HENRY KISSINGER

And the third problem is: there is developing an almost idyllic no-
tion with respect to conventional weapons in some Western intellec-
tual circles. It is important to remember, first, that if you look at
European history, wars have constantly started between countries
that on paper seemed equally strong; wars have started always be-
tween countries, both of which thought they could win the war.
So that to define what a conventional balance of power is is not so
easy; one needs to give no lecture to Israelis on this subject. The sec-
ond problem, which again one needs to give no lecture to Israelis on,
is that modern conventional weapons are terribly destructive as well,
and that therefore the real problem is to prevent aggression.

Now I mention this issue to define the danger of an intellectual
breakdown and the danger that the intellectual community risks con-
tributing to what could be the psychological disarmament of the
Western nations. Because if we are to become too one-sided, how do
we know that the Soviet Union will then not reverse its declared stra-
tegy and begin blackmailing us with nuclear weapons?

In short, I agree that we have to reduce reliance on nuclear wea-
pons. I agree that we should build up conventional forces. I believe
we need a new approach to strategy, but it has to be done in an intel-
lectually respectable manner; it has to be done in a framework that is
related to a possible future. And it is in this respect that I do not be-
lieve that the scientific community is doing today, at least in the
countries that I know best, what it did in the fifties. Nobody is
thinking of what the world will be like in the nineties or in the next
century except either in terms so complete that they are, as I said,
a projection of the present into the future, or in terms so abstract
that there is nothing that can guide policymakers. We will now face,
in the very near future, negotiations on the reductions of strategic
arms. I favor the approach proposed by President Reagan. I think it
is conceptually the right approach, but it is also true that as it
evolves, inevitably a whole set of new problems will arise, since we
have already seen another approach put forward by Brezhnev and all
our domestic debates are going to deteriorate into a civil war between
self-righteous feuding factions.

And there is another thing. Whatever the result of these negotia-
tions, they leave several aspects. One is, to the extent that we reduce
the levels of strategic forces to lower levels, we also need a new stra-
tegy. The worst possible outcome is to have no strategy for nuclear
weapons, nuclear pacifism, and no conventional build-up. This in the

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military field. Secondly in the political field. The fundamental problem with the Soviet Union remains the reluctance of the Soviet system up to now to make the fundamental decision of whether it will stop its expansionism or will try to get everything.

I know the word "linkage" is considered a dirty word in many intellectual circles, but somewhere along the line there has to be a connection between the political conduct of a country and other measures that are conducted, or else all negotiations become a safety valve for conning the intended victims. In 1972, when we started expanding East-West trade, many of us thought it could be used as a restraint on Soviet conduct, but it can be a restraint on Soviet conduct only if the industrial democracies are prepared to interrupt it when the Soviet conduct is not restrained. In fact the Western countries have invented excuses in every situation to continue and expand the trade, so that it is now a lever on the part of the Soviet Union against the West rather than the other way round. Lenin said once that the capitalists would one day compete for the privilege of supplying the rope with which to hang them. What Lenin did not say was that the capitalists would compete to supply credits so that they could buy the rope with which to hang them, and that they would offer concessional prices for the rope.

Now again, this is a subject not incapable of intellectual analysis, and yet again the splits are largely ideological and not intellectual, and in some cases, in many cases, presumably conservative industrialists join those with ideological orientations in the field of East-West trade.

Take the problem of developing countries. There are a number of shibboleths in this area. One is that the greatest danger of all resides in the poverty of the developing nations. But if you look at history, I think you will find that wars are rarely started by the very rich or by the very poor. Wars are generally started by the countries that are becoming rich, that are in the process of development, and that acquire a surplus of resources for adventurism and do not yet have so much that they are satiated. In other words, it is highly probable that in the process of development, international tensions may multiply rather than diminish. I am not saying this as an argument against development, but as a necessity to analyze the problem.

Secondly, there is no question that the process of development does not produce stability domestically. But it is very likely to produce instability. It is usually said, in my view incorrectly but I am

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not going to debate it, that one of the American mistakes was not to
have contact with the opposition, the potential opposition, in the
Iranian revolution. But if we had had contact with the opposition,
we would have had contact with the Western-educated intellectuals,
against whom the revolution was as much directed as against the
Shah. The revolution in Iran was aimed at the very process of devel-
opment. They did not want to be a second class nation, but a first
class something. What, like most revolutionaries, they did not know,
but it was in part a revolution against modernity.

Now, supposing any of the states in the Persian Gulf come to us
today and ask us for advice on how they should develop in a direc-
tion that is politically fruitful and stable and pacific, what would we
tell them? Which of our countries knows anything except platitudes?
Do we know how you make democracy develop in twenty years
when it took 300 years in the West? Do we understand what demo-
cracy means in societies with different cultural traditions? Do we un-
derstand the significance of the rise of cities when people are moved
from the countryside into the cities and suddenly become a prole-
tariat? And it may be that in the oil-rich countries, if there is any-
thing more dangerous than a poor proletariat it may be a rich pro-
letariat that has nothing to do. Now I do not have the answers to
these questions, but my argument is that they are not being studied,
there is no intellectual leadership that finds recognizable forms, at
least in the United States. Since the Vietnam war, our intellectual
community is more or less split between those who reject any valid-
ity in government and those who are potential applicants for govern-
ment jobs, and neither of them is concentrating (there are of course
notable exceptions) on the middle-term future on which so much
depends.

Now these problems appear in the Middle East today, a region torn
by East-West conflict, moderate-radical conflict and the Arab-Israeli
conflict, which partly overlap and are partly autonomous. There is
much discussion about can we or can we not achieve a strategic con-
sensus in that region against the Soviet Union. I believe that most of
the nations in that area, with maybe the exception of Egypt, feel so
impotent in relation to the Soviet Union that if we ask them for help
it only makes them more nervous. They cannot imagine what they
could possibly contribute to a confrontation with the Soviet Union.
On the other hand, there are problems like Iran-Iraq; when that
war broke out, at a press conference in New York, with my usual

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tact I said the only thing I regret is that only one side can lose that
war.

But the significance of this is that professorially, it is easy to set
an objective. We can have no interest in a victory of either side
against the other, and we can have no interest in an Iran that is so
weak that it becomes a plaything for the Soviets, nor in an Iran so
strong that it terrifies all the surrounding states. But what that means
concretely and how that policy is conducted is something which is
neither in intellectual process at this moment, so that everybody pur-
sues very short-term policies, nor is there the requisite Western unity
because ever since 1973, the various Western countries have consider-
ed the difficulties of one the opportunity of the other.

Frankly in the Arab-Israeli negotiations on the West Bank, a sub-
ject I do not wish to enter into in any detail, it is however possible to
make one general observation. I do not believe that the current state
of affairs on the West Bank will be supported internationally for an
indefinite period. At the same time, also I do not believe that Israel
can accept the current alternative proposals. So we live in a never-
never land in which two incompatible proposals are being permitted
to float around in the hope that no catastrophe is going to happen.
But sooner or later something is going to blow up.

I believe that in the final analysis, at least for an interim period,
Israel will probably have to offer more than it has so far. And the
Arabs will have to take less than they have put forward. But what the
nature of this arrangement is, is not at all clear. And in the process,
the psychological framework for a sustained international support of
policies disintegrates. And one of these days there will be a crisis
which requires quick action, and then nobody knows what will be
done. I'm speaking about this now as an intellectual problem, not as
a policy problem of what to do tomorrow morning.

Now I was told to talk 30 minutes and I have carried on for much
longer. It reminds me of the first time I came to Germany as a pro-
fessor. I asked a German graduate student at Harvard what advice he
had to give me, and he said "you must talk for an hour and a half or
they don't take you seriously, and under no circumstances must you
do anything suggesting humor, or they don't think you're a profes-
sor." So I will conclude here by saying that I've probably violated
both precepts. I've talked longer than I've been asked, but shorter
than is desirable in Germany.

I would like to end on a somewhat more positive note which is

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HENRY KISSINGER

this. I have listed a range of problems, all of which are capable, if not of intellectual solution, then of an intellectual approach. I think that scientists that are pure oppositionists demoralize the body politic. And I believe that scientists who are maneuvering to get into high office are not contributing their specialty; they should be treated like politicians. And they have every right to do this. The biggest problem for political leaders is to get a five-year perspective. Beyond that it becomes too nebulous. Shorter than that, the bureaucracy is going to have to give them a proposal. Some of the questions I raised, and many others, are crying for some systematic consideration. And one of the unfortunate legacies in our country of the Vietnam war is that this hasn't happened. But as I explained, the Vietnam war is in itself a reaction to the trauma that America now is no longer omnipotent and it has to choose priorities and it has to substitute intelligence for power, and all the other things that other societies have long since done.

For all of these reasons, I think the Weizmann Institute is to be congratulated for assembling such a group, and even though I have not talked about my topic, I wanted to put before this group some of my concerns. Having now made it impossible for myself to deal with colleagues at Harvard University, perhaps I can exchange ideas on these subjects at the Weizmann Institute some time.

DISCUSSION

Question

I would like to ask you two separate questions. First of all you ask for an intellectual dialogue, an inquiry. For the problems that we should address ourselves to, dialogue among ourselves is not enough, or inquiry. This has to be conducted with the other side. What forum would you pick for that? At one time there was an argument for the Pugwash movement when they dealt with the topic of nuclear disarmament. Will you suggest some similar alternative where this could be conducted?

The second question, which is a different one, is — one fourth of the world's population live in China. You have not addressed yourself at all to the role that China is playing and will play in this world to come.

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Kissinger: Well, I used to attend Pugwash meetings before I joined the Government, and I think that dialogue with the other side is of considerable utility, in part because there doesn't seem to be any mechanism on the other side to develop any new ideas, and almost any intellectual progress that has been made in the fields of international diplomacy with the other side really have had their origin in the West and then were gradually worked through the Soviet system. What is necessary, however, is that the Western participants in these conversations have some coherent view of what it is that they want to accomplish. Many of them get so intoxicated with their contact, and so tend to believe that their own personal relations are going to change Soviet political attitudes, and are really so suspicious of their own Government that it isn't always clear who propagandistically benefits from some of these exchanges. I have the impression that we have been sort of running down intellectually in the East-West exchanges, that the West has neither the self-confidence nor the new ideas to present. But as a question of principle, I would favor these exchanges, and it's primarily a question of doing our own homework and understanding the framework within which it could proceed.

Now as to the question of China. That is a very difficult problem, because it seems to me that China is going through a very complicated period internally. For China outside contact has always been complicated. Through most of their history, in fact through all of their history, the Chinese have considered themselves culturally superior to other societies, and therefore the idea of learning from other societies other than technique, to learn concepts from other societies, is not one that comes naturally. And secondly I think that the Chinese are extremely absorbed now with the process of modernization and changing their society. But if this process were to succeed, or when it succeeds, the need for contact on an intellectual level with the Chinese would be very important, because if nine hundred million Chinese were to develop a technology like Japan, even in the sixties, they would be a very major factor in power terms. So I don't have a good answer. I would favor the contact. Perhaps one should attempt to start it on a small scale now, but the cultural obstacles would be serious.

Katzir: Well, before asking a few questions, may I just recall a little episode which happened several years ago, when I had the pleasure of

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having Dr. Kissinger in the house of the President in Jerusalem, together with Golda Meir. At that time you were negotiating with neighboring Arab countries to find at least a settlement for the time being. I was very keen to know whether your experience as a professor of Harvard was of any great use to you while you were carrying out these negotiations, and I asked you, as a professor of Harvard, was it of any help to you. You looked at me and you said, "Of enormous help." It was when you were a member of the Senate of professors at Harvard, you had negotiations and discussed different ideas with the most intelligent, clever people, and now you said "All my work with the politicians is just child's play."

But now to ask just a few very short questions. I think you mentioned, and rightly so, the weakness in democracies, and we face these weaknesses every day. In Israel the Government is going to fall, or to stand, and we don't know any day what will happen. The fact that there is a coalition, that there is an orthodox, very small party that uses the fact that they are members of the coalition to extract things that the majority certainly doesn't want, just emphasizes the weaknesses of a democracy. Any good alternative, any good suggestion?

Now, the second point that I want to mention. I must say from my personal experience on a very small scale, I fully agree with you that sometimes scientists with noble, abstract ideas, cause only harm, without really understanding the political situation. Would it be desirable to teach natural scientists a little bit of modern politics and realities of everyday life and international affairs?

And another point. You didn't refer to the importance of moral values. Would you ignore them for a time to look for a balance of power, an equilibrium, or forget about them completely, which would be very, very painful indeed?

And the last point. I think what you mentioned concerning the West Bank in Israel. I couldn't agree more with you. I think it's really basically an insoluble problem. But with such problems you just wait, or you go a little bit this way or the other way, and the Israelis will perhaps have to be just a little bit more moderate, and the Palestinians will perhaps have to get less than what they want, just as you mentioned.

*Kissinger:* If I may add my own personal reminiscence of President Katzir, which he may not be all that aware of. At the end of every

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negotiation that I conducted in the Middle East, there was a period when the Israel Cabinet met, which can be a searing process, because they might be meeting ten hours at a stretch, and the success and failure of what had been done over months would depend on a meeting of a group of men and women who had not distinguished themselves by the ability to agree with each other previously; for us on the American side it was rather nerve-racking. Now I usually called on the President during that period, partly because courtesy required it, but above all because he had a very calming effect on me. He reassured me, without our discussing what the Israeli Cabinet would do, that there were some fundamental values that even if they were not articulated, would dominate the situation, and he always turned out to be right.

And that brings me to the answer to your last question. I do believe that the balance of power is important, I do believe that statesmen have to be prudent and have to be calculating, and I wish it could be otherwise. But I also believe that the most important quality of a statesman is courage. Intelligence you can hire. Courage you cannot hire, particularly the courage to go towards a future you cannot prove when you make a decision. For that you need moral conviction, and where intellectuals often go wrong, is that they believe that moral conviction is identical with scientific certainty. The moral conviction of a statesman has to reside in the willingness to live with imperfection on a road towards an ultimate goal, every stage of which is likely to be imperfect. Now that, of course, can easily lend itself to expediency, and the expedient and the moral are not always that easy to distinguish in politics. But if you look at the great statesmen in history in any country, they had at their core a moral certainty — maybe wrong — but without that moral strength, you cannot live through the insecurities of decision making. Nothing that I say about balance of power, which certainly is involved every day, should take away the fact that without that core of moral conviction you cannot operate.

The other questions: On the West Bank I have said all that I can say. I think there is no final solution on the West Bank right now. And everybody should have the courage to say that there can only be right now an interim solution, and adjust their decisions accordingly. I think this is an area where outside thinking can help, because being inside the government gives you no special perception of this problem.

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Should scientists be educated in politics? I actually do not want to imply that scientists cannot make a major contribution to political thinking. These groups in the fifties have had a major impact, and I would say, negatively, that if the scientific and intellectual community becomes abstract or irresponsible it would also have a tremendous impact, because where else is the long-range thinking going to come from? But when scientists act politically, they ought to understand the world, at least to some extent, into which they are moving, and they ought not to think that they can simply transfer what they have done in their laboratories automatically to the political field. And they should also prevent themselves from being coopted by the political process. So they have a very fine line to walk between becoming politically more conscious and yet not becoming simply ratifiers of what is going to be done anyway. You know, this is a personal decision that everyone has to make.

About democracy: I tend to agree with Churchill that it's a terrible system, except that it's better than any other. If you look at the Soviet system, where they cannot change their leadership, where with an average age of 74 in the Politburo they have a Central Committee meeting and reelect everybody for five years, and where in the whole system of Soviet history they have had only three changes of leadership and nobody knows what the procedure is. I know that we do not know who will replace Brezhnev, but I am sure that Brezhnev does not know who's going to replace Brezhnev. That's an impossible system.

Dictatorships can have tremendous momentum for a limited period of time, but for a long period democracy is the best system. But democracy requires one thing that is being threatened now by the impact of mass media, by the impact of temptation for demagoguery. It needs self-restraint in the conduct of debates, because when you take a defense budget in America — 258 billion dollars — who can grasp this? You take the nuclear issue; it's easy to describe nuclear war in the most horrible terms imaginable, or it is equally easy to describe it simply as a form of conventional war. How you get self-restraint into the dialogue, how you prevent exploitation of demographic possibilities, for this I don't have any good answer. That again requires the intellectual community to play a role by what they can or cannot make respectable. This is the big problem that democracy has, but there is no system I know of that can compare with it in terms of potentiality.

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*Stone:* Thank you Henry. I liked everything except your reference to 74-year olds. Now there's one last question.

*Question*

You said "Large-scale dropping of atom bombs would be a disaster." Would you imply that small-scale dropping would be less so? My second question is: you said that the Vietnam war made things easy for everybody. Would you include Vietnamese in everybody? And the third question is: You said Moscow is behind every terrorist movement in the world. Would you include in this statement those people who shot at Archbishop Romero two years ago?

*Kissinger:* The first question — do I favor small-scale use of nuclear weapons? This is the sort of question which lends itself to a semi-demagogic appeal, because you say yes, you favor small-scale use of nuclear weapons, and then somebody brings you statistics of how terrible that can be. Of course, the small-scale use of nuclear weapons would also be a disaster, but I feel we are now facing the following. Those groups in our society that are usually for a humane, progressive policy are also describing nuclear strategy in the most apocalyptic terms, and they keep saying that as long as you can kill two hundred million people what do you need more nuclear weapons for? Intellectually, it has not proved possible to come up with a doctrine of limited nuclear war that is satisfactory. Nevertheless, if it ever happens, I would hope that our governments will make every effort to limit the use of nuclear weapons to military objectives, and to try to save as many lives as possible, recognizing that it would be a great disaster. We live in a world in which tens of thousands of nuclear weapons have been produced by the major powers, hundreds by the middle powers, scores by the smaller powers. The factories will always exist, the knowledge will always exist in the minds of men. Therefore to talk as if it could never ever happen is also irresponsible. I would prefer that it never happens, but I think it is also irresponsible to pretend that there are some people who would like to use nuclear weapons.

I think one has a dual responsibility to do one's utmost to prevent their use, but secondly, if it should happen, to limit their use, and not to give the other side the impression that we are going to yield, to be defeated in a conventional war, because this is going to lead to the outbreak of war which then will have very grave consequences.

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Now the second question. My English may be too complicated. I
did not say that the Vietnam war made it easy for everybody. The
President and I had the unfortunate responsibility of how to extri-
cate 550,000 Americans that the previous administration had left in
that country, and we had to get them out of there. It was very easy
to have demonstrations on that subject, much more difficult to do it
without producing an even worse catastrophe. I said it made it in-
tellectually easy to debate this thing on abstract moral grounds and
not to debate the issue of how to extricate the 550,000 people. I
did not say anything else was easy about the war. Certainly not for
the Vietnamese, nor for the Americans who were there, nor for the
Americans who had the responsibility for the future of Western
security as they saw it. They too were capable of some anguish in
this period, and not just the people who were marching around with
placards, which was not the most difficult assignment in the world.
So only in this sense was the Vietnam debate easy.

Third, on terrorism. I do not favor terrorism of the right, any
more than I favor terrorism of the left, and the people who killed
Archbishop Romero deserved condemnation as much as the terror-
ists on the left. It is nevertheless a fact that most of the terrorism in
the world today is generated by groups that in one way or another
are affiliated with the left. While it is not necessarily true that every
terrorist movement is financed directly from Moscow, it is true that
those that are not financed and trained from Moscow are often
financed and trained by groups that are financed and trained from
Moscow. And a person who throws a rock down a mountainside
that's covered with boulders and starts a rockslide that kills a passer-
by, cannot afterwards claim that he is innocent because the rock that
killed the passerby is not the rock that he threw. And in this sense I
would say that the overwhelming majority of terrorist movements,
certainly those that are interconnected with each other, come from
Soviet-supported groups either directly or indirectly. Insofar as
right-wing groups are doing it, they deserve as much condemnation
as left-wing groups. Terrorism is incompatible with the civilized
democratic states we have to stand for.

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