FRAGILE FRIENDSHIP:

UNITED STATES - JAPAN RELATIONS

AND THE BALANCE OF POWER IN POST-COLD WAR ASIA

April 20, 1993

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

by

Hon. Henry A. Kissinger

Introduction by President Richard Nixon

JOHN H. TAYLOR

This dinner has two owners and two custodians. One, of course, is the Conference, "Fragile Friendship", and the other is the President's Council of the Nixon Library and Birthplace, and those two custodians are Lawrence Eagleburger and Caroline Ahmanson. They would each like the opportunity to welcome you personally. Larry Eagleburger, our distinguished Co-Chairman, has a complete biography in your conference program. Suffice it to say that this former Secretary of State is one of our nation's most skilled and accomplished diplomats. Together with his Excellency, Toshiki Kaifu, former Prime Minister of Japan, from whom you will hear in just three or four hours, he was the indispensable element in making this conference possible. Please join me in welcoming Lawrence S. Eagleburger.

LAWRENCE S. EAGLEBURGER

Mr. President, the absent Henry Kissinger, for when he heard I was going to say something, left. The job of a chairman of a conference like this is to move things along and say as little as possible, so Colonel Taylor told me just a minute ago. So I will be very brief. Let me say, first of all, to all of those who were instrumental in organizing this conference, it is our hope that it will provide an opportunity for Americans and Japanese to be frank and honest with each other at a time when the challenges to our bilateral relationship are indeed serious and likely to become more so in the coming years, and with the hope that when this conference has ended, both we and our Japanese friends and allies will understand that as we

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move out of the Twentieth Century into the Twenty-First Century, and as we see the instabilities that are arising with the collapse of the Soviet empire, we will understand that without the cooperation of the Japanese democracy, the democracies of Western Europe and the United States, the Twenty-First Century could be a rather unpleasant time, but that if we and our Japanese friends and our European friends can work constructively and imaginatively together, it can indeed be a great century of stability, peace and prosperity.

At the same time that I say this-- and I now apologize to those who have heard this story before-- I want our Japanese friends to understand that this conference will-- thank you, Henry, for coming back before I finish.

I want our Japanese friends to understand that this conference will, from my point of view at least, be guided by the Machiavellian Principle. Machiavelli was dying and they got a priest from the church to come and give him the last rites, and the priest looked at him as he lay on his deathbed and said, "My son, my son, do you repent of your sins and renounce the Devil?" Machiavelli did not answer. The priest asked two or three more times and got no response, but finally in frustration he said, "I ask you for the last time: Do you repent of your sins and renounce the Devil?" And Machiavelli looked at him and said, "This is no time to make new enemies."

You will be hearing in a few moments from Henry Kissinger, but I did want to make one remark about my friend, my mentor, my teacher and my very good friend. And I have said for years and years that he is clearly the greatest Secretary of State of the Twentieth Century. It is only within the last several months that I've changed my mind.

I hope you will all enjoy the rest of the evening, and thank you for coming and God bless. Thank you.

JOHN H. TAYLOR

Coming from little Yorba Linda to introduce Caroline Ahmanson to this distinguished Los Angeles audience is like carrying coals to Newcastle, or as President Nixon likes to quote, the Japanese carrying saki to Nata. You all know her so well. She is a distinguished philanthropist, a singularly successful businesswoman, and is, like President Nixon, a Sinophile. In fact, she's about to embark upon her fourteenth visit to the Peoples Republic of China. More important to us at the Nixon Library, she's the founder of our President's Council, and she's offered tonight to give a toast. So please join me in welcoming Caroline L. Ahmanson.

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MS. AHMANSON

CAROLINE L. AHMANSON

I do add my welcome as well to this very distinguished audience. We are full of all kinds of diplomats, certainly American and Japanese, but we're also very fond of saying that we have some very, very special people, and these special people are here tonight. I would like to ask you to join me in saluting the thirty-seventh President of the United States, Richard Nixon.

It has been my great pleasure to be inspired by going to the birthplace and the Nixon Library. When I walked into that little home, which his father ordered by catalog from Sears Roebuck and that he built by hand and then, brick by brick, putting in the fireplace, even building a loft for four of their children just above their bedroom and living room, this to me was Americana, and this particular library receives no governmental support at all. That is why I started the President's Council.

I had the great privilege tonight to introduce a very good friend, and certainly one who has served not only a community but the nation very well. Here's a man who is always ready to help. When our great library, our public library here, burnt down, he stepped in, started the rebuilding and has contributed to so many of the wonderful causes, not only in our community but in our country. He is the Chairman of the Board of the American Place in this community, which is the private sector. He is the Chairman of Arco, a very good friend to all good causes, and now it is my great pleasure, and I ask you to welcome Lod Cook.

Incidentally, that tan he got also shows he's a good sportsman. He played golf today.

LODWRICK COOK, CHAIRMAN, ARCO

Thank you, Caroline, and thank you for telling everybody I played hooky today. Just this afternoon, though, I think some of you saw that Henry and I took a break. I thought I had better take one if he was going to take one because it probably meant he was going to talk longer than usual.

Larry mentioned about Henry being the great spaceman of our century. I have to share a true story with you. The first time I met Henry Kissinger was at a briefing at our tower some years ago, and at the break I went up to him, obviously very awed by him, and I said, "Mr. Secretary, I now know why you're the greatest spaceman of this century." There was this awkward pause, and I kind of blurted out, "I'm sorry I limited you to this century," and this is what he said: "I was wondering about that."

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MR. COOK

First of all, I want to congratulate Caroline on all you do for our community and for the library, and what a great person you are to have in our midst, and let's give her another round of applause.

It seems that like most of us, even former presidents of the United States have to play telephone tag every once in a while. A few weeks ago, for example, President Nixon had just returned to his home in New Jersey from a gruelling two week trip to the former Soviet Union when the telephone rang. It was the White House. President Clinton was calling to invite Mr. Nixon to come to Washington and report on his findings, and perhaps help educate him in the fine art of global politics. That's something Mr. Nixon knows quite a bit about.

The White House operator had Mr. Nixon on the line but was embarrassed to report that she was having trouble locating President Clinton. Mr. Nixon said, "I'll wait. He's a hell of a lot busier than I am." Mr. President, I find it hard to believe that anyone's busier than you are.

When the connection was finally made, you and President Clinton talked for forty minutes about conditions in Russia, and that conversation led to a face-to-face visit at the White House a few days later. I think everyone realizes that those conversations helped in a major way to shape the agenda for the meeting in Canada between President Clinton and Russia.

And I don't think it surprises anyone that you were back at the center of power. After all, you had been there for nearly half a century. We all remember that while in the White House, you became the first American president to visit China and the U.S.S.R., and you repeated your visits to those countries through the years.

You met them all, Mao, Breshnev, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and of course, Kruschev. And that last name reminds us of the most famous encounter of all: Your meeting with Premier Kruschev in the Moscow Kitchen thirty-four years ago. You described the scene in your ninth and latest book, *Seize the Moment*. When Kruschev bragged that your children will live under Communism, you responded that his grandchildren would live in freedom. You said in the book that you knew he was wrong, but you weren't sure that you were right.

Today, we know how right you were. Today, the American people from President Clinton on down, recognize and applaud the unique role you have played and are playing in building a safer, more peaceful world in which we hope all of our grandchildren will live. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor and privilege to present America's foreign policy

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elder statesman, the thirty-seventh President of the United
States, Richard Nixon.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON

Thank you very much. I am most grateful to Lod Cook for his very generous introduction, and I want to say that it was due to his assistance that I was able to travel both to Russia and other states from the former Soviet Union and later to Japan and Korea and China. And I want to say too, that as to his reference to me as the greatest statesman, I am going to introduce the greatest statesman. So in introducing Henry Kissinger, however, I should like to say that everybody has a favorite Kissinger story. He has a few himself.

So, anticipating that, I remember so well, the State dinner we gave for Golda Meir in the White House in 1969. She was very concerned at that time that the Europeans were being too naive about the Soviets. She expressed her concerns to me at the White House dinner. The dinner was held in the State dining room. It was like this with round tables. Henry was sitting at the table across from us and Mrs. Meir was sitting at my right. I was trying to reassure her on that point that the Europeans might be a little too naive, and I wanted to make it very clear to her that we were not being naive. I said, "You know, we have a Golden Rule, a Golden Rule of diplomacy. It is different from the Golden Rule of the New Testament which of course is 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' The Golden Rule of diplomacy as far as we're concerned is do unto others as they do unto you." She started to nod in agreement, and across the table; Henry growled, "Plus ten percent."

In his monograph on Lord Rosemary, Winston Churchill observed that he had the misfortune to live in a time of great men and small events. Henry Kissinger had the good fortune to live in a time of great events, and he had the genius to match those events. For him to have done even one of the four great achievements that he accomplished during his period as National Security Adviser and Secretary of State would have been enough to make a very successful administration.

Let me briefly mention, he played a decisive, indispensable role in the opening to China. He played an indispensable role and a decisive role in the new relationship with the Soviet Union, and particularly the first arms control agreement with the Soviet Union. And then again, he played a decisive role in the Vietnam peace agreement. Finally, and this has not been as well known and not adequately reported actually, he played an indispensable role after the Yom Kippur War in working for the mutual

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disengagement which set up the possibility which then matured in the Camp David Accords.

Any one of these achievements, as I have noted, would have been enough to make it a successful administration. But Henry had four of them, and that has to be a record. It's like Nolan Ryan's five no-hitters. It's a record that will never be broken. And so I would like to say tonight that in introducing him, I introduce him as a friend, I introduce him as a colleague and I introduce as the premier diplomat of the Twentieth Century.

HENRY KISSINGER

Mr. President and friends of the Nixon Library, after hearing this introduction, I can hardly wait to hear what I'm going to say. I might point out a fifth achievement which I owe to the President which is that for eighteen months, I was simultaneously National Security Adviser and Secretary of State. And the reason I mention that is because never before and never since have relations between the White House and the State Department been as harmonious as they were in those days.

Mr. President, what you have said means everything to me and it is however, giving me too much credit. Dean Acheson once said the relations between a President and a Secretary of State will always be good as long as the Secretary of State knows who the President is, and certainly, this is important for history. The decisions for that direction were made by President Nixon. The direction was established by President Nixon.

And I remember two lessons that may be aberristic that he managed to sum up in a sentence each for me. The first one was when I was prone to use three-syllable Harvard words. He would say to me, "Remember the American people will think what you have just said is a soft drink. So, simplify it." And the second and really crucial lesson which he always used to say, "The price you pay for doing something halfway is the same as for doing it completely. So, you might as well do it completely." Not an easy lesson to learn for a professor used to hedging his conclusions.

I believe that the period of the Nixon Administration will go down in foreign policy as one of the seminal periods in our history. America has had a very particular approach to foreign policy, shared by no other nation. When one reads the speeches of most American presidents, I would say almost without exception-- the only two exceptions I know, one is Theodore Roosevelt and the other one is President Nixon-- almost all the others, especially in this century, would say when they described some issue: America has no

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interest in this issue. We're doing it for abstract principles, for the rule of law, for resisting aggression, for helping the needy. We are the only country whose leaders have prided themselves on making sacrifices because we had no interest in a problem. Almost in every other country, foreign policy is justified because the country has an interest. America has believed that public morality and private morality should be identical. Its leaders have argued that it has a special mission in the world to spread its institutions and its values all over the world, and that that is almost key criterion of its foreign policy. And it has maligned the balance of power and all the other principles by which other nations have had to conduct foreign policy.

We could afford such an approach because we had a huge margin of survival. For the greatest part of American history, we could afford to be isolationist. Even at the end of World War II, when we first became involved in international affairs, we had a margin of superiority so vast that foreign policy could be conducted like domestic policy. When you have a nuclear monopoly and then a vast superiority, when you produce forty percent at least of the total gross national product of the world, you do not need to make decisions on the basis of assumptions. You can wait until a threat becomes unambiguous and then overwhelm it with resources.

I mention all of this because when President Nixon came into office, we had come to the end of our period of innocence. We had entered the war in Vietnam for very American and for very moral reasons in, as you will all remember, a different administration from President Nixon's. We ended it because the president who made that decision believed they were fighting for democracy in distant parts of the world and they wanted to contribute to development of the world in peace, which was jeopardized by what they believed to be a communist global conspiracy ran from Moscow and extending through Beijing into Hanoi. We learned in Vietnam the limits of our earth, and it was a painful, national, dramatic experience. And having ended the war as an expression of morality, there were so many Americans who wanted to leave it in a state of moral indignation.

I have recently been reviewing some of the debates of the period when President Nixon guided our nation, on that subject, and it is absolutely astonishing to think that the difference between what the demonstrators were asking for and what was in fact being done was sometimes a question of six to nine months. Almost everything that was being asked for was in fact being done. But there was one important difference. President Nixon believed-- and so did those of us who had the honor to serve him-- that this country was too important for the peace and progress of the world to

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simply jettison an enterprise that had already cost tens of thousands of American lives, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lives, in addition to the fact that there was also no practical way of doing it even if one had wanted to do it when there were still five hundred and fifty thousand Americans on the ground surrounded by a million Vietnamese that were armed on both sides.

President Nixon believed that there were people, and I heard them who said to him, "Why don't you just say a horrible mistake has been made?" And I remember his reply was, "You cannot tell the mothers of thirty thousand dead that you're just going to turn this thing off and sacrifice tens of thousands more, and we owe it to our country to try to find a decent exit." And it was accomplished. And I repeat, the actual, practical difference wasn't so great. The real difference was that we were not prepared to say that this was a bad country and we were not prepared to pull out in the name of condemning America. Nobody saw more the anguish that President Nixon had to go through, and he got us out, and he reduced our forces by a hundred and fifty thousand each year, unilaterally. In the midst of this trauma, he also recognized, before he even entered office, that the communist block was not monolithic and that there was an enormous opportunity to promote peace in the world by dealing with the differential interests of communist China and the Soviet Union.

Now, I mention this last point particularly because when President Nixon came into office, America had reached, philosophically, the end of the period that had started with the great achievement of the immediate post-war world. President Nixon thought it was his duty to educate the American people as to its necessities in the world in which there would be many different powers, in which it was not possible to have a final answer to every question. America, historically, has been either isolationist or it has been able to commit itself to a project which had a finite conclusion. President Nixon stressed, and those of us who had the privilege of working with him, believed with him, that in the future, America could neither withdraw nor achieve a kind of resolution which would permit it again to withdraw, and relayed it to the rest of the world. It had to find a reason of why it was acting.

And so you will find in what President Nixon has said through the years, an emphasis on the American national interest and an attempt to define a reason why America should act in particular circumstances. This is important now. In those days, it was far-founded. Today, that truth is all around us. Communism has collapsed. All over the world, various national states are asserting ethnic and other special interests. They're going through one of the great structural changes. At the end of the Eighteenth

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Century, nobody had heard of the nation state. Fifty years later, nobody could understand how there could be anything other than a nation state. What will emerge out of this present chaotic international situation is not clear. But what is clear is that we will not possibly find our way through it without some definition of what the American national interest is.

Now this can be encompassing. It can, it must include being the kind of people we are, a moral component. But one must not pretend that the United States can wander around the world following every whim and pursuing every domestic preference without taking into account its capabilities and the way other nations act towards each of them.

I believe that we will be obliged to think that way about the successive states to the Soviet Union and that the tendency to personalize it will not be a permanent feature. But I want to talk primarily about Asia because in Asia, we find what I believe will be a characteristic of the present world, a group of states, largely national in character, conducting a foreign policy by principles that nineteenth century diplomats would easily recognize, but that in our century have been often rejected. When you have a group of nation states dealing with each other of more or less equal status, there can be only two results. One will dominate all the others and establish an empire, or some sort of equilibrium or balance of power will develop between them.

This I believe to be the emerging situation globally. But in Europe there are special circumstances produced by a different historic evolution, but it's especially true in Asia. In Asia, you have to follow your features. First, none of the nations there has any experience in the global management of international affairs. Japan, which is the subject of this conference, had insulated itself from the outside world for a period of five hundred years. It did not even deign to balance the barbarians up against each other or invent a system of trepidary relationships like the Chinese. It simply did not permit them to enter its domain. For five hundred years, Japan guided itself on its singularity, clarified its military tradition by civil wars, and grounded its internal structure on the conviction that its culture was so unique that it was not only impervious to foreign influence but superior to it. This enabled Japan to alter its domestic arrangements dramatically, when Commodore Perry opened it up forcibly. Determined not to suffer the fate of China, and with confidence in its cultural uniqueness, Japan adopted the methods of the outside world, secured in the knowledge that they would always remain culturally Japanese.

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It is important to keep that in mind because as one looks at Japanese politics today, we Americans have a tendency to overestimate the changes that occur. I do not believe-- but there are the few who know this better-- that most Japanese believe that in 1945 a total change in their society took place. What took place was an adjustment, similar to that of the major restoration in the Nineteenth Century, to the powerful realities of the end of the war. And therefore we have to look at Japan as a society with continuing traditions. One of these traditions, incidentally, seems to me to be the inability of any one Japanese leader to make a decision that binds the other Japanese leaders, and that there is therefore something faded about the dialogue between American presidents most of the time and Japanese prime ministers.

The American thinks that he must either persuade, charm his counterpart or pressure him into agreeing to some progress. The Japanese leader knows that he cannot deliver, that he must build a consensus even if he wanted to do what is being asked of him, which is also not always the case. So almost always the meetings end with great disappointment because, again, we're reflecting a cultural tradition. The Japanese Prime Minister will never say no. But when he says yes, what he means is "I have understood you," not "I will do what you have asked." The Japanese Prime Minister will never say no, but when he says yes, what he means is "I have understood you," not "I will do what you ask." It is therefore unwise to try to score points in domestic policy politics in America by humiliating or pressuring Japanese Prime Ministers publicly, press conferences or elsewhere. This is not to say that with any cultural method, it is a joy for Americans to negotiate with Japanese, and if I had discovered the method on how to do it, I would certainly put it to use in my consulting business before I give it away at a free speech. But nobody has yet worked this out. But let me come back to that point and let me make some others.

Japan has been independent and self-reliant for thousands of years. It therefore cannot be expected to continue foreign policy as an appendage of the American decision-making process for the indefinite future. In the decades ahead, I believe that we will look back with nostalgia to the happy days when all the troubles the Japanese caused us were in the economic field. I think it is inevitable, and even in the long run, desirable that Japan conduct its own foreign policy as it will, and as it must.

In the Cold War, Japan could nestle under the American protection because there was only one serious threat to the security of either country, but as the Soviet threat diminishes, it cannot be, and we would kid ourselves if we expected it, that Japan will interpret its security in the same way as we do.

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I expect some Japanese rearmament over the next decade and a half, not because it saves America some money, which is the reason why we usually recommend it, but for quite different reasons. If you believe in Asia dealing with countries that really have no cooperative local experience, I would imagine that over a period of decades, any Japanese leader will want a military establishment at least as large as Korea's, and I would expect over a period of time as large as China and Korea put together, not in size, in capability. This I expect, not because I welcome it with enormous joy, but because I think that it's inherent in the situation that I have described such that Japan will assert its own foreign policy.

Again, I don't say this critically. In fact, it may be healthier as long as we can manage to maintain a political dialog on common objectives which remain very large.

Now, let me turn for a moment to China, another country that has no experience in global management because they thought they were the globe for the greater part of their history. The middle kingdom believed that it was the center of the universe, that you can even find located geographically in a specific place at the Temple of Heavenly Peace in Beijing, and therefore, all other states which it knew were in some tributary relationship to it.

I just saw the other day a document from the Seventeenth Century where the Chinese, with particular subtle insolence, told the Russians they were not a tributary state; they declared them officially an enemy, which is not something that they frequently did. So, China, however, dealt with the outside world with greater assurance, and from the point of view of playing of the various barbarians against each other following the matter that they would prefer to deal with a different barbarian up against the barbarians, something which President Nixon recognized and benefited from in '71. Crude liquid, they did not particularly like us. They liked the Soviets a little less. Above all, the Soviets were closer, so they dealt with us and then you have Russia and Asia. In our history books, we always read about Russia and Europe, but throughout the Nineteenth Century, Russia was expanding in Asia as much as it was in Europe, and the Russo-Japanese War was about who would, in the early part of the century, 1904, control Korea and Manchuria. The Japanese offered the Russians Manchuria and wanted Korea for themselves. The Russians said they wanted both, and as often happened in their history, they lost them both.

I mention all of this because when you look at this historical experience, and then Korea, which was the hermit kingdom, even more closed off than the others, if that was possible, are all becoming significant players, and what

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this means that for the United States, the relationship
between China, Japan, Russia and ourselves is the key, and
one cannot say one relationship is crucial. It is our
ability to maintain all relationships and our ability to
throw our weight in the direction that most serve our
interests in the piece of the world that will be decided.

Now, America had absolutely no experience with this
kind of foreign policy, and you can read scholarly journals
and the media the rest of this year and you will not find an
analysis of this kind, from which I conclude, you cannot
expect scholars and media to be right all of the time. But
seriously, the biggest foreign policy problem of the United
States at this moment is to define what its necessities are,
and I find it astonishing that we simultaneously tackled
Japan on the economy and China on human rights as if we were
some sort of a professor teaching a class of eager students
of how they should conduct themselves, and if they would
practically sit there and wait for our instructions and for
the privilege of dealing with us.

I believe Japanese-American relations are crucial, but
I don't know how we will conduct them effectively if we
drive China into a nationalistic policy of organizing Asia
against us, which is at least a possibility, nor do I
understand how we propose to proceed in our negotiations
with Japan by these endless guerilla negotiations in which
the weakest American industry stake a claim against the
strongest Japanese industry and get involved in this sort of
rescue operation.

Of course, the Japanese have also a lot to answer for.
They cannot hide forever behind their cultural peculiarities
and refuse a dialogue that Americans can comprehend. We may
be too impetuous, but the Japanese cannot let the whole
world wait on their consensus, and somebody has to help
shape it. We need a serious dialogue about the economic
issue, but we need also, even more importantly, a serious
dialogue of how we visualize the future of Asia when China
becomes a major military power, as it will within ten years.
If Russia, which it might, shift the center of gravity from
Europe to the Euros as it did last century once for a period
of thirty years, and as Southeast Asia, which I have not
even discussed yet, and don't get bored, I will not discuss
it, also articulates itself.

Two weeks ago, the Japanese Prime Minister was asked
whether Japan would accept a Korean nuclear capability, and
in very un-Japanese fashion, he said no and nothing else.
That is important. That was probably the most important
statement that was made by anybody in the last month.

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You will hear tomorrow from President Nixon about his impressions of his journey, and he can and will go into much more detail than I did. I thought the most useful thing I could do is to explain that I really believe that this country is at an absolutely crucial point in its perception of the world, and what makes it so crucial is that we can rock along for quite a few years without anything showing up because these other relationships will develop gradually. The price will be progressive irrelevance, and a foreign policy of being almost like a common scold, lecturing everybody, but changing very little.

Mr. President, it has been a great honor to speak at this dinner honoring you and your achievements. I have told you when we worked together what I thought posterity would think of you and that it would treat you very kindly. And I believe that everything I have said here was implied, was fated in President Nixon's foreign policy, who took over a colossal crisis and refused to deal with its symptoms, insisted on dealing with its causes, opened to China to all practical purposes alone, negotiated with the Soviets and started a process which culminated ten years later, and most importantly, raised the fundamental question for future foreign relations, and it's our task now to continue to work on the answers.

Thank you very much.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON

Dr. Kissinger, we express our appreciation for this very profound analysis of the great forces that move the world and particularly those that affect this conference. I should point out to you that former presidents are somewhat experienced in that role. Former Presidents have no power. But they do have a privilege, and that privilege is to propose just one toast at the end of a dinner like this. And I've been thinking to whom that toast might be directed. Of course, to our speaker, Dr. Kissinger, but I've already praised him enough. But in any event, there's more to come. I was thinking too, that as he spoke so generously about my role and as I spoke about his role, that he would agree with me that there are in this audience today, many others who helped us in what we accomplished in those years. We know, for example, what Larry Eagleburger did, what Brent Scowcroft has done in the Bush Administration, and as Henry will tell you, they were indispensable players in our administration as well. So, I toast them. And I'm sure that all of you would join me to say we should propose a toast to John Taylor and all of those who put on this beautiful dinner for us here. They've done an outstanding job.

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And I have a different toast that I do want to propose. You will find it hard to believe, but that beautiful lady who stood here a few minutes ago and introduced Lod Cook was born in 1918. Just a few days ago, she celebrated her seventy-fifth birthday. To Caroline Ahmanson, on her seventy-fifth birthday.

JOHN H. TAYLOR

One's best tactic after magnificent presentations by the two preeminent geo-strategists of the age is to thank them and to send very quickly into conference logistics, Dr. Kissinger, for a beautifully presenting food for thought that our panelists and speakers will be able to mull over tomorrow at great length-- our thanks. And to President Nixon for giving us two glimpses of what is to come tomorrow at twelve-thirty, our thanks to you as well. "Fragile Friendship" is adjourned for the evening. Our next meeting is at eight o'clock in the Gold Room for a presentation by Clinton Administration official, Derek N. Shearer. We'll see most of you then in the Gold Room at eight o'clock. Thank you for being with us ladies and gentlemen.

* * *

Transcribed by STUDIO TRANSCRIPTION SERVICES 4-20-93

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April 20, 1993

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

by

Hon. Henry A. Kissinger

JOHN H. TAYLOR

LAWRENCE S. EAGLEBURGER

MR. EAGLEBURGER/MR. TAYLOR

JOHN H. TAYLOR

Coming from little Yorba Linda to introduce Caroline
Ahmanson to this distinguished Los Angeles audience is like
carrying coals to Newcastle, or as President Nixon likes to
quote, the Japanese carrying saki to Nata. You all know her
so well. She is a distinguished philanthropist, a
singularly successful businesswoman, and is, like President
Nixon, a Sinophile. In fact, she's about to embark upon her
fourteenth visit to the People's Republic of China. More
important to us at the Nixon Library, she's the founder of
our President's Council, and she's offered tonight to give a
toast. So please join me in welcoming Caroline L. Ahmanson.

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MS. AHMANSON

CAROLINE L. AHMANSON

LODWRICK COOK, CHAIRMAN, ARCO

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MR. COOK/PRES. NIXON

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON

So, anticipating that, I remember so well, the State dinner we gave for Golda Meir in the White House in 1969. She was very concerned at that time that the Europeans were being too naive about the Soviets. She expressed her concerns to me at the White House dinner. The dinner was held in the State dining room. It was like this with round tables. Henry was sitting at the table across from us and Mrs. Meir was sitting at my right. I was trying to reassure her on that point that the Europeans might be a little too naive, and I wanted to make it very clear to her that we were not being naive. I said, "You know, we have a Golden Rule, a Golden Rule of diplomacy. It is different from the Golden Rule of the New Testament which of course is 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' The Golden Rule of diplomacy as far as we're concerned is do unto others as they do unto you." She started to nod in agreement, and across the table, Henry growled, "Plus ten percent."

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[Lc]

MR. NIXON/MR. KISSINGER

HENRY KISSINGER

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[Lc]

MR. KISSINGER

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[let]

MR. KISSINGER

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[10]

MR. KISSINGER

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[1c]

MR. KISSINGER

this means is that for the United States, the relationship
between China, Japan, Russia and ourselves is the key, and
one cannot say one relationship is crucial. It is our
ability to maintain all relationships and our ability to
throw our weight in the direction that most serve our
interests in the piece of the world that will be decided.

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MR. KISSINGER/PRES. NIXON

Thank you very much,

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON

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PRES. NIXON/MR. TAYLOR

JOHN H. TAYLOR

* * *

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