[Lc]

## Introduction

Owing to Berlin's political and geographic position at the point in Europe where two world systems face each other across a Wall, events in Berlin occasionally assume an unusual quality. Such was the case when Henry Kissinger came to Berlin, December 2-4, 1978.

Dr. Kissinger, a Fellow and Member of the Board of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, spent two days in Berlin, participating in a conference on *Perspectives for the 1980's* held at the Aspen Institute Berlin. A list of the participants is appended to this report.

During his stay Dr. Kissinger delivered an informal public lecture before an audience of 1,200 as part of the Aspen Institute Berlin's Hans Wallenberg lecture series. Admission to the lecture was free and uncontrolled. At least half the audience appeared to be young, many university students.

The Aspen Institute Berlin has received many requests for Dr. Kissinger's speech. It is published here together with the questions and answers which followed his talk.

A note on technicalities. In introducing Dr. Kissinger, the undersigned spoke in what he hopes had a certain relationship to the German language. In these remarks it seemed appropriate to emphasize the extraordinary fact of a 15 year-old who in 1938 had had to leave Germany with his family, within a few years had had a brilliant career at Harvard and later became Secretary of State of the United States.

Dr. Kissinger prefaced his talk by brief remarks in German. Some questions were asked in German. For the sake of both readers of German and English the original remarks are also translated into English.

Shepard Stone
Director
Aspen Institute Berlin

Henry Kissinger

Informal Talk, Questions and Answers
at the Congress Hall, Berlin

December 2, 1978

## German Text

Ich werde es nicht
wagen, eine Rede auf Deutsch
hier zu halten; erstens
werde ich nicht das Vorbild
erreichen von meinem Freund
Shep Stone und zweitens, wie
Sie wissen, bin ich in
Franken geboren, so bin ich
sicher, daß die Berliner auf
jeden Fall die Simultanüber-
setzung benutzen werden. Ich
möchte mich aber bei Mr.
Stone sehr bedanken über die
freundlichen Dinge, die er
über mich sagte. Sie sollten
nicht zu beeindruckt sein
über die Bücher. Eine eng-
lische Zeitung schrieb mal
über eines meiner Bücher:
"Ich weiß nicht, ob Dr.
Kissinger ein großer Schrei-
ber ist, aber jeder, der dies
es Buch zu Ende liest, ist
ein großer Leser."

## English Translation

I shall not dare to speak
German tonight. First I should
be unable to match the example
of my friend, Shep Stone, and
second, as you know, I was born
in Franconia. Consequently I am
certain that Berliners will have
to listen to the simultaneous
translation. I am grateful to
Mr. Stone for the friendly re-
marks he made about me, but you
should not be overimpressed by
what he said about my books. An
English newspaper critic once
commented about one of my books:
"I do not know if Dr. Kissinger
is a great writer, but everyone
who reads this book to the end
has to be a great reader."

I am now writing my memoirs.
I have said in the USA that I
have written 2,000 pages and
have reached my tenth birthday,

2

Ich bin im Begriff,
meine Memoiren zu schreiben,
ich habe erklärt in Amerika,
daß ich 2000 Seiten geschrieben
hätte und mein zehntes
Lebensjahr erreicht habe, und
ich schreibe es im deutschen
Stil. Sie wissen, daß Anatol
France sagte, er könnte nicht
behaupten, daß er Kant gelesen
habe. Er hätte neun Bände gelesen,
aber das Verb war im
zehnten. So wenn Sie mir erlauben,
daß ich zu Ihnen auf
Englisch spreche, weil ich
mich dann relativ präziser ausdrücken
kann, und mir viele
der Worte in der deutschen
Sprache leider fehlen, nachdem
mein Vokabular im Alter vom 15.
Lebensjahr, mein deutsches Vokabular
zu Ende ging. So werde
ich mir erlauben, auf Englisch
zu sprechen und versuchen, meine
Rede auf eine halbe Stunde zu
machen und dann Ihre Fragen zu
beantworten, wie es andere
Amerikaner schon in dieser
Halle getan haben, Amerikaner,
die auch Englisch mit einem
Akzent sprechen.

writing in German style. You
know that Anatol France once
said that he could not claim
to have read Kant - he had
read nine volumes, but the
verb *was* in the tenth. So
with your permission I shall
speak in English because I
can be relatively more precise. My German vocabulary
has many deficiencies since I
stopped studying the language
when I was fifteen. I shall
try to hold my remarks to a
half-hour and then answer your
questions, somewhat along the
example of other Americans who
have spoken in this hall, who
also spoke English with an accent.

[Lc]

3

[c]

For me it is always particularly moving to come to Berlin. I was here for the first time in 1946 at the very end of the war when the city was in ruins and no one would have thought it possible that it could be physically reconstructed. I was here in the 50's during the period when Germany was being divided. I was a consultant to the Kennedy Administration at the time that the Berlin wall was being built. And through all the post-war period Berlin has been a symbol to me, as to so many others, of the importance of the spirit of freedom. In no other city, in no other place in the world, is it so clear that security and economic progress and freedom are inseparable, and that it is ultimately the human spirit which guarantees the future of all of our peoples.

In 1971 I had the opportunity to participate in the negotiations that brought about the four-power agreement. I must be quite honest to say that I had my doubts about the so called "Ostpolitik" when it was first proclaimed. But then later I came to the view that it was inevitable and that it was courageous for German leaders to take the responsibility for what the reality of the post-war period imposed. And, therefore, I cooperated over many months with great intensity publicly and sometimes behind the scenes in the four-power agreement which in my view has tremendously improved the situation of Berlin. Since then the vital access routes have been guaranteed by an international agreement. The communications between West Berlin and East Berlin and between West Berlin and the German Democratic Republic have been greatly strengthened. And the Soviet Union has formally accepted that the ties between West Berlin and the Federal Republic will be maintained and developed. The adherence to that four-power agreement is an absolute test for the reality of any detente that may exist between the United States and the Soviet Union. Though I served a different party than the one that is now in office in Washington, there is no dispute whatso-

4

ever about the essential commitment of Americans to the freedom
and to the viability of Berlin, to its connections with the
Federal Republic and to the strengthening of its capacity to
grow and to prosper. This is why I accepted with great pleasure
the invitation of my friend Shep Stone to speak here and to
make whatever little contribution I can make to the commitment
of all Americans to the future of the city.

As I have said, the future of the city depends on international
relationships to an extraordinary degree. No place in the world
can have a greater interest in peace. No place in the world can
have a greater concern with security. In the United States to-
day, we are going through a period of transition. A transition
from the old concepts when the United States was so powerful that
it didn't really need a theory of international relations to a
period when we have to conduct a foreign policy based on priorities
and on judgment the way other countries have had to throughout
most of their history. And also a change of generations from the
group that built the post-war institutions to a generation that
grew up after the great period of the Marshall plan and which has
to learn again the experiences which were so much taken for granted
in the previous decades. That generation confronts the problem
of peace, the problem of security, the problem of East-West rela-
tions, the problem of North-South relations, and the future of the
domestic economies.

Let me say a few words about each of these. Nobody who is famil-
iar with modern weapons can have any question about the absolute
commitment, that all leading statesmen must make, to the impor-
tance of working for peace. Nobody can afford the slogans of
previous decades in which an accumulation of crises was permitted
to slide countries into unnecessary confrontations. In America
occasionally there is a debate about whether there should be
detente. We have no choice except to strive for a relaxation of
tensions. We must do so as a moral obligation because of the

5

destructiveness of weapons. We must do so as a practical
obligation because no leader will be able to run the risks of
conflict unless he has convinced his public that he has ex-
hausted all possibilities for peace. At the same time, and this
is the paradox of our period, the search for peace cannot be our
only objective. If peace is not related to justice and to free-
dom it becomes the tool of the most ruthless. If the fear of
war is the only dominant characteristic of national leaders then
they will ultimately be blackmailed by those who are willing to
threaten war. So we have to pursue the paradoxical course of
being committed to detente but not permitting detente to be used
for moral disarmament of the free, of striving for peace but not
having that search for peace turn into the blackmail of the
ruthless. This after the domestic upheavals that our country has
undergone is not always an easy task. There is always the temp-
tation to oscillate between those who see in foreign policy only
moral posturing and those who think foreign policy is only the
accumulation of weapons. But we do not have that luxury. We
must be able to pursue either one of them.

In dealing with the Soviet Union we face a country that is
ideologically opposed to us, a country which believes strongly
in the predominance of objective factors, which therefore does
not believe that personal relations and individual good will
are the determining features of international politics. The
only reliable policy therefore is one of strict reciprocity in
which concrete concessions are demanded for any concessions that
we offer. It is essential that we make clear that if there are
tensions in the world they are caused by specific objective fac-
tors -- and that they can be removed only by the elimination of
these factors. I do not believe that a relaxation of tensions
between the United States and the Soviet Union is possible for
an extended period of time if the Soviet Union continues to en-
courage proxy military forces from an island 90 miles off our
shore to operate on a global basis while Soviet military forces

6

are sent to Cuba to permit Cuban forces to operate in Africa. It is not a legacy of the Cold War if we must insist that the relaxation of tensions, which I strongly favor, must have a global basis and that it cannot be compatible with a long-term policy of detente if one country exacerbates all conflicts and uses every opportunity to encourage tensions in the so-called underdeveloped parts of the world. And for those of us in the West we have an obligation towards each other not to fall into the illusion that any one of our countries has a special opportunity or a special method for dealing with the East. The greatest danger for us is something that could be called differential detente in which tensions are maintained with one region and improved in other regions, decreased in other regions. It is not correct if the United States conducts an excessive bilateral diplomacy, and it would be dangerous if its allies conducted an excessive bilateral diplomacy. It is essential that the relaxation of tensions is pursued in a substantially uniform manner on the basis of uniform criteria that all of us apply with confidence towards each other.

With respect to the new nations we often hear the phrase that the North-South dialogue should replace the East-West conflict. I do not believe that we have this choice. There will be an East-West dialogue for the foreseeable future. And I think it will also cut across the North-South discussions. With respect to the developing countries there are a number of developments of recent years that all of us in the industrial democracies should note. First we have assumed during the whole post-war period that economic development would automatically produce political stability. We should learn that economic development has a high tendency to produce political instability. Economic development by its nature will destroy the political and economic institutions of the feudal or at any rate elementary economic systems in which they operate. And the industrial democracies, therefore, must understand that

7

[il]

their economic development programs are bound to be politically
subversive. We have an obligation to develop some concept for
how to deal with the political dislocations that will be the
inevitable result of our successes. We have seen in Iran, for
example, in which there are many causes for the upheavals, that
surely one cause is that all the elements that have been affected
by the process of development have united those who think the
process is going too rapidly and those who believe that it is
not going rapidly enough. And that in the process -- just as
was the case in many European countries in the 19th century and
18th century -- there has been a struggle of political legiti-
macy. It is therefore not simply a question of giving economic
aid, but it is also a problem of developing a political legiti-
macy other than the communist one to which the developing coun-
tries can attach themselves.

In a dialogue between the developing and the developed countries
we face the paradox that pragmatically all the evidence proves
that development is most effectively achieved by market economies
and yet many of the developing countries insist on copying social-
ist models, not necessarily for economic reasons but for the rea-
sons of political stability. In our discussion with the East it
must become an increasing topic of conversation that if the East-
West conflict is systematically exported into the North-South
dialogue that international turmoil will become uncontrollable.
It may be true that neither side can achieve permanent gains but
it is also true that in the effort to achieve temporary gains the
dislocations will become so great that at some point the tensions
will get out of hand.

It would be a tragedy if it were not possible to achieve an
understanding on these issues. It would be a tragedy because
in both the industrial democracies and in the communist world
enormous problems await their solution. In the industrial de-
mocracies we are facing a novel problem in the sense that in-
vestment can increase unemployment as a result of technology

8

being, on the whole, labor saving. We face the problem that there are no longer any automatic regulators as existed in previous centuries so that you can have inflation and recession simultaneously. Under the existing monetary systems there is an enormous temptation for each country to export its economic problems to other countries. Some country will always be in surplus and will then become the target of pressures of others. So what finally will have to happen among the industrial democracies is a global negotiation in which the domestic economic policies of the various countries are brought into some systematic harmony in order to avoid the constant resolution through monetary crisis, or through inflation in some countries, which are now the mechanism for bringing about change.

In the communist world the agenda is enormous. Here is a system that has no method for changing leaders and in which the reputation of very few leaders has survived their own death and nobody dares to leave office because the consequences are too unforeseeable. There is a system that has not solved the problems of production and the problems of minorities or the problems of nationalities. The question now is whether all these stresses on both sides will be resolved in a manner that leads to an explosion, or in a manner that is based on negotiation. Given the risks of our period, I would say there is no alternative to working them out constructively.

We in the West have every reason to be optimistic. All the significant countries in the world are geopolitically on our side. And only one major country is on the other. We have the resources and the technology and the manpower. We, therefore, have to have every confidence in a period of peaceful competition and every confidence in a period of negotiation. It is in this context that islands of freedom like this city, whose survival has never been guaranteed by the local balance of forces, nevertheless can find a long-term future in a global balance of forces

[i]

10

Answer:

First of all, I rather regret that I am now going to get into
conflict together here with my friend Professor Löwenthal, and,
I must tell you that my view on Eurocommunism is in total dis-
agreement with that of the entire faculty of Harvard University
whatsoever attention you give to Harvard University.

I am primarily interested in foreign policy and not in the in-
ternal struggles of the various communist movements. From the
point of view of foreign policy I do not accept that Eurocommun-
ism is an independent movement, and I do not accept the proposi-
tion that Eurocommunism could even be desirable for us. Certain-
ly, to get to the top in communist parties you need to have a
highly developed sense of power, because after all the penalty
for failure is not transferred to another department but is rather
drastic, and, therefore, only those who have an enormous will to
power get to the top. And when they get to the top they are re-
luctant to accept directives from Moscow with respect to the in-
ternal organization of their party. I therefore have no great
difficulty understanding that there are disputes between various
communist chieftains and Moscow.

Where I part company with my distinguished colleagues from Har-
vard and others is on the interesting statistical fact that if
you read the Italian communist newspaper L'Unità, for example,
you will look in vain for any disagreement with the Soviet for-
eign policy on any issue where the Soviet Union and the United
States disagree. Now it is statistically improbable that the
United States is always wrong. Last year, for example, the So-
viet Union switched its support from Somalia to Ethiopia. Every
European communist party, Eurocommunist or not, switched its
support from Somalia to Ethiopia. And even though I am willing
to grant that Europeans are much more sophisticated than Ameri-
cans (there are many Americans who did not even know where Somalia

11

and Ethiopia were), it is conceivable to me that there were
some Europeans who were not up-to-date on the latest details
of what was going on in the Ogaden; so that this happening in
a very brief period of time struck me as a very amazing coinci-
dence.

In short, I believe that from a foreign policy point of view to
have been brought up in the communist church produces certain
categories of thinking. Certainly the Italian communists have
in theory accepted NATO but only as an instrument of detente,
and on no concrete weapons program have they ever supported it.
Now it may be that we cannot prevent it, we cannot prevent the
participation of communists in some European governments. There
are limits to what the United States can do, but the one thing
that I insist on is that the United States not delude itself.

Objectively the participation of communists in governments of
NATO countries will weaken their capacity to conduct a united
western defense and will weaken the defense of NATO. It may
not be avoidable in some situations but at least we should tell
ourselves what I consider to be the truth about it. But very
serious people have a different view on this subject from me.

Frage:

Um so interessanter nach
Ihren Ausführungen jetzt
wäre doch für die Berliner
Politik beispielsweise die
Frage, was mit dem franzö-
sischen Sektor hier passie-
ren könnte, wenn in Frank-
reich die kommunistische
Partei an der Regierung
beteiligt wäre?

Question:

After hearing your remarks
one question becomes very
interesting for Berlin poli-
tics -- what might happen
here in the French sector
of Berlin if Communists be-
came members of a French
government?

12

L

Answer:

I frankly have to confess that, painful as this may be to you, I haven't really thought about this problem. My general reaction I have given, and how it will apply specifically to Berlin I will now think about, and the next time I come back I will have a devastating answer.

Question:

Well, Dr. Kissinger, before the French elections you gave an interview, as I remember, to *Newsweek* or *Time* and your outlook about the political future in Europe was quite pessimistic. Do you think that recently there is more hope or change to the better?

Answer:

You have to remember this, that in the United States if you are of German origin, people think that you listen to violins with every meal and you read Spengler for breakfast and that you declare a national holiday on Metternich's birthday. I have read that I was very pessimistic about the future of Europe. I do not remember, but this may be because I only tend to remember the predictions I make which come true; and those I remember very well, and repeat on many occasions. But I don't remember that I predicted that the left was going to win in France.

There was a period when all the statistics seemed to show that the combined socialists and communists had a good chance of winning. My belief then was, and remains, that if the communists participate in the government of a major European country that this will have profound consequences for their foreign policy. At some point about 6 months before the election or 9 months before the election, the French communists deliberately decided

14

Answer:

If I understood what President Nixon said, it was that our intelligence estimates of Soviet missile capabilities were wrong for 11 years. Let me say two things. First, as you know, I worked with President Nixon for four and a half years and I think he was a good president in foreign policy matters. Secondly, on this particular issue my own recollection is slightly different from his. My recollection is that the Central Intelligence Agency always makes three estimates of Soviet missile developments: a low estimate, a middle estimate and a high estimate. In general the high estimate turned out to be what the Soviets were doing.

Of course there is a psychological fact that when you are in government you always tend to believe the middle estimate when you are given three choices. If I ever teach a course in public administration again, I will teach that if anyone enters the government and is given three choices by the bureaucracy, if he picks the middle one, he is usually picking the one that they want. So psychologically I think what President Nixon was focusing on was the middle estimate.

I think the correct statement is that the Soviet Union for about 10 years was in fact building at the highest estimate that we made and against which there is usually a predisposition because one usually thinks it is exaggerated. But in fact the estimate was not wrong -- it was just that the Soviet Union did the maximum of what we thought they were capable.

That is my recollection of it and I think I am correct. But it was not a question of deception. The way these estimates are made is that one looks at what they are building any one year and then projects into the future. We were never wrong about what

15

MC

they had already built. The disagreements are those on the
issue of projecting into the future.

### Question:

Mr. Kissinger, analysts maintain that you did not have in the past a specific and clear foreign policy towards Africa south of the Sahara. Is this true, and if yes, why? Do you see recognizable changes in this respect under the Carter Administration? And which concrete policies would you recommend to avoid a further penetration of Soviet influence south of the Sahara?

### Answer:

Well, you, ladies and gentlemen, will be able to say you were present at a historic occasion because I will admit that we did not have a significant policy towards Africa until 1975. And there are not many audiences who have been present when I admitted less than infallibility. But one has to understand it in the context of the period.

When we came into office we found five hundred and fifty thousand Americans engaged in a war in Vietnam. And we had simultaneously a crisis in Southeast Asia, a crisis in the Middle East, at one point a crisis in the Caribbean when a submarine base was being built in Cuba, the opening to China, negotiations with the Soviet Union, and, in this context, there are only so many things any government can do at any one time.

Secondly, the conditions were not really ripe for an extremely active African policy. But it is certainly correct that we did not turn our major attention to Africa until 1975. After that, actually, the commitment to majority rule by Smith occurred in 1976. And I have publicly stated that I am not in agreement with every detail of our current African policy. But for the sake of the emotional stability of the American ambassador who

17

Answer:

Well, I don't think the situation is quite comparable. In any
event, I would be glad to give you my view on the Jackson Amend-
ment. I was, when I was in office, and I am now, in favor of
economic relations between the Soviet Union and the industrial
democracies. I also believe that those economic relations
ought to be related to specific political conditions; otherwise
we will be financing communist military and foreign pressures
around the world.

My disagreement with the Jackson Amendment was inherent in what I said in the answer to the previous question. I believe obvious-ly that all democratic nations must stand in their own countries for human rights and they must try to promote human rights by effective means elsewhere as well. I do not believe that turn-ing human rights into a foreign policy issue where one country legislates about the domestic arrangements of another is an ef-fective means of promoting human rights. And therefore I believe that the Jackson Amendment has demonstrably lowered the rate of emigration from the Soviet Union. We had it increased by quiet diplomacy from 400 a year to 40,000 a year. After the Jackson Amendment it went down again to 15,000 a year. So this is a question of philosophy.

I do not think that a policy of state-to-state confrontation on the issue of human rights with the Soviet Union can bring about anything other than a demonstration of western impotence, a worse condition for the dissidents in the Soviet Union, and no signifi-cant progress on human rights. But I do believe that the economic assistance of the West should be conditioned on restraint in foreign policy.

We have a right to demand foreign policy performances from the
Soviet Union and I find it painful to reflect that $850 billion

18

of western credits have given on purely economic criteria
so that indirectly we are financing the Cubans in Africa. But
I do not agree with the Jackson Amendment.

Frage:

Dr. Kissinger, am Beginn
dieses Jahrzehnts wurde
Ihnen zusammen mit dem
Vietnamesischen Außen-
minister der Nobel-Preis
verliehen. Nach 7 Jahren
etwa spüren wir in unserem
eigenen Lande und auch hier
in Berlin noch die Aus-
wirkung, indem wir die
Flüchtlinge aufnehmen. In
diesem Jahr sind nicht nur
Außenministern sondern Präsi-
denten, Herrn Präsident
Sadat und Präsident Begin
der Nobel-Preis verliehen
worden.

Ich möchte daran zwei Fra-
gen anschließen. Wenn ich
richtig informiert bin,
waren Sie derjenige, oder
einer unter mehreren, die
die beiden Präsidenten zum
Nobel-Preis vorgeschlagen
haben. Glauben Sie, erstens,
daß das Nobel-Preiskomitee
mit dem Nobel-Preis, dem
Friedens-Nobel-Preis einen
Einfluß auf die Politik
ausüben will, und zweitens,
glauben Sie, daß auf länge-
re Sicht gesehen, die Ver-
leihung des Nobel-Preises
irgendwelche politischen
Folgen haben kann?

Question:

Dr. Kissinger, at the begin-
ning of the present decade
you and the Foreign Minister
of Vietnam were awarded the
Nobel Prize. Now, seven years
later, we are noticing the
results in Germany and also
here in Berlin in that we are
taking in some refugees. This
year not only foreign ministers
but presidents (heads of state),
President Sadat and Prime Min-
ister Begin, have been awarded
the Nobel Prize.

I should like to ask two ques-
tions. If I am correctly in-
formed you or you and others
nominated these two men for the
Nobel Prize. Do you believe
that the Nobel Prize committee
is trying to exercise political
influence by its awards of the
Peace Prize and secondly do you
believe, from the long-range
point of view, that the award
of a Nobel Prize can have poli-
tical consequences.

19

[i]

Answer:

Well, first of all about the Nobel Prize in 1973. As you know
in the United States the Vietnam war had become so contentious
and the debate had been so vicious that I cannot say that the
award of the Nobel Prize to an American in 1973 was greeted
with unanimous acclaim, and therefore it became part of the
Watergate-Vietnam atmosphere of that period. I can assure you
when I was negotiating, just speaking personally, on Vietnam,
on the issue of Vietnam, the idea of winning a Nobel Peace
Prize quite literally never crossed my mind and I was absolutely
astonished when it was awarded.

I think what has happened to Vietnam since then is a tragedy.
What we did to ourselves during the Vietnam war, when one reflects on the viciousness and the bitterness with which the debate was conducted, is also a tragedy that sometime will have to be studied. This is not the time to discuss that.

Now, on Vietnam, I believe that the agreement that was reached
was viable and could have been maintained if our domestic situation had not disintegrated as a result of Watergate. But when
our Congress cut the aid for Vietnam by 50 per cent in each
peace-time year, when it prohibited even the threat of the use
of American military forces to maintain an agreement which we
had solemnly signed and when it prohibited any assistance to
any of the other countries in Indochina, then a collapse was inevitable. And no agreement could have been maintained under
those conditions. And if that had been done in Korea, Korea
would have collapsed by now. So therefore no peace agreement
will enforce itself by its legal obligations.

Any peace agreement, and that will be true in the Middle East,
too, will depend on the willingness of the parties to maintain
it. Now, I have to say quite frankly, in the Middle East, my

21

[w]

advisors at the period.

**Frage:**

Herr Kissinger, ich möchte, daß Sie noch mal auf die Nah-Ost Frage, die in gewisser Weise schon eben angesprochen worden ist, eingehen und zwar etwas präziser. Meine Frage geht dahin, Sie, in Ihrer Eigenschaft als Wegbereiter für die Friedensverhandlungen, die jetzt stattfinden, wie schätzen Sie die Lage ein, daß diese Verhandlungen noch in diesem Jahr zu einem Abschluß kommen, denn es wurde nach den Verhandlungen in Amerika in diesem Sommer sowohl von Herrn Sadat als auch von Herrn Begin im amerikanischen Fernsehen direkt danach proklamiert, daß es in wenigen Wochen so weit sein sollte. Im Augenblick scheint mir die Sache aber ziemlich festgefahren.

Dann hätte ich noch eine Zusatzfrage, die auch eben schon anklang, nämlich Sie als Nobel-Preisträger möchte ich fragen, ob Sie nicht eventuell auch sich der Meinung anschließen könnten, daß ein wenig Vorschußlorbeeren verteilt wurden, indem Herrn Sadat und Herrn Begin der Friedens-Nobel-Preis jetzt schon zuerkannt worden ist, bevor die eigentlichen Verhandlungen zum Abschluß gekommen sind.

**Question:**

Mr. Kissinger, I'd like to have you come back to the Near East question, somewhat more precisely. My question is how do you assess, as the one who was the initiator of the peace negotiations, the possibility that the negotiations will still be concluded this year. After the negotiations in the USA this summer both Mr. Sadat and Mr. Begin proclaimed over US television that a conclusion would be reached within a few weeks. It appears to me, however, that the situation is now dead-locked.

I have a second question. I'd like to ask you, as a holder of the Nobel Prize, if you would not agree that the awards were made somewhat preliminarily in that Mr. Sadat and Mr. Begin received the Nobel Prize before the negotiations were completed?

22

[i]

Answer:

You have to remember that the method of negotiation in the Middle East is for both parties to try to bring us to the verge of insanity and to make sure that the American President or the Secretary of State just retains enough self-control to sign the final document. And whenever the parties have decided that we have reached that point there will probably be an agreement.

But, seriously, I think that the fundamental decisions seem to me to have been taken, and I cannot believe that the issue that now remains -- whether a date will be agreed to on which elections can take place on the West Bank -- I cannot believe that a solution cannot be found to this problem. Since it has been already agreed that there will be elections, since the nature of these elections has already been agreed to, it cannot be beyond the wit of man to find a solution after all the distance that has been traveled. I cannot believe that the negotiation will fail.

I therefore expect it to be concluded within the next month or two and what the formula is I cannot now imagine, but I think the consequences of a failure for both sides would be so horrendous that when they are face-to-face with it, I do not believe that they will accept it. So I expect some form of compromise to be found.

Now, whether the Nobel Prize was given prematurely or not, that is hard to tell. I think that a year from now it will be considered to have been a proper prize and that a peace agreement will have been signed. The problem in the Middle East is not this agreement. As difficult as it is, the problem will be what happens after this agreement and that is what we should think about.

23

**Frage:**

Herr Kissinger, als Korea-
nischer Bürger habe ich
die deutsche Ostpolitik
mit großem Interesse be-
obachtet und hier zu Lande
ist eine für Koreaner be-
neidenswerte Teilungslage
entstanden. Meine Frage
ist nun, können Sie mir
ganz kurz skizzieren, wie
Sie oder die Vereinigten
Staaten die Teilungslage
oder die Konfrontations-
lage in Korea auffassen?

**Question:**

Mr. Kissinger, as a Korean
citizen, I follow German
Eastern policy with great
interest. For a Korean, a
rather enviable partition
situation has developed in
Germany. My question is if
you can tell us briefly how
you and the United States look
upon the division or situation
of confrontation in Korea?

**Answer:**

I have to say that it is depressing beyond expression to me to
find a Korean who speaks German with less of an accent than I
do. I think that the situation in Korea is somewhat different
from Germany in the sense that the authorities in North Korea
will not accept the concept of an even temporary division of
their country and are insisting on being the only government
that will eventually unify Korea. They also have conducted a
policy of extreme aggressiveness.

Now as far as the United States is concerned, I have always
been of the view that we should insist that any government
that wants to establish relations with North Korea should also
have relations with South Korea and that we should not encourage
any government to have relations only with North Korea, nor
should we engage in negotiations on Korea that exclude South
Korea since the strategy of the North Koreans is to isolate the
South Koreans.

If the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union begin to
establish contacts with South Korea then I think we can be pre-

24

pared to establish some contacts with North Korea. But we
must never get into a position where South Korea is isolated
in negotiations that we conduct over its head. It is a some-
what more precarious situation in Korea because of the much
more bellicose nature at the moment of the North Korean govern-
ment.

Frage:

Herr Kissinger, warum sind
Sie damals mit Präsident
Ford nach Wladiwostok ge-
fahren, um sich mit
Breschnew zu treffen. Muß-
ten Sie nicht befürchten,
daß das die Chinapolitik
der Vereinigten Staaten er-
heblich belastet?

Question:

Mr. Kissinger, why did you and
President Ford go to Vladivo-
stock to meet with Brezhnev?
Didn't you have to fear that
this would put a heavy burden
on America's China policy?

Answer:

It's a very good question. I don't know whether it did any
damage to our China policy. It was certainly not the most
brilliant move we made in our China policy. The reason we
went to Vladivostock at the time was, as often in government,
it happened to be the most convenient place to meet. President
Ford was going to Tokyo -- he was in Asia in any event -- he
had no trip planned to any other place; I know this is not the
most brilliant explanation that I can give you. He didn't want
to go to Moscow, so at any rate it was not brilliantly thought
out in terms of location. The meeting itself was extremely im-
portant and made an extremely important agreement, but I think
I can report without divulging any secrets that when I went from
there to Peking the crowds in the street were not of enormous
size.

25

**Frage:**

Herr Kissinger, ich möchte
zwei Fragen an Sie richten,
die vielleicht zusammen-
hängen. Einer meiner Vor-
redner hat eben gesagt,
die Deutschen hätten eine
beneidenswerte Teilungs-
lage gefunden. Ich bin
nicht ganz sicher, wer uns
darum beneiden soll und
deshalb ist meine Frage an
Sie, sehen Sie, in histo-
rischer Dimension gedacht,
eine Möglichkeit für die
Wiedervereinigung der bei-
den deutschen Staaten?
Wenn ja, unter welchen Be-
dingungen?

Und meine zweite Frage,
eventuell mit der ersten
zusammenhängend, wie be-
urteilen Sie den fort-
gehenden sowjetisch-chi-
nesischen Dissens für die
politische Lage in Europa?

**Question:**

Mr. Kissinger, I would like to
put two related questions to
you. A previous speaker said
that the Germans had found an
enviable way to deal with the
division of Germany. I'm not
sure anybody should envy us and
therefore my question: do you
see, thinking historically, a
possibility for the reunifica-
tion of the two German States?
If so, under what conditions?

And my second question which
is somehow connected with the
first is, how do you assess
the significance of the con-
tinuing Soviet-Chinese contro-
versy for the political situa-
tion in Europe?

**Answer:**

I have to tell you in all honesty that I see no prospects in
any near future for the reunification of Germany. I suppose
I should express this in a more tactful manner, but I do not
believe that the Soviet Union will abandon the German Democrat-
ic Republic and permit a free election according to our prin-
ciples, nor do I see that it would permit a negotiation between
the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic that
would lead to reunification. And therefore the only thing that
I can see is that over a period of time there may be a historical
evolution in Europe which will permit the two states to come
close together and eventually to reunify. But I think any for-
eigner who would pretend that this can be achieved in any future

26

that he can foresee would probably be misleading you. I regret to have to say this, but this is my conviction.

The Soviet-Chinese relations and the impact on Europe: the Soviet-Chinese difference is sometimes discussed as if it were a matter that we can play with. In my view the Soviet-Chinese difference occurred before we were even aware of its consequence. They are not maintaining it as a favor to us and they will not continue it as a favor to us. It has a geopolitical advantage for NATO that more Soviet divisions are facing China than are facing Europe, and that therefore it is easing the pressures on Europe.

On the other hand if we attempt to play with this as a deliberate objective of our policy, we may produce a crisis on the one hand or drive the two parties together on the other. We have to navigate. I believe that it is against certainly the American interest and probably against the European interest to acquiesce in military pressure against the People's Republic of China. I said that when I was in office and I say this out of office. On the other hand, we should conduct ourselves in such a way that we do not create additional incentives for that.

The independence of China and the autonomous policy of China and the cooperation of China with us is a matter of very great importance to us which we should carry out with seriousness and care and discretion. But we must do it in a manner in which we remember that, first, they have a history of 3,000 years and understand their own independent requirements, and secondly, we want to ease the pressures on Europe and not face ourselves with choices that may be extremely difficult. So it is one of the most delicate policies for Europe and the United States to conduct -- to maintain China in an autonomous and independent position and not to encourage an attack on it, but also not to acquiesce in it should it happen.

Aspen Institute Berlin

Inselstrasse 10

1000 Berlin 38

Telefon 803-10 90

803-10 80

Cable: Aspen Berlin

R.O. Anderson
Chairman of the Board
J.E. Slater President

Shepard Stone
Director

James A. Cooney
Assistant Director

Meeting with Dr. Henry Kissinger

December 2-3, 1978

List of participants

Sven Backlund
Swedish Ambassador
Bonn

Egon Bahr
Member of Parliament and
Chief Parliamentary
Whip of the SPD
Bonn

Hellmut Becker
Director of the Max
Planck Institute for
Educational Research
Berlin

Berthold Beitz
Chairman of the Board,
Alfried Krupp von
Bohlen und Halbach
Foundation
Essen

Klaus Blech
Director General
(Ministerialdirigent)
Foreign Office
Bonn

Kurt Birrenbach
Chairman of the Board,
Fritz Thyssen Foundation
Cologne

Joachim Bölke
Political Editor,
Der Tagesspiegel
Berlin

Ernst Cramer
Journalist, Axel Springer
Press
Berlin

Richard Daus
Banker
Frankfurt

Marion Countess Dönhoff
Publisher, *Die Zeit*
Hamburg

Horst Ehmke
Member of Parliament (SPD)
Bonn

Horst Elfe
President of the Chamber of
Commerce and Industry
Berlin

Günter Gaus
Undersecretary of State and
Permanent Representative
of the Federal Republic
of Germany in the GDR

Dieter Hiss
President, Federal Reserve
Bank of Berlin
Berlin

Friedhelm Kemna
Deputy Chief Editor, *Die Welt*
Bonn

The Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies

717 Fifth Avenue

New York, New York 10022

Telephone: 212-759-1053

Cable: Aspeninst New York

P.O. Box 219

Aspen, Colorado 81611

Telephone: 303-925-7010

Cable: Aspeninst Aspen Colorado