Glassboro Summit Conference

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Glassboro Summit Conference began on the 23rd of June 1967 in a house almost nobody outside New Jersey had heard of. Hollybush was the home of the president of Glassboro State College. For three days, it served as the meeting place of the leaders of the two Cold War superpowers. President Lyndon B. Johnson and Premier Alexei Kosygin each preferred a different venue. Johnson wanted Washington, wary of anti-war protesters near the White House. Kosygin preferred New York. Glassboro sat roughly equidistant between the two, and that geography settled the question. A war neither superpower had started brought them together at all. The Arab-Israeli Six-Day War erupted on the 5th of June 1967. It pulled Washington and Moscow into diplomatic contact they had not sustained for years. National Security Advisor Walt Rostow estimated a 20 percent chance the summit would genuinely improve Soviet-American relations. He put the odds of a bad outcome at only 10 percent.

  71

• 2. The Hot Line Letter

  ›

  On the 10th of June 1967, a message from Alexei Kosygin arrived at the White House via the Soviet-American hot line. He addressed it directly to President Johnson. Kosygin wrote that Israel had completely disregarded the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council. A critical moment had arrived, he said. If military action in the Middle East was not halted within hours, the Soviet Union would be forced to act independently. Such action, he warned, might lead to "a clash, which will lead to a grave catastrophe." He asked Johnson to demand that Israel cease its offensive unconditionally, promising the Soviet Union would do the same. The letter ended: "Please give me your views."

  Several days later, Kosygin traveled to New York City to address the United Nations on the ongoing crisis. The American government, learning of his presence, welcomed the opportunity for a direct meeting. On the 13th of June 1967, Johnson sought out Senator J. William Fulbright at a White House reception to begin working through the idea.

  237

• 3. Diplomats and Doubt

  ›

  Llewellyn Thompson, the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, believed the meeting could open a genuine channel of dialogue. He described it as a chance to "start the process of moving toward an understanding with the Soviets." Senator Fulbright went further. He wrote two letters to President Johnson pressing the importance of a face-to-face summit. Fulbright even believed Johnson was already reconsidering his strategy on Vietnam. Some hoped the diplomatic opening might extend to joint Soviet-American cooperation on ending the Vietnam War. Johnson replied to Fulbright, confirming that an invitation had been extended and that Washington was waiting for a Soviet response.

  Inside the Soviet Politburo, opinion was divided. Members disagreed over whether such a meeting would serve Soviet interests. Andrei Gromyko, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, stepped in to make the case. He was not yet a Politburo member himself, but he won enough support to move forward. His argument was that Soviet-American dialogue had been suspended since 1963 and needed to be revived. The United States at that point was gradually losing ground in Vietnam, and Johnson's administration was actively seeking other paths to a resolution.

  357

• 4. Vietnam at the Table

  ›

  Only four people were present when Johnson and Kosygin held their first session: the two leaders and their respective interpreters. The main subjects were the ongoing Middle East crisis and the Soviet-American arms race. Near the end of that meeting, Johnson raised Vietnam directly. He proposed dividing the country in half, one portion communist and the other capitalist. American-supervised democratic elections would follow the war's end. He told Kosygin that the sole reason for U.S. bombing of North Vietnam was to respond to North Vietnamese intervention in the South. Kosygin's response was to return to the Middle East.

  Kosygin mentioned in the afternoon session that he had recently spoken with Pham Van Dong, the Prime Minister of North Vietnam. The two had discussed the possibility of ending the war. A reply from Hanoi arrived during Kosygin's lunch with Johnson that same day. Kosygin drew a comparison to the Algerian War, which had ended when Charles de Gaulle's France signed a peace treaty withdrawing from Algeria. He suggested a similar outcome lay ahead for the United States. He made equally clear that North Vietnam would not easily relinquish its goal of a unified communist state.

  Johnson's deepest worry was political. He told Kosygin that if U.S. bombing stopped and North Vietnamese troops moved south, it would "crucify" him politically at home. Kosygin tried to reassure him. A North Vietnamese delegation, he said, stood ready to meet American representatives anywhere in the world to discuss a settlement.

  5674

• 5. The Spirit of Glassboro

  ›

  Johnson and Kosygin failed to reach agreement on the summit's central technical question: limiting anti-ballistic missile systems. No major accord emerged from any of the sessions. The atmosphere of the talks, however, was regarded as unusually warm for an encounter between Cold War rivals. Officials and journalists alike began calling it the "Spirit of Glassboro." That phrase captured the goodwill that had persisted despite every unresolved disagreement. The broad assessment was measured but genuine: the meeting was seen as having improved Soviet-American relations. The school that served as its venue is today called Rowan University.

  674