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MICHAEL KORDA
CORPORATE VICE PRESIDENT
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

TRADE DIVISION
SIMON & SCHUSTER, INC.
1250 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS
NEW YORK, NY 10020
VOICE 212 698 7340

November 28, 2000

NOV 29 2000

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
Kissinger Associates
350 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10022

Dear Henry:

Here is the reply from Ms. Dreifus about your reviewing quotes in her piece.

I don't understand the second message, i.e. Ms. Dreifus's letter to
Victoria Meyer. Your spoken English is as good as anyone's I know!

However, judging from the transcript, the review of quotes _does_ seem to be limited to questions of grammar, rather than to meaning.

I'm sorry we ever got into this thing, but who knows?—maybe it will turn out alright in the end.

MVK/csb
Enc.

www.simonleys.com
A VIACOM COMPANY

Korda, Michael

From: Meyer, Victoria
Sent: Monday, November 27, 2000 1:26 PM
To: Korda, Michael
Subject: FW: Transcript

MVK: As requested. The person she cc'd is her editor at Modern Maturity magazine. VM

-----Original Message-----

From: CLAUDREIF@aol.com [mailto:CLAUDREIF@aol.com] <mailto:[mailto:CLAUDREIF@aol.com]

Sent: Monday, November 27, 2000 1:20 PM
To: Meyer, Victoria
Cc: JWood@aarp.org
Subject: Transcript

Dear Victoria:

As promised, the section of the transcript dealing with what was promised to Dr. Kissinger-and of course, what he promised to me.

Things got a little hectic over the holiday week-end or I would have gotten it to you sooner.

Best wishes, Claudia Dreifus

DREIFUS: Let's talk about what we agreed upon on tape.

KISSINGER: What I understand is that I have the right to edit the transcript, not to change meaning, but to clean up the English.

DREIFUS: I've agreed to let you look at the transcript to make the English fully grammatical but not to change any meaning of what has been said.

KISSINGER: That's correct.

DREIFUS: And you agree to that?

KISSINGER: Yes.

DREIFUS: And I agree to that.

Korda, Michael

From: Meyer, Victoria
Sent: Monday, November 27, 2000 3:33 PM
To: Korda, Michael
Subject: FW: Transcript

Are the timetable....

-----Original Message-----

From: CLAUDREIF@aol.com [mailto:CLAUDREIF@aol.com]; <mailto:CLAUDREIF@aol.com>
Sent: Monday, November 27, 2000 3:19 PM
To: Meyer, Victoria
Cc: JWood@aarp.org
Subject: Re: Transcript

Dear Victoria:

As the publication of the interview has been postponed, as you requested, until the June issue, I have put this project on a backburner and am currently working on other things. Will get back to you later this month on that.

Dr. Kissinger was promised only a look at the transcript for the interview to correct grammar. That was a request he made because he feared his spoken English wouldn't read well-and a courtesy agreed to out of sympathy for the fact that he is not a native-English speaker. In our conversation, he was extremely specific that his was only a request for a grammatic check and nothing else.

He was not at any time promised the right to review any "quotes."

Best wishes, Claudia Dreifus

facetoface

The World
of Dr. K

Love him or
hate him, Henry
Kissinger was the
mastermind of
global politics.
What would he
do today?

by Claudia Dreifus

When Henry Kissinger served as Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977, the hot-button international issues included China, nuclear deterrence, and the Middle East. The faces of leadership have since changed, but the problems persist. In an exclusive MODERN MATURITY interview, the 78-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner, author of the new book *Does America Need a Foreign Policy?* (Simon & Schuster), reflected on the state of the world and on how current leaders are dealing with it.

Q How would you rate President Bush's first few months on the foreign affairs front?

A He has been amazingly sure-footed. And I agree with the main lines of his foreign policy. Probably it would have been wiser to renegotiate the Kyoto protocols (adopted by the Clinton administration, agreeing to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases), rather than abrogate it. But the main line of the foreign policy I support.

Q Whom would you define as America's main enemy now?

A I don't think we have any one [enemy] anymore. We have a plethora of issues before us. I think the emergence of China as a major country is a challenge to America and to the international system. It is a test for us: whether we can live in a world in which we are the most powerful country, but in which we do not insist on dominating. [Otherwise] we will use more and more of our resources and expend our energy, as we have recently, by turning foreign pol-

icy into a series of domestic issues. And we will lose our relevance.

Now, it could happen that China becomes our enemy. But it is not fore-ordained. And it should not happen as a result of our actions.

Q You are an ardent advocate of close U.S.-China relations. At the same time, you

Chopstick diplomacy: Dining in Beijing with his host, Chinese Premier Chou En-lai, 1973.

TOP: CHRISTOPHER WAHL; BOTTOM: BETTMANN/CORBIS

july/august 2001 mm 25

★ facetoface

Busy, busy, busy: For the
photo shoot at his New
York office, Kissinger was
a moving target.

support the development of a U.S. “Star
Wars”-type program, which the Chinese
find extremely threatening.

**A** I know it's an axiomatic view of the Left around the world that missile defense is sin-ful, and that it's desirable to keep each nation as vulnerable as possible. But that's a debatable premise. The U.S. must defend itself against whoever has missiles that would threaten the United States. And you don't have to be able to name an enemy.

**Q** What would you prescribe at this moment in the Middle East?

**A** Specifically, one could couple the exis-tence of a Palestinian state with some agreement about coexistence with Israel—and leave such issues like the future of Jerusalem to some administrative agreement that does not have the element of finality.

**Q** Do you see that happening?

**A** I think it's possible. I think it is not pos-sible to make an agreement that settles all issues for all eternity.

**Q** Why did last year's Camp David meeting fall apart?

**A** The Arab-Israeli conflict went from an irreconcilable cul-tural clash to a belief that maybe it was all a terrible misunderstanding—and that if only the psychological barriers could be removed, a final settlement would be quite easy. This is what led Clinton to organ-ize Camp David, in the belief that in one ses-sion you could finish the peace process. It turned out that there were deeply religious and philosophical obstacles. As a result, both parties have trapped themselves and have pushed the situation almost back to the point where it was when the peace process started. I think we have to go back to a much more modest understanding. We have to get back to coexistence.

**Q** There was a time when this country pro-duced giants in foreign policy—Dean Ache-son and George Kennan. Why has no one of comparable stature emerged?

**A** Because our politics has become bru-tally competitive. When I was in graduate school, we thought government service was a high calling. Now, foreign policy is not a subject that occupies budding careers. So there is no comparable group to the ones

we had in the '40s, '50s and '60s.

**Q** In his book on the Vietnam War, for-mer Secretary of Defense Robert McNa-mara wrote that we were “terribly wrong.”

**A** Well, I don't think we were wrong. We made a mistake. We applied the values by which we had conducted post-[World War II] reconstruction to cultures and circum-stances ... to which they really did not fit. I do not think it was a moral mistake. The motive was noble. I don't think Vietnam was the place to exercise it.

**Q** Did you say that then?

**A** Then, I didn't understand it well enough. I said it as soon as I visited Viet-nam, in 1965. I said that the war could not possibly be won that way ... and I urged a negotiated outcome.

**Q** As someone who lived through the Nixon near-impeachment, how did you feel watching the Clinton impeachment?

‘I was the devil incarnate? I was
too power-oriented for liberals,
too conciliatory for conservatives.’

**A** I was opposed to the impeachment. The correct outcome would have been some form of censure by the Congress. I am very worried about turning into a kind of parliamentary system by using the impeachment process to get rid of our chief executives.

Our media culture makes it so that once a crisis starts, it almost cannot end. I saw in the Nixon period this growing preoccu-pation with survival from day to day and the focus on technical details not decisive for the future of the country.

**Q** Why, during the Reagan era, did so many conservatives consider you the devil incarnate?

**A** I was the devil incarnate? Well, some of the conservatives were looking to conduct foreign policy as a crusade. Some of the lib-erals wanted a morality play. So I was prob-ably too power-oriented for the liberals, and too conciliatory for the conservatives.

Claudia Dreifus’ latest book of interviews, *Scientific Conversations*, will be published in October.

CHRISTOPHER WAHL

26 mm july/august 2001

05-30-01 10:24am

From-SIMON & SCHUSTER HARDCOVER PUBLICITY 12H

+12126987336

T-013 P 01/03 F-127

Fax from Simon & Schuster
Publicity Department

1230 Ave of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
(212) 698-7541
(212) 698-7336 (fax)

MAY 3 0 2001

To: Theresa / Rebecca, 2/2/759-0042

From: Tracey Guest

Date: 5/30/01

Message: Modern Maturity article

Total Number of Pages (including the cover page): 3

If, for some reason, you have not received the correct number of pages, please
call the sender at the following number and advise.

212/698-7533

A VIACOM COMPANY

05-30-01 10:24am

T-013 P.02/03 F-127

facetoface

The World
of Dr. K

by Claudia Dreifus

A I don't think we have any one [enemy] anymore. We have a plethora of issues before us. I think the emergence of China as a major country is a challenge to America and to the international system. It is a test for us: whether we can live in a world in which we are the most powerful country, but in which we do not insist on dominating. [Otherwise] we will use more and more of our resources and expend our energy, as we have recently, by turning foreign policy into a series of domestic issues. And we will lose our relevance.

Now, it could happen that China becomes our enemy. But it is not foreordained. And it should not happen as a result of our actions.

TOP, CHRISTOPHER WAHL; BOTTOM: BETTMANN/CORBIS

July/August 2001 *mm* 25

05-30-01

10:24am

+12126987336

T-013

P.03/03

F-127

facetoface

support the development of a U.S. "Star
Wars"-type program, which the Chinese
find extremely threatening.

A I know it's an axiomatic view of the Left around the world that missile defense is sin- ful, and that it's desirable to keep each nation as vulnerable as possible. But that's a debatable premise. The U.S. must defend itself against whoever has missiles that would threaten the United States. And you don't have to be able to name an enemy.

Q What would you prescribe at this moment in the Middle East?

A Specifically, one could couple the exis-
tence of a Palestinian state with some
agreement about coexistence with Israel—
and leave such issues like the future of
Jerusalem to some administrative agreement
that does not have the element of finality

Q Do you see that happening?

A I think it's possible. I think it is not pos-
sible to make an agreement that
settles all issues for all eternity.

Q Why did last year's Camp David meeting fall apart?

A The Arab-Israeli conflict went from an irreconcilable cultural clash to a belief that maybe

it was all a terrible misunderstanding—and
that if only the psychological barriers could
be removed, a final settlement would be
quite easy. This is what led Clinton to organ-
ize Camp David, in the belief that in one ses-
sion you could finish the peace process. It
turned out that there were deeply religious
and philosophical obstacles. As a result,
both parties have trapped themselves and
have pushed the situation almost back to the
point where it was when the peace process
started. I think we have to go back to a
much more modest understanding. We have
to get back to coexistence.

Q There was a time when this country pro-
duced giants in foreign policy—Dean Ache-
son and George Kennan. Why has no one
of comparable stature emerged?

A Because our politics has become bru-
tally competitive. When I was in graduate
school, we thought government service was
a high calling. Now, foreign policy is not a
subject that occupies budding careers. So
there is no comparable group to the ones

Q In his book on the Vietnam War, for-
mer Secretary of Defense Robert McNa-
mara wrote that we were "terribly wrong"

A Well, I don't think we were wrong. We made a mistake. We applied the values by which we had conducted post-[World War II] reconstruction to cultures and circumstances ... to which they really did not fit. I do not think it was a moral mistake. The motive was noble. I don't think Vietnam was the place to exercise it.

Q Did you say that then?

A Then, I didn't understand it well enough. I said it as soon as I visited Vietnam, in 1965. I said that the war could not possibly be won that way ... and I urged a negotiated outcome.

Q As someone who lived through the Nixon near-impeachment, how did you feel watching the Clinton impeachment?

'I was the devil incarnate? I was
too power-oriented for liberals,
too conciliatory for conservatives.'

A I was opposed to the impeachment. The correct outcome would have been some form of censure by the Congress. I am very worried about turning into a kind of parliamentary system by using the impeachment process to get rid of our chief executives.

Our media culture makes it so that once
a crisis starts, it almost cannot end. I saw
in the Nixon period this growing preoccu-
pation with survival from day to day and
the focus on technical details not decisive
for the future of the country.

Q Why, in the Reagan era, did many con-
servatives consider you the devil incarnate?

A I was the devil incarnate? Well, some of the conservatives were looking to conduct foreign policy as a crusade. Some of the liberals wanted a morality play. So I was probably too power-oriented for the liberals, and too conciliatory for the conservatives.

Claudia Dreifus' latest book of interviews, *Scientific Conversations*, will be published in October. For an extended interview, go to www.modernmaturity.org.

CHRISTOPHER WALK

26 mm July/august 2001

HENRY KISSINGER TRANSCRIPT

CHECKED AGAINST TAPE

HK: My problem with the New York Times starts with the new publisher, not with the old. But it's not a vendetta. It's a tone. They haven't done anything to me, I have no personal concerns.

Q: I believe we also have a mutual friend in Karsten Voigt.

K: Oh yes...Karsten Voigt, I mean this is not...Oh, I like him very much.

Q: I usually stay with him when I'm in Germany

K: When you are in Germany, in Berlin.

Q: Yah. (A dog enters the room) Ah, a sweet puppy.

K: (To the dog) Yes, my sweetheart, my good girl..

Q: I feel that if we can just give this enough time, we can do a fabulous interview.

HK: Well, we'll have two...we have about 45 minutes
Friday.

Q: The President is on his way to Vietnam today.

HK: Yes.

Q: In your book, in your new book which comes out in June, and this will not come out till June, one can almost hear your annoyance with the epidemic of apologies that we've been sending out, for the last few years.

HENRY KISSINGER TRANSCRIPT

CHECKED AGAINST TAPE

HK: Well, we'll have two...we have about 45 minut
Friday.

HK: Yes.

HENRY KISSINGER TRANSCRIPT

CHECKED AGAINST TAPE

K: Oh yes...Karsten Voigt, I mean this is not true, I like him very much.

K: (To the dog) Yes, my sweetheart, my good girl...She's getting too old.

HK: Well, we'll have two...we have about 45 minutes now and about 35 minutes on Friday.

HK: Yes.

Q: Yes, I've read the manuscript.

HK: Wait a minute. Which one?

Q: The manuscript to the book that comes out in June.

HK: But which version have you read? Because it was rewritten, major parts of it.

Q: Whatever version that exists as of three weeks ago. But I have an impression, and let's just ... I'm not going to quote from it.

HK: But a much better version is around now. Much better, no comparison.

Q: Well, I have a sense of your ideas.

HK: Yes. But you know ...

Q: I'm not going to quote specifically from it because it's too early.

HK: Well, I think that it's wrong for the President of the United States to go around the world apologizing in various countries for the alleged misdeeds of various as of his predecessors, drawn from the vocabulary of the Vietnam protest. When foreign nations deal with us, they have to assume a certain continuity of philosophy. And actually what you read was not intended to refer primarily to Vietnam.

Q: Well, what was it then, that you referred to?

HK: Well, it was meant to refer to apologizing all over Africa for our part in the absence of democratic institutions in those countries. The leaders of those countries were almost invariably those who had lead the independence struggle. And the United States had a very marginal influence if any, in selecting the leaders. And

2

Except for the Congo, I really don't know any place where the United States played a role in installing a leader in Africa

[Y]

Q: Well, and foremost...

HK: And then, he is apologizing really for the alleged support of Junta(?), and he apologized to Iran for the removal of Mossedegh(?). This is a separating event from a historical context. And it is always done with the argument that other people at the time of the Cold War inventions or actions... as if the Cold War were some invention. There were real problems, and whether they were treated well or badly, it is open for discussion.

But not in the categories that were invented 30 years later. I thought it was inappropriate. Not inappropriate for us to have a domestic discussion of these issues. I'm talking about the President of the United States apologizing ABROAD for these things. Actions of predecessors in a different context.

Q: He's not the only one who has apologized. I mean, this seems to be a trend.

HK: Well, he is the President of the United States.

Q: In his book on the Vietnam War, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara wrote, "We were wrong, tragically wrong." How do you feel aesthetically, politically about him saying something like that?

HK: Well, I don't think we were wrong. We made a mistake.

Q: What was that mistake?

HK: The mistake in Vietnam was that we applied the values by which we had conducted the post-war reconstruction to cultures and circumstances in which it was

3

critics, I do not think it was a moral mistake I think it was a mistake of historical
imagination.

The motive was noble. We wanted to bring democracy to a region of the world that
was engaged in civil war. And to prevent the spread of communism--this was our
operating philosophy throughout the Cold War period. I understand that objective. I
don't think Vietnam was the place to exercise it.

Q: Did you say that then?

HK: Then, I didn't understand it well enough and I didn't say I don't know what I said then because I was not involved in Asian policy. I said as soon as I visited Vietnam, and the first time that was in 1965, I said that the war could not possibly be won that way.

Q: With this nation building and ...

HK: And I'm urged to ... negotiated outcome. But when I parted company with the protesters was in treating the War as a moral stain on America and as a reflection on American moral inadequacies.

Q: One of the (Overlap)

HK: But I certainly I don't want to make this interview this book is not about Vietnam.

Q: No, and clearly this interview is a general interview but there's ...

HK: I am amazed they gave you the manuscript. It was so unready.

what you were saying and thinking. As someone who lived through the hell of the
Nixon impeachment and the subsequent resignation, how did you feel last year as
you watched the Clinton impeachment?

HK: I was opposed to the impeachment.

Q: You were?

HK: And I thought that the correct outcome would have been some form of
censure by the Congress of what had been done. I am very worried about turning
our system into a kind of parliamentary system by using the impeachment process to
get rid of our chief executives. So I did not favor the impeachment process.

Q: But your feelings as you watched it?

HK: Well, I had a lot of sympathy for what people were going through. I think that CLINTON was a President unusually given to operate in a kind at the edge of legal procedures. But I did not think impeachment was the right way to deal with it.

Q: So when you say you had sympathy ... for theFACTORS object?

HK: I had sympathy for the object, sure.

Q: Could you elaborate a little bit?

HK: Well, I've been through procedures every day, there is something about our media culture now that once a crisis starts, it almost cannot end. And you cannot hide from the repetition of news stories, what is new or what is a recycling of what has already been covered. And therefore, I saw in the Nixon period this growing preoccupation with survival from day to day and the focus on technical

[Y]

5

country. So for all of these reasons, I was hoping that the impeachment process
would come to an end, and indeed that there wouldn't be an impeachment.

Q: I almost don't want to ask you today about the Presidential race, because we are talking about something that will be published in June, and it seems like a million years away. And for the reasons you've just cited, it will be old news. But to go back a bit, one of the things that always puzzled me in reading about you was why so many conservatives had animosity towards you. During the Reagan administration despite your heading that Commission on Central America, it often seemed like for many of the Reagan Republicans, Kissinger was the devil incarnate.

HK: Nixon?

Q: No, during the Reagan period.

HK: Nixon was the devil incarnate?

Q: No, no, Kissinger.

HK: I was the devil incarnate?

Q: For the neo-cons ... and the conservatives.

HK: (Pensively, ironically) Yes, I united American people, the intellectuals. I have no trouble with the American people. Well, some of the conservatives are looking to conduct foreign policy as a crusade, and as a confrontation between good and evil, and they want ultimate showdowns. Some of the liberals wanted to turn it into a morality play.

And in my belief is more historical. I believe that foreign policy shapes the history of a country and not any one aspect of which may not be conclusive. Every aspect of it

idea. So I was probably too power-oriented for the liberals, and too conciliatory for the conservatives.

Q: Conciliatory with whom?

HK: I did not say ... there was one word ... you see ... you also have to understand that some of the conservative agenda of the '80s was shaped by people who had been radical liberals in the '60s and early '70s, and who converted in the early '70s to conservatism, and who therefore had no recollection of what this country had gone through during the Vietnam trauma. When I was in office, under both Nixon and Ford, I felt that our country had to avoid these oscillations between over-commitment and despondency and dedicate itself to a program of measurable objectives. And the crusaders on the other side wanted final outcomes. So some of the conservatives preferred a more confrontational course than I favored.

Q: Well, I think specifically that they were very annoyed about the détente?

HK: Well, I mean, annoyed about détente, What did one mean by détente? I mean, that's really the question about détente. This was a country that had gone through a decade of a bitter conflict, and many of the population, certainly many of the Intellectual population, thought it was unjustified. So I believed we owed it to our public to demonstrate that we were not an obstacle to peace, and practically were contributors to peace.

We thought we would make an attempt to help bring about the transformation of the Soviet Union from a cause to a nation. We were very tough, even ruthless in seeking to prevent the expansion of the Soviet sphere. And on every challenge to the dividing line, we resisted.

showdown about nuclear readiness. And we did not think that was the arena in which we faced the overwhelming facts. Because if there was a threat, it was the gradual expansion of the Soviet sphere, and not an all-out assault on the United States.

Q: The Helsinki Accords, which you negotiated ... a lot of people now say that is the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union.

HK: Yes

Q: But you are not credited for that. Is it the beginning of the end?

HK: It's one of the contributing factors. And in fairness, I don't want to say that I foresaw all the consequences. To us the Helsinki Accords were part of a mosiac in which we tied down the Soviets to a series of commitments, which we had no illusions, necessarily, that they would keep, but which would then improve our capacity for resistance, if they didn't keep them. In the Helsinki Accords, the two provisions that made historically the biggest difference were the three provisions. One was that boundaries could be changed in Europe by peaceful means. It was not that they were sacrosanct, only that they couldn't be changed by force.

Q: Which in theory protected some of the eastern countries wanting to break away?

HK: From what?

Q: From the Soviet Union.

HK: Yes. Secondly, that each country which was part of the same provision was free to choose its own alliances--which was an attack on the Brezhnev doctrine.

8

humanitarian conduct, for the first time, the subject of international judgement, of
international assessment. Now that last provision we thought we might use if the
Soviet Union repressed dissidents as they had in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. We
did not imagine that the dissidents would use it as an offensive weapon against the
Soviet Union. We were delighted, but that wasn't certainly how hecht was going to
how vailant Walesa (Switch in tone) But let me understand, what is the purpose of
this interview? I thought it was about my book, and not about my history.

Q: It's a general interview ... As all of these interviews are, it is a general broad interview about a person's philosophy, ideas, and we will be discussing the book.

But ...

HK: Not (Inaudible) profile.

Q: To some degree, yes, let me get ...

HK: There is nothing in the book that deals with any of this. And what chapters have you read?

Q: I looked through the whole manuscript as much as I could. Let's go on so that we don't waste time.

HK: That was very naughty. They should never have done that.

Q: Well, I promised not to ...

HK: I'm not worried about this is not a case where I'm worried about your
revealing it. I'm worried about the fact that what you had seen is very, very
unfinished.

[Y]

9

CYJ

HK: And totally rewritten.

Q: I'd like to read a later version.

HK: I'd be happy to let you see the later version.

Q: Fine, I'll read it in the next day. I'll look through it.

HK: Okay, next week. There's a better version around.

Q: In the book you talk about how you are concerned with some off the conservatives and the neo-conservatives, are now using ...

HK: Look, I've taken almost all of this out. This is debates... this is no longer a relevant debate.

Q: About China?

HK: Not even about China.

Q: Well, that was what that question was to be. I was going to ask you if ... one of the things that was in the version I read was a quote where you basically thought it was wrong for some of the neo-conservatives to make China as the new target.

HK: Right.

Q: Do you want to talk about that?

HK: I don't want to aim at the neo-conservatives because this will not be the debate of the next few years.

10

enemy?

HK: I don't think we have anyone, anymore.

Q: Any one enemy? Then, what is the enemy?

HK: We have a plethora of problems. I think the emergence of China as a major country is a challenge to America and to the international system. And I think it is a test for us, whether we can live in world in which we are the most powerful country, but in which we do not insist on dominating, as we did in the Immediate post-war period. ~~It appears that any attempt by the United States to achieve a position of hegemony in the world will unite, in time, all the rest of the world against us,~~ and make us suffer the fate of other empires, ~~and that we will use more and more of our resources, our energy, by turning foreign policy into domestic issues.~~ And we will lose our relevance. Our challenge as a society is to turn foreign policy power into some sort of international consensus. ~~And that is a much more complex problem.~~ Now, it could happen that China becomes our enemy. But it is not foreordained, and it should not happen as a result of our actions.

Q: In the book you talk about the concern that there are people who are kind of solidified and hard against China already, that in the wake of the Cold War, there is a desire for an enemy.

HK: You know, the reason I sort of regret that you have seen this is the following, ~~are,~~ ed by when you write a book like this, you always have the temptation of what triggers you immediately, and what you want people to think ~~in two, three~~ years from now. A lot of the arguments that were made in the internal Republican debate last year, ~~are still~~ not going to be relevant in the future. There will be the problem of how to deal with China. That problem remains relevant. And it is true that there are people who see

CYJ

11

the Soviet Union was legitimized by a universal ideology, and (the Soviets) claimed they had universal relevance.

China does regard itself as a necessary guide to anybody else. The Soviet Union was surrounded by very weak countries; China is surrounded by quite strong countries.

So the idea of China marching around the world, when it has the almost insurmountable inconceivable task of moving over a billion people into the modern period, that it

should spend its resources countering what, for what purpose? So I don't believe it, of course. It is a realistic assessment. (Now) As China becomes stronger, it will become more influential. That is inherent in the strategy of a strong country, and that is weakening China. If China challenges us, we should resist. But that I do not believe is foreordained.

Q: Well, you advocate on one hand closer relations with China. And you also on the other had support a rededication to a strategic missile program. How does that affect each other?

HK: Not a strategic missile defense.

Q: Yes. Well then the revival of a kind of star wars project

HK: I know. It's an axiomatic view of the Left around the world, that missile defense is sinful and that it's desirable to keep each nation as vulnerable as possible on the proposition that, unless it is totally vulnerable, it may do dangerous things. But that's a debatable premise. I believe that this is an unrealistic concept in the present world.

Q: But who are we to be defended against?

12

not played the game of saying it's North Korea, or it's Iran. I include China, but I do not believe it is very likely that China will use nuclear missiles against the United States. Or Russia, I do not see how an American President of whatever party could, if he were an American citizen, face his people and say I had the means to protect you against a certain missile, but I kept you totally vulnerable on some abstract theory, according to which, if one weapon would kill ten million people, I will kill fifty million of the attackers. Because it's a great theory until you have to apply it.

**Q:** But some people are asking now, is it worth all this treasure to defend against an abstract enemy that you can't even name?

**HK:** Incidentally, talking about the Chinese, the Chinese know my views. It has not affected my personal relationship with the Chinese. And it's not meant as a device to keep China impotent. It's an insurance policy. People take out a lot of insurance policies. It's in the nature of a world in which nuclear weapons are proliferating, and you don't have to be able to name an enemy. I don't play that game. Nor do I say that the defense has to be airtight against any level of attack. I think that if you can bring about a situation in which an attacker has to do it at a level that forces consideration at a high level, that already worth something.

**Q:** How have you felt watching events in Korea unfold? Have they astonished you?

**HK:** I am reserving judgement on Korea for a while. Yes, it may have opened up a whole new area, but there are many possibilities. There is the possibility that North Korea is using it to establish itself as our principal interlocutor on the Korean peninsula and thereby lowering the standing of South Korea. There is the possibility that they think they can solve some of their economic problems without changing their

13

be able to control as it evolves. And we have to be open to all the possibilities.

I do not particularly appreciate their use in a country in which hundreds of thousands starve to death each year, the development of missiles and nuclear weapons becomes their form of international blackmail and the means of triggering a visit with the Secretary of State and perhaps even the President to their country in order to dispose of something they should never have done in the first place.

Q: What were your feelings as you watched Madeleine Albright go before the staged ceremonies in the final year of the Clinton Administraion? You've been to that movie, I mean, you have seen that sort of thing.

HK: Well, I would not have recommended the Secretary of State attend the ceremonies.

Q: Really?

HK: Not without more happening. Many people said it was the same as Nixon going to Beijing. Nixon's going to Beijing was a reversal of alliances and by itself, created an objective new reality. The visit (of Mrs. Albright) as of yet, changed nothing. A lot will depend on what happens afterwards.

Q: How would you rate Mrs. Albright as a Secretary of State?

HK: Look, she is a friend of mine, and anybody who has been in that position knows the complexity of the job.

Q: Let me ask you a question. I'm writing a book about women heads of state at the moment.

HK: Yeah, they are a hell of a lot tougher than men heads of state.

[Y]

14

Q: And more interesting.

HK: That too could be true.

Q: But I am wondering if you think that there is somewhat of a hinderance for a woman to be a Secretary of State if there were men in power who had trouble dealing with a woman.

HK: I think Madeleine handled that part of it quite effectively. I can't think of any situation in which she was handicapped.

Q: So she became the United States ...

HK: The Secretary of State represents the United States. And I think she has done a more than adequate job. I disagree with her on a number of things. I would not have handled Kosovo the way she did, but that is not reflection on a philosophical difference.

Q: The book has a lot about Kosovo in it.

HK: Yeah, but (Overlap)

Q: That's what I (Overlap), okay.

HK: I will say to you the interview is driving me mad.

Q: Well, I don't mean to drive you mad.

HK: I have put all of Kosovo and everything in that book about Kosovo in the first chapter, I've taken out because it was written for the wrong reason, when you write a book you go through phases - at least I go through phases, and I have turned all of it into more general issues.

15

Q: Let me ask you, and I don't know if this is still in the book. But you have a moment when you discuss what things that you have to Deng said to you. Is that still there?

HK: Yeah.

Q: Yeah. And you say that he repeated six times to you that if stability had been lost and that it would have taken a generation to restore it.

HK: Yeah.

Q: Do you feel in retrospect that the decision that Chinese Communist Party leaders made in 1989 was the only one they could have made.

HK: I don't know that. I must say: I knew Deng for 20 years. I consider him one of the great reformers maybe of history, who took a society that was completely and totalitarian highly regimented and opened it up. And in the process he made the opposite mistake that Gorbachev made. Gorbachev thought that we could open up the politics and the economics would follow. Deng thought he could open up economics and didn't worry about the political evolution. And he didn't realize that the processes that he had started. And so I have understanding for his tragedy. Could he have done it better? Well, if you assume that all his successes were foreordained, and all the failures were avoidable, then this might have been avoidable....

Q: Did they have to send the tanks into Tiananmen Square?

HK: I regret that they sent the tanks into Tiananmen Square. But I still consider Deng a great reformer.

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Middle East.

[Y]

HK: No, I have to write that chapter now.

Q: As the father of shuttle diplomacy which was effective, (Dog makes move for affection. We talk about dogs. Do you think Bush will be more muscular with the Israelis than Gore might have been.

HK: I don't think that's the issue anymore.

Q: What's the issue?

HK: Well, the issue now is that for about a decade, ~~you know, my closest friends~~, of all these people was Rabin ~~not a political friend~~, He was my genuine friend.

Q: Is he irreplaceable in the world?

HK: Well, the Arab-Israeli conflict went from an irreconcilable cultural clash, to a belief that maybe it was all a terrible misunderstanding, and that if only the psychological barriers could be removed, a final settlement ~~was quite easy.~~ And this is what led Barak to go to Camp David, and Clinton to organize Camp David in the belief that in one session, you could finish the peace process.

But it turned out that they were deeply religious and philosophical obsticles. And so ~~that's as a result, all the parties trapped themselves and have made the situation~~, ~~have been pushed~~ almost back to the point where it was when the peace process started. It is one thing to settle territorial disputes. And it is another to ask for a compromise ~~on~~ holy places. And when Clinton kept sending emissaries around to the other Arabs, asking them to reach a compromise, he was creating a situation in which ~~Arafat~~, the other Arabs wanted Arafat to be a local leader. But by becoming the defender of the holy places, he was again an Arab leader. So everybody was trapped by their

17

understanding, We have to get back to co-existence.

Q: Well, how do you do that?

HK: Well, it has to be done, somewhere along existing dividing lines and territorial adjustments from Camp David. But I don't think that the issue of Jerusalem can be solved?) right now.

Q: Many people in the work of all of this have wondered what Barak was thinking in terms of letting Ariel Sharon go into the Moslim holy places...?

HK: The Sharon thing was irrelevant.

Q: Irrelevant?

HK: Irrelevant, it gave a pretext of something that was certain to (Inaudible).

Q: But it absolutely set the fire.

HK: No, it gave the pretext of the fire. You don't get uprisings all over a territory, with stones prepared, and ambulances only because of one incident. Nobody can believe that.

Q: No, of course not, but they've always been prepared for that sort of thing.

HK: They haven't always been prepared. I think the outcome of Camp David, one way or the other, was going to be something like that. And I said that all along.

Q: Can you elaborate? Because most people would think that in a peace negotiation, the outcome is peace.

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understandably set out with Arafat that he should make a proposal that he should sign a statement that he has no further claims. It's not possible. But there are a million refugees in camps. And you can avoid pressing the claim, as it's an factual matter that he can do.

Q: But he can't sign it.

HK: He can't say it. And so there was a terrible misunderstanding.

Q: But surely Barak was smart enough to know this.

HK: No, he wasn't. Israel has become a sort of high tech middle class society that thought all they needed was a deal. They are in the 21st Century, and yet philosophically some of the Arabs in the 17th Century in terms of religious convictions. And it was a whole series of things like this.

Q: So you think the kind of things that Samuel Huntington has written about the clashes of civilization are on target?

HK: I think it's on target and not on target in assuming that whenever there is a clash of culture, there must be conflict. But it does mean that in the clash of culture, each side has to be careful not to impose its cultural values on the other. Because if it does, disputes become intractable.

I do not question the solution that cross-cultural lines are achievable and most of the time desirable. But the very attempt to make a final definitive resolution, on the territory in which each side believes it is entitled to their own territory, and certainly the Arabs believe this, the Palestinians believe this, created a tension that with some thoughtfulness, could have been avoided.

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fuzzy?

HK: Or partial.

Q: But wasn't the Camp David compromises that were being suggested, they weren't giving them all of these ways ...

HK: You can't compromise religious convictions. The territory can be compromised. There is no urgency either to do it at this time. When people said if they don't do it, ~~they declared~~ a state, so what? Let them declare a state. That's ~~the inevitable result of outcome anyway.~~

Q: And if they then declared a state, would that then lead to automatic conflict?

HK: I don't see why.

Q: If you were designing a policy for the next Secretary of State what would it look like now?

HK: I really think everybody should step back. I believe a new President should send somebody he trusts around and listen very carefully to all the parties'~~ to their tangibles ~~ as well as their intangible demands and try to inspire some confidence that we understand the problems. And then not come up with American solutions, but see in what area solutions are possible. Because all the parties are all so trapped. ~~Because~~ on the one hand, they cannot agree to what is on the table. But they cannot win any conflict. So some solutions will have to emerge.

Q: When I was in Israel in 1979, I was doing a story on how they were improving their cuisine.

HK: Their what?

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[v]

Q: Their food, and it seems ...

HK: Hasn't reached me yet.

Q: No. But it seems to me like the whole country was involved in smoking turkey, and it was just the (Inaudible), tastes just like ham, doesn't it?

HK: I don't know about how three million Jewish mothers can produce such appalling food.

Q: It's remarkable. At any rate ...

HK: It's not like any food that I know anywhere. It is not Jewish food either. I don't know what the hell it is.

Q: It really is weird. At any rate, one night I went to a restaurant, I was taken to a restaurant called Moishe's in Jerusalem which was run by a Moroccan Jew who was famous for his stuffed vegetables. And there was a guest book of all the famous people who had eaten there. I was told that it was a very exclusive restaurant and you needed reservations from God to go there. And you had just been there also.

HK: Yeah, I think I know the place too.

Q: And in the guest book which was proudly shown to us, you had signed "Henry Kissinger, Furth, Germany".

HK: What?

Q: You had signed the guest book, "Henry Kissinger, Furth Germany?".

HK: Germany?

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cyj

HK: I don't think that's true.

Q: Well, I saw it.

HK: "Furth, Germany?"

Q: Well, I always wondered about that. I thought it ...

HK: Impossible.

Q: Yeah, okay. I thought that perhaps you had been, you know, as they say in the South, "getting down" or gone folkie.

HK: Absolutely impossible.

Q: Okay, it never happened.

HK: Well, I don't know in what context it could conceivably have happened.

Q: Well, he said ... because I asked about it, that you had been there during the shuttle diplomacy period.

HK: But why would that bring Germany into it.

Q: Well, I thought maybe it was sort of like a Proustian thing.

HK: Like a what?

Q: It was Proustian ... that you were there and you were perhaps going back to an earlier placer ... no? Totally wrong.

HK: Most certainly. I just can't remember what the conceivable context of it would be.

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Q: I looked through the Walter Issacson book about you, I don't know if you like it...

HK: I hate it.

Q: Well, there is a letter in here that you wrote (Inaudible) from Germany, where you found the one Jewish survivor of Furth, and it was a letter to his relatives in the States. And it is so beautifully written and so moving that it made me think you could have been a great novelist.

HK: I don't think I ever had the passion to write.

Q: It's not the Henry Kissinger the world thinks of. It is a deeply emotional letter, sensitive and it is very deeply knowledgeable about human nature

HK: I haven't read the whole book but ... I don't deny that it is a letter that I wrote.

Q: The chapter on Pinochet...?

A: What I have done is I have written a long chapter called "Peace and Justice," on which I discuss the evolution of American thinking. It is a chapter of a hundred and seventy-six pages. It is not a chapter on Pinochet. At the very end of which, there is a discussion of the concept of universal juristiction and within that, I have a discussion of Pinochet.

Q: Well, in the book that I read, and I'm sure that that piece is there, you say that it is a disaster, the English detention of Pinochet...?

K: I think it was wrong, yes.

Q: Why?

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innocence of Pinochet. And I would not object and I do not object to a Chilean court trying him, or to a special court being set up by the United Nations on the model of the Yugoslav. I think the principle of an individual judge anywhere in the world (as was the case with a Spanish judge CD) being able to pursue any individual at his or her discretion, I think, is a very dangerous concept to establish independent of the guilt or innocence of Pinochet.

Q: In the book, you talk about the Presidential campaign having almost no foreign policy discussion.

A: Yes.

Q: How did we get to such a place where this is true?

A: I think at this moment, the American public does not think it is in danger from anybody. We are living through a phase of American triumphalism, in which we think the spread of ideas in both politics and economics, will automatically guarantee universal peace, and that our obligation is really not foreign policy anymore, but missionary work. And I think that is not a sustainable position because the world will come back and impinge on us.

Q: But it seems as if almost nothing but Elian Gonzales was discussed in the last election and the one semi foreign policy question wasn't one at all.

A: Because all the problems that I perceive in the world are medium and long term problems. How do you fit Russia into an international system, what is our relationship to a Europe that is becoming a political unit, what is the future of China that we have (industinct). What is our role in areas like Southeast Asia--where I think Indonesia is being turned into a debacle, partly by American actions. All of

[Y]

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American people as impacting on their immediate life.

And then you have Presidential candidates who are totally obsessed with the short-term consequences of their remarks, who are driven by focus groups. So it is very hard to imagine a Presidential candidate today who like Roosevelt in '37 would speak of "quarantining" an aggressor years down the road. But soon or later the world will impinge on us and then we will have to deal with it.

Q: In your book, you deal with the internationalization of American culture. That reality would be astonishing to a President like Coolidge who feel believe we even had an American culture. And now we have culture that we sell, and do. Do we under estimate how important that is?

A: You know, I think, basically, we don't care as a people, right now, whether it is or it isn't. It is, as a matter of fact, hugely important and certainly people are wearing blue jeans and watching American television around the world. So in that sense...

Why don't we do this...we are going to have a second interview, are we not?

(Interview ends--at his request. Turn off machine. I turn on machine again to get on tape exact meaning of what I've agreed to.

KISSINGER: What I understand is that I have the right to edit the transcript, not to change meaning, but to clean up the English...

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KISSINGER: That's correct.

KISSINGER: Yes.

DREIFUS: And I agree to that.

Q: Well, your comments were very interesting and very unexpected, and will surprise a lot of people.

OLGA: (Offering tea and cake.) My English is no good

HK: You are doing fine, Olga. I got her a picture from Kirk Douglas yesterday so I am now on good terms with Olga.

Q: I understand that Adam Michnik was going to come and see you.

HK: I had to cancel it because I was working.. I love Adam Michnik, remarkable man. Would have loved to have seen him, but I had to...So why don't we do one or two questions, and then sort of wind it up because I don't see where we are going to take this in any meaningful manner anymore. It's, you know, about done.

Q: I think you're focussing too much on (the fact that I've read the manuscript ...)

HK: Look, I've covered Deng. We've covered Pinochet. We covered Vietnam. Name me one constructive thing that I would consider that I would want to talk about for publication. Why would I want to talk about Deng now? Or about Pinochet?

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[y]

Q: I'm sorry, I only read it in the book. Forgive me for reading it in the book. I mean, I didn't get it out of thin air. I mean, I didn't come with a set agenda, I came with ...

HK: Well, they had a ... I don't know.

Q: It's not irreparable. But one of the things I found in whatever it was that I read, were some interesting comments from you about for instance the Seattle demonstrations and your feeling that while they were appalling and violent, they pointed to something that is legitimate that's out there.

HK: Can you tell me what are the subjects you want to cover today?

Q: IMF, globalization, Russia. You had said something about Rabin being a close friend but we never discussed ... never came to the end of that thought. And I was hoping you could finish it. Agenda for the new President, whoever that will be--a feeling about why the Europeans seem to build their unity on anti-Americanism.

HK: You see, with the best will in the world ... I'm not saying you start with any preconceived notion. You are reflecting exactly what you have. And what you have are sort of contentious points which I threw together to get myself started.

Q: But they do reflect your thinking, don't they? Where did they come from?

HK: Well, in the way first drafts reflect one's thinking ... they do not reflect my considered opinion in a comprehensive way. So we are in a ... on the other hand you have nothing else to base it on. So you are innocent here.

Q: So help me a little bit.

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By Ric Edelman

could also make the argument that the social cost was very high, and that the
political chaos in Indonesia is something it will suffer from for a long time.

Q: It's a little difficult to ask you today what advice you would give to an incoming President, because it's such a confusing matter as to who it will be.

HK: Well, that is what my book is attempting to do, but it's hard to summarize in two sentences.

Q: Well, one of the things I sense you are concerned about is ...

HK: But not the version you read. I don't know why they gave it to you. I raised more hell with Korda (Micheal) than I am with you.

Q: I'm sure you did. I'm sure you ruined Korda's day. But it doesn't ...

HK: It's awfully warm in here.

Q: Yes, it is.

(Dr. Kissinger attempts to open window.)

HK: Is it warm out?

Q: Can I do that? I work out with weights.

HK: Can you get it open?

Q: I got it! All the work I do with my trainer has some use!!! One senses, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you feel that with the fall of the Soviet Union, the prosperity, that there has developed a kind of complacency and almost for want of a better word, isolationism here.

HK: Triumphalism.

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Q: Triumphalism. And that it's not healthy.

HK: No. No, I think when you are as powerful as America is, you can either go the road towards trying to dominate the whole world, which in time could destroy us because it will unite people against us, and then turn every foreign policy problem into a domestic debate--or we can transform our achievements into some sort of international consensus which requires giving other societies a sense of participation in the process.

We have found that hard to do in either Party, which is not a political matter, for different reasons. And I think that would be the overwhelming challenge.

Q: Well, is the UN then the answer or ...

HK: Well, I think the UN has a certain role. Well, I think it is more the objectives which we proclaim and the methods by which we pursue them. And I think, in too many parts of the world today, there is a belief that America is hegemonious, and it's an irony this is said of a (Clinton) administration staffed by veterans of the Vietnam protest, and who have no particular intention to be hegemonious. But this is the general concern of many people about America today.

Q: Well, in Europe, where the US is synonymous with bad cooking and genetically engineered food. There is this sense that ... I feel like an international unity or an international unity is forged on sort of loathing of American culture.

HK: Well, on the one hand some resentment of American culture. But on the other hand they all imitate American culture. So it isn't that they offer an alternative culture. But I think Europe is sort of torn at this moment because to have the political identity at least the continentals and certainly France, they want to assert in

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HK: No.

Q: No?

HK: I didn't think there isn't any... much about Russia and what you have, I wrote... I believe that the general... that In the conduct of foreign policy it is very important to understand the history of societies with which you deal. I do not believe you can invent foreign policy for any society on the basis of some abstract model. But I think that a country that has had viscious forms of autocracy for 400 years, and has been an empire for most of that period, will ~~not~~ transform itself into a pluralistic American-style democracy from one day to the next. And therefore I think it is very important to understand what our priorities should be with respect to Russia. And the good thing we should try to achieve with Russia is: ~~we~~ to get it to leave their neighbors alone, which would be already a tremendous change.

If Russia, for any historic period, concentrates on developing its own resources--something which it has never done as a top priority--that will change the nature of their society in an extraordinary fundamental way. So again you have got all these bits and pieces of things.

Q: Well, I'd rather you just expand on my impressions and set it straight.

HK: I think that Russia is bringing Russia into the international system as a non-autocratic state is a very important objective. I think it is also a very complicated one, because Russia is part of Asia, and part of Europe. It has a shared part of its history with Europe, but it has never fully committed itself, and cannot because of its geography, through one of the regions, that it has oscillated back and forth in its priorities. And it has had a different religious background in the sense that the Russian Orthodox Church was always a state organ, compared to the Western Churches. Then concept of democracy was never as developed in Russia as it was in

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the West. It was developed as part of a small intellectual group in the Russian
capital.

So all of this now has to be indicated and we have made it too simple for ourselves
by identifying this process which Gorbachev and with Yeltsin, and not understanding
the complexities. And now I have noticed one of the European temptations is to try
to play with Russia as conceivably part of Europe. But I think it would be a major
change in Europe if Russia were considered more a part of Europe than America is.
There would be an intellectual revolution!

Q: So do you see it going that way?

HK: No, some of the things that the French did when Putin visited Paris sort of implied that there is a special security relationship that Russia and Europe can work up between themselves.

Q: But in the Clinton administration ... sort of attempts to placate Russia by
offering some kind of honorary membership with NATO or some ...

HK: I think that was ridiculous.

Q: Yeah?

HK: I think Russia should be offered serious participation and political acceptance.

But to offer it membership or honorary membership is really a most

(Inaudible) thing. So of course those were the technical arguments about a treaty,

but now that it is completed it's irrelevant. So most of this discussion is ...

Q: But you, Clinton sort of bet the farm on Yeltsin and it was a mistake.

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HK: Well, Clinton in my view doesn't really believe in NATO. And Clinton believes that the Cold War probably could have been avoided by a more understanding handling of Russia.

And so he fuzzes up the dividing line and I think the political dividing line can be fuzzed up, but there is no future if Russia is part of NATO and NATO has no meaning. On the other hand, we could not make major foreign policy moves without discussing it with Russia. There is a legal framework in the European security conference, which was created in Helsinki, with which we could consult with political matters as often as we want and we should do it frequently.

Q: One of the things you talk about ...

HK: Well, I think we make a meeting in which the membership of Kazakstan to 50 nations, are public relations exercises which destroy the meaning of NATO.

Q: Is NATO still important with the Soviet Union gone?

HK: Well, that is an interesting question and that is one of the issues that we are talking about. The question whether the two sides of the Atlantic, one of the points that I have made in the rewrite of the book which you have not seen as yet, is that Americans like to think of the world following one single formula, usually some form of Wilsonianism. But in fact there are at least three different worlds existing right now.

And it is the 21st century world which is Europe and the Americas. And there actually Wilsonian principles are quite applicable. Wars are highly improbable. Economic and political relations are very crucial. (Tape recorder briefly shut off) And then the question is since NATO is the only institutional link we have to Europe, what is its meaning in the contemporary world. It would be a pity to think that the democracies cannot develop some institutions. I actually would favor something like

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the trans-Atlantic free trade area. Then we have the world of Asia, which is more like 19th century Europe, had been if politically aligned.

Then we have the Middle East, which is more like 17th century Europe. And we as Americans have to try to deal with all of them, by the formulas appropriate for them.

And if we misunderstand what we are dealing with, we create the sort of debacle that we had Camp David this (last) summer.

Q: Which is?

HK: Which is to forget that in a universal reconciliation and general compromise of the Wilsonian world order, does not apply when one of the parties believes that there is a fundamental ideological or religious conflict. Because then, compromise is an insult.

Q: What would you have done differently?

HK: I would have done almost everything differently. I would not have assembled the meeting without knowing what the range of disagreements was. Or without having some definition of what the discernable outcome was. I'm not sure I would have aimed for a complete solution.

Q: But it was called for by a timetable in Oslo...

HK: Well that's...

Q: You can just ...

HK: It was called for that an agreement would be reached in that time frame. And then what happens when you don't reach an agreement? Then, you have to live through the consequences of not having the agreement. And that is probably what will happen, actually, where we are now, and that is what we'll have to be done now. It

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is now no longer possible to have an overall agreement, at least not for the
even if that were desirable. So I think that the attempt should be made to reach a
foresible future which is desirable. And Arafat said it from the
beginning.

Q: What did he say?

HK: He didn't want to come. He said, "we are not ready."

Q: Is there any way out of the mess now?

HK: It would have to be slow.

Q: You spoke about your friend Rabin. How would he have done things differently?

HK: I don't think he would have bet the farm on one negotiation. He was extremely thoughtful, also very cautious. He would not have had a negotiation whose outcome he couldn't describe. Barak is a commander of raiders and he wants to look at the objectives, saying, "This is my goal. So let's do it all at once." But Rabin was a strategist. I have respect for that. I respect Barak for what he was trying to do. But Clinton didn't help him because Clinton should have said, "this can't work". And instead he kept egging him on. The further they went down that road, more frustrated all the parties became. So now there is no basis within Israel, or the Palestinians for that overall solution.

Q: So where do things go from here, being that the alternative is unthinkable?

HK: One has to define a pattern of co-existence for a while. They have to coexist for a bit, and actually they may learn habits from you. You don't achieve reconciliation by writing it on a piece of paper. First they have to learn to coexist and I think it's big

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step backwards. But I wrote all of this several times during the summer when the negotiations still looked as if they were going succeed.

Q: Clinton's other supposed success was Northern Ireland. Is it an actual success?

HK: I have never addressed the problem of Northern Ireland. I think it was a political success. It was a similar type of problem and these things simply do not have grand finales. But again I don't know anything better in Northern Ireland that could have been done.

Q: So that you would grant him.

HK: I grant him high intelligence on all things.

Q: Bush, how will what is presented here be ... how will he be different?

HK: Well, first of all, I'm not at all sure that he will be President. But I think the difference between Gore and Bush is that Gore is sort of inscrutable. He really doesn't share his views with anybody. And one doesn't even know who his advisors are. Well, when and if he becomes President, then we'll know this. And Gore is of the view that looking at foreign policy as an agent of a global domestic transformation. And Bush would be more oriented towards a more precise definition of the American national interest. There would be some overlap, but I think overall, this would be the distinction.

Q: Condellza Rice was saying that there would be a policy of restraint, is that a code word for saying no more of these humanitarian missions?

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Charleston Choice

HK: No, but I think it may be a way of saying that, if you engaged in a humanitarian mission, you have to be able to describe an outcome. And you cannot have American military outposts all over the world, in non-concluded civil wars.

Q: Well, I know you're very critical of the Kosovo ...

HK: No, that's not perfectly correct either. I mean. It depends, on how you define the objective. If you define the objective as reducing the killing that is going on in Kosovo and giving the local population a greater scope for self-expression--which is an objective I approve--then the means chosen were inappropriate. To demand the military occupation of a country before anything has yet happened, seems to me wrong. But again I have written that at great length, so there is no point repeating it here.

Once the war started, I was one of the strongest public defenders of it. Because then I thought it was important for me to also thought it was wrong for NATO to make demands beyond the defensive purposes for which it was formed, at a time when we were trying to bring Russia into the international system. So the methods I was much more sympathetic to the message of Holbrook, who wanted to put in as many UN inspectors as possible to reduce the scope of the civil war. It was taking longer than before, but now we have replaced one ethnic group with another. And we have put ourselves into a spot where, what will be the outcome now that a new Democratic government in Serbia?

Q: Well, surely that's good.

HK: Not really. That's good. But what if they demand that we have never denied that they have sovereignty in Kosovo? Are we back to the original problem?

Q: But you don't have a million refugees all over Europe.

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Where We Take Our Friends

HK: Well, I don't think there would have been a million refugees with other measures (Inaudible) (tried there) had

Q: When you talk about a possibility of economic crisis in the US ... this generation of young people have never really known the kind of suffering and dislocation that an economic crisis would mean.

HK: I don't know whether the younger generation would react to any crisis because they have never lived through economic crisis or military crisis. If we talk to them about the Korean War for example, you go to any Ivy League school, they wouldn't know whether that was before or after the Spanish American War. It has no operational meaning to them. The Cold War has no meaning to them. So you have to focus much more on economics than on politics.

Q: You wrote that ...

HK: They have been brought up on computers rather than books, which in itself was a totally different outlook on the world.

Q: But what I'm asking is do you think they are tough enough to handle down-times?

HK: Well, they're tough all right. I mean, in their economic competitiveness with each other, they certainly don't lack toughness. But they maybe tough enough. But whether they know how to do it, I don't know. When you look at Franklin Roosevelt, the great leaders were people who had a vision of the future and were willing to move towards it, if necessary alone for awhile, until they could bring their people with them. Do we generate people now who have that sort of toughness? Probably in the economic world but not in the political world.

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Q: But if the economic world doesn't give them those fast fixes, the great fortunes and the easy way to make money in a way that I have never seen in my lifetime ...

HK: I don't blame them. It is a different culture. If you read the other day I read some letters that Theodore Roosevelt wrote to Senator Cabot Lodge. I mean, that was a highly educated man who could quote from the Greek classics, who could write about geography and history. Our present leadership group doesn't have that foundation. They are very competitive, very tough in a much foreshortened world.

Q: Toughness ... one of the things that seems to be a truism in US foreign policy is an unwillingness to sustain any losses in a battle.

HK: Yes, but that's a symptom that we are not serious. If you have a vital interest you use military force without being willing to suffer casualties, you are setting ourself up for potential disaster. You at least owe it to the families of those who are killed to be able to explain to them what caused the... (what was the word here?) If you can't do that, then you shouldn't use military force.

Q: Well, there was a kind of smugness about Kosovo, that there were no American casualties, except maybe in a car accident.

HK: Well, again I repeat, I supported Kosovo once it started, I objected to what America and NATO giving an ultimatum that one knew had to lead to war before any significant amount of any large-scale ethnic cleansing had started. I thought it was inappropriate to proceed in that manner. I would have strongly favored a greater UN presence and at some point might have supported military force.

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Q: But what about that aspect of not being willing to take any loses. If the policy had been well explained... there would have been a completely different reaction if there had been some casualties.

HK: Yes, but that's a very dangerous course to be engaged in. We should try it only for those things that we are willing to suffer casualties. I was willing to use ground forces in Kosovo once the war started.

Q: Well, no one else was.

HK: No, no, a number of people were. Prime Minister Blair was. Senator McCain was.

Q: Well, are you pleased with the way things turned out in Belgrade?

HK: Belgrade ... (Pause) But again in the completed version of my book you will have a more thoughtful analysis of Kosovo. Or you can read some things I wrote for Newsweek and the Washington Post.

Q: Those I think are online.

HK: We have to bring this to a conclusion.

Q: I hope you don't find this an annoying question. But, it's sort of a pop culture truism that Stanley Kubrick based, supposedly, Dr. Strangelove on your work. Did...

HK: I won't answer that question.

Q: Did you ever run in ...

HK: It's an unworthy question and it's one that I won't answer. You shouldn't ask it.

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Q: Did you ever (Overlap--run into him socially and what did he say) Well I ...

HK: It may be a pop cultural thing, it's a simple minded thing to say and there are people who know me and they can easily see in what sense these characterues apply. It presumes I love war and that I can hardly wait to get a war started.

Q: I was wondering if you'd ever run into Kubrick, in any point of your ...

HK: No.

Q: No.

HK: Nor do I know whether it's true that he based it on that. The fact that you people say that doesn't mean that is correct.

Q: Now, this may not be in your book anymore. But one of the things you mentioned was how astounded you were to go to the historical museum in Hanoi and see the degree to which they were absorbed with their conflict with China, and not that much with us.

HK: Well, that's what they showed me. They may have a wing of that museum that concentrates on their war with the United States.

Q: Let me ask one more question that may be regarded as unworthy but that indeed people will ask ...

HK: Not everybody would ask these questions. You are one of the few people that ever presumed to ask me that question about Dr. Strangelove. Go ahead, ask it. But you shouldn't think just because the people you move in the circle you move in, it holds these views, that that is a general view. You know, the public wouldn't even understand that question. But go ahead, ask the next one.

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Q: You are a great friend of China.

HK: Of what?

Q: China.

HK: Well, I think China is a very important country and it is going ahead, ask the question.

Q: Well, the question ... and this is a question my editor asked, is some people would say that ... is there a conflict of interest in ...?

HK: Why should there be, um? I mean, what is the conflict of interest?

Q: You represent businesses that want to work with China in your private consulting firm.

HK: Look, I have a thirty year record in expressing my views. Anybody who thinks my views are for sale should not have that opinion shouldn't read anything Write
I say, I'm not going to try to justify myself, you would be amazed, but I won't even go into what, if any money I'm making in China. But that's not the point. It's an insulting question.

Q: I don't mean it to be.

HK: It is an insulting question, whether you mean it to be or not.

Q: You say you were writing with ... the summer when you were not well.

HK: Look, I'll do this. You and I come from different worlds. We will not come to an understanding on any of these issues. You will do the best you can, and you will make as fair an interview as you can. But we should bring it to a conclusion. What's this? I wrote in the summer, what?

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Q: Well, this is not a deep question. But I'm fascinated ... I was friends with William Shirer, the late William Shirer.

HK: I know who he is, I've read him.

Q: And at the end of his life, he could hardly see but he found ways to write. He wrote a book about the death of Tolstoy. But it was the thing that kind of pulled him through the difficulties. What does writing do for you? Because it couldn't have been easy to write that way.

HK: Well, my life has been an attempt to make a difference. Which you can easily reconstruct from the experiences that I've had and what I've seen. Some of which parallel yours and some of which are different. And writing is one of the forms in which I do that. But I really think, why don't we bring it to a conclusion. I will look forward to seeing it. I don't want to see any quotes. And you are free to do what you want. And um... it's entirely up to you.

Q: I thank you for your time.

HK: I'm glad to have met you, I was impressed with your article.

Q: My grandfather, when he first came here, would walk across the George Washington Bridge every day, he was just so happy to be alive.

HK: Well, I was lucky enough to leave just before the Kristallnacht so I didn't experience the worst of it. Most of the people I knew who stayed behind, all of them saw the worst of it, including my grandparents. But I didn't. I didn't enjoy it, but I did not have the daily terror and the daily inconveniences of persecution. But they were not yet killing people when I left.

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Q: And you were young.

HK: I was young.

Q: So you could enjoy what was here...

HK: What?

Q: When you got here you could enjoy ...

HK: Oh, yeah.

Q: The air ...

HK: Well, it was ... well, we lived in ... it was a difficult life and you probably went through it yourself.

Q: Well, I was born here, as I've said.

HK: Oh, you were born here.

Q: But I was born close to it. So all the people around me had lived it, when I was growing up.

HK: Well, when six people live in two rooms, it's a little closed in, but I didn't think so at the time. Today I don't understand how we managed it. But in those days I thought it was normal. Okay, let's, you know ... I hope you read the book when it comes out.

Q: I certainly will.

HK: And maybe ...

Q: On Pinochet...?

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Kissinger: They really have done a wicked thing. What I have done a long chapter on called "Peace and Justice," in which I discuss the evolution of American thinking, which is a chapter of 176 triple spaced pages. At the very end of which...there is not a chapter on Pinochet...there is a discussion of the concept of universal juristiction and within that, I have a discussion of Pinochet.

Q: In the book that I read, and I'm sure that point is there, you say that you think it is a disaster what happened?

A: I think it was wrong, yes.

Q: Why?

A: Because it established a principle that any...It has nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of Pinochet. And I would not object and I do not object to a Chilean court trying him, or to a special court being set up by the United Nations on the model of the Yugoslav. I think the principle of an individual judge anywhere in the world (as was the case with a Spanish judge CD) being able to pursue any individual at his discretion, I think, is a very dangerous concept to establish, independent of the guilt or innocence of Pinochet.

A: Yes.

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danger from anybody. We are living through a phase of American triumphalism, in which we think the spread of ideas in both politics and economics, will automatically guarantee universal peace. And that our obligation is really not foreign policy anymore, but missionary work. And I think that is not a sustainable position because the world will come back and impinge on us.

A: Because all the problems that I perceive in the world...are medium and long term problems--how do you fit Russia into an international system, what is our relationship to a Europe that is becoming a political unit? What is the future of China that we have (indistinct) What is our role in areas like Southeast Asia--where I think Indonesia is being turned into a debacle, partly by American actions. All of these are medium and long term issues which are very hard to bring across to the American people as impacting on their immediate life.

And then you have Presidential candidates who are totally obsessed with the short term consequences of their remarks, who are driven by focus groups. So It is very hard to imagine a Presidential candidate today who like Roosevelt in '37 would speak of "quarantining" an aggressor years down the road. But soon or later the world will impinge on us and then we will have to deal with it.

A: You know, I think basically, we don't care--as a people, right now,