1

Address of Dr. Henry A. Kissinger

delivered to the 86th Convention of the

Northeastern Retail Lumbermens Association at

the Hynes Auditorium, Boston, Massachusetts, on

Monday, January 7, 1960.

DR. HENRY A. KISSINGER, Jr.

Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate the
introduction very much. You have to understand
why I didn't go to the Super Bowl. Why should I
sit on the 47-yard line? (Laughter and applause)

I know that a group like this in
an election year could have had anybody and,
therefore, I'm particularly honored to have been
asked. Each of the candidates would, I'm sure,
have been happy to come. But I know you follow
the motto of our President, "why not the best?"
(Laughter and Applause)

I also appreciated the reference
to my book. You can't buy any value for equal
weight anywhere. (Laughter) It is 1,500 pages and
covers four years of my life. Wait until you
get to the second volume when I start going to
kindergarten. (Laughter)

LEAVITT REPORTING SERVICE, INC.

2

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

It will really get exciting at
that point. Now, I thought I will talk to you
today about where we stand in my view in our
overall foreign policy. After my remarks I will
answer some questions and lest you get too
nervous, I will indicate when my remarks are
concluded because for somebody brought up in the
German language, it isn't always evident when
the conclusion has been reached. (Laughter)

We are right now living through a
period of seeming crisis, in which every day the
media and the newspapers inform us of some
measure the United States is taking or some
proposals that are being made for measures that
the United States might take in the face of a
series of turbulent events that we are confronting,
especially in Southwest Asia.

But I would like to stress that
these events are symptoms of a more fundamental
problem. An important lesson for America to
learn is not this or that tactical move; the
important challenge we face is whether for the
first time in a decade and a half we can recover

3

a sense of national unity about the role of

America in the world, about the purpose we are
supposed to pursue, the purposes which we wish to pursue.

The crisis that has started over

Iran and Afghanistan will not end with the

release of the hostages or with whatever

evolution may take place in Afghanistan itself.

The crisis is in part caused by the fact that

America has been divided about its role in the
world.

Ever since the Vietnam war we have

been unsure about the significance of power,

about the role that the United States should

play geographically, about the values we can

pursue and to what extent. And until we come to

some national agreement on this, on a non-
partisan basis, we will continue to oscillate

between extremes of panic and extremes of

conciliation, between believing that all

problems can be solved in one fit of anger or

that all problems will disappear in an
atmosphere of reconciliation.

This, beyond any of the tactical

4

1 issues that confront us, must be our national

2 agenda. For better or worse, there can be no

3 security in the world without an American role.

4 There can be no progress in the world without an

5 American commitment. We are the strongest free

6 nation.

7 When we abdicate or when we are

8 divided or when we are unsure about our purposes,

9 a vacuum is inevitably created that will affect

10 the perception of their opportunities of other

11 countries, and ~~the~~ self-confidence of our friends

12 and the boldness of our adversaries.

13 This is what has been happening to

14 us over the decade of the Vietnam war, the

15 subsequent national divisions, and some of the

16 delusions with which policy was afterwards

17 conducted.

18 I would like to discuss the areas

19 in which we must work for a national consensus

20 under four headings. Under the heading of the

21 balance of power, of geopolitical relationships,

22 of who are the nations with which we can

23 associate, and, fourth, under the heading of

5

1 what happens when the present period of crisis
2 ends and negotiations start again, so that we can
3 avoid this excessive oscillation that I have
described before between panic and euphoria.

5 Let me speak first about the
6 balance of power. It is now generally
7 recognized in unclassified literature, that is
8 uncontested, that the Soviet Union for over a
9 period of 15 years has been increasing its
10 military expenditures at the rate of over five
11 percent a year while the United States military
12 expenditures have remained at best constant,
13 allowing for inflation.

14 Compound interest at the rate of
15 five percent a year over a 15 year period is
16 bound to yield an enormous net increase in
17 military power.

18 This is compounded by the fact
19 that the United States is spending nearly 60
20 percent of its military budget on personnel
21 while the Soviet Union is spending at most 30
22 percent and probably less of its military budget
23 on personnel.

So not only has the Soviet Union spent more, it has also used what it spent for investment in research and development and in military hardware.

Inevitably this is bound to create a situation where the military balance is tilting against the free countries. There is no dispute that at best there is parity in strategic forces, that we are behind in theater nuclear forces, that we are far behind in conventional forces, and that the Soviets are rapidly closing the gap in naval forces.

It has never happened in history that a nation gained an advantage in so many significant military categories without gaining some political benefit from it. It is inevitable that unless this balance is rectified, (that) the crisis which we have been witnessing will multiply in as yet unforeseeable areas and in some foreseeable ones.

If, in every crisis, ~~the side~~ armed by the Soviet union, ordered Soviet arms, determined the outcome, whatever the moral

7

1 convictions of people around the world will be,
2 they will try to adjust of necessity to the
dominant trends.
3

4 We have believed for too long that
5 our arms were a contributing cause to military
tension. We have developed theories by which we
6 gave up our superiority in strategic forces
7 without compensating with a build-up in other
forces.
8

10 As late as 1977, when President
11 Carter cancelled the B-1 bomber, he called on
the Soviet Union to follow suit. But <u>I</u> read <u>that</u> in
12 the newspapers now that not only did the Soviet
13 Union not follow suit, <u>but</u> they are developing
14 now a supersonic bomber of their own.
15

16 Without going into the technical
17 complexities of weapon systems, we face with
respect to military power this fundamental
18 problem. Every year the Institute of Strategic
Studies of London publishes an unclassified
20 report, which has never been contested, about the
21 relative balance of military forces on both
sides.
22
23

8

This has shown in recent years a
clearly emerging gap against the United States
in the early 1980s. we have had <u>in recent months</u>,
in connection with the ratification of the SALT
agreement, endless <u>arguments</u> about first whether
money ought to be appropriated in order to pass
SALT and secondly what percentage is the right
figure, whether it should be three percent
increase or five percent increase or what would
be the correct figure.

The answer is that first, even
when SALT goes <u>WAS</u> before the Senate, no
just
appropriation should be made <u>in</u> order to pass an
agreement. The only justification is the
national security of the United States. And the
national security of the United States cannot be
measured by percentage increases, but by one
very simple test; <u>Are the gaps that I have been</u>
describing being closed or do they remain
constant or do they even increase?

If these gaps remain constant or
increase, then we are not doing enough. A great
deal of the increase that is talked about is

9

1 being devoted to ~~fund~~ forces that we have
~~CLAIMED~~ ~~To~~

2 ~~carried as~~ (possess), but which have in fact

3 received inadequate appropriations in the past.

4 So the simple test that any
5 citizen can apply is whether the military

6 program presented to the Congress will close the
7 ~~whose existence is~~ gaps [that are] uncontested, or whether it does
8 ~~nothing.~~

9 That must be the subject of our
10 national debate and the time is past when we
11 should pretend to ourselves that unilateral
12 American good will can preserve the peace, that
13 unreciprocated examples will be followed, that
14 unilateral steps will create a pattern of
15 international conduct.

16 The second area which we must
17 understand is the geopolitical balance in the
18 world. By geopolitical balance I mean the
19 intangible qualities by which friends of the
20 United States believe that they represent either
21 the wave of the future or at a minimum that
22 their security can be assured.

23 The sense, expressed very often in

10

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

intangibles, as to who can achieve its
objectives, in this sense we have to remember
that to be effective geopolitically one has to
be prepared to act on assessments that cannot be
proved true when they are not ~~MAJ~~.

When the scope for action is
greatest, the knowledge on which to base such
action is at a minimum. When the knowledge is
greatest, the scope for creative action has
often disappeared.

In 1936, one French division could
have stopped the Germans when they remilitarized
the Rhine and. The world would still be arguing
today whether Hitler was a misunderstood
nationalist or a maniac bent on world domination.

By 1941 everybody knew that Hitler
was a maniac bent on world domination, and (we
had to) the world had to pay a price of 20
million lives for learning this.

The present events in Afghanistan
had their origins no later than 1975 when, for
the first time, Soviet proxy troops were
introduced in distant continents and where, for

11

1 the first time, the United States was prevented
2 by congressional action from resisting and from
3 assisting the anti-Communist forces in Angola.

4 The issue was not then, as it is
5 not exclusively in Afghanistan, the intrinsic
6 importance of Angola. The issue was that if a
7 small Caribbean country can send an
8 expeditionary force, financed by the Soviet
9 Union, equipped by the Soviet Union, under the
10 shelter of Soviet military protection, into a
11 distant continent, what will all the leaders of
12 that area believe, what will be the perception,
13 the willingness, and ability of the United
14 States to maintain the global balance?

15 We heard then that we would be
16 involved in another Vietnam, though no one
17 thought of introducing American forces. Those
18 Cuban forces spread from Angola to Ethiopia,
19 which is a direct threat to the oil producing
20 regions of the Middle East. And they went from
21 Ethiopia to South Yemen.

22 And the first Communist coup in
23 Afghanistan did not occur 10 days ago, but 20

12

1 months ago when a Communist government was
2 installed to replace a previously neutralist
3 government and 5,000 Soviet advisors appeared in
4 all the ministries of Kabul without opposition
5 from the United States.

6 It is this sequence of events
7 which has contributed to a general climate of
8 uncertainty And it was compounded by the
9 collapse, for whatever reason, of the government
10 of Iran, which for 37 years had been a close
11 ally of the United States.

12 All of this has created an
13 atmosphere in that region in which the
14 fundamental question is whether the United
15 States is willing or able to maintain the
16 balance not only against the Soviet Union, but
17 against those radical forces that are sponsored
18 by the Soviet Union, against that network of
19 associations that is trained, equipped in
20 Communist locations and which tends to under-
21 mine the security of most or these countries.

22 And, therefore, if we are serious
23 about dealing with the current crisis, we must

13

have an answer not just in the sense of
immediate retaliatory steps, which incidentally,
I support and which I believe all Americans
should support, but in a deeper sense of
conveying to other nations that may be threatened
or whose cooperation we want some perception of
what it is that we are resisting, how it is that
we are going to resist it, some strategy that
they can understand.

If Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or any
of our other friends are threatened, what is the
threat, how are we going to resist it, what is
the role that these countries will play and what
is the role that we shall play?

Are we acting now in order to
punish the Soviet Union for an individual act or
are we committing to a long term strategy that
we can communicate to others that they can
understand, that our people will support and
that will be carried out by our leadership
groups of both parties regardless of the
accidents of political fortune?

For if we change our policies with

14

1 every election, we become an element of insecurity
to those who have to depend on us.

3 And this leads to the third
4 question, who are our friends in the world? In
5 the name of what are we going to support them?
6 It is true that our country stands for human
rights, for democratic liberties, and for the
respect of the individual.

9 But it is also true that there is
10 such a thing as the geopolitical balance in the
world, that the history of other nations is not
11 always the same as ours, that democracy has been
12 in the West the result of an evolution extending
13 over centuries, and that in many parts of the
14 world our immediate choice is not between
15 perfection and evil, but between fundamental
16 threats and situations which, while not
17 desirable, have within them the possibility of a
18 moderate evolution.

20 I have been criticized because I
believed that the United States should not
21 lightly discard a friend of 37 years whom eight
22 American presidents had praised to the skies in
23

15

1 his hour of need.

2 But whatever the merits of that
3 debate, if you look at what has been described
4 as the arc of crisis, we will find it
5 exclusively led by governments which do not meet
6 all our ideal standards. Are we then going to
7 repeat our domestic debate of a decade and in their
8 hour of need remember all their imperfections
9 and use them as an excuse for inaction, or will
10 we recognize what is essential and what must be
11 left to an historical process?

12 That in some situations the best
13 we can do is to leave open the possibility for a
14 longer, but never ending evolution. If we
15 cannot answer this question, we will find that
16 the offers of help which we now extend may not
17 be easily so readily received, or that if
18 they are received that we will confront again
19 the domestic divisions which from Vietnam,
20 through our current period, have made it
21 impossible to formulate a national consensus.

22 And if we are not able to
23 formulate this national consensus, then we will

16

1 not be able to meet the current crisis.

2 This gets me to my nearly last
3 point. It is this, in 1968, after the Soviets
4 occupied Czeckoslovakia, a television network
5 that must have been hard up for commentators,
6 since I was totally unknown at the time
7 (Laughter), asked me whether I was afraid that
8 the Soviets were now going to attack western
9 Europe.

10 And I said I'm not afraid of the
11 military attack that the Soviets are now going
12 to launch. I'm afraid of the peace offensive
13 that is certain to follow. Five months later,
14 to my amazement, I was asked to join the
15 Administration of a President whom I had
16 consistently opposed for the previous decade
17 when I worked for Governor Rockefeller.

18 And in the first months of the
19 Nixon Administration we were harassed by our
20 media and by our allies to pick up the overtures
21 for peace which five months after Czeckoslovakia
22 the Soviet Union was extending to us.

23 Sooner or later there will be

17

another Soviet peace offensive. Sooner or later
we will be again involved in negotiations. We
will be involved in negotiations because, just
as we are the leaders of the free world in
organizing resistance, so we have to be the
leaders of the free world in defining what we
mean by peace.

So now is the time to get clear in
our mind what it is that we want when we
negotiate, what are the terms which we consider
compatible with peace, security, and our values.
What do we want, a change of tone or a change in
conduct?

And if a change in conduct, which
is, of course, what I would insist on, what
change in conduct?

Let us not again slide into
negotiations where the big debate occurs after
they are already concluded. Let us use this
time when we ready our defenses and organize our
alliances and give courage to our friends, also
to define what it is that we are ultimately
prepared to negotiate upon.

13

1. Now, in this period of constant crisis, it is easy to overestimate our perils.

2 We should keep in mind that we alone have [three]

4 times the gross national product of the Soviet Union and, with our allies, five times the gross national product of the Soviet Union.

7 We should remember that the Soviet Union is a system of government that has never managed a legitimate succession. There have only been four leaders in the whole history of the Soviet Union in the over 50 years of their history. Two died in office, one went on vacation without taking his colleagues with him (Laughter), and the fourth is determined not to repeat that mistake. (Laughter)

16 A system of government where the average age of the top leadership group, the Politburo, is about 70, hardly represents the wave of the future. The economy of no planned economy has ever been able to compete with a market economy, whether it is Czeckoslovakia and Austria, East and West Germany, North and South Korea, never have the market economies done

[x]

19

1. anything but outstrip the socialistic countries.

3. So we are in a critical period.

4. We will face a period in which we have to make major efforts to restore the military balance.

6. We have been shocked and thereby given the opportunity to rally free countries and we have ahead of us some difficult years.

9. But if one looks at the longer term, future, there will be a reality, certainly, that Soviet domestic problems will mount while ours can be mastered. That at some point the choice in Moscow must be for genuine co-existence that we have not yet had.

15. Whether we achieve a world which is free of the danger of nuclear war, but also free of the danger of nuclear blackmail, a world in which the desire for peace does not become a tool in the hand of the strong, but is allied to the determination of the just, whether we can bring about a world of hope and of confidence is finally dependent on whether at last we can stop our own problems and whether we can unite and

20

whether we understand that with all our
adversity we are the most fortunate people in
the world in the sense that the solution of our
problems, depends almost entirely on ourselves.

Thank you very much. (Applause)

Now, I'll be glad to answer some questions.

Yes, sir.

A QUESTION: Dr. Kissinger, you spoke of the inability of the nation to rally around certain geopolitical concepts or goals. With the oil in the Middle East that the west needs so desperately at the present time, won't that provide a consensus not only in the United States, but in western Europe, to come together internally?

DR. KISSINGER: The question is while I have spoken about the inability of the United States to rally around geopolitical goals, is it not a fact that with the threat to the oil of the Middle East, which is essential to our security and for our economy and also essential to western Europe, does that not provide a rallying point?

21

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

So some extent, yes. To the
extent that everybody recognizes the crucial
importance of oil. On the other hand, I
experienced when I was in office and so has the
current Administration that every political
leader faces the dilemma that his term of office
is usually shorter than the length of time it
takes for a problem to work itself out.

And so there's always a great
temptation to solve your immediate symptoms
without getting into the causes.

In 1974 I attempted to organize
all the consuming nations into a group so that
they could negotiate with the producing nations
without being played off one against the other.
At that time the argument was that we need
negotiation, not confrontation, which was really
a subterfuge for enabling every nation to make
its own deal, which was another way of saying
they wanted to get through two, three, four
years, and let somebody else worry about the
long term problem.

In a way we still face the same

22

1 problem. Now there's a greater understanding of
2 the need for unity. But whether there is yet a
3 full understanding of what is needed to act, we
4 will see in the next few months.

5 The additional problem is, that you
6 take a country, I won't name any country, but
7 you take any of the countries in that region, or
8 many of the countries in that region, as a
9 result of the collapse of Iran, which was an
10 unquestioning American ally and which had the
11 largest army in that region, that tended to keep
12 the radical forces in that region in balance.

13 I do not believe, for example,
14 that the Soviet Union would have acted in
15 Afghanistan as it did if Iran had still been an
16 American ally with its traditional, with its
17 existing forces.

18 Leaving aside now the question of
19 whether anything could have been done about
20 it, the fact of the collapse of an ally of the
21 United States for 37 years shifted the balance
22 of power in the Middle East in the direction of
23 the radical forces represented by countries like

23

1 Iraq.

2 Now countries like Saudi Arabia
3 have to decide what, have to judge whether they
can be protected against internal or external
4
5 dangers or whether it isn't safer for them to
6 try to accommodate to their neighbors.

7 And when you look at the oil price,
8 when the moderates at the recent OPEC meeting
9 began by raising the oil price by 33 percent and
10 couldn't carry the radicals with them, you have
11 some sense of the insecurity that now exists
12 among the moderate governments.

13 So we have two tasks. One is to
14 achieve some coherence within our country and
15 with our allies about what it is we need to do.
16 Secondly, to convince the threatened countries
17 that we know what we can do, that we have the
ability to do it, and above all, that we will
18
19 stick with it for the time it takes to
20 accomplish the objective and that we do not
21 ~~midnight~~ again go off into one of our national
22 orgies of masochism and recrimination in which
23 we blame everything on ourselves.

24

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

And that is a tough assignment for
anybody to carry out. Yes, sir.

A QUESTION: There are several
references, Dr. Kissinger, to our allies and to
our friends and we have heard a lot about that
recently. You mentioned it several times here
today.

To me, a friend, it's easy to have
a friend when everything is going right and we
are powerful and we have enemies all around us.
In our time of need, when our country has such
vulnerability internationally and also nationally,
could you point to some overt examples of people
we have traditionally called our friends when
they have done something to support our position.
I'm looking at Japan, for example, we spend
enormous amounts of money, Germany, you talk
Europe, I don't see any overt gestures on their
part to help us make these decisions and give us
the coherence that you asked us to have.

DR. KISSINGER: Well, I'll just
set up the question. The question is, I talked a
lot about our friends and the questioner does

25

1 not see many examples of our friends showing
equal concern for the United States, and do I
2 believe that there is any, that they will
3 contribute to the sense of coherence of which I
4 spoke.
5

6 I agree with many of the sentiments
7 expressed in your question. There has undoubtedly
8 been an inequality in the burdens carried and in
9 the willingness to assume responsibility. Many
countries have seen in the existing
international crisis an opportunity to
strengthen their own relative position. Some
countries, like Great Britain, have behaved very
well and have been very staunch allies, so one
cannot make a general comment.
10

16 But the fact of the matter is that
we have to stick by some of the countries that
have been our friends, not as a favor to them,
but as a necessity for ourselves.
17

20 I was speaking primarily not of
western Europe, incidentally, and Japan. I was
talking primarily of that arc stretching from
Pakistan through northern Africa, of the oil
21
22
23

CyJ

26

producing moderate countries in the Middle East.

And then, even if their actions are sometimes

not what we would desire, we are now facing the

geopolitical reality that if the Soviet Union

appears as an overriding threat and it within

this world the radical forces, led by the Soviet

Union, appear to become dominant, that such

enormous damage can be done to our own economy

and to our own well being regardless of whether

the Europeans or the Japness support us.

In fact, I can foresee

circumstances in which we may have to act

without the Europeans and without the Japanese

in pursuit of our own fundamental national

interest. So it is a complicated question and I

think you are right, we have not always had

adequate support, but it is also true that we

have not always given an adequate lead.

And both of these are required.

Yes, sir.

A QUESTION: Dr. Kissinger, I was

subjected to a media presentation a couple of

weeks ago about the inability of this country,

27

the United States, in order to move or deploy a
unit anywhere in the world. The indication was
that it would take weeks and months to move a
unit of 7,000 to 10,000 men any given place in
the world.

Is that really fact?

DR. KISSINGER: The question was
that there has, the questioner saw a media
presentation about the difficulty of the United
States to move forces around the world.
Regrettably, it is substantially true. For
example, we now have three carriers off Iran as
part of the hostage crisis. In order to get
three carriers off Iran, we are for the first
time since the Korean War without any carrier in
the western Pacific and we are down to one
carrier for the first time in 25 years in the
Mediterranean.

This means that our forces are
stretched so thin that we have real difficulties
in being present. Still, I think, in cases like
Iran, we have the power to act. The question is,
has to be assessed in the context of the fate of

28

1 the hostages and other matters.

2 But the area in which we have the

3 greatest difficulty is in the defense of

4 peripheral, of countries close to the Soviet

5 Union against either attacks by countries armed

6 by the Soviet Union or Soviet proxy forces or

7 Soviet forces, and this is one of the short-

8 comings that must be dealt with.

9 Yes, sir.

10 A QUESTION: Somebody was
11 mentioning China, and I think that China could
12 be a possible ally to us in the future. What is
13 your thinking on that?

14 DR. KISSINGER: The question is, could
15 China be a possible ally of the United States in
16 the future? Well, I, of course, have a strong
17 personal and maybe even sentimental feeling
18 about China, having been the first senior
19 American official to go there in 1971.

20 And there's no question that what
21 brought China and us together was the Chinese
22 fear that they at some point might suffer a fate
23 similar to what Afghanistan has experienced, and

29

a fear of Soviet military pressure.

On the other hand, we also have to
recognize that China is an extremely neuralgic
point for the Soviet Union, so that the
development of our relations with China has to
be carried out with some care so that we do not
provoke what we are trying to avoid.

I'm in favor of assistance to
China in its modernization and its modernization
will automatically improve its defensive
capability. But, again, I would like to stress that
what we need with China is a measured policy
which we carry out regardless of Soviet
maneuvers, so that it doesn't look as if we are
using China to needle the Soviets and conversely
create the impression that if the Soviets pay us
some price, we will stop our relations with
China.

So in the long term what you say
has merit, but it has to be carried out with
enormous circumspection and care and
thoughtfulness.

A QUESTION: Dr. Kissinger, in

30

your view is there any tactical similarity
between the Afghanistan of today and the
Czeckoslovakia in 1938 and the potentiality of
either Pakistan or Iran being the Poland of 1939?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't think that
the Soviets move exactly like the Nazis. The
Nazis operated in a particular manner because
Hitler was convinced that he had to accomplish
whatever he wanted in his lifetime and,
therefore, they would never make a pause and go
from one they would go from Czeckoslovakia to
Poland to France to Russia.

The Soviets are more patient. The
Soviets understand that this demonstration of
frightfulness will not be forgotten. Then their
normal pattern if they follow their normal
pattern, they will consolidate. They will then
make a peace offer, I would think, primarily
aimed at the Europeans to try to split the
Europeans away from us.

The mere fact that these
negotiations are going on will make a lot of
people wonder whether the crisis is now over and

32

work on building our strength or making clear
our determination and when we do negotiate, not
let that be used to sap our will.

That's a much more difficult
problem. But the danger we face is very similar
to the one of the 1930s. Yes, sir.

A QUESTION: Dr. Kissinger, in
regards to national unity and leadership, last
Friday Frank Reynolds of ABC News was
interviewing President Carter and he said in so
many words, "Mr. President, the country is
behind you. We want leadership. What catalyst
for change do you see which will bring about new
leadership in this country and more leadership
in the Congress?"

DR. KISSINGER: What did he say?
(Laughter).

THE QUESTION: My opinion the
President said nothing.

DR. KISSINGER: Well, of course,
I'm not absolutely sure that the President is
committed to the emergence of new leadership in
this year. (Laughter and applause)

33

1 To answer your question, I think
2 what is needed is that the administration put forward, not simply a series of individual steps,
3 which I have supported here before this group,
4 but that the Administration put forward some
5 coherent philosophy of what it is we can do.
6

7 We have heard now for many years
8 that this administration is "free of an in-
9 ordinate fear of Communism," that it will not
10 support countries just because they oppose the
11 Soviet Union, about the limits of our
12 capabilities.

13 And it is true we have learned the
14 limits of our capabilities in a very difficult
15 experience. But we also have an obligation to
16 be told what the scope of our possibilities is.

17 I think this needs to be put forward by the Administration and it needs to involve the leaders of the Republican party. It simply cannot be put forward on a take it or leave it basis because other nations have to get the sense that this country has a settled policy which does not change every time there's a

34

change of administration, much as Britain

throughout most of the 19th Century, throughout

all changes of its government, maintained -- of

course they had disagreements even on foreign
policy -- but the main (lines) of the foreign
policy were not constantly in dispute.

So I think that the Administration
has to take the lead and I think that all who
aspire to leadership and who are concerned about
the future of this country should contribute in
a constructive spirit. Perhaps disagreements
will still remain. In that case, we have an
opportunity to debate them in our national
election this year.

But we should avoid the ad hoc
approach to foreign policy, to race after the
latest crisis, then to chase the latest peace
offensive without any coherent picture of what
it is we are trying to do because we will not
succeed in either negotiating or in resistance
until we get this policy.

MR. BRESCIA: We have time for
one more question.

35

1

DR. KISSINGER: Then you pick it.

2

(Laughter)

3

A QUESTION: Dr. Kissinger, do you think there's a danger of the average citizen in this country not taking the Russian presence in Afghanistan seriously because of our presence in Vietnam all those years? And if so, how would you explain the differences between those two presences?

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

DR. KISSINGER: I think there was an enormous difference. We were invited by the government in South Vietnam, which was invaded by the North Vietnamese armies, the North Vietnamese armies that have been marching all over Indo-China for 20 years.

11

12

13

14

15

16

Now, you can debate whether it was worth it for the United States to send 500,000 troops that far away, but you cannot debate what cannot be debated is that without the invasion of North Vietnamese combat forces across an internationally recognized line and the invasion by the North Vietnamese of Laos and Cambodia, which was serious, the United States

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

36

would not have been involved there.

Then we withdrew our forces and
the government that was left behind in South
Vietnam was overthrown when 19 out of the 20
North Vietnamese combat divisions invaded it
again in 1975.

What we face in Afghanistan is
first there was a Communist coup. When that
Communist government couldn't maintain itself,
the Russian army marched in, executed the leader
of that country, ~~in whose name~~ they now say they
claim had called them in, and occupied the
country in order to Communize it.

We did have a very sad experience
in Vietnam. Part of it we did to ourselves. A
large part of it we did to ourselves. But the
self-~~flagellation~~ flagellation by which we keep blaming
ourselves, what got us involved in Vietnam, and
that was in an Administration that preceded ours,
we inherited 500,000 troops there, we didn't put
them there when we reached office, but what got
us into Vietnam four years before then, before
our coming to office, was idealism.

37

We wanted to protect a people that
was under Communist attack. It may have been a
wrong practical judgment, but morally there's
all the world of difference between trying to
defend people who are under attack and occupying
a country and executing its leaders in order to
extend your hegemony. (Rising Applause)

MR. BRESCIA: Dr. Kissinger, on
behalf of Northeastern Retail Lumbermens
Association, thank you very much.

I'll remind the audience our
exhibits are still open. Thank you again.

(The session was closed at 12
o'clock noon)