FIRING
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NEWSLETTER

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JAN 26 1987

A production
of the
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EDUCATIONAL
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NATIONAL REVIEW
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(212) 679-7409

"AFTERTHOUGHTS ON REYKJAVIK"

Guest: Henry Kissinger

#1629 for air on PBS the week of February 13, 1987

Interest: Dr. Kissinger on arms control

Rating:

Public Interest ****
Performance ****
Entertainment ***

"The knowledge of nuclear weapons cannot be suppressed by any of the schemes that have been discussed at Reykjavik and elsewhere."--Dr. Henry Kissinger

Comment:

Henry Kissinger has great charm, a rich and resonant voice and vast stores of knowledge. He is also very good at explaining hard things in ways that make them understandable. All of the above make him an excellent FIRING LINE guest. There is no confrontation during this hour, which would perhaps have been more exciting if Mr. Buckley had taxed Dr. Kissinger. He chose not to, instead simply drawing out an explanation of what was wrong with the Reykjavik summit and why, as well as what should be done on arms control. This still gives us, however, a look at a great analytical mind at work, an historical view of arms limitation and build-up, and the special sense of closeness to great events that one always gets from listening to Dr. Kissinger. It is enough for a very good hour.

Mr. Buckley's Introduction:

The political excitement of arms to Iran, followed quickly by secret-money-to-the-Contras, overwhelmed the truly serious political event of 1986, which was the summit conference in Reykjavik. It was President Reagan who suddenly turned to Secretary Gorbachev and said: Enough is enough--and came home. But it was also Mr. Reagan who said, as recently as in mid-November, that more had been accomplished at Reykjavik in two days than at the conference table in Geneva in two years. The purpose of this hour is to examine the implications of what it is that happened at Reykjavik, and to the end of doing so we have no less than Talleyrand himself to consult.

Henry Kissinger is, of course, a sometime professor of international relations at Harvard, where he got his doctorate. He was secretary of state for Richard Nixon and then for Gerald Ford. He is chairman of the firm of Kissinger Associates, serving also as university professor of diplomacy at the School of Foreign Service, and counselor to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. President Reagan named him chairman of the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America in 1983. His two books about service in Washington during the Nixon years, *The White House Years* and *Years of Upheaval*, are widely regarded as masterpieces of history, as well as of style.

* Poor

** Fair

*** Good

**** Excellent

Dr. Kissinger is, on top of everything else, a syndicated columnist, and his first commentary on the Reykjavik summit expressed much less than the enthusiasm so many feel at the prospect of the elimination of nuclear force from our lives. He outlined what he called three "components of the Reykjavik Revolution," and I think we will remind ourselves what these were, eliciting from him comments on them one at a time. The first was "an agreement to reduce strategic forces by 50 per cent, with a moratorium for 10 years on deployment of the Strategic Defense Initiative." Question: Dr. Kissinger, what's wrong with a 50 per cent reduction in strategic forces? Have you got a weakness for nuclear weapons?

Excerpts:

**BUCKLEY:** How do you handle the argument so frequently made that we have got to come to terms with the apocalyptic increase inherent in modern warfare--i.e., unless we struggle to put the genie back in the bottle, we are going to live in a situation in which apocalypse becomes technically possible. Do you simply answer that by saying, sure it's possible, but there's nothing we can do about the fact that it's possible? **KISSINGER:** No. I'm in favor of negotiating with the Soviets, but first of all I don't believe that the military component is the only, or indeed the principal element of international tension and I do not think that you can reduce tension simply by eliminating the military component. But with respect to the military component, what I ask for is that the proposals can demonstrably improve the situation. That should not be intellectually beyond the wit of man. I do not see why an agreement that makes no difference militarily should make a difference politically. Secondly, I think we have to face the fact that most of the tensions in the world have been caused by political decisions...

**KISSINGER:** Gromyko was rather rigid and morbidly suspicious. Gromyko was like an African rhino who charged in a straight line, always quite predictably. Now they've got Dobrynin there, who was ambassador in Washington and who must have taught them that what you see is what you get, and you can afford to accept American proposals because they indeed may not be in the American interest. They may result from a bureaucratic compromise...

**KISSINGER:** I have known the European leaders personally for a long time, and I will assert flatly that I know none now in office, with maybe one or two--**BUCKLEY:** Scandinavian exceptions? **KISSINGER:** None of the major countries--that is at ease about the withdrawal of American missiles from Europe, even in return for the withdrawal of a certain category of Soviet missiles, even though for domestic reasons they cannot attack it as all out as they feel...

**KISSINGER:** I am opposed to limitations on research of any kind...

(This newsletter is prepared by the producers of FIRING LINE. Mr. Buckley is not consulted in any way in its preparation.)