KISSINGER: ...there'll be--you know, you can make a contrary case, but my decision will be final.

D. CATER: That is the understanding.

KISSINGER: Okay.

D. CATER: And what we are attempting to do is to to focus on you at this point in time in a way that does not take you into (1) judgments of the present foreign policy; (2) judgments of your--Nixon or anything relating to that; and (3) does not tread upon the more expert area of your memoirs.

We thought we would start with a few opening questions that sort of, we hope you can answer without too much modesty--that put your positioning in history as it's seen from several perspectives, including your own, and with that kind of general opening then to move back to some more specific questions. I'll begin and then Kenneth will move into phase II.

But the first is--that's black for me. Thank you.
(conversation)

D. CATER: ...as I pondered on this and having been a reporter since, most of the period since World War II, it's really remarkable--you're the first foreign minister since

2

World War II to leave office, to leave the State Department with your public esteem enhanced, as reflected in both-- both in Europe and the United States in terms of polls. I watched what happen to Acheson, I watched what happened to Dulles--how do you account for this?

KISSINGER: I was in office during a period when major changes had to take place in American foreign policy. These changes was not I served. weren't invented by me or by the Administration which has (which is what they) would have faced any Administration that was in office at that time. And this process had to be at a period of great confusion and great division in this country, first due to the Vietnam War and second to Watergate.

✓ These changes lent themselves to dramatic symbolic acts which indicated a new approach and the emergence of a new international order. Combined with the fact that there were frustrations in so many other fields, And the disintegration of Executive authority in other areas due to Watergate. The American public, and for a long period, the Congress, needed some thing of which they could be proud or with which they could identify. And so, partly as the result of these circumstances, I think I have emerged out of this period, if you say so, in that, in that situation.

D. CATER: Well, let's take, then, the paradox in which by some persons in the universities and in the press world you

3

are regarded or at least you are treated publicly almost as
a war criminal. And people threaten to hold rallies to prevent
you from taking positions. Why the, why the depth of this
hostility?

KISSINGER: In the press, I think ~~that's~~ every~~that's~~ a very
small minority. I think the more interesting question is not
why I would be treated like this, but what it is in the intellectual
community at this moment, and indeed, over the last decade,
that produces this enormous ~~what I would almost call self-~~
hatred, or ~~consider~~ self-hatred. I can understand that people
might disagree with individual decisions that were made during
the Vietnam war because many of them were ~~difficult~~ close decisions,
~~pros and cons~~
And the ~~closing counts~~ were obviously fairly evenly divided. ↕

But I would have thought that intellectuals, in particular,
should understand the tragedy of the situation ~~in which one~~
~~already~~ comes
into office and finds 550,000 Americans engaged in combat.
How you disengage, as a great power, 550,000 Americans from combat,
would
under conditions that ~~(neither) dishonor~~ the American spirit nor
the American commitments around the world, is at least a very
complicated problem. The fact is that we substantially reduced
~~(the)~~ American troop strength every year, ~~we were in office, and~~
That we reduced ~~(casualties in Vietnam)~~ American casualties in
Vietnam from 9,000 in the first year, ~~-- before any new policy could have~~
~~which can certainly not be~~ taken hold ~~in 1965--~~ and 1,000 year. So
~~be blamed to 4,000 in the second to 3,000 in the third~~ so
that every year casualties were cut by ~~at least~~ 50 percent and
~~the number of American troops by even more than that~~.

4

So, whether we could have in fact got out a year earlier or not,
can be debated forever. But the fact is that from the first
began our
day, we moved towards disengagement. The strategy for that
in late 1968 that was
disengagement was outlined in an article I wrote published in
*Foreign Affairs* in *January 1969*. It was in *December, 1968*.

If you read it today you will find that it is
substantially what we did. Now, I don't want now to debate
whether we were right or wrong. But to put it in
the issue
of being
autumn slogans (one)
terms of liking for war, war criminals, leads to some reflection
about almost a necessity of some of these groups to have some
symbolic enemy. And it's almost as if they come out of the
trenches like the reunions of old veterans; That every time
they
you can relate anything to Vietnam, they try to recapture the
pristine glory of the late 1960's when they were all institutions
could be attacked.

I think the reason has nothing to do with me
personally, or little to do with me personally. After all, It
happened to too many people and precisely to those people who
were morally sympathetic to the objectives of the peace
movement, though they disagreed with its methods and its
strategy. After all, I agreed with what the peace movement was
and worked with great energy to bring about a peace settlement.
trying to do, I just disagreed with how they were going to do
it and with the feasibility of some of their specific proposals.

K. HARRIS: How do you feel about being assailed by those people?

5

[Y]

KISSINGER: Well, many of them are people with whom I worked for many years, so while their significance in terms of public opinion is negligible, they are part of my intellectual history and therefore, *their attacks are painful* and it is a more meaningful attack on me to me than some of the other criticisms I have received from extreme right-wing groups, for example.

On the other hand, I have seen it for a long time. I have predicted it for a long time, that something like that would happen. I believe it. Certainly, I attempted to conduct myself in office in such a way as to heal wounds on the Vietnam issue, and I don't think you will find over all the years of my public service that I would attack the peace movement, and I think, not for my own sake, because *they are not doing me any damage, that we finally ended the Vietnam war debate*. But it could backfire, you know. If it continues, sooner or (because it could backfire, you know, you could also get a right later, the right wing will be heard from, too. And then wing reaction at some point), we could have a very nasty confrontation. Controversy.

D. CATER: A third of the position in question could be-- you are the first pure intellectual in modern times, at least, to move to the helm of foreign policy, with very little operating experience before. You've written about the role of the intellectual and the policy maker in the past. Looking at it in retrospect, what were the strengths and the weaknesses that being an intellectual brought to the job of...

KISSINGER: First of all, I had *two* years experience, on a

6

EYC

of year and a half, experience as a consultant in the Kennedy White House, with no conspicuous success, which was largely my fault. And I had six years to reflect about the reasons for my relative lack of effectiveness in the Kennedy White House. Without having seen the operation of the White House at that time, and without having had the time to reflect about it, I could not have taken on the position of Assistant to the President, with whatever effectiveness I demonstrated. Now, I think the difficulty, that, sometimes, intellectuals have in policy-making, decisions is that they do not generally recognize the difference between a conclusion and a decision. As an academician you can take all kinds of time to reflect before you have to commit yourself, as an outsider you can paint the best consequences of your proposed action and you are not responsible for its failure because it isn't being implemented.

but also As a policy-maker, you are responsible for the worst that can happen. Not only for the best that can happen, and also Outsiders do not understand the enormous pressure of time, under which one function is rarely performed. Very often I found myself in the position which is like in a nightmare--that like in a nightmare where everyone is on a train track with a train heading for one and, can't get off. I mean, several times I knew that certain problems existed, I might even have known what to do about them, but I had deliberately to postpone dealing with them until some more urgent problem was dealt with. That you could only pray that the

train wouldn't hit you before you ran out of time. And so, *one always* if one wants to have a realistic--if not a compassionate-- understanding of policy choices, one has to know how the alternatives presented themselves and not only what the best solution might *one must* understand have been, and also *the time span that was available for dealing with the issue*.

In so many of the *ex post* facto investigations, they take individual documents and assume that people sat around the table in a seminar-type discussion, having all the facts that one then knows, *but* that that is rarely the case. Usually decisions are made *with* in a very brief time with enormous *pressure and uncertain knowledge*. Confusion,

D. CATER: Nearly twenty years ago you wrote that in describing the need, I would presume, for the intellectual to become more involved in policymaking, it says very little in the experience that forms American leadership groups produces the combination of political accumen, conceptual skill, persuasive power and an administrative ability required for the highest positions of government.

Now that was, in a sense, an indictment of the pragmatic policy maker who has no intellectual base on which he is building. Did you find that--did you in good stead?

KISSINGER: I believe my strength and my weakness was the

8

EYJ

fact that I did try to conceptualize. It was my strength, because whether I was right or not, I usually could describe the relationship of events to each other as they affected policy.

It was my weakness because there is very little tradition in America that would give you a clear cut constituency when you conduct policy that way, and it makes you very vulnerable to attack from almost every traditional sector--from the idealist, the legalist, the pragmatist, because that doesn't fit any tradition, a geopolitical and conceptual approach that is inescapable today has little precedent in the American experience. particular approach.

D. CATER: That leads to a fifth question, that you came to the White House almost as a stranger to the President. How did you establish and preserve your role when -- even when one President was resigning in office and a second one was being defeated in office?

KISSINGER: Essentially by doing my job. And not getting involved as much as others did in the personal relationships.

D. CATER: Well, then, how do you see yourself at this point in history. What was the unique character of the Kissinger Secretaryship.

KISSINGER: I think I attempted to begin an approach to foreign policy that was less tied to crises, less prone to

9

to oscillation between extremes of hope and extremes of confrontation, and more clearly tied to, I hope, an enlightened conception of the national interest, and therefore more permanent.

But it could only be the beginning of the process. That process couldn't be completed in the incumbency of any one person. Of any one official.

D. CATER: Do you feel regrets that you had, in a sense, to leave before you were through?

KISSINGER: No, I think it's the essence of politics that you always leave -- too early. And this is to be true. The challenge is unending, and if more likely you are to leave before you are through. And if you are the goals are important enough, they have got to transcend the individual. And I have been at peace since I left office.

D. CATER: Kenneth, why don't we go to some of the second phase--these are excellent...

K. HARRIS: Fascinating, fascinating. And I'm really taking up by saying if there's one thing about you which has fascinated people in Western Europe, it's their feeling that this is the first time a mind gave itself to the development of American foreign policy. A mind is at work. And therefore, this great curiosity about what formed that mind...where it came from.

10

CYJ

And one begins, naturally, by wondering to what extent perhaps
your early years, up to the age of 15 in Germany, might have
had some formative influence on your thinking. Might that be
so?

KISSINGER: Well, you would expect that surely has had some
impact on your thinking, yes.

HARRIS: Could you specify?

KISSINGER: Well, I don't think you-I think it has an impact in ways. I think it is impossible to live in a totalitarian state, especially as a member of a persecuted minority, without realizing that societies are subject to nearly irrevocable disasters and that it cannot be taken for granted that things will always evolve in the most positive direction.

And secondly, I think that, contrary to this
may sound, it gives one an appreciation of the importance of
the United States, especially that native Americans and some of the
Especially the intellectuals who hate sometimes hate the
country because they hate themselves, just don't understand.
(With all its failing, I've said so in a speech) When I came
to this country I was asked to write an essay in high school about what
coming to America meant to me. I wrote that in a new country
And it wasn't all that easy to be a refugee with an accent
and so forth, but I wrote that with all these problems when
I think that here I can cross the street with my head erect,

tremendously is a moving experience. Now I admit, this is personal, but anyone who was in the war in Europe and saw how Americans were received at the end of the war, *must* believe that this country has a very crucial role to give hope to the world, *and* therefore that it *mustn't* destroy itself by this endless self-torment.

( ) so it's a combination of recognizing the perils to the modern societies as well as some conviction that America has a very crucial role at this time.

K. HARRIS: At what point in your development did you give your mind to foreign policy--thinking about foreign policy in the way that another man might have given his mind to involving a scientific theory.

KISSINGER: Well, I *didn't*) was always interested in foreign policy, but I never thought that I could play any role, even an intellectual role in relation to it, until I joined the Army. But while I was in the service, in *other words*, in the American Army *largely* in Europe, *is* when I decided that this was an area about which I wanted to think more. *And* this then drew me into Harvard and specializing in these fields.

K. HARRIS: Was it the kind of thinking...

KISSINGER: But I started out studying philosophy. *rather than*, I didn't study international politics *as a subject* until I had

12

CYJ

achieved a certain philosophical bent.

K. HARRIS: Was it the kind of thinking -- we mustn't go through this hell again. I must try and play my part to prevent it.

KISSINGER: If by hell you define not only the war but also the whole context of totalitarian existence, yes, very much.

K. HARRIS: One further question from there, a number of people in Britain feel, and people who admire you immensely, that as well as thinking about foreign policy you have a system of ideas about foreign policy as indeed some great Europeans have had in the past. Now, I'm not sure whether that's the case or not. Is it? And if so, what is that body of thought? What-is-there that approach--integrated approach--consist of?

KISSINGER: [Well, I think] The problem of foreign policy (both as to) reflection and as to substance, is to relate ideas to possibility. I don't think you can conduct foreign policy purely pragmatically. Even the total pragmatists, if you search long enough, will have some rudimentary ideas that they are trying to implement. They may wait for events to force them to implement them, but there is no such thing as pure pragmatism. So we are dealing with a question of emphasis. So of course, I had rudimentary ideas. I think I think maybe

13

CYJ

more than rudimentary ideas I thought a great deal about the relationship between domestic structure, international legitimacy, and power, between ideals and empirical reality. Indeed, I had written philosophical papers on that subject. Before I had

At the same time, a statesman must not only have ideas; he must learn the management of means. And I would think what I attempted to do is to relate these two. One of them is the essence of policy, making that you can never completely take account of all of the possible factors.

D. CATER: What book, what thinker would you say influenced you most in your teens?

KISSINGER: Well, as I said, I was mostly interested in political philosophy. I was very influenced by Spinoza and Kant and I was influenced by one aspect of Spengler's-- his prediction of decline, which was really secondary, but in the idea that each society was an integral part of which philosophy, art, mathematics, and politics formed part of the same conceptual framework. I found that a very interesting idea. I don't know what practical consequence it had in my approach to policy, making except that it has given me a certain empathy for different societies. And, of course,

D. CATER: At the age of 26 in your thesis, "The Meaning of History", you spoke about the need to appear willing to act

14

irrationally, which raises interesting questions for the
conduct of foreign policy. Has that been a...

KISSINGER: I'd have to know what context I mentioned
that in. Did I state that as my view or did I state it as
a summary of somebody else's view.

D. CATER: My understanding is, and I would double check
for that you stated it...

KISSINGER: Well, frankly, I have...

D. CATER: It leads to two questions about such as the time
of the alert, total alert at the time of the Middle East
crisis, that where in the conduct of foreign policy courage must
substitute for sweet reason.

KISSINGER: (Well, I think the actions I take in a crisis have to be seen in the relation to the danger one perceived and to the means which one thought one had available.)

Sometimes the safest the seemingly safest course
is the most dangerous. Sometimes very gradual escalation tempts
the other side into following suit and therefore leads to a
higher level of violence, and a very drastic step (but) puts
and end to the confrontation. It's hard to make a general rule
about this.

15

D. CATER: Well, I'd like to pursue I--just a moment because you say sometimes--there are those, and I've pondered this myself--who wonder in this age -- in the -- that the Vietnam experience shows that not just sometimes, but all times if you are dealing with an adversary who knows the precise limits of your escalation, that you really do not have any impact from its escalation. If limited wars for limited objectives become the pure exercise in tactics, does it any longer have a....

KISSINGER: You can have limited wars for limited objectives.

D. CATER: Can your adversaries...

KISSINGER: (without speaking)
...but that doesn't mean that the tactics within that war have to be extremely cautious. The great temptation of statesmen is to believe.

(interruption)

...is to think that they can take away the of their action by half-heartedness in execution. Usually that leads to failure, and that usually gives awards for those who fail because of inward doubt.

LYJ

16

Harris: You've frequently been compared to, for instance, a statesman like Metinick or statesman like Castleray. Can one compare you to anybody? If not, why do those people mention those two 19th century statesmen?

KISSINGER: Well, because I wrote a book about Metinick and Castleray, which was an accident, because I wanted to write it as an introduction to a book on Bismarck in order to describe the difference between the Bismarck foreign policy and the Metinick and Castleray foreign policy, and then got so long that it became a separate book, and the one that was half finished and I never concluded it. I had about eight chapters written and left it there and I condensed it into one article.

I think you can't use history like a cookbook, because you have to compare yourself to any individual. I was impressed by Metinick's diplomatic skill and by the achievement of both Metinick and Castleray, and the other statesmen of the period who were an international settlement that, after all, lasted.

CYJ

17

a hundred years. On the other hand, the specific lessons one
can draw from this for the contemporary period are minimal.

K. HARRIS: Final question on the formative period. When you were thinking about foreign policy and writing about foreign policy and very informedly, while still a young don, did you ever think of yourself as somebody who would do foreign policy.. would carry it out...a policy maker?

KISSINGER: When I was a [when I was a] young professor at Harvard, it would have been next to impossible to describe a process [in fact, it would have been impossible] by which I would wind up as a principal foreign policy maker. I thought that I might occasionally be consulted on specific issues, but that isn't really making foreign policy, and I had no idea that I would emerge as a principal figure in making foreign policy.

K. HARRIS: I take up the question, now if I may, that I put when you went to the telephone. I hear it's often said in Britain that one of the characteristics of your conduct of foreign policy in general was that it was against the American tradition which has always been to aim for open diplomacy, whereas Dr. Kissinger's was a secret diplomacy.

KISSINGER: Well, again, [it's very] you have to define what you mean by open and by secret diplomacy. I think the record

18

will show that I gave more press conferences, made more public speeches, traveled more around the United States in explaining our foreign policy, than I believe almost any of my predecessors. During the last two years in office I visited 30 some 40 American cities, and on each visit I spent, gave a speech, I answered questions to a large audience, I met with small groups, I would spend ten hours at least in meeting with various groups to answer any questions. So I made a serious effort to explain and discuss the main directions of our foreign policy. I testified more frequently before Congressional committees than, I believe, any of my predecessors in terms of numbers.

On the other hand, the tactics of day-to-day diplomacy have, to some extent, to be confidential, and after all, the new Administration is now conducting foreign policy, in I hate to see this, given their image of themselves, but in terms of the sharing of tactical information, perhaps a little more restrictively than we did, certainly no less restrictively than we did -- painful as it may be to admit this. If this is unavoidable, because of course, after our foreign policy there are many ideas you try out in a negotiation that, if the other side accepts, are tolerable. But if they are publicized (it becomes quite tolerant, but which, if they are publicized before they are accepted, by either side, for either side, become very difficult to handle. I think a foreign government must have the assurance that it can explore ideas without having the whole thing public before it is concluded. It makes compromise more possible.

K. HARRIS: Doesn't that method threaten to undermine what

19

[Y]

one might call conference diplomacy--for instance, the authority
of an organization like the U.N. This bilateral operation.

KISSINGER: It doesn't have to. Well, you know, there are
many intermediate stages between bilateral diplomacy and UN-
type diplomacy. UN-type diplomacy is by definition open, so there
are too many people involved. I think most serious negotiations
that I have seen have required an element of confidentiality.

K. HARRIS: Does this massive technique of personal negotiating
which you practiced with such vast success, so far, does that threaten
to undermine the authority of the State Department, or indeed,
of the foreign office in any country?

KISSINGER: Well, you could also argue it enhances the
authority of the State Department. I tend to think that during
my term in office the State Department was clearly a defender
of policy making, and all my key appointments were professionals.
All my close advisors, with one or two exceptions, were pro-
fessionals. All the Assistant Secretaries that had reached in-
the bureaus (I think) were professionals, I think for the first
time in a decade, if ever.

So I don't know in what way it would undermine
the authority of the State Department. I don't believe that
it is, not of a Cabinet member, to register the consensus
of the bureaucracy. He is there to guide and lead the bureaucracy.

20

And the bureaucracy is not <u>that</u> it doesn't run like a Parliament <u>and should not be</u> by majority vote.

In which you take a vote, so I don't believe that I believe <u>that</u> during my term in office <u>on the contrary</u>, the State Department was very much at the center of events.

D. CATER: Still, the image of the lonely man, the loner clung hard to you. That you were a man who is, of course, using your professional associates, but essentially conducting foreign policy within yourself. How would you respond to that?

KISSINGER: Well, first of all, anybody in an eminent position will be attacked for something, inevitably. All the incentives are in that direction. <u>Are in the direction of</u> criticism rather than in the direction of support. And if you're in office for eight years, something will be picked up.

I think that I sought to shape foreign policy and not simply to register a bureaucratic consensus. <u>I thought it was my duty as Secretary of State to shape foreign policy. I think</u> All strong Secretaries of State have attempted to do that. And to some extent, that is a lonely act.

On the other hand, I used to spend hours before I made a decision talking it over with a group whose opinion I valued, <u>which usually included the</u> Assistant Secretaries of relevant and other of my colleagues. Of course, finally, <u>the regional bureaus</u> <u>anyway.</u>

So to some extent, when you engage in conspicuous activity, you are considered <u>you are considered a loner, but</u> always <u>creative action</u> has a lonely element.

21

D. CATER: Somewhat along that same line in the division of your time and energy in retrospect, do you believe you struck the right balance between the Secretary of State as being the man up above the scene and the shuttle diplomat--the man who is moving to the crisis, spots and really spending a tremendous amount of time and energy on personal...

KISSINGER: First of all, I notice that my successor, whom I respect greatly, ~~and who~~ announced when he was appointed that he would not spend so much time traveling, ~~He~~ is now traveling ~~at~~ least~~ as much as I ever did. ~~and this is~~ partly because the calendar imposes certain necessities. There is no way a ~~ministerial~~ Secretary of State can avoid attending the meetings of the ~~important~~ Alliances to which we belong or to which we are related. There is no way a Secretary of State can avoid negotiating~~ the~~ major issues with the Soviet Union like SALT, or with the Chinese. And there are certain North-South activities which require at least ~~American~~ a symbolic presence.

D. CATER: But the term was applied specifically to those tireless hours that you were moving back and forth in the Middle East. Could no one have done that for you?

KISSINGER: No. I think if you look at the situation in the Middle East, it required the symbolic distillation of the American presence. At the time that I moved, personally, into

22

in late 1973, Middle East diplomacy,¹ there was an oil embargo, an uneasy armistice, massive Soviet presence,² a danger of a new eruption,³ and the whole pattern of relationships had to be altered while⁴ ... steps were taken towards peace, and *this* process *not easily have been* had to be done by subordinate officials.⁵ *That* would have made it impossible for people like Sadat and Asad to get personally involved, and therefore there would not have been the authority on the other side¹¹ which made these difficult steps *possible*.

But I think we are getting more and more into what we said we weren't going to do.

D. CATER: All right. Could I just one-- and you'll get the transcript--but could you just ...

KISSINGER: I can't edit the transcript when it has nothing else but you ... should we ask...

D. CATER: One quick follow up to that. Did you ever wonder yourself how well you were able to get along better than anyone else I know as a Jew with the leaders of the Middle East--the Arabs.

KISSINGER: Well, it had its poignant elements. I attempted in any negotiation to understand as profoundly as I could the psychology and the aspirations of the people *that* I was dealing *with*. I believe It's *a* popular mythology to believe

23

CYJ

that a good negotiator is somebody who tells different things to different people. You can't do that because you meet the same people over and over again. A good negotiator is somebody who can give them the confidence to move in what they must each perceive to be their own interest, and since they are responsible for the future of their country, you would be reckless if you try to trick them about that. What you can do is to affect the margins of their perception, and I think that was my principal role.

HARRIS: Excellent, Excellent. Could I go back to the conduct of foreign policy as such?

The vast amount of personal publicity that you got when you traveled from here to there or indeed when you stayed at home--did you find that helpful to foreign policy or unhelpful?

KISSINGER: During the period of my maximum publicity, I found it very helpful because it enabled the symbolization of American policy at a time of great domestic travail. Later on, it became a mixed blessing because it also made me much more vulnerable to attack. [But we're still in the area of the past.]

D. CATER: All right. Let's get into the present. But would it be pushing our luck too hard if one were to say that the accusation has been made, from what you say is what a policy

24

negotiator has to do, that in the Rhodesian thing there were
definite differences of perception as to what you meant,
what you were prepared to follow up with.

KISSINGER: I don't think so. I think when that happens when that whole story is fully laid out, it will be clear that we were working from a script that was first concerted between us and Britain, and then explained in great detail to various African leaders before it was ever presented to Smith.

Then later, some of the African leaders found a greater reluctance on their greater difficulty in implementing what they wanted, what they thought they could do. And then at home and therefore were without authority after November, we lost the election. So we never had an opportunity, really, to carry our plan to its conclusion.

D. CATER: You said power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, but you never really explained what you meant by that.

KISSINGER: Well, that was a joke, but you certainly..
I mean it's clear to you that when you are in high office, your
social life multiplies beyond your intrinsic merits. sometimes.
(laughter)

D. CATER: Did you enjoy the role of swinger?

KISSINGER: I've never complained about it. I made no serious effort to stop it.

25

D. CATER: What about the role of the press in the conduct of foreign policy and--what are its--you mentioned the degree of attention at the height of the problems was useful.

Do you have any deeper concerns about the communications system within which Western diplomacy must be conducted?

KISSINGER: Well, especially the American press has a tendency to look for some piece of news that nobody else has, and therefore may tend to emphasize the dramatic over the fundamental. In foreign policy there isn't all that much new news. The new news is the superior analysis of well known fact and that is on the whole different from the basic ethos of the American press.

D. CATER: Congress evolved significantly during your period. It has become, some people would say, a more...

KISSINGER: You're incorrigible, Doug...you keep going on and on...

D. CATER: Well, I'm sorry but maybe my misunderstanding is wrong here, but I thought you were prepared to reflect on the problems of a Secretary of State in conducting foreign policy and that was going to be the thrust of this question. Hear the question...if it's wrong...

KISSINGER: No, the questions themselves are all excellent,

26

but they all really lead me into a summing up of my experience
which I don't want to do.

D. CATER: Okay. I wouldn't no ...

KISSINGER: I mean, the questions are all excellent.

D. CATER: Well, some of them you can take out and use for
your own purposes, let's say that, but I really didn't--would
be interested in...

KISSINGER: I haven't written one line yet, so it's not
competitive with anything I've written so far and what I'm
writing won't appear for two and a half years...

D. CATER: Well, I think we do have a slight--perhaps
failure of understanding on the conduct of foreign policy. I
was merely going to ask if Congress as looking at it from your
historical perspective, is Congress as an institution more
difficult, less difficult or about the same for a Secretary
of State (unintelligible).

KISSINGER: Congress has become much different in the eight
years that I served in Washington. When I came to Washington
there were a number of key leaders of both houses who could tell

27

you what was possible and with whom it therefore was possible
to negotiate.

Today, there is no leader that controls enough votes
to give you a reliable estimate, and therefore there are different
coalitions for every problem and these coalitions have to be
anew each time. This consumes
constructed from problem-to-problem, meaning, which it takes
an inordinate amount of time of the Secretary of State. I
spent half of my time with the Congress, and, when I was in town
and I am sure that my successor is spending at least as much.

Secondly, the Congress exists to pass laws, not to
conduct day-to-day foreign policy. Passing laws is a series
of individual steps, which are made and which the
process is concluded when the law is passed. Foreign policy
is a continuing process depending very much on the sense of nuance,
and therefore, the intervention of the Congress and essentially
tactical decisions is bound to lead it to lack at least coherence,
because there will be a different coalition for each intervention.
And it creates enormous complications.

D. CATER: All right. Just on a point if I could...is that
kind of question out of our ball park. I thought it was within
it.

KISSINGER: I don't want this to be a summing up of all my
views...

D. CATER: Oh, no...but this isn't. This is...

28

[Y]

KISSINGER: Well, it gets awfully close.

K. HARRIS: Can I ask you some questions about broad themes about foreign policy looking into the future? ~~Its certainly~~ not...

Shall I try one?

KISSINGER: Like what?

K. HARRIS: Do you believe that real detente is going to be possible with the Soviet Union? Do you believe that real coexistence is possible with the Soviet Union or are they always going to be trying, if not overtly, covertly to undermine Western Europe?

KISSINGER: I would say yes to both questions. I think ~~that~~ will try to undermine Western Europe and I think ~~the real~~ coexistence is possible. It requires that we prevent their achieving success in undermining Western Europe. It means that we should have no illusions about the basic goals ~~of~~ success of Soviet policy, ~~but I think also~~ At the same time we must never forget that nuclear weapons and will be reinforced over the decades by the emergence of other power centers in the world. So, one should not look at detente as depending on Soviet good will ~~on~~ or a sudden change in Soviet perceptions. One should look at it as the coexistence of two ideologically opposed systems, because the alternatives to coexistence ~~are more~~ could be

29

cataclysmic. And the problem is to coexist without giving up
fundamental principles.

K. HARRIS: Are we shortly going to have to...we all of us...
rethink the degree of conflict that there is, of trying to secure
detente and stand up for human rights. Behind the Iron Curtain.

KISSINGER: This is an area in which I don't want to get.

K. HARRIS: Oh, I thought because it was future....

KISSINGER: No, no, but that involves Carter, they must be given the chance to implement their policies.

D. CATER: What about though...the Americans use more
frequently that in my observation than any other nation that
the word "morality" in the conduct of relations among nations, they
often equate it with the morality of individual dealing with
individual. Can you make a distinction?

KISSINGER: I think the difference in individual international...
First, of all, I agree that foreign policy which has no moral
content is likely to be sterile. In a democratic society, especially,
foreign policy has to be anchored in the people's beliefs. And
On the other hand, there is a difference between individual
morality and international policy, that in international affairs you
has to be implemented.

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live in a society of sovereign states, each of which-- many
of which have their own conception of morality. And therefore
a nation its objectives at best only in stages, each
one cannot achieve one except in stages, and
stage by definition is likely to be imperfect from the point of
view of the moralist.

And that sets up an inherent tension between the
 domestic and the international perception. I think morality is
 Without morality one will not have the strength to live in an
 = imperfect world; with excessive moralism may undermine international
 order. It is a fine balance to strike.
 perfection that defeats one's purposes.

D. CATER: Henry Stimson who is frequently quoted as having
said that gentlemen do not open each other's mail. We've come
a ways since then. What imposes the ultimate limits on say,
immoral behavior or ungentlemanly behavior among nations?

KISSINGER: Well, first of all, one needs a definition
of what is immoral behavior among nations. One lives in a world
in which other nations engage in acts that threaten one's
security and tend to undermine stability. Now, then the problem
is what methods are appropriate for fighting this?

It is very hard to give an abstract rule. One
should not do things that are so offensive to the public
morality that people will begin to doubt the purpose
of the whole conduct of foreign policy. But on the other hand,
there is a security element that may impose necessities that

31

CYJ

have to be carefully analyzed and that one cannot in the abstract
simply discard.

D. CATER: Assassination has been the subject of speculation...

KISSINGER: I can think of ~~practically~~ no circumstance in which a democratic government should adopt assassination as an operative method.

K. HARRIS: Could I attempt two questions simply from the point of view of Britain. They may be out of bounds, but we just will have to try if we may.

The old chestnut... do you think there is a
special relationship between Britain and the United States.

KISSINGER: Yes.

K. HARRIS: Can you tell me what it consists of?

KISSINGER: Well, it consists [of... it consists] essentially of a degree of consultation [and the needs of communication] that is unparalleled between any other nations. I think the confidence [that it] has been shown by British and American officials in their [ministers and] towards each other [and I think now, and practically] every Administration since the war, and so it is a permanent feature, leads to an intimacy of exchange that doesn't need to be formalized.

32

to address seriously
And it makes possible for them but then the most difficult
task of foreign policy, the harmonization of our limit as ultimate
purposes.

It hasn't led to any special privileges for Britain
in any formal legal sense, but it has made it possible to commu-
nicate with British leaders in an unusually frank, candid and
friendly way. (and I think) It makes a difference that in almost
every case in the post war period--certainly during my term of
evidence exists a person al affection has developed between the leaders, that is
not faked and that is not imposed by abstract considerations of
the national interest and that makes a difference at the margins
of decisions.

K. HARRIS: I'm very, very grateful for the answer to that question. May I try one more, also on Britain? Do, to paraphrase that phrase--does Britain have a particular role in the modern world today?

KISSINGER: Well, of course, I am a great Anglophile--you have to keep this in mind. I think Britain still has the civil service and the foreign service of a great power even if its relative strength has declined in the post war period.

K. HARRIS: Very interesting.

33

KISSINGER

K. HARRIS:
I think the judgments that Britain makes may -- sometimes--go beyond its own capacity to implement, but are of great value to us. And to the whole free world. The British system, with its [if I may say, the aristocratic traditions, which means that whatever party is in office, there is a sense of quality and of national service] produces and approach to policy that, at least in the international field, is in the direction of moderation and good practical sense. In the solution of problems.

And therefore, I have always favored Britain's playing the largest possible formal role. [and -- but whatever role Britain decides to play, I think it's accumulated wisdom and the quality of its officials and leaders makes its role extremely important, and I hope that it will not withdraw into a purely insular conception because that would really be a loss to all free peoples.]

D. CATER:
As one who's been living now, for several months, in Great Britain, I've become increasingly aware of how both the U.S. and Great Britain are preoccupied with the domestic aspect of role in the world--the limits of growth, the limited means with which to accomplish domestic social purposes.

Do you see this as being a major factor in--major problem for foreign policy in the next decade.

KISSINGER:
If I could go back to the first--to your question for one minute...when I look back on my time in office, I don't

34

think, I can't remember any other country where I would feel
that I would call up some of the ambassadors and occasionally,
some of the officials, to ask of you on something that didn't
particularly concern Britain, and in which there wasn't even any
formal consultation, and I'd sometimes just--ask either somebody
to come over whose views I particularly respected or ask some
of the ambassadors to come in and just chat with me about a
decision in which I was involved--that was not the subject of
formal consultation and which I didn't so much ask--what does
His Majesty's or Her Majesty's government think, but I just--
which is a very unusual thing and even though they certainly
departed it to Whitehall, they understood the difference between
a formal consultation and this sort of informal advice.

Now this is a very special sort of relationship,
now on the limits of ...

KISSINGER:

Growth and limits of possibilities. Certainly, a country has to know the limits of its possibilities. But also a country has to reach beyond what is technically possible, and that seems technically feasible at any one time at any one point. Usually the margins of action are greater than the experts believe, and to do great things you have to have an element of faith. Of course, the faith has to be related to technical possibility, but it mustn't be driven by technical possibility.

And I think if one becomes too obsessed with
what cannot do, one will never try for greatness. And in a world

35

If you look at most great achievements were
defined as impossible before they were attempted.

D. CATER: Could I ask one blockbuster question?

Because I want to be sure to get it in. You have been quoted,
and I can get the precise citation--that tragedy can be the
fate of nations as well of as individuals. And its meaning
may well reside in living in a world with which one is no longer
familiar. There have been hints and various thoughtful articles
written about you from time to time that -- way down deep, you
are a pessimist, despite your Herculean efforts--that there
is a Gibbonsque quality to your world view.

KISSINGER: Well, I think that anybody--any serious student
of history who is not conscious of the fact that every civilization
that has ever existed has eventually declined, is being fatuous.

a process of
History has always been a constant change, and
no society has ever remained permanently stable. On the
other hand, a statesman cannot act upon the assumption of
imminent doom. Any more than a man can act--should needs
should commit suicide because he is conscious of his mortality.

I think this is a fact to be considered. I think it is the

36

try to sustain

**duty of leaders to** maintain the creativity of their society,

**And to keep them dynamic,** and perhaps, if they are fortunate,

to represent the first society that escapes the fate of others.

But you cannot ask for a guarantee of success.

And I see no incompatibility between making major efforts and
being conscious of what has happened to other societies. I think
some societies have achieved great permanence. The Chinese
society has had an uninterrupted historical evolution as
a functioning society, but certainly with many changes of
system, and dynasties within it. At any rate, I don't consider my-
self a pessimist.

On the other hand, I believe that serious people
have an obligation to understand what the deepest problems of
the historical period are in which they live and not to pretend
that they are that which tragedy cannot occur.

D. CATER: Could I ask a personal question. You--one other
unique aspect of your period is that you've come out of office
at a time when public figures of your preeminence have turned
out to be highly in demand as -- to be continuing public figures
in terms of -- there's been criticism in fact, of the amount
of money being tendered to you and to some of the others who
have left the Administration. What do you see as your job
of defining your place now for the immediate future?