LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Gerald Ford: Soviet Union
built 263 days ago
Ford presided over the evacuation of U.S. personnel from Vietnam, which he ordered in April 1975. Because he was linked to this withdrawal, he was destined to have no notable strength in foreign affairs. Although he claimed credit for the Helsinki Accord in which the Soviet Union renounced its right to keep its satellite states in line by military intervention, the true effect was to recognize at last Soviet domination of the eastern bloc nations. Possibly... the Helsinki Accord helped restrain the Soviet Union from intervening when citizens in communist countries overthrew their governments in 1989.
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In foreign policy, Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger continued the policy of detente with the Soviet Union and "shuttle diplomacy" in the Middle East. U.S.-Soviet relations were marked by on-going arms negotiations, the Helsinki agreements on human rights principles and East European national boundaries, trade negotiations, and the symbolic Apollo-Soyuz joint manned space flight. Ford's personal diplomacy was highlighted by trips to Japan and China, a 10-day European tour, and co-sponsorship of the first international economic summit meeting, as well as the reception of numerous foreign heads of state, many of whom came in observance of the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976.
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In the spring of 1975, Ford did little to help either Cambodia or South Vietnam as they faced the final Communist offensives against their regimes. The fall of Saigon, which led in April to the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy there, allowed Ford to announce that “[the] war is finished as far as America is concerned,†but it left him open to criticism by conservatives for abandoning an ally. They were more supportive of Ford's actions in the Mayaguez crisis that May, when he reacted to the seizure of an American merchant vessel by bombing the Cambodian mainland and launching a successful, though costly, rescue mission by the U.S. Marines. Nevertheless, conservatives broke with the administration over the SALT Treaties that they felt favored the Soviet Union, and with Ford's support of the 1975 Helsinki Accord, which acquiesced in Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe.
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In the previous month, Ford had traveled to Helsinki to sign an accord that recognized the existing frontiers between states, including the border between East and West Germany. This implicitly recognized Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. In return, Moscow agreed to respect basic human rights and to ease restrictions on the free exchange of information and on emigration and travel within the Soviet Union.
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GERALD FORD: The people who were critical in the United States didn't understand what the impact would be with the human rights provision. They so frozen in their opposition to the Soviet Union,and the way the Soviets for example had treated, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. They didn't realize that the human rights provision would end up with the kind of freedom that they wanted in the Baltic Nations. And it took time, it took the human rights development to convince them that Helsinki was a great step forward and a time bomb for communism.
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Ford’s policies toward the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) were ... opposed by both Democrats and conservative Republicans. The most controversial issue was the Helsinki Accords, which recognized the existing frontiers between states, including those that separated West and East Germany. In return for this provision, which implicitly acknowledged Soviet domination in Eastern Europe, the USSR agreed to respect basic human rights, to ease travel restrictions both to and from and within the USSR, and to allow freer dissemination of information.
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