LEADER

3.12.86.

The Doctor's orders

D. TELEGRAPI

IN his Ernest Bevin Memorial Lecture, Dr Henry Kissinger's audience included senior Labour politicians: an audience of comparable stature to those which Mr Neil Kinnock is addressing in the United States. Dr Kissinger's task was rendered much simpler than Mr Kinnock's by the fact that, unlike the latter, he saw no need to adapt or to explain away the policies he advocates, for domestic consumption. He did not gratuitously denigrate his own government even when he differed from it. His criticisms of the President's strategy at Reykjavik were cogent, and part of a more general caveat. It was not clear to the Doctor what the missile reductions discussed at the summit had been intended to achieve; he deplored the absence from the policies of Western governments of those "distant goals, which were not necessarily reflected in public opinion polls", that had guided the great statesmen of the past. Dr Kissinger supports SDI and the British independent nuclear deterrent for sober, old-fashioned reasons. These are based upon, respectively, the moral duty to protect civilians—however inadequately—and the fact that he cannot see "how Europe can contribute intellectually to a debate in a field of technology from which it has excluded itself."

The more experienced members of Dr Kissinger's audience, at least, must have felt uneasy to hear him appeal repeatedly to the memory of the Labour Foreign Secretary after whom the lecture was named, and then to hear the present policies of the party of Bevin courteously cut to pieces. Some sense of the fundamental rightness of Dr Kissinger's analysis—and particularly his scepticism about Mr Gorachev's ability or intention to alter Soviet purposes in the face of his own Communist Party hierarchy—cannot have failed to communicate itself to survivors of Labour's old guard. If Mr Bevin found himself on successive evenings in the audience of Mr Kinnock and Dr Kissinger there is little doubt whose world view he would have found more plausible.

THE TIMES TUESDAY DECEMBER 2 1986

# Kissinger rebuff for Labour on defence

By Nicholas Wood
Political Reporter

Mr Henry Kissinger, the former United States Secretary of State, told Labour MPs last night that the British independent nuclear deterrent contributed to a "strong and united Europe".

He also supported the Strategic Defence Initiative, although not for the reasons advanced by the Reagan administration, and warned of the growth of isolationism across the Atlantic.

With Mr Neil Kinnock in the United States to sell his party's non-nuclear defence posture to a disbelieving public and hostile politicians, Mr Kissinger's measured assessment of East-West relations amounted to yet another rebuff for Labour's policies.

"I have always favoured independent nuclear capabilities in Europe. What form and what technology is not for me, but I do not see how Europe can contribute intellectually to a debate in a field of technology in which it has excluded itself," he said.

"Given the additional uncertainties that are raised by the growth of nuclear weapons, there is a marginal utility for a capability for independent action in a case of extremity."

The former senior member of the Nixon and Ford administrations also backed SDI, though not as "leakproof shelter over the US". Instead, its value lay in its capacity to offer limited protection to civilians both at home and abroad and to retaliatory forces.

For an American government not to do all it could to safeguard its people was "moronally unsustainable", he added.

Mr Kissinger was giving the Ernest Bevin Memorial Lecture, sponsored by Mirror Group Newspapers, at the House of Commons.

He said that the Reagan administration had been "misunderstood" in Europe. It was perceived as "Rambo-like", throwing its weight around and exerting power without thought of the consequences.

Its rhetoric invited such an interpretation, but the real significance of the policies adopted since 1980 lay elsewhere - in the shift in the centre of gravity of American politics away from the East Coast, with its emotional ties to Europe, towards the West with its tradition of isolationism.

2ND DEC 1986

## Kissinger warns opponents of Nato strategy

By Michael Cassell

OPPONENTS of Nato's "first use" nuclear weapons strategy were not serving the best interests of their country or of the West, Dr Henry Kissinger, said in London last night.

Delivering the Ernest Bevin memorial lecture at Westminster, the former US Secretary of State said that those who ruled out first use implied they would rather be defended by conventional weapons, the practical consequences of which could be to invite a conventional war.

Dr Kissinger, whose comments reflect criticism within the present US Administration over Labour's non-nuclear defence policy, said that it would be desirable for conventional weapons to be built up but claimed that was not the issue.

He continued: "If we put the horse of conventional armaments before the cart of nuclear weapons we would be doing the correct thing. But if we give up our existing strategy before we build up credible, conventional defences, I believe we attract the dangers we seek to avoid."

# Kissinger gives a nuclear warning

## INDEPENDENT

2. DEC. 1986

HENRY KISSINGER, the former US Secretary of State, last night warned Labour Party leaders not to stigmatisate nuclear weapons before they could put in place a credible defence alternative. To do so would be to tempt the danger of Soviet political pressure based on military strength.

Delivering the Ernest Bevin memorial lecture in a Commons committee room, Mr Kissinger spoke of "serious philosophical problems" besetting Nato and a lack of consensus both within and between its member countries.

"We have seen a growth of de facto isolationism in the United States and of de facto neutralism in Europe; even if both phenomena appear in the guise of claiming to reinforce the alliance."

Mr Kissinger refrained before a largely Labour Party audience from directly criticising the non-nuclear defence policy Neil Kinnock is this week trying to advance in the United States, but reiterated his support for independent nuclear capabilities in Europe.

He was later challenged by Denis Healey. Though the two men when both in office agreed on the need for nuclear deterrence, Mr Healey — Labour defence secretary from 1964 to 1970 — told Mr Kissinger: "Mankind cannot rely for much longer on the threat of extermination for its security."

Mr Kissinger argued that a strong, united Europe was in the American interest. But on both sides of the Atlantic he noted a changed perception about the danger facing the West. "Nuclear weapons have created such apocalyptic fears that the relationship between defence and the world one inherits after a war has become for many incommensurate."

There was therefore a hidden tendency towards unilateral disarmament, said Mr Kissinger.

From: Field Marshal Lord Carver

2 December 1986

I apologize for leaving the table before the end of the dinner in your honour last night, but I had to catch a train back to my home in the country in order to fulfill an engagement near there in the morning.

I was interested that, in your lecture, which I listened to with fascination, you said that you had _always_ been in favour of European independent nuclear forces. May I remind you of what you wrote in _The Necessity for Choice_ on page 114 in the Chatto & Windus 1960 edition:

> "Whether the reaction is overconfidence or a sense of futurity, the growth of individual retaliatory forces is almost certain to weaken the cohesion of the Western alliance. They very act of creating an independent retaliatory force springs from a lack of confidence in either American understanding of the common interest or American unwillingness to run risks on behalf of xxx allies. Each European country will face in relation to its partners the inhibitions against resorting to all-out war which they have ascribed to the United States and which induced them to develop an independent retaliatory force in the first place. They will reserve nuclear retaliation for direct and overwhelming attacks on their national existence. In relation to all other issues, their relative weakness and greater proximity to the USSR will probably produce hesitations exceeding our own. By the same token each ally that may be fearful of being involved in a nuclear war against his will may take drastic steps to dissociate himself from his partners in tense periods. The result of a multiplication of national retaliatory forces must be the weakening, if not the disintegration, of NATO. Such a course will diffuse the risks while detracting from over-all strength."

I recall that, at the working breakfast in the State Department on 12 November 1974, when Sir John Hunt, then the Secretary of the Cabinet, asked you for your reaction if the British Government were faced with a choice between maintaining the Polaris force or the strength of our conventional forces, you gave a cautious reply. You said that you hoped the choice would not arise, and expressed that we could well afford both; but that you would deprecate Britain giving up her nuclear capability, as it would send the wrong message to Moscow.