Richard Nixon, Russell Train, and the Birth of Modern American Environmental Diplomacy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 16530295 |
|---|---|
| Authors | J Brooks Flippen (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 613-638 |
| Publication date | 2008-09-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Diplomatic History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0145-2096 • E-ISSN: 1467-7709 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-7709.2008.00715.x |
| OpenAlex | W2113754838 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
In the spring of 1972, Russell E. Train, chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality under President Richard Nixon, invited Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to lunch at Washington's tony Metropolitan Club. Train had already developed a friendly relationship with the powerful diplomat but this was no casual social call. Train had an agenda that his own boss, John Ehrlichman, one of Nixon's top advisers, had cleared prior to the meeting. The United States and the Soviet Union, Train suggested, should work together to improve environmental quality. Despite Cold War tensions, the nations shared the world's ecosystem and both had a stake in fighting threats such as air and water pollution. The two nations might cooperate in eleven areas, from land use to wildlife protection, and a joint commission might regularly meet to guide the process. Neither country benefited from arguments over which economic system was the worst offender, Train continued, perhaps anticipating objections. “Capitalists and socialists are in the same boat and will survive or flounder together.”1 Dobrynin listened politely, struggling to follow Train's lead and eat soft-shell crabs, which he had never tasted before. “The picture is indelibly fixed in my mind,” Train later wrote, “of the distinguished ambassador with almost an entire crab in his mouth, the legs protruding out to either side and wiggling as he tried to chew and speak.” Having survived the crabs, Dobrynin agreed the idea had merit and promised to raise the matter with the Kremlin. He would have to move quickly, Train admitted; Nixon needed “tangible visible evidence of progress under the agreement prior to the [1972 presidential] election.”2
Boss · Casual · Club · Commission · Diplomacy · Economic history · Political science · Politics · American Environmental and Regional History · Engineering · History · Law
| Citations per year | 0.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2011 - 2025 (15) |
| Highly cited | No |