DR. KISSINGER'S BACKGROUNDERS - 1970

VOLUME I - JANUARY THRU AUGUST

<table><thead><tr><th>No.</th><th>Date</th><th>Description</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1</td><td>February 14</td><td>Administration Policy Concerning Toxins (9:45 A.M.)</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>February 14</td><td>Preparation of the President's Foreign Policy Message (10:10 A.M.)</td></tr><tr><td>✓ 3</td><td>February 16</td><td>U.S. Foreign Policy for the 1970's (5:13 P.M.)</td></tr><tr><td>✓ 4</td><td>February 16</td><td>U.S. Foreign Policy for the 1970's (7:15 P.M.)</td></tr><tr><td>✓ 5</td><td>February 18</td><td>U.S. Foreign Policy for the 1970's</td></tr><tr><td>6</td><td>March 6</td><td>President's Statement on Laos</td></tr><tr><td>7</td><td>April 20</td><td>President's Statement on Vietnam</td></tr><tr><td>8</td><td>April 30</td><td>President's Statement on Cambodia (7:40 P.M.)</td></tr><tr><td>9</td><td>April 30</td><td>President's Statement on Cambodia (8:14 P.M.)</td></tr><tr><td>10</td><td>May 1</td><td>President's Statement on Cambodia</td></tr><tr><td>11</td><td>May 9</td><td>President's Press Conference of May 8 (re Cambodia)</td></tr><tr><td>12</td><td>May 16</td><td>Re Cambodia (SEA) in Key Biscayne</td></tr><tr><td>✓ 13</td><td>June 26</td><td>Re U.S. Foreign Policy with Vogt & Sullivan (In San Clemente)</td></tr><tr><td>14</td><td>June 30</td><td>President's Report on Cambodia (10:05 A.M.) (In San Clemente)</td></tr><tr><td>15</td><td>June 30</td><td>Re Middle East, etc. 10:51 A.M. (In San Clemente)</td></tr><tr><td>16</td><td>August 14</td><td>With Mr. Sisco in New Orleans</td></tr><tr><td>17</td><td>August 19</td><td>Geneva Protocol</td></tr><tr><td>✓ 18</td><td>August 24</td><td>U.S. Foreign Policy & Asia (with Joe Sisco)(S.C.)</td></tr></tbody></table>

FOR RELEASE AT 6:00 P.M. EST

FEBRUARY 14, 1970

This Copy For

BACKGROUND BRIEFING
(Administration Policy Concerning Toxins)

AT THE WHITE HOUSE
(Key Biscayne, Florida)

WITH RON ZIEGLER, PRESS SECRETARY
TO THE PRESIDENT, AND HENRY
KISSINGER, ASSISTANT TO THE
PRESIDENT FOR NATIONAL SECURITY
AFFAIRS

FEBRUARY 14, 1970

SATURDAY AT 9:45 A.M. EST

MR. ZIEGLER: You have had a chance to read over the release which is for 6:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time regarding the President's decision on toxins.

Dr. Kissinger is here to take your questions regarding this subject this morning. You can attribute what Dr. Kissinger says to White House officials. You can quote directly, however, but attribute it not to Dr. Kissinger, but to White House officials.

DR. KISSINGER: Any questions?

Q Several of us were under the impression that this was all taken care of in the President's November 25 announcement. Can you describe what this additional factor is?

DR. KISSINGER: In the President's November 25 announcement we determined the policy for biological weapons and for chemical weapons. As it turns out, toxins are somewhere in between. Toxins are produced by biological or microbial processes. But they act like chemicals. They are classified as chemicals by the World Health Organization, for example, so they fell in between and this then raised the question of how they were to be treated.

The second problem is that from some military points of view toxins are more effective than some of the other weapons, some of the pure chemical weapons, so we felt we had to make a policy determination. The decision was made to act on the basis of how they are produced.

If we had not made this decision we would have had to keep the biological laboratories open to produce toxins. This would have raised questions about the good faith of the original decision about biological weapons since outsiders would not have been able to tell what we were actually doing in these biological laboratories, so, therefore, the President decided to put the toxins into the same category as biological weapons.

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Q As you know, there is a very, very large installation producing biological weapons primarily at Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and another large installation at Fort Detrick which is mainly centered on chemicals.

Now that the decisions have been made on biologicals and toxins, what is the future of those laboratories?

DR. KISSINGER: The installation at Fort Detrick also produces chemical weapons and the only biological part of this will be used for other purposes. With respect to the Pine Bluff installation, we are now studying how it can be used by the unclassified parts of the government such as HEW, and for the part of the research program under the Presidential decision that remains committed, such as developing immunization for some of the biological and toxin agents. But, at any rate, whatever work will be done there will be in an unclassified basis and will be in the open.

Q Henry, could you give us an example of a toxin-caused disease or a disease that a toxin can cause that would be familiar to all of us?

DR. KISSINGER: Yes. The common characteristics of toxin-caused diseases is that they are not contagious. The example of a toxin would be snake venom. Snake venom is a toxin. Food poisoning is a toxin. For that matter, but you would not know the effect of this, alcohol operates like a toxin.

Q Can you tell us whether we use any toxins in warfare now?

DR. KISSINGER: No, they are not.

Q In Vietnam?

DR. KISSINGER: No. They are extremely virulent when they are used.

Q Anthrax against livestock, is that a toxin or biological?

DR. KISSINGER: I think that would be a toxoid -- that is an antitoxin. I am not a scientist so don't hold me to this. Tetanus is a toxin. These are all examples of what would be in the toxin category.

Q Why were toxins not included in the November 25 statement? Was it just something that was overlooked by the people who did the research for that statement?

DR. KISSINGER: Yes. (Laughter)

Q What does that tell you about the quality of the staffing?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, the next time you write an article about changes in my staff, I have one more reason other than my personality. (Laughter) Quite seriously, the problem with the toxin was that because

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it is produced biologically and acts chemically, because we do not have large stocks of it, it fell between the cracks and it tells us that no matter how careful we are, something can fall between the cracks. It was a slipup. As soon as it was called to our attention, we started a full-scale study of the toxin problem on exactly the same basis as the biological and chemical warfare study. The recommendations were made to the President and he made his decision.

Q How did it come to your attention, that it had fallen between the cracks?

DR. KISSINGER: It came to my attention after the original statement because there were some queries from the Department of Defense regarding in what category toxins fell and this then caused us to start the formal study. We put that study through the same process, that is, we put it before an interdepartmental group and it went up through the NSC review group.

Q What is going to be the problem of disposing of the toxins that we already have stocked?

DR. KISSINGER: They are not very large quantities and, as I understand it, it is not a major problem to dispose of them because they are not very long-lasting in effect. But the technical side of this, I think, the Defense Department is better capable of explaining than I am. I have not been told that it presents any problems.

Q Doctor, I am not sure of Fort Detrick. You said only the biological activities at Fort Detrick will be affected by the November 25 order, and by this, and I infer from that, that they will be closed down.

DR. KISSINGER: No. What we are now doing is examining the biological facilities to see to what extent they could be used for unclassified research and for the defensive research that is authorized under the President's policy, that is, methods of immunization and other protective measures, but there will be no need for secret research in this field under this program.

Q About the chemical part of this, I remember on the November 25 order, do I infer from that statement the chemical aspects or chemical programs at Detrick will not be affected, that you are still going to be making chemical warfare agents at Fort Detrick? I had the idea that chemical warfare agents were covered in the November 25 statement.

DR. KISSINGER: Yes, they are covered in this way. The President reaffirmed the misuse of deadly chemical weapons. He extended its renunciation to incapacitating chemical agents. So the United States policy is that we will not use deadly or incapacitating chemical agents first.

On the other hand, we will reserve the right to use chemical agents in retaliation and, therefore, we are going to continue to produce chemical agents, but for those purposes only.

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MR. ZIEGLER: Jim, we will have the November 25 statement here for you to review.

Q Henry, what do we know about what potential enemies do with this toxin like the Chinese and the Russians? Do we have any idea of where they stand with this and what the dangers might be for a one-sided situation?

DR. KISSINGER: Yes. We, of course, looked into this problem as part of this review. Since much of the work on these matters is done in laboratories, it is not easy to get a fully accurate picture. What we know is to a considerable extent, of course, classified. To the best of our information, only the Soviet Union has some sort of a program but we don't believe it is of a very large scope. We also believe that we have other weapons of retaliation, including chemical and nuclear weapons which we could use if toxins were used against us.

We do not feel we must use toxins in reply if toxins were used against us as long as we have other means to which we can reply to the aggressor if he used toxins. So we believe that the assisting chemical program and other weapons we have are sufficient. We don't think that any country has a major program of toxins at this moment.

Q Could you tell us if the United States has ever used these toxins and, if so, where?

DR. KISSINGER: I am certain that the United States has never used toxins.

Q Has any nation, to your knowledge?

DR. KISSINGER: To the best of my knowledge, toxins have never been used.

Q There have been stories that the United States Government has trained the foreign military personnel in the use of bacteriological and chemical warfare. Are we continuing to do this? Do we have any training program for either national or foreigners in the training for this type of warfare today?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't want to answer the question because I really don't know. I am not aware that we do, but I think Defense would know that. I am not aware that we do. It has not come to my attention.

Q Would this order discontinue such a thing?

DR. KISSINGER: If people are being trained for biological warfare, since we have renounced biological warfare, I would expect that under this order the only training we would do is for defensive purposes, that is in methods of immunization and in methods of protection, but we would not train other people in offensive use of biological warfare or toxin warfare.

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Q There was one point about the November 25 decision which was not entirely clear at the time and maybe this would be a good time to raise the question. It had to do with the non-disabling chemicals, particularly tear gas. It was not clear from the papers that were put out whether the United States had decided against banning tear gas or had the President had simply decided not to make a decision on that question for a while.

Could you tell us which it is and whether any continuing review is being given to this problem?

DR. KISSINGER: The decision is that we will indicate that we do not believe that the Geneva protocol covers incapacitating agents that are also used domestically. Of course, the President always has the right to review policy. So the only decision that was made with respect to incapacitating agents at this time referred to the Geneva protocol.

Q In other words, you are still intending to use tear gas both abroad and at home?

DR. KISSINGER: For the time being, yes, sir.

Q Could you give us an example of some of the toxic weapons that now exist in our arsenal?

DR. KISSINGER: I can give you the general types. There are some bullets which have toxic material in them and they are being destroyed. Then there are various other categories of toxins which have effects similar to food poisoning. I don't think I need to go any further. At any rate, all the stocks are being disposed of.

Q To go back to Don's question on tear gas, I think the same issue was raised to defoliants. Is your answer the same?

DR. KISSINGER: They are in the same category.

Q Will any of these decisions move us closer to ratifying the genocide agreement?

DR. KISSINGER: We are in the final stages of a decision on that.

Q Henry, in destroying the excess stocks of nerve gas and other gases will toxins be included?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't know how you would define excess stocks. This position does not affect chemical weapons and we now considered it in a review of the matter of biological weapons, chemical weapons and toxins are included.

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Q The excess stock I am thinking of is the stock of chemical weapons at Okinawa and those at the Rocky Mountain arsenal.

DR. KISSINGER: They are being removed from Okinawa. That is clear. As other weapons become available and as other chemical weapons become available, the more out-dated ones will be disposed of.

Q Do we have any more biological weapons left?

DR. KISSINGER: I frankly don't know what the status of it is. They are in the process of being destroyed. I don't know what the exact status of it is at this moment.

Q Do you have any idea of when they will all be destroyed?

DR. KISSINGER: I think within a matter of months.

Q Just to refresh our recollection, can you state the difference in the November 25th announcement on bacteriological and chemical? I think I understand, but I want to be sure.

DR. KISSINGER: With respect to biological weapons, the President, on November 25th, renounced the production and use of biological weapons. We will have the statement, I understand, here so that you can get the correct terms about it. We confined the American program with respect to biological weapons to defensive research and development only; that is to say, the research program of the United States will concentrate on methods of immunization and methods of protection against a possible enemy attack.

This might require the production of very minor quantities of the biological agent that produced the illness in order to determine the immunization requirements, but this is the thrust of the program. By the decision that the President is announcing today that same prohibition or that same general category of regulations is applied to toxins.

Henceforth, the United States is renouncing the offensive use of toxins, the production of toxins and it will confine its program with respect to toxins to defensive research and development; that is to say, to methods of immunization and protection.

With respect to chemicals, the decision at the end of November was that the United States, as I said before, would renounce the first use of chemicals, either lethal or incapacitating.

Now, let me say one other thing simply to complete the picture: It may be possible to produce toxins by chemical synthesis, as the statement states. Up to now it is not the only way they can be produced in any militarily useful quantity, through biological and bacteriological processes. However, there is reason to believe that they can

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be produced by chemical processes over a period of three to five years. To make a distinction between chemical production and biological production would produce an almost hopeless issue of definition. Therefore, we have decided to treat toxins in terms of their biological production and to classify them as biological weapons, no matter how they are produced, because the effect of even chemically produced toxins is the same as those of biologically produced ones.

I just state this for completeness because there is this theoretical possibility.

Q If they can be produced chemically we will not produce them?

DR. KISSINGER: If they can be produced chemically we still won't produce them.

Q You said in the last paragraph, "The United States hopes that other nations will follow our example with respect to both biological and toxin weapons." Since November 25th, do we have any indication that any other nation has modified its policies?

DR. KISSINGER: No.

Q Henry, is the most useful and practical way for the military to spread toxins by dumping them into water supplies?

DR. KISSINGER: No. I think the most useful way is to spread them in a way that they can be inhaled.

Q You can inhale a toxin and it would be deadly?

DR. KISSINGER: Yes, and it takes only very small quantities to be very damaging, deadly.

Q Are toxin weapons produced now at any other spot other than Fort Detrick and Pine Bluff?

DR. KISSINGER: To the best of my knowledge, no. I understand that there is, of course, a certain commercial production for anti-snake bite venom and tetanus and so forth. We are talking now about military users and the answer to that is no.

Q Have they been producing it militarily and has there been some policy or some guidelines for its use up until now?

DR. KISSINGER: They have been producing it in rather small quantities and the general context has been to use it only in retaliation. That case has not arisen.

Q How long has the research program been going on -- since World War II?

DR. KISSINGER: I really can't tell you.

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Q At the time of the November 25th announcement you were asked whether you felt that this announcement would have any beneficial effect on the SALT talks. I have forgotten your answer, but let me ask you the same question with respect to today's announcement.

DR. KISSINGER: I think we are demonstrating by this
that we are serious about controlling the arms race, that we
are prepared to take risks for peace, that we are willing to
forego some seeming unilateral benefits and it is a testimony
to the spirit with which we approach these negotiations.

It doesn't have a direct relation to the SALT, but
it might contribute to the attitude and to the atmosphere.

THE PRESS: Thank you.

END

(AT 10:10 A.M. EST)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

This Copy

BACKGROUND BRIEFING
(Preparation of the President's Foreign Policy Message)

FEBRUARY 14, 1970

AT 10:10 A.M. EST

SATURDAY

MR. ZIEGLER: As I mentioned yesterday, the President
has been working on his upcoming foreign policy message and
has been, of course, in close discussion with Dr. Kissinger
on this.

Q Could we get Dr. Kissinger back for some amplification on that, Ron?

MR. ZIEGLER: That was the big announcement I was
going to make, Gene. (Laughter)

Let me say this in regard to the
President's foreign policy message. Following discussions
with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,
the President has decided that there should be a single,
comprehensive statement on foreign affairs and national
security policy.

This will be contained in the President's foreign
policy message. So, as there had been previously some
discussion on a foreign policy statement by the Department
of State and the statement by the Department of Defense, these
will no longer be forthcoming.

All of the matter on foreign policy and national
security policy will be contained in the President's message.

Following the forwarding of the message to Congress,
the two Secretaries, the Secretary of Defense, and the
Secretary of State, in testifying before the concerned
committees of Congress, will amplify and supplement those
aspects of the report which fall into their respective
responsibilities.

Although Dr. Kissinger will not be able to be
specific as to the content of the message which is for
release on Wednesday, February 18th, I think he could maybe
discuss with you to some degree the preparation process and
give you some indication about the tone of the forthcoming
message. This is for your BACKGROUND.

Q Are you saying there will be no Defense
Department posture statement?

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MR. ZIEGLER: There will be a Defense statement but it will deal with the programs in the budget, not in the context as has been discussed.

Q When is this for release, Ron, also for tonight?

MR. ZIEGLER: What Dr. Kissinger will cover in terms of the foreign policy message can be for immediate release.

Q So we get this clear, there has been over the past eight years a Defense Department posture statement by the Secretary of Defense which -- which, of course, the same matters are in the budget -- covers the posture of our defenses for the authorizing committees as well as the appropriating committees and so on. Is that going to continue or not?

MR. ZIEGLER: After the message which goes up on the 18th, a supplementary Defense program and budget material will be released.

Q Will that be the same as the Defense statement?

DR. KISSINGER: The Defense statement which will be released on the 20th will be more narrowly confined to Defense Department issues than has been the case in previous posture statements. It will not cover foreign policy in any detail and it will not discuss the general overall national security concerns.

It will confine itself primarily to the issues that are relevant to Defense policy. It will be a full statement of those issues in considerable detail and therefore it will parallel about two-thirds of the previous posture statement without the introductory material about the world situation.

Q Will there be a State Department supplement as well?

DR. KISSINGER: No, although in his testimony, of course, the Secretary of State will draw on the material that was prepared by the Department of State in its contribution to the overall Presidential report.

Q So, the plan of having a State Department posture statement which had been thought of for this year has been dropped in effect?

DR. KISSINGER: It has been dropped because as it turned out, a Presidential statement and a separate State Department statement would so much have covered the same material that it was decided to amalgamate the two on the recommendation of the Secretary of State and officials of the Department of State have worked closely with us in producing a joint version which the President is going over now.

Q Why was the State Department posture statement written?

DR. KISSINGER: Because there were many inputs. This is the first time that a comprehensive attempt was made to put the whole foreign policy together. It was thought at one time that there might be a division between a general contextual approach and a more detailed country-by-country approach. When one looked at it, it seemed that there was an artificial division and that the two really belonged together.

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There are a number of departments, as well as some
members of the NSC staff, who did various drafts and they
are being put together.

Q Will this propose any new policies, any new
doctrines? Will it give us a preview of the future?

DR. KISSINGER: It will give you a general account
of the President's philosophy in dealing with the issues
of national security and foreign policy, his view of the
relationship of these issues to each other and of the tasks
which he sees ahead. But it is primarily an account of what
was done with some general direction for the future.

It is not a statement that explains in great
detail the specific programs that are to be implemented.

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Q Do you expect this to deal with the subject of troop levels in Vietnam?

DR. KISSINGER: It will deal with the subject. It will, of course, have an account of the Vietnam policy and it will talk about the problems of Vietnamization. If you are asking if this gives a schedule of specific withdrawals, it will not do that.

Q I am asking it that way or I am asking from the general standpoint of the President's philosophy about U.S. troop levels in Vietnam.

DR. KISSINGER: It will explain the President's philosophy with respect to Vietnam policy and will give his assessment of the situation in Vietnam as he now sees it.

Q Dr. Kissinger, Secretary Laird said today that there is going to be a meeting of the Vietnam war allies in six or eight weeks.

Do you expect President Nixon to attend that meeting?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't think so. I am not aware of any Presidential travel plans. Ziegler doesn't tell me those things too far ahead of time.

Q How will this message be divided? Will it be by section of the world or physically how will it be made up?

DR. KISSINGER: It will be divided by major subject areas but within one of the categories of the subject areas there will be a geographic subdivision, not country by country, but by area.

Q We have been told that it will not announce the decision on the question of additional Sky Hawk and Phantom jet fighters for Israel.

When do you expect that decision to be made and announced?

DR. KISSINGER: We are in the process of examining this. I would not want to speculate beyond what the President has said in his press conference.

Q He has a deadline on a decision which he made for himself?

DR. KISSINGER: He has a deadline on a decision but not on an announcement. (Laughter)

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Q. Does it appear that he will be able to make the deadline he set for himself at this moment or is this one of the deadlines that may not turn out to be a deadline?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't know what those are.

Q. We have had some of these self-set deadlines before that that were unmet.

DR. KISSINGER: In this Administration?

Q. Yes.

DR. KISSINGER: It must be in Ehrlichman's area. (Laughter) I think we will come to a conclusion close to the deadline.

Q. Do you think it will be announced? What are the prospects?

DR. KISSINGER: One more day in the sun and I will tell them everything. (Laughter)

Q. You are the one who brought up the difference between an announcement. (Laughter)

Q. Do you have any idea when the announcement will be made?

DR. KISSINGER: I really don't know. First of all, I don't know what the decision will be. I don't know how we are going to handle it. Realistically, it will not be possible to make a decision without announcing it because the decision, whether it is affirmative or negative, something will happen or not happen, and that will become obvious. I think within a reasonable time after the decision is made you can expect it will become evident.

Q. When you think of this lengthy document, do you have any ball park estimate on the wordage?

DR. KISSINGER: I would guess it is close to 30,000 words, 25,000 to 30,000 words. That would be my guess.

Q. Henry, are you asking for any action from Congress on this?

DR. KISSINGER: No. This will be transmitted. Do you mean in the report?

Q. In terms of a resolution or in terms of any legislation?

DR. KISSINGER: No. This will be transmitted to Congress, of course, on Wednesday. But it is really an account of what was done and of the directions in which the President intends to go, and of the basic lines of administration policy.

It does not ask for specific legislative action and it does not ask for congressional endorsement.

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Q Dr. Kissinger, this doesn't apply to this message, but I think we would be remiss in not asking this question.

There is a story on page one of the Miami Herald this morning which says that in effect there is a new policy of firing first in reconnaissance flights over North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia which is described here as a new escalation of tension in the aerial war.

Has there been any change in the rules regarding what is called preemptive fire by reconnaissance flights?

DR. KISSINGER: I have not read the story so I can't comment on it. There has been no change in the basic rules.

MR. ZIEGLER: The remarks other than Henry's remarks on the toxin statement are for immediate release but they should be for BACKGROUND attributed to White House officials, but Henry has asked that you not quote him directly on that.

Thank you, Doctor. Welcome to Florida.

END

(AT 10:25 A.M. EST)

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This Copy For

BACKGROUND BRIEFING
(United States Foreign Policy for the 1970s)

AT THE WHITE HOUSE

WITH DR. HENRY A. KISSINGER,
ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR
NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS; ELLIOT
LEE RICHARDSON, UNDERSECRETARY OF
STATE; DAVID PACKARD, DEPUTY
SECRETARY OF DEFENSE; AND RON
ZIEGLER, PRESS SECRETARY TO THE
PRESIDENT

5:13 P.M. EST

FEBRUARY 16, 1970

MONDAY

MR. ZIEGLER: Let me restate the groundrules.

The President's remarks you can quote directly. What he said will remain under the same embargo as the content of the briefing today. What Dr. Kissinger and Undersecretary Richardson and Deputy Secretary Packard say today can be attributed to Administration officials. You can quote them directly, direct quotations, but it should be attributed to Administration officials -- Administration officials said, quote.

I think the advanced message which you have clearly states the embargo groundrules. It is embargoed for wire transmission until midnight Tuesday. It is embargoed for use until 12:00 noon on Wednesday.

The material discussed this afternoon falls into those same groundrules.

Dr. Kissinger.

DR. KISSINGER: Why don't we go immediately to questions?

Q Dr. Kissinger, on page 93 of the Defense section, at the top of the page, there is a statement about reaching agreement within the Government on four specific criteria for strategic sufficiency. Can you give us any more than what is there on that?

DR. KISSINGER: No, We thought that to list the actual criteria would be revealing security information that would help any potential opponent to plan with excessive precision. But we have established that four criteria which we believe define our notion of adequacy, and we are planning our forces accordingly and we are reviewing them as technology changes.

Q Dr. Kissinger, on page 91, are those figures, the statistics on the ballistic missiles and the submarine missiles, are those new, the projections for '70?

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DR. KISSINGER: They are accurate. I have seen them
in many unclassified versions.

Q What I am trying to get at is, is this the
first time the Government has backed up these figures?

DR. KISSINGER: Dave, you would know better than I do.

MR. PACKARD: I don't know whether these particular
figures have been given before. They represent the latest report
we have from the intelligence community. This is updated as of the
end of the year. I can't assure you that we have given these figures
out anywhere. They have probably gotten out. As you know, some of
these figures get out without having given them out. But these are
the latest figures.

Q How many of the 1,054 Soviet ICBMs are projected
as SS-9s?

DR. KISSINGER: We don't want to get into that
much detail. But I think Secretary Laird in his testimony
last year indicated that they would be moving towards the
300 figure.

Q Dr. Kissinger, on page 55, in the Vietnam
section, on negotiations, the statement is made that "One task
is to persuade the North Vietnamese Government to join us in
genuine negotiations leading toward a compromise settlement which
would assure the self-determination of the South Vietnamese
people and would also ensure the continued neutrality of Laos.
I don't ever remember the two being linked. Are they linked?

DR. KISSINGER: A settlement in Vietnam that does
not at the same time also lead to an observance of the 1962
Accords would have serious problems. We have always believed
that there was a relationship between these two. This is not
a new pronouncement. We have always held this view.

MR. RICHARDSON: I was going to say I think the record
will show that Ambassador Lodge and Ambassador Habib in Paris
have made this clear.

Q Dr. Kissinger, on that same page, the middle of
the page, there is a reference to Hanoi facing serious and
complicated issues, one of them being uncertainties in its
international support. What country is that a reference to?

DR. KISSINGER: The situation where Hanoi could with
confidence count for an unlimited period of time on a monolithic
degree of Communist support is cast into doubt, at least
to the extent that Sino-Soviet disputes might effect Hanoi's
confidence about the future. And what is meant by that statement
is not that Peking or Moscow are not supporting Hanoi now, but
as Hanoi looks into the future it does not have an unlimited
expectation of tranquility on the part of the countries that
are giving supporting aid.

Q Dr. Kissinger, on page 61 there is a statement,
"But the United States would view any effort by the Soviet Union
to seek predominance in the Middle East as a matter of grave
concern." Has a statement comparable to this in gravity been
issued by the President before first, or, secondly, by other members
of the Government?

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DR. KISSINGER: A statement to that effect has not been made in these words by the President, but it has always been an element of American policy. What we attempted to do here was to distinguish between those elements in the Middle East that relate to the Arab-Israeli dispute and those that may involve issues that go beyond the Arab-Israeli conflict. And we wanted to make clear that the United States does have interests in this region going beyond that.

Elliot, would you like to say something on that?

MR. RICHARDSON: No, I think you have covered it very well.

Q Doctor, could we call this a warning to the Soviets? Would that be too strong a word?

DR. KISSINGER: It is a statement of policy and it is a statement of fact. We don't make warnings.

Q Dr. Kissinger, the President used the word "watershed" in introducing this briefing this afternoon. If I understand watershed correctly, it means a separation, division, going in a new direction. I have not had a chance to read this. What are the watershed points in this foreign policy statement?

DR. KISSINGER: What the President meant is the fact that there now exists a comprehensive, philosophical statement of American foreign policy. It makes it clear that for better or worse our policies are not simply tactical responses to immediate situations, but that there exists a coherent picture of the world; that we are taking our action in relation to this picture; and that this document outlines his experience in foreign policy, national security policy and his expectations for the future.

So whatever debate is generated by this would have to be in terms of a general concept of foreign policy and not simply in terms of tactical responses to immediate situations.

Secondly, it is his belief and it is the Administration's belief that we are reaching the end of the post-war era, the end of the post-war era in the sense that in the immediate period after World War II the United States, among the non-Communist countries, was the only one that had emerged from the war with its society and its economy relatively intact. Therefore, it was natural that the United States would assume a predominant role anyplace where it felt that security of the non-Communist world was threatened.

This, in turn, imposed on us the requirement that we were trying to remedy immediate crisis situations rather than deal with the overall structure of peace, or, rather, we identified the overall structure of peace with the solution of immediate crisis.

This is ending now for a number of reasons. It is ending, according to this document and our convictions, because many other parts of the world have now regained a degree of cohesion, have grown into independence, which was, of course, not the case at the end of World War II, and are capable of assuming a greater responsibility, both for their security and for their problems.

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In these conditions, the United States should not
be the firemen running from one conflagration to the other, but
can address itself to the longer-term problems of a peaceful
international structure and leave to local responsibilities the
immediate task of construction.

In other words, the United States will participate
where it can make a difference. It will attempt to contribute
to the creation of regional organization where that is
appropriate, but the United States in this new era will have
to change its position from one of predominance to one of
partnership.

Now, we recognize -- and to pick up a point that
the President made in introducing this report -- that there
is a danger that in moving from predominance to partnership
some people may believe that we are moving towards disengagement
or returning to isolation. This is not the philosophy of this
Administration.

The philosophy of this Administration is to find a
basis for a long-term engagement in the world, one that is
consistent with the realities of the contemporary world, one
that we can sustain over an indefinite period of time, and one
that will give an impetus to our foreign policy of the same
order that the Marshall Plan conception did to the conditions
of 1947. Those conceptions were appropriate to the realities
of the '40s and '50s and early '60s and we are attempting
to find conceptions that are appropriate to the realities of the
'70s.

Q Dr. Kissinger, I wonder how you can relate
that to our special relationship to the Atlantic Alliance,
and particularly the President's own words, that we are a
leader of the Atlantic Alliance. Don't we have a commitment
there that an attack on one is considered an attack on all,
a special arrangement?

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DR. KISSINGER: We have a number of alliances, of course, and the President has repeatedly asserted that we intend to maintain our commitments.

With respect to NATO, as the report says, as the President has asserted repeatedly, we have a special relationship to Europe which does not grow out of the fact that there exists a legal document which defines our commitments, but which grows out of the fact that we consider the integrity, and the prosperity of Europe as vital to our own security.

And therefore, what we aim for in Europe is perfectly consistent with the general objectives that I have stated here.

We believe that Europe, being vital to our security, that the alliance, the continuation of NATO, is an essential attribute, an essential requirement of American foreign policy.

At the same time, we believe that the growth of European economic strength and political self-confidence will enable the Europeans over the years ahead to play a larger relative role, both intellectually and materially, within the alliance. And we will take great care, insofar as it is within our power and within our wisdom to make sure that this shift from American predominance to partnership will not be misunderstood either by potential adversaries or by long time friends as a move towards a disengagement of the American interests from Europe.

Indeed, we consider our European policy a test of the new conceptions and not inconsistent with it.

Q Dr. Kissinger, I seem to recall in a background briefing by a White House source following the Midway Conference, getting back ---

DR. KISSINGER: Did he have an accent?

Q Yes, sir, he did, rather recognizable.

I believe we were told then that in the negotiations, to seek a settlement in Vietnam, that it would be necessary that we arrive at an agreement that would settle the political issues, not only in Laos, but it was my understanding Cambodia, Thailand and what was old French Indochina, that we were seeking a package settlement.

I notice here only the neutrality of Laos is mentioned specifically. Is my memory faulty or have we changed the emphasis?

DR. KISSINGER: Of course, I read that backgrounder and I was very impressed by it. (Laughter). So far as I understood it. (Laughter).

Of course, Thailand was never part of French Indochina. But you are correct. We believe that the neutrality of Cambodia and Laos are an integral part of the Vietnam settlement. Cambodia was not especially mentioned in this report, because its neutrality is not as directly challenged and at issue as the one of Laos. But your recollection of the backgrounder is correct and it represents, it continues to represent our policy.

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Elliot, do you want to add anything?

MR. RICHARDSON: No. I think you covered it very well.

Referring again to the statements by Ambassador Lodge
in Paris and the proposals that had been put forward for
settlement, most especially in the President's speech of May 14,
a settlement embracing North and South Vietnam and Laos and
Cambodia has been always a part of the general curriculum at
which we have been aiming.

Q Dr. Kissinger, on page 98, you describe or
mention briefly the "1-1/2 war" strategy.

DR. KISSINGER: Yes.

Q I wonder if you could give us a little bit
more of your thinking there. Specifically, what does it mean
"assisting allies against non-Chinese threats in Asia, and
contending with a contingency elsewhere." And have you decided
on the force levels in peace time to do this, or is this
something that is yet to be decided?

DR. KISSINGER: We are not trying to have such a war.
We are trying to explain what we want to be prepared for.

Q Yes, I understand that.

DR. KISSINGER: The theory is that a Chinese attack
on an American ally would involve a major conflict. And,
therefore, as a shorthand for what we would consider a non-
major conflict in Asia, we have used the example of a non-
Chinese attack on an American ally, such as Korea, for example.

The force levels for this that would be required are
being determined now in the five-year review that we are under-
taking initially in the Defense Department and eventually before
the Defense Program Review Committee.

But they will be determined during the course of this
year.

Q Would the Vietnam War be considered a non-major
conflict under your definition?

DR. KISSINGER: Under this definition, the way it is
written, it would be hard to say that you could call it anything
else. But this definition is to be considered a form of
shorthand for the general strategy and for the general force
levels that we are going to maintain in peace time.

It is not an indication of the particular forces that
would be used in any one contingency, nor what we could build
up to in case of a protracted conflict.

Dave?

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MR. PACKARD: There are a couple of things I would like to say about this. As far as the force planning is concerned, the 1971 budget, as we have worked out in the Defense Department, is really sort of a transition budget. We still have the Vietnamese War to take into account.

We tried to take action in planning this budget which was generally consistent with the policies that are in this document, because we have been working with the State Department and the White House in developing these policies and it will be in our work in addressing the 1972 budget, which we have under way now, that we will begin to move ahead and address some of the specific questions about the forces that are needed for this so-called "1-1/2" strategy.

One of the problems with the "2-1/2 war" strategy is, as far as I can see, we were never able to develop and build the forces that were adequate to support that kind of a strategy.

I think the action we are taking this year to make a very careful evaluation of the world-wide interests, of the commitment and from that the forces that are necessary to meet those commitments has brought us down to a much closer tie between the requirements that are going to be placed on the Defense Department through this process and our ability to support those specific forces.

DR. KISSINGER: What we attempted to do was determine what a reasonable threat might be under foreseeable political conditions, how we would propose to meet such a threat as we could foresee it.

In other words, whether a simultaneous full-scale Soviet and Chinese attack was probable, whether if it were probable, it should be resisted by peace time general purpose forces primarily, and, thirdly, to bring our capabilities and doctrines in line with each other.

And all of these three considerations led in the direction that Dave Packard indicated.

Q In the section on Strategic reasons on Defense, you are quite explicit in saying that the decisions that the Johnson Administration made on strategic forces, letting the Soviet buildup continue while we restrained our own. You then go on I think to imply, at least as I read it, that you thought that that was a correct decision, but you never quite approved or disapproved of the Johnson Administration's handling and the situation that they gave you.

Is that a fair reading?

DR. KISSINGER: It is a fair reading of our description of how we got to where we are. We did not attempt in this document to judge the actions that the previous Administration took.

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What we sought to do in the document was describe the
situation which we found and the kind of actions, both in
doctrinal and interms of forces, that are made necessary for
us.

So, I would have to answer your question by saying
we are taking the situation that the previous Administration took
as given and we are going on from there. I would like to add
that the previous Administration faced a different order of
technology, that many decisions that we were taking in the
pre-MIRV, pre-accurate ICBM period may have been very appropriate
to that period and may nevertheless have imposed on us a
requirement to rethink the situation, just as we are sure
that successor Administrations will have to take a look at
our policies in the light of a changing technology.

But we did not attempt in this document to criticize.
We tried to state the facts as we found them.

Q Dr. Kissinger, are you implying that in this
relation of facts that there could have been decisions made
by the Johnson Administration within the realm of reasonable
possibility which would have prevented the Soviet Union from
achieving the degree or ability which it did achieve?

DR. KISSINGER: No, I think it was clear that beyond
a certain point, the significance of numbers changes, and
that regardless of what decisions a previous Administration
might have taken, it is the growing Soviet nuclear capability
which would have imposed or would have brought about a change
in the situation that existed, for example, at the beginning
of the Kennedy Administration.

Now, whether the Soviets would have been more restrained
if we had been less restrained, this is a judgment which the
people at the time had to make, in the light of all the
information that was available to them, and we are literally
not attempting to pass any judgment on it.

We do agree, both for our purposes, and for previous
purposes, that we cannot go back to the situation of 1961 by
simply establishing the old numerical relationship, either
technically or even if we did, that it would mean exactly
the same thing.

There is a new order.

MR. PACKARD: Henry, I might point out that in the
process of evaluating the very strategic postures of our
program that we might undertake in this study, we considered
at different levels the possibility of going higher, at a
much higher level in offensive weapons and going to a higher
level in defensive weapons, and where we came out is that in
the present program, which we think is about right.

We are not recommending any significant changes
in our strategic program.

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DR. KISSINGER: In fact, on page 93, we are pointing out some of the facts. We also at some other point are pointing out that if the Soviet build-up continues indefinitely at the rate of the last few years, we will have to look at our situation again.

Q Are you saying in the last two paragraphs on page 94, that we will in effect play it by ear?

DR. KISSINGER: No, we will not play it by ear. We are making a five-year assessment now, a five-year projection of what the best judgment is of the threat of foreseeable technologies and what the best answer is that we can give to it, both in terms of build-up, the relationship between build-up and restraint, and so on.

Of course, within that five-year program, there will be an annual budgetary review. This budgetary review is now being conducted slightly differently from previous years. In the past, the Defense budget was largely completed as an internal Defense matter and did not reach the political level until fairly late in the year.

Now, through the Defense Program Review Committee, we are reviewing the Defense program in its formative stages from the point of view of long-term political arms control and other considerations every year in addition to the five-year program.

So that to some extent, one has to adjust one's long-term program to the realities of every year, but we do have a five-year projection and we are in the process of undertaking a five-year projection and as Secretary Packard pointed out, the 1971 budget is a transitional budget and the 1972 budget will embody the five-year projection.

Q Sir, in connection with the strategic area, would you tell us the distinction between your term "adequacy" and the McNamara term "assured destruction", and are we abandoning "assured destruction"?

DR. KISSINGER: We are not abandoning assured destruction. But in our review, we have to consider the fact that, first, there have been a number of new technological developments since the "assured destruction" concept was originated in the middle-1960's having to do with increases in forces, increases in accuracy with multiple warheads.

Secondly, we are looking at a situation in which the approach to the problem of strategy simply by counting the number of civilians that could be killed seems too simple, especially when you consider that the decision has to be taken with the certainty that a large number of casualties on our side would be inevitable.

So that what we are trying to do with our strategy is to bring it into relationship to the political objectives that might be sought to be achieved by it, and to the decisions that the political leadership might have to take in the conditions that are foreseeable in the 1970's.

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I am confident that whoever was in office at this time
would have to ask himself these questions, whatever answer
he would come up with.

Q On page 21, dealing with the U.S. troop level
in Europe, the report says, "At the same time we recognized
that we must use this time to conduct a thorough study
of our strategy for the defense of Western Europe, including
a full and candid exchange of views with our allies."

Do you foresee a special procedure to establish these
goals together with the Western allies through consultation
with NATO or through a special meeting? What do you have
in mind?

DR. KISSINGER: We think that the current procedures
are adequate. We have started, as you know, last year, exchanges
on the Under Secretary level, having to do with the long-term
future, and this seems to be a set of questions that is peculiarly
appropriate to that level.

We don't believe, I think at this moment, that a
new procedure is necessary.

Elliot?

MR. RICHARDSON: I think what you say is entirely
true, Henry. I might just add that there has also been
initiated, again at the President's suggestion in his 23 January
speech, a less formal and more frequent contact among the
planners in all of the NATO countries.

These two things as additional means of communication
and consultation should serve the purposes contemplated here.

Q Dr. Kissinger, I am not sure from all of this
whether you think the Cold War is increasing or lessening.
Do you think it is increasing or lessening from this broad
philosophical statement?

DR. KISSINGER: The Cold War, as it came to be known
in the immediate post-war period, we would say has in that
forum lessened. At that time, there was a belief in a
monolithic communism, and that no longer exists in this forum.

At that time, there was a belief in the notion of
an irreconcilable hostility. On the other hand, we believe
that there are objective causes for the tension that has existed
over this period. We believe that we are doing no one a service
by pretending that these tensions do not exist or that they
can be removed by mere atmospherics.

We are prepared to negotiate seriously, either
individually or comprehensively, on these issues with either
of the great Communist countries. And, therefore, the foreign
policy that was appropriate to the period that was called the
Cold War is not appropriate to the period into which we believe
we are now entering.

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But we make this statement without under-estimating
that there are still serious causes of tension, that ideology
is not dead, even though it has changed some of its character,
and that large areas of potential discord and of hostility
remain. But we are prepared to work seriously, and energetically
as we can.

Q Doctor, on page 103, the President discusses the
Verification Panel. He says one of the things that survived
was our intelligence capability to monitor the other side's
compliance with a curb on each weapons system and then he
discusses the three categories.

Can you say, first of all, how much monitoring we
are capable of doing on MIRV and whether we have developed
a policy position for the SALT talks on MIRV?

DR. KISSINGER: It is a good thing that my friend Pelms isn't in this room. What we did in the Verification Panel is, as the President indicates in his report, and as I have pointed out on a number of occasions to this group, to try to avoid this endless debate where some people say, "You are jeopardizing security" and other people say, "You must run some risk for peace", to the President when he has to make a decision and try to get a precise definition of just what risks one was running, if any, with respect to each individual category of weapon.

I dare say that in this process, 98 percent of the
disagreements have disappeared; that is, everybody more or less
agreed substantially on the area within which we could have
confidence with respect to individual limitations that might be
put on various weapons systems.

There was agreement as to how much could be hidden
before we would know what measures we could take to counteract
it, how we might improve our unilateral intelligence capabilities
with respect to this.

So, we have a rather good catalogue of this.

And this in turn enables the President and his senior
advisers to form a judgment with respect to the various categories
of agreements that might be conceivable.

The second question is do we know what can be verified
with respect to MIRV?

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DR. KISSINGER: We have had a special sub-panel of the verification panel dealing only with MIRVs and tangentially with the relationship of MIRVs to ABM. I think we have a rather clear idea of what is verifiable, what collateral measures would have to be taken, what the difficulties are. And without going into the details that would take us too far, I think there is a large area of agreement within the Government as to what would be required in terms of collateral steps and how one would have to go about it and the degree of uncertainty that exists, which is fairly large. It is an extremely complicated problem. It is one of the most complicated problems that we examined in the verification panel and the one which simply raises a lot of collateral issues.

But we can put before the President and we have put before the President exactly what is involved. And before the Vienna meeting, we will, of course, have a position.

Q Dr. Kissinger, on page 103, you say that we see evidence that the Soviet Union seeks a position in the Middle East which would make a great power rivalry more likely. Can you tell us what that evidence is, what the Soviets are doing now and what the danger is there?

DR. KISSINGER: This is really the same point about which I believe Saville Davis asked earlier. It has to do with the impression that some Soviet acts create, that beyond its inevitable involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict it seeks to use this for a more permanent foothold in the Middle East.

We believe that the best way to achieve peace in that area is through the self-restraint of the major powers. And we attempted to convey in this document that we were hoping that the Soviet Union would follow us.

Let me get somebody who hasn't asked a question yet.

Q Is the Administration satisfied with the relative strength in strategic missiles that you project will prevail at the end of 1970 between the United States and the Soviet Union?

DR. KISSINGER: Is the United States satisfied with this?

Q Is the Administration satisfied with the strength that you project will exist in 1970?

DR. KISSINGER: Yes, because if we weren't, we would make an attempt to change it.

As the Deputy Secretary of Defense has pointed out, we believe that at this rate of Soviet buildup we can live with the force decisions we have made.

On the hand, we also raised a number of questions which we would have to address if either SALT failed and/or the Soviet buildup continued unchecked at its recent rate.

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I may say, incidentally, all of this represents,
of course, a joint effort by all the Departments, so that
this represents the views of the appropriate Defense
authorities.

Q Dr. Kissinger, in answer to an earlier question, you said there was an agreed position within the Government on the problems of verification of MIRV and ABM. Were you saying also that this agreed position is that it is so difficult to detect it by national means that we had better look for a different agreement?

DR. KISSINGER: Let me be precise. There is an
agreed position as to the technical issues that are involved.
Different people might weigh the significance of these technical
issues differently.

But, as the President pointed out at one of his
press conferences, we are prepared to discuss these schemes,
and if the other side considers them in its interest and we
have not taken the position which you have described.

Q At page 79, the first paragraph, what exactly
does it purport?

DR. KISSINGER: What does the first paragraph refer to?

Q This paragraph on bilateral aid. What are the
steps contemplated and what are the steps to be taken?

DR. KISSINGER: You mean about the restrictions that
have been reduced? This refers to several of the steps that
have been taken, especially with respect to Latin America
and about tied loans and about additionality and items of this
nature.

It indicates we are undertaking a complete review
of our aid policies and we are expecting the report of the
Peterson Commission, which will deal with these. But our
stating it here in the general aid section indicates that
this is the philosophy with which we are planning to approach
the whole thing.

Elliot, you had a task force on this problem, too.

MR. RICHARDSON: I think you covered it very well.
The restrictions include, as you said, the ones which had been
lifted for Latin American for tying and additionality, the 90/10
component rule, so-called, and among the others that are
under review and which are referred to here, the Long
and Symington amendments and the Hickenlooper amendment, all of
which attach conditions of one sort or another.

Essentially, what is involved is we question whether
we ought to on the one side reduce the particular kinds of
conditions that are designed to further US domestic policies
or political interests or, on the other, rather, whether we
should reduce these in order to make our bilateral economic
development programs more effective and with less political load.

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Q Could I ask you another question, please, on
Vietnam?

On page 56 and 57, you have a series of posing
questions which at least make the question or judgment on
pacification tentative. But on page 52, or thereabouts, you
make the flat assertion that Vietnamization or pacification
is succeeding. How do you square these two?

DR. KISSINGER: On page 52 we are doing what? We
state that it is succeeding.

Q You haven't gotten the answers, I take it,
to the questions on 56 and 57?

DR. KISSINGER: No. Let me explain.

Our judgment is that Vietnamization, as of now,
is succeeding for the reasons which we indicate. On the
other hand, we realize that it requires a constant review
and that conditions could at least theoretically change and
that there are some uncertainties in this situation which
we constantly have to look at. We are not claiming that we
are over the hump. We are claiming that we have made progress,
that it has been succeeding and that these questions are
being kept under constant review, that we are confident that
we can solve them because, as we point out at some other point,
we can't fool Hanoi. They have shown a high degree of ability
to understand the situation in Vietnam.

And this was put in to indicate that obviously there
are problems that worry us that we are working on and that
create some elements of uncertainty. But we believe, we are
confident that we could solve them.

Q Dr. Kissinger, how do you view the present
arms balance in the Middle East?

DR. KISSINGER: With dismay. It is under review
at this moment and is part of the President's decision on
the Israeli arms package. Nice try. (Laughter.)

Q Doctor, on page 60, the statement is made,
we have gone on the Middle East as far as we believe useful in
making new proposals, et cetera. Does this fall in the same
pattern as the President's statement at Saigon regarding
Vietnam and the Paris negotiations? Can you give us any
amplification on that relationship?

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DR. KISSINGER: The Secretary of State has pointed out on a number of occasions that we have put forward a proposal which we believe is fair and balanced, and if being criticized by both sides is a criterion, we have achieved this brilliantly. But we believe we have put forward a fair proposal, and that it is not up to us to go further now in the absence of some indication from the other side that it is willing to take a fair and balanced view of the situation and indicate what contribution to peace it is willing to make.

We have in this proposal that the Secretary of State had in his speech December 9, and which was later embodied in the various negotiating packages, indicated our view as to what a just settlement would be and we have also indicated areas which we believe must appropriately be negotiated among the parties in order for the peace to be meaningful, because no outsider can impose a peace on the Middle East.

And what this statement means is that the policy enunciated by the Secretary of State, of course, indicates the framework which we consider just, and therefore we cannot go beyond it.

Is it of the same order as what the President indicated at Saigon? Well, in the sense that now that the other side has to make a move, it has some comparability.

Q Dr. Kissinger, in the discussion of the ABM system, on Page 94 and 95, there seems to be a return, an almost equal emphasis on the Soviet threat, and the Chinese threat, whereas, the President, in his last press conference, discussed the Chinese threat to a great extent in saying that there would be an area defense in the next phase of the ABM.

Is this dual emphasis significant?

DR. KISSINGER: Our policy on the ABM has been fully consistent from the beginning. And you will see in the program that the Department of Defense will submit next week that the outline of our program, the justification, is fully consistent with the justification put forward last year.

The misunderstanding arose because the President at the press conference was asked only about area defense and he answered the question with respect to area defense, and gave his reasons why area defense is part of the total justification of the program.

On the other hand, the program had always three components. It was so declared last March 14, and it is reiterated in this statement. It will certainly be repeated in the Secretary of Defense's statement. Those three components have not changed. The relative weight we would give to them budgetarily depends on the relationship, on the development, of the threat.

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That threat in turn has been studied in a number of
forums by the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board by the
Defense Program Review Committee and obviously from the figures
we have given the Soviet threat is more imminent than the
Chinese threat and this would be reflected in our budgetary
recommendations.

Q To make another stab on the arms balance in the
Middle East, what was the thinking behind the President's
announcement that he had to make this decision within 30 days
or he would make it within 30 days on the Israel arms request?

DR. KISSINGER: This decision had been before the
President for several months. He had, of course, been fully
briefed on the state of the discussions that are now going
on within the NSC system in which a full review is being made
of the relative capabilities and arms balance, and he therefore knew
that the consideration within the NSC system had reached the
point where the various choices could be put before him within the
time period he gave.

It had no profound significance in terms of a diplomatic
ploy, it was not intended as a warning, it was not intended as
a self-inflicted deadline, it simply reflected his appreciation
of where our internal considerations stood.

He knew when this would be moved before him and the
National Security Council, and therefore, he expected to make
a decision within the time frame that the bureaucratic process
had set for it. There was no profound diplomatic significance
to it.

Q Dr. Kissinger, can you expand on that time frame?

Q Dr. Kissinger, do you expect this will be an annual
event, a report of this kind, or is it with respect particularly
to 1970 and to the studies you have been reviewing?

DR. KISSINGER: On the first page, it says, "This
First Annual Report on U.S. Foreign Policy."

THE PRESS: Thank you.

END

(AT 6:05 P.M. EST)

This Copy For

BACKGROUND BRIEFING

AT THE WHITE HOUSE

WITH DR. HENRY A. KISSINGER,
ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT
FOR NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS;
AND JERRY WARREN, DEPUTY PRESS
SECRETARY TO THE PRESIDENT

7:15 P.M. EST

FEBRUARY 16, 1970

MONDAY

MR. WARREN: Dr. Kissinger will be speaking on a
BACKGROUND basis, but you will be quoted directly. Right,
Dr. Kissinger?

DR. KISSINGER: At this meeting, I don't expect so.

MR. WARREN: Same embargo as the message.

Q No quotes?

DR. KISSINGER: No.

MR. WARREN: No quotations.

Q I will probably live to regret this meeting.

Q On the section on Europe, is there a shift of
tone or emphasis when you talk about the disadvantages we are
willing to take, economic, for promoting unity in Europe? This
is the bottom of page 20, and the top of 21.

DR. KISSINGER: Shift of emphasis from where?

Q We have always said we are willing to make these
economic sacrifices, back in other Administrations, but yet,
there is coming out of the Administration at least more of a
sense of possible concern that this thing is going to become
a happy trade club, at our expense and maybe not go much
farther than that.

But that feeling is not reflected in this. I assume
that is deliberate.

DR. KISSINGER: Yes, this was deliberately pointed
out. We are less interested in European economic unity for
its own sake than we are in the European economic unity leading
to political unity.

In any event, this makes it clear. While we
subsequently favor European political unity, we don't think it
is our task to bring it about, and also, we believe that an
attempt by us to bring it about would be counter-productive,
that previous Administrations in an effort to become the principal
advocate, have harmed rather than helped progress.

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So, I am really paraphrasing what they say.

Q Henry, while we are on 21, on the troops in Europe, can you give us a little guidance after this precipice called mid-1970? You have left it here sort of in the air pending study of our strategy for the defense of Western Europe and everybody, I presume -- part of the tactic is to make the Europeans get off their dead ends a little bit, and you want to leave it vague, but on the other hand, the President has been trying to say that we are not going to run away from Europe and so on, as he says in here.

What is really your thinking about this?

DR. KISSINGER: You all recognize that the European problem is a delicate one for a number of reasons, because the record doesn't really show that the Europeans increased their effort as we increased ours. Usually as we decrease our efforts, they decrease theirs, because it is domestically the easier thing to do because they can justify it on the grounds that our assessment of the international situation is permitting us to reduce forces and they must be permitted to reduce forces.

So, the equation doesn't work exactly that way. This is why we believe, we don't mean to suggest that we will reduce forces by the middle of 1971.

What we do want to suggest is that over the next year and a half, we ought to face some of these questions and come jointly to some understanding of what we are about so that the forces that are there, so we can disentangle the symbolic and the substantive functions of these forces and to develop some conception that we can maintain over an indefinite period of time, or in an interim period of time. I don't want to put a time limit on it.

Rather than put it in terms of force levels, I think we are eager to get a common appreciation with our European allies of what we are trying to achieve rather than tie ourselves to one particular magic number which becomes a symbol of our commitment.

Everyone knows how accidentally some of these force levels were originally determined.

Q But then that plunges you into where are you going on SALT, where is Brandt going with us.

DR. KISSINGER: That leaves it all to be faced. We will have to have serious discussions with the Europeans before and after April 16 about the future of SALT. We have always said, and I think we are repeating it in here, that SALT must have an impact on European defense, not really in the sense of creating a new position, condition, but of formalizing a condition which is coming about even without SALT.

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There is no way we can get around these issues and
there is no way we can avoid rocking this particular boat because
events are rocking that particular boat.

So, before June, we are going to have to discuss the
SALT implications very seriously with the Europeans. There is
just no way simply around that because of SALT.

As you go into SALT, as you discuss the new strategic
situation that exists with or without SALT, namely, the one
in which a first nuclear strike is simply a completely different
problem today than it was in 1960. There is no amount of formal
declaration that is going to change that fact.

The figures that we are printing in here make that
self-evident.

As we do that, all the other issues which you have
mentioned are bound to come to be put on the table. It is our
common problem. It is not a problem that we face alone. It is
a problem that we face with them and which we want to discuss
with them.

Q So, nothing really can -- the Brandt visit or
the Pompidou visit won't really resolve it? They are just
interims.

DR. KISSINGER: The Brandt or the Pompidou visit,
the very first stages -- obviously, we will have to begin talking
about some of these things. But they won't resolve them.

Of course, obviously, there are different views in
every government on this.

Q I got the impression from the section on SALT
and the verification problem that the only proposal which
the United States itself might care to make in April or
some other stage of the talks was one for the limitation of
various types of nuclear missiles by number, because everything
else requires verification beyond a unilateral capacity.

DR. KISSINGER: That isn't true. It isn't true.
Number of missiles by number? In other words, we are not prepared
to make proposals about MIRV?

Q That is right.

DR. KISSINGER: I mean that is the only thing you would
exclude by that, because everything else you can do by number.

Q Can you tell an ABM by number?

DR. KISSINGER: Can you tell an ABM by number?

Q By outside?

DR. KISSINGER: Or can you tell whether something is
an ABM or something else? That is one of the interesting
verification problems. But I think essentially you can, yes.

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Let me give you an example of how this verification thing works. These figures aren't correct. We said, for example, in the case of your wanting to put a limit on land based ICBM's, supposing the limit were 3,000 -- no one has 3,000 -- then they could hide, let me invent a figure, 400 and after they have 3,400, we begin picking them up.

Then we said, "Well, at what stage do we know? Does it have to be 3,400 or can we tell already at the level of 3,290?"

Well, so, we then got a spectrum at which you could begin picking them up. Then we asked, "What is the significance of that?" If it is significant, what can we do about it? If it isn't significant, can we live with it for a time interval? Or, what do we have to do to our intelligence capabilities so that we will get up at the ban.. at which we can live with it?

Suppose we can live with it at 2,300. Don't draw any conclusions from these figures. They are deliberately misleading.

And this is the sort of inventory we made. It really helped to resolve a lot of disputes, because quite candidly in some areas, it turned out everyone was talking about the same thing. When one group in the government said, "You are diminishing security", they were talking about exactly the same number that the other group was saying, "You must run a risk for peace."

Then when you asked, "What is the strategic significance of it?" Sometimes it turns out there is no great strategic significance to it, to a particular evasion.

With respect to MIRV, this raises special problems. It raises special problems because it is harder to tell by unilateral inspection. In fact, deployment is impossible to tell by unilateral inspection.

With respect to MIRV testing, the issue is that there are a lot of collateral activities you have to ban in order to be sure that there is no MIRV testing that can be strategically significant, such as testing one warhead at a time, such as testing the release mechanisms by other methods.

And what happened with respect to MIRV is that we actually had a very comprehensive study, and that we have to relate it to other measures. We cannot take MIRV by itself. It has to be related to ABM before one can make a reliable judgment. But we are not saying that they are only limitations as to numbers. You will make a mistake if you read it that way.

What judgment we will have to come to, probably during the Vienna discussions, we probably will not make that final judgment, is to relate comprehensiveness to speed. If we want a quick agreement or a relatively quick agreement. It cannot be too comprehensive. If we are willing to go and sacrifice time, then we can go for a larger order of comprehensiveness. But we will be prepared to go either way.

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Q Now, if I could just pursue this a fraction further. In the paragraph introducing the three categories on page 108, you speak about this position and the three general categories. "This will enable us to respond to a broad range of Soviet proposals."

The first question which occurred to me there was whether as a tactical matter the United States ---

DR. KISSINGER: We will have a proposal. We are not going in there and telling the Soviets, "Make a proposal and we will tell you what we think of it." We will have probably more than one position, depending on the range of comprehensiveness we are talking about.

Q Can you explain the third category down there, which I don't understand. What is the difference between offensive forces and missiles qualitatively?

DR. KISSINGER: The second category would be, say, a ban on MIRV. The third category would be a reduction of the forces with or without a ban on MIRV.

Q Forces meaning what?

DR. KISSINGER: Say, ICBMs and Polarisates, and, of course, probably we should have stated defensive forces, too.

Q It seems to me there is not much difference between that and category 1.

DR. KISSINGER: It depends on how you read it. Category 1 is meant to say that you put a ceiling on forces but not necessarily reduce them; that is, you stop where you are or you go to another level and stop there.

Category 3 means you agree to a level of forces lower than the forces that now exist. There is a school of thought that believes that this is the best way of getting at the MIRV problem, because it may be that when you reduce your forces out of an existing inventory that depends now whether you can put in new missiles, you will be less ready to put in new and relatively untried warheads.

This is the significance of Category 3. And each of those has some options. There are various combinations in each of these that are possible. What we are trying to avoid is to get SALT into the same kind of position as in the Middle East where you have one position and the other side puts down one position and then you haggle over the clauses of your positions before you know exactly where you are trying to go. This is no criticism of the Middle East thing where you don't have that choice. You can't say we have ten different attitudes towards the borders. In some areas, it is unavoidable.

But with respect to SALT, it is our belief that we are better off having a certain flexibility within broad categories.

Q I would like to clear up one thing I think you said in response to John. You said MIRV has to be related to ABM. I was trying to define what you meant.

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DR. KISSINGER: If you have very high ABM levels on both sides, then MIRVs are absolutely unavoidable; that is, if you have very large ABM levels it would be very difficult. The MIRVs were originally conceived on our side, not necessarily on the Soviet side, as a counter to ABM.

Q Would you consider Safeguard a very high level in that terminology?

DR. KISSINGER: It depends what level at Safeguard you are talking about. I think the existing Safeguard program is at the limit of what you could do. You couldn't go beyond it.

Q Including what is going up this year?

DR. KISSINGER: What is going up this year is a very low ABM level.

Q How do you define a low level of ABM? Indeed, how do you prevent a kind of escalating ambiguity in this area?

DR. KISSINGER: You can make an analysis -- we are talking about the relationship between Soviet and American forces, and we have made that analysis -- of what level of ABM would not represent a threat to a second strike capability and could not plausibly represent a threat to a second strike capability. Anything that reduces a first strike capability is of course an asset. I am talking strategic theory now. Anything that reduces either side's first strike capability without reducing its second strike capability reduces the probability of strategic nuclear war.

Q Let me take it back a little bit. I am really confused now. I think you said in this last statement that Safeguard, as programmed now, is at a low level. Would you say their ABM is at a high level?

DR. KISSINGER: No.

Q But it justifies our going ahead with MIRV?

DR. KISSINGER: Our MIRV, when it was developed under McNamara, was designed -- the MIRV program we have pursued is the program of the previous Administration. It was designed in the previous Administration as a counter to the then estimated Soviet ABM deployment.

And the argument I am making is that if the ABMs don't increase substantially, if there is no very high ABM level, then the MIRVs, as they are now conceived, do not effect the strategic equation fundamentally.

Q Do you think the McNamara response was a wise response? You have continued with that program.

DR. KISSINGER: I tried to explain what it was. I don't want to get into the business of criticizing or commenting on the previous Administration. I am just saying that the problem we now face is this: that if you want to limit MIRVs, you have to do it in relation to an ABM program, to an ABM limitation, because if ABMs are on first strike and MIRVs are eliminated, then this can give a significant problem.

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At the present ABM levels in the Soviet Union, we are not saying that we require MIRV to penetrate existing ABM levels in the Soviet Union. This is why the President has indicated in a press conference that he is prepared to discuss these issues in relationship to each other.

The difficulty with ABM -- our verification studies have shown this is not an argument against it. Every time I say "difficult," people say I am just telling you what our studies show. It isn't so much to launch this, because there we have a fair amount of confidence that we can tell the number of launches. The difficulty about ABMs has to do with radar and whether you can enforce limitations on radars and how you prevent existing radars from being used for ABM purposes after which ABM missiles could be introduced fairly rapidly.

Q Is that a reference to converting SAMs to ABMs?

DR. KISSINGER: No, that is a separate problem. It is a reference to converting radar associated with SAMs. I am just telling you the difficulties. We are prepared to look at this problem and the newspaper accounts which have us taking a dogmatic position on this are simply inaccurate. It is simply not true that we have precluded this.

Q Henry, on page 40, the statement says, "The responsibilities once borne by the United States at such great cost can now be shared." What degree of confidence do you have that they will effectively be shared? And if they are not effectively shared, do we run the risk of basing a very important policy on great uncertainty?

DR. KISSINGER: Every policy has to be based on a degree of uncertainty and on an assessment which you can't prove when you make it. Our belief is that over a historical period, which is what we are attempting to define here, five to ten years, it isn't possible for the United States either politically, fiscally, or psychologically to put itself into the frontline of defense of every conceivable local crisis. And the attempt to do so would be the surest way of exhausting ourselves and of tearing ourselves to pieces.

We cannot continue to take the position that the defense of every country is more in our interest than in the interest of that country and, therefore, we will have to consider the painful prospects that are involved and that would flow from it.

Of course, if there are countries that in our belief are vital to our security, we may be forced to draw consequences even if they don't make provisions for their defense. Britain had to continue fighting in 1940 even though it turned out that France's efforts to defend itself proved inadequate.

But we are talking here about the automatic assumption that any attack from any Communist or aggressive country against any country whatever that was so characteristic of some of the period in the '50s and other periods.

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It is a fact that the conditions have changed and that
the President is trying to take account of the changed conditions.

Q But isn't the really important change in conditions
the change in the attitudes within this country?

DR. KISSINGER: No.

Q And the support that he feels he can have in
this country?

DR. KISSINGER: No. I believe if you look at the
President's views over a period of time, they have been quite
consistent on this. And, in any event, we would approach this
problem essentially the same way, even if American domestic
opinion were temporarily more favorable because, obviously,
our assessment would have to be that any attempt by the
United States to be the principal organizer of programs all
over the world and the principal defender of every part of
the world simultaneously would in time erode -- not the domestic
position of this Administration, but the possibility of any con-
structive leadership.

In this sense, any Administration has to look at the
issues of priorities. In the long term, we cannot make
what was a crisis situation in the late '40s a permanent
feature of our foreign policy.

So from this point of view one is affected by it,
but it wouldn't be a good policy, even if one could count
on an indefinite continuation of domestic support for it, because
over a period of time it breaks the sense of responsibility
of every other country.

Q Does the Administration actually believe that
our European allies now play a greater role commensurate with
their growing strength now? Or is that a hope?

DR. KISSINGER: To some extent, it is a hope. It is
the purpose of our policy. They are playing a greater role
than they did some time ago in such organizations as the
Nuclear Planning Group. They are having a greater influence
on nuclear planning than was the case, say, ten years ago.

It is one of the problems, though, that has to be
faced in NATO, a different proportioning of burdens and
responsibilities.

Q Henry, what is this based on? Did the
President have this idea when he came into office for a report
like this, or did it grow out of what evolved?

DR. KISSINGER: Yes. This I can speak to with some
great assurance because in Key Biscayne -- in fact, I have it
enshrined in a document, a record of that meeting -- there was
an NSC meeting -- it couldn't have been an NSC meeting. The
membership of what was to become the NSC met in Key Biscayne
at the end of December, I think, 1968. It was memorable to
me. It was my first encounter with the President. And there
the President stated that he was going to publish an annual
report which would have these major features. This has been
part of his idea of the NSC structure since it was set up.

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Q Is there any feeling that this report is rooted
in a year that has been rather abnormal as far as world
crisis roles, Henry, in that ---

DR. KISSINGER: It has been quiet, you mean?

Q Yes, unusually so. And perhaps it reflects
some unreality because of that.

DR. KISSINGER: We will have to see as the years
go on. We will have to see whether it is an unusual year
in this Administration or not. But it was part of our
program. I would have thought that whether there is a year of
turmoil or a year of relative calm, analysis of what one
attempted to do during the year was important both for the
public and for the Governmental structure so that they understand
in a coherent detail what the President is about.

Usually when we deal with the Governmental structure,
we give them individual written instructions. But we have
not had the opportunity to put together the whole conception
of foreign policy.

I don't believe that if this had been a year of
turmoil it would be any the less necessary. What the year
of relative calm engaged us to do, of course, was to make the
changes in philosophical emphasis more explicit than we would
have been able to if there had been, say, a Berlin crisis in the
first year and we would have had to put all of our energies
on that crisis. Although I must say it is not that Vietnam
did not take some attention.

Q How do you characterize this year?

DR. KISSINGER: Of course, who knows the cause and
effect in foreign policy? We would believe, of course, that
what we did contributed somewhat to the fact that it was a
relatively calm year.

Let me answer that last question. How would I
characterize the year?

Q Yes.

DR. KISSINGER: It was a transitional year, maybe
between crisis, certainly between conceptions of foreign policy;
a year that could easily have led to very profound disturbances
that did not happen.

We don't claim that this year proved any final
accomplishment. It gave us a point of departure. It enabled
us to set a new orientation. I think it is too early to say
what the final meaning of it was.

But in a number of fields we did things that I
think it is probably safe to say it would have been politically
harder to do for a previous Administration.

I think, strangely enough, in the comprehensiveness
of the approach to SALT, certainly the sort of thing one did
towards China, biological weapons and toxins, and so forth, were
easier to do for an Administration which is less assailed from the
right than would have been the case, undeservedly perhaps, for
another one.

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Q Do you envision this being the first of an annual
series? Do you envision in the future Nixon years that these
documents will be of this proportion?

DR. KISSINGER: I hope not. I think it will age
a number of us, really. I don't think so. We don't propose
to write a new philosophy of foreign policy every year. And
this is a deliberately conceptual, philosophical document.

In future years, if what we did here has any validity,
hopefully we can sum up what the basic approach was and perhaps
put more emphasis on what was actually done. But I think it
will be a substantial document, nevertheless, every year, yes.

Q Henry, you sound on page 2 as though the
shattering of international Communist unity is more or less
attributable to the natural growth of national unity. To what
extent do you give credit to the policies of previous Administra-
tions in bringing this about?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't think there is an Administration
view on that. My own personal view is that it is much more
the result of a natural evolution than of anything previous
Administrations did or didn't do. I would say that also if
it continues under our Administration.

I think if the United States had tried to promote
a split between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, it wouldn't
have known how to do it. We could take account of it once
it had happened and we could integrate it into a wise foreign
policy. But I don't think we could produce it. I believe that
the tensions between the Soviet Union and Communist China
derive from two factors: One, ideological; that is, in the
Communist world with its belief in infallibility of Communist
leadership, it is very difficult to accept the notion that
there are two interpreters of Communist doctrine. If you
will remember in 1957, the initial dispute between the Chinese
and the Russians arose over a question which to us seemed
hopelessly theological. The Chinese claimed they were going
from feudalism directly to Communism, skipping the state of
socialism, while the Russians had claimed they hadn't even
reached Communism yet, that they were still going through the
stage of socialism. This occupied a party congress and produced
an open attack by the Soviets on the Chinese. Because to them
it was not just a question of an abstruse theology, but the
relationship of leadership to other Communist parties in the
world depended importantly on whether Peking or Moscow were the
true interpreters of Communism.

The second is a geopolitical fact which I believe
any Russian and Chinese Government would face, which is a
5,000 mile frontier which has 800 million people on one
side and 30 million on the other side. Even without ideological
dispute, if Canada had a population of 500 million and was building
nuclear weapons, even if it didn't contest our frontiers we would think
about it differently.

Q You are not suggesting things like the
Greek-Turkey policy, the resistance in Berlin or Korea or
the Cuban missile showdown had no effective toll?

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DR. KISSINGER: Certainly, if Communism had spread across Europe and if it had seemed the inevitable wave of the future, if Yugoslavia had not had some support from the outside and then maybe Tito in 1948 would have decided that it was foolhardy to defy Stalin. After all, Stalin thought even under the conditions of 1948 that Tito couldn't possibly last in opposition with the Soviet Union.

With respect to the relationship of Communist China to the Soviet Union, I cannot really think of anything we did that was more than peripherally related to it. And I think there the internal dynamism of the system produced the split and whatever foreign policy problem it now poses for us.

Q Henry, the urge to read this as a guide to action is irresistible. You have to excuse the desire to see it that way. Large hunks of this philosophy have surely been in fact applied. Indonesia, East Berlin, all kinds of things have happened where we just followed our hands and let things happen.

The question inevitably arises, how much farther does this take, beyond the ways in which you so well defined the Guam doctrine, and this part of it applied to Asia, that the tone and rhetoric itself may have important consequences.

Let me ask you something very specific. Would a Dominican intervention be unthinkable in the terms of this kind of a document?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't want to go into the previous Administration.

Q No, Asian intervention, anything?

DR. KISSINGER: Jamaica? (Laughter.)

Nothing in this document excludes an American intervention where we believe our vital interests are threatened. Therefore, a lot depends on how we define our vital interests. Therefore, if we agreed with President Johnson's judgment that what was happening in the Dominican Republic was a threat to the American national security, we might act this way. Where the difference might arise is that we would be unlikely to act on the basis of some of the fragmentary information that some of the reports at the time indicated formed the basis of action. We would be much more likely to ask explicitly in a very systematic way what the threat to the vital interest was, where the evolution might go, and ask the sort of middle term question that we asked with relation to the verification work.

Whether that would then lead you to the conclusion that your national interests were threatened, I don't know. But I would have to answer the question in those terms.

But certainly intervention by the United States would be considered in relation to a rather clear idea of where one would be a year or two later.

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Q If I could follow on that with the statement on page 61 about the Middle East, which was raised in the East Room, "...the United States would view any effort by the Soviet Union to seek predominance in the Middle East as a matter of grave concern." That on the basis of what Max has been asking you, is the statement that the Administration considers there is such a national interest in the Middle East at this point in time.

DR. KISSINGER: Yes. There is an important interest in the Middle East. Of course, we would also have to define for ourselves as we are doing, what we mean by predominance. We do not mean that the Soviet Union should not play any role in the Middle East. We are not trying to expel the Soviet Union from the Middle East.

But if the Soviet Union were to attempt to get into a position where its unilateral decision could cut off the oil supplies to Europe, for example, this would be a matter that we would have to take very seriously.

Q Excuse me.

Q Can I follow that up a minute?

Q Sure.

Q The impression I get here, here you pin something on the Soviet Union in the Vietnam section that they have not put their weight on Hanoi.

DR. KISSINGER: Not in the Vietnam section. It is in the Soviet Union.

Q There is a reference of not putting their weight on Hanoi.

DR. KISSINGER: I don't think it is in the Vietnam section.

Q Wherever it is, there is that reference. There is also reference to the Russians in the East-West thing in Europe. What I am getting at is this: You have tried to construct an orderly view of what the United States could do in the 70's, but you have one great "if" through the whole thing.

That is, if the other big boy will play the same game. Right?

DR. KISSINGER: Let me say two things: In the section on the Soviet Union, we attempted to make a fair account, as fair an account as we could get, of the pluses and minuses of our present relationship, of the things that we think have gone well and of the things that we think have not gone well.

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We listed among the things that had gone well the
arms talks ---

Q 102.

DR. KISSINGER: Yes, I have got it. -- and the fact
of the negotiations on the Middle East, the ratification of the
Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the beginning of talks on Europe.
We listed among the things that had not gone well the fact that
the Soviet Union is continuing to be the principal supplier of arms
and equipment to Hanoi.

We are not stating that pejoratively We are
simply stating the facts of life, and the fact that the Soviet
Union has pulled back from the negotiations on the Middle East.

So, the intention here was not to pin anything particularly
on the Soviet Union, but to give an accounting of the pluses and
minuses of the relationship, and I think this is a fair account.

Now, your question depends a lot on whether the other
fellow takes the same view. Well, I run against this very often
in these discussions. And I know I am always expected to say we
conduct our policy regardless of what anyone else does. It just
isn't true. Of course, it depends to some extent on what the other
big boy is doing.

If the Soviet Union were to adopt a Hitlerian foreign
policy, which we are not saying, there is not the slightest evidence
of this, but obviously, if the Soviet Union were to adopt an
obstructive foreign policy that went back to the policy of the
late 40's, if you interpret it this way, of challenging us at
every turn, of threatening the security of every country, or
relying a great deal on military supremacy, of course, it would
affect our action.

We are hopeful and we are trying to bring about a
situation in which we do not threaten Soviet vital interests and
they don't threaten our vital interests and we would like to work
out an accommodation on a really comprehensive basis. But we
would like to do it from a realistic assessment of the pluses
and minuses of where we are.

To some extent, peace in the world depends both on our
restraint and on their restraint and there is no way of getting
around it. We would recognize it depends on our restraint. If
we challenged vital Soviet interests every place, that would
compound tensions. One thing you can certainly read in this
document is that we will not deliberately challenge Soviet
vital interests.

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Q Aren't they challenging in your view our
vital interests in the Middle East today?

DR. KISSINGER: In the Middle East, we have attempted
to point out in this document that we are getting into a gray
area.

Q Henry, it seemed to me at the start of this
Administration there was at least kind of an underground
optimism about relations between Nixon and the Soviets,
that the talk of visits to Moscow and that ---

DR. KISSINGER: Never by Nixon.

Q What?

DR. KISSINGER: Never by the President.

Q No, but certainly there were discussions.

DR. KISSINGER: Excuse me.

Q I was saying at least that was my understanding,
that at various times he had expressed some hope, at least,
even before the inauguration, of some kind of rapport.

DR. KISSINGER: Of going? No, the President has
always believed long before he came into office that he knew
how to deal with the Soviet leaders. He has never said that
he believed that he could do so on the basis of personal
diplomacy. In fact, I think from the earliest press conference
on he has made clear that he believes that progress could
be made only with very concrete, very patient negotiations,
and that the personal element would enter only after a
certain amount of progress had been made, and not as a
condition for this progress.

And on the whole, he continues to hold his view.
While, of course, it is always tempting to take credit for
things that may have had many other reasons, certainly nothing
that has happened in the first year of the Administration --
we have not had any major crises with the Soviet Union. We
have kept our relations with the Soviet leaders free of
Cold War rhetoric on our side. The Soviet leaders have been
reasonably restrained towards us.

The SALT talks have gone about the way we hoped
they would go.

And this maxim of not challenging each other has
on the whole been observed except in areas where previous
involvements may make it very difficult.

So, I would think that the Soviet policy has gone
about as we were hoping it would go.

Again, the final test will be apparent over the next
year or two.

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Q As this is read by an outsider coming to it for the first time without the benefit of all of this discussion, the impression one gets is that there is really basic dissatisfaction with Soviet policy and behavior. It runs through at several points.

For instance, one says, "The Soviet present build-ups of strategic forces" and so on, "raises serious questions about whether we have any potential threat."

There is criticism on their failure to help the peace and their supplying arms to Vietnam, to criticism on their role in the Middle East and the danger that they may move into a dominant position. There is a statement that the Vietnam behavior of theirs clouds all our relations with them.

I am not trying to prove anything. I am just pointing out how it reads to an outsider looking at the thing cold.

DR. KISSINGER: If it reads that way, that was not the intention. The intention was to present a balanced account of the pluses and minuses in our relationship. The point which you mentioned is true. It is true that the Soviet build-up of strategic weapons raises questions, if it is continued for an indefinite period of time.

On the other hand, I just haven't marked it up this way. But we also say that our fundamental national interest is to be sought in an enduring structure of peace. We are making very clear that we don't look at security entirely through arms. I haven't marked up the passages that list the pros and cons. But I am sure you can make a collection of statements that cast questions on Soviet intentions.

The issue is, are those fair statements. We think they are fair statements. I have not made a collection of statements that indicated we are most eager for negotiations. I think if you read at the beginning of this document, quoting the Secretary of State, I think if you read the section on willingness to negotiate in the Era of Negotiations, you can find many positive assertions. We did not deliberately intend to load it.

Incidentally, the point I made at the is a document that was worked on by all the departments. This is not a unilateral document.

Q You mean Defense or the White House?

DR. KISSINGER: Or State.

Q I get the impression from this passage on Vietnam that even with the qualifications it is probably the most optimistic.

On the bottom of page 52 and 53, where you go through the military point. Was that meant to be, or is it the right impression?

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DR. KISSINGER: We made very careful studies over a period of months. Of course, all of us who have suffered through Vietnam know that nothing is more elusive than an accurate appraisal of where you are. It is more difficult to know where the trend line is going. This is our best judgment for better or worse, these conclusions represent our best internal judgments.

All the indications we have of where this situation is today, within South Vietnam, are in fact probably more optimistic than we have stated here.

Now, we have also stated the uncertainty because the problem is not where it is today, but where it will be six to nine months from now. This is the problem that is giving us the greatest concern, the one we are studying most carefully, and the one that is going to make or break that policy.

Q My point is that I think this seems to be more optimistic than six months ago.

DR. KISSINGER: Yes. Our best judgment is we have made an excruciatingly detailed study of 12 provinces throwing away all the previous criteria. We selected them carefully so that they are representative of various types of situations. We have sent people out there to look at them, people who change their itinerary every night so that they wouldn't be met with canned briefings.

For all I know, there may be something inherently elusive about the situation and six months from now you will all quote this at me like many other optimistic statements. In fact, we are saying this claim of progress has been frequent. It has to be our nightmare, becausethe last thing we can want is that in addition to the inherent problems that the war in Vietnam creates, it is that we undermine confidence in the credibility of government as such, because if successive Administrations should be believed to have deliberately misled the public in order to secure short-range tactical ends, I think the blow to our politics would be more serious than anything that is relevant to the issue.

So, we may or may not be wrong. In any case, those of us will have to take the responsibility for making wrong judgments.

The President would be perfectly entitled to hold us to account. But this is our best judgment and, you know, one finds it hard to believe that progress could have been possible after all we have seen there. But this is the evidence we now have. Even if it collapses, I would say this is the evidence.

Q To get back to John Hightower's point a minute, you say you don't mean that this was not prepared with any intention to lead it as highly critical of the Russians as the focal point of the document.

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DR. KISSINGER: That is not the focal point of the document.

Q But John is attempting to make the point that this document, as it circulates around the world, will not have the benefit of your kind of explanations, and there are an awful lot of people who are going to read this, selectively.

When the Administration was putting this together, were you unaware of this possibility that the focal point of a great many people was going to be criticism of the Russians, particularly on the Middle East and strategic arms?

DR. KISSINGER: No. These are in our judgment correct statements. It is equally correct, and equally supportable by this document that there are positive elements and that our intentions are to bridge these differences despite these obstacles.

But these statements were put in to indicate what we considered to be the debit side of the relationship. If they give an impression that there is only a debit side to the relationship, then we have misjudged the balance of the report and we and all the other experts who have looked at it, that eluded us.

Of course, if you take sentences out of context and list only those, it may give it a sordid impression. But in those three areas, those that we believe to be the areas, the debit areas of the relationship, we have never made a secret of it.

Q Henry, going back to a question Hugh asked earlier, if Mr. Nixon came up with this idea back in Key Biscayne or prior to that, do you have any understanding of what he hoped to gain by this? Why is he going through this exercise, other than what is the intention of it?

DR. KISSINGER: Of this document?

Q Yes.

DR. KISSINGER: The intention of the document is, first, to give an account to the American people of what is done during the first year. It used to be that the Defense Department put out a posture statement on the whole range of our policy. But actually, since the key issues cut across Defense, foreign policy, it was appropriate that it be done as part of the NSC system.

Secondly, almost all the impact of Presidential decisions, both with respect to the public, and with respect to the bureaucracies, in terms of individual decisions that have to be made and that have to be justified, if at all, in terms of the individual condition that gave rise to it, what this document attempts to do, for better or for worse, is to lay out how the President sees the inter-relationship of events and where America is intending to go.

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So, it is a means of informing the public, and of putting before the government the total pattern of policy, and to put across to foreign countries how we view the world at this, what seems to us -- as the President said this afternoon, watershed -- of conditions in the world.

This was the general intention, and it was so stated, in fact, last year.

Q A lot of it seems to be so general and broad in its terminology that you can practically get anything out of it, depending on how you interpret the sentence. As you pointed out before, it is a matter of interpretation.

Was there ever any thought of making it more specific? Did you have to cut back on what you were able to say when you realized the sentences would be read so widely?

DR. KISSINGER: No. Actually, this particular document -- there was a thought at one point to put out separate documents by the various departments in order to take care of this point. But then it turned out that there would be such a large degree of overlap, and so many inevitable comparisons, that it was decided, indeed on the recommendations of the departments, that they should be consolidated.

There was no deliberate attempt to cut this, or to shade it.

Q What does this document do to the posture statement that Secretary Rogers was going to put out in lieu of the Defense Department's policy statement?

DR. KISSINGER: It was not in lieu thereof. What this posture statement does, the Defense Department posture statement, as you will see, has been cut back so that it deals with primarily technical programs and budgets of the Defense Department. The part of the Defense posture statement that deals with foreign policy really deals with it by reference to this document, so that the Defense Department does not propose to make national policy any more, but its statement, which isn't going to be called a posture statement. I forget what they call it, Defense Review or something, what it attempts to do is to explain from the assumptions of this foreign policy what Defense policy and programs would support it.

The Secretary of State's posture statement was not intended to replace the Defense statement. There were going to be two concurrent ones. So the Defense one has been cut back to a technical program and the State Department one, on the recommendation of the Secretary of State, actually was combined with this.

Q You mean there won't be a separate statement by the Secretary of State?

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DR. KISSINGER: There will be testimony by the Secretary of State before the appropriate committee. And there won't be a separate statement as such, no.

Q Did you have the thought, Hrney, that this report might produce hearings on your report by the appropriate committee, the way the economic report is handled?

DR. KISSINGER: Since this hasn't been done before, yes, we expect that the Secretary of State and where appropriate, the Secretary of Defense, will testify with respect to this. When the Secretary of State testifies, we did not include in this report accounts of policy towards individual countries, because this would have made it unmanageably long, and a lot of work on this has been done and will undoubtedly be incorporated.

Q Would you relate the report somewhat to the desire of the Congress to have a closer association with the Executive in the development of foreign policy?

DR. KISSINGER: Certainly it is responsive to this desire, but in all candor, I have to tell you that the decision to put out this report was made before we deliberately addressed it. It grew out of the view that if there was a need for a posture statement, it should not come from one military department, but it should come -- this was the original intention.

Secondly, that it was a good way of bringing together the various elements of the bureaucracy in working together on one general conceptual statement as indeed has happened. It was enormously useful.

Thirdly, it was a good way of informing the American public about the general thrust of our foreign policy.

Those were our original intentions. I would like to take credit for the other intentions. I have to tell you candidly it is a pleasant result, but it was not the original intention.

Q Could you expand on one point of the mechanics of policy-making, namely, the cross-over to the domestic budgetary considerations?

DR. KISSINGER: Yes.

Q You come up to that point several times, but you don't really explain it. Is it more than what the budget message told us about how they figured out a five-year projection of overall resources and, you know, the cupboard is bare except for the $20 billion left to play with in 1975?

That is, were specific programs balanced?

DR. KISSINGER: Can I tell you off the record that I never read the budget message.

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Q But the budget message and economic report contain projections to 1975 of the country's capacity overall.

DR. KISSINGER: Let me tell you what we did in the area in which I have something to do and what we are going to do in the future. Since this is the first time it was done it wasn't refined. We got into the budget process at the White House level or at the NSC level later last year than we will this year, closer to the traditional time then will be the case this year.

What we did in the domestic side is we developed five packages of priority programs at various levels of expenditure. It turned out to be five. So, it was relatively easy to match it.

When we had our basic Defense review, we had five levels, five different types of strategy, and five different levels of Defense expenditure. And we then gave this to the domestic part, and we in turn took the projections of domestic staff and on this basis we worked out which of the domestic packages could be carried out at various Defense package levels. And by extension, what domestic programs would have to be given up as you went up the ladder of various strategy.

In a way, of course, this was arbitrary. So what you had initially was an analysis. I did not get involved. The NSC didn't get involved with establishing the domestic priorities. We treated those as given.

In turn, the domestic staff didn't get into the establishment of military priorities. They had to take those as given.

But anyway, we had a consolidated document which enabled us to see what domestic priorities would have been considered at various levels.

There is this problem in connection with this. You can't just trade freely between these two, because there is some irreducible level of Defense expenditures beyond which, by any judgment, you are not running risks, but jeopardizing your security. At that level, you are obviously not free to trade between domestic priorities, if your judgment is correct, and security priorities.

But in the area of where you have a measure of flexibility, and you can take a calculated risk, this turns out to be very helpful. In fact, we rejected two levels of expenditures largely on those grounds.

Q But it was never a case of Bob Finch arguing with Mel Laird? There was no back and forth?

DR. KISSINGER: Is housing more important than new missile sites or something like that?

Q Right.

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DR. KISSINGER: No. But now what we are doing in the Defense Program Review Committee, in the five-year projection, we will have a forum for doing that.

Q What you were talking about a minute ago was --

DR. KISSINGER: That was the 1971 program. The 1972 and beyond program will provide for this. The 1971 attempt was the first rough try at it.

Q When did you do that, approximately?

DR. KISSINGER: We did that in San Clemente last summer. We did that in August. We did the staff work in June and July, but the meetings took place in August.

But I will have to say this: At the time we had the meetings of allocations between the various levels of expenditures, there were concurrent meetings going on on the domestic priorities, so that while there was not a direct confrontation -- we have MacCracken, for example, as an organic member of the Defense Review Committee.

Q Can you foresee the day -- I am talking about in this five-year period -- where this debate can be sufficiently opened for Congress and the public to participate. That is, is it humanly possible to take three carriers and five city slums and put them on the scale and have the Congress really participate.

DR. KISSINGER: It is a bad way of putting the issue because the first thing you have to decide is do you need the carriers or the security. Or are they useful or not essential.

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Once you have made the determination that you would like to have them, but you don't have to have them, then you can usefully debate the three carriers against city slums. But if it should turn out that you conclude there is an irreducible number of carriers, then can you have a public debate on it? I will tell you, my experience in this Administration has been that if we can stay three days ahead of Beecher, we are doing pretty well.

Q This is a slightly different problem. The real issue is that Congress and elements of the public are clammering for a piece of the action, of what is absolutely essential and what is not.

DR. KISSINGER: Let me put it this way: I don't really think the public can decide whether you should have 13 or 15 carriers. But in the gross categories, of where the country is going, what relative emphasis to give, how threatened it feels, and from what, I think, a national debate is helpful and desirable.

Q Can I ask you one final question, if we are all exhausted? Somewhere in here you say we are trying to avoid the cold war rhetoric or some such phrase. This question came up in the other briefing. You are talking about a transition here. You are still talking about the Soviet Union as a potential enemy. You have listed plusses and minuses.

What do you call this period, if it isn't cold war?

DR. KISSINGER: The cold war was based on the assumption of an irreconcilable hostility between the Communists and us, a hostility that would end either with our defeat or their transformation.

Q That is the Leninist view.

DR. KISSINGER: No. You read George Kennan's containment article and you will find that his conclusion is that the Soviet Union will have to be contained, that the fact of the containment will bring about fundamental transformations within the Soviet system, which will then make it possible to have fruitful negotiations or you take statements of Acheson in the late 40's in which he said "You must have a situation of strength. From that situation of strength will then flow"-- well, it was just a restatement of the Kennan position.

Our view would be that, of course, it is possible that there will be a change in the Soviet position, and this will make a more general arrangement conceivably easier. But even if the Communist system should continue, as is after all probable, it is imperative in our time to work out modes of co-existence other than pure positions of strength.

I would have thought that the arms control talks would have been utterly inconceivable before 1960 as a theoretical statement of an objective.

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So it is a period that is somewhere between the
cold war and between an era in which there is consciousness
of no irreconciable differences and I think one of the
problems is that both sides will have to break, as we are attempting
to break, with some of the patterns of the past.

Q: Kennedy said in the American University speech, which really I think began this period you are talking about, that we had to reexamine our view of the cold war and our own attitudes toward the Soviet Union and stated in here the facts of nuclear life which impel a certain ---

DR. KISSINGER: We are not saying that everything
in this document -- while the document is probably
unprecedented -- is totally unprecedented. Some of
the things that are in this document are quite consistent with
that particular declaration.

Another thing we are doing here, which had not
been done that explicitly before, is stating a
philosophy towards dealing with Communist China,
which is maybe a somewhat new departure. But I think
it is a mistake to say in foreign policy, and I think it would
be wrong to pretend that everything we are saying here of the
state of the world is blown, fullblown, from our brains.

There is an evolution here that has gone on. It
is a conjunction of conditions, convictions and when
Kennedy spoke, it was a year after the confrontation, and, yet,
four years before this tremendous Soviet missile buildup,
so it was set in a slightly different context.

But the intention was not widely different. It
was maybe stated in more apoplectic terms than this
Administration would express itself, less to specifics
and concreteness, but this is a question of style.

THE PRESS: Thank you.

END

(AT 8:34 P.M. EST)

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This Copy For __________

AT THE WHITE HOUSE
(Indian Treaty Room)

WITH DR. HENRY A. KISSINGER,
ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT
FOR NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS,
AND GERALD L. WARREN, DEPUTY
PRESS SECRETARY TO THE
PRESIDENT.

AT 10:35 A.M. EST.

FEBRUARY 18, 1970

WEDNESDAY

MR. WARREN: This is on a background basis, and I know you all understand that. We would like you to attribute what Dr. Kissinger says to Administration sources, without quotations, please.

Q Could you give a general rundown of what is the aim of this message, and what, in your view, are the main points of the message?

DR. KISSINGER: Actually, the original idea for the message arose before the Administration came into office. When the President and I met at Key Biscayne at the end of December, 1968, we decided that there would be an annual report by the President. The purpose of this report would be three-fold: One, to lay out in one document the basic conceptual premise on which the Administration policy operates. Secondly, to put before the American public what we were trying to do; and thirdly, to serve as a guide to the bureaucracy what the main direction of American policy was.

One of the attributes of the governmental process is that the President impinges upon it through a series of tactical decisions when there is a problem that comes to the White House for a decision. We then make a decision and send out a decision memorandum, which simply states what we have decided.

But the overall relationship is not self-evident. Therefore, this report attempts to lay out these three principal purposes. Of course, it also may or may not be used by foreign governments to have some idea of the basic thinking of this Administration.

These are the basic reasons for this report.

Q We are meeting in the Indian Treaty Room, and we are thinking of India, and you refer to the costly arms race and that the United States will keep all its treaty commitments. Does this imply that you won't make any new ones?

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Secondly, on Page 40 you refer to America's willingness to provide a shield if a nuclear power threatens the freedom of a nation allied with us, or of a nation whose survival we consider vital to our security and the security of the region as a whole.

What kind of shield?

DR. KISSINGER: Let me answer the second part of this question which was asked over here, as to what is the main part of the report.

In a 40,000 word document, it is awfully difficult to say what the main point of the report is. I wouldn't say there is any one main point, but if there is one, it is, we believe, as is stated in the report, that the immediate post-war period is over. That is the period that was characterized by America's immediate, direct and overwhelming involvement in every crisis every place in the world.

Now this, incidentally -- and I want to make this point very strongly -- does not mean that we are withdrawing from the world. It is our conviction that this is the only way that we can remain related to the world for an indefinite period of time. This is a point which the President has made at great length, if you read his Air Force Academy speech last year, and he has made it on every occasion where he has spoken about the report.

The last thing a President wants, who has traveled so much and to whom foreign policy has been such an overwhelming interest, is to withdraw from the world. But he is convinced that America cannot remain involved in the world on the basis that was appropriate for a period when we were the only country capable of conducting a foreign policy, when many of the new countries were just coming into independence, when Europe was shattered and Japan was prostrate.

For all of these reasons, we believe that this defines America's relationship with the world and is not a matter of withdrawal from the world. This is the basic theme. There are a lot of subordinate themes which I suppose we can come to with your questions.

Now, with respect to India or the shield, one of our basic points is that there is a great deal of debate in the United States at this moment about what American commitments are. There is a great deal of implication that America is involved in the world only where it has commitments, and therefore, the way to get America out of the world is to reduce American commitments.

We make the statement somewhere in the report that America is not involved because it has commitments. It has commitments because it is involved. Our commitments do not define our interests. Our interests define our commitments.

Therefore, we reserve the right with respect to countries to which we have no commitments, but whose integrity we consider crucial to the peace of the world, to react to major challenges to their survival and to their integrity. How we would react and in what manner we will not necessarily say in advance, so I can't tell you exactly what sort of a shield we will give.

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Of course, where nuclear issues are involved,
there are certain obvious consequences that follow.

Q The second question was, you mentioned here
that we want to avoid a costly armed race. My question was,
does this imply, regarding India, that there has to be a
strong power there? Are you implying that the situation
regarding India is similar to the situation with the
Israelis and the Arabs?

DR. KISSINGER: I was battered from pillar to post
traveling through India answering questions like that.

Our involvement in the India-Pakistan immediate
dispute is less intense than it is in the Middle East problem.
This was a general statement of our preference. It was not
a detailed guide to our policy.

Q The report poses more questions than it
provides answers. Is this because of the remarkable reluctance
on the part of the Government to not go into the future,
or is it because of National security?

DR. KISSINGER: It is a combination of both factors.
I would have thought, first of all, for our people and those
who have to deal with us, it makes a difference whether we ask the
questions. Many of these questions have proved difficult to
solve over a period of years, and it would be preposterous
for us to pretend that we have a patent solution for all of
the issues that confront America or the world, and can write
them down in a document.

Now I have been asked variations of this question,
and I am frankly a little puzzled by it, because first of
all, there is a three page explanation, from page 99 to
101, in which we state why we believe negotiations with
the major countries, and particularly the Soviet Union,
are absolutely essential.

We point out why it is that we believe there has to
be an era of negotiations. But we also believe that
in negotiating with the Communists, we are not dealing
with them psycho-therapeutically. We state that we consider
the Communist leaders to be serious and Communist, and that
we do not ask them to give up their convictions as a condition
for settlement.

From this certain conclusions will follow. One is,
we are trying to avoid the oscillations between euphoria and
frustration which have characterized previous negotiations.

Secondly, we do not consider the background of
negotiations significant. We consider the results significant.
We do not believe in the type of negotiations where we say
we will try to do something unimportant and later on do something
important. We believe if you can't do something important
now, let us not pretend we are doing something.

Therefore, we made a catalogue from this philosophy
in which we remained committed to major negotiations with
the Soviet Union on the basis of precise and agreed things.
We made a catalogue of the things that we believe have gone
well, and of the things that have gone badly.

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These are statements of fact. Anybody can tell us that we have listed the wrong things, but that is apparently not the case. We have listed the facts and there is a debit side to our relationship which we will try to remove insofar as it is within our power to remove it.

It was not intended as a challenge to the Soviet Union, but it was intended as a statement of fact of where we are, and to characterize the precise unemotional nature in which we propose to conduct our relationships, and in which we do not believe that you can substitute charm for substance -- that is a lucky thing for me.

This is the basic intention of the document. It is not intended as a hard-line or a soft-line document. It is intended as a realistic assessment of where we stand and as a firm commitment to a policy of negotiation with the Soviet Union.

We believe, moreover, that it will help our relationship with the Soviet Union. We believe that the Soviet Union will find it easier to negotiate with us from the basis of a correct evaluation of each other's necessities rather than on the basis of abstract professions of good will which they won't believe any way.

Q With relation to Europe, you say the United States may have to make sacrifices in the common interest, and you say that these ---

DR. KISSINGER: Can you give me the page?

Q It is on Page 21, and it says that this is outweighed by the gain in the political vitality of the West as a whole.

How much do you have in mind the process of defense and military integration?

DR. KISSINGER: We can live with European defense integration, and we consider it very consistent with our interests. We would have no difficulty with it.

Q On Page 6 of the introduction, Dr. Kissinger, under the paragraph beginning, "In Asia," you say our cooperation with Asian nations will be enhanced as they cooperate with one another and develop regional institutions.

There are plenty of regional institutions in Asia. Could you tell us which ones you have in mind?

DR. KISSINGER: We mention later such institutions as the Mekong River Development and the Asian Development Bank. We have no overwhelming desire to create new institutions. I think strengthening the existing ones would be a more realistic phrase. It does not refer to any particular institutions.

Q At the top of Page 113, referring to limiting the flow of weapons to regions in conflict, is this confined to the Middle East or are there other nations referred to?

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DR. KISSINGER: This is a general statement.

Q Would it refer to the Soviet Union?

DR. KISSINGER: We would be prepared to do that.

Q On Page 113, Point 4, you talk about finding
a way to head off a conflict. What are you thinking of in
more practical terms?

DR. KISSINGER: We were thinking in practical terms,
adaptations of the Hot Line situation, so that if--there were
crises, we do not get thrown into an inadequate flow of
information -- the sort of situation that arose, for example,
in the Middle East in 1967.

Q On Page 23, the first paragraph, the report
deals with the achievements and continues to say that "the
completion of this process in close collaboration with all
of our allies, including those possessing national nuclear
capabilities, will be a major contribution to the credible
defense of Europe."

Does this mean that the United States Government
intends to engage the French government in a discussion of how
to join forces through guidelines with a planning group or
otherwise?

And secondly, I have a broader question in this
connection. If the report assumes that the Nixon doctrine
should be made applicable to all alliances of the United
States and not to Asia alone, how do you imagine a feasible
and self-sustaining defense force in Western Europe would
be capable of really sharing the burdens with the United
States of the NATO areas?

DR. KISSINGER: With respect to the first question,
the relationship of our forces to other forces and to NATO,
there is no immediate urgency to settle the issue, but in
principal we would be glad to discuss this problem with the
French government whenever the French government is ready to
engage in such discussion, and be ready to discuss it as a
practical problem.

With respect to the second question, I should say
we expect to retain forces in Europe for the foreseeable
future, and nothing in this document should be read as indi-
cating that the United States is intending to withdraw major part
of its forces from Europe in any time frame, that we can foresee.

On the other hand, we also believe that the basic
principle is that there has to be a reallocation of
responsibility, which should apply at least as much to Europe
as to other areas of the world, in terms of Europe's recovered
economies, and we and Europeans should discuss this over a
reasonable future.

We have no intention of proceeding with ultimatums
on this problem. If it is true that we have a common interest
in this matter, we ought to be able to discuss it on a common
basis. It seems to me that with the Europeans with their
combined gross national product larger than the Soviet Union,
it is more a practical problem than a theoretical problem.

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Q How would the United States raise this question? That is the essential point.

DR. KISSINGER: Well, we have many forums available for raising it. We have just created the Under Secretaries Forum, which is supposed to address long-term problems. This is a long-term problem. There are many forums in which it can be raised. But we have no intention of raising it as an immediate crisis issue or that it must be resolved in any immediate time frame.

Q There is a section that Mr. McNamara spent years over, looking at the widening missile gap.

DR. KISSINGER: Mr. McNamara is a good, personal friend of mine, so I don't want to comment on the previous Administration. I think the figures speak for themselves and they are facts.

Perhaps he concluded it didn't make any difference what we did about it, that if these numbers were reversed it wouldn't change the situation, and therefore, he believed that American security was within attainable conditions and was being maintained with the force levels that he was developing.

I think that the notion of a missile gap as it existed in the late 1950's, in which it was believed possible that one side might have a complete striking force, is not the case with these figures. Nothing in these figures suggests that the Soviet Union has even the remotest capability now to strike the United States first without suffering totally unacceptable damage in retaliation.

If you are defining any disparity in one category of weapons in the missile gap, this is perhaps true. But if you look at it as a doctrinal question, I would have to answer the way I did.

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Q Can you clarify your arms sale policy with South Asia? Secondly, in view of the importance of Japan in matters of security, do you intend that Japan will rearm much more than it is already doing now?

DR. KISSINGER: The arms sale policy with respect to South Asia was covered only in very general terms here and it is a subject which is now before the National Security Council. Until the National Security Council has made a final decision on some of the specific aspects of this, I don't think that I can, in explaining this document, go beyond what I said to this other gentleman.

Secondly, on the question of Japanese rearmament, obviously, of course, Japan is a great and vital people, which is perfectly capable of defining its own security requirements without too much tutelage from the United States.

Our general philosophy is that we believe that Japan can play and will play a larger role in Asia and we are willing and anxious to cooperate with Japan. Our impression is that Japan is putting more emphasis on its economic role than its military role.

Q Dr. Kissinger, I refer to Page 98 where you refer to forces ---

DR. KISSINGER: I will never meet with a group again that actually reads documents. (Laughter)

Q I see you have stated that you are maintaining in peacetime forces, adequate general purpose forces for simultaneously meeting a major Communist attack in either Europe or Asia. Does this mean that you might become involved in a major land war in Asia in the case of Chinese aggression?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't think that we can be expected to say in the abstract exactly what our war plans are. We are characterizing the forces we are developing. The forces we are developing have to theoretically be capable of either fighting a major land war in Europe or Asia. A large part of these forces are in Europe and it is more logical to assume that we are expecting that to be, if it takes place at all, in Europe rather than in Asia.

But the theoretical capability exists to do it in one place or the other.

Let me put it this way: We don't exclude the option, but the deployment of our forces makes clear where our priorities are.

Q But in this case of this theoretical question, wouldn't you be obliged to take forces from Europe to put them in Asia?

DR. KISSINGER: If we engaged in a major land war with China, we would have the choice of either using the forces we have and remobilizing and sending additional forces, or taking some forces from Europe. I have to say that in our immediate planning we don't think this is the most probable event.

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Q Is the United States still prepared to pay an economic price for the political unity of Europe? There was a speech a few days ago which seemed to point in another direction.

DR. KISSINGER: What is that speech?

Q It was in the Foreign Policy Association in Bonn.

DR. KISSINGER: That is outranked by the President and this is the policy of the Administration.

Q On Page 75, for example, you say that you reiterate a case for fair trade practices and this is what Schaetzel seemed to be pointing out in his speech on Sunday.

DR. KISSINGER: As I said, I didn't see the speech, so it is very hard for me to comment on it. If Europe is merely a trade area and not a political entity, we have no overwhelming incentive to pay any particular price for a European trading community.

Under those circumstances, we would apply purely economic criteria to our relationship with a European free trade area. If it were a political entity, then we would face a different situation and it might be possible for us to submerge some of those principles to larger political considerations.

Q I wonder if we can persuade you to go to the briefing tomorrow or Friday on the French President's visit. I think some of us would find it very useful indeed.

Seriously, it could be with one of your regular briefings which you hold from time to time.

DR. KISSINGER: Let me see about it -- maybe Monday. Let me see.

Q Could I have a follow-up question to that statement? Would it be possible when we have visitors in the United States like Mr. Wilson and Pompidou, that during these visits or at least at the conclusion that you or somebody else might come forward and give us some bits of information of what is going on.

We were in a very, very difficult situation when Wilson was here.

DR. KISSINGER: I don't make the press policy, and I don't do that much briefing. I don't brief the American press more than once a month, so let me see what we can work out.

Q On Page 24 you talk of relations between East and West in the fourth paragraph in an obvious reference to the planning of one single grand conference and you say it would be wrong to believe that one single grand conference can encompass all existing relationships. Under what conditions do you think perhaps a conference of this kind could be produced?

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DR. KISSINGER: Well, you know, if it has a subject that affects all European countries, or that affects the general security of European countries, then it would be productive, such as if you had a subject that dealt with arms arrangements in central Europe, for example, I am not saying this is what we recommend, but I am just taking a type of thing. Or, if issues of Germany arose, then I could imagine a more general conference. But to discuss trade matters and cultural matters which have up to now been the only subjects accepted by the other side, that does not seem to us to warrant the title of a European security conference.

We are personally willing to discuss cultural matters and trade matters, and we don't want to suggest for a moment that we are opposed to having these subjects discussed. But we don't believe it is likely to change the situation very significantly.

THE PRESS: Thank you very much.

END (AT 11:10 A.M. EST)