[Y]

5

based on an expectation of significant U.S. concessions, to
be obtained by exploiting the personal vanity of
Dr. Kissinger, which they were confident would make a North
Vietnamese victory inevitable. The statements and
implications of this scene are unknown to the writer and
essentially unknowable.

At that point Dr. Kissinger had been engaged in
negotiations with Hanoi in both the Johnson and Nixon
Administrations, participating directly or indirectly in
close to twenty meetings. Throughout a period of five years
he had resisted Hanoi's exorbitant demands. When the
breakthrough finally came, starting on August 14, 1972, and
culminating on October 8, 1972, it was not by Dr. Kissinger
offering new concessions but by Le Duc Tho moving toward the
American position at each meeting, as Le Duc Tho
acknowledged when tabling the final North Vietnamese
proposal on October 8. (See point #9 below.)

The insinuation in the fictionalized meeting,
moreover, that Dr. Kissinger would accept a political
solution in which "Washington [would] stop supplying Thieu
and his army" is historically false. It is contradicted by
the explicit terms of the January 1972 Paris Agreement
(Tab 3) which, in paragraph 2 of Article 7, permitted the
United States to continue to resupply the Army of the

6

republic of Vietnam through designated international checkpoints.

In addition, the alleged trade-off of a U.S. willingness to "drop the demand that we withdraw our forces from the South" in return for "no longer insist [ing] President Thieu be ousted" is another fabrication. By October 1972, the issue of the withdrawal of North Vietnamese forces from the South had been superseded by a series of joint U.S.-South Vietnamese proposals starting as early as October 7, 1970, for a ceasefire-in-place. (See point #5 below.)

Most importantly, the major North Vietnamese diplomatic initiatives for a solution--which came in the form of *North Vietnamese concessions*--came later in the summer and early fall of 1972, after the United States had resumed bombing of North Vietnam and mined North Vietnamese harbors, which brought about the defeat of the North Vietnamese military offensive of March 1972. The factual context makes it totally implausible that such a discussion could have been held in Hanoi at the time suggested.

3. One of the most serious allegations of the Script is that Dr. Kissinger pressed to conclude a negotiated settlement with North Vietnam before the 1972 U.S. presidential election, despite disadvantageous terms,

7

for reasons of personal vanity or the President's electoral
gain (Script, e.g., pp. 16, 17, 22, 48, 67). The allegation
is demonstrably false, contradicted as it is by voluminous
documentary evidence that it was the North Vietnamese who
first suggested, and then insisted upon, acceleration of the
negotiations and completion of an agreement by October 31,
1972, and that Dr. Kissinger's negotiating strategy--fully
understood by President Nixon and in the end supported by
him--was to exploit that North Vietnamese impatience in
order to extract the maximum concessions from the North
Vietnamese side.

The record makes clear that the idea of a deadline
for the negotiations was broached by Le Duc Tho at the
September 15 meeting and reiterated at each subsequent
session. Dr. Kissinger's strategy was to use this North
Vietnamese impatience to extract North Vietnamese
concessions as is evidenced by Dr. Kissinger's
communications at the time to the President and Gen. Haig
(e.g., Kissinger memorandum to the President reporting on
August 14 meeting with Le Duc Tho; Kissinger memorandum to
the President reporting on September 15 meeting with Le Duc
Tho; Haig's meeting with Thieu, October 2, 1972).

Dr. Kissinger's strategy is also described at length in
*White House Years*, pp. 1328-1331, 1377-1378. His account is

8

fully confirmed by the Haldeman diary entries for Saturday, September 16, 1972 (see H. R. Haldeman, *The Haldeman Diaries*, paperback edition, p. 614).

Whatever difference in emphasis between President Nixon and Dr. Kissinger existed in September concerned not the desirability but the likelihood of an early settlement. Nevertheless, Nixon approved the fact of every meeting as well as every negotiating position. That President Nixon fully accepted Dr. Kissinger's strategy is shown by the fact that in his meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko on October 2, he expressed his desire to end the war by the end of October and warned that the forthcoming meeting between Dr. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho on October 8 would be the last chance to do so.

Once Hanoi produced its proposal of October 8, 1972, which essentially accepted Nixon's public positions of January 25 and May 8 (and, on the point of Thieu's resignation before an election, went beyond it), the issue became moot. For had the United States refused to negotiate on these terms, it was inevitable that Hanoi would publish them. The Administration would then have been accused of stalling on implementing its own proposals and risking lives for electoral reasons. The U.S. would also have lost the opportunity to extract from Hanoi the improvements in the

9

text that were in fact achieved. Therefore, Nixon's instructions to Dr. Kissinger were to negotiating exclusively on the merits, leaving any electoral considerations aside (e.g., Nixon letter to Kissinger, October 16, 1972, Tab 4).

The claim that Dr. Kissinger disregarded President Nixon's instructions is equally false (Script, e.g., p. 68). The episode in the Script concerning the message sent by Dr. Kissinger to Hanoi in the President's name on October 20, 1972--to the effect that the President "now considers the agreement complete"--distorts the facts. This message was preceded by two prior U.S. messages to Hanoi on October 18 insisting on Hanoi's acceptance of the U.S. positions on a number of outstanding issues, all of which Nixon had approved, and by a reply from Hanoi on October 19 accepting those U.S. positions. Dr. Kissinger received a White House message on October 20 congratulating him on this achievement.

President Nixon expressed satisfaction, on a number of occasions, with the terms of the agreement *ad referendum* that had been reached by Dr. Kissinger with Le Duc Tho in early October 1972 as well as with the terms of the final Paris Agreement of January 1973. (E.g., meeting between Nixon, Kissinger, and Haig, October 12, 1972; Haig

10

message to Kissinger, October 18, 1972; Nixon message to Kissinger, October 19, 1972; letters from Nixon to Thieu, October 16 and 22, 1972; Nixon message to Kissinger, January 9, 1973.) President Nixon's letter to Thieu of October 16 stated the following:

"Dr. Kissinger will explain to you in the fullest detail the provisions of the proposed agreement which he carries with him and I will therefore not provide further elaboration in this message. I do, however, want you to know that I believe we have no reasonable alternative but to accept this agreement. It represents major movement by the other side, and it is my firm conviction that its implementation will leave you and your people with the ability to defend yourselves and decide the political destiny of South Vietnam . . .

Dr. Kissinger, General Haig and I have discussed this proposal at great length. I am personally convinced it is the best we will be able to get and that it meets my absolute condition--that the GVN must survive as a free country. Dr. Kissinger's comments have my total backing". (*White House Years*, pp. 1368-1369)

In sum, the allegations and insinuations in the Script are demonstrably false.

4. The implication *that Dr. Kissinger misled South Vietnamese President Thieu about the U.S. negotiating strategy* is also demonstrably false. There is voluminous documentation of communications with President Thieu on all

11

the elements of U.S. thinking. This includes, for example,
Dr. Kissinger's assessment as early as the spring of 1972
that the North Vietnamese military offensive of that period
could well be the prelude to the climactic phase of the
negotiations. (This was communicated, e.g., by Gen. Haig in
a meeting with Thieu in Saigon in April 1972.) The record
also includes ample discussions with Thieu of the above-
mentioned U.S. strategy of squeezing the North Vietnamese
against their own self-imposed deadline of Nixon's
reelection. (E.g., Haig's conversation with Thieu on
July 3, 1972.)

All, repeat all, U.S. negotiating proposals to
North Vietnam in the Kissinger-Le Duc Tho channel were made
with the explicit concurrence of President Thieu, from 1969
until September 15, 1972. On the latter date, the first
U.S. proposal presented to Le Duc Tho despite Thieu's
disagreement concerned the composition of a hypothetical
"Committee of National Reconciliation"--and it was made
irrelevant by new concessions by Le Duc Tho at the same
meeting.

The disagreements with President Thieu proved to
be serious later on, but any reasonable analysis would
conclude that they concerned above all Thieu's unwillingness
to accept what he had previously endorsed, not the procedure

[Y]

12

or the inadequacy of consultation. President Thieu became increasingly alarmed, most of all, at the imminence of a compromise agreement involving a final U.S. troop withdrawal even if it was fundamentally based (as it was) on terms that the United States and South Vietnam had been proposing jointly--secretly and publicly--for years. It may well be that Thieu's concurrence in earlier joint proposals (such as a ceasefire-in-place) had reflected his assumption that it was a price he needed to pay for American support and that nothing would ever come of the negotiations. However, the United States (and Dr. Kissinger in particular) had been scrupulous in forewarning President Thieu of the U.S. strategy, and of the U.S. assessment that North Vietnam might make serious moves toward compromise in the fall of 1972 and that the United States would have no option but to negotiate seriously in response. Gen. Haig visited Saigon three times between April and October 1972, and Dr. Kissinger visited twice. Dr. Kissinger indeed repeated to President Thieu on three occasions during a meeting in Saigon on August 17, 1972 that, if North Vietnam accepted the long-standing U.S.-South Vietnamese proposal for a ceasefire-in-place, the two allies would have no choice but to accept it.

[Y]

13

In addition, Dr. Kissinger made repeatedly clear to the North Vietnamese during the negotiating meetings in October that South Vietnamese concurrence would be required for the agreement.

5. Also false is the allegation <u>that</u>
<u>Dr. Kissinger surprised and betrayed the United States'</u>
<u>South Vietnamese ally by agreeing suddenly to an agreement</u>
<u>that permitted North Vietnamese troops to remain in South</u>
<u>Vietnam (Script, passim.).</u> The charge is especially
defamatory in light of the Nixon Administration's
negotiating record with respect to President Thieu. For
four years, President Nixon and Dr. Kissinger endured a
stalemate in negotiations and domestic public attacks
precisely because of their refusal to discuss the overthrow
of the Thieu government. By the time Thieu began to object
to the continuing presence of North Vietnamese troops in
South Vietnam in September 1972, the demand for a North
Vietnamese troop withdrawal had been absent from all
previous joint U.S.-South Vietnamese negotiating proposals--
public as well as secret--over the previous two years. This
is supported by the entire public record as well as the
entire private record. President Nixon had offered a
ceasefire-in-place in a televised address as far back as
October 7, 1970 (Tab 5); this proposal had President Thieu's

(Y)

14

concurrence. In the secret talks, a U.S. proposal was put
forward--with President Thieu's explicit concurrence--on
May 31, 1971, including a ceasefire-in-place, U.S. troop
withdrawal, and return of prisoners and deferring a
settlement of other major issues to a subsequent negotiation
between the Vietnamese parties. This joint U.S.-South
Vietnamese proposal was reiterated in subsequent Kissinger
meetings with Le Duc Tho on June 26, July 12, July 26, and
August 16, 1971. President Thieu was fully briefed on all
these conversations and interposed no objection. A
modification of the U.S. position--containing the same
provision for a ceasefire-in-place--was presented to the
North Vietnamese by message on October 11, 1971; this U.S.
proposal too had Thieu's explicit concurrence (as reported
by Gen. Haig after his conversation with Thieu,
September 23, 1971). This proposal was reiterated publicly
in President Nixon's televised address of January 25, 1972
(Tab 6)--again, with President Thieu's concurrence. The
same provision was part of the new U.S. proposal announced
by President Nixon in his televised address on May 8, 1972
(Tab 1)--again, with Thieu's concurrence.

The reason for dropping the demand for mutual
troop withdrawal was that American forces were already being
withdrawn unilaterally as part of the Vietnamization

15

program, and, above all, because Congressional and media
pressures had long since ceased to support such a demand.
Domestic pressures were demanding a <u>unilateral</u> American
withdrawal, on no other condition that a return of our
prisoners or on no conditions at all. In 1971 and
escalating in 1972, there were many Congressional
resolutions embodying one or the other of these themes
(Tab 7). Nor were the American proposals criticized as too
conciliatory when they were put forward. A sampling of
media and Congressional statements (Tab 8) shows that the
Nixon Administration position was constantly attacked as too
tough. There were not any significant Congressional or
media demands for North Vietnamese withdrawal in the three
years before negotiating breakthrough.

The inability to obtain at the negotiating table
what you have not been able to win on the battlefield is an
axiom of international politics as well as a reality of
life. However--contrary to implications in the Script--the
Paris Agreement as signed in January 1973 (Tab 3) contained
a number of important provisions denying the right of North
Vietnam to keep its forces in the South and (if implemented)
making it impossible for North Vietnam to resupply and
sustain its forces there. [E.g., the explicit references to
the "independence" and "sovereignty" of South Vietnam in

16

Article 14, Article 18(e), and Article 20(d); the explicit reaffirmation of the sanctity of the Demilitarized Zone in the precise terms in which it had been established in the 1954 Geneva Accords (Art. 15) 1/ ; and the prohibition on North Vietnamese infiltration of either troops or material into South Vietnam (Art. 7) and on any use by North Vietnam of its previous logistics network in Laos and Cambodia for that purpose (Art. 20).] These provisions, if implemented as signed, would have reduced the problem of the remaining troops significantly.

As it happened, the victorious offensive by North Vietnam in April 1975 was carried out not by its troops allegedly "permitted" by the Paris Agreement to remain in the South but by forces massively infiltrated and supplied from the North subsequently in violation of explicit prohibitions in the Agreement. The inability of the United States either to deter or to respond militarily to these North Vietnamese violations came not from the Paris Agreement but from an Act of Congress in June 1973--five

1/ The references to the Demilitarized Zone are another subject totally misrepresented in the Script, e.g., pp. 101, 102. There was never an issue of establishing an international border any more than there had been in Korea. The Vietnamese dividing line was established in 1954 as a demilitarized zone whose regimen was in fact strengthened by the Paris Agreement.

[Y]

17

months after the Paris Agreement-- prohibiting all U.S. military action in or around Indochina (see Tab 9).

6. The Script presents a caricature of the events surrounding Dr. Kissinger's news conference of October 26, 1972, including the insinuation _that that conference was an exercise in self-promotion on Dr. Kissinger's part_ (Script, e.g., pp. 69, 84). This is an absurdity. The night before, Hanoi had revealed the content of the framework agreement that had been reached; Hanoi was publicly and dramatically accusing the United States of reneging on a peace agreement. A public response from the White House was inescapable. Dr. Kissinger's news conference took place at President Nixon's express request, and it was hosted by Ronald Ziegler, the President's Press Secretary.

During his journey home from Saigon on October 23, 1972, after President Thieu's rejection of the agreement, Dr. Kissinger sent a message to Gen. Haig for President Nixon, proposing that if Hanoi were to go public and disclose the agreements, the U.S. should confirm that major progress was getting made but that some further meetings with the North Vietnamese were needed to iron out the remaining differences. Nixon approved this strategy by return message via Haig. The President reaffirmed this strategy in person after Dr. Kissinger's return to

18

Washington and in advance of the October 26 press conference.

In order to preserve the possibility of putting the negotiating back on track, it was essential for the White House publicly to reaffirm to Hanoi that the United State was still committed to settling, to make clear to Saigon that the time had come to accept our own joint proposals, and to reassure the American people that, despite the flare-up, the true significance of the event was that the negotiations had reached their climactic phase. All this was, in fact, true, and all these objectives required a public posture that stressed the important progress that had been achieved in early October. The negotiating issues remaining in contention, after all, were far less significant than the issues already resolved. This was the good-faith substantive purpose that underlay Dr. Kissinger's pronouncements. It was indeed verbatim how the "peace is at hand" phrase was explained in the very paragraph that contains it. Any insinuation otherwise is false.

It is true that, after the event, President Nixon was concerned that the "peace is at hand" phrase would raise expectations too high and undercut U.S. leverage. It was essentially correct in its affirmation that a negotiation that had dragged on fruitlessly for four years had entered

19

its final phase. Any fair reading of Dr. Kissinger's news
conference of October 26 (Tab 10) will leave no doubt that
an aim of Dr. Kissinger's presentation was to explain the
agreement's terms in detail, point by point; the reader was
in a position to judge the adequacy of the offending phrase.
The Script's rendition of the actual press conference is
also false as is shown in the transcript (Tab 10). The
spirit of the news conference was captured in its final
paragraph (unreported by most media):

We will not be stampeded into an agreement until
its provisions are right. We will not be
deflected from an agreement when its provisions
are right. And with this attitude, and with some
cooperation from the other side, we believe that
we can restore both peace and unity to America
very soon.

7. There are several references in the script to
actions or writings purportedly engineered by Kissinger
behind Congress' back. They are all false and defamatory.
For example, relating to potential military action if the
North Vietnamese were to renegotiate their agreement, the
script reads:

NIXON

20

Are you crazy!? That's promising we'll
go back to war in a year. The Congress
would skin our asses.

KISSINGER

Only if they know about it.

(Then, quietly)

Saigon would accept private assurances.

A secret commitment. (Script at 103)

That dialogue in no way provides even the essence of truth.

<u>First</u>, neither that conversation nor anything like it
ever occurred. <u>Second</u>, the Nixon commitments to Thieu were not
secret and definitionally not in any way done behind Congress'
back. While the letters were not published, their contents--
Nixon's explicit policy and intentions--were publicly
available. <u>Third</u>, the Administration had made clear its
intention to react strongly against North Vietnamese violations
of the Paris Agreement in voluminous public statements. (E.g.,
Nixon's televised address, January 23, 1973; Kissinger press
conference, January 24, 1973; Deputy Assistant Secretary of
State William Sullivan's appearance on "Meet the Press",
January 28, 1973; Kissinger interview with Marvin Kalb on CBS
News, February 1, 1973; Nixon news conference, March 15, 1973;
Under Secretary of State William Porter's speech in Grand
Rapids, March 21, 1973; Nixon televised address,

21

March 29, 1973; Secretary of Defense Elliot Richardson, "Meet the Press", April 1, 1973; Richardson testimony to Senate Armed Services Committee, April 2, 1973; U.S.-South Vietnam Joint Communiqué, San Clemente, April 3, 1973; Richardson interview prior to appearance before House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, April 3, 1973; Kissinger press conference, May 2, 1973; Nixon Report to the Congress on U.S. Foreign Policy, May 3, 1973; Kissinger press conference, June 13, 1973; Nixon message to Speaker of the House, June 27, 1973. See compilation of these statements at Tab 11.) These public statements of the U.S. intentions were widely commented upon at the time (e.g., editorials in *Washington Post*, March 18, 1973, and *New York Times*, March 17, 1973). Nor is it logical that any President of the United States would or could conclude a peace agreement and not retain the right to enforce it.

8. The Script also refers to Presidential communications to Hanoi allegedly promising reparations disguised as reconstruction aid to Hanoi, and implies falsely that such communications with Hanoi on reconstruction aid were unconstitutional circumventions of Congress engineered by Dr. Kissinger (Script, pp. 46, 103).

At page 103, the Script reads:

NIXON

23

And Congress could fight for whatever
new fights lie ahead.

(Then, again tempting)

All it needs is your signature on secret
side letters. (Script pp. 103-104)

The absurdity of this insinuation is demonstrated
by the fact that the U.S. offer to Hanoi of postwar,
reconstruction aid was a long-standing element of the public
U.S. negotiating position going back eight years to the
Johnson Administration. President Johnson first suggested
such aid after a peace settlement in a speech in April 1965.
President Nixon repeated the U.S. offer in his address to
the UN General Assembly on September 18, 1969. It was
included in U.S. secret peace proposals to Le Duc Tho in
1971, made public by President Nixon on January 25, 1972.
President Nixon's Report to the Congress on U.S. Foreign
Policy, February 9, 1972, referred to a U.S. offer of a
$7.5 billion reconstruction program for all of Indochina, of
which North Vietnam could share up to $2.5 billion. It was
repeated by Dr. Kissinger in news conferences of October 26,
1972, and January 24, 1973, in meetings with members of the
House and Senate, January 26, 1973, and by President Nixon
in a news conference on January 31, 1973. A general
commitment of U.S. reconstruction aid was included in

24

Article 21 of the Paris Agreement made public on January 24, 1973 and signed on January 27 (Tab 12).

A confidential message on reconstruction aid was sent to North Vietnamese Premier Pham Van Dong in the name of President Nixon on February 1, 1973, the content of which had been the subject of prior discussion between Dr. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. The message included an explicit codicil that a presidential commitment of economic aid would be implemented in accordance with our constitutional provisions. The negotiating record (for example, at the Paris meeting of January 13, 1973) makes abundantly clear that this codicil was included at Dr. Kissinger's insistence, despite Le Duc Tho's objections.

It is in fact normal procedure for administrations to discuss projected aid programs first with recipient governments--always subject to the obvious caveat of the need for Congressional concurrence. That was the essence of the matter here, and the record of Dr. Kissinger's discussions with the North Vietnamese is replete with his explanations and insistence on the constitutional necessity of subsequent Congressional authorization and appropriations (especially his meeting with Le Duc Tho in Paris on January 13, 1973 and with Premier Pham Van Dong in Hanoi, February 12, 1973.)

25

9. The Script furthermore resuscitates the myth that the same terms negotiated by Dr. Kissinger in late 1972 could have been obtained in 1969, avoiding many thousands of U.S. casualties in the intervening period (Script, p. 65). This too is false and defamatory.

The allegation has not the slightest evidentiary support; on the contrary, it is contradicted by the mountain of evidence in the negotiating record that North Vietnam continually rejected the essential terms on which the Paris Agreement was based--until October 1972.

The essential core of the Paris Agreement was an explicit and concrete settlement of the military issues--ceasefire-in-place, U.S. troop withdrawal, no further North Vietnamese infiltrations, and return of POWs and accounting for MIAs. The intractable political issues involving the future of South Vietnam were left to a future negotiation among the Vietnamese parties, with the political provisions in the Agreement containing mostly general formulations or procedures for the envisioned future negotiations. This approach to a solution had long been the American approach, as first suggested in a Foreign Affairs article by Dr. Kissinger published in January 1969 (Tab 13); it was also reflected in repeated variations of the U.S. negotiating position.

26

It was always the North Vietnamese who ruled out any such approach, insisting on a comprehensive negotiated political outcome as a *prelude* to any military solution. (Thus, for example, they rejected even the U.S. anti-war movement's favorite idea of a "fixed deadline for U.S. troop withdrawal", because it failed to guarantee a comprehensive political arrangement. See, e.g., the September 16, 1971, news conference of the North Vietnamese press spokesman in Paris and the colloquy with *Washington Post* correspondent Jonathan Randal recounted in *White House Years*, p. 1037.)

The kind of political outcome that Hanoi insisted upon from 1969 to 1972, moreover, was of a sweeping and uncompromising nature: Hanoi demanded that, *before* any ceasefire, withdrawal or release of prisoners, the United States had first to remove the leadership of the South Vietnamese government and replace it with a "peace cabinet" acceptable to the Communists. This "peace cabinet" would then negotiate with the Communists to set up a tripartite coalition of the Communists, neutralists acceptable to the Communists, and elements of the decapitated South Vietnamese government--a coalition government guaranteed to be dominated by the Communists. (A chart tracing the glacial evolution of the North Vietnamese/NLF positions on a ceasefire and political settlement is at Tab 14.)

27

It was only in the early fall of 1972 when the North Vietnamese began to water down--and eventually, in effect drop--this one-sided political program that an agreement became possible. What had been an adamant North Vietnamese demand for a U.S.-imposed, Communist-dominated coalition government was diluted into a meaningless bipartite "National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord", with functions limited to organizing future elections and leaving the South Vietnamese government with a veto over its functioning. As Le Duc Tho noted to Dr. Kissinger on five occasions during the meeting of October 8, 1972, this represented nothing other than North Vietnamese acceptance of the U.S. position on the preferred framework for a settlement. In Tho's words:

> And, this is what you yourself have proposed, the same proposal . . . . So our proposal has shown our good will, our real desire to rapidly end the war. And it is the same proposal made by President Nixon himself--ceasefire, release of prisoners, and troop withdrawal . . . . As to the internal political and military questions of South Vietnam we agree on principles and the South Vietnamese parties will discuss . . . . We do this with a view to reducing the thorny questions. So our aim is to do what you proposed previously: ceasefire and cessation of hostilities, troop withdrawal, release of prisoners . . . . And it is your proposal, and we met it with great good will, in order to end the war . . . . Because his new proposal is

(Y)

28

exactly what President Nixon has himself proposed: ceasefire, end of the war, release of the prisoners, and troop withdrawal ... and we propose a number of principles on political problems. You have also proposed this. And we shall leave to the South Vietnamese parties the settlement of these questions ... (White House Years, p. 1345)

This was the breakthrough of October 1972.

In the face of the entire documentary and historical record, to continue to repeat the myth that the United States could have obtained the same terms four years earlier is to repeat a defamatory falsehood in reckless disregard of the truth.

10. The Script portrays Kissinger in 1972 smiling in response to Haig's suggestion of "some more wiretaps on our own inside staff" (p. 19) and as suggesting to Nixon: "I'll have Haig liaise with the FBI on the wiretaps. Perhaps a few more on some lower-level CBS staff are indicated" (p.37). The Script also continues with Nixon simultaneously instructing Colson and Haldeman that "If he [Kissinger] wants more wiretaps, you tell Hoover to play along."

That is all false and defamatory. Without more it is seriously damaging to Dr. Kissinger and is particularly outrageous since there is so much in the public record that

29

proves this false. Dr. Kissinger's involvement in national
security wiretaps ended in May 1970, after President Nixon
ordered the FBI to cease sending reports to Dr. Kissinger's
office (as the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
found in *Halperin v. Kissinger*, 606 F. 2d 1192, 1197, 1199.)
The entire program was terminated by President Nixon in
February 1971, well over a year before the events in the
Script. Nor was a shred of evidence ever introduced in many
court hearings and two reviews by the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee (all publicly available) that the
national security wiretaps in question were ever used for
the purposes alleged in the Script.

The program was initiated by the President and
implemented pursuant to his direction. President Nixon, in
a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee dated
July 12, 1974, stated:

> I am familiar with the testimony given by
> Secretary Kissinger before your committee to
> the effect that he performed the function, at
> my request, of furnishing information about
> individuals within investigative categories
> that I established so that an appropriate and
> effective investigation would be conducted in
> each case. This testimony is entirely
> correct; and I wish to affirm categorically
> that Secretary Kissinger and others involved
> in various aspects of this investigation were
> operating under my specific authority and
> were carrying out my express orders. (Senate
> Foreign Relations Committee Report, August 6,
> 1974, Tab 15, p. 5)

30

The program was implemented by the Attorney General of the United States and the Director of the FBI, pursuant to procedures that were then legal and had been followed by several previous administrations. Indeed, the legality of the initiation of the taps was the subject of exhaustive litigation; in none did a court determine that the wiretaps were illegally initiated or conducted. See
**Mitchell v. Forsyth**, 472 U.S. 531, 533-35 (1985). **Harlow v. Fitzgerald**, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). **Halperin v. Kissinger**, 807 F.2d 188-9, 194. (D.C. Cir 1986). **Zweibon v. Mitchell**, 720 F.2d 162, 169-70. (D.C. Cir 1983).
**Sinclair v. Kleindienst**, 645 F.2d 1080,1085 (10th Cir 1981).
**Chaqnon v. Bell**, 642 F.2d 1248, 1262 (D.C. Cir 1980).
**Halperin v. Kissinger**, 606 F.2d 1192, (D.C. Cir 1979).
**Halperin v. Kissinger**, 723 F.Supp 1535 (D.D.C. 1989).

Dr. Kissinger testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the hearings on his nomination to be Secretary of State in September of 1973. The Committee considered the wiretaps at length. Dr. Kissinger stated:

> I did not initiate the program, I did not recommend the program, and I had nothing to do with its establishment. I then participated in the program, once it was established, according to criteria that has been laid down by the President's office.

The Committee held a second round of hearings on the wiretaps the following year, after further evidence of

31

the nature of the program became public, and examined each case in detail and reviewed the relevant documents. After this second set of hearings, it concluded that there was no "basis in ascertainable fact to conclude that Dr. Kissinger misrepresented his role in the wiretapping" and declared that it had "establish[ed] to its satisfaction that Secretary Kissinger's role in the program was essentially as he described it in testimony . . ." (Tab 15, pp. 4, 6).

In short, by 1972, the period portrayed in the Script, there was no White House national security wiretap program; Kissinger did not and could not have said or been involved in discussions anything remotely approaching what the Script reads.

11. In addition, there are a number of other defamatory statements and depictions which, we are forced to conclude, either stem from errors of fact, indicating the sloppiness of the factual basis of the Script and the unreliability of the sources relied upon, or from an - intentional disregard of the truth (or some combination thereof). In either event, they are defamatory and actionable. Among these are:

--The allegation, put into the mouth of Haldeman, that Dr. Kissinger was "under care" (presumably psychiatric care) (Script, p. 76). This allegation is false and defamatory.

(Y)

32

--The description of Dr. Kissinger's office as "adorned in an orgy of self-congratulation: photos, plaques, framed letter, etc." (p. 10). That is a fabrication.

Dr. Kissinger's White House office was decorated with a single large abstract painting, other smaller works of art, and a copy of his commission from President Nixon.

--The assertion that Dr. Kissinger had never been invited by President Nixon to dine privately at the White House (Script, p. 34). This is false; Dr. Kissinger dined with the President in the private quarters on many occasions.

--The depiction of Dr. Kissinger declaring to his staff in Paris, "<u>What</u> counter-offer!? Don't you understand!? I <u>want to meet</u> his [Le Duc Tho's] <u>position</u>! (Script p. 44) is a distortion. Dr. Kissinger did not say that or anything of its essence. Dr. Kissinger's negotiating tactic was to accept much of Le Duc Tho's terminology while ensuring that the <u>substance</u> matched that essential requirements of the U.S. position. For example, the North Vietnamese proposal for a coalition government had, as noted above, been completely gutted and turned into an ineffectual "National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord". The essence of the matter was a collapse of the North Vietnamese political program, not a U.S. acceptance of it.

33

--The portrayal of the meeting at the State Department between Secretary of State Roger and Dr. Kissinger in mid-October 1972 (Script, pp. 55-58) is grotesquely inaccurate. The meeting (in fact, a breakfast on October 13, in which Gen. Haig participated) included none of the nasty tone portrayed.

--The portrayal of Dr. Kissinger arranging a television interview with Marvin Kalb during the December 1972 bombing without clearance from H.R. Haldeman (Script, p. 92). This is false. No such interview could have been arranged without clearance from the President via Haldeman.

--The quote from Dr. Kissinger reacting to Thieu's refusal to go along with the agreement, on p. 66, is false. The correct quote from Ambassador Bunker's transcript is in *White House Years*, pp. 1385-1386. The Script bears not the slightest resemblance to reality.

--The alleged quote on p. 97 about wanting to surrender never happened or could have happened; it is incompatible with Dr. Kissinger's entire public record on Vietnam.

--The alleged quote on p. 79 about how to survive the Nazis is grotesque and defamatory--especially in light of the Holocaust victims in Dr. Kissinger's family.

Dr. Kissinger was nine years old when Hitler came to power. He was in not position to decide to "stand aside". It is as

34

well a cruel misrepresentation of the choices in fact
available to the adult members of the Jewish community, many
of whom were murdered. The rest of the quote represents no
views ever held or expressed by Dr. Kissinger.

--The description of Le Duc Tho declining the Nobel
Peace Prize while Dr. Kissinger "sent someone . . . to
receive it" (Script, p. 108). This is misleading.
Dr. Kissinger donated his entire share of the Nobel Peace
Prize award to a scholarship fund for children of U.S. POWs
and MIAs.

--Gen. Haig was promoted to four-star general
coincidental with his being appointed Army Vice Chief of
Staff, a position which he took up in January 1973. The
Script alleging that he was promoted provided he stayed in
the White House to spy on Dr. Kissinger is therefore false
and defamatory.

* * *

In conclusion, the compromise outcome of the
Vietnam negotiation was a painful exercise that was bound to
be traumatic for South Vietnam and for the United States no
matter how it was handled. It was unachievable without
diplomatic confrontations with Hanoi or tensions with
Saigon. Nor does the Script refer to the context that would

35

have demonstrated its implausibility: Dr. Kissinger's
strong support over four years of all the measures to
preserve South Vietnam's independence and especially of the
risks taken in 1972 to blunt Hanoi's offensive. The
essential truth--that the United States Government in
general and Dr. Kissinger in particular acted in good faith
in a monumentally difficult situation to achieve peace with
honor--is the one interpretation excluded by the cynical,
confused, and false portrayal in the Script.

The United States was suffering bitter divisions,
with escalating media and Congressional pressures to vacate
Indochina immediately, on terms far less balanced than were
obtained in the Paris Agreement. Failure by the United
States to conclude an agreement after the North Vietnamese
had announced the fact of their acceptance of President
Nixon's essential terms--which had been attacked
domestically as too tough--would have guaranteed a public
and Congressional stampede to cut off all funds for the war
in early 1973. (See again the sampling of Congressional and
editorial pressures during 1972 attached at Tabs 7, 8.) In
the context of this reality, the Script's after-the-fact
insinuation that Dr. Kissinger "sold out" Saigon is a cruel
defamation.

36

The Paris Agreement of January 1973 was balanced in its terms; both sides took risks. The instruments of leverage that President Nixon and Dr. Kissinger counted upon to maintain the balance after the Agreement--the threat to reintervene militarily, continuation of military supply to Saigon, and the carrot of possible reconstruction aid for Hanoi--were all removed by Congress in the two years subsequent to the Paris Agreement. Hanoi had neither incentives to maintain nor disincentives to violate the Agreement. Watergate also played a role in the unraveling of the Administration's leverage in Congress and general credibility. It was these dramatic (and unanticipated) post-Agreement developments that doomed the Agreement and South Vietnam, not the terms of the Agreement or, even less, the process by which it was negotiated.

[y]

HENRY A. KISSINGER

March 9, 1994

Dear Mr. Aitken:

It has been nearly a year since I read your excellent biography of Nixon. I did not write sooner because I was totally occupied with finishing a book on the relationship between the American and the European styles of diplomacy, in the course of which I deal with Nixon as one of the seminal statesmen of American history and as the originator of modern American diplomacy. It goes without saying that I strongly endorse the basic thesis of your book.

It may therefore seem churlish to call to your attention certain inaccuracies which, on the one hand, reflect strongly on my honor and conduct in office while doing nothing to enhance Nixon's reputation. You have been meticulous in listing your sources. If some of your assertions are nevertheless demonstrably untrue, it is surely because you had no reason to disbelieve what you were told.

In assessing the veracity of your sources, it is important to keep in mind the strict separation between domestic and foreign policy in the Nixon White House. I was never invited to any meeting dealing with domestic policy; Ehrlichman *never* participated in any meeting on foreign policy; Haldeman attended perhaps 20% of my meetings with Nixon, mostly dealing with presidential trips. Neither of them saw cables or attended interdepartmental meetings. What they think they know, they learned from gossip, from elliptical Nixon comments, and/or from attempts by Nixon - in the best Roosevelt tradition - to pit his assistants against each other. Neither Nixon nor his staff in Saddle River have any documents - except the tapes - so that they depend entirely on recollections which are 20 years or even older.

TWENTY-SIXTH FLOOR • 350 PARK AVENUE • NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10022 • (212) 759-7919

[4]

page 2

So it happened that in your book I could be presented
as emotionally unstable, panicky in crises, in conflict with
the President on the direction of the second term, and as
systematically disregarding presidential instructions in the
first. All of this is demonstrably untrue. Nor does it do
much for Nixon. What does it say about a chief executive
who tolerates such conduct and for years makes such a
personality his principal foreign policy aide? How is the
Nixon Presidency enhanced by attributing to the conduct of
foreign policy the worst aspects of Watergate?

Fortunately, the charges can be refuted from the
documentary record, available at the Library of Congress.
Specifically:

- The account of my alleged despondency during the
Cambodian incursion is absurd (p. 404). It will not be
supported by the tapes of the telephone conversations or by
the contemporary records. Even my dissident staff members in
their many published attacks on me have never stooped to
such accusations. The Nixon quote regarding Lot's wife may
or may not be accurate but it surely was not triggered by my
conduct; separated from its context, it means nothing - as
anyone familiar with Nixon's ruminations can tell you.

- I was never under "care" - psychiatric or medical -
as White House medical records would surely demonstrate (p.
463).

- I did not disregard presidential instructions or my
briefs, as the attached document, drawn entirely from
available records, shows.

All of this matters enough to me so that I have put
together *from documentary sources* an answer to some of the
charges.

None of it detracts from my respect for your book or
reduces my gratitude to Nixon for the extraordinary service
he rendered our country, and for giving me the opportunity
to participate in one of the most creative periods of
American diplomacy.

# Documentary Analysis of Specific Charges

## Were Nixon's Instructions Disregarded?

To answer this question, it is important to understand how Nixon and I collaborated. While most treatises emphasize the differences, a study of contemporary documents or of the White House tapes will demonstrate a near-identity of views. There were occasional nuances of emphasis as to tactics; there were none that I recall on strategy. Therefore, any attempt to show a significant discrepancy will be disproved by the record - always keeping in mind that Nixon bore the ultimate responsibility, ran the final risk, and therefore deserves the major credit.

Domestic policy did not interest Nixon very much, which may account for the free hand he gave some of his associates and for the methods which some of them employed. By contrast, with respect to foreign policy, Nixon was passionate, knowledgeable, and utterly responsible. The initiatives of his Administration invariably grew out of long conversations between the two of us, which I would then reflect in a strategy memorandum. Nixon either modified or approved it (usually the latter). I would then execute the decisions. I know of no exceptions.

The same procedure was followed with respect to negotiations. Before engaging in any negotiation - either in Washington or abroad - I would submit a detailed memorandum listing the points I intended to make, the goals we should seek, and the concessions we should make. Nixon would modify or approve it (usually the latter); I would carry it out. Upon my return, I would submit a detailed memorandum of the results. All the strategy and negotiating memoranda together with Nixon's comments are available at the Library of Congress.

To judge whether I disregarded instructions, one would have to consider the memoranda and Nixon's (rare) marginalia. One would find that not a single one of my summary memoranda or trip reports was ever disapproved by Nixon. Can anyone believe that so strong a personality as Nixon would have tolerated the transgressions about which you were told?

2

[Y]

Let me deal with a few of them:

(1) You cite Ehrlichman's memoirs to demonstrate my "erratic" behavior, alleging that I twice cabled Hanoi accepting its October 1972 proposal on Vietnam in the President's name without presidential authority and over Haig's objections.

It would be difficult to exceed the combination of malice and ignorance contained in this allegation. On the face of it, no one can believe that President Nixon would let an assistant make a peace settlement on which his entire reputation depended or that even a reckless assistant would dare to do so. Our procedures would have precluded such a possibility. Every Presidential message went through the situation room and was approved by Nixon. If I invoked his name on a trip - a very rare occurrence - I would sent the text to the situation room. The person in charge - usually Haig - would either clear it with the President or, if he judged it to be a technical implementation of a previous instruction, he might send it and submit the text to Nixon for his information, at the latest by the end of the day. The decision was not mine but that of the person in charge of the NSC office in my absense. Nixon was therefore always in control of Presidential messages and Ehrlichman simply does not know what he is talking about or understand what he was told.

The substantive facts are quite straightforward, if somewhat complicated. On October 8, 1972 Le Duc Tho in effect accepted Nixon's peace terms with respect to Vietnam, put forward on television in January and spelled out in greater detail in May. The phrasing of Le Duc Tho's offer made it clear who was accepting whose terms:

"...this new proposal is exactly what President Nixon has himself proposed: ceasefire, end of the war, release of the prisoners, and troop withdrawal...and we propose a number of principles on political problems. You have also proposed this. And we shall leave to the South Vietnamese parties the settlement of these questions."

I negotiated more precise implementing provisions *ad referendum* to Nixon. He approved the document in writing on October 13 subject to discussions in Saigon. We so notified Hanoi from Washington, with Nixon's specific approval.

3

Since Nixon's May proposals had not been specific about Laos and Cambodia, a new set of proposals had to be devised for those countries. This was done by my staff and State and Defense officials. These new proposals were approved by Nixon and sent under my name to Hanoi. While heading for Saigon, I tried to put pressure on Hanoi via a Presidential message that Laos and Cambodia had to be settled before the Vietnam agreement would be completed. This went by the procedure described above. While I was in Saigon, we received via Washington Le Duc Tho's reply accepting our proposals. I replied in the President's name that the portion on Laos and Cambodia was now satisfactory. Both messages went through the situation room. Contrary to Ehrlichman's comments, Haig raised no objection and, for all I know, cleared them with the President.

In short, there were two messages in Nixon's name, neither of them accepting Hanoi's terms. The first stated that Hanoi had to accept the proposal approved by Nixon before the agreement could be completed. The second acknowledged Hanoi's acceptance of Nixon's demand - the exact opposite of Ehrlichman's allegation. Both messages followed established procedures and are publicly available. An unfriendly Senate Committee found no fault with these procedures last year.

(2) The argument that I exceeded my "brief" in the October 26 press conference, by using the phrase, "peace is at hand," and that I did so in order to claim credit for Nixon's election victory (p. 401) is equally malicious and equally untrue.

When Thieu refused to accept the terms negotiated at Paris, I returned to Washington. On the way home I prepared the usual trip report for Nixon, together with another memorandum suggesting a response should Hanoi go public. The latter stated that we should affirm major progress and that we were close to an agreement but needed one or two additional meetings to sort out the remaining differences. Nixon approved both memoranda.

On the morning of October 26, the North Vietnamese radio announced the text of the agreement as it then stood. Nixon, Ziegler, and I met early in the morning to plan our response. Nixon approved once again the strategy of the memorandum of two days earlier: to acknowledge the agreement, and to assert

4

that it was close to completion but needed some more work - as
the tapes will no doubt show.

This is not to say that the phrasing of my press conferences
could not have been improved - after three weeks of non-stop
travel and negotiations, it would have been miraculous if
every sentence of an improvised press conference had been
perfectly chosen. But I exceeded no brief; Nixon knew exactly
the line I was going to take.

Moreover, Nixon, concerned that my accent would disturb
viewers in Peoria, had always insisted that I not appear live
on television; in other words, that my briefings be on
background. Without telling me, Ziegler turned on the cameras,
heightening the impact of the press conference without warning
me to be careful.

Finally, the text hardly sounds "reckless" (p. 453), being in
the main a recital of the terms of the agreement. Its spirit
was reflected in the last sentence: "We will not be stampeded
into an agreement until its provisions are right. We will not
be deflected from an agreement when the provisions are
right."

The suggestion that my motive was to "steal" credit for the
all-but-certain election victory is beneath contempt. I never
participated in any sense in partisan politics. I played no
role whatsoever in the campaign. I did not attend meetings
dealing with domestic policies. My sole motive was to preserve
the diplomatic achievement for which Nixon had suffered
obloquy for four years. This forced me to try to navigate
between the passionate Vietnamese parties, the equally
passionate American peace movement, and the in-fighting within
the Administration of which the statements you quote are good
examples.

(3) Exceeding my instructions while negotiating in Moscow in
April 1972.

This canard reflects vast ignorance of the record.
Throughout the first term, Nixon's (and my) positions on arms
control were tougher and more comprehensive than those of the
interdepartmental negotiating team. This created two problems:
on the one hand, constant bureaucratic frictions, on the
other, a state of affairs whereby the media and Congress
depicted the White House as the villain and the negotiators as

5

the heroes of the negotiating process. But since Nixon was
being pilloried by the peace movement as a warmonger and
worse, he absolutely needed the American public to perceive
him as a leader capable of bringing peace. Therefore, he
charged me with negotiating on arms control directly with the
Kremlin in a backchannel via the Soviet ambassador in
Washington. This required that I convince the Soviet leaders
that there was no short-cut around the White House as a
prelude to negotiating the sort of agreement Nixon wanted.

The first obstacle to be overcome was the Soviet insistence
that negotiations be confined to defensive weapons in which
America had a technological edge. In other words, the Soviets
were refusing to limit offensive weapons in which they were
striving for a quantitative edge - all this while the Congress
was blocking all new American offensive programs. The White
House insisted that any agreement include offensive as well as
defensive weapons. The linkage between offensive and defensive
weapons was achieved in May 1971.

Following their stereotyped tactics, the Soviets next tried
to limit the types of offensive weapons to be covered to the
smallest number possible. Nixon's (and my) objective was
clearly the opposite - to cover the largest number of
offensive weapons. Thus, when I went to Moscow in April 1972
to prepare for Nixon's summit, our official negotiating team
was pressing us toward the Soviet position, which in effect
excluded submarines and submarine-based missiles; the White
House wanted to include all missiles, whether land- or sea-
based. In early February, I had submitted in the backchannel a
comprehensive plan approved by Nixon, including both land- and
sea-based missiles. I also submitted - with Nixon's approval -
a draft communique for the summit. No answer had yet been
received when I went to Moscow in April 1972.

The situation was further complicated because North Vietnam
had just started a major offensive. Nixon was determined not
to permit Soviet arms to defeat an American ally and wanted to
press Moscow to use its influence in Hanoi to call off the
offensive. He therefore instructed me: (a) to make sure he
would be received as head of state and not as head of
government; (b) to complete the agenda for the summit and in
the process to insist that arms control remain in the White
House channel and not in the diplomatic channel; (c) to make
progress on other subjects depend on progress on Vietnam. I

6

agreed with this approach - even though it seemed to urge me to negotiate and to stonewall at the same time.

While I was en route to Moscow, the Soviets repeated a ploy from the previous year's negotiations. They offered in the front -that is, public - channel about half of what Nixon and I had put forward in the backchannel. Our SALT negotiating team considered this major progress and pressed for authority to proceed. Nixon was enraged by what he considered a ploy to deprive him of credit and to limit his options. Almost all of the misunderstandings of the next few days resulted from Nixon's difficulty in distinguishing at his remove between the front and the backchannel proposals.

In Moscow, I refused for two days to discuss any subject except Vietnam. The discussions stalemated, though Brezhnev promised to support a resumption of secret talks in Paris three weeks hence. On the morning of the third day, devoted to summit preparations, Brezhnev suddenly in effect accepted all our proposals of February, both with respect to arms control and the final communique. This presented me with the following dilemma: if I rejected our own proposal, it would scuttle the summit and remove any restraint on Soviet support for Hanoi's offensive; the proposal would then surface in the front channel. If rejected there, it would start a huge bureaucratic row and cause Nixon to be accused of undermining arms control because of his "obsession" with Vietnam. For these reasons, I agreed to tighten up the language of Brezhnev's memorandum and take it back to Nixon ad referendum, meaning that Nixon still had the full option of rejecting it.

Nixon, who was in Camp David without any advisers acquainted with the subject (Haig having remained at the White House), thought I was bringing back the frontchannel proposal or some variation thereof. It was the sort of temporary misunderstanding which, given different time zones and limited time for details, can occasionally occur in any negotiation; the miracle is how rarely such misunderstanding took place.

Upon my return, Nixon understood immediately that he had in fact scored a huge breakthrough for which we had made no additional concession and that all of his options on Vietnam remained open. On the night of my return, Nixon orally confirmed the Brezhnev offer. The next day, he approved it in writing. The results were in fact substantially what ended up in the ultimate agreement, whose basic numbers have been adopted by all subsequent administrations.

Alleged Differences Between Nixon and Me Regarding the Second
Term's Foreign Policy

You mention two disagreements between Nixon and me about the direction of the second term. The first concerns the viability of the Vietnam agreement, the second the priority of American foreign policy between Europe and the Middle East.

With respect to the first, you wrote (p. 464): "Kissinger had no confidence that it would last whereas Nixon was utterly determined to make it endure." There exists not a shred of evidence - in memoranda, phone conversations, public statements and, I am absolutely confident, in the tapes - to support such a proposition. It is particularly painful to someone who, in the Ford Administration, testified day after day on behalf of aid to Indo China long after all my colleagues had jumped ship.

I was indeed convinced that the North Vietnamese would challenge the agreement; I was equally determined that America would have to resist with all its means. The White House records supplied to the Kerry Committee by the Bush Administration show that, starting in March 1973, I urged major air attacks on North Vietnam in retaliation against Hanoi's systematic violations. Nixon preferred to wait until all our prisoners had been returned in early April. I have no doubt that he would have retaliated with his customary determination then. However, Watergate was coming to a head at that precise moment, eliminating his options and absorbing his attention. In June, the Congress voted to bar any retaliation "in, over or near Indo China."

The second point - that I somehow thwarted a Middle East process in favor of the Year of Europe - is odd. I had thought that Middle East policy was one of the success stories of the Nixon administration, and the shuttle diplomacy is connected in the public mind with at least some of Nixon's achievements. So what exactly is the charge? The second term started on January 20, 1973. February was consumed with finishing up Vietnam and a trip to China. In March and again in May, I met secretly with Hafez Ismail, Sadat's National Security Adviser, to explore the start of a peace process - all with Nixon's approval. We made little progress because, with Watergate in full flower, Nixon did not wish to add to his domestic difficulties by proposing a formal comprehensive plan. In June

1973, Nixon, in a three-hour meeting with Brezhnev at San Clemente, stonewalled Brezhnev's proposal for a joint Soviet-American initiative for much the same reason.

The October War gave us the opportunity to take charge of the peace process, with me as the negotiator. A Middle East peace conference was assembled at Geneva in December 1973 and an Israeli-Egyptian disengagement agreement emerged under American auspices in January 1974. A Syrian agreement, still in force and still being observed, followed in June 1974 and another Israeli-Egyptian agreement a year later (in the Ford Administration but started under Nixon). All students of the period agree that the Nixon Administration started the peace process which culminated later in historic settlements. I can think of not a single disagreement on strategy with Nixon on that subject.

As for the Year of Europe, documents show that Nixon approved the concept; he personally negotiated it with Brandt, Heath, and Pompidou, spending more personal time on it than on any other topic. Once again, the record shows not the slightest difference between the President and his advisor. So, once again, what exactly is the problem?

REMARKS BY PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON

Ceremonies Marking the 25th Anniversary of
His First Inauguration
and the Announcement of THE CENTER FOR PEACE AND FREEDOM

Thursday, January 20, 1994

Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace
Yorba Linda, California

TO ALL OF OUR DISTINGUISHED guests here today, I want to say first that I'm very complimented to be introduced by Jerry Ford. We have been friends for many years. But I was particularly impressed to be introduced by him because, you see, he was a star center at the University of Michigan. I didn't even make a letter at Whittier. I asked him just before I came out on the stage today whether he had been named to the All-American team. He said, "Oh no. I wasn't that good." I think he probably was. But let me just say this. While he didn't make the All-American team in football, during the 33 years he has served his nation -- in the Navy, in Congress, as Vice President, and as President -- Jerry Ford was and is an all-American.

And I'm sure Pat would say that we are very pleased to have Betty here, too, because it reminds us that First Ladies play a very significant role, some in more public ways than others. A First Lady has to endure campaigning with her husband through the years. I dedicated my first book, *Six Crises*, to Pat, because she also ran. And I think of a First Lady -- Pat, Betty, the others I have known, Democrat and Republican -- sitting through speeches that they've heard many times, acting as if they were hearing it for the first time. I think of them suffering in silence when they can't do anything about the fact that their husbands are under attack. I think of them hosting those interminable state dinners, shaking hands, always gracious, always smiling, always First Ladies. And so today I want to pay tribute to Betty, to Lee Annenberg, and to all of those who have been First Ladies in our embassies abroad or in the White House. We owe them a great debt of gratitude.

I also want to thank those here today who served in our administration and who have talked about the record we tried to achieve. The man at the top gets the credit, or the discredit as the case might be, but I can assure you, we couldn't have done what we did without a great team.

IT IS HARD TO IMAGINE, at a time when we are going through the ordeal of another earthquake in southern California, that things could ever have been worse. But as I look back 25 years to that cold Inauguration Day in Washington, I remember the enormous problems we had abroad. There were 550,000 Americans serving in Vietnam. We had no relations with China. We had a belligerent relationship with the Soviet Union. There were no prospects for ending the Cold War.

But the war abroad was matched by a war at home. Urban violence had reached incredible heights. In 1968 we had the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. In the Presidential campaign, both Senator Humphrey and I were exposed to enormous, violent demonstrations, but it was brought home to Pat and me most dramatically on Inauguration Day. I remember how disappointed we were when the Secret Service insisted that we ride in an enclosed car from that Capitol to the White House, which had not happened before in our time. The reason was that there were too many demonstrators out there armed with overripe eggs and other controlled substances.

Think of how different things are today. Think of what has happened over the past five years. One hundred million people liberated from Soviet control in Eastern Europe. Communism collapsing in its Russian heartland. We now have a relationship with the Peoples Republic of China, which is still communist politically but which is becoming more and more capitalist economically and which as a result has the fastest growth rate of any major nation in the world.

What we should recognize, and what we should be thankful for today, is that we truly live in a new world. It is a time when we should all be celebrating victory. But instead we find too many people who wring their hands and act as if we have suffered defeat. We are rich in goods but poor in spirit. We have a serious budget deficit. But the far more serious problem we face is a deficit of the spirit, and to address that spiritual deficit, we must look beyond the peace that we have won and that we are enjoying today.

For example, I sometimes hear young people say, "You know, what a hard time it is to be growing up." My response always surprises them. I tell them that I cannot think of a time when one would be more fortunate to live in the United States of America than at this time -- not only because of what has been achieved in the past but also what can be achieved in the future. Thinking of what I have just mentioned in terms of how the world has changed, we should remember that there is so much more left to do.

I remember vividly the last time I saw Mao Zedong in Beijing. It was in 1976. He had suffered a stroke. He could still think clearly, but it was very difficult for him to speak. It was painful to watch his face flush as he tried to grunt out responses to my comments and questions. I said to him, "Mr. Chairman, it is important that the United States and China have a relationship. Not only will we produce peace between our two countries, but we will help produce peace for all the people in Asia and in the world." He tried to answer. As the very pretty translator tried to translate -- dressed, incidentally, in a drab Mao suit, perhaps the worst punishment the communists ever inflicted upon Chinese women -- Mao could understand enough English to realize that she had gotten it wrong. He reached up, grabbed the notebook from her hand, and scrawled out the words. She then read what he had said: "Is peace your only goal?"

I didn't expect the question and wasn't prepared with an answer. Off the top of my head I said, "We should seek peace with justice." That was an adequate response during the Cold War. It would not be an adequate response today. Historically we must recognize that peace has usually been a time of stagnation, not a time of growth. Today we must go beyond peace, beyond order, beyond even justice in conflicts between people. We must stand for peace with freedom in its broadest aspects.

And that is why our young people today should realize that the legacy that we have inherited from our forebears and that we must pass on is that we stand for something that is unique. It isn't our military strength, which is awesome. It isn't our economic wealth, although we are the richest nation in the world. It is that we stand for a great idea -- one that has drawn millions of people to our shores over many generations and that has been the admiration of people all over the world since our country's beginnings.

Consider that there are now 184 members in the United Nations. There are

4,000 languages spoken in the world. While the Cold War is over, we have new, small
wars. Racial wars. Religious wars. War again haunts the continent of Europe. Our
example is a great one because it overrides the differences between races and among
religious and political and national backgrounds. That great, unifying ideal is
something that every American regardless of his background can enjoy. As George
Shultz indicated in his remarks, it is the heritage we must do everything in our power to
pass along to the future.

AS HAS BEEN SAID MANY times today on this platform, the Cold War is over. The
communists have lost the Cold War. But it is a mistake to say that the West has won it.
Communism has been rejected by the peoples of Eastern Europe and by the people of
the former Soviet Union. Now freedom is on trial. Can freedom provide those material
things that people need and want, the things the communists promised but could not
deliver, as well as the higher freedoms -- freedom of the press, freedom of religion,
freedom in all of its great and glorious aspects? That is the challenge we have today --
a challenge beyond peace.

All eyes today are focused on Russia, the former capital of communism, which is
going through enormous difficulties. Many question whether peace, political freedom,
and economic freedom can survive there. The challenges ahead for the Russian
people are very difficult. Freedom must survive in Russia, and I believe that it will, but
only if we continue, along with our allies, to help it survive.

Consider what they are trying to do. Russia is trying to have a democratic
system, and to a point, it is succeeding. Yeltsin is the first elected Russian leader in
1000 years of Russian history. That tells us, however, that there has been no history of
democracy which Russians can use in developing their policies. Winston Churchill is
often quoted as saying that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all
the others. The Russians are learning that right now.

The Russian leaders are also courageously trying to enact free market economic
policies despite the fact that for 70 years they have not developed an entrepreneurial
class that can run a free market. And to paraphrase Churchill, free market economic
policies are the worst economic policies that a country can have, except for all the
others. Whether it will work is not predictable. And we're going to have uncertainties.

There will be up and down and back and forth. But we must stay the course, for their
sake and ours and for the cause of peace and freedom in the world.

Consider what is at stake. If political and economic freedom succeed in Russia, other dictatorships around the world may follow them along that path. If they fail, there could be a turning back to dictatorship in Russia as well as in other nations around the world. And so that is the reason that we should play a role.

What we have before us today is this question: Can democratic capitalism, which is taking form in Russia, compete with communist capitalism, which we have in China? The jury is still out. The answer will be determined by how well the Russians handle this terribly difficult situation. But it also will depend upon what our friends do to help them handle it.

**WHAT DOES THE FUTURE hold?** Let me make a few predictions. There will not be a global nuclear war. The end of the Cold War decided that. But there may be an increase in the chances for small wars, some of them nuclear. Those nations that are trying to get nuclear weapons will not be as inhibited as the Soviets were by the thought of nuclear suicide. That's on the negative side.

On the positive side, the next century provides very exciting prospects, and a very hopeful prognosis. For the balance of this century and into the next century, we are going to see a period of economic prosperity because, as nations adopt free market economic policies, they will be able to move forward as they could not under policies of socialism and communism. The world's enormous technological progress will permit us to better address social problems such as inadequate health care and hunger. It will be a century in which political freedom will be the rule rather than the exception, because the communications revolution has had the effect of making dictatorships no longer viable. They cannot stand having their closed societies opened up.

It will be a period that I can best describe by referring again to Winston Churchill. His favorite American politician was an eloquent Irishman from New York, Bourke Cochran. Cochran once said, "The earth is a generous mother. She will provide for all of her children in abundance if they will only cultivate her soil in peace and in justice." That was not true when Cochran said it at the beginning of the 20th

5

century. It is true on the eve of the 21st century. We now have the knowledge and
wealth to wage a winning war against hunger, against disease all over the world.

That brings us to the role of the United States. Some are tired of leadership. They say we carried that burden long enough. But if we do not provide leadership, who will? The Germans? The Japanese? The Russians? The Chinese? Only the United States has the potential militarily and economically to lead in the era beyond peace. It is a great challenge for great people.

Some ask why the United Nations cannot lead. I would remind you that General De Gaulle, shortly before his death, said that parliaments can paralyze policy; they can not initiate it. The United States should use the United Nations when it serves our interests, but we must not have our policy determined by the United Nations.

Some say we can no longer afford to lead. But as Herb Stein once said, "The United States is a very rich country -- not rich enough to do everything, but rich enough to do everything important." And nothing is more important than the survival of peace and freedom -- not just in Russia but in nations all over the world, and particularly in the United States.

And that, as I understand it, is the mission of this Center for Peace and Freedom, which has been addressed by the previous speakers. I am proud to be associated with it. As many of you know, I'm not much of a fan of think tanks, but this is a different one, or so I've been assured by Dimitri Simes, Henry Kissinger, Jim Schlesinger, and George Argyros. It is different because it has a different goal, the goal I have tried to describe very briefly to you today.

AS I READ IN THE PAPERS a rather strange and sad statement by Bobby Inman when he declined to be further considered for Secretary of Defense, the thought occurred to me that many people might ask me if it was all worth it. Just a year ago, while I was in Moscow, I met with Vice President Rutskoi. He was a war hero, and he was complaining bitterly about the frustration of working with a bunch of politicians. As I was leaving, I said to him, "Mr. Vice President, as you know, General Sherman said 'War is hell.' You may find that politics is even worse." I could not have imagined that six months later he would have turned against President Yeltsin, and he is now paying

a price for doing that. He found out that politics really could be hell.

In 1973, a fine vocal group from Southern California appeared at the White House. I think Jerry and others will remember how brilliantly they performed. At the end, a handsome young boy stood up and expressed appreciation for being invited to the White House. He said, "It's a long from Watts to the White House." Those of you who have seen this little home, which my father built just a few steps away, would probably agree that it's also a long way from Yorba Linda to the White House. Was it worth it? Well, my answer, very briefly, is this. Politics is never going to be heaven, and sometimes it's hell, but it was worth the trip.

President Nixon spoke without notes or a text.

## Essay

WILLIAM SAFIRE

# The Last New Nixon

PARK RIDGE, N.J.

"My partisan days are over."

Coming from Richard Nixon, who has raised more partisan ire than any American public figure in the past half-century, that's a stunning statement.

Back in 1966, the year of his first comeback, reporters listening to his longheaded world views would narrow their eyes and wonder about the "new" Nixon. I was present at the creation of his disarming and not defensive reply: "Of course there's a 'new' Nixon — times change; there's a new America and a new world."

In 1993, at age 80, the American uniquely qualified to be foreign-policy elder statesman is renewing his role again. "There may be a need for a Vandenberg," he says, recalling the Republican Senator whose name is still associated with bipartisanship in foreign policy.

He has just returned from a grueling two-week private trip to Russia and other republics of the former Soviet Union. Today, he responds to an invitation from President Clinton to report his findings and help educate his youthful successor on global power-playing. A month from now, he's off to Japan and China.

Last Wednesday night at 9:40, the White House operator reached the former President in his New Jersey town house. The operator then could not find President Clinton, and apolогоized; Nixon said, "I'll wait; he's a helluva lot busier than I am." When Clinton came on, they talked for nearly 40 minutes.

I tried to find out what was said in that call (recommended to Clinton by Bob Dole and Bob Strauss) and received a mock-glower: one does not reveal confidences with Presidents. But Nixon returning from abroad always writes his thoughts and sticks to them; his long article on The Times's Op-Ed page, which was later looked kindly upon publicly by President Clinton, telegraphed his central points:

1. Boris Yeltsin is not hard to read — charismatic, refreshingly straightforward — and if he were replaced, we would not likely get a better hope for democracy in Russia, only a worse one.

2. The reformers need help from Western executives in developing an entrepreneurial class to attract private investment. In next month's summit in Vancouver, Clinton should have specific ways "to put some meat on the table," as statesmen say, and Nixon has a few thoughts about that.

3. Our stakes in Russia's reform could not be higher, because Clinton's

budget package would be a dead letter if Russian nationalists took over and our defense budget had to be increased.

Nixon is candid about his liking for Russians. "I'm a Russophile, but not a Commiephile."

He takes a visitor on a world tour. On Bosnia: "I'm more hawkish than Bush was. You cannot work out a settlement unless there is a correlation of forces — the arms embargo was a mistake. Your colleague Gelb is right about that."

On China: "They can never hope to attract Taiwan if they stomp on democracy in Hong Kong. I'll tell them that in Beijing." Trade pressure for human rights? "It would be a mistake for us to weaken the private Chinese economy — that's the greatest pressure for political reform, and the next generation is more Chinese than Communist."

Japan: "It's really dumb for the Japanese to predicate help for Russia on four little islands."

America as world policeman: "Who the hell else do you want to lead the world — China, Japan, Germany? The U.N.? Russia and all those republics could be lost to freedom if America abdicates leadership."

## Elder statesman now on duty.

Clinton's call to arms? Looking out across a snowy landscape, Nixon gives an indirect reply: "By making freedom work here, we set a powerful example. We have to exercise leadership that makes the world respect us and build a society that makes the world admire us. You see misery in Moscow, but determination — poor in goods, rich in spirit. That's the message to get across to kids these days. What a great chance for Clinton."

The 1996 campaign? Nixon, the old glem in his eye, leans forward: "Republicans should forget about '96 and think about good candidates for '94 — you can't win seven Senate seats with turkeys. In '66, two years after the Goldwater debacle, we —"

He catches himself.

"Nope. I don't want to reduce my effectiveness in foreign affairs. My partisan days are over." ☐

THE RICHARD NIXON

LIBRARY & BIRTHPLACE

APR 06 1992

Address by Former President Richard Nixon

Wednesday, March 11, 1992

THE PROMISE OF PEACE

We meet at a very challenging time in America's history -- a time when we have been through three years of events that have changed the world. I refer to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union, and to our victory over aggression in the Gulf War. As a result of those events, we live in a new world, and the question now is: what should the leadership position of the United States be in that new world?

Other participants in this conference will address what the policy of the United States should be in this new world ideally.

I am going to direct my remarks in this political year not just to what our policy should be, but what is possible politically. If you follow political campaigns, it's rather standard practice for the candidate to get up and say, "This is the most important election in history." I know, I said it a lot of times. Of course every campaign is very important to the candidate. In this case it's very important to the nation.

Over the past 44 years I have had the opportunity to observe 12 presidential elections; I have been a candidate in five of them. In that period of time there has never been a campaign in which foreign policy was less discussed, and there has never been a time in which foreign policy was more important, because whomever is President in the next four years will provide the leadership that will make the difference as to whether peace and freedom survive in the world. Since that is the case, it is vitally important that foreign policy be front and center in our considerations.

We have been on a rollercoaster ride as far as foreign policy is concerned. After the Communist victory in Vietnam the attitude of most Americans was that there was nothing we could do in foreign policy. After our victory in the Gulf War, the conventional wisdom was that we could do anything. After the collapse of Communism, particularly in the Soviet Union, the conventional wisdom was that there was nothing left to do.

As a result of these events, we see developing a new isolationism in both political parties. The general theme which runs through the new isolationists is that the United States no

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longer should play or can play a leadership role in the
world. There are some who say we can't afford to, there are
others who say it is not necessary for us to play that role,
and there are still others who say that others should play
that role.

When we consider what they are saying, it reminds me of
a pickup ragtime band. Some are marching to different
drummers, some are singing off-key, but all of them have the
same tune, the same theme -- come home America.

Even some of those who have been the strongest supporters of
a strong foreign policy role for the United States now say it is
time to turn our efforts inward. We can't afford it, as far as
foreign policy is concerned. Our domestic problems are so great
that we should concentrate on them.

What they fail to realize is that foreign and domestic
policy are like Siamese twins: neither can survive without the
other. The American people will not support a strong foreign
policy unless we have a strong policy dealing with problems at
home. And what they fail to realize is that foreign policy has
an impact on what we do at home. We can't be at peace in a
world of wars, and we can't have a healthy American economy in a
sick world economy. For example, we all can recall -- I can, at
least, you've read about it, I lived through it -- the Great
Depression. It began as a recession in 1931, became a depression
in 1932 in great part because the United States adopted a
protectionist policy under the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.

We come now to the fundamental question: Is it necessary
for the United States to play a role in this new world since all
of these events have occurred? Those who answer 'no' begin with
what I think is a false premise. It goes something like this:
The Cold War is over, and we have won it. It is time to come
home. That's only half true. It is true that the communists
have lost the Cold War. It is not true, however, that the free
world has won it.

What we have to realize is that the Cold War was not the
traditional war over territory by great powers. It was a war of
ideas, the ideas of communism versus the ideas of freedom. We
can see that war most clearly in Russia where the seeds of the
idea of communism were first planted. The Russian people reaped
the bitter harvest from those seeds. As a result, the Russian
people rejected communism. They rejected it because it didn't
work.

But now, freedom is on trial, and if freedom does not work,
the Russian people are not going to return to communism because
it failed. But they will turn to a new despotism in which they
trade their freedom for security and put their future in the
hands of those who promise to make sure that they can have the
necessities of life. This new despotism, shorn of the baggage of
the dying faith of communism, but still committed to the
imperialist Russian nationalism which has been traditional in
Russian history, could be a far more dangerous threat to peace
and freedom in the world, and particularly to peace, than was the

Page 2

old Soviet totalitarianism. And it is that, therefore, that we
have to address today.

So let us turn to Russia. In turning to Russia, as I was
saying to Dr. Brzezinski during lunch, that does not mean that I
believe we should ignore what is happening in Ukraine and other
former Soviet republics and the newly independent nations of
Eastern Europe. I use Russia only as the prime example of the
problem. What I say about Russia would apply to the others as
well.

As we look at Russia today, the question somebody asked me
at the table was, Is it going to work? Is freedom going to
survive? The answer is it is going to be a very close-run thing.

It is going to be close-run because there are many minus
factors at this time. Among them, as Dimitri Simes has pointed
out in a recent article, corruption is rampant. We have the
problem of ethnic quarrels. We have the problem of enormous
suffering because of the changes that have been made in the
attempt to build a free market society in Russia.

One of the major reasons that there is a serious question as
to whether freedom can succeed in Russia is the lack of a
management class. When I say the lack of a management class,
that indicates why the Marshall Plan analogy will not work,
because when we look at Russia and when we compare the situation
in Europe, and for that matter, in Japan at the end of World War
II, five years of war did not destroy the management class in
Western Europe or in Japan. Seventy years of totalitarian
communism did destroy the management class in Russia. And
therefore we have to have a different approach than the Marshall
Plan. Those are the negatives.

There are some positive factors which we sometimes overlook.
One is that Russia is a very rich country, rich in resources and
rich in its people. It is a highly industrialized society. The
Russian people are a great people, they are a strong people.
Ninety-five percent of the Russian people are literate. Ninety
percent have the equivalent of a high school education. Russia
produces some of the great scientists, the great engineers,
particularly in military activities. Some people forget that the
first man in space was not an American, it was a Russian.

There's another factor on the plus side, which is often
overlooked. Pushkin in the 19th century wrote that rebellions
in Russia tend to be senseless and violent. What is particularly
significant about this revolution is that it was neither violent
nor senseless. This is to the great credit of both Gorbachev and
Yeltsin.

The major factor on the plus side, however, is that Russia,
the new Russia, has a strong leader. There is a tendency to
underestimate Boris Yeltsin. Some say that politically, he isn't
democratic enough; and others say that intellectually he is not
smart enough; and that socially he is not smooth enough.

I have seen many great leaders over the past 44 years. I

Page 3

would rate both Gorbachev and Yeltsin as political heavyweights. Both were born as peasants. Gorbachev became a man of the world; Yeltsin remained a man of the people. And Yeltsin right now must never forget that.

As he moves onto the world scene, he must always remember that if he is going to change the world, he first has to change Russia. He has to change it from dictatorship to democracy. He has to change it from a command economy to a free market economy. And if he is going to be able to do that, he is going to need help. The question is: should we provide that help?

Let's look at the positive factors as far as Yeltsin is concerned. Yeltsin has demonstrated his physical courage by standing on top of a tank and facing down a gang of card-carrying killers who were trying to run a Stalinist coup.

Even more important, he has political courage. He risked his immense popularity by adopting policies which let the ruble float. This led to astronomical inflation. This has caused enormous hardship, and has brought his popularity down. But it was a necessary first step in moving from a command to a free market economy.

He is one who, unlike Gorbachev, if you read Gorbachev's first column in the New York Times a few days ago, has repudiated not just communism but socialism as well. He has vetoed all of the foreign aid programs that he inherited from Gorbachev, which in the year 1990 took $15 billion from the Russian budget to provide aid to a number of countries including Cuba which were antagonistic to the West and to the United States. And we all know that in the field of arms control, he not only has matched President Bush's courageous initiatives; he exceeded them.

Yeltsin is the most pro-Western leader in Russian history. He deserves our help.

What does he need? He needs a number of things. Just to tick off a few of them, he needs help from the IMF and other sources, and that will take billions of dollars, to stabilize the ruble. He needs more open markets for the exports which Russia would want to make, the new Russia, to the West and to other parts of the world. He needs humanitarian aid. And there needs to be a single Western-led organization which would assess all of the needs and then would develop a program for working with private enterprise and with governments to meet those needs.

To summarize, it is important for us to recognize that Yeltsin is going to need very substantial economic aid from the West. Not just the United States, I emphasize, but from the West. The New York Times in its editorial today estimated that the cost of the aid to cover some of these items that I have mentioned and others would be approximately $20 billion a year over a period of five years. That's a great deal of money. However, the London Financial Times, in its report yesterday pointed out that $20 billion a year has to be compared with 20 times that much that the West spent last year, before the collapse of communism, to defend against Soviet communism. This

Page 4

puts it all in perspective.

Now we come to the hard political questions. What does the United States do? How do we meet this problem, particularly when we are in the midst of a presidential campaign and in the middle of a recession? The first argument that is made, and it's one that is well taken, is that the United States has carried this burden long enough. It is time for others to carry it. After World War II we provided aid to our allies and also to our defeated enemies and enabled them to recover from World War II. Now it is time for those that we helped then to assume the burden of helping Russia, the other independent countries in the former Soviet Union and those in Eastern Europe recover from the Cold War. They are right.

The major burden for meeting the needs of Russia and the other countries that need help must be carried by the nations in Europe and in Japan that we helped after World War II. But the United States is the richest and strongest nation in the world and we must provide the leadership. We cannot provide the leadership unless we have a seat at the table. To paraphrase Ben Stein in another context, you can't have a seat at the table unless you have chips to put in the pot. And we have to have enough chips to be a serious contender for that leadership role.

Now we come to a fundamentally basic question in a campaign year. What's in it for us? What's in it for us to help Russia, Ukraine, the other independent nations in the Soviet Union and the nations of Eastern Europe? The answer is that a great deal is in it for us.

Charity, it is said, begins at home. I agree. But aid to Russia is not charity. We have to realize that if Yeltsin fails the alternative is not going to be somebody better, it is going to be somebody infinitely worse. If Yeltsin fails, if freedom fails, the new despotism which will take its place will mean that the peace dividend is finished, we will have to rearm, and that's going to cost infinitely more than would the aid that we provide at the present time. It would also mean, if Yeltsin fails, if freedom fails in Russia, that the great tide of freedom that has been sweeping over the world in these last three years will begin to ebb and that dictatorship, rather than democracy, will be the wave of the future.

On the other hand, if freedom succeeds in Russia, Russia will be an example for others, particularly in China, in the other remaining communist countries and in the non-communist dictatorships around the world -- an example for others to follow, a powerful magnet drawing them to freedom.

It would mean too that with freedom succeeding in Russia, we would live in a totally new world with all that could mean to all the people of the world and particularly to us in the United States. Just think. For seventy years, communist Russia has been trying to export communism around the world. If Yeltsin and his reforms succeed, democratic free Russia will be exporting the goods and the ideas of freedom around the world. And that means that, in the years ahead, this will have an impact going

Page 5

far beyond Russia, far beyond Europe, all over the world.
Economically speaking, it means that the new Russia, with all of
the production it will be able to have with a free economy, will
provide great new markets for the products of the United States.
That means billions of dollars in trade and potentially millions
of jobs.

It also means -- if Yeltsin succeeds, if democracy survives
-- that our children and grandchildren will be freed from the
fear of a possible world nuclear war that now haunts them,
because democracies do not begin wars.

We come now, however, to another political question, and I
understand that people are interested in politics these days.
The political question is this: All of the pollsters are telling
their candidates, don't tackle foreign policy, and particularly
not foreign aid, because foreign aid is poison as a political
issue. They're wrong and history proves it.

I recall vividly what Harry Truman did in 1947. Let me lay
the foundation of what he did and why. Harry Truman's popularity
in January of that year was 35 percent. The Congress was
overwhelmingly Republican. He had suffered an enormous defeat in
the election of the 80th Congress in the previous November. And
yet, I remember as if it were yesterday, Harry Truman -- jaunty,
some said a little cocky -- coming down before a joint session of
the Congress and asking for millions of dollars in aid to Greece
and Turkey to prevent communist subversion and possible communist
aggression. It was a very tough vote for two very young and
both, as history later indicated, rather ambitious young
congressmen.

The liberal Democrats in Jack Kennedy's Massachusetts
district were against military foreign aid. The conservative
Republicans in my California district were against all foreign
aid. However, after considering it, we both voted for it, and a
majority in the Republican House and Senate, voted for that
program and that was the program which later was developed into
the Marshall Plan and later into NATO, which not only contained
communism but bought the time that was essential for communism to
fail as it inevitably did fail last year in the Soviet Union as
well as in Eastern Europe two years before.

The following year, Harry Truman who had been at 35 percent
in January of 1947, won the election for President. What is more
important is that a Democratic President supported by a
Republican Congress provided aid to Greece and Turkey, which was
the indispensable step toward containing communism and that
eventually led to the victory of freedom in Russia and the rest
of the Soviet Union. Today a Republican President with a
Democratic Congress has the opportunity to provide aid to
Russia which would assure the victory of freedom.

We responded magnanimously to the threat of war then. Can
we not respond to the promise of peace now?

War brings out the worst and the best in men; real peace
will bring out only the best.

Page 6

In the Cold War, we united to prevent what was evil. Now we must unite to advance what is good.

That is the question, then, that Americans must face today, political Americans, all Americans, and I think we know what the answer should be.

As we look to the future it is important for us to recognize that we have this great responsibility but it is also a great opportunity. Consider this. The 20th century will be remembered as a century of war. By our leadership at this time, we can help make the 21st century a century of peace and freedom. That is our challenge.

In his Iron Curtain speech, Winston Churchill said, "America at this time stands at the pinnacle of world power. This is a solemn moment for the American democracy, because with primacy in power is joined an awe-inspiring accountability for the future."

Despite what the pessimists say, despite what the negativists say, those words are as true today as they were when he spoke them 45 years ago.

America today has that responsibility but some may ask, why not someone else? If America does not lead, who? The Japanese? The Chinese? The Russians? The Germans? They are the only nations in the world that have the potential economic and military power to lead in the next century. This is our moment of greatness. It is our moment of truth. We must seize this moment because we hold the future in our hands.

RAVE REACTIONS TO PRESIDENT NIXON'S SPEECH, *THE PROMISE OF PEACE*, DELIVERED AT THE NIXON LIBRARY CONFERENCE,

WASHINGTON, DC

MARCH 11, 1992

"Richard Nixon surfaced here to advocate a major assistance program that would support a non-communist Russia at a potential turning point in world history. Mr. Nixon's emergence at (the) conference...was a major political event."

## --Washington Post

"Should we...bring home the boys, cancel foreign aid, cut down on defenses and pull down the blinds? Will a return to isolationism make America first? Mr. Nixon's answer--an emphatic no--was succinctly formulated in his 30-minute address on "America's Role in the Emerging World." It is hoped that Mr. Nixon's timely wake-up call will get that debate going."

## --Washington Times

"Along came Richard Nixon...to give all the candidates and their lockstep pollsters a swift kick in the teeth. At the bipartisan, star-studded conference,...Nixon...(urged) the assembled leaders to reaffirm national purpose..."

## --William Safire
*New York Times*

"Suddenly and to good purpose, a foreign policy issue--aid to Russia and the other former Soviet republics--is moving back into a political debate otherwise smothered by domestic concerns. A boost has come from former President Richard Nixon, who..challenged his fellow Republican, George Bush, to ward off a "new despotism."...He is right."

## --Washington Post
*Editorial*

"Mr. Nixon argues passionately that if President Boris Yeltsin fails in his effort to transform Russia into a free market democracy, everything that has been gained in the peaceful revolution there in 1991 will be lost."

## --New York Times

"Mr. Nixon stands almost alone in flinging down the interventionist gauntlet..."

--Daniel Schorr

"Standing at the front of a hotel ballroom replete with American flags,...Nixon struck the pose of the man in an arena so familiar to his political campaigns and presidency. With his hands clasped in front of him,...he spoke as often before into a single microphone without notes, a lectern or TelePrompTer."

--Washington Post

"My favorite Nixon point is the one about creating a single organization to coordinate all aid to Russia. It's absolutely essential."

--Leslie Gelb

New York Times

"Former President Richard M. Nixon has done a service to his country...A (great) benefit will come if Nixon's call to action succeeds in forcing the nation's political leaders to address one of the urgent challenges of our day. Nixon gives (Russia's needs) a prominence they clearly would not have had in this election season."

--Los Angeles Times

"It takes his courage to help Russian democracy. Nixon's leadership is a tremendous breakthrough..."

--Senator Joseph Lieberman

"Mr. Nixon has it right."

--Senator Joseph Biden

"Brilliant."

--Senator Malcolm Wallop

"He knows more about foreign affairs than this entire building combined."

--Senator Alan Simpson

"Good for Nixon."

--Senator Sam Nunn

"Magnificent."

--Senator Robert Dole

"What a history lesson."

--Senator Paul Simon

"It was the clearest voice we have heard from any political figure of either party during this period."

--Max Kampelman

"Nixon...(dominated) the world stage,...reminding people of the great drama in Russia and its importance to Americans."

--Hugh Sidey
Time

"HEEDING NIXON'S CALL...Many Republicans in Congress have joined the former President and Democrats in urging the Administration to push for more aid to the former Soviet republics."

--New York Times

"The former Republican President, Richard Nixon, has done his country a service. First in a memorandum...and now in a televised speech in Washington, he has raised American eyes from the pettiness of the primaries to what he calls the most important issue since the end of the Second World War: the fate of the political and economic reforms in Russia. Mr. Nixon's argument has struck home..."

--The Independent
London

America's Role in the Emerging World

Nixon Library National Policy Conference
Washington, DC, March 11 and 12, 1992

Full transcripts are available of this important national forum convened to focus attention and action on the post-Cold War challenges the United States faces in a world irrevocably transformed by the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Transcript books include all speeches and panel discussions on such timely issues as U.S. Global Involvement: Is it Worth the Price?, Facing the New Asia, Defining U.S. National Security Priorities, The United States and the New Europe, and The United States and the End of the Soviet Union -- plus picture pages on conference highlights. Nearly 100 pages of history making dialogue by our nation's top decision makers. A great addition to your library -- and as gifts.

Speakers: President Bush, President Nixon, former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger; former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger; CIA Director Robert Gates; U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills, and 20 distinguished panel participants from academia, industry, government and America's top think tanks.

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THE RICHARD NIXON

LIBRARY & BIRTHPLACE

MAR 30 1992

March 25, 1992

Honorable Henry A. Kissinger
Kissinger Associates
350 Park Avenue
New York, New York 10022

Dear Henry,

On behalf of our Board of Directors, I thank you for taking the time to participate in "America's Role in the Emerging World" and for enriching it immeasurably with your remarks. Virtually all the comments we have received have dwelt upon the high quality of the participants and the special effort they had obviously put into their presentations. We are honored you thought the forum worthy of your attention.

Having received dozens of requests for transcripts, we are in the process of preparing a complete text. I thought you might like to have the opportunity to ease the transition from the spoken to the written word by performing a light edit on your remarks during the address. If you would like to have us make any changes, please return your edited text to me by April 7 at fax 714-528-0544. We plan to have finished copies, of which I will of course send you one, by the end of April.

Please let me know if I can ever be helpful to you in any way. And do consider visiting us if business or pleasure bring you close by.

P.S.: When I mentioned to Suzanne your caveat about the LA Times Syndicate, she said it was her guess that neither they nor you would have a problem with this kind of publication.

America's Role in the World.

Speaker: Henry A. Kissinger, Chairman, Kissinger Associates, Inc.

JAMES SCHLESINGER: Ladies and gentlemen, we have gone through a great deal together in these last two days. (Laughter.) We have had five panels, and we are planning to have five speakers, and we now have the last, the culminating speech.

As you know from our various panels and discussions, this is a far more turbulent world as a result of the end of the Cold War. It is more difficult to analyze. It is subject to continued and disconcerting change. And, as a result, analysis and diplomacy are far more difficult than they are when there are clear lines of division in the world.

That may constitute a special problem for the United States. Americans are not well suited to analyzing other people's cultures and societies. Americans do not have much of a curiosity about history. Bob Gates just referred to the need for reminders of the past. Americans tend to believe, with the late Henry Ford, that history is bunk and, besides that, other peoples aren't that much different, they all just want simply to be Americans.

So the essential ingredient for a great diplomat is an understanding of other cultures and an understanding of history which permits one to understand what motivates other societies and, in that way, one will be able to anticipate how they will react to actions of our own. No one that I know has

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a greater understanding of what motivates other societies, no
one has a greater understanding of history, and no one has a
greater ability to anticipate the reactions of other societies
than my colleague and classmate, former Secretary of State
Henry A. Kissinger. (Applause.)

DR. KISSINGER: Mr. President, Jim, friends from so
many common battles, and ladies and gentlemen. Mr. President,
you should have been so lucky as to hear Jim Schlesinger say
such good things about me when we were in your Cabinet
together. (Laughter.) But I appreciated them greatly, as
colleagues for many decades and having learned so much from
Jim.

When I was asked by the President to be a speaker
here I thought it would be one of these philosophical meetings
where I could give a ponderous speech on the new world order.
Bill Safire could have then written that my words appeared
only every five minutes. (Laughter.) And it has, however,
now turned into what I think will turn out to be a rather
seminal occasion.

It is an astonishing tribute to President Nixon
that after all these years he could in one speech chart again
a path in the direction of which we need to go, and to start
a debate which will contribute in a decisive way to the
creation of the new international system and, above all, to
the reintegration of the countries of the communist world into
an international community.

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Whenever I have the privilege of speaking in the presence of President Nixon, I have to remember occasions when I would present some document to him in my somewhat ponderous style which passes for profundity at Harvard, and he'd pick out a few words of more than two syllables and he'd say, "Now remember, the average person will think that this is a soft drink." (Laughter.)

And there was another crucial lesson, among many, that I learned from President Nixon. The major foreign policy decisions of his administration, regardless of what was reported at the time, taken by him were not ever taken impulsively, sometimes to the great regret of the staff that went through excruciating deliberation while the decision was being made. And my tendency occasionally was to suggest some way to hedge what was being decided. And the President always said, "Remember, you pay the same price for doing something half way as for doing it completely." I think that is an important lesson for the conduct of foreign policy.

Leaders have a choice to act or not to act. They get no reward for failing by half measures. And it is a lesson that applies in every period, including, obviously, our own.

So it is a privilege for me to see what grade I get, when I conclude my remarks, from somebody from whom I have learned an enormous amount.

The subject which I was asked to address was

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America's role in the new world order. As a student of history I can think of few examples, in fact I can think of no example where a nation achieved so completely what it set out to do as the United States has in the last two or three years. If one compares what the bipartisan leaders of the late '40s and early '50s were saying of the kind of earth that they wanted to bring about, it is almost exactly what has happened, except that nobody believed that it would happen so quickly.

I know no one, at least I knew no one before this morning, who had predicted the evolution in the Soviet Union.

Now Mr. President, if you hold another conference a couple of years from now and do me the honor of inviting me, I will no doubt have convinced myself that I thought clearly at every stage. (Laughter, followed by applause) But at this point I must say that while I had some belief of a disintegration of the satellite orbit, it did not occur to me that we would see the twin revolutions through which we are now living, the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union and the collapse of the imperial system of the Russian empire.

The first revolution destroyed institutions that are 75 years old. The second revolution destroyed an enterprise that has gone on relentlessly, uninterruptedly for 300 years. Now this achievement of the United States has projected this country into a world for which it has very little philosophical apparatus.

The Cold War coincided with certain categories with

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which we were quite familiar. One was the experience of the
New Deal in which we had learned that political instability
can be cured if the gap between economic expectations and
reality can be closed. That was the foundation for the
Marshall Plan, for economic aid programs and similar
activities. The second was the experience of the 1930s and
'40s where appeasement had failed and then under American
leadership total victory was achieved in a struggle against a
country that at that time represented absolute evil, in Nazi
Germany, and unusual aggressiveness in Japan.

So those twoexperiences provided leadership groups
and concepts which could be applied to the two-power world of
the Cold War, which again required great American efforts and
also was perceived correctly as a struggle of good versus
evil.

We in America do not always realize how unique the
American approach to foreign policy has been historically. I
know no other nation that believes in a similar way a number
of the following propositions.

One, that what it does and says is of universal
significance; it is not an expression of the national interest
but an expression of universal principles, and that therefore
America has an obligation as a beacon of liberty. To believe
that personal morality and international morality are
identical, to believe that national interest is somehow wrong,
but that one has to stand for universal principles. The idea

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that America defends not special concerns but collective
security.

And when you read American presidents speaking of
foreign policy, you will find these themes, from Wilson
through the incumbent always repeated, if I may say so, with
one exception, which was President Nixon, who repeated these
themes also but managed to relate to concepts in which all
other nations, without exception, have had to conduct foreign
policy on narrow margins of survival, on the relative
satisfaction of their goals or nuances of foreign policy.

The great challenge of contemporary American
foreign policy is we have now graduated into a world of four,
five, six, seven -- depending on the time frame you pick --
more or less equal countries. I know documents which claim
that we can impose a particular preference on a universal
scale. It is beyond the capacity in the long term of our
political system to be the military policeman of the whole
world, even though without us there can be no security. In
such a world, we need to have some concept of equilibrium,
some relationship of objectives to historical processes. I
don't say that we have to become like the nations of the old
world. The nations of the old world managed in pursuit of
perfectly sound international theory to produce the colossal
catastrophe of World War I.

We have sometimes overextended ourselves in pursuit
of crucial and fundamental values. If you look at the history

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of the Cold War, the victory that I described could never have
been achieved without American idealism, and even if some
particular applications were marginally naive, one has to
remember that cynics don't build cathedrals.

Now, it's in this context that I would like to make
a few observations about the theme that has preoccupied this
conference, and particularly the theme of a major aid program
to Russia in support of the Russian leadership, and I would
like to put that in the context of the general observations
that I have advanced.

First let me repeat what I said at the beginning.
President Nixon has described a path with which I agree.
There has been a huge revolution, destroying ideologies and
international systems, in the area of Europe going from the
Elbe to Vladivostok and encompassing an empire that reaches
Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Something has to replace
that vacuum, or it will be a source of eternal turmoil. So I
agree with the call for this effort. I have told the
President that there are some nuances which, if we sat down
together, I would raise with the confidence that after a few
days of discussion we would reach the complete agreement that
always existed on all major policy decisions -- and I must say
on all minor foreign policy decisions -- between President
Nixon and myself. And I want to make clear he was the one who
made the decision.

Now, the question I want to raise is whether one

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should make the justification of a program depend on the
political future of any one leader in any one country.
Secondly, whether it is ambitious enough to make the political
evolution of that vast area depend on the political progress
and economic progress of one of the countries, even though it
is the largest and the most important. And three, whether it
is enough to concentrate only on an economic program, of
whatever magnitude, for one of these constituent countries.
I want to emphasize that this is not a disagreement in
principle. It is an agreement in principle. It is a question
of implementation.

As President Nixon and probably learning from
President Nixon's brilliant account of his visit to the Soviet
Union, I came to share his view that much as I respected
Gorbachev's contributions to getting the system into motion,
that Yeltsin probably represented a more viable future. I
have no reason to question what the director of Central
Intelligence said a few minutes ago about his role, but in the
long run, I believe that the foreign policy of any country
must be determined by its fundamental interests, and the
foreign policy of the United States must be related to the
weighing of these interests. And therefore it is the role of
that country that must be judged, and not simply one
particular leader, no matter how important and no matter what
its role.

Secondly, if I look at history, I must say that one

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source of the tragedies of, maybe of centuries, has been the
extraordinary expansionism of Russia. And it has been a
tragedy for the Russian people even more than for all the
surrounding countries. For 300 years, that state has expanded
from the area around Moscow to the shores of the Pacific, to
the gates of India, to the center of Europe, touching very
many different cultures.

And I tend to believe that a rhythm of that nature
represents a certain proclivity. In the last since Peter the
Great, Russian troops have invaded their neighbors 17 times,
and therefore, while one can explain some of it by a
compulsive sense of insecurity produced by the absence of any
natural borders, some of the compulsive insecurity was also
created by the acquisition of more and more foreign
populations, which could be kept together only by inventing or
believing in an outside threat larger than its internal
animosity.

So, the United States has two apparently
contradictory necessities at this moment. One, Russia,
extending from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, is one of the
greatest nations in the world. It extends over 11 time zones,
so it need not suffer from claustrophobia.

At the same time, Russia has never stayed within
its borders. As a great nation, we have no conflicting
national interests with it that I can discover, unless it
starts again on its historic rhythm of reacquiring all the

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republics that have now become independent. Therefore, it is
not enough to talk to their leaders only about economic
development. They must understand that if this process starts
again, whether we like it or not, the political processes in
the democracies and the historic fears of Eastern Europe and
the historic fears of Asia and the Middle East will produce
inevitably the suspicion, the hostility, and the tensions
which have been its sources of relations between Russia and
the outside world and have poisoned these relations for 300
years, under czars and commissars.

So, this is our challenge. For this reason, while
I agree completely that the economic turn towards democracy
and market economics is of crucial importance, it is also
important that the new republics -- Ukraine, Belarus, Baltic
states -- be perceived in Russia and in the outside world as
the independent states which they aspire to be. Of course,
they can have and should have and will have close
relationships with a country as important and powerful as
neighboring Russia. What should be prevented, in the
interests of the Russian people, as well as in the interests
of world peace, is a recentralization.

This is why I believe that the program, with which
in principle I agree, should be focused on all of Eastern
Europe. It cannot be in our interests to see a no-man's-land
develop between a powerful Germany and a recovering Russia,
tempting hegemonial aspirations of either or both or conflicts

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between both. This is why I believe the area in between must
be built into a relationship commensurate, and must receive
the attention commensurate, to the one that is given to
Russia.

I want to repeat, Russia will have close to 200
million people. Russia has a huge nuclear capacity. Russia
will be a global power. There's no reason why Russia cannot be
a friend of the United States and why it should not be treated
as a partner in many important international issues. But
structure contributes to motivation. And in this historic
moment to which President Nixon has so importantly called our
attention, this is one of the elements which I wanted to take
the liberty of elaborating on his concept. If what I
described happens, then the center of gravity of Russia will
move towards the Urals.

In Central Asia today, we see an evolution that no
one had thought possible: an infusion of Turkish, Iranian,
and Russian influences, and in time Chinese as well. With
respect to that evolution, I believe that Russia and the
United States have quite parallel interests in preventing the
domination of these areas by fundamentalism. And, indeed, in
no part of the world do I see the need for the confrontations
that we have experienced, and, if the scope of the necessary
evolution is kept in mind, no reason why Russian economic
progress is not something that the United States should not
support. Indeed, I think we should support it. I just want

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to fill in the territory between the German border and the
Russian border. And I want to remind people especially with
respect to Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, who for forty
years were told that if they threw off their fetters they
would find a home in the West, that the democracies have a
major obligation in that respect, and not only an obligation,
but a self-interest. Still, I want to come back to where I
started.

There is a vacuum today produced by the collapse of
two major historical forces. That vacuum must be filled.
Indeed, it will be filled. What President Nixon has done is
to call our attention to the need and to some specific
programs that can fill that need. As for the role of America,
I have spoken here of some aspects like equilibrium, like
problems that have no final solutions that have not been part
of the American vocabulary and of American convictions.

But I want to make clear that I do not believe that
these can be the end of foreign policy. It was American
perfectionism, American conviction that it represented values
deeper than simply self-interest that propelled America into
the adventure and into the success of the cold war period.
And the curious thing is that with all the criticisms one can
make of this or that aspect of American foreign policy, the
people who tore themselves apart most was the American people,
groping for perfection, lacerating its conscience, keeping on
the road, and at the end achieving what it had set out to do.

327

Now, I can only hope that in the opportunity that
has opened up before us we can analyze the new situation in
terms of the very conditions that we brought about to commit
ourselves, perhaps to avoid the anguish through which we went.
So I only want to conclude by thanking President Nixon to give
me this opportunity to appear on a program with him and to
tell him that as a solitary individual without a huge
machinery, he has again recalled us to our duty.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

I'll take a few questions until -- Dimitri? And
then this gentleman. Okay, you first, and then Dimitri.

Q Okay. How do you see Siberia fitting into
the Russian puzzle? Will it be part of Russia or will they go
it alone?

MR. KISSINGER: Who?

Q Siberia.

MR. KISSINGER: For me, I consider Siberia is
historically part of Russia. And it is now part of the
Russian republic. What may happen in the various autonomous
regions within the Russian republic is something that I have
no clear opinion on. And I must say I have another view. I
do not believe that every problem in the world needs to be
solved by the United States. (Scattered applause.)

Q Mr. Secretary, my question is about
principle, policy, and outcome, the relationship between the
three. You outlined principles which are commendable and

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noncontroversial, I believe, at least as far as the vast
majority of people in this room are concerned. But what about
policy?

It seems to me that Russia accepted that all these
former republics are sovereign and entitled to be independent.
That is not in dispute. Russia established diplomatic
relations with these former republics and accepted their
territorial integrity. It seems to me that under those
circumstances, the United States would logically want to
support the Russian government and the Russian leader because
when you support governments you support their leaders which
are willing to do all the things which we wanted them to do
for so long.

Is it possible that if we failed to take yes for an
answer and if we are too unwilling to understand Russian
pride, Russian concerns, and Russian legitimate interests
vis-a-vis republics, with many of which they have long
histories of rivalry and complicated disputes, is it possible
that instead of creating this great equilibrium and zone of
stability which you so eloquently described and which I
believe is in everybody's interest, is it possible that we
would push Russia in the direction of chauvanism, that we'd
appeal to Russian wounded pride, would undermine Yeltsin, and
add then, would create a new Russian challenge to America?

MR. KISSINGER: Well, as I tried to make clear, I
don't accept the proposition that we should conduct our

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foreign policy in order to support any one particular leader. Nor do I accept the proposition that a country can make us do something we shouldn't do for fear that somebody terrible will come in which, incidentally, we've been saying in Russia for 50 years. But I support economic assistance to Russia. I only want it to be a part of a program in which comparable assistance, of course allowing for the difference in size and economies, is given to other republics like Belorus and Ukraine. I have no objection whatever to a specific program for Russia.

Secondly, my impression is, for very understandable reasons, that Russian leaders find it very difficult to accept the proposition that they are now leaders of Russia. I think they find it very difficult to treat Ukraine, Belorus, and other nations as truly separate nations, and I believe that in many of their minds, they -- it's the idea that just as between 1917 and 1922 they were independent, they will bring them back.

Now, if Russia wanted to form a genuine confederation or a European-type community, there's no conceivable reason why the United States should have any objection to it. The principal -- I'm not, incidentally, aware of the fact that Russia has sent ambassadors to these countries who are received -- ambassadors from them. I believe that that would be a very useful step. What I -- I'm not asking that Russia does anything that some leaders have

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not already said. I would like the United States to treat
these republics as truly sovereign states, and not just send
three or four people to Ukraine, which is after all a country
of 58 million, but give it an adequate representation.

This is not to the detriment of Russia. It is to
avoid temptations, since if you say these temptations exist,
they may come to the surface, and they ought to be
discouraged. But I'm not opposed to economic -- an economic
program as part of a total program for Eastern Europe that
includes also the former satellite countries.

Q Dr. Kissinger, you spoke of --

Q Mr. Secretary, could I just follow that up
before we go on to another question? Isn't the point that
Dimitri was making that in policy you don't have the luxury of
often making that choice. For example, you say that you have
no objection to providing economic aid to the other republics,
if --

MR. KISSINGER: No, I'm for it.

Q I understand that. But the -- if we provide
a stabilization fund for the ruble, it makes the ruble the
currency, in effect, that's internationally recognized, not
only in Russia, but in the other republics. You yourself in
your speech talk about the importance of interests. Isn't it
in the American interest for Russia -- the largest republic,
the most important republic, the republic that is trusted by
-- at the moment -- by Ukraine and by the other republics to

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a degree which even has surprised us. Is it not in our
interest to help and support Russia as the linchpin, the
bulwark that can hold -- provide stability and hold this whole
thing together? That's the issue.

MR. KISSINGER: Well, that is the issue, and I just
don't accept the proposition that the United States ought to
build Russia into the position of pulling these countries
together again. It's also not my impression that this
universal trust exists, but I may be meeting the wrong people.
(Laughter.) But that is exactly the issue. I simply don't
accept the proposition that anybody who comes here and says,
"Something horrible is going to happen in my country unless
you do what I want" must -- that that must be accepted.

But I also want to make clear that a Russia that is
genuinely carrying out what it says -- what many of its
leaders have said, has no conflicting interest with the United
States, and should be treated with respect, care, and in many
respects, partnership. This is not intended as an
anti-Russian statement, but it is to avoid temptations that
300 years of history have produced and that cannot be
eradicated by any one leader.

Q Dr. Kissinger, you spoke of the -- over here,
it's Charles Krauthammer. You spoke of the historical
proclivity of Russia to expand, but one could also speak of
the historical proclivity of France to expand, which ended
with Waterloo, and the century-old proclivity of Germany to

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expand, which ended with the catastrophe of World War II.

Isn't it equally possible that the Russian proclivity to expand, however historical it is, could equally as well be tempered, if not ended, by the catastrophe of the collapse of the system and the loss of the Cold War?

MR. KISSINGER: The historical proclivity of France to expand ended when -- was produced when it was surrounded by weak states. It ended when what Pitt called in the Pitt Plan the great masses were created in Central Europe so that the physical capacity of France to expand was curbed. It went on for another forty years, but they never found a good place to exercise it, and --

Q They tried after that for awhile --

MR. KISSINGER: And I've just -- I -- one has to --

Q My point simply is that defeat can be -- can change historical proclivities.

MR. KISSINGER: Certainly. And I say you cannot base foreign policy entirely on conversion, and you have to look at a -- if that happens, I consider it quite possible that if Russia for twenty year emphasizes the development of its own country, it will, one, become again a superpower; secondly, it will live in peace with its environment; third, it will have a major influence on all the smaller countries in the region. But we have to create that space where that happens, because neither in the case of France, nor in the case of Germany did it occur simply by the appearance of one

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[LW]

leader.

Q But I -- if I could just, to follow up -- but
right now there is a plurality of leadership in Russia. It
isn't as if we're dealing with a unified country with a single
perspective or proclivity, and there is a party of
non-expansion, there's a non-imperial party which happens to
be in power. And wouldn't it be in our interest and also a
way of promoting non-expansion on the part of the Russian to
actually help that party to succeed? And --

MR. KISSINGER: Nobody -- well, first of all, I'm
going to have to define what one means by succeed. Secondly,
all I'm saying is we shouldn't single out Russia. Thirdly, I
think one should not -- one has to analyze -- I don't want on
this occasion to go leader by leader as to what their arriere
pensee may be on various subjects. I do not believe the views
of the political leadership are as simple as you describe
them, but they could certainly be influenced by what Americans
think about what they should be.

Q I'm not imputing you -- simplicity to them,
but I think Yeltsin, by his actions -- for example, of being
the first to recognize the Baltics, is certainly the least
imperial --

MR. KISSINGER: Yeah, but the Russian army has not
yet left the Baltics, and shows no sign of leaving it. All
I'm saying is there are tendencies, and the American position
with respect to them ought to be made clear, and we ought not

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to gamble everything on just dealing with one of these many
republics. I'm not saying we should not give some aid -- or
some significant aid to Russia.

If what you say is true, it should cause them
absolutely no pain to be asked to confirm what you say they've
already said.

(Applause.)

PRESIDENT NIXON: I just want to say that I know we
were all very appreciative of Dr. Kissinger's presentation,
and he raised some issues that should definitely be
considered. But I don't want there to be any
misunderstanding, as I indicated to him prior to his speaking
today, when we did discuss these matters -- any
misunderstanding as to what my position is.

As you will recall in my remarks yesterday, I was
using the example of Russia, and I said this also applies. I
didn't go into it because of time constraints, even though I'm
supposed to control that in this conference. But in any
event, I made the point that what I was saying about Russia in
terms of aid certainly applies to Eastern Europe, it applies
to Poland, it applies to Czechoslovakia, it applies to any of
the other countries, provided they have, shall we say,
democratic systems and free market policies which have a
chance to succeed. It certainly applies to Ukraine, no doubt
about that. If I said anything else, Dr. Brzezinski would not
have appeared yesterday. But in any event it applies to

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Ukraine, it applies to the other Soviet republics. So there's no disagreement on that. And in my emphasis on Russia, I was simply selecting the major nation where, if it fails there, it's going to fail everywhere. If it fails there it will have an enormous impact all over the world; and particularly if it succeeds there, in Russia, because Russia is the place where it all began, it's going to have an impact on China, on the other -- the remaining communist states and on dictatorships around the world.

The second point that I would make, and I think Henry -- I think it's well that he remind us of the fact that Russia has been an expansionist power -- not just 300 years, it goes back even further than that, but it's been particularly so for 300 years. He said under czars and commissars. We don't yet know whether it's going to be expansionist under democracies. That is the question here. I think that's the question that Dr. Krauthammer is raising. I don't mean the fact that a country is a democracy means that it will never be expansionist again, because I am sure of this: If the current leadership fails, if this democracy fails and if a new despotism comes into power, it will then again be expansionist without question, because the traditional Russian push toward expansionism will assert itself.

There is a question, and Dr. Kissinger is very well advised to raise it. We can't assume that because we at the

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(LC)

present do have a democratic government, which has indicated
that it is not going to be expansionist, which recognized the
Baltic countries and we trust will work out proper relations
with the others -- there is a chance that this situation will
change and that the Russia that has always previously been
expansionist will no longer be so.

I would finally conclude that by saying, who would
have thought that Japan would no longer be expansionist? It
is no longer expansionist, in part because it was defeated, in
part because it's a democracy. Who would have thought,
looking at the Germans -- and there are those that would
disagree with that -- but who would have thought that the
Germans were no longer expansionist? And there are many
people in Europe who still fear that they might be. I am not
one of those that feels that simply because we have a
democracy that we can think that peace, isn't it wonderful,
it's because democracies don't begin wars. I state that.
That's been the tradition in the past, but that can change.

What we have to have in mind is at the present time we
have a chance, a chance, in Russia, as well as in the other
former Soviet states -- particularly in Russia, with a
government that proclaims itself to be democratic, which
proclaims itself not to be expansionist. If it survives, then
there is a chance that it will not embark on that traditional
nationalistic junket again. If it does not survive, we can be
sure it will revert to what it historically has been. That

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was the point I tried to make, and I think Henry Kissinger
would agree with that.

(Applause.)

MR. SCHLESINGER: Thank you very much, Mr.
President. We have a schedule, for you to keep above all.
And we want to thank you for your attention, attentiveness,
and for your continued participation in the program.

PRESIDENT NIXON: Before I leave for my shuttle --
I was going to say my presidential plane -- but in any event,
before I leave for my shuttle, I would like to express
appreciation, as I have already, to the panels, but also to
those who made the conference possible, particularly to Jim
Schlesinger, to Dimitri Simes, to Theresa Hollingsworth, to
Bob Ellsworth, to John Taylor. There are many others. But it
took a lot of people to put this conference on.

For those, the panelists and the others who
participated, for all those that helped plan it, for those of
you who attended it, I want to express a deep appreciation.
We hope that -- I was going to say that you enjoyed it, but I
never thought that, you know, politics is about having fun and
enjoying something. The question is, this was a serious
conference and I hope that you go away possibly with a better
understanding of the problems we face but particularly with
the great opportunities we have in this emerging world.

Conference Adjourns.

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