PARTICIPANTS—Members of the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs who participated in the negotiations of economic and commercial agreements with the Soviet Union are, from left to right: Clarke Ellis, Robert B. Wright, Joseph E. O'Mahony, Assistant Secretary Armstrong, F. Louise Hughes, H. Gardner Ainsworth, Thomas C. Dawson and Moorhead C. Kennedy, Jr.

## U.S. and Soviet Union Sign Economic and Commercial Agreements

A comprehensive series of economic and commercial agreements with the Soviet Union was signed in the John Quincy Adams Room of the Department on October 18. Secretary Rogers led the U.S. signers who, in addition to the Secretary, were Secretary of Commerce Peter G. Peterson and the President of the Export-Import Bank, Henry G. Kearns. Soviet Foreign Trade Minister Patolichev led the Soviet delegation.

The initial agreement, signed by Secretary Rogers and Minister Patolichev, was a settlement of the World War II Lend-Lease debt owed by the Soviets. The agreement provides for additional Soviet payments of $722 million over the next 28 years. The settlement was negotiated by Assistant Secretary Willis Armstrong of the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs and Soviet Vice-Minister of Foreign Trade Vladimir Alkhimov.

The recent rounds of negotiations on this debt began in April, were continued at the Summit in May and in meetings of the U.S. Soviet Commercial Commission in Moscow in July, and were concluded in October in talks in the Department. Talks on this issue had taken place in 1946, 1952, and 1960.

The second agreement signed was a comprehensive trade agreement negotiated by teams led by Secretary Peterson and Minister Patolichev. De-

partment representatives participated in the working groups on the agreement and Assistant Secretary Armstrong was a member of the U.S. Soviet Commercial Commission which met in Moscow in August and in Washington in early October to work out the agreement.

The final agreement signed in the eighth floor ceremony was between the U.S. Export-Import Bank and the Soviet Government. It provides for

FIRST PAYMENT—Soviet Vice-Minister of Foreign Trade Vladimer Alkhimov, right, presents Assistant Secretary Armstrong with a check for $12 million, the first payment under the recent agreement settling the Lend Lease debt.

extension of Export-Import Bank lending to private exports to the Soviet Union. The agreement was made possible by the determination October 18 by President Nixon that extension of credits was in the national interest. Export-Import Bank President Kearns and Soviet Vice-Minister Alkhimov signed this agreement.

These three agreements were preceded by the conclusion of a Maritime Agreement with the Soviet Union which was signed on October 14 by representatives of the Commerce Department and the Soviet Foreign Trade ministry.

Department offices participating in the negotiation of the agreements included the Bureau of European Affairs, the Legal Adviser's Office, the Office of East-West Trade, the Office of International Trade, the Office of Investment Affairs, and the Office of Maritime Affairs. The Economic Counselor from the Embassy in Moscow, Lewis Bowden, returned to Washington for the final round of talks.

More than 100 college-level courses will be offered after working hours in 23 downtown Federal buildings in the District of Columbia next spring through the Federal After Hours Education Program of the College of General Studies, George Washington University.

18

DEPARTMENT OF STATE NEWSLETTER

MEMORANDUM

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON

MEMORANDUM OF CONVERSATION

PARTICIPANTS:

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
Mr. Jacques Amalric, Le Monde
Mr. Stephen Barber, London Daily Telegraph
Mr. Heinz Barth, Die Welt (Hamburg)
Mr. Fred Emery, London Times
Mr. John Heffernan, Reuter News Agency
Mr. Marino de Medici, Il Tempo
Mr. John Midgley, The Economist
Mr. Fernand Moulier, French News Agency
Mr. Jan Reifenberg, Frankfurther Allgemeine Zeitung
Mr. Joachim Schwelien, Stuttgarter Zeitung
Mr. Ugo Stille, Corriera della Sera
Mr. Hans Tuetsch, Neue Zuercher Zeitung
Dr. Herbert von Borch, Sueddeutsche Zeitung (Munich)
Mr. Adalbert de Segonzac, France-Soir
Mr. Les Janka (Notetaker)

TIME & PLACE:

1:15 - 2:30 p.m., November 3, 1972
Chez Camille Restaurant

The luncheon was opened by Mr. de Segonzac who introduced Dr. Kissinger and confirmed the ground rules for this meeting: that it would be totally off the record. There must be no attribution and the attendees were to write their stories under their own authority. It was to be as if this luncheon had never happened.

Dr. Kissinger made no opening statement and said that he would proceed directly to questions.

**Question:** Have you read Mr. Landau's biography? Are you pleased with it?

**Dr. Kissinger:** I have read excerpts published in various places, but I have not read the whole book. All I can say is that it does not do justice to my own estimation of myself, but then very little that I read does. I found it amusing that in the book Landau argued that the problem with our

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Vietnam effort was that I was trying to closely link the military and political issues and then only a few days ago in the *New York Times* he criticizes our draft agreement for now having linked the military and political aspects. Actually I have never met him. I would consider him more indicative of the mood at Harvard right now, than a serious researcher, which he is certainly not. My guess is that he did most of this with the assistance of my ex-colleagues at Harvard.

**Question:** Did you read I. F. Stone's piece in the recent New York review of books?

**Dr. Kissinger:** No, I have not read that piece, but I. F. Stone is a very intelligent man.

**Question:** But what do you think of various pieces that try to compare the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy with Metternich foreign policy?

**Dr. Kissinger:** To think that you can draw comparisons of Metternich, who operated at a time when diplomatic communications took a matter of weeks, at a time when the leaders with which he dealt were essentially homogeneous members of the aristocracy of Europe, and at a time when he could operate with very few domestic constraints in that going to war was not a matter of public opinion; with the world today when communication is instantaneous, when diplomacy is global and operates under a threat of nuclear holocaust, and under a heavy burden of domestic public opinion, and when you are dealing with all kinds of leaders of various cultures all over the world, is totally absurd. And after all, you must realize that my writing on Metternich was part of a PhD thesis. Metternich was never seen as a model for the development of a perfect foreign policy. Also, the Metternich part of my PhD thesis was conceived as only the first third of a larger work, the other two parts of which I never finished. There was, however, a longish related article on Bismarck which came out later. In comparing the 19th to the 20th century, I would say that Bismarck is far more relevant to contemporary times than any other 19th century diplomatic figure.

**Question:** Speaking about aristocratic diplomatists, how aristocratic did you find Le Duc Tho? How did you find him as a person?

**Dr. Kissinger:** Le Duc Tho represents what passes for the aristocracy in the Communist world. He is a member of the Politburo and has long military experience. He is a man of enormous dedication, and is of the generation of Communists who made their own revolution.

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**Question:** What kind of personal relationship did you develop with Le Duc Tho in your negotiations?

**Dr. Kissinger:** The relationship is one of great personal respect. As the negotiations progressed, some meetings were very long and extremely tough. Le Duc Tho is polite and has a good sense of humor. Our meetings were conducted with no vilification. There was always extreme politeness on both sides and of course towards the end a real sense of seriousness prevailed.

**Question:** How good of an understanding does North Vietnam have of the politics of this country? Do they understand our peace movement?

**Dr. Kissinger:** Certainly they have all the details, but for some reason they can't put it altogether into an understandable pattern. For example, the recent prisoner of war release shows how little they understand what goes on in this country. That release would have had serious public impact if they had given them to the U.S. Government. But instead they turned them over to Cora Weiss and David Dellinger, who are hardly known in this country or if known at all, in a very negative way. Their giving the POWs over to Cora Weiss was a totally counterproductive action. At another time Le Duc Tho mentioned some anti-war leader as the leader of millions of people. I responded that I didn't know him and Le Duc Tho said he was the leader who burned himself alive in front of the U.N. Now, Le Duc Tho saw him as a leader of millions, but I still don't know his name and I doubt there is one person in five million in this country who would know his name. So you can see they have lots of details but they can't put it altogether into a coherent understanding of how our system works.

**Question:** But why then did they make this agreement? The POW release must have been followed by a considerable change in mood or attitude leading up to October 8.

**Dr. Kissinger:** North Vietnamese decide things over a long period of time. The decision for the POW release was made at an earlier point when they thought the election would be much closer and they thought they might be able to influence it. Even though that fact had changed they proceeded with the POW release anyway.

**Question:** Did the election actually have an effect on the timing of this agreement?

**Dr. Kissinger:** It is clear that they wanted it settled before November 7.

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**Question:** As the negotiations resume, will there be new conditions discussed? Will there be new explorations to be clarified and settled?

**Dr. Kissinger:** I have found the U.S. press play on this very interesting. All summer long the press was saying that the talks in Paris were just a fraud. Now I have three hundred press calls a week trying to take the temperature every hour to see where we stand on the talks. Let me say that my press conference on October 26 was done only on three or four hours notice. We had intended fully to keep the agreement secret but Hanoi of course forced our hand. Now we are not going to negotiate with Hanoi through the press. Hanoi knows very well what we want. They can have no doubt at all what it is we are seeking. All the little things you see coming out in the press now are really not new, it is just that they are becoming public. So I say again, Hanoi knows very well what it is we want. There is nothing new to this and they can have no doubt at all about it.

**Question:** Well then, what are these misunderstandings or ambiguities which seem to exist?

**Dr. Kissinger:** What we have here, I think, is a combination of honest misunderstandings and some wishful thinking on the part of Hanoi. It was the other side that was always pushing for the schedule that they proposed. However, we told them what had to be done in order to meet these schedules or to reach a final settlement, but they may not have been listening. This was partly due to their worries about the approach of November 7. They seem to be thinking that we might kick over the agreement after November 7 and therefore they wanted it nailed down before that date.

**Question:** But what about their claim that the President had actually agreed to sign on October 31?

**Dr. Kissinger:** Their own statements on this matter are quite contradictory. First they point out that October 31 was firmly agreed upon but at the same time they point out quite clearly that we had changed the date several times. When they claim the President agreed to the 31st in a letter dated October 22, they fail to point out that the President then proposed on the 23rd of October that there be another meeting, thus between the 22nd and the 23rd there could have been confused for at most 24 to 36 hours. By the 23rd they knew clearly that we were asking for another meeting before a final settlement.

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**Question:** Do you consider the agreement still open? Or incomplete? Or did new questions arise when you met with President Thieu?

**Dr. Kissinger:** Some items are not new items; they are things that the North has always understood that it must do, but I do not want to go into detail on these matters. Other things, such as the international supervisory commission for a ceasefire were left vague and when I was in Saigon we began to get intelligent evidence of Hanoi's plans for big actions around a ceasefire date which would probably lead to a tremendous massacre. Only then we decided that we had to get a supervisory commission in place at the time a ceasefire would take effect. Also we now find them playing games with the translations. We do have to clarify some of the linguistic ambiguities which have now appeared. Let me say that if they are approaching the next meeting with the attitude they displayed October 8 through 11, then all of these matters will be easily settled. However, if they want a deadlock, then these issues are certainly capable of providing the excuse for such a deadlock.

**Question:** Can you assure the other side that after November 8 you will not kick over the agreement?

**Dr. Kissinger:** We are in contact with them at this time.

**Question:** In his speech last night the President reiterated that it was to be an Indochina-wide ceasefire, although in your press briefing the ceasefire seemed to relate only to South Vietnam. Was the President widening the scope of the agreement last night?

**Dr. Kissinger:** No, no, there is an understanding on this. There will be a nearly simultaneous ceasefire throughout Indochina. I pointed this out on October 26, if you will go back and read the transcript of that briefing.

**Question:** Is a North Vietnamese troop withdrawal one of the unilateral understandings which exist outside the agreement?

**Dr. Kissinger:** I won't get into the troop question, which I might say has taken on an odd significance in the debate of last week. Let me point out that, first, the American proposals since 1970 have never required the withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops. Therefore there is nothing new in this. We have never made this a formal part of any ceasefire agreement. I would also point out to you that the withdrawal of NVA troops from Laos and Cambodia was not part of the plan announced on May 8, but we have progressed to the point where it is now part of the

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current agreement. Now, under the October 8 plan, what do we have. First, infiltration of foreign troops must stop. Second, no new equipment can come in, only replacement of that which is there now. There is very little heavy equipment left with these North Vietnamese troops. Most of their tanks and other heavy equipment have been destroyed. Third, if North Vietnamese troops are withdrawn from Cambodia and Laos, and the Ho Chi Minh Trail as a result is closed down, there is no possibility North Vietnam can really maintain its forces in the South. Additionally, the called-for demobilization factor will vastly favor the South which has a much bigger army and can more easily afford the equal reductions in forces. So you can see that the NVA forces in the South are only a problem if North Vietnam does not keep the agreement. But even if they decide to break the agreement, the men in the South will have no real significance anyway. They aren't that powerful and they aren't that well equipped. And you must recognize that this agreement does not legitimize the North Vietnamese forces in the South; it merely does not require Hanoi to admit the presence of its forces in the South, which is probably impossible to get Hanoi to do. More importantly in this context you must remember that North Vietnamese have fought for 15 years, yet all they have to show for it is control over perhaps 10 percent of the population, even by the most generous estimates. As for control of a great percentage of territory, it is hard to tell who actually controls empty uninhabited territory. With more Viet Cong in President Thieu's jails than are free in South Vietnam, any withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops would in fact be a requirement for total unconditional surrender on the part of the North Vietnamese. It is obvious the North Vietnamese would not sign that kind of an agreement. In conclusion then, it is important to see that the presence of troops is not as important as is the will of North Vietnam to keep the agreement. What we have to do now is to create the foreign policy environment, aid programs and so forth to keep another war from starting.

**Question:** Why then is Thieu so nervous?

**Dr. Kissinger:** He is nervous because he will never have a better set of conditions than 200 B-52s on his side, and the fact that this agreement will force him into a political contest rather than a military one. And as you can realize, he and his colleagues are much more comfortable in a military contest than with the unknowns of a political one. And of course he is also trying to show that he is not a U.S. puppet. Now, when we have people who have been slaughtering each other for 25 years, we cannot expect them to approach a settlement with exactly western rationality.

**Question:** Are there really two agreements? A public one and a more extensive private one?

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**Dr. Kissinger:** Hanoi just put out a summary which of course reflected some of the Hanoi biases. We would not want to put out the full record now as that might be injurious to the next negotiating sessions.

**Question:** Do the North Vietnamese have to remove their troops from Laos and Cambodia?

**Dr. Kissinger:** Yes, the agreement clearly states that foreign troops cannot be in Laos and Cambodia. Therefore, the North Vietnamese cannot withdraw from South Vietnam into Laos and Cambodia.

**Question:** What about this National Council of Reconciliation, has its role been somewhat overemphasized in light of the fact that the two sides have to agree on everything it does?

**Dr. Kissinger:** Our problem has been with the U.S. press which has itself totally committed to a coalition government. At times I think our press may even be trying to negotiate a separate peace with the enemy. But let me point out that even Pham Van Dong has said that this kind of body would be essentially a cosmetic cover. Let us ask ourselves what is this Council to actually be. It is not a government. It will only promote the agreements reached and the observance of the ceasefire. Its only specific task is to organize and supervise the elections. But these elections are to be determined by the two sides. The fact of the elections, the timing of the elections and even the institutions for which these elections are to occur have not been decided. Also this National Council will operate by unanimity which will of course limit its aggressiveness. Now it has been noted that this National Council will not work. I will admit to you that I won't hasten to call the President to point out to him that fact. But looking back you must remember that on January 25 we proposed at that time an agreement calling for an election within six months with Thieu resigning a month before. Now the provisions of the current agreement are much less onerous to Thieu. There is no time limit, Thieu doesn't have to resign and there is no proposal for the institutions for which these elections are to be held. Thus, what can this Council do? It has no power, no function that any government not exercises in South Vietnam.

**Question:** What is it you want to clarify about this National Council of Reconciliation?

**Dr. Kissinger:** The use of the Vietnamese word for "administrative structure" is not fully clarified. We would prefer to see wording indicating a more non-governmental aspect to this entity. Now, looking at

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this National Council of Reconciliation, and comparing it to the other
side's September 11 statement, there can be no doubt who made the
major concessions on October 8. On September 11 they wanted a
coalition government with a total dissolution of the South Vietnamese
government. But on October 8 they accepted our approach of separating
the military issues from the political issues and agreed to the formation
of this National Council of Reconciliation and Concord.

**Question:** Does the concept of a "decent interval" as suggested by Landau now have any meaning?

**Dr. Kissinger:** I can imagine that the North Vietnamese are telling themselves that the South Vietnamese Government cannot survive the centrifugal pressures of peace, but equally they must also recognize that their present course had no hope of success. Therefore, a pause, a period of reconstruction would most importantly permit them to rest and renew their strength and recover from the devastation of their country. For our part, we could also see that two more years of war would not significantly strengthen the South Vietnamese Government beyond where it is now. All in all, in foreign policy, if you can gain three to five years in any agreement, then you can look for and expect other things to come to bear on the situation. Thus, I can certainly assure you that there is no hidden agreement with North Vietnam for any specific interval after which we would no longer care if they marched in and took over South Vietnam. What we really want to say is that we gave Thieu a decent chance to survive. No matter what we did, we could not guarantee Thieu's survival. We believe, however, that a government in South Vietnam with a million man army and a huge police force should be able to win any political contest. On the other hand, there is no uncertainty about the military situation at the present. If only 10 percent of the people in the country make up the Communist side, the government of South Vietnam ought to be able to win any political contest. Thus in fact the only uncertainty is the cohesion of the South Vietnamese and their ability to wage and win a political contest.

**Question:** Why couldn't you gain even more by waiting for another year?

**Dr. Kissinger:** We would have to pay too high a price in this country. For what kind of a better agreement could we obtain? We would have to weigh the erosion of U.S. public support for the South Vietnamese Government in terms of budgetary support, public opinion and so forth against some marginal, if any, gains in a future agreement. What more could we gain? We could never get a concession of complete collapse from Hanoi.

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**Question:** Why is there the replacement clause in the agreement if you have a total ceasefire?

**Dr. Kissinger:** That clause is to permit the one for one replacement of material which will naturally wear out and be lost. Also it is a way of guaranteeing against weakness in the face of any potential infiltration.

**Question:** Just how is the ceasefire balance of forces and demarcation of territory spelled out in the agreement?

**Dr. Kissinger:** There is a very highly detailed section in the agreement on the supervision aspects. And of course we now want to see that the machinery for supervision is in place at the time the agreement takes effect. Actually on the demarcation problem, most of the territory held by both sides is pretty much contiguous. The VC hold a few small slivers along the coast and along some of the borders, but we are really not faced with a major "leopard spot" problem in South Vietnam. Demarcation will really not be a serious problem for us.

**Question:** But what about the contested hamlets where at night they are controlled by the Viet Cong and during the day by the GVN?

**Dr. Kissinger:** I grant there will be innumerable problems. But this should be a much smaller problem for the side with a million man army and a huge policy force than it will be for the Viet Cong.

**Question:** What factors do you think influenced the North Vietnamese towards their decision of October 8?

**Dr. Kissinger:** The May 8 decision to resume the bombing, the mining, the failure of the North Vietnamese offensive against the South, and the lack of support from their allies. Especially significant is the way North Vietnam's allies stopped their previous total support. All of these factors combined to make them seek a settlement at this time. Also we should realize that they lost most of their guerrilla base in the South in 1968 during the Tet offensive. They were unable to rebuild this and thus there was no uprising in the invasion of this year. Their alternative of massive military invasion obviously failed. Therefore, what can they do in the 1976 Presidential election? They will be dealing with an incumbent who will not be running again. They have tried guerrilla uprising, they have tried a massive military invasion, and they have no clear alternative left.

**Question:** Turning to Europe, what can you tell us about any efforts to build a new Atlantic partnership? Some people here in town say there is nothing to rumors that the Nixon Administration will move in that direction.

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**Dr. Kissinger:** We don't have a detailed program right now, but I think our record of the past three years will show that we do what we say. Present conditions show us that we cannot rely on security structures alone, although we will be dealing with NATO and with such issues as MBFR. We will also want to build a new political relationship as well as a new economic framework as a means of avoiding the inevitable conflict if we go on as we have over the last year or two. Our general approach, then, will be to combine these three factors into a broader, more comprehensive relationship. In fact I have a small group working on this right now. If you have picked up reports to the contrary around town, you are obviously not talking to the right people.

**Question:** Returning to Vietnam, what do you see in terms of the ultimate political outcome. How can you guarantee that this agreement will hold?

**Dr. Kissinger:** Objectively the Viet Cong have discipline and cohesion going for them. On a more factual basis, South Vietnam has all the assets of strength and control which will make them a powerful political force. It is interesting to note in this context that it is the North Vietnamese who want a larger supervisory force rather than a smaller one. I would think this indicates that it is they who want the protection and that they do not want a small force as a means of eventually kicking over the agreement. Speaking of the International Supervisory Force, I can tell you that we have already agreed on the countries to be involved. For our part we want somewhat larger numbers than I have seen talked about in the press, but still the United States has envisioned a more modest level of supervisory force than the North Vietnamese have wanted. It seems clear that they are looking to this international force to protect them from the more powerful South Vietnamese. Thus, given the objective relationship of forces, I would think it is safe to say that South Vietnam's adherents will be much safer than the followers of the Viet Cong.

**Question:** How do you envision the physical contact between the two South Vietnamese parties?

**Dr. Kissinger:** It will occur at two levels. There will be a joint military commission of the two sides which will be operating at the local levels. But also there will be the International Commission above this to act on appeals.

**Question:** Who will chair the International Supervisory Force?

**Dr. Kissinger:** This will operate on a rotating basis.

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**Question:** Why hasn't Hanoi agreed to another meeting?

**Dr. Kissinger:** I think they have delayed because they had briefed all of their people and had planned certain military actions to coincide with a ceasefire and thus had all of their people hanging out in exposed positions. Also, they would lose face if Le Duc Tho left for Paris right after the 31st deadline passed. Now, they may have thought that if they met before the election, the U.S. would get what it wanted but still delay the signing until after the election, thus getting the maximum benefit for the election and still being able to renege on the agreement after November 7. But also on our part, we wanted to avoid the inevitable press crush at any meeting right around the election. I did not want to go to Paris with 200 press right on my tail, pressing for hourly briefings and progress reports, and creating a public spectacular could only lead to extraneous pressures on both sides. Thus, in terms of when the next meeting will be, we first of course will have to see Le Duc Tho leave Hanoi. Let me just say, we are ready to meet and we are waiting for the other side. It is not possible that, after both sides coming 90 percent of the way, we could now fail to finally reach an agreement.

**Question:** Can you describe for us the international conference and its composition?

**Dr. Kissinger:** The international conference would spell out guarantees for the agreement, set up new ones and where necessary make recommendations for the establishment of a more permanent peace in Indochina.

**Question:** Will the French be involved in any way in the supervisory force?

**Dr. Kissinger:** My guess would be that if the French wanted to operate in South Vietnam, they would have to fight their way back in.

**Question:** You mentioned the possibility of a deadlock over some of the remaining issues. Do you expect there might be a deadlock?

**Dr. Kissinger:** My judgment is that they will maintain the attitude reflected by their decision of October 8. What we ask now are relatively minor issues compared to what they have already decided to do. Actually nothing has happened this week that I didn't foresee nor am I any less confident now than I was a week ago. I think it is possible that their nightmare now is coming to a meeting which results in a situation where we will want to renegotiate the agreement and thus make it look like they are becoming

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the obstacle to peace, permitting the President to renew the bombing or
other military actions. However, if you read everything they are saying, they
are in effect really asking how they can be sure that the Americans are ser-
ious about reaching an agreement. This is what they are seeking assurances
upon. Also I can tell you that their private posture is less belligerent than
their public stance has been this week.

**Question:** Can you comment on reports that you want 35,000 troops pulled out before the signing of an agreement. Is this in effect a new condition for a final settlement?

**Dr. Kissinger:** The North has always known our position. This is nothing new. We have not changed one thing about it. To better understand this, you must look to the distribution of their troops in South Vietnam, the great bulk of which are in the northern provinces very close to the DMZ. In this sense, for them the strategic weight will not be greatly affected by a few miles' withdrawal to North Vietnam. It is still as militarily significant on their side of the border as it is in the South if the North decides to break the agreement. The remainder of their troops are scattered in very small groups all along the border stretching down into the South.

**Question:** You have said that you want the supervisory force in place at the time of a ceasefire, but in fact it doesn't even exist yet.

**Dr. Kissinger:** I think we could get it put together in a week. At the most two. In this matter of a ceasefire, you must realize that Hanoi is probably more afraid of being tricked than defeated. They have gone and are now going through a serious psychological trauma. For the U.S. there is no magic about November 7. Our social problems and our political pressures will be just as great and just as serious after November 7. The election in effect is not the problem for the United States it is for North Vietnam.

**Question:** What would you do if Thieu tries to sabotage the agreement?

**Dr. Kissinger:** The U.S. will do its best to get serious implementation of the agreements. And of course we are not without means of influence in the South.

**Question:** Who will retain control of the police and the army during the elections?

**Dr. Kissinger:** Both sides will control their own forces. Even Hanoi radio broadcasts have made it clear that both sides will maintain control over their respective forces until the election.

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**Question:** What about the timing of the election? Pham Van Dong says that it should come within six months.

**Dr. Kissinger:** There is no understanding on the timing of an election, inside or outside of the agreement.

**Question:** What can you tell us about current troop movements or continued infiltration at this time?

**Dr. Kissinger:** I guess I would say that the press reports you have seen are fairly accurate. Clearly you would expect the North to try to resupply its troops in the South which have been fighting desperately and have suffered serious losses of men and material. However I doubt that the reports saying three divisions of North Vietnamese moving into South Vietnam from Cambodia are accurate. From the briefings I received in Saigon, I can see that most of their units are now very much under strength. As you read reports of hamlets being taken now, you must realize this is being done by very small groups, maybe only as many as 50 men. Reports of roads being cut are in fact being cut only between 4:00 and 7:00 a.m. and again only by small groups of men.

**Question:** Leaving Vietnam for a moment, could you compare the quality of the leadership you found in Peking and Moscow?

**Dr. Kissinger:** The people are of course completely different. The people in Peking made their own revolution. They are the generation of Lenin, and they took great personal risks in bringing about their revolution. The leaders in Moscow on the other hand are products of a bureaucracy. They are much less messianic, more cautious, less inspired about their revolution and of course you have the great cultural differences.

**Question:** Do you think the success of this agreement depends to a large degree on the Chinese?

**Dr. Kissinger:** The success of this agreement will depend on restraint of all the foreign powers, including the U.S. Success will depend on the major powers not trying to give unilateral advantage to either side, but this matter of supply will not be easy. You must realize that this year's invasion came only after two years of hoarding and building up equipment by the North Vietnamese. But I can't see why either the Soviets or the Chinese would see any advantage in a new Indochina flareup. I would think that over a period of time, Indochina will at last be placed in its proper perspective in world politics.

**Question:** How much U.S. aid for North Vietnam is involved?

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**Dr. Kissinger:** This aid is not in any way reparation. The U.S. will help according to its traditions. I would also point out to you that the five-year reconstruction program may in fact become a major means for restraining new military actions. This will give us a certain amount of leverage with the North. However, I readily admit that there may be centrifugal forces in Saigon that will blow everything apart after this agreement. But I would point out that it will be peace, not this agreement, that leads to the breakdown in Indochina. Now, even the leaders in Hanoi cannot know exactly how they will be able to keep up their military power after peace in announced. Once they have their victory celebrations, as I am sure they will, they will have a hard time drafting people and sending supplies South and keeping up the military discipline required. I would give you the example of the Soviet Union in 1945. There is no question that in 1945 they could have continued to fight for one, two, or maybe even three more years. But once peace was announced, it was extremely difficult for them to ever contemplate another war. And this avoidance of war has been a major factor in Soviet foreign policy ever since. Thus North Vietnam after the settlement will not be the North Vietnam we know now. I would think the idea that after millions of casualties and the heavy destruction of their country, that they will start a new war is the height of improbability.

**Question:** What does China want after Thieu? Would they want a more neutral South Vietnam?

**Dr. Kissinger:** China is probably ambivalent on this matter. But let me say that the U.S. is not fighting to preserve a particular government in Saigon. It similarly will not participate in any military/political agreement or pressures to bring about in Saigon what we have fought for years to prevent. Obviously we will not stand in the way of a free political contest. If Thieu loses it, we will not in any way intervene to preserve him.

**Question:** When do you see U.S. troops being withdrawn from Taiwan?

**Dr. Kissinger:** Generally, I would say to you that U.S. troops on Taiwan are not directly linked to Vietnam despite any reference you might make to the Shanghai communique. All of this will be worked out and I foresee no big problems. This can be handled painlessly over time.

**Question:** What are your personal plans for 1973 and beyond?

**Dr. Kissinger:** Genuinely, I can tell you I haven't really given it any thought. I just haven't had the time to think about it. I have always said that I would stay in the Administration until Vietnam is settled, but that doesn't mean necessarily that I will leave once it is settled. Again I would say, I just haven't had time to think about it or make any plans.

MEMORANDUM

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON

November 3, 1972

ADMINISTRATIVELY CONFIDENTIAL

MEMORANDUM FOR: MR. HENRY KISSINGER

FROM: BRUCE KEHRLI

SUBJECT: Article by Hamilton Fish Armstrong

The attached article "Isolated America" by Hamilton Fish Armstrong has been reviewed and it was requested that, after the election, you prepare a critique of this last bump from the foreign policy establishment.

Please follow up and submit this critique to the Office of the Staff Secretary by November 17, 1972.

Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT HAS SEEN...

# FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Vol. 51

OCTOBER 1972

## ISOLATED AMERICA

By Hamilton Fish Armstrong

SEVENTY-FIVE years ago, Archibald Cary Coolidge, who later became the first Editor of *Foreign Affairs*, wrote a book with a theme and title entirely novel at that time, "The United States as a World Power." In it he made the first attempt to define the new role in the world then rapidly being assumed by the United States. He remarked that all nations divide mankind into two categories—themselves and everybody else. And he said that Americans would be just as prone as others to cherish the pleasing belief that they had grown great by their own virtues and the favor of a kindly Providence, whereas the progress of other states was marked by unscrupulous rapacity; hence, they would demand that American statesmen keep sharp watch lest nefarious foreigners take advantage of their good nature and honest simplicity. The accuracy of Mr. Coolidge's analysis was corroborated before long by the alacrity with which the American people accepted the idea that they had come into World War I altruistically, in order to make the world safe for democracy ("American" democracy); and again by their readiness to suppose that President Wilson and his advisers at Paris had been bamboozled by wily European statesmen. The latter conception was promoted by American isolationists who depicted the League of Nations as a naïve and useless affair and a trap to involve us in Old World power politics.

The war in Vietnam has been the longest and in some respects the most calamitous war in our history. It has rent the American people apart, spiritually and politically. It is a war which has not been and could not be won, a war which was pushed from small beginnings to an appalling multitude of horrors, many of which we have become conscious of only by degrees. The methods we have used in fighting the war have scandalized and disgusted public opinion in almost all foreign countries.

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Not since we withdrew into comfortable isolation in 1920 has the prestige of the United States stood so low. Following Harding's sweeping victory and his announcement that Wilson's League was "now deceased," the League of Nations passed out of the minds of most Americans. Having won the war for their allies, as they put it, Americans considered that they were entitled to attend to their own affairs exclusively. The world was stunned. The United States had won glory by turning the tide of battle in Europe and moral stature by sponsoring, through President Wilson, a program for organizing the peace that the world craved. In their disillusionment, Europeans did not forget America's achievements in the war or minimize what the American Relief Administration and other organizations continued to do in feeding the starving and restoring the wreckage in devastated regions. But something was gone from the picture that the world had formed in wartime of Americans; their ad-venturousness, their willingness to take risks had disappeared. There were Americans, too, who felt that the American dream had paled and who had twinges of conscience that their country was taking no part in the endeavor to make a new war less likely.

Efforts were made before long to demonstrate that the United States was on the side of peace even though it would not share the alleged risks of becoming a member of the League of Nations. One effort was made in Coolidge's administration, the second in Hoover's. In the summer of 1928 Secretary of State Kellogg took part in negotiating what became the Pact of Paris, the purpose of which was, in the popular phrase, to "outlaw war." It aimed to establish peace by fiat and was acceptable to the U.S. Senate because its signatories were not committed to take any concrete action to prevent aggression. It was harmless except to the extent that it led the American public to suppose that something effective had been done to compensate for the refusal to participate in the League. A second effort to show that the United States was on the side of peace was made by Secretary of State Stimson in January 1932. The League had been struggling vainly to find means to curb the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Stimson sought to back up the effort by committing the United States to a policy of not recognizing the fruits of aggression. The plan was well intentioned, but its effect in slowing the Japanese invasion was nil.

This was not a period in which the United States was influen-

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tial in world affairs. Materially, it was a Great Power in capital letters; morally, its greatness did not shine. When the Great Depression overwhelmed the United States, as all nations, Roosevelt's spectacular measures of reform gave the American people hope and trust again, but there was little energy left to think about the troubles and dangers of others. The European landscape was black. A new arms race set in. Hitler's advent was a portent of what was to come. Roosevelt made an effort to have the Neutrality Act amended so that the United States need not, by insisting on its rights as a neutral, break a blockade set up by members of the League against an aggressor; the possibility that it would recognize a blockade would be a powerful deterrent to aggression. The Senate refused.

Through the interwar years the picture of the United States in the eyes of the world remained much as it had been after the Senate killed the proposal to join the League, refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and rejected the Tripartite Pact which promised France protection against fresh German attack and which she had accepted as a substitute for seizing territorial guarantees of her own on the Rhine. Nor did it ratify the Protocol of the World Court. American policy was looked upon as quirky and unpredictable.

## II

In the first issue of *Foreign Affairs* Elihu Root expressed a fairly obvious fact in picturesque language: "When foreign affairs were ruled by autocracies or oligarchies the danger of war was in sinister purpose. When foreign affairs are ruled by democracies the danger of war will be in mistaken beliefs." It is notable that Mr. Root, having in mind the collapse of four great autocracies following the First World War, referred to autocracies in the past tense, an error of which we soon became aware.

Since the United States is not an autocracy nor is it an oligarchy in the formal meaning of that term, the Vietnam War did not originate in what Mr. Root called sinister purpose. Did it, then, originate in mistaken beliefs? If we did indeed start down the road to war unwittingly and in ignorance, and if we failed to notice the points at which our leaders went wrong in time to curb or deflect them from a doomed failure, what are the characteristics of our society which account for our having been left in such a pitiable situation?

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Discussions of the issues raised by these questions, indeed the discussion of all the problems of American foreign relations, are being carried on today in a denatured terminology. The rhetoric of good words and high ideals is everywhere heard; but the opponents of selfish or provincial attitudes are at a disadvantage which they did not face formerly and do not altogether recognize now. The words used to express the highest aspirations have become shopworn. Calls to duty or endeavor like those uttered 50 years ago by Woodrow Wilson today sound hollow and meretricious. The phrases have been used and abused too long.

It was in that period of American public euphoria, misleadingly called "normalcy," that *Foreign Affairs* was founded. Its purpose was not to promote specific policies, however laudable, but to increase the interest of the American public in foreign policy as such and stimulate their consciousness that they were an integral part of a world society and had a concern for its welfare as a whole. To anyone who had a share in that enterprise there seems to be a similarity in the situation then and now. Actually, however, the forces at work are very different. *The risk today* is not that the American people may become isolationist; the reality is that the United States is being isolated.

In these conditions, an attempt to write other than cynically about the present situation of the United States seems bound to be an exercise in futility. Yet the attempt must be made. Unless we evaluate and not merely enumerate the elements in our society as they condition the quality of our foreign policy we shall not make progress in changing what we feel is wrong with it. And wrong it must have been. Not, in the experience of the present writer, since the Harding era when we denied our enlightened self-interest and retreated from responsibility in our foreign relationships, while confessing to scandal and tawdry commercialism at home, has the world had such a poor opinion of us. American principles, which sometimes were characterized as naïve but in general were respected as sincere and humane, now are freely called hypocritical and self-serving; the weight of American material and military power, looked to in the past as a mainstay of world stability, is now mistrusted and feared.

### III

Once again in the Second World War the United States saved Western civilization. The victory won, it took the lead in form-

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ing the United Nations and the Senate voted membership in it almost unanimously. It is now one of the two superpowers, unassailable in nuclear strength. Nevertheless its political power is less than its material power and its prestige is tarnished.

Our methods of fighting the Vietnam War are what have chiefly fanned world opinion against us. But there are other causes of resentment too. Radical changes in the structure of our foreign policy undertaken recently without notice to friends and allies have strengthened a feeling that American policies are conceived for American purposes only. Gratitude for the immense sums given for foreign aid since the war, and especially for the help given Europe in the Marshall Plan, has largely evaporated. Just as the war has sharpened all our internal conflicts, so it has accentuated foreign criticism of American civilization and intensified the resentment of foreign governments that the United States seems more and more to ignore their political interests and economic needs.

In the summer of 1971 President Nixon announced without warning that his National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, had been secretly consulting with Premier Chou En-lai in Pe-King and that he himself was planning a visit there shortly. A month later, he announced that he had unpegged the dollar from gold and ordered a ten percent surcharge on imports; this our allies considered contrary to international agreement. These actions, and to a lesser degree the later announcement that the President also planned to visit Moscow, confirmed the feeling in many foreign offices that American policy was erratic and ego-centric.

The President's goal was to come to live-and-let-live terms with two great nations that had long sought to undermine our position in the world and that were hostile to our social and political system. His grand hope was to end the remnants of the cold war with Soviet Russia and make progress toward cur tailing the arms race; and to open contacts with the People's Republic of China, with which we had no diplomatic relations and with which we had once come close to war on behalf of our protégé Taiwan. The objectives were admirable, provided the endeavor did not involve sacrificing friendships and alliances with peoples with whom we had had close ties, some of them traditional and in a sense sentimental, some economic and commercial, some rooted in similar concepts of constitutional gov-

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ernment, democracy and freedom. In his preoccupation with
methods of attaining the goal, and in his excitement as he seemed
to near it, the President lost sight of the proviso. The result was
a chaotic situation. The stability of the monetary system was
further undermined, with our NATO allies among those most
adversely affected. Canada, an essential friend and neighbor,
Japan, the rising power in East Asia, and India, the largest
Asian democracy, were alienated.

The approach to Peking was not precipitate; it had been care-
fully prepared. But the announcement that the President would
go there in person was made in a way that caused maximum em-
barrassment to the Japanese government. We had been pressing
Tokyo to have as little as possible to do with "Red" China, "our
mutual enemy." In so doing, we had opened Premier Eisaku
Sato to domestic attack for sacrificing Japan's interests to those
of the United States. Suddenly he found himself bereft of his
excuse for having taken a position opposed in many influential
circles. He felt betrayed.

Japan deserves consideration in the forefront of American
foreign policy in her own right. Japan is now the world's third
industrial power. Japan provides the second largest market,
after Canada, for American goods, and a third of her foreign
trade is with the United States. "Japan is our most important
ally," said President Nixon on February 25, 1971. Our recent
policies do not reflect a full awareness of these facts.

The end of our long-time friendship with India came about
as a by-product of our efforts to please the People's Republic of
China by averting our faces while the army of China's protégé,
Pakistan, bloodily repressed a revolt in the eastern half of the
country. India was overwhelmed by an influx of refugees from
East Pakistan and took the occasion to help weaken her tradi-
tional enemy Pakistan and establish the independence of East
Pakistan as Bangladesh, meanwhile accepting the support of the
Soviet Union in exchange for the peevish "neutrality" of the
United States. Our maneuvering included the futile naval
demonstration—plainly directed more against the Soviet Union
than India—of sending the *Enterprise* sailing up the Bay of Ben-
gal (and down again). The gainer was the Soviet Union, which
signed a treaty of mutual support with India and secured new
facilities on the Indian Ocean, where the Soviet fleet will now
face the American on better terms.

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7

Canada is our neighbor and, we have always assumed, our staunch friend. The British used to take us for granted, a fact that irked us considerably; the Canadians have been similarly irked that in our eyes Canada is a natural extension of our culture and a part of our economic domain. This has been particularly exasperating because it is based largely on fact. Our periodicals sell in Canada almost to the exclusion of the local product. We have provided the greater part of the capital for developing Canadian raw materials and have acquired majority control of Canadian industries.

The increasingly uncomfortable character of the Canadian-American relationship remained unrecognized by the American public and apparently was given scant consideration in Washington, as shown when President Nixon made his economic and financial announcements, and Secretary of the Treasury Connally at once began negotiations with Canada (as with many nations) in an effort to see that the United States derived maximum benefits from its new economic policy. In the talks with Canada he stressed the need to "rectify" Canada's favorable balance of trade with the United States, and demanded changes in the 1965 pact which allowed Canadian-manufactured automobiles to be shipped across the border duty-free.

Canada pointed out that not only had she suffered annual deficits in overall trade with the United States in the 20 years before 1970 but that for the five years before 1971 she had suffered deficits in the automobile trade up to $625 million. Was Canada to understand that the United States was prepared to trade with her only when she incurred a deficit, and required concessions from her when (for a change) the United States incurred a deficit? And how was Canada, with a trading deficit, to pay the immense sums of interest, dividends and transportation costs arising out of American investments in her industries?

The effort to improve the overall American trade balance and balance of payments, even if this meant resorting to protectionist measures, was of course connected with the financial drain of the war in Vietnam. Canadian public opinion was strongly critical of the war and this increased the opposition to American efforts to secure Canadian concessions to help pay for it. Canadian official resentment was exacerbated by Secretary Connally's seeming lack of understanding for Prime Minister Trudeau's difficulties in submitting to American demands when Canadian

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elections were in the offing. (American officials are not the only ones that must take account of elections.) In general, Canada simply put down the controversy as an example of the usual self-centered approach of Americans toward their northern neighbor.

"Our isolation from other peoples is the reverse of 50 years ago; today we are the object, not the subject.

## IV

Our age finds it convenient to simplify everything. "Know thyself," a difficult proposition, is supplanted by "Know everybody," not "everybody" as diverse types but as a single prototype—glands, psyches, behavioral reactions and all. That we take refuge in generality is not surprising. Our society has become so complex that the multiplicity of its individual problems overwhelms us. To save our self-respect we turn from the un-understandable particular to the perhaps understandable general.

What is called for is a resolute attempt at complication, as the events detailed above indicate. Interactions must be understood as well as facts. Science and technology are adding to the world's problems, not solving them. Something better than a hit-or-miss relationship must be established between the knowledge amassed by scientists in a multitude of fields and the decision-making processes of those who guide political action. How are discoveries in physics to be related to population trends, urban blight, television addiction, substitutes for standard nutritional resources? The answers will not come out of a computer because judgment as to utility and aesthetic choice cannot be fed in along with the facts. Robert Oppenheimer once said to me that physics had become so recondite that the formulae that demonstrate one scientist's conclusions often remain intelligible only to himself. How, then, is a statesman knowing nothing of science to choose between alternative recommendations regarding, say, the development of ballistic missiles, presented to him by scientific advisers who may not know possible variations in fundamental factors involved?

Those who watched the negotiators at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 struggle to find a realistic and usable pattern of the events that were transforming the world around them, and so to act to forestall new tragedy, redeem promises and justify hopes, were conscious that the leaders assembled there, men on the whole of unusual caliber and in some cases unusual idealism,

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9

were unable to come to grips individually with more than a
single fraction of the problems they faced. Single minds could
not encompass such complexities. Since then the condensation of
time and space has magnified the complexities and made each
component problem more immediate.

This ought to temper our criticism of our leaders as we look
back at the remnants of half-understood policies and stumbling
actions that strew the path of our involvement in Vietnam. It
does not make us feel a need, however, to be lenient in our judg-
ment where they disguised disasters in clichés or cloaked the
miseries of millions of refugees, harried hither and yon under a
rain of bombs, under comfortable terms like “resettlement” and
“reëducation.”

It must be made less likely—for it can never be made impos-
sible—for American leaders again to take the country into war,
unawares. Proposed legislation to limit executive power to con-
duct an undeclared war by requiring the President to obtain con-
gressional approval of his action within 30 days is misleading; in
30 days a war will have achieved a momentum of its own and
will have introduced complications in relations with third
powers that neither the public nor Congress will know how to
limit or terminate. And of course no domestic legislation can
prevent foreign attack, nuclear or otherwise. The prescription
for reform is not written in specific terms. If we assume that mis-
taken beliefs, in Mr. Root's terms, have been responsible for the
failure of the American democracy to curb actions of its lead-
ers that are leading to war, the prescription is stunningly large
and recovery can come only slowly as a result of a multitude of
actions that could give our country a sense of direction again.

The direction is not backward, in nostalgia, to the virtues of
our forefathers, except that we will draw from them an adven-
turous spirit and in that spirit will answer the question, “What is
wrong?” with the answer they gave, “Let’s do something about
it.” The direction is forward, to recognize and accept the present
ills of our society and to set about curing them—by rehumaniz-
ing ourselves, by readopting civility as a part of good behavior,
by recognizing that history can inform the future, by encourag-
ing the growth of élites in many fields, not in order to copy them
snobbishly but to set intellectual standards to which everyone
may in some degree aspire, by asserting that aesthetics is an essen-
tial element in art, by reëstablishing learning as opening doors

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to choice, by leavening the mediocrity of our culture with
snatches of unorthodoxy, by welcoming diversity of opinion as
an essential element of strength in a democracy.

Is this a dream? The crudeness brought by the mechanization
of modern life says, yes it is. But science need not be against us,
nor need we be against science. Almost 40 years ago Newton D.
Baker wrote in *Foreign Affairs*: "The triumph of science in the
material world encourages us to do some laboratory work with
the human spirit. A peaceful world would have been less amaz-
ing to George Washington than wireless telegraphy. We must
not think too well of atoms at the expense of thinking too ill of
men." If we accept that adjuration we may recover our self-
confidence and self-respect and regain for our nation the stand-
ing in the world's estimation it once possessed.