zed to negotiate about normalization because Carter was afraid it might hurt developing relations with Russia and Japan. The United States and the Soviet Union were beginning to negotiate a S.A.L.T. (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) treaty, and President Carter was determined not to delay any SALT negotiations. Vance was not authorized to negotiate in China, but did a good job of laying the groundwork for future agreements. In the summer and Fall of 1978 president Carter negotiated the terms of normalization directly with the Chinese through the United States ambassador to China, Leonard Woodcock. Jimmy Carter believed that having better relations and stronger ties with China would help bring negotiations with the Soviet Union to a successful end. Directly after normalization terms concluded with China, president Carter pushed for a SALT treaty. By January 1979, Vance had met with Chinas Andrei Gromyko in Geneva to put the finishing touches to SALT (130, 131). By the later part of Jimmy Carters presidency, relations with the Soviet Union began to arise. The United States and the Soviet Union were working together on general terms for a SALT II treaty. Ceilings were set on the number of total strategic nuclear launch vehicles along with a subceiling for vehicles with multiple warheads that each country could hold. The Soviets could keep their total number of missiles and continue to add multiple warheads to them. The United States could increase their number of missiles and warheads up to the ceilings. The two unresolved issues were whether a new Soviet plane, the Backfire, was an offensive bomber (if so it would be included in the agreement) and whether the American Cruise missile, which was not mentioned to the Soviets for some time, would be considered a missile in terms of the Vladivostok agreement. Assuming the possibility of agreement on Backfire and the Cruise, a SALT II treaty based on the Vladivostok meeting would have stabiliz...
