry open the Kremlin by requesting meet- ings with all and sundry in the Polit- buro, using the press briefings to let the Russians know his intentions in ad- vance. This initiative produced patchy results — and Toon’s candid views on the various individuals he did manage to meet cannot have helped much. Leonid Brezhnev, he declared once, “has really seriously deterio- rated. His eyes are opaque. He can’t focus properly.” The Kremlin’s world- view was another target. “The Soviet leadership has a totally simplistic view of how the U.S. system works,” he complained in mid-1978. Boris Ponamarev, a longtime Polit- buro member with responsibility for Third World relations, was a particu- lar bete noire. In November 1978, Toon reported a “vigorous exchange” with the dyed-in-the-wool Marxist ide- ologue, during which he ended up telling Ponamarev, as he later recalled, that “my view is that 12 U.S. senators are more important to the USSR than Ethiopia.” He also relentlessly pur- sued a potential Brezhnev replace- ment, Grigory Romanov. When he did finally meet the Leningrad party boss, he dismissed him as “emotional, short and peppery,” and said Romanov “did a lot of shooting from the hip — a smart arse.” Still, Toon was not prescient about the future of the USSR. He consis- tently favored Andrei Kirilenko to take over from Brezhnev, never saw Yuri Andropov as a serious candidate and dismissed Konstantin Chernenko as a “paper-shuffler.” Forecasting that it would be “50, 60, 70 years before you see a basic change in the Soviet world outlook,” he was equally withering to- ward the notion that a new generation of leaders would differ much from the Brezhnev generation. He argued that “no basic internal changes (are likely) for a long, long time to come.” By this stage the reader may well be wondering how Toon avoided being recalled by Washington or expelled by the Soviets. Walking the fine line he did in these weekly briefings required consummate tactical and strategic skill to avoid being drawn out too far be- yond U.S. policy, while remaining true to himself and getting his message out. Lively Exchanges Toon, who turned 61 in 1977, was at the height of his powers: a superior operator, a four-time ambassador with decades of international experience under his belt and a born leader on his last foreign assignment, who owed lit- tle to Vance or Carter. He was helped, too, by the caliber of his audience. As with diplomats, the U.S. media tended to send its brightest and best to serve in Moscow during the Cold War. Between 1977 and 1979 the 25 Amer- ican-accredited reporters in the Soviet capital included two future Pulitzer Prize winners, four future foreign edi- tors, the authors of half a dozen books on the USSR, a future New York pub- lisher, a future head of Radio Liberty/ Radio Free Europe and National Pub- lic Radio, and a Rhodes Scholar. They understood the rules of the game and often gave as good as they got. Ambas- sador McNamara remembers Toon leaving one particularly lively briefing and saying to him, “I enjoyed that.” Yet the sheer unpredictability of So- viet-American relations throughout the period constantly threatened to wrong- foot even the savviest envoy. And as Toon neared the end of his time in Moscow, things seemed to get steadily worse. A succession of staged incidents in- volving the embassy, American jour- nalists and U.S. business representa- tives in the Soviet capital threatened SALT’s passage and suggested the Kremlin was losing interest in a more constructive relationship. It was a test- 42 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 1 1 Amb. Toon had three audiences in mind as he talked: the American public, Washington beyond Foggy Bottom and the Kremlin.