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Q Could you give us the overall percentage increase to apply the Nixon Doctrine in this form? In other words, is it a third, a quarter or some percentage over previously existing military aid programs?

DR. KISSINGER: You have to remember that it is partly the Nixon Doctrine and it is partly unexpected contingencies. I do not have the exact figure of what percentage it is above previous programs. It would be misleading if I tried. I can get it for you and let you know. But I don't have the figures.

Q Asking for clarification, for example, on the Cambodian thing, so far as I am aware, the previously announced figure had been 8.9 plus 40.

Is there now then an additional 40 plus ---

DR. KISSINGER: The total figure for Cambodia, including everything, economic assistance and P.L. 480 and military assistance will be $285 million. That will be the total figure.

Q Do you expect this lame duck Congress to act on it or the next?

DR. KISSINGER: We expect this Congress to act on it.

Q Dr. Kissinger, would you clarify something you just said? You said parts should be broken out. You trailed off. You said we would have to consider what to do. Can things be transferred from one to the other?

DR. KISSINGER: Yes. The appropriations on military assistance programs are illustrative and it is possible to shift among them. But this would not be true of the Israeli appropriation.

Q That has already been authorized.

DR. KISSINGER: That has already been authorized.

Q What about the rest? You have to go through the authorization process for the total package?

DR. KISSINGER: The expectation is that we will, yes, although as a parliamentarian explained this to me this morning, with supplements that isn't strictly speaking, not necessarily.

Q Can you explain that?

DR. KISSINGER: No, because we are going to go through the authorization process.

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Q You gave us a figure for Cambodia for Fiscal 1971. Can you give us similar figures for U.S. aid to Vietnam and to South Korea for Fiscal 1971?

DR. KISSINGER: For Korea, it is around $300 million, I think.

Q Including this?

DR. KISSINGER: Including this; $290 million.

Q For which?

DR. KISSINGER: For Korea.

Q What about Vietnam and can we get a meaningful figure on Israel?

DR. KISSINGER: The figure you have is the only meaningful figure, because that is the only one that involves American dollars.

Q You already asked for $100 million, didn't you, in March?

Q Are we talking about $500 million, plus $100 million, or just the $500 million total?

DR. KISSINGER: $500 million total. Do you know the figure for Vietnam?

MR. BERGSTEN: The Vietnam supporting assistance figure, the economic package with this supplemental, would be about $430 million. The military in Vietnam, of course, is funded in the Defense Department budget, This is not part of the military assistance program. It is a separate program.

Q Henry, can I ask about this Korean situation? You talk about a five-year program and yet $150 million is in the first year of it. Does that mean basically we are talking in terms of about three-quarters of a billion dollars for this modernization?

DR. KISSINGER: That is about right, yes.

Q Dr. Kissinger, would you expect that in the future budgeting for foreign aid we will now have to because of the Nixon Doctrine increase our expenditures?

DR. KISSINGER: There will be an interim period in which we will have to increase our expenditures for foreign military assistance but reduce our direct expenditures for American forces abroad.

And on the whole one would expect that there will be a net savings in that process, though you cannot guarantee that in every single year. But there will be an interim period while these forces are being modernized where we have to increase foreign military assistance or economic support while direct American expenditures are being reduced.

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Q Are there any projections as to how much over a period of years we would have to do this?

DR. KISSINGER: We will submit a program to that effect to the new Congress which will attempt to project the number of years.

Q Equipment is transferred in Korea. Is that included in the amount of $150 million?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't believe so.

MR. BERGSTEN: No. The amount already transferred builds up to your $285 million, but it is not part of that $150 million.

Q How much did you originally ask for in foreign aid in the same category as this $1.35 billion?

DR. KISSINGER: For military assistance, I think we asked for $350 million and for economic support $415 million.

Q For where?

Q He was asking for the original foreign aid appropriation.

DR. KISSINGER: That was about $1.7 billion.

Q Does that include military? That is economic only, isn't it?

DR. KISSINGER: $1.7 billion is economic.

Q So what he wants is a figure comparable to this $1.035 we have gotten today which includes both economic and military.

DR. KISSINGER: That would be $2.62 billion.

Q That is what you have got appropriated. We were asking for the request.

Q What did you ask for?

DR. KISSINGER: That is what we asked for.

Q Did you get what you asked for?

DR. KISSINGER: I think we have gotten $350 million.

Q What was the request, 1.7 economic, 2.2 military?

DR. KISSINGER: No, 350. The total amount was 2.2; 1.7 ---

Q 2.02.

DR. KISSINGER: 2.02.

Q Did I understand you to say earlier that the

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Israeli request was exempted from your remark that the
President wanted today's to be considered as a package?

DR. KISSINGER: No, it was not exempted from the
remark.

Q You want the whole thing considered as one
package?

DR. KISSINGER: Absolutely.

Q Is the $5 million for Lebanon for military
aid for the Lebanese Army?

DR. KISSINGER: That is military. The military
assistance for Lebanon and Jordan is for equipment to
the governments which will enable them to maintain internal
security more effectively.

Q Doctor, to go back to practically your first
statement, in referring to the $500 million for Israel,
you said the bulk of it was airplanes, electronic equipment
and some other items that were needed to rectify the situation
that arose in the summer.

DR. KISSINGER: That is not exactly correct.
What is involved is all the commitments that were made
during the year, including the items that were added to the
program after the standstill difficulties arose. There were
many items that were agreed to earlier in the year, some
of which have been reported in the press; for example,
the package that had nothing to do with the ceasefire violations.

Q Nevertheless, you have referred to some other
items that were made necessary to rectify the situation.

DR. KISSINGER: That is right.

Q What I am asking is this: Is the implication
of this that we have given up on our hopes or efforts to
rectify this situation by reaching some kind of agreement
with the Soviet Union under which they would withdraw some
or all of the missiles or instead are just adding equipment,
giving additional equipment to the Israelis to balance off
that new situation created in the ceasefire zone?

DR. KISSINGER: The Department of State has made clear
that one should look at rectification in a number of ways.
We have stated that we believe that the withdrawal of some
or all of those units would be a form of rectification.

In the absence of this, we have thought it
necessary to agree to sell the Israelis some of the equipment
that they need to rectify the situation. Therefore,
I do not want as part of a briefing on a supplemental to
get into the question of how we define rectification in the
diplomacy that is going to develop over the next few weeks,
except to say that we would like to bring about conditions
which will make the resumption of negotiations possible.

THE PRESS: Thank you.

END

(AT 3:40 P.M. EST)

DECEMBER 3, 1970

OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS
(Foreign Policy Backgrounder)

AT THE STATE DEPARTMENT

WITH DR. HENRY A. KISSINGER,
ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR
NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS;
JOSEPH J. SISCO, ASSISTANT
SECRETARY FOR NEAR EASTERN AND
AND SOUTH ASIAN AFFAIRS; HERBERT
G. KLEIN, DIRECTOR OF COM-
MUNICATIONS FOR THE EXECUTIVE
BRANCH; AND MICHAEL COLLINS,
ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE
FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS

AT 2:30 P.M. EST

DECEMBER 3, 1970

THURSDAY

MR. COLLINS: I am Mike Collins, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs. I would like to welcome you all to the Department of State and tell you how happy we are that you came and joined us here this afternoon, at a time when the American public seems to be turning inward away from foreign relations.

We think it is extremely important that we explain the Nixon Doctrine, not only the lower profile aspects of it, but also the fact that it in no way is an abdication of our international responsibilities. We are very happy that you have come with us this afternoon.

We have put together a little bit of information for you which we hope may be helpful to you.

I would like now to turn the meeting over to Herb Klein, who needs no introduction to you. I will say that he has had a long and distinguished career as a newspaper man, editor of the San Diego Union, and a very long and close association with the President.

He now serves, as you know, as Director of Communications for the Executive Branch where he serves as a very vital focal point for all our public affairs information program.

So without further ado, Herb, would you like to take over?

MR. JUDD: If you don't know it, he formerly was Assistant Secretary of the Moon -- Mr. Collins.

MR. KLEIN: I would like to add to what Walter said. I think it is one of the fine things that we have, that we have people who have accomplished a great deal in a field which captures the imagination of all of us, the work of the astronauts who are working with the Department of State and doing an outstanding job such as Mike is doing in developing the

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program which he participates in himself, and developing a
program which we have a great number of people working on
here, to make American policy clear to people in all parts
of the country and of all ages.

The President asked us, as you know, to bring over
two of our outstanding people to discuss this program with
you after he had had a conversation with Dr. Judd, and he
wanted me to give his personal greetings to all of you.

I think there are very few people in the room who haven't known the President closely over a period of years. He was only sorry he couldn't join you himself today. But I do believe the two people we have to speak to you today are those who you recognize and will feel you are much privileged to listen to as they get into, in a very candid way, the depth of our policies around the world, and particularly in the very hot areas today.

Because of the nature of this, and because of the
opportunity, we look forward to having a free exchange with
you in the questions and all. We have asked that this
session be an OFF-THE-RECORD session. We, therefore, look
at it on the basis that the information they give you is
such that if you would like to use it for your own evaluation
or if you would like to use it in making speeches and other
appearances that you have, the information can be used but
should be used as your own in the way that you evaluate it
and not attributed to those who are speaking to you today.

We feel that in doing this we can look more closely
at the policies and in doing this Dr. Kissinger and Secretary
Sisco can, I think, get into greater depth, which would
probably be more helpful to you than if we were to take this
as a public forum where they would have to guard each word
more carefully.

Our general format this afternoon will be with
Mike and myself working on this, will be to first have Dr.
Kissinger give you some in-depth discussion of what is
really taking place in our policies in the last 30 years and
how they affect where we are going in the decade of the 70's.

At the conclusion of his remarks, Dr. Kissinger will
be happy to answer whatever questions you have on any of
the aspects of foreign policy, with the possible exception
of most parts of the Middle East, which will be then discussed,
following the questions, by Secretary Sisco, who has done
such an outstanding job for us here in that particular field.

I am sure that all of you, with your own background,
are very familiar with the work of Dr. Kissinger in directing
the National Security Council. If you look at the changes
which have taken place in policy today and you look at the
crises which are on a daily basis, I know of no tougher job
in government than that which is handled by Dr. Kissinger.

I think that one of the reasons he is able to do
such an outstanding job in this is the fact that he has a
very good relationship with both the leaders in the State
Department and in the Defense Department, and he certainly
has the full confidence of the President in the many, many
conferences and his ability to gather all sides and all
options of the questions and for the President to examine
not only in detail what one person thinks but what a variety

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do and, therefore, use the method best not in terms of
having things filtered but in terms of having a full
presentation and a full staffing job on the problems which
he must face in making the big decisions.

Dr. Kissinger has a distinguished career, as you know, in terms of the whole field of international relations, both in terms of the work he did as a leading professor at Harvard, and also as a leader in many, many conferences on international relationships, and also the examination of disarmament over a period of years, which dates back to the 50's and through several Administrations.

I am very proud, I would have to say -- and I say
this because many of you are personal friends of mine for a
long time -- to be on a team with Dr. Kissinger. He is the
kind of man I think you would want if you were the President
and serving in this field.

Dr. Henry Kissinger.

DR. KISSINGER: Herb, I appreciate this very much.
In fact, I think perhaps I should quit while I am ahead and
go straight to Assistant Secretary Sisco.

One of the things that used to irritate me most when I was out of government and participated in conferences was officials who appeared at these conferences and with a nice glow of self-satisfaction pointed out that everything they had done was the best possible policy, that every conceivable alternative had been considered, and that if we only knew as much as they did we wouldn't presume to question them.

I just want you to know, ladies and gentlemen, that I am here to tell you that we are pursuing the best possible policies, every alternative has been considered, and if you only knew as much as I did we could dispense with the question period.

Let me talk to you for a bit about the general
philosophy of the Nixon Administration. Let me illustrate
it with a few examples and then let me take your questions
either on what I have said or on anything else that interests
you.

Keep in mind that the Middle East will be covered
more fully by Assistant Secretary Sisco.

I started out my professional career as a historian,
and as a historian I am inclined to believe that when this
period is written up it will emerge in the books as a
dividing line in American foreign policy.

The peculiar thing is that the big revolution in
American foreign policy occurred not in the early 1960's
when it was so loudly announced, but in the late 1960's when
nobody proclaimed it.

I don't say this as a criticism, and also I have to
say in fairness that a change in direction of American foreign
policy would have been necessary no matter who won the
election of 1968. But, of course, we like to believe that
we have understood this problem adequately.

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I am not here to argue any particular Administration
point of view, but simply to point out that the kind of
foreign policy that had been initiated in the immediate post-
war period, and for which the participants deserve in many
respects a great deal of credit, had come to the end of the
road in the late 1960's.

The change in atmosphere in this country is perhaps
best illustrated if you remember that last April 30th, when
the President announced the incursions into Cambodia, he was
attacked by many on the ground that he was reviving an
undiscriminating internationalist attitude and that he was
going back to a cold war rhetoric.

I suggest now that the passions of this period have
passed, and that most of our critics now admit that the
Cambodian operation achieved the objectives that were set for
it, now that this point is reached, I suggest that you read
that speech and compare it, for example, with the Inaugural
Address of President Kennedy.

You will find that no one in this Administration has
ever said, "We will pay any price, we will bear any burden,
we will meet any hardship, we will support any friend, we
will fight any foe," to achieve the survival of liberty any-
where.

That was global internationalism. And I don't say
that as a criticism of the Kennedy Administration. I say
that as an example of the difference in attitude and of the
change in conditions that has come about since the late 1940's.

In historical retrospect, I believe that the Kennedy
Administration will probably be remembered as the last
flowering of the foreign policy that was ushered in by the
Marshall Plan rather than as the beginning of a new era in
international relations.

The reason for that seems to be this: In the immediate
post-war period, the United States undertook many farsighted
and important ventures in foreign policy, many of which
succeeded because they correctly reflected the realities of
that particular period.

In the late 1940's, the United States was the only
country that had a domestic structure and an economy capable
of supporting a global foreign policy.

All of the traditional major powers had been
enormously weakened by the war. Indeed, all of them, except
Great Britain, had been defeated at one stage or another in
the war. All of them, except Great Britain, had been occupied
at one stage or another in the war. And even Great Britain
had suffered a substantial erosion of its strength and of its
ability to conduct a world-wide foreign policy.

In these circumstances, it was natural to believe,
and it was correct, that progress, development and security
everywhere in the world depended on the American ability to
commit its resources or to commit its word to the defense of
these areas.

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We, therefore, moved from a period of undiscriminating isolationism to a period of undiscriminating internationalism in which the fact of participation in international affairs seemed almost as important to many Americans as the content in which the idea grew up that a change in the situation anywhere in the world was of direct, immediate and overwhelming concern to the United States, so much so that for many countries the impression grew up that they could blackmail us with the proposition that if they went Communist it was worse for us than it was for them.

This led to a situation where very often foreign governments would make recommendations to us in which they didn't believe at all, so that they could gain domestic support in the hope that we, as the defenders of the international interests, would reject them, so that we would have both the benefit of their preference and the benefit of their formal statement.

I said to a foreign leader -- I hope there are not too many officials here who will report it -- the other day, "Be careful what you recommend to us because we may take your advice."

This is one of the changes that has now come about. We were the country that assumed the principal responsibility for development. We were the country that assumed the principal responsibility for security.

A pattern of behavior grew up in which the United States conceived the programs, worked out their details, executed them all over the world, furnished much of the key personnel, and in which leadership came to be identified with other countries following not only the general lines but the details of American prescriptions.

This policy, we have concluded, is not a tenable policy for the long run. It is not healthy for us. It is not healthy for other countries. And it is not in accord with the realities of the present situation.

It is not in accord with the realities of the present situation because many of the countries that I have described earlier, many of the traditional great powers, are no longer the weak and divided countries that we encountered at the end of World War II. Many of these countries have restored their economies and regained a great deal of their vitality.

It is not natural that in those circumstances the United States should take the position that it should adopt a paternalistic attitude in relation to these countries.

In many parts of the world today other countries are capable of assuming greater responsibilities and, indeed, for the long-term it is essential that they assume greater responsibilities.

When we are the dominant country everywhere, a number of consequences occur that are disadvantageous. First of all, in the situation that I described earlier, where foreign policy for too many countries becomes a form of lobbying in the American decision-making process rather than

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a clear understanding of their own interests, and where
foreign governments very often take public positions against
their better judgment, grandstanding to their public, in
the expectation that the United States would take on itself
the burden of all difficult choices, this, in turn, has the
objective consequence of isolating us because vis-a-vis their
public opinion some of these leaders pretend that they are
more enlightened than we are and that they are pushing us in
the desirable directions while they tell us privately that
for God's sake, we should be careful about listening to them
too carefully.

And it isn't healthy for us for this reason: I am
often asked what the principal difference is in my academic
life and in this situation. Well, one difference is that
Washington is quieter than Harvard. While people play for
blood here, they have to attend faculty meetings before they
know what real competition is like.

But more seriously, one enormous difference is that
on the outside the recognition of a problem meant that I would
then be able to work on it long enough to be able to do the
best job that I was able to do with it and, therefore, I always
thought that recognizing a problem and understanding an issue
was one of my most important tasks.

In high office, one of the most important lessons
that I learned has been that you are always under pressure of
time, and that there are a number of issues that you may be
perfectly well aware of and which you might even think you
would know how to deal with if you could ever find the time
to address them.

That means that very often senior officials have to
deal with the urgent at the expense of the important. It also
means, quite honestly, that staff papers, no matter how
brilliantly conceived, are meaningless until they reach some
senior official. Policy planning papers are academic exercises
until a senior official can address them.

For a senior official, one problem is to establish a
hierarchy of issues so that he can deal with the high priority
once and get a few of them settled before some lower priority
one becomes acute.

So you are always on a railway track with the train
heading for you, and you have to hope that you can get out of
the way before it finally hits.

This forces a certain liveliness to one's position.
But it means also that if all positions are centralized in
Washington, inevitably the high priority items that require
urgent attention by the American senior officials become
unmanageable.

The danger that some important problem gets
neglected is physically enhanced. This has nothing to do
with the wisdom of the individuals or the adequacy of their
procedural arrangements. It is inherent in the nature of the
problem.

Therefore, to the extent that we can develop the
responsibilities for key issues to some other areas, we can

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get at least an initial consideration of key problems else-
where, and this problem of the overloading of the American
decision-making process can be avoided.

This is one of the big changes in the situation that
has occurred.

Another change that has occurred is that the
Communist world which appeared monolithic in the late 40's
and early 50's has emerged as a much more complex set of
institutions than the one on which the policy of the 40's
and 50's was based.

The notion that equated the Communists with the Nazis,
and that assumed that the danger of Communist expansion
resided primarily in military attack across recognized borders
by a disciplined, uniformed set of states, is probably wrong.

The Communist threat is more complicated and in that
way perhaps more dangerous than the Nazi threat, because it
combines economic, psychological, political and military
factors, and it avoids wherever possible the direct military
challenge. It seeks to avoid presenting us with an unambiguous
challenge.

So when we are confronted with Communist adversaries
we always have a domestic dispute about whether the challenge
is in fact taking place before we can even address the question
of what we should do about it.

But secondly, the Communist world is far from
uniform. One of the biggest splits in the world today is not
only that between the non-Communist and the Communist
countries; it is between Moscow and Peking. The Soviet Union
today has more divisions and better equipped divisions on
the Chinese border than it has in Central Europe.

The situation can perhaps best be understood by
how we would feel if our frontier with Mexico were 5,000 miles
long, if Mexico had a population of 800 million and were
building nuclear weapons, and if it announced that all
territorial acquisitions of the United States that the United
States made in the 19th century were null and void; indeed,
if it showed in its history books California, New Mexico and
Texas as part of Mexico. That is, in its high school history
books.

But this is precisely what Communist China is doing.
Communist China is showing all the Soviet territorial
acquisitions in Siberia in the 19th century and in Sinkiang
and in the maritime provinces as part of China. It does not
accept its frontier. It has a population of 800 million
on its side of the frontier, while on the Soviet side there
are only 30 million people facing China, the majority of the
Soviet people living in Western Russia.

This is an eerie feeling for the Soviets. If you
add to this you have the fact you have a quasi religious move-
ment in the Communist Party that prides itself on its
universal and unique interpretation of Leninism, but you have
two centers of orthodoxy, namely Peking and Moscow, and if
you combine the ideological dispute with the geopolitical,

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you have here a new aspect to the international situation
that is quite different from what we expected in the 50's,
which gives us possibilities for additional maneuver, but
which also produces additional rigidities.

Then another important change that has occurred is
the change in the strategic balance. When the American
foreign policy was developed in the late 1940's, the United
States possessed an atomic monopoly. Throughout the 1950's
we possessed an overwhelming strategic superiority. As
late as the Cuban missile crisis, when we thought we were
confronting really the most serious threat of war, as late
as the Cuban missile crisis the Soviets had less than 70
ICBMs, all standing in the open, all requiring eight to 10
hours before they could be fueled.

We at that time had 500 ICBMs and over 1,200 long-range bombers, each of which could get to the Soviet missiles before the Soviets could get them off the ground, because each of them could get there in less time than it took the Soviets to launch them.

In other words, we were in a position as late as
1962, less than 10 years ago, to do to the Soviets what the
Israelis did to the Arabs in 1967.

Even then relations with the Soviet Union were not
precisely calm.

Now the Soviet Union has over 1,300 long-range missiles, which is more long-range land-based missiles than we have. Their submarine-based missiles are increasing.

The only area in which we are still numerically ahead
is in long-range bombers.

I am not arguing that the Soviet Union is getting
ahead of us. I am arguing that the decision to go to
strategic nuclear war is totally different in the 70's regard-
less of who is in the White House, regardless of what pro-
testations people make, than it was as late as 1962, indeed,
than it was as late as 1965 or 1966.

This is a fundamental change which many of our
allies haven't yet understood. It means, for example, for
those of you who have been interested in NATO, that the
assumptions on which NATO was built in the 40's and 50's
require the most careful reexamination. Basically, the
Europeans in the 40's and 50's looked at the American commit-
ment as a way of triggering the American strategic force.

They also asked for American ground forces in
Europe, but really for reasons that they could never make
explicit they asked for American ground forces because
remembering the lessons of their own history they knew that
formal alliances were sometimes broken since every one of
our European allies had let down some ally at one stage or
another in the last 100 years.

They, therefore, wanted tangible American guarantees,
to put it completely, American hostages on the ground, so
that if a war broke out it would begin with the spilling of
American blood which would deprive the President of any

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choice about going to general nuclear war.

In the conditions of the 40's and 50's, and early
60's, this was a perfectly feasible fear and, in fact, it
has had a good if unintended by-product. It has had the by-
product that developed really quite inconsistently with the
strategic doctrine of a large military establishment on the
Continent.

In other words, at a time of our greatest nuclear
superiority we built up ground forces in the area in which
our nuclear threat should have been most credible. But no
matter how inconsistent this may have been in the 50's and
60's, in the 70's these ground forces are now very important.

One reason why this Administration is opposed to the
various propositions that we should withdraw forces from
Europe is precisely because we believe that in the 70's the
ground forces are of much greater importance in the defense
of Europe than they were in the 50's and 60's.

This is the wrong time to weaken the local defense
of NATO.

This, then, is the situation in which we found our-
selves, and that is what we have attempted to rectify.

We address this in a number of ways. First of all,
the President, as those of you here who know him will
recognize, is a very systematic and very thoughtful man. He
has insisted from the beginning that he be given every reason-
able choice.

I have had occasion to say that the surest way I
could ruin myself with the President is not by giving him
wrong advice. I think if I made a habit of it, it would
impose certain limitations on the number of appointments I
could receive. But that is not what would concern him most.

The surest way to put a strain on our relationship
is if a policy failed for reasons which were foreseeable but
which were not put before him. He insists that he be given the
options that he has together with the consequences of carrying
them out and with all associated policies, including the con-
sequences of failure.

Therefore, when you read in the newspapers that the
President shot from the hip, or that people were inadequately
consulted, or that choices weren't put before him, you can
always assume this was put out by self-serving individuals.
Of course, errors in judgment occur. That is inevitable.

It is up to each of you to decide which policies
were errors in judgment and which were correct. But what
has in my view not happened is that the President acted on
the basis of a single recommendation without having had put
before him a whole range of alternatives.

What he has constantly asked us to do is to put
before him a five-year prospective first and then to work
back from that to the specific policy measure.

He has time and again said to me and to his other
associates that he does not want to be known as a President

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who managed crises well. He would consider his policies
successful not through the management of crises but through
the less spectacular avoidance of crises.

He wants to bring about a situation in which there
is a maximum opportunity to preserve the peace and where we
can shape events towards some positive purposes rather than
simply deal with individual issues as they come up.

The expression of his general philosophy is in
what has come to be called the Nixon Doctrine, which he
enunciated at Guam in July, 1969.

The Nixon Doctrine states essentially three propositions. The first one is the United States will honor its commitments.

The second is that we recognize a special obligation
in defending non-nuclear countries against nuclear attack.
The reason we are saying that is because we do not want to
create an incentive for other countries to develop nuclear
weapons of their own.

Thirdly and most importantly, we say this, that both
the defense and the development of other countries must be in
the first instance the responsibility of the country concerned.
And, in the second instance, of the region concerned. That
the United States can and will participate, where our interests
require it, but we want to participate as a weight in the scale
and not as making the sole effort or as being in the front line
of every confrontation.

I have just been getting some additional instructions
here from Mr. Klein.

This doctrine, by itself, of course, cannot be
applied like a cookbook, and we cannot apply it equally to
all situations. It expresses a sense of direction rather than
a precise description of policy.

The sense of direction is that we want other countries
and other regions to assume a greater share not only of the
physical burden but, above all, a greater share of the
intellectual burden. We want them to make themselves more
responsible for international stability and for their own
development and security.

I am sometimes -- and the President is sometimes --
appealed by some of the enthusiastic supporters we have
developed, because there are some people who tend to interpret
the Nixon Doctrine as a charter for the withdrawal by the
United States from the world.

Many times we are urged to do certain things that we
consider inconsistent with American interests on the ground
that they are consistent with a low profile.

Let me make it clear, we did not think of the Nixon
Doctrine as a means of withdrawing from the world. We did
not look at it as a means of shedding our commitments. We
looked at it as a means by which the United States could remain

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related to the world without the oscillations between
euphoria and despair, and without the overcommitment of
American resources that characterized the previous period.

Without the United States, no security and development is possible.

Therefore, we have to develop a fine line between
doing so much as to break the self-reliance of the other
countries in the world, and doing so little, or withdrawing
so precipitantly, that the other countries mistake an
inevitable adjustment of our policy for a return to
isolationism.

This is the general philosophy of the Administration.

I could, I suppose, illustrate it with many examples,
but I want to leave some time for questions. Therefore, let
me just take two illustrations of some of the things that
we have done. I will take two illustrations and one defi-
nition of a problem.

One illustration is the approach of this Admin-
istration to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks with the
Soviet Union. When we came into office, we were confronted
by what had by then been the traditional situation, which was
there were some people for disarmament and others against
disarmament.

They would then get involved in a tremendous bureau-
cratic hassle which the President had to resolve by forcing
the adoption of some one negotiating position. This
negotiating position would then be presented to the Russians.

The subject is so complicated that the Russians
would almost never -- indeed, never in the past -- come up
with a position similar to ours.

We then had to go back to our bureaucracy and
renegotiate our original position, with the result that in
almost every previous negotiation with the Russians we spent
more time negotiating with ourselves than with the other
side.

In this case we attempted to remove the issue from
the realm of theology to the concrete examination of the
issues. We made a study of every conceivable weapon system
that could conceivably be the subject of negotiation.

We examined our intelligence capabilities with
respect to it, the consequences of a violation, what steps
we could take if there were a violation.

We, therefore, made a catalog of all conceivable
weapons systems that could be subject to a negotiation. We
spent about six months on that.

On the other hand, having done that, we were in a
position to put before the President four different approaches
to the issue, of which he chose two. When the Soviets
rejected both of those, we could put together a third one
relatively quickly -- in fact, in a matter of less than three
weeks -- which is the subject of the current negotiations.

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At the same time, the Soviets have, up to now, proceeded in a serious but not particularly hurried manner.

I think it is possible to say this about the SALT talks: There is no technical reason why they should not succeed. If they do not succeed it is because political decisions have been made on the other side that a SALT agreement is not now in their interest. The differences that exist are negotiable. We certainly approach the issue with the intention of coming to an agreement.

It is difficult to make a prediction of where the negotiations will go, but I think we can say that whenever the Soviet Union decides that for political reasons it wants an agreement, the technical basis for getting it exists and the negotiations have far enough advanced so that within six months of the policy decision, whenever that is -- which is unpredictable -- we can have an agreement.

The area you will be hearing Assistant Secretary Sisco on is, of course, in many ways, the most difficult problem we face, and in many ways the most dangerous. Vietnam is our most anguishing problem. The Middle East is our most dangerous problem.

All I will do here is explain why we believe it is dangerous and why we have given it so much attention.

It is dangerous because the Middle East now exhibits many of the characteristics of the Balkans before World War I. That is to say you have two countries or one country facing a group of countries, each of which is tied to one of the major countries, each of which is very conscious of the local rivalries, each of which thinks its national survival is at stake and, therefore, acutely aware of its own immediate problems.

The major countries have varying degrees of commitment to their survival but not total control over their foreign policy. Therefore, a sequence of events is conceivable, such as, indeed, already happened in 1967, and nearly happened last September, in which local rivalries can erupt of such a nature that the great powers may be drawn in even if they didn't plan them.

I don't believe that the Soviet Union wanted a Middle East war in 1967, even though they are very heavily responsible for how it developed.

Similarly, last September, if events had developed just a little further, or a little faster, there could have been a Middle East war, again, in which the Soviet contribution was quite frivolous but quite dangerous, but which was not really started by the Soviet Union.

No one could have predicted the hijacking of these airplanes and the outbreak of the Jordanian civil war.

The difference between 1970 and 1967 was in 1967 the United States kept a complete hands-off policy; in 1970, we did enough to make clear that we were present, and enough so that the countries most threatened, namely Jordan and Israel, did not get so desperate that they felt they had to

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run enormous risks.

But by the very act of commitment, we could
exercise restraint on these other countries. So we avoided
a general Middle East war.

But we don't want to continue to live with a
situation where the security of the United States hangs so
precariously on decisions that are taken in very volatile
capitals on the basis of considerations we cannot fully
control.

Assistant Secretary Sisco will talk to you in
greater detail about what precise steps we are taking in
this direction.

Now let me turn to Vietnam. We came into office
at a moment when there were 540,000 Americans in Vietnam in
the fifth year of a war, in the second year of a negotiation
which had not yet generated a single concrete political
proposal, in a country which was becoming increasingly
bitterly divided about the conduct of the war.

We have attempted to end the war on a basis that
would contribute to a more lasting peace.

I have found that Vietnam has acquired such a
liturgical quality that it is almost impossible to have a
rational discussion about it. One hears nothing but standard
arguments on either side of the debate.

I cannot, in the few minutes that I have left, go
into great detail about all the aspects of Vietnam, so what
I give you has to be selective. I will be glad to answer
questions, however.

The temptation for the President on a number of
occasions during these years of either leaving, when we came
in, and blaming it all on the Democrats, or leaving during
one of the various moratoria we have faced and saying,
"I tried to end the war honorably but I cannot take the
responsibility of having American lives killed while the
political opposition behaves so irresponsibly."

This temptation was very great and could have been
carried out even to political advantage. But we refused this,
and for two reasons: The first reason is that we believe
that international stability depends importantly on the
manner in which we end the war in Vietnam.

We have talked to many foreign leaders and I can
tell you flatly -- and I attend, I think, every meeting that
the President has with foreign leaders -- no non-Communist
leader has ever asked us to get out of Vietnam faster than
we do -- none -- no matter what they may say publicly.

As one approaches Vietnam geographically, the
intensity with which leaders ask us to stay increases. The
reason that foreign countries recognize that their security
depends importantly on the steadiness of the American per-
formance. They cannot treat us as if we were whiz kids.
Too many of my academic friends suffer from the illusion that
you can conduct foreign policy like a seminar and just spark

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fresh, brilliant ideas at least the way outsiders believe Harvard seminars are conducted.

Foreign countries can gear their action to curs only if there is a certain predictability in our behavior and a certain steadiness in our actions. Therefore, if we simply threw in the sponge in Vietnam, you would get major changes in such countries as Japan.

Those of you who know Japanese history will be aware of the fact that the Japanese totally changed their domestic and foreign orientation twice in a century not on the basis of ideological conviction, but on the basis of their belief that the balance of power in their area had changed and they adjusted to the dominant trend.

Their adjustment is very ruthless when they make it because they are so convinced of the cultural peculiarity of their country that they believe they can adjust to anything and survive as a society.

Within the Communist world, if it should emerge that a fifth rate agricultural country defeats and humiliates the United States, it will give added strength to all of those who believe that the way to deal with the United States is to face us down.

So we have believed that if we buy an illusory peace in Vietnam, we will do so at the price of greater conflict and more serious confrontations later on. We could never have gotten through the Middle East crisis last September if we had not previously established the credibility of our performance in Indochina.

We didn't necessarily foresee a crisis. I am simply pointing this out.

The second concern we have is with our domestic situation. We have felt that if we yield to public demonstrations on a matter in which we believe the national interest is overwhelmingly involved, we will create a situation in which it may well turn out that those who demonstrate most strongly against us will be the first victims of the sequence of events that is unleashed.

We cannot abdicate the judgment to a test of strength in the streets. We believe that we have to be judged by the results over a period of years and not by the immediate editorials.

We believe that it is essential for the cohesion of the society that a war which we entered under whatever assumptions eight years ago is ended as an act of the American Government and not as an act of panic.

No one can doubt that we are serious about ending the war. No one can believe that anyone could be so mad as to think we can impose an unconditional victory when our force levels are shrinking and when we are not bombing North Vietnam, when we couldn't do it with twice as many forces as we have there now.

No one can believe that we would be withdrawing 300,000 men, as we will have to all practical purposes by

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next July, and reduce the intensity of the war if we did not mean to end it.

But we also have to face the fact that there have not been serious negotiations by the other side. We should not delude ourselves into believing that we are the primary or even a significant obstacle to having a negotiated peace.

We are now in a position where we believe that we can end the war one way or another. We believe that the Vietnamization is proceeding at a pace by which in a measurable time the responsibility for the conduct of the war can be turned over to the South Vietnamese.

We keep looking at this situation with as much care as we can, cognizant of the fact that we would only be deluding ourselves if we put out stories to the American people that in a year or two will turn out to be false.

We believe we are making progress in an admittedly tenuous situation. So far we have managed to withdraw, and we will by next May 1, over 260,000 men, and still have improved the security of South Vietnam and the capacity of the South Vietnamese to defend themselves. We expect to continue that process.

We had hoped to be able to have serious negotiations. Up to now these negotiations have been disappointing.

We are under constant pressure by groups to make new offers. I just would like to remind you, ladies and gentlemen, that in the last two years the following propositions have been advanced: If there were an end to bombing, there would be constructive negotiations.

If we would accept the principle of troop withdrawal, if we made a token troop withdrawal, if we made a troop withdrawal of 50,000, if we announced a troop withdrawal of 100,000, if we made a troop withdrawal of 100,000, if we announced a new Ambassador to Paris, if we were prepared to negotiate with the NLF at the conference table, if we proposed an unconditional standstill cease-fire.

Each of these things was urged on us as leading to constructive negotiation. Each of these things we have done and exceeded. None of them have led to constructive negotiation.

Now we are told the obstacle is Thieu, Ky and Diem. It will be a test of our maturity as a political society whether we are capable of facing what it is that is really being proposed to us.

What North Vietnam is asking of us is: One, the unconditional withdrawal of American forces, and on the way out we should overthrow the existing government in Saigon and replace it with a Communist government.

I would like to ask you, ladies and gentlemen, if we decide to withdraw from South Vietnam, why should we replace the government in Saigon?

If we withdraw from South Vietnam, let Hanoi see whether they can replace the government in Saigon. If they felt so confident, why don't they accept our proposal of an

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immediate, mutual withdrawal of our forces?

We have offered to give them a deadline of our withdrawal month by month over a year's period. Then if they are so strong in South Vietnam, why don't they overthrow the Saigon government by themselves?

And what is it that they propose? They say we should replace Thieu, Ky and Diem. I already hear and I can see it mounting over the next months, the proposal that the United States is sacrificing men for three individuals.

First of all, if we are realistic we have to face the fact that if there is one man in the world more eager to get rid of Ky than the NLF, it must be Thieu. Thieu does not believe that Ky is a political supporter. Diem is the political appointment of Thieu.

With the other side is proposing the following: They say there has to be a coalition government, there must be a coalition government, to use their phrase, composed of the following elements: the PRG, that is the Communist government, those members of the Saigon administration, minus Thieu, Ky and Diem, who genuinely stand for peace, independence and neutrality, and all other forces who genuinely stand for peace, independence and neutrality. Only Hanoi knows who stands for peace, independence and neutrality, and certainly only Hanoi knows who genuinely stands for peace, independence and neutrality. So what they want is to appoint a third of the government and veto the other two-thirds.

If that is a negotiating position, if that is not a prescription for unconditional surrender, coupled with an unconditional withdrawal of American forces, I don't know what the meaning of unconditional surrender is.

And that is the only obstacle to negotiations. We have told them we will talk about all their propositions together with all of our propositions. We have offered a cease-fire, a standstill cease-fire.

We have offered an international conference. We have offered an exchange of prisoners. We have offered anything that can reasonably be conceded and we have run risks in proposing them.

I cannot guarantee that they will ever negotiate seriously. I simply do not know. All I can say is we are prepared to negotiate seriously, but we will end the war one way or the other because we are on a course now which we believe will succeed.

Incidentally, there was a report in today's New York Times according to which an expert we sent to Vietnam gave us a pessimistic report. This newspaper story is 180 degrees off the mark. The report is extremely optimistic. In fact, it is so optimistic that we haven't even made anything of it. But I simply wanted to point this out in case any of you may have read it.

So this is where we stand in Vietnam. It is, of course, an anguishing problem, and political fragility in Saigon may defeat us. This is true. But we believe that

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nothing is more important, including for the people who
attack us most, than to see that an American Government can
succeed in its purposes, and that an American Government is
not to be shaken simply by demonstrations.

This can do a great deal to re-establish a degree
of public confidence in our policies, and we believe it is
in the National interest for the foreign policies.

I want to come back to where I started. In the
long-term, this Administration doesn't want to be known
primarily for having ended the war in Vietnam, though I am
confident that we will do it, nor for having managed crises
like the Middle East adequately.

We would like to bring about an orientation of
American policy which can serve us for the next decade or two,
the basic aspect of which will be that it ushered in a period
of lasting peace, something which we haven't had in this
century.

I have talked longer than I intended, but I will be
glad to answer questions.

Q You have given us a very informative and
constructive talk. I, for one, appreciate it. I am O. K.
Armstrong, former Member of Congress from Missouri, a veteran
of World War I. I am happy to count myself a personal as well
as political friend of President Nixon.

There is one question that has bothered me ever since
this tragic war started. I covet this chance to ask it of
you, sir, and I hope we can get the answer.

As you are aware, four Presidents, Eisenhower,
Kennedy, Johnson and now Nixon, have all said in similar
worlds, "We are in Vietnam" -- quoting the exact words of
President Johnson but all the others have said similar words --
"to defend and preserve the freedom and independence of the
people of South Vietnam."

Is it your opinion that the program we are now
following, instead of military victory, which we certainly
could have won according to -- and, by the way, I will
respect the admonition of my friend Herb Klein. I am on the
staff of Reader's Digest. But this is off the record.

I have been in Vietnam many times, and only a few
weeks ago. I have interviewed the majors and the generals
clear on down to the buck privates, all of whom say we could
have won the war a long time ago, and should have done it.

Leaving that aside, and certainly you can't blame
this Administration for what happened before January 20th,
1969, but is it your opinion, sir, that the policy we are
now following of withdrawing our troops without any, as you
have said, meaningful negotiation in Paris or anywhere else,
will achieve our objective in South Vietnam?

DR. KISSINGER: We believe that the military situation
is as follows: The incursion into Cambodia, the overthrow of
Sihanouk coupled with our incursion into Cambodia, brought
about a major change in the military situation.

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When we came into office we were confronted with
conflicting intelligence estimates about the amount of
supplies that came in through Sihanoukville. There was a
very wide spread in these estimates. I don't want to go
into the reasons for these differences.

But the interesting thing is that the actual amount
that came in, now that we have discovered the bills of lading
and know exactly what came in, through Sihanoukville, was
more than two and a half times as much as the highest
intelligence estimate which we received at that time, and which
no one took seriously because we thought it was an exaggerated,
hysterical assessment.

This means that the Communists are facing the problem
of shipping overland across 600 miles of trail what they used
to be able to ship by sea and then transport by road into
IV Corps, III Corps, and the southern half of II Corps.

It is now clear that 95 percent of the supplies for
those areas came from the south.

Secondly, the destruction of the sanctuaries which
we undertook in May and June of last year had the practical
consequence of completely disrupting their supply system.

This has given the South Vietnamese about a year to
a year and a half, and maybe more, of building up their forces.
Where a year ago, even a year ago, one would have had to say
that if the South Vietnamese faced the North Vietnamese alone,
the probability is that the North Vietnamese would win within
the next three or four years, we believe that the Cambodian
operation has greatly compressed this period.

Right now, the main force war in III and IV Corps
is essentially over, for the time being, anyway.

In I Corps it is still possible, and in some parts
of II Corps it is still possible, but we believe that the
South Vietnamese in another year or year and a half or so --
I don't want to put a time limit on it -- can take on
increasing responsibilities, provided Sihanoukville remains
closed and provided they don't simply knock over Cambodia in
an attack in this dry season.

This, incidentally, is why we believe the supple-
mental appropriation for Cambodia is so important. They
managed to fight the war in South Vietnam from the sanctuaries
in Cambodia from which they emerged when they were ready to
fight and to which they withdrew when they needed recuperation.
This situation has now changed.

My answer to your question is that if we act wisely
and not precipitantly there is a chance, there is a good
chance, that we can preserve the freedom of the people of
South Vietnam.

I would also have to add this: Anyone who knows
the recent history of South Vietnam knows the political
volatility of Vietnamese political leaders. I cannot exclude
the fact that the South Vietnamese may throw away the fruits
of 10 years of struggle over a period of time after the war is

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over or after the war is substantially over. If that
happens, it would be very regrettable, but it would be a
quite different phenomenon than if the United States handed
over Saigon to a Communist government, which is the demand
the other side is now making on us.

We would prefer a negotiated settlement, but the
current Communist strategy in Paris is to deprive the
American people of any hope of negotiation in order to be
able to bring maximum pressure on us.

Q Will we simply keep our boys over there
fighting and dying until we bring them all back without any
hope of victory?

DR. KISSINGER: No, we are bringing the boys home
in a measurable period of time and achieving precisely the
objective which you read President Johnson as having
enunciated.

Q Dr. Kissinger, several times in your talk
you said, "We will end this war one way or another."

What do you mean by one way or another?

DR. KISSINGER: One way or another, either through
negotiation or through Vietnamization.

Q If I make any remark, I am not criticizing
any Administration official. Would you tell me what you
mean or to whom do you refer when you mention the Communists?
Do you refer to the USSR and Red China?

DR. KISSINGER: It depends in what context. When
I refer to the Communist world I would have to include the
USSR, Communist China, North Vietnam, North Korea, the
states of Eastern Europe. These are all Communist states.

Q I am thinking of the enemy number one in my
estimation as being the USSR versus Red China. I would like
to follow up my question on it, if I may.

In 1952, General Eisenhower, President Eisenhower,
said, "I will bring the troops home from Korea," in a famous
speech.

At that time, then we went to armistice as far as
Korea was concerned. I was sitting on the Foreign Affairs
Committee and saw the buildup in Vietnam which was very
dangerous, and so forth.

During those two periods, the United States was
challenged by the third-party nations. Now we are facing
the Middle East where we are facing the USSR.

Is there any possibility that we could force --
and if you are doing anything, and I am sure you are -- to
force the Russians to see this point of view and bring them
into negotiations for Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East
under one?

DR. KISSINGER: Frankly, we see no possibility
for that. We have tried everything of which our ingenuity

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is capable to get the Soviet Union involved in helping us
in Vietnam, or in helping out in Vietnam.

You can't expect them to help us. We tried to
link negotiations together, whereupon nine-tenths of the
press jumped all over us for the concept of linkage, saying
each issue should be handled separately. Excessive appro-
bation by the press hasn't been one of our troubles. So this
wasn't a decisive feature.

The Soviet Union is either not interested or
incapable of influencing events in Vietnam, and probably it
is a combination of both.

They have no overwhelming desire to relieve us of
this drain and they probably don't know how to do it at low
cost even if they wanted to because of their rivalry with the
Communist Chinese. So that has not worked.

Secondly, I have to say that in our negotiations
with the Soviet Union over recent months, it would not be easy
to demonstrate a great readiness by the Soviet Union to
subordinate temporary benefits for the long-term advantages
of peace.

As to the question who is our number one enemy, our
position is this: We have no illusions about the motives of
either Communist China or the Soviet Union. We do not want,
however, the Soviet Union to prescribe to us whom we can deal
with in the Communist world.

Therefore, we have a rather cold approach of
engaging in discussions with Communist China partly as a way
against the Soviet Union, but we are under no illusions about
their motives.

Q How much of the Russian supplies to North Vietnam move through Communist China?

DR. KISSINGER: The major part of the Russian
supplies to Hanoi come by sea. There is only a relatively
small proportion that goes through Communist China, partly
because the Chinese found that some of the individuals
accompanying the arms shipments were engaging in activities
they considered anti-Chinese and partly because the Russians
found that some of the arms were pilfered, so that the
relations between those two countries are not exactly on the
basis of mutual trust and confidence. We would think about
15 percent at most comes through Communist China.

Q I am Bob Berry, Dr. Kissinger. From what I
have seen recently in Vietnam, I think we have a victory in
Vietnam, an undeclared victory. I have several times been
to Vietnam, and from going there from the beginning until
now I can't see that we haven't achieved our objective, which
Dean Rusk many times said was to teach North Vietnam to leave
their neighbors alone.

They have certainly learned that lesson. Whether
they have quit is another matter. They haven't done anything
since Tet. They have the capacity to do anything, so we
believe.

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Why can't we take the affirmative position, now
that the new land program is going to be inaugurated? As I
understand, it will give 800,000 peasants of South Vietnam
land for the first time, and that will undercut anything the
Viet Cong could possibly ever do so far as bringing revolt
by the people in the future. With this combination of a
victorious stoppage of the North Vietnamese plus under-
cutting the Viet Cong with the land program, whatever the
name of it, why not assume a posture of victory except for
harassment and jungle warfare?

DR. KISSINGER: We don't want to claim things
excessively because we may undermine our credibility and,
therefore, the confidence in the government.

The fact is that when we came in, weekly American
casualties ran at the average of about 300 a week. Within a
year we had that down to about 125 and now the average weekly
toll is around 40. That is still too high but it shows the
way the curve of the war has been going.

You have to assume that since Cambodia it is largely
due to their incapacity because if they could have kept our
casualties high this summer there would have been an enormous
public pressure.

At the same time, I think it is realistic to assume
that they will probably try to launch another series of
offenses in the dry season starting in February. We think
it will be probably directed primarily at Cambodia and only
secondarily at Vietnam. There is no doubt that they are
much weaker than they were before.

The situation is about as I described it, but I
think it would be premature to claim that we have now achieved
a victory.

Q I have a very brief question, Doctor. How,
in the light of the Communist strategy of protracted
negotiations, can we expect to gain in the SALT conferences
and negotiation at Paris? In the light of their strategy,
how and in what we do we expect to gain?

DR. KISSINGER: The SALT talks are based on this
assumption, that after a certain point of strategic buildup
for either side, neither side can gain a useful and meaning-
ful advantage. One side can be slightly ahead in one
category and the other can be slightly ahead in the other
category. But neither side can get into a position where it
can knock out the other without fear of unacceptable
retaliation.

Therefore, while we recognize that the Communist
preference is for protracted strategy, they cannot change
this technological fact. We have seen in the Middle East
what they do when they think they can get away with violations.

We have no doubt that if they thought they could
get away with it in SALT they would do exactly the same
thing. This is why we made such detailed studies of our
unilateral intelligence procedures and why we have rather
precise estimates of the degree of violation that is required
to upset the strategic balance in various categories, how
quickly we would know, how quickly we could react to it.

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We are confident they could not build up suffi-
ciently quickly in any of the strategically significant
categories for us not to be able to react in time. There-
fore, in a funny way, Joe Sisco would admit that he sees an
opportunity in the Middle East to get the cease-fire and
standstill, but that actually the detailed studies of what
it would take to police it were less far advanced in the
Middle East and he had to move fast or lose the opportunity.

And there is another problem: In the Middle East
they could move their missiles in a matter of two weeks. In
SALT it takes them 18 months to complete one SS-9 complex.
We picked them up in never a longer time than three months.

So they cannot suddenly introduce a lot of
strategic missiles and put us at a complete disadvantage.

On the time frame, if we had had that much of a lead
time in the Middle East it would have been easy. Even in
SALT, if there was any weapon that they could introduce in
two weeks and put us at a disadvantage it would be too risky.
But there is no weapon that they could put into action in
sufficient numbers in a time frame that we couldn't counter-
act within that time period. That is our analysis on SALT.

On Paris, we know that their preference is for
protracted war. The reason we are in Paris is because we
believe that they may feel it is in their interest, even
from the protracted strategy, either to cut their losses or
to get to a different phase of political conflict. We are
prepared to risk political conflict with them.

If the Saigon government should lose a political
conflict we cannot be in the business of maintaining a
government by force in Saigon for all eternity with
American soldiers if it cannot win a political conflict.

So that is what we expect to get out of the
negotiations in Paris. But as I pointed out to you, those
negotiations are not foreordained to success.

Q Do you want to comment on the fact that they have violated every agreement they made with us, and keep that in mind, too, Doctor?

DR. KISSINGER: We are keeping it in mind. I don't
think that President Nixon suffers from excessive softness
towards communism. At least, that is not the image of him
that my colleagues at Harvard possess.

Q Dr. Kissinger, is it fair to gather from much
of what you said that your biggest problem really is in public
sentiment here at home? The situation abroad is better than
it is here. For example, the President has to make statements
like he did two months ago, this five-point proposal. All
sorts of people and groups in America across the spectrum
hailed it as a great advance.

But, of course, the Communists hailed it as a sub-
stantial retreat. They say he yielded on the standstill
cease-fire. "Therefore, why should we stop with 10 yards;
just hang on and he will give us 20 yards and after a while
we will get 30 yards."

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Who stops with 10 yards if they can get 30 yards? It is this erosion of understanding and support at home which is the real danger to your being able to carry out what you talked about in either the Vietnamization or negotiations.

Is that a fair conclusion?

DR. KISSINGER: It is certainly fair to say that public support is essential to carry out the policies that I described; that without public support, if there is a consistent attack on the credibility of the President and on the confidence of established authorities, it will not only undermine this President; it will undermine the Presidency and any consistent foreign policy.

If no sooner do you say something that people start picking away as if you were in the business of deliberately misleading the American public, if that becomes the established pattern of our political discourse, then our democratic process and our foreign policy are equally in jeopardy.

Q These are all men who served in Congress, a good many of them on the Foreign Affairs Committee and Foreign Relations Committee. Maybe they could be helpful to you mostly in interpreting things at home so people understand what is at stake.

We can say to them, as you said in the beginning, more bluntly than you can.

DR. KISSINGER: It would certainly be greatly appreciated.

Q Dr. Kissinger, I am greatly interested in your comment about the story in the New York Times. I did read it coming down on the train this morning. It seems to me right here you have this point of what is the public to believe.

The New York Times is considered a responsible newspaper by many people. They read a story like this in there, which is highly critical, and you suggest it is 180 degrees wrong.

DR. KISSINGER: I can flatly say I have the report. It is, unfortunately, classified, and I can't get into the business. We were tempted, frankly, to release the report. It would make the story so outrageous. Then we had to consider that if we release one report to the President on the basis of a misleading news story, then all a newspaper would have to do in order to get a confidential report to the President released is to publish any story about it at all and have established a presumptive claim.

I think Thompson is going to write a very strong letter of protest to the New York Times. I think this is the way we are going to handle it.

The fact of the matter is that Thompson came back from Vietnam to say, in fact, what this gentleman said, that the war was won, that we had gained two years by the Cambodian operation.

He said the only area in which a problem remained

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was in the establishment of police forces because as we
were moving from combat operations, anti-terrorist operations
became more important. But the report is really so euphoric
that if we published it people would accuse us of sending
a captive spokesman to Vietnam.

The story is mischievous -- you can't even say
distortion. It is an invention of lies designed to dis-
credit Administration policy. I have not seen the President
so outraged by anything as he was by this story in the New
York Times.

Q This does cause confusion among the public in
general.

MR. KLEIN: I will have to cut this off, much as
I know all of you would like to talk longer.

I think you will agree that the man I introduced
is a tough-minded man in looking after the interests of the
United States and working with the President.

Thank you, Henry.

MR. COLLINS: Ladies and gentlemen, I suggest we
continue.

One of my greatest pleasures here in the State
Department is working with people like Joe Sisco. Despite
the fact he is a Chicago native, he graduated from Knox
College, Magna Cum and Phi Beta Kappa, and went off to World
War II as an infantry officer.

He came back to the University of Chicago where he
got both his Master's and his Doctorate, specializing in
Soviet Affairs.

He has worked here in the Department for about 20
years, the early years primarily involved with the United
Nations.

Also, in 1966, he was awarded, one of the 10 people
in Federal Government, as Outstanding Career Officers, awarded
by the Civil Service League.

For the last nearly two years he has been the
Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs.

I know some Government officials, and perhaps even
Assistant Secretaries of State, have been accused of being
like the Platt River in midsummer, which is three inches deep
and a mile wide at the mouth. I would like to assure you in
Joe Sisco's case this is not true. He is both deep and wide.

MR. SISCO: I will have a very difficult time living
up to that, but I feel good about it all simply because I do
see a number of very familiar faces. I have had the privilege
of working with a number of you over the past decade or two.
At this point I am beginning to feel pretty much as a veteran
as a number of you, I am sure, feel, given the number of
years that each of us have spent in Washington.

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I am sure that Henry has said a good deal about
Vietnam, and he has certainly underscored, if I know what
Henry said, that this is one of our most anguishing problems.

The President feels that perhaps the Middle East
is the most dangerous problem. I think it is for one simple
reason: that there is a serious risk that, as a result of
the turmoil and the instability that exists in the area,
the situation could develop in such a way that there could
be a confrontation over this area between the United States
and the Soviet Union.

When we talk of the Middle Eastern problem, we
are really not talking about one problem but we are talking
about at least three problems. The first and the foremost
is obviously the Arab-Israeli dispute which, in my judgment,
the Soviets have used to exploit and have used to make
advances in the Middle East.

Secondly, there are the intra-Arab problems, and
here we have, today, divisions between so-called moderates
and extremists, between established Arab governments and
Fedayeen, between Palestinians of one stripe as against
another.

The third aspect is the aspect that obviously con-
cerns us most and that is that this is an area where the
United States has important political, economic and strategic
interests, and that there is the risk of confrontation. It
is an area either of potential cooperation or of potential
conflict.

I think the record of the last couple of years of
negotiations that we have had with the Soviet Union on the
Middle East, both on a bilateral basis as well as within the
context of four-power talks at the United Nations, indicates
this: The Russians are not interested in going to war with
the United States over this area. The Russians don't want a
renewal of Arab-Israeli hostilities anymore than we do, because
it would confront them with some difficult choices, as it would
confront us.

But having said that their objective is to prevent
the outbreak of a local war which could draw the two major
powers in, it does not follow that the Soviet actions support
the thesis that they are as interested in a stable peace in
this area as we are.

The fact of the matter is that they have been able
to exploit the turmoil. They have been able to exploit the
Arab-Israeli dispute. So when the United States has taken the
lead, as it has, over the years in trying to achieve a
political solution, it has done so on the assumption that our
national interests would be best served by trying to find a
way to stabilize this area, trying to find ways to meet the
legitimate concerns of the states in the area, feeling that
if there is a way to diminish Soviet influence in the area,
if there is a way to reverse the trend of increased prestige
of the Soviet Union in this area, it is by finding a political
solution which would eliminate the turmoil, which would try to
get the parties to adopt a live-and-let-live attitude, and a
willingness to coexist along one side and the other.

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Well, of course, this is much easier said than
done. We have seen in the Mediterranean an increase in
Soviet activities over the last several years.

We have seen the establishment of a substantial
base by the Soviet Union in Egypt. As you look at this
particular base, as a minimum it serves the purpose of
bulwarking the Egyptians vis-a-vis the Israelis. But the
base goes well beyond that because the base can and does
serve broader designs insofar as the Soviet Union is con-
cerned in the Mediterranean.

If it is in our national interest to try to
stabilize this area, if it is in our national interest to
try to achieve something better than the de facto armistice
arrangements that have existed in this area for 20 years and
have given rise to three wars, then this is really the prin-
cipal rationale for the amount of diplomatic effort which
the United States has put into this thing.

Rather than go through a very long history, I would
merely say this: When the Israelis achieved the remarkable
six-day victory, the objective that was announced by this
Government was a peace, a binding peace, not scotch-taped,
de facto armistice arrangements.

That remains the objective of this Government.
For the first two years after the June war, we left the
question of trying to achieve a peace between the parties
largely to the representative of the United Nations, namely
Ambassador Jarring, who was mandated by the Security Council
to try to promote agreement between the parties based upon a
Security Council resolution adopted in November of 1967,
which purported to outline the principal elements of a settle-
ment.

What were these? A binding peace agreement between
the parties; freedom of passage through the Straits of
Tehran and the Suez Canal; a recognition on the side of the
Arabs that Israel had the right to exist as a sovereign state
and to live within so-called secure and recognized borders.

The principle of withdrawal of forces was enunciated
in that resolution, with the final borders to be negotiated
between the parties. And some general statement of principle
recognizing that there could be no lasting solution in the
Middle East unless the fundamental Palestinian problem, the
fundamental refugee problem, was resolved, because, after all,
this is the cancerous sore in this area that has been a
primary root of the difficulty in the last 20 years.

So this last June the United States took a new
initiative, and the objective of this initiative was to stop
the shooting and to get the parties to start talking.

The first half of that initiative is a reality
today. That is, we have had a 90-day cease-fire between
Egypt and Israel, and we have had a further extension of
that 90-day cease-fire. We are roughly about 30 days into
that second 90-day extension at the present time.

The second half, namely the beginning of talks
between the Israelis and the Egyptians, has not succeeded

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primarily because an agreement that was entered into was broken.

As part of the overall cease-fire agreement there was also an agreement that each side would stand still, militarily. In other words, what was adopted by both sides was the principle that neither side would utilize the cease-fire to try to benefit from the other, militarily speaking. Standstill meant standstill. That is why the word was used.

We negotiated with the Egyptians the details of this cease-fire standstill. We not only got the agreement of the Egyptians, the Jordanians and the Israelis; we got the agreement of the Soviet Union, both to the limited cease-fire and to the concept of the standstill.

Q In writing?

MR. SISCO: I will come to this, Walter, in a moment, if I could.

Having done this, what occurred and why? Is there a rational explanation? First of all, what were the nature of these violations? There were several kinds. First, our intelligence indicates that in dozens of instances where you had merely a flat piece of sand, nothing there at all, positions have been built. The intelligence indicates that in a number of other instances sites had been begun at the time of the cease-fire. Thirty, 40, 50, 60 days later these sites were completed.

In a number of other cases where our photography indicated that at the time of the cease-fire positions did exist, there was no missile or missile-related equipment in these positions. X number of days following, these positions had either SAM-2s or SAM-3s or missile-related equipment in them.

As you examined the 90-day period, what occurred was that the cease-fire-standstill zone was 50 kilometers west and east of the Suez Canal; there was a progressive movement both of the positions as well as the missiles closer to the Suez Canal itself.

Walter asked was it in writing.

Yes, these proposals were all in writing, Walter. We received the acceptances of Egypt, Jordan and Israel in writing. The Soviet response was an oral response. But as they normally do, the oral response really came in writing, even though this is for translation purposes to be sure no one misunderstood one another.

This piece of paper we have in the record says "Oral message." In other words, they are conveying it to us orally. But actually, as Mr. Dobrynin said this to our Secretary of State, he said, "Here it is," even though it does not in the parlance of diplomacy get categorized in the formal sense as an aid memoir, and whathaveyou.

At this particular meeting the Secretary discussed with Dobrynin the concept of the standstill. "Are you clear

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that this means there is not going to be any improvement of
position on either side?" Yes, they understood that very
clearly.

And the Egyptians, with whom we discussed further
details, will even have more to say to you about this.

What happened? What happened was this, and it is
our best judgment. We may be wrong but I want to share the
judgment with you. The cease-fire went into effect at mid-
night of August 7. Our intelligence indicated that sometime
before then Egypt and the Soviet Union had taken a decision
to establish an integrated air defense system in this zone.

To go back for a moment, the whole beginning in this
was that about a year and a half ago, Nasser had declared the
four U.N. Security Council resolutions null and void. In
short, he was saying, "I am going to disregard the cease-fire
resolutions."

He started what he called the war of attrition
against Israel on the assumption that a bigger country can
pursue a war of attrition for a longer period of time than
a smaller country can.

In response to this so-called war of attrition,
the Israelis began deep penetration raids. You will recall
that these deep penetration raids hit centers very close to
Cairo, and so on.

The Soviet-Egyptian response in turn to these deep
penetration raids was the establishment of the missile system
in this zone itself.

What effect has this had on the military balance?
One thing which the President has made very, very clear, and
he made this explicitly clear at the time that the Israeli
Government accepted the American peace initiative of June of
last year, was this: The Israelis, frankly, were concerned
about the possibility of cheating on the other side. The
President said, "I can assure you we will not allow the
balance to tip against you."

The violations took place. The Israeli assessment
as to the impact on the balance is simply this: One, it has
restricted their air maneuverability over the Suez Canal.
Secondly, it did strengthen the Egyptian hand to pursue the
war of attrition against Israel because there is a good line
of artillery back of the Suez Canal which obviously enjoys
the protection of both the SAM-2s and the SAM-3s. So any
military counteraction on the part of the Israelis would be
more costly today than it was at the time of the June war,
and particularly if one, in addition to this, looks all over
Egypt where there are SAM sites in other places, plus the
fact that the Egyptians have learned the lesson of the June
war and that is their much larger air force is no longer on
an exposed airfield because these airplanes are protected
with concrete and so on.

So the notion of winning a six-day war basically
in the first four or five hours, as occurred, really, in
June of 1967, is not a military reality today.

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The Israelis don't say that the installation of the missiles has had such an adverse impact on the military balance, that Egypt today, even with the support of the Soviet Union, the present support of the Soviet Union, is in a position to cross the Suez Canal and to establish more or less of a permanent toehold in the Sinai which is presently occupied by the Israelis.

So, obviously, the Israelis were put to a greater disadvantage, and for this reason we have, in the past months, stepped up our military support very considerably of the Israelis, both with material that they can use in the air, on the ground, as well as material in relationship to the new military situation that was created by the installation of the missiles. This is in addition to, as you saw in your newspaper the other day, a supplemental bill on the Hill for $500 million worth of credit.

What we are doing and what we have done militarily, I think the Israelis would be the first to admit has now compensated, militarily speaking, for whatever disadvantage has accrued to the Israelis.

However, of course, this really leads to the political psychological aspect of this. The question is if the Egyptians violated, as they did, the cease-fire standstill, how much is any political agreement, the Israelis ask, worth if we get to the point of resolving this particular issue?

There is no easy answer to this question.

Secondly, I think the same question is raised with respect to the Soviet Union. We do not accept, obviously, the nonsensical arguments of the Soviet Union that they are not responsible and that they were not parties to this agreement.

The question that is raised is this: How much will any agreement in this area really mean unless you really have it buttoned down in such a way that it is basically self-enforcing and is basically commitments by the parties themselves with practical security arrangements on the ground whereby both sides have a mutual interest in maintaining it?

Our present efforts are directed at trying to get these negotiations started. In recent days the Israelis have conveyed to us their current views. Let me tell you what they are worried about.

The argument goes something along these lines: The Egyptians, according to the Israelis, have an open-ended commitment from the Soviet Union for military support. What are the long-range views of the United States in this regard?

This is the question we are being asked.

Secondly, the Egyptians have categoric, all-out support politically for the Egyptian position as it relates to the elements in the substance of a solution. What are the U. S. views in this regard?

So that the object of the dialogue, the quiet dialogue, that is going on between ourselves and the Israelis

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at the present time is really to try to arrive at some
general understanding on these two key points before these
negotiations in fact open.

The Israelis are convinced that this is a par-
ticularly good time to explore what possibilities there are
for a peace settlement.

The interesting thing about the fact that the one
major initiative which the President took in his Administration
in the last two years which has, I think, had the most decisive
effect on the area is the fact that we have succeeded in
stopping the shooting. Neither side wants to resume the
shooting. Both sides recognize that the actual beginning of
talks, the actual beginning of talks -- and I underline the
word beginning -- is an important thing if for no reason at
all other than it will help justify each side's continuance
of a cease-fire.

When one gets into the question of is peace possible,
is a peace settlement possible between the Arabs and the
Israelis, given the fact also that we and the Soviets have
different objectives in this particular area, then you are
getting into an area which I think is much more difficult to
respond to in any assured sense.

I do know this: The present positions of the
parties must be resolved and reconciled if there is going to
be any common ground achieved because basically each is
expressing itself as is normal on the eve of any negotiation.
in maximal terms.

The Egyptian position is total Israeli withdrawal
to the lines that existed before the June war and a refugee
solution which gives the refugees the full opportunity to
choose whether they want to go back to Israel or whether they
want to be resettled in the area, with no limit whatsoever.

Obviously, the Israelis are not going to accept a
solution based on total Israeli withdrawal to the lines that
existed before the June war because a number of those lines
were insecure lines where there are and were practical
security problems.

If any of you have ever gone to the Golon heights
and have seen what the situation is in terms of that position
in relationship to Israeli villages, I think you will know
what I mean.

Moreover, they are not going to accept a solution
which gives the Arabs the right to inundate Israel with a
million and a half refugees without any control on the tap.
In the first place, this would be more than a fifth column.
It would change the fundamental character of the Jewish State
of Israel. So, obviously, there has to be compromise.

Obviously, borders have to be negotiated in such
a way that the security concerns of both sides are taken into
account. And, obviously, a refugee solution has to be found
in a way that, yes, they are given an opportunity to express
themselves, but given an opportunity to express themselves
in such a way that the realities of the situation are taken
into account; that only a modest number of these people are
going to be able to go back to Israel if this is what they

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desire, and that for the most part the refugees are going
to have to reside somewhere, basically, in the Arab world.

So what I am trying to suggest is that the
immediate short-range American objective is to get these
talks started simply because the new group in Cairo is a
group that needs testing. Basically, it is a weaker group
than Nasser.

Nasser had great stature in the Arab world, and the
new group that is in power in Cairo today is really trying to
find itself, not only its own position internally speaking
but its position, broadly speaking, in the Arab world.

Hussein, who will be coming here next week, went
through the pain of a very difficult civil war against the
Fedayeen and also a very serious outside involvement from
Syria.

This recent crisis was probably the most serious
crisis that we have faced in the Middle East since the June
war.

I personally am convinced that if the Syrians
had not stopped, if the Syrians had continued with their out-
side involvement and moved on towards Amman, there was likely
to be an outside intervention in this situation.

My feeling is that the Israelis would not have per-
mitted the dismemberment of the State of Jordan by the Syrian
Government.

Why did the Syrians stop? I think in the first
instance they stopped because Hussein's tanks gave them a
licking.

In the second instance, the facade of the Syrian
Government, that really these were merely Syrian-supported
Fedayeen rather than Syrian regular armed forces would have
been exposed for what it was, a phony, the longer the military
operation continued.

So if it wasn't clear to the world that it was
really direct Syrian Government involvement at that point,
it certainly would have been a week later if they had con-
tinued to move towards Amman.

Third, there was the very definite feeling in Syria
and elsewhere that if that had continued, the likelihood was
that Israel would intervene because that portion of Jordan,
from the Israeli point of view, is no more than an extension
of the Golon heights.

Frankly, the Israelis have been kicking themselves
in the pants as to why they didn't take that piece of
territory during the June war anyway, from a security point
of view.

Fourth, I think the posture adopted by President
Nixon, a very firm posture in that situation, militarily as
well as diplomatically, had an effect on the Soviet Union.
I think the subsequent trip by the President to the
Mediterranean was an important signal to the Soviet Union,
because I am absolutely convinced that if there were more

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Vietnams and our country ever came to mean to Arabs and others in the world and the Soviet Union that the United Statesdis not going to protect its vital interests in the world, and I happen to feel that the Middle East is an important part of the world from our point of view, if that feeling ever becomes a universal feeling, then we are inviting the disaster we all want to avoid.

This is another way of saying that our diplomacy in the Middle East has to be bulwarked by sufficient strength; not a weaker Sixth Fleet, but a stronger Sixth Fleet, in my judgment.

The way to avoid confrontation in the Middle East is to make it clear that you are willing to confront if it is necessary.

Our interests go beyond any one national state in that area. I am not suggesting that we ought to put our eggs only in the Israeli basket. We are trying to find a solution that meets the legitimate concerns both of Israel and the Arabs. The Arabs have legitimate concerns. If you go all over the Arab world, regardless of the public criticism that you find of American policy, there is a realization that only the United States can really resolve this problem by peaceful means, regardless of the Soviet presence.

There is still a tremendous reservoir of goodwill for Americans in all of the Arab world. If you walk in the streets of Cairo today, you will find that the Egyptian people are pro-American. This may surprise you, but it just happens to be the case.

So we do have these broader interests.

Yes, the protection of the security of Israel, but the answer to the Soviet problem is not only maintaining our strength in this particular area because we are up against primarily a political strategy by the Soviet Union bulwarked by Soviet military strength and the answer has to be a political answer.

A political answer is the kind of solution that at least meets the principal concerns on both sides, even though we are perfectly convinced that whatever we put forward is going to end up really in a solution where both sides are going to be relatively unhappy but willing to live with it.

That is about all I really wanted to say because I wanted to give you the maximum amount of time to ask questions.

Q Doctor, from the newspaper reports, and we recognize the fact that sometimes they are somewhat erroneous, we had guaranteed to the Israelis that there would be no infraction. Now you say we just said that we were going to compensate for any infractions that occurred.

Was there an outright guarantee that they would not do anything? If so, how did we ever make a thing like that?

MR. SISCO: Obviously, the word "guarantee" is much too strong. What we did was to negotiate the details of the cease-fire standstill both with Israel and with the Arabs, and

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the Israelis were as anxious to go ahead on this thing as
the other side.

The one thing that we are convinced of is the
Israelis are thoroughly happy over the cease-fire and so
are the Egyptians because, frankly, it is costly on both
sides.

The Israelis, however, as a result of their
suspicions, did not want to enter into the cease-fire as a
cease-fire, per se. That is why we injected, on behalf of
the Israelis, the concept of the standstill.

That is why we agreed to help supervise this thing
with our own means.

That is why our intelligence, as well as the Israeli
intelligence, was able to detect this.

Obviously, we did not guarantee it. We frankly
shared some of the principal concerns that they had. But it
was a risk that we felt was worth taking. It is a risk that
they felt was worth taking.

As I say, from a military point of view I don't
think there is anything that is lost. I think the difficult
thing is its deeper implications on the political side, as
I have indicated.

Q Doctor, how can we blame the Soviet Union
for Egypt's violation of the standstill?

MR. SISCO: Very easily. First of all, the Soviets
agreed both to the cease-fire and the concept of the stand-
still.

Secondly, the acceptance of this proposal came
both from Egypt and the Soviet Union after Nasser spent
several weeks in Moscow.

Third, Soviet personnel are in an operational
capacity at a number of these missile sites.

Fourth -- I will go further -- these violations
could not have taken place without the full knowledge and
the participation of the Soviet Union on the ground.

I could go further but I won't because there are
some other things.

Q Doctor, is it the Soviet Union's point that
the Israelis must withdraw to their prior boundaries?

MR. SISCO: The Soviet view is that the Israelis
must withdraw to the lines that existed before the June war.

Q Why doesn't world opinion press the Soviet
Union to get out of Eastern Europe, then? The same strategy
is involved on both sides.

MR. SISCO: You know the answer to that question,
I am sure, as well as I do. The Soviet Union is not going
to get out of Eastern Europe on the basis of whatever world
pressure there is.

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You will notice I didn't say anything in terms of
whether Israel should or should not.

My own feeling would be that there are ways in
which certain withdrawals -- and here I am expressing as
much an Israeli point of view as I am an American point of
view -- that from the Israeli point of view regardless of
all the difficulties, fundamentally Israel feels that a peace
and a peace agreement is preferable to the kind of hostility
that they have experienced in the last 20 years.

I think that the established Arab governments,
namely Egypt and Hussein, have accepted the notion of trying
to resolve this -- notice I am not saying anything about the
terms -- on the basis of coexistence. I don't think Nasser
was out to destroy Israel. I don't think the present group
in Egypt is out to destroy Israel, simply because it is not
in the cards.

Let me be frank about it. The notion of throwing
Israelis into the sea is an unrealistic objective. They know
that militarily as well as politically.

Having said that, what Israel wants is, first of all,
a binding peace agreement. We agree. That is rather than
an armistice arrangement that doesn't really definitively
decide what the borders are.

Secondly, if you could get an agreement on these
borders and some practical way to actually supervise it.
Here, as you know, Israel has no faith whatsoever in the
United Nations. It wants to use primarily its own means.

I would say that the violations of the cease-fire
standstill enforce that view further. Then they are willing
to risk a peace agreement.

Notice I said the established governments: Cairo,
Amman and Israel. But, you know, there is another development.
The Middle East is in somewhat of a revolutionary stage. The
Palestinian movement today has become a much more formidable
political movement in the area than it was a year, two, and
three years ago.

The problem with the Palestinians is that, first
of all, you don't really have one individual who can claim
to speak for all the Palestinians. You can find Palestinians
on the east bank of Jordan, Palestinians on the west bank,
in Gaza, in the Arab countries, and each has a different
notion as to what the solution is. Each has a different
notion as to what political entity there ought to be. Most
of them have some nebulous feeling that there ought to be a
Palestinian entity or a Palestinian state.

The moment you get into a discussion as to where,
what and so on, there is just no meeting of the minds what-
soever. But even before you get to that, before you can
really deal with the Palestinian problem, you have to have
a group of Palestinians committed to one fundamental notion.

A resolution of this problem not by force, not by
the destruction of the State of Israel, even though it is an
unreal military objective, but a solution peacefully, no
Fedayeen that we know of, whether it be one who is Maoist-

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oriented, whether it be one who portrays himself as a
moderate but is still talking about a solution by force
rather than by peaceful means. No real leadership has
come out from the Palestinian movement and has said
explicitly, publicly and privately, "We want to try to work
this out by means of negotiation."

Here is what our concern is: Our concern is that
the weaker government in Cairo and King Hussein, even though
he has come out on top in this recent military tussle -- our
concern is that if there is a negotiation and if progress is
made -- and these are two big "ifs" -- are they in a position
to make it stick?

To turn it around, what price will the Palestinians
demand in order to cooperate in any peaceful solution? There
are a good many, thousands and thousands of Palestinians that
are absolutely fed up with the war, who are ready to try to
work for a peaceful solution. But the leadership hasn't
sprung out. It hasn't made itself explicit. It hasn't made
itself manifest.

What I am trying to suggest is that you have this
third component which has added immensely to the complexity,
and that is why none of us can be very optimistic about
predicting that there is going to be a very quick solution
once negotiations begin.

It is going to be long, it is going to be drawn out,
and some answer has to be found in order to meet some of the
legitimate concerns of the Palestinians themselves.

Q Speaking for myself, I think this is the finest
presentation I have ever heard on the Middle East, either as
a Member of Congress or since I retired.

I also want to leave with the impression that you
knew what you were talking about, but even more importantly,
you believed what you were saying. To me, that is the
greatest impression I can go away with -- you believe me.

MR. SISCO: You embarrass me. I am reminded of
what the late Adlai Stevenson once said when someone in the
audience -- and I happened to be at the UN with Walter here --
someone paid him a wonderful compliment.

I do appreciate what you said.

He said, "You know, a little flattery is wonderful,
but I promise not to inhale too deeply."

Q I want to say that as long as you are where
you are and you have done what you have over the years, I have
no worry as far as the Middle East is concerned.

MR. SISCO: Thank you.

Q I do want to ask one question. On the
Palestinian refugees, what would you say is the cancer there?
Have we an estimate now of the amount of property, value and
bank accounts, held in escrow by Israel? Have there been any
repatriations to the individuals?

MR. SISCO: The UN made a study of this four or five

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years ago. There is really no agreement as to what the
property value is simply because inflation has taken over
the Middle East as it has everywhere else. But I don't
think the money part of this is part of the solution.

Our judgment has always been that there would only
be a limited number of Arabs who would go back to Israel
because they would have to go there as peace-loving Israeli
citizens.

What you would have to do, basically, is to put
what one would consider a reasonable price tag to remove
these people as formal, bona fide refugees and as citizenry
of country X in the Arab world. I haven't the foggiest notion
as to what this amount of money would be. Whatever it would
be, it would be worth it, if we could solve it.

Q You mentioned a million and a half at this time.
When I was at the United Nations I think we had eight to nine
hundred.

MR. SISCO: What happens is that some have died,
others have been removed from the refugee rolls, but the
population explosion has also taken place. If you are a
refugee and have a son and daughter, your son and daughter
qualify as refugees and, therefore, you are added to the rolls.

The relief program of the Palestine Refugee Agency
has been doing nothing more than keeping up with the birth
rate.

Q Would you give us your judgment of the Russian
objective in the Middle East first and; secondly, why you
think confrontation is imminent?

MR. SISCO: I don't think it is imminent. Possible,
yes, but I don't think the confrontation is imminent.

Q Is it a possibility?

MR. SISCO: It certainly is. I think it is the
most serious possibility that the United States confronts
over the next five years.

Q For what reason?

MR. SISCO: For this reason: On the objectives of
the Soviet Union, I will put them negatively first. I think
they do want to avoid war over this area. I think they do
want to avoid another June war simply because they confront
these difficult decisions.

I will tell you why it so risky today. Our
concern -- and interestingly enough the Israelis share this
assessment, particularly after they have looked at the amount
of investment that the Soviet Union has made in Egypt in the
last three years -- our concern is that today the Soviet
investment is greater than it was at the time of the June
war.

At the time of the June war we kept the ring. The
hot line was open. We told the Russians, "We don't intend to
intervene and we don't intend for you to intervene," and that
is the way it worked out. They fought it out themselves.

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All right. One, we don't think if there was
another Arab-Israeli war that it is going to be ended in
six days. We think it would be a much more prolonged war
for the reasons I have tried to indicate.

The longer any kind of a local war goes on, the
greater the possibility that the major powers get involved
whether they want to or not.

Secondly, it is no longer a direct confrontation
between the Israelis and the Egyptians. If a war breaks out,
Russians are going to get killed. Russians are right there
in an operational capacity.

Now, is the Soviet Union, the second strongest power
in the world, either going to stand by and watch the Egyptians
licked again, or, more importantly, what is their reaction
going to be when their own people are being killed?

You and I can say, "What are they doing there in
the first place?" But that is not the way, unfortunately,
these things are decided. So the risk is greater because the
Soviet involvement is greater at the present time.

I want to be equally candid. I think the debate in
our country on Vietnam has given the Soviet Union some reason
to believe or question as to whether we are going to stand up
in this situation. I think that is why it is so important
that there be no miscalculation.

I am frankly very proud of how this Government
acted during the recent Jordanian crisis. I think the
President managed this himself. He managed it very well.
I think he emitted the right signals in this situation.

I just want to say, however, I view quite seriously
what I have just said because the United States is not
interested in playing a game of brinkmanship. In this
business, your bluff may very well be called. I am not
suggesting we were bluffing in this recent development.

The point is that if you are involved and these
are your interests, and you are acting on that basis, then
you have to realize what could conceivably come at the end
of the line.

I happen to think that the Soviet Union would not
feel that the Middle East would be worth World War III. But
I don't know whether this is the way the Kremlin views this
thing. That is why I feel that we have to find ways to cool
off this thing.

I am not trying to be partisan here. As Walter
knows, I have worked under the Democrats as well as the
Republicans. That is why I happen to think that one of the
major accomplishments of this Administration is the cease-
fire in the Middle East. It has helped diffuse it.

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Obviously, you are going to find that there was
an explosion yesterday, and a naval boat is knocked out,
and so on. These incidents are going to occur. But I think
it is all important to get these talks started if for no
reason other than we want this diffused, cease-fire to
continue along the Egyptian-Israeli line. If it breaks out
again then I think the situation once again becomes more
tense and it is very difficult to know where this is going to
lead.

Q Doctor, I am Frank Chelf, of Kentucky. I
wanted to ask you whether, in your opinion, the Russians
and Red China have the wrong assessment of our recent
November elections?

MR. SISCO: That is a good question. I hope I can
give an intelligent answer.

Q I am a Democrat and this man is my President
and, by God, I am for him, and this is my country. I am
trying to say please give me the reaction, if you know.

MR. SISCO: My judgment would be this: I don't
happen to think that Vietnam or any major foreign policy issue
was an important fundamental issue in this election. That is
the first thing I would say to you.

I think President Nixon has done in two years one
thing. I think there is basic sympathy with what he is
trying to do in Vietnam. I am not casting aspersions on
President Johnson, because the problem of Vietnam is one that
any President, whether he be Democrat or Republican, has to
face in terms of our overall national interest and in pro-
tection of all of us as Americans.

I think that the Cambodian operation came as some-
what of a surprise to the Soviet Union. I think this con-
tributed to doubt and question mark in the minds of the
Soviet Union as to what the United States was going to do in
the recent Jordanian crisis.

So as they read this particular election, I think
they largely see it in domestic terms, they largely see it
in terms of the economy.

Q I think he did wonderful. Generally in an
off-year you lose 35 seats, but he held it to nine. And I
am a Democrat.

MR. SISCO: I don't think they take it as a set-
back at all. In fact, I will go further, as I see the
situation in my area. When you get 70 Senators three or
four months ago signing a letter and saying, "Give Israel
what it needs," here is what I told Mr. Dobrynin, and don't
walk out and tell him I said this.

I said, "Look, Mr. Dobrynin, you may think this
is sheer domestic politics and this fellow is about to run
in November and he is doing the right thing." Yes, this
does manifest a broad interest.

I call to your attention that there were 70
Senators, some with Jewish communities and some not. "This
is a signal to you, Mr. Dobrynin, a signal to you that we
don't like what you are doing in the Middle East. You have

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[LC]

helped us collect 70 signatures on this piece of paper, and I hope you will report this to Moscow." I don't know whether he did or not.

By the way, you can see that I am not a diplomat.

Q With respect to our international interests, speaking of Red China, your knowledge of the UN and your magnificent work there in past years, can you tell us whether our Government is moving toward the bringing or permitting, I would say, of the Red Chinese into the United Nations, still unrepentant, and with the Korean war blood on our hands?

MR. SISCO: I think I can answer this question. It is wonderful because I have no responsibility for it. Walter Judd and I used to worry about it together at the UN, and the Korean problem.

First of all, let me say very clearly that over the years Communist China has pursued a policy of self-exclusion, as we know. It hasn't been interested in joining the international community, and it has only been in recent months that they are beginning to spread ambassadors around the world and beginning to make contact with others.

Secondly, you know that our President has adopted the posture of maintaining a dialogue. No decisions have been made, either in terms of recognition or in terms of the UN seat. I will come back to this in a moment.

Decisions as they relate to recognition and decisions as they relate to a seat in the UN, these are not to be made on the basis of nose counts in New York. That is not the way the fundamental interest of the United States on this question manifests itself.

Communist China is there. It is big. It is 800 million people. It is developing a nuclear capacity. It is obviously not something that we can disregard. But fundamentally the approach of this Administration is one of looking to Communist behavior in the first instance, looking to Communist policy in the first instance, maintaining dialogue.

But we haven't really gotten very far in terms of any reciprocal steps which really and clearly indicate that Communist China is genuinely interested in improving relations with us specifically.

In the absence of that, obviously, it is quite premature to consider questions such as recognition.

The question in the UN, and again I would repeat there is no decision that has been taken, is a tactical question that really is subsumed in the broader analysis.

Here is the thing that we have to look at: The recent vote indicates that there is in the UN an overlapping majority, a majority that wants Red China in and a majority that wants the Republic of China in.

In saying this I don't want you to get the impression that I am promulgating a two-China policy. I am saying how

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we read this recent vote.

The danger that confronts us as a tactical danger in the UN is that a situation can be created over the next year, particularly if Communist China continues to pursue this tactic of beginning to make contact all over the world, the danger is that you might get a vote there which, in effect, says one China, Red China, and the Republic of China out.

That is the situation that we have to look at. Obviously, this is being studied but we are far away from any kind of a new decision. The fundamental approach is that the door is open to dialogue, as it is through our Ambassadors in Warsaw, but there has been no progress on any of the outstanding issues, increased communication, that we might have been interested in.

MR. KLEIN: I am going to have to close this off. Again, I feel it is an unfortunate duty because I have sat and listened to Joe with as much appreciation as you have.

I would just like to say in conclusion before I turn this back to Mike Collins, that the President has felt very strongly from the start that it is important that we try to have people understand the background of policy decisions.

We would hope that with your own background and your great service to this country that what we have been able to do today will be helpful in that and will be helpful in your own contacts and the things that you do in public and in private as you go back.

If we have been able to accomplish that and provide that information, then we feel we have made a better stride towards the kind of understanding that I think has to prevail across the country if we are to go ahead with the policies which are in the best interests of our own country.

I would like to thank you very much for allowing us to have this discussion with you. We appreciate the fact that many of you made sacrifices to be with us.

Q I will ask you one question. How do these things like the New York Times story happen? The newspaperman didn't think that up. Somebody must have told him that. This is in your field. The others have answered questions. You should answer that one.

MR. KLEIN: I think there is no one in this room who hasn't seen a great number of stories leaked in Washington. Certainly this one is not unusual in that way.

When I said we were going to have an open government, we didn't mean it should run out like a sieve. My guess would be, on a story like this, and this happens all too often, is that someone at a lower echelon, whether in Washington or Saigon, gets about a half glimmer of a half a thing, and he feels that he is going to enhance his position with a newsman, and goes from that and draws other conclusions. That is what I think occurs most often.

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When I was a newsman we used to call it writing off your belly button. I see a lot of belly button-writing in columns, where people think they can out-think someone else and draw their own conclusions.

So we have both problems, one being excessive leaks, a problem we are trying to combat very seriously, and we have the secondary problem of those who refuse to really dig into the facts and take a half a conclusion of their own and then go ahead and write as if it is a total fact.

We don't really worry that much about the New York Times. In fact, I think I would have to say frankly that the Times, when their editorials are in favor of us, we have a great huddle to see what we did wrong.

MR. HAYS: I know the time has come for us to go, and I am sure all of us regret that we can't just have a long time to pursue this discussion.

I gave a false impression one time by saying something to Secretary Rusk that got in the newspapers. This is an opportunity to correct it. I think Joe Sisco may remember it. He asked me to do something with Senator Fulbright. I said, "Now, Mr. Secretary, I can't do that. You will have to do this yourself." I said, "This is something that can't be delegated. I have good biblical authority for that statement. You will find in the 11th Chapter of Hebrews this sentence, 'Jacob leaned on his staff and died.'"

What I want to say to the President when I see him, and to say to Bill Rogers, is if he has this kind of staff to lean on, he will live forever.

MR. COLLINS: Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for being with us today.

END

(AT 5:10 P.M. EST)

DECEMBER 3, 1970

AT THE STATE DEPARTMENT

AT 2:30 P.M. EST

DECEMBER 3, 1970

THURSDAY

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Dr. Henry Kissinger.

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We, therefore, moved from a period of undiscriminating isolationism to a period of undiscriminating internationalism in which the fact of participation in international affairs seemed almost as important to many Americans as the content, in which the idea grew up that a change in the situation anywhere in the world was of direct, immediate and overwhelming concern to the United States, so much so that for many countries the impression grew up that they could blackmail us with the proposition that if they went Communist it was worse for us than it was for them.

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a clear understanding of their own interests, and where
foreign governments very often take public positions against
their better judgment, grandstanding to their public, in
the expectation that the United States would take on itself
the burden of all difficult choices, this, in turn, has the
objective consequence of isolating us, because vis-a-vis their
public opinion some of these leaders pretend that they are
more enlightened than we are and that they are pushing us in
the desirable directions while they tell us privately that
for God's sake, we should be careful about listening to them
too carefully.

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This is an eerie feeling for the Soviets. If you
add to this you have the fact you have a quasi-religious move-
ment in the Communist Party that prides itself on its
universal and unique interpretation of Leninism, but you have
two centers of orthodoxy, namely Peking and Moscow, and if
you combine the ideological dispute with the geopolitical,

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They also asked for American ground forces in
Europe, but really for reasons that they could never make
explicit; they asked for American ground forces because
remembering the lessons of their own history they knew that
formal alliances were sometimes broken since every one of
our European allies had let down some ally at one stage or
another in the last 100 years.

They, therefore, wanted tangible American guarantees,
to put it concretely, American hostages on the ground, so
that if a war broke out it would begin with the spilling of
American blood which would deprive the President of any

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The surest way to put a strain on our relationship
is if a policy failed for reasons which were foreseeable but
which were not put before him. He insists that he be given the
options that he has, together with the consequences of carrying
them out and with all associated policies, including the con-
sequencies of failure.

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I am sometimes -- and the President is sometimes --
appalled by some of the enthusiastic supporters we have
developed, because there are some people who tend to interpret
the Nixon Doctrine as a charter for the withdrawal by the
United States from the world.

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run enormous risks.

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Foreign countries can gear their action to ours
only if there is a certain predictability in our behavior
and a certain steadiness in our actions. Therefore, if we
simply threw in the sponge in Vietnam, you would get major
changes in such countries as Japan.

Those of you who know Japanese history will be aware
of the fact that the Japanese totally changed their domestic
and foreign orientation twice in a century, not on the basis
of ideological conviction, but on the basis of their belief
that the balance of power in their area had changed and they
adjusted to the dominant trend.

The second concern we have is with our domestic
situation. We have felt that if we yield to public demon-
strations on a matter in which we believe the national
interest is overwhelmingly involved, we will create a situation
in which it may well turn out that those who demonstrate most
strongly against us will be the first victims of the sequence
of events that is unleashed.

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Now we are told the obstacle is Thieu, Ky and Kim. It will be a test of our maturity as a political society whether we are capable of facing what it is that is really being proposed to us.

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We have offered to give them a deadline of our with-
drawal month by month over a year's period. Then if they are
so strong in South Vietnam, why don't they overthrow the
Saigon government by themselves?

And what is it that they propose? They say we
should replace Thieu, Ky and Hoaiem. I already hear and I can
see it mounting over the next months, the proposal that the
United States is sacrificing men for three individuals.

First of all, if we are realistic we have to face
the fact that if there is one man in the world more eager to
get rid of Ky than the NLF, it must be Thieu. Thieu does
not believe that Ky is a political supporter. Hoaiem is the
political appointment of Thieu.

What the other side is proposing is the following:
They say there has to be a coalition government, there must
be a coalition government, to use their phrase, composed of
the following elements: the PRG, that is the Communist
government, those members of the Saigon administration, minus
Thieu, Ky and Hoaiem, who genuinely stand for peace, independence
and neutrality, and all other forces who genuinely stand for
peace, independence and neutrality. Only Hanoi knows who
stands for peace, independence and neutrality, and certainly
only Hanoi knows who genuinely stands for peace, independence
and neutrality. So what they want is to appoint a third of
the government and veto the other two-thirds.

We have offered an international conference. We
have offered an exchange of prisoners. We have offered any-
thing that can reasonably be conceded and we have run risks
in proposing them.

Incidentally, there was a report in today's New
York Times according to which an expert we sent to Vietnam
gave us a pessimistic report. This newspaper story is 180
degrees off the mark. The report is extremely optimistic.
In fact, it is so optimistic that we haven't even made any-
thing of it. But I simply wanted to point this out in case
any of you may have read it.

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This, incidentally, is why we believe the supplemental appropriation for Cambodia is so important. They managed to fight the war in South Vietnam from the sanctuaries in Cambodia from which they emerged when they were ready to fight and to which they withdrew when they needed recuperation. This situation has now changed.

My answer to your question is that if we act wisely
and not precipitately there is a chance, there is a good
chance, that we can preserve the freedom of the people of
South Vietnam.

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Is that a fair conclusion?

He said the only areain which a problem remained

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Thank you, Henry.

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Secondly, there are the intra-Arab problems, and here we have, today, divisions between so-called moderates and extremists, between established Arab governments and Fayideen, between Palestinians of one stripe as against another.

The third aspect is the aspect that obviously concerns us most and that is that this is an area where the United States has important political, economic and strategic interests, and that there is the risk of confrontation. It is an area either of potential cooperation or of potential conflict.

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We have seen the establishment of a substantial base by the Soviet Union in Egypt. As you look at this particular base, as a minimum it serves the purpose of bulwarking the Egyptians vis-a-vis the Israelis. But the base goes well beyond that because the base can and does serve broader designs insofar as the Soviet Union is concerned in the Mediterranean.

If it is in our national interest to try to stabilize this area, if it is in our national interest to try to achieve something better than the de facto armistice arrangements that have existed in this area for 20 years and have given rise to three wars, then this is really the principal rationale for the amount of diplomatic effort which the United States has put into this thing.

That remains the objective of this Government. For the first two years after the June war, we left the question of trying to achieve a peace between the parties largely to the representative of the United Nations, namely Ambassador Jarring, who was mandated by the Security Council to try to promote agreement between the parties based upon a Security Council resolution adopted in November of 1967, which purported to outline the principal elements of a settlement.

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Q In writing?

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The moment you get into a discussion as to where, what and so on, there is just no meeting of the minds whatsoever. But even before you get to that, before you can really deal with the Palestinian problem, you have to have a group of Palestinians committed to one fundamental notion.

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MR. SISCO: Thank you.

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Q Is it a possibility?

Q For what reason?

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E.C.3

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Q With respect to our international interests, speaking of Red China, your knowledge of the UN and your magnificent work there in past years, can you tell us whether our Government is moving toward the bringing or permitting, I would say, of the Red Chinese into the United Nations, still unrepentant, and with the Korean war blodd on our hands?

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we read this recent vote.

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END

(AT 5:10 P.M. EST)

This Copy For

BACKGROUND BRIEFING

### CONTENT OF THIS BRIEFING IS STRICTLY EMBARGOED UNTIL 6:00 P.M. EDT DECEMBER 26, 1970. IT MAY BE ATTRIBUTED TO ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS. DIRECT QUOTATION IS NOT PERMITTED.

AT THE WHITE HOUSE

AT 10:25 A.M. EST

DECEMBER 24, 1970

THURSDAY

MR. ZIEGLER: Dr. Kissinger will cover with you briefly this morning foreign policy developments over the past two years and will take your questions on that subject.

He will have brief opening remarks which you can attribute to White House officials, but they will not be for direct quotation.

When we move to the question and answer portion of the session this morning, you may quote Dr. Kissinger directly, attributing it to White House officials; in other words, White House officials, quote, but on his opening rundown, we will do it as we have done it in the past, White House officials, with no direct quotation.

Incidentally, this is embargoed as was yesterday's session until Sunday, which is 6 p.m. Saturday.

Q What other schedule do you have today? Are you going to brief at all?

MR. ZIEGLER: No, we will have a very general briefing at about 11:30 and we may have Paul McCracken at that briefing. Then that will be it for the day.

Dr. Kissinger.

DR. KISSINGER: In the part in which you quote me, you are free to put the verb in the grammatically correct place. (Laughter).

Q We have to do it with others, so we might as well do it with you.

DR. KISSINGER: Actually, the reason for this briefing is the well known bias of this press corps. If we didn't put out what we have accomplished, you would never write it. (Laughter).

MR. ZIEGLER: That is off the record. (Laughter).

DR. KISSINGER: I will make a few observations initially, partly for purposes of an internal White House experiment to determine whether I can say anything in 15 minutes. (Laughter). And it does not pretend to be an exhaustive survey of the foreign policy of the last two years. But I would like to state a few general directions and then answer your questions in greater detail.

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When this Administration came into office, it found
itself confronted with the necessity of changing the emphasis
of American foreign policy both in its general philosophical
thrust as well as in a number of specific areas.

I don't say this as a criticism of previous Adminis-
trations, but rather because the coming into office of
this Administration coincided with a general shift in the
nature of international relationships, as well as with the
fact that a number of crises had brought about a new
questioning of some of the old assumptions.

I have spoken at various briefings and there is no
point in repeating now what the factors were that had brought
about this change of the international climate. The attitude
that had projected us into post-war international affairs,
in which we were initially the only country in the non-
Communist world capable of conducting a global foreign
policy, reflected conditions which, by the late 1960's, had
significantly changed.

By the late 1960's, it had to be an imperative of
American foreign policy to take into account that many new
nations had come into being, that many traditional nations
had regained their vitality, that the Communist world had
become more differentiated, and that the strategic equation
had importantly changed.

All of this was a fact of international life. And
it was overlaid by the anguish of the war in Vietnam, which
had divided our society, and which had gone on inconclusively
for five years when this Administration came into office.

Now, I can add nothing, or very little here, to
various background briefings which some of you have heard
me give on these trends, and I, therefore, will not take
time now to repeat them.

Let me make a few observations on what we have
attempted to do to meet these conditions. The philosophical
statement of what the Administration attempted to do was
expressed in the Nixon Doctrine. No one has ever claimed
that the Nixon Doctrine is a cookbook which gives you a
recipe for every situation with which you may be confronted.
It defines an attitude and a general philosophy, not a set
of specific detailed policies.

What it says is that you cannot build a new inter-
national structure entirely on conceptions,
the resources and the unilateral policies of the United
States; that in the next phase of American foreign policy
our ingenuity has to be concentrated on eliciting the
cooperation of other countries; and that defense and
progress in other areas of the world cannot be entirely
or even largely an American policy.

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This is not intended as a retreat into isolationism.
The President has repeatedly pointed out that this is our way
of remaining committed to the rest of the world under the
conditions appropriate to the new period for the next phase
of American foreign policy.

It isn't possible in the abstract to say how this has
applied from circumstance to circumstance. In many countries,
such as in Asia, it has led to a reduction of the American
physical presence and will lead to a further reduction of the
American physical presence as the local resources become
available. In other areas, it was believed that the only way
a greater contribution of those areas could be elicited was
to maintain the presence of the United States, more or less,
in its current extent. This was the decision we made with
respect to NATO.

Therefore, one cannot apply it literally in every
specific area, but the major thrust is clear; that intellectually,
politically and in terms of resources, a greater contribution
by other countries is required, and that we are looking for
a new cooperative relationship with those countries with which
we have been allied and with those countries with which we
share common objectives, even if they are not allied with us.

Now, let me make a few observations about different
parts of the world.

One of the top priorities of the Administration, which
was symbolized by the first foreign travel of the President,
was to restore our relationship to Western Europe.

The United States deserves a great deal of credit
for the economic and political recovery of Europe and for
maintaining its security through much of the post-war period.
But, also, in that period a pattern of paternalism developed
in which the United States, perhaps, became too obtrusive
in the development of common policies.

This Administration is convinced that a greater European
contribution in the common interest is desired.

We are prepared to conduct our relations with Europe
on the basis of a real partnership and we have attempted to be
meticulous in consulting our European Allies on those policies
which we are conducting bilaterally with the Soviet Union or
in other contexts.

We have conducted the SALT negotiations without any
of the flare-ups that have characterized previous disarmament
negotiations; that is, flare-ups with our Allies.

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We believe that we have restored a greater degree of understanding between ourselves and the Europeans. There are a number of issues in American-European relationships: First, the issue of defense. We have concluded, after very careful study, that the new strategic equation, the new strategic situation that exists, requires that NATO adapt to some of its actions and some of its policies.

For a long time, NATO, in effect, could rely almost exclusively on the threat of massive retaliation. In the new nuclear situation that exists, it is only realistic to face the fact that other forms of defense are also essential. Many Europeans expressed profound concern earlier last year about the possible withdrawal of American forces from Europe. We have committed ourselves to maintaining our forces in Europe, provided the Europeans cooperate with us in making these forces militarily meaningful and cooperate with us in an equitable sharing of the burdens that result from it.

The second concern that I read about in the newspapers has to do with the various policies of detente, that different European countries may be pursuing more or less bilaterally as we pursue some of our policies bilaterally.

Let me make the attitude of this Administration clear. We favor a relaxation of tensions and we are committed to inaugurating a period of negotiation, rather than one of confrontation.

It is in the common interest that the policies of negotiation, whoever pursues them, we or the other countries, are carried out in the closest consultation so that they do not lead to an opportunity by possible opponents to drive a wedge in between traditional friends or to use a differentiated detente; that is to say, to have a detente with one part of the Alliance and a hardening of relationships with the other.

These are strictures we put on ourselves and therefore, we have meticulously consulted our Allies on SALT negotiations. This is our view with respect to bilateral negotiations that our Allies may conduct with the Soviet Union.

We have no complaints about the degree to which we have been consulted in the past. And within this framework of consultation, we believe that the general process of relaxation can continue, provided there is a realistic basis for negotiation, and that is in the common interest.

The third problem we will face is the negotiations that are now going on between Britain and the Common Market, looking to Britain's entry into the European economic community.

This Administration favors Britain's entry into the European economic community, but we also believe that the details of how it is to come about are primarily for the Europeans to negotiate and cannot be the result of American policies or American pressures.

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We recognize that there may be some price that we
have to pay for the greater degree of cohesion that will be
one of the benefits of greater European economic integration,
and to a certain point, we are prepared to go along with it.

Again, we believe it is in the common interest
that these relationships develop in such a way as to encourage
the maximum degree of trade, rather than restrictive practices,
but I believe that the principle is recognized on both sides
of the Atlantic and in the years ahead, we will attempt to
work it out to the common interest.

A word now about East-West relations: When the
President came into office, in his Inaugural Address he
pointed out that he wanted to initiate an era of negotiation,
rather than confrontation. Our basic principle has been to
deal with the Communist world, and particularly with the
Soviet Union, on the assumption that the tensions of the past
two decades have not been caused by personal misunderstanding,
but have an objective basis. And we have, therefore, been
prepared to deal with these issues concretely, realistically,
and on the basis of reciprocity. We recognize that the Soviet
Union is a great country, is a major power, and we recognize
that a major power will not make agreements to its own
disadvantage. And this is not our interest.

Similarly, we expect that the same principles are
applied to us. We have, therefore, insisted in our own
preparations for negotiations, such as SALT, to be meticulously
prepared and not to substitute a general attitude for
detailed negotiation.

This process has had its ups and downs. It would
be idle to deny that there have been incidents that have
given us pause. Events in the Middle East last summer, some
of the activities in the Caribbean, some of the harassments
on the Berlin access routes have, in our view, not been
conducive to creating the climate which we are seeking.

On the other hand, the SALT negotiations have been
conducted, on the whole, in a realistic and constructive
spirit.

But my purpose here is not to discuss the past. My
purpose is to reaffirm that this Administration remains
committed to the policy of negotiation. This Administration
continues to believe that it is in the mutual interests of
both countries to seek realistic negotiations.

We recognize that major settlements of major areas,
such as the Middle East, are not possible, unless the Soviet
Union is also interested in achieving a realistic settlement
and considers its own interests adequately safeguarded.

And, therefore, we still strive, in the next two
years, to continue to explore means, within the framework
that I have indicated, of reducing the causes of the tensions
and of seeking realistic agreements with the other side.

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In this connection, the SALT negotiations have
always had the special attention of this Administration.

It is not only that strategic arms represent the
most cataclysmic threat that mankind has ever confronted.
It is also that if the two sides can come to an understanding
of the limits of permissible actions in this field, that
they might develop a common interest affecting their relation-
ships in other areas as well.

The subject is extremely difficult. Even within
our own preparations for it, we confronted many objectively
difficult issues. And we are, therefore, not surprised,
and even less are we disheartened by the fact that progress
in these negotiations has not been, as yet, spectacularly
rapid.

On the other hand, we are in a position of being
able to move very rapidly into various types of agreements,
because the kind of preparation we have made enables us
to put together the building blocks of various positions
fairly fast, and secondly, we believe that we have now
reached a point in the negotiations in which the two positions
are fairly well understood, and in which the intellectual
basis of a possible agreement is becoming increasingly clear.

What is required now is a political decision to
move forward towards an agreement, a political decision we
believe primarily in Moscow.

If that decision is made, we believe that an agreement
can be reached fairly rapidly.

With respect to Communist China, and other of the
major Communist countries, our position has been quite
similar to the one that I have just described towards
the Soviet Union.

Early in the Administration, the President ordered
an examination of the possibilities of easing some of the
irritations in the relationship, especially in the field
of trade and travel. And we, therefore, took a number of
steps which removed some of these restrictions and which
beyond that made clear to the Communist Chinese that the
United States was prepared to talk seriously and to enable
them to re-enter the international community.

We are in the process now of again reviewing the
still existing restrictions. We remain prepared, at Warsaw,
or elsewhere, to talk to the Communist Chinese about differences
that divide us. There were some talks in Warsaw last year
that were interrupted, but we stand prepared to resume them,
applying the same principles that I have indicated govern
our relationship to the Communist world, which is to seek,
on the basis of equality, to remove the causes that have
produced the tensions.

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A few words about Vietnam, the subject most difficult to discuss in a non-liturgical manner.

I think I have spent more time with this group on Vietnam than on any other single subject. But it might be important to recall that when we came into office, the number of troops in Vietnam was still actually increasing, that no substantive negotiations had, as yet, taken place, no formal American position in the negotiations existed. And no policy for how the war might be ended was at hand.

I would simply point out to you that the number of troops in Vietnam will have been cut in half by the spring of this year; that we believe that the Vietnamization program is making progress so that the end of the war can now be said to be in sight one way or the other, either through negotiation or through Vietnamization or, at least, through Vietnamization, the end of our active participation.

We have been disappointed that negotiations have not been more rapid. And we had greater hopes for the peace initiative in October than have so far been realized.

On the whole, we believe that the main thrust of our policy will lead us towards the objective to end the war under conditions that keep our country united and that give our people the sense that the suffering of the last seven years has not been entirely pointless.

We have never said this is an easy process, and there will be no doubt in the next two years, ups and downs, but the thing to observe is the trend and not any particular event, and the trend is clearly going to be in the direction which I have indicated.

A few words about other areas. The Secretary of State covered the Middle East fully yesterday at his press conference. There is nothing that I can add, except the observation that I have already made.

Of course, a settlement in the Middle East will be extremely difficult to negotiate. The fears and the passions of the protagonists are very profound. The interests of major outside countries are involved.

No one has ever pretended that the progress will be smooth, but whatever the difficulties of an existing policy, they have to be measured against the alternatives, and it is the view of this Administration that the alternative of permitting the military confrontation to continue involves unacceptable risks for everybody.

We went through a difficult period last summer with the Jordanian crisis, with the cease-fire violations, in which for a week the question of peace and war in the Middle East seemed to hang in the balance.

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We believed that the experience of that week should
teach everybody how precarious the international equilibrium
in that area is and should enable all the interested parties
to take a new look at their positions when the negotiations
begin again. As the Secretary of State pointed out yesterday,
he hopes they will at the appropriate time.

Among the disappoishments, one would have to list the
evolution in Latin America. We developed early in the Administra-
tion a policy informed by the same spirit as the one I have
indicated to you previously, but as with all transitional
programs, there is an inevitable time lag as one shifts from
one phase to another. And in some revolutionary areas, that
time lag then produces events that may occur more rapidly
than one would like to see.

Nevertheless, we remain convinced that the
Western Hemisphere is an area as much as any other, in which
the possibility of cooperative relationships must be tested
and fully explored.

I will stop here with just one general observation.
The basic thrust of the instructions that the President has
given his senior adviers has been that he doesn't want to be
remembered as the President who managed crises well, that
he would like to bring about policies which reduced crises
to a minimum and gave the maximum opportunity for the
development of constructive and peaceful policies.

We have attempted to look ahead three to five years
in major areas. In many little-observed respects, we have
tried to take farsighted approaches, such as in the
regulation of the seabeds where we have proposed a new inter-
national regime.

In evolving a new structure for peace, it is
inevitably true that the task of construction takes longer
than to regulate the destructive forces, and, therefore,
the public's attention is inevitably focused on the crises
and on the dangers.

And it also seems to us to be the case that while
in the first two years we had to deal with many vestiges
of previous periods and previous policies, while we had to
get the machinery of government into place, while we had to
lay the foundation of the constructive phase, that many of
the trends that I have described should develop further in
the next two years and that is certainly what we will
dedicate our efforts to.

I apologize for the generality of some of these
remarks, but I will try to be more specific in answering
your questions.

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Q Dr. Kissinger, a liturgical question about Vietnam.

DR. KISSINGER: You don't scare off easily, do you? (Laughter).

Q Does the Administration consider now that the preservation of a non-Communist government or friendly government, friendly to us, that is independent of Hanoi, is essential to the security of the United States?

DR. KISSINGER: The Administration considers, as the President has pointed out in several speeches, and as other senior officials have said, that we should give the people of South Vietnam an opportunity to express their preferences and not to have a government imposed on them from the outside.

This Administration will abide by the political decisions of the South Vietnamese people. It will not impose a government on the South Vietnamese against their wishes.

It is also, of course, clear that how you determine the political will of the South Vietnamese people is a very complicated process. The traditions are different than ours. We have proposed various methods of determining it, which we obviously believe to be the best, or we would not have proposed them. But we have always said that we are prepared to listen to counter-proposals that are consistent with this objective.

Q Dr. Kissinger, has the evolution of Soviet policy in the last two years surprised this government, and if it has, is that the reason why the Nixon Doctrine has had to be adapted in several ways? And the Asian aspects of it are quite different from the European aspects of it.

Would it have been similar but for this evolution of Soviet policy in the last two years?

DR. KISSINGER: I think it is safe to say that the change in international relations that we are trying to bring about, especially in our relationships to major adversaries, such as the Soviet Union, present major problems for the decision-making also of the other countries. The old Cold War world is more familiar to everybody, and therefore, any major change is bound to run into internal oppositions everywhere.

Therefore, the process of negotiation inevitably is going to have its ups and downs. And I think it is safe to say that relationships have not improved as rapidly as some of us had hoped.

Is the change in NATO policy the direct result of specific Soviet policy? I will have to answer this in two parts: The change in NATO policy is to the largest degree due to the changed nature of the strategic situation, which is independent of individual Soviet policies, other than their rapid buildup of long-range missiles.

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That has produced a new strategic situation, which in turn led to its own consequences. And in these circumstances, it simply was not possible to continue the previous pattern.

We have, however, made clear, and we continue to be prepared, that we are willing to discuss a mutual, what is called a mutual balanced force reduction, and, therefore, to the extent that the Soviet Union is prepared to engage in serious negotiations with us on that issue, we can reverse these NATO policies which I have described on the basis of reciprocity.

As far as we are concerned, we are now in the process of making as detailed and as serious studies on the issue of mutual balanced force reductions as was previously made on SALT, even though no negotiations seem to be eminent.

I mention this only to indicate our general readiness. Therefore, I would have to reply to you that, of course, in Western Europe, the countries concerned are in direct confrontation with a military power possessing an enormous nuclear arsenal, and is directly adjoining.

In Southeast Asia, this is not the precise strategic situation, and this is one of the main reasons for the difference in which the Nixon Doctrine has been applied in the two areas of the world. I would not describe the NATO policy in major part as a reaction to specific Soviet moves over the last six months.

Q May I follow up? The reason I asked my question was because it was assumed, and many people said that we are not going to maintain present force levels in NATO beyond the end of fiscal 1971, and we have adopted a policy which seems open ended now.

And that would seem to suggest that it was because of something that happened of a specific policy nature.

DR. KISSINGER: No, the decision was made in its largest degree as a result of our analysis of the strategic situation as well as of the concerns expressed by the Europeans, as to the requirements of Atlantic cohesion. But we made studies, starting last May really, as part of the preparation for the Defense budget, in the course of which we came to the conclusion, really primarily on the merits of the strategic analysis, that a shift away from the attitude of the 50's to the realities of the present was essential.

And it is fair to say that not everybody started with that conviction when the studies were first undertaken. That is not said as a criticism. That is what studies are for.

Murrey?

Q May I follow that up?

DR. KISSINGER: As long as you don't ask me about what a certain word means.

Q I will not. (Laughter).

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A number of responsible critics, Dr. Kissinger, have said that on analysis to them the emphasis of the Nixon Doctrine on the reduction of forces and bases overseas in many areas inevitably will lead to a raising of the threshold for use of tactical nuclear weapons.

Could you respond to that?

DR. KISSINGER: OFF THE RECORD, of course, I have to say that we have some difficulty accepting the proposition that the adjective and the noun can be connected. I am not sure they are responsible critics. (Laughter).

But leaving that for later discussion, what you must mean is lowering the threshold, not raising the threshold. What you are saying is that tactical nuclear weapons may have to be used earlier than they would be if the Nixon Doctrine did not exist?

Q I believe it has two elements; that there is greater reliance on tactical nuclear weapons, it is contended, and/or, that they will have to be used earlier.

DR. KISSINGER: It is not true that there is an explicit policy to rely on tactical nuclear weapons earlier than was the case previously. In its formal sense, what the Nixon Doctrine attempts to do is to substitute, to the extent possible, local resources for American resources, and, therefore, if that substitution works out, that should not make the recourse to tactical nuclear more necessary.

The primary thrust of the Nixon Doctrine is not to develop a military strategy as such. The primary thrust of the Nixon Doctrine is to take account of the fact that it is psychologically and physically, but above all, psychologically, beyond any one country's capability to make itself responsible for every part of the world, at every moment of time, in every conceivable crisis.

We are, above all, interested in eliciting the participation of other countries in their own development and in their own defense. That is the primary orientation of the Nixon Doctrine, because anything else and any paternalistic attitude on our part really, over a historical period, breaks the self-reliance of the countries concerned.

Then you come to the practical question: As American forces are reduced, does that in practice lead to a greater reliance on tactical nuclear weapons, even if that was not your original intention?

Let me explain, for example, with respect to the decision to withdraw 20,000 troops from Korea. We made very extensive studies. First, you have to remember that the level of forces that existed in Korea dated from the middle 50's and that once these deployments exist, they develop a life of their own.

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The original purpose and the original rationale may be forgotten and the forces take on a symbolic character of their own.

We attempted to ask the question of what threat is
it that any forces, Korean or American, might have to meet
in Korea. We came to the conclusion that with a modernization
program for South Korean forces they ought to be able to meet,
in the new arrangement that we have proposed to them, any
foreseeable threat from North Korea. And even a threat from
North Korea, combined with some measure of threat from
Communist China.

Of course, if Communist China launches an all-out
attack against South Korea, together with an all-out attack
from North Korea, then you face a new situation. But that
new situation, in our judgment, would exist even if 20,000
more American troops were there.

In other words, that is not affected by our with-
d withdrawal and, therefore, in the case of Korea, I can say with
some confidence that according to our best judgment, the
probability of using nuclear weapons earlier is not involved.

In other areas where there have been drawdowns,
such as Vietnam, this is also not the case, and one would then
have to analyze it area by area.

In Western Europe, the whole issue of tactical
nuclear weapons is involved in the examination of the strategy
in which we are now engaged and clearly the likelihood is
not going to be increased by the decision to rely more on
conventional weapons.

So, I would say this is an unjustified criticism both
in terms of philosophy, in terms of our intentions and in terms
of the likely results as we have studied them.

Q Could you describe for us the direction and
thrust of our policy toward Chile and specifically what
alternatives ---

DR. KISSINGER: I knew you were going to get me. I
have ducked you for three weeks. (Laughter).

Mr. Ziegler says the time is up. (Laughter).

Q I haven't finished my question.

Q What is the question?

DR. KISSINGER: I am afraid I know the question.

Q Would you please describe for us the direction
and thrust of American policy toward Chile and specifically
what alternatives are being offered this country to prevent
them from going in the direction of Cuba?

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DR. KISSINGER: First, I think we have to understand that some countries have their own policies and don't pursue them primarily in reaction to ours. If you look at the career of the Chilean President, you have to say that he has pursued certain principles with a fair amount of consistency over a considerable period of time. I don't want to go into many specifics on an issue as delicate as our relations with Chile. Our policy is to be prepared to have the relationship with Chile that Chile is prepared to have with us.

We are not seeking a confrontation with Chile. We have maintained all people to people programs of the Peace Corps, P.L. 480, and there will be other measures of this kind. We have kept open many of the pipelines.

So, I think it is safe to say that the government of Chile knows that the lines of communication to us are open and if it moves in the direction of Cuba, I do not believe it can be said that we are driving it there.

Q But if some aid is held up, Dr. Kissinger, as it has been reported it has been, wouldn't they have to go elsewhere for alternatives?

DR. KISSINGER: First of all, it is a question of what aid we are talking about, because anything having to do with people to people programs has been completely unaffected. Other matters, other programs, are under the process of review, but no existing program has been permanently held up or has been held up beyond what is made necessary by a review brought about by such a self-proclaimed fundamental change.

Bob?

Q Henry, on this success of the Vietnamization program, if this program is, as I understand it, an attempt to provide the South Vietnamese with the wherewithal to fight their own battles, defend their own country, equipment, training, they have now got their own helicopter units, their own air force, and you say this is all succeeding, why is it then necessary to step up the bombing or even to threaten to step up the bombing if we, in fact, believe that all of this is working out for us?

DR. KISSINGER: First of all, we haven't stepped up bombing. What the President has said, and what the Secretary of State has repeated, yesterday, was that if the other side steps up its activities, we retain the freedom to react to it.

I do not want to create the misleading impression that the policy of Vietnamization is proceeding in a straight line in every area of the country at an equal pace.

In military Region 3 and military Region 4, as a result of the Cambodian incursion, the ability of the North Vietnamese to launch major operations has been, for the time being, practically eliminated.

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In military Region 4, there are at present no American forces, and nevertheless, the Pacification Program is gaining. There are, however, two problems. One is when you replace 550,000 Americans, when you are in the process of drawing down several hundred thousand Americans in a relatively short period of time, and replacing them with Vietnamese, it is obvious that this is a problem that goes beyond just training these Vietnamese. It has also this replacement aspect.

Secondly, the North Vietnamese have significantly stepped up their rate of infiltration in this dry season, which may create the impression or which gives us the impression that they may be planning offensive operations. We are not saying that the North Vietnamese cannot launch an offensive. And as our troops are withdrawn, of course, the remaining troops are, to that extent, somewhat more exposed to an unimpeded North Vietnamese attack.

Nevertheless, we believe that over a reasonable period of time we can get the South Vietnamese into a position where we will be able to deal with some ups and downs, with any unforeseeable level of North Vietnamese attack.

In 1971, this will not be quite the case yet, but it is much more the case in 1971 than it was in 1970. If we can make similar progress in 1971, as we did in the last year, I think that the concern you have expressed would be sharply reduced in future years.

Q Dr. Kissinger, do the tactics taken by West Germany in its negotiated treaty with the Soviet Union and Poland meet your standards of the right way to go about detente, or do they perhaps also create some anxieties?

DR. KISSINGER: I have pointed out that there are two problems in any bilateral negotiation with the Soviet Union. And I would apply this to us, as well as to any other country. This is not a peculiarly German problem.

There is, first of all, the substance of the negotiation. There is secondly the process in which the negotiations may start. As to the substance of the negotiations, all of the issues that the Germans have negotiated have concerned essentially German matters in which we believe that they have to be the best judge of their own interests, and in which we believe it would be inappropriate for the United States to express an opinion as to the substance. They have not affected essential American interests. And we have been fully informed about the negotiations.

The second is that any bilateral negotiations, by anybody, including us, have the problem of perhaps creating temptations of driving a wedge between the various Allies. Therefore, they have to be compensated by, first of all, very careful consultation, both as to the details and the general theory that is being pursued, and secondly, by some agreement on general objectives.

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