ings possible. We will work hard to make them a success. They provide us the opportunity to shape new constructive relationships in the world economy.

But another oil price rise would severely jeopardize these hopes. It could set off a relentless sequence of action and reaction, to the detriment of all countries, developed and developing. This vicious cycle must be avoided. The possibilities of a cooperative world order depend upon it.

## Peace in the Middle East

There is no more vivid example of the stake that we have in the world around us, and the decisive contribution that this nation can make, than the conflict in the Middle East.

The Congress is now deliberating on the recent Egyptian-Israeli agreement. As it does so, it is important for the American people to understand why the United States is involved, what strategy we have pursued, the significance of the agreement, and where we will go from here.

The Middle East lies at the crossroads of three continents. Because of the area's strategic importance and because it provides the energy on which much of the world depends, outside powers have continued to involve themselves in its conflicts, often competitively.

For the United States a diplomatic role in the Middle East is not a preference, but a matter of vital interest:

- Because of our historical and moral commitment to the survival and security of Israel;

- Because of our important concerns in the Arab world, an area of more than 150 million people and the site of the world's largest oil reserves;

- Because perpetual crisis in the Middle East would severely strain our relations with our most important allies in Europe and Japan;

- Because upheaval in the Middle East jeopardizes the world's hopes for economic recovery, threatening the well-being of the industrial nations and the hopes of the developing world; and

- Because tension in the Middle East increases the prospect of direct U.S.-Soviet confrontation with its attendant nuclear risk.

Each successive Middle East crisis has presented us with painful choices between our many commitments and interests. And each successive crisis accelerates the trends of radicalism in the area, putting greater pressures on America's friends in the moderate Arab world, and heightening all the tensions and dangers.

The stake of every American in peace in the Middle East was dramatically and concretely illustrated by the Middle East war of 1973:

- The oil embargo, coupled with the OPEC [Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries] price increases, cost Americans half a million jobs and over $10 billion in national output. It added at least five percentage points to the price index, contributing to the worst inflation since World War II. It set the stage for a serious worldwide recession, from which we are only now recovering two years later.

- Partly because of their greater dependence on Middle East oil, our principal allies in Western Europe and Japan separated from us over Middle East policy, in the most serious strain in our alliances since they were founded.

- The 1973 crisis tested the course of U.S.-Soviet relations, leading us briefly to the verge of confrontation in the October 24 alert.

The October war also set in train momentum that is now irreversible. Events can be channeled toward diplomatic progress, or they can pull us headlong toward another war.

This is why the United States since October 1973 has been actively engaged in promoting a peaceful solution.

We have no illusions about the difficulties. The Middle East has seen more than its share of dashed hopes and disappointment. But progress depends crucially—even decisively—on the United States. Time and again the parties have turned to us for mediation. Time and again we have acceded

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Department of State Bulletin

Middle East in-
لى U.S.-Soviet
Urd nuclear risk.

East crisis has
choices between
and interests. And
erates the trends
putting greater
trends in the mod-
lightening all the

nerican in peace in
nationally and con-
Middle East war

led with the OPEC
on Exporting Coun-
Americans half a
billion in national
st five percentage
contributing to the
War II. It set the
e side recession, from
covering two years

e greater depend-
our principal allies
span separated from
policy, in the most
alliances since they

d in the course of U.S.-
us briefly to the
in the October 24

set in train momen-
table. Events can be
matic progress, or
long toward another

d States since Octo-
ely engaged in pro-
on.

about the difficulties
seen more than its
and disappointment
crucially—even de-
States. Time and
e turned to us for
gain we have acceded

to these requests because we are convinced
that stagnation invites disaster. The next
Middle East war will pose greater risks,
complexities, and dangers and cause more
dislocations than any previous conflict.

What, then, has been our approach?

For nearly three decades it was axiomatic
that *all* issues pertaining to *all* the countries
involved had to be addressed comprehen-
sively: the final frontiers of Israel and the
reciprocal guarantees of peace of the Arab
states, the future of the Palestinians, the
status of Jerusalem, and the question of in-
ternational guarantees should all be con-
idered together.

But for 30 years it proved nearly impos-
sible even to begin the process of negotia-
tion. Every attempt to discuss a comprehen-
sive solution failed—from the partition plan,
to the Lausanne conference [1949], to the
Rogers plan and the Four-Power talks of
1969 and 1970, to the U.N. Security Council
deliberations. To discuss simultaneously is-
sues of such complexity, between countries
whose deep mutual mistrust rejected even
the concept of compromise, was futile until
a minimum of confidence had been estab-
lished. In the long history of the Arab-Israeli
conflict, it is a new and relatively recent de-
velopment that opinion in the Arab world
has begun to think in terms of recognizing
a sovereign Israel and that Israel has begun
to see peace as a tangible goal rather than
a distant dream.

The United States therefore concluded that
instead of seeking to deal with all problems
at once, we should proceed step by step with
the parties prepared to negotiate and on
the issues where some room for maneuver
seemed possible. We believed that once the
parties began a negotiating process they
would develop a stake in success. Solutions
to problems more easily negotiable would
build mutual confidence. On each side a sense
would grow that negotiations could produce
benefits and that agreements would be kept
agreements that could become building
blocks for a final peace.

Ultimately we expected that the step-by-
step process would bring about, for the first
time, the basic political conditions needed for
the overall settlement called for by Security

Council Resolution 338. This remains our
goal.

Progress since the October war has been
without precedent since the beginning of
the Arab-Israeli conflict. Security Council
Resolution 338 launched a negotiating proc-
ess and the first Geneva Conference. Agree-
ments to separate the opposing forces and
establish U.N. buffer zones to strengthen the
cease-fire were successfully negotiated be-
tween Egypt and Israel in January 1974 and
between Syria and Israel in May 1974.

The role of the United States was crucial
in helping the parties reach these agree-
ments. It reflected the fact that only we had
developed strong relationships of trust with
all parties. Major Arab countries that broke
diplomatic relations with the United States
in 1967 moved in 1973 and 1974 to restore
their ties with us, creating a new climate of
confidence and thereby the conditions for
progress. And our traditional friendship with
Israel has been reinforced in the crucible of
crisis and the long months of close associa-
tion in negotiations.

The momentum of progress was inter-
rupted in the summer and fall of 1974: first
by our Presidential succession, then by the
decision of the Arab summit at Rabat which
made negotiations over the West Bank im-
possible.

When negotiations were resumed in March
of this year, they first ended in deadlock.
We therefore reexamined our approach, ask-
ing whether we should continue the step-by-
step strategy or move directly to the Geneva
Conference and a comprehensive approach.
The imminent crisis we feared as a result of
the March deadlock did not materialize—
almost solely because everyone expected that
the United States, in one way or another,
would resume its effort.

The President consulted widely—with con-
gressional and civic leaders, with our Ambas-
sadors from the area, and with the Middle
East parties. He met with King Hussein,
President Sadat, Prime Minister Rabin, and
Syrian Foreign Minister Khaddam. We bene-
fited from the views of the new Saudi lead-
ership, which is continuing the policy of the
highly respected late King Faisal.

The President concluded that the time was

tment of State Bulletin

October 6, 1975

497

still not ripe for a comprehensive approach. In the wake of an apparent failure, the intractability of the issues would only be compounded by their being combined. Bringing all the parties, including the most irreconcilable, together in one dramatic public negotiation was an invitation to a deepened stalemate. This could discredit the whole process of negotiation and create a slide toward war. It was widely understood that the momentum of diplomatic progress had to be restored before Geneva was convened to consider the broader issues.

## New Egypt-Israel Agreement

Therefore, at the request of both sides the United States resumed its step-by-step effort. The result was the new agreement between Egypt and Israel which was signed in Geneva on September 4.

The agreement is fair and balanced:

- Territorially, it provides for withdrawal of Israeli forces from the eastern coast of the Gulf of Suez and from the strategic Sinai passes. Egypt recovers a significant portion of its territory, including the economically important oilfields.

- Militarily, the agreement reaffirms the cease-fire. It widens the buffer zone and extends the limitations of forces that were negotiated in the disengagement agreement of January 1974. These balanced provisions markedly reduce the danger of surprise attack that figured centrally in the wars of 1967 and 1973.

- Politically, the agreement, which remains in force until it is superseded by another one, commits both sides to a peaceful solution to the Middle East conflict and to refrain from use or threat of force or of military blockade. It permits nonmilitary Israeli cargoes to go through the newly reopened Suez Canal.

Both Prime Minister Rabin and President Sadat have hailed the agreement as a possible turning point. It represents the most far-reaching practical test of peace—political, military, and psychological—in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. For the first time, Israel and an Arab state have taken a

step not just to halt fighting or to disentangle forces but to reduce the danger of future war and to commit themselves to peaceful settlement of the conflict. The effort that went into it and the inhibitions that both sides had to overcome reflect a serious determination to end a generation of violence. And both sides have affirmed that the agreement is a significant step in a process that must be continued toward a just and durable peace.

The achievement owes much to the courage of leaders on both sides.

President Sadat and his government moved Egypt on the path of moderation and development; they have understood that a political process offered the only realistic hope for the achievement of all Arab interests.

Credit is due equally to the courage of Prime Minister Rabin and the Government of Israel. Israel's dilemma is that to obtain peace it must give up tangible assets such as territory for intangible concessions such as assurances and recognition. Israel's leaders realized that only negotiation offered a hope to achieve what Israel has sought for 27 years—new political conditions that would mean acceptance by its neighbors, in return for withdrawal from territory. They had the wisdom to recognize that the time had come to start this difficult, even painful process.

The presence of 200 civilian Americans to assist with the early-warning system in the small area of the passes is a limited—but crucial—American responsibility. It was not a role we sought. We accepted it at the request of both sides only when it became totally clear that there would be no agreement without it and only on carefully limited terms. We agreed because failure would have posed grave risks for the United States.

In the aftermath of Indochina the concerns of some Americans about this presence are understandable. But the two cases are totally different. The American presence in the Sinai is not a step into conflict; it is a move which gives added insurance against conflict. It is limited to 200 volunteer civilians by agreement with both sides. They will be stationed in a small but important sector of the U.N. neutral zone. They are not combat personnel or advisers engaged on one side

498

Department of State Bulletin

of an ongoing war. They serve both sides at their request and complement the U.N. presence from such countries as Canada, Sweden, Austria, and Finland.

Our presence in the area is not new. Indeed, 36 Americans are at this moment serving with the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization in the Middle East. Americans have been serving in this capacity for over 25 years.

The agreement provides the President the right to withdraw the American personnel if they are in jeopardy. We are prepared, as well, to accept a congressional proposal making the withdrawal mandatory in case of hostilities.

In short, what we have proposed to the Congress and the American people is not an engagement in war, but an investment in peace.

## Military and Economic Assistance

There will also be deliberation in the Congress over military and economic assistance to the parties. We will submit our recommendations within a month. This assistance is not part of the agreement itself. Indeed, most of the assistance we shall request would have been sought even if there were no agreement. But in the present context our aid takes on new significance; it is central to our policy and vital to the chances for a lasting peace in the Middle East.

Economic and military support for Israel's security has been American policy during five Administrations. Last May, 76 U.S. Seniors wrote to President Ford urging that the United States "be responsive to Israel's urgent economic and military needs." The Administration's request for new assistance to Israel is responsive to this call; it will require longstanding criteria of assistance; only a small part grows out of new requirements from the agreement.

The case for aid to Egypt is equally strong. Egypt has taken important steps toward and closer relations with the West. Egypt preserves our encouragement. American technology and capital, public and private, strengthen all the constructive tend-

encies in the Middle East. The symbolic and substantive significance of American support to Egypt is immeasurable.

Thus, the additional burden of U.S. assistance is modest, infinitely smaller than the demonstrated costs of another war—which in 1973 required direct appropriations to Israel of $2.2 billion in addition to the indirect costs. But its role is crucial. It reduces the incentives for war; it, too, is an investment in peace.

## Continuing Process Toward Peace

Where do we go from here?

The Egyptian-Israeli agreement is a step in a continuing process. The agreement states explicitly that the parties shall continue the negotiating efforts to reach an overall final peace settlement in accordance with Resolution 338.

The path ahead will be difficult. In the immediate future, we must begin the implementation of the Egyptian-Israeli agreement. This must await the deliberation and decision of the Congress. When this is settled and if the agreement goes into effect, we will start our consultations with all concerned to assure that there is consensus on the next step. We will not move precipitously, because we want confidence to build. We will not move without careful preparation, because we want the process to continue to succeed.

But the effort to achieve a lasting peace must resume. The Egyptian-Israeli agreement has created new opportunities for the future—but these opportunities must be seized, or they will disappear. The United States did not help negotiate this agreement in order to put an end to the process of peace, but to give it new impetus. There can be no stagnation, for the area remains tense and volatile.

For our part, we stand ready to assist as the parties desire. We will seriously encourage a negotiation between Syria and Israel. We are prepared to consult all countries concerned, including the Soviet Union, about the timing and substance of a reconvened Geneva Conference. And we are fully aware that there will be no permanent peace

October 6, 1975

Department of State

499

unless it includes arrangements that take
into account the legitimate interests of the
Palestinian people.

The United States seeks no special ad-
vantage in the Middle East. It has always
been our policy that the nations of the re-
gion should be free to determine their own
relationships with any outside power. There-
fore the United States would not understand,
and would be obliged to oppose, efforts by any
outside power to thwart the Egyptian-Israeli
agreement.

In the search for a final peace, the United
States is prepared to work with the Soviet
Union. We are cosponsors of the Security
Council resolutions that launched this hope-
ful course of negotiation; we are cochairmen
of the Geneva Peace Conference, which met
at an early crucial phase. While we have had
important differences with the Soviet Union
over the substance of a settlement, our two
countries have held parallel views that the
Middle East situation poses grave dangers
and that partial steps must be part of, and
contribute to, progress toward a comprehen-
sive solution.

In the Middle East there is a yearning for
peace surpassing any known for a genera-
tion. Let us seize this historic opportunity.
The suffering and bravery of the peoples of
the Middle East demand it; the highest in-
terests of the United States require it.

This is why the American people, their
Congress, and the President are, to an ex-
traordinary degree, united on the course of
our Middle East policy. And this is why we
will not cease our effort.

American Leadership and American Unity

Ladies and gentlemen, we Americans have
spent the better part of a decade apologiz-
ing to ourselves and the world for what we
thought we had become. We have spent most
of the last three years enmeshed in a na-
tional tragedy that caused many to lose sight
of what our country has meant, and con-
tinues to mean, to the billions abroad who
look to the United States as a beacon of free-
dom and hope.

Today the issues that threatened our unity
and confidence are in the process of being
put behind us. A world of turmoil, danger,
and opportunity cries out for our purposeful
leadership. There is no doubt of our physical
capacity and technical skill. But we must
put them in the service of a common pur-
pose.

After a decade of challenge and crises, we
must strive to insure that our government
will be united, that our people will have con-
fidence, that our country will be strong, and
that our freedoms will flourish. As we enter
the year of a political campaign at home—
in an era of unprecedented challenge abroad
—a spirit of unity and bipartisanship be-
comes our international as well as national
duty. We cannot afford a year and a half of
partisan warfare. Our foreign policy must
be a common enterprise of all Americans, for
what we do—or fail to do—will inevitably
affect events for many years to come.

If the past two years of effort in the Mid-
dle East have lessened the dangers of war
and set that part of the world on the road
to peace—as I pray they have—it is the
United States that has made the difference.
It is the United States alone among the
world's nations that Israel and its Arab
neighbors were prepared to trust. It has been
deeply moving for me to observe, after all
the travails and self-doubts of the last dec-
ade, the confidence that others have in us.
The nations of the Middle East have thus
done us a service, in reminding us of how
in serving our international responsibility we
also serve our own highest goals.

In the final analysis it is our own prin-
ciples and hopes that define our obligation.
America has always stood for something be-
yond our own material success: we have al-
ways believed—correctly—that we meant
something to others. Our Founding Fathers
spoke of the rights and hopes of all men.
Our belief in the inalienable rights of man
is no less compelling today—no less worthy
of sacrifice—than it was 200 years ago when
a few dreamers came together in Philadel-
phia to proclaim history's only truly perma-
nent revolution.

Department of State Bulletin

500

Furthering Peace in the Middle East

Toast by Secretary Kissinger¹

It is a pleasure to welcome you. Seeing so many relaxed and happy faces, I know that you must be delighted to be here among friends in quiet, peaceful New York—far from the tensions and conflict and bitterness of Vienna.

I am especially pleased by this opportunity to reciprocate at least in part the warm hospitality offered to me so often by several of the Arab countries represented here. My wife, Nancy, feels neglected when several months go by without my offering her an opportunity to visit the Middle East. So, for personal as well as high policy reasons, I am obliged to remain actively engaged in helping negotiate a settlement.

It was almost two years ago today that I first met as Secretary of State with the representatives of the Arab League here at the United Nations.

I remember saying then that I recognized that the situation in the Middle East was intolerable for the Arab nations; I pledged that the United States would involve itself actively in the search for a just and lasting peace.

And in the days that followed, in private meetings with some of you and with some of your predecessors—we remember with affection [Saudi Arabian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs] Umar Saqqaf, whose passing grieved us all—I gave my personal promise to make a special effort to begin concrete steps toward peace.

While those talks were still going on, war broke out. The costs—political, economic, human—were tragically high.

Tonight I would like to reflect with you briefly on the distance that we, the United States and the people of the Middle East, have traveled together in these two years.

The Middle East at a New Crossroads

For centuries, men have seen the Middle East as the crossroads of three continents. Long ago, when armies and caravans moved on foot, and when trade first began to move through the Suez Canal, that statement had strategic meaning.

Today the Middle East stands at a new crossroads—not only of geography but of issues and concerns that affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people in all corners of the world.

The Middle East today is an area where mankind's effort to build a peaceful, equitable, and prosperous world will be tested.

Little did we know two years ago what our active involvement in the search for peace would mean in effort and anguish, nor to the relationship between the United States and the peoples and leaders of the Middle East.

I have made 11 trips to the Middle East, amounting in time to almost one week out of six over this two-year period. And two Presidents of the United States have met with many of the area's chiefs of state, heads of government, and foreign ministers.

More important than these statistics has been the dramatic evidence of new policies, attitudes, and our ability to work together.

¹Given on Sept. 29 at a dinner at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in honor of the heads of delegations and Permanent Representatives to the United Nations of member nations of the Arab League (text from press release 506).

October 20, 1975

581

Our political and economic ties have been restored; we have organized new efforts of collaboration for economic development; we have worked closely together in the diplomacy of Middle East peace.

There is no longer any doubt today of the United States' irrevocable commitment and active involvement in furthering peace and progress in the Middle East. The American people are conscious of this new approach and support it. Important changes have taken place in the American people's attitudes. This is irreversible—and of tremendous importance for the future.

The United States, when it approached this problem in 1973, did so with the philosophy of realism and evenhandedness. Both sides in the area would be called upon to contribute reciprocally to the process of settlement. We launched, as you know, the step-by-step approach, as the most promising avenue to implementation of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.

Therefore, first of all, it should be obvious that no interim agreement has been or can be an end in itself. The only durable solution is a just and comprehensive peace. The United States remains committed to that objective. Each step taken or to be taken by any country is intended to make that goal more achievable and is therefore a step for all. We have always intended that the step-by-step approach would merge at some point with discussion of an overall settlement.

Second, we recognize that peace in the Middle East is not divisible. Each nation and people which is party to the Arab-Israeli problem must find some fair satisfaction of its legitimate interests. It is in the nature of compromise that extreme solutions cannot be realized. It is in the nature of a lasting peace that partial solutions will not endure. The United States has no interest or purpose in dividing the Arab world. On the contrary, only a united Arab world can make a final peace. The United States is prepared to make the same effort for any Arab state that it has already made on behalf of some.

Third, it is in the nature of gradual movement toward peace that it must address all

the key problems in a balanced way step. The questions of territory, and military deployments cannot with unless at the same time the political and economic settlement are equal attention. If we are to move forward we must move evenhandedly on both of the equation.

Fourth, any step taken must be judged in the light of the alternatives that were presented. Each party has the right to judge those and compromises that are possible, any given stage as it accepts or refrains from. Any agreements reached have achieved objectives as well as mutual objectives. We have created conditions for further movement more effectively than any alternative. They have been steps No other methods have worked. We have been a futile step backward. At this point of such a conflict, we would all have exactly the same problems which we have today—and perhaps more, infinitely complicated conditions.

Last March, after the suspension negotiations, it was the government's area, on both sides, that pressed that another, early, step toward peace be the first priority. That is why we renewed effort to help Egypt and achieve the interim agreement at Geneva September 4.

That agreement was not a peace plan. It was taken to give furtherance to the cause of the cause of the process of movement. It was taken to full understanding on all sides that progress toward peace must continue, and that challenge now is to build on the progress that has been made.

President Ford has asked me to say here on his behalf that the United States remains just as energetically committed to progress now as it has been for the past several years. We will not rest until we achieve the goal of a just and lasting peace—unless the parties themselves decide to abandon their effort.

What the next step will be of course depends on the judgment of the parties.

382

Department of State

the negotiations. We have suggested several alternative procedures, and we are open-minded. The object of our consultations in the days immediately ahead will be to determine how to proceed between Israel and Syria, if the parties desire; to begin considering how the negotiations for an overall settlement can be organized; and to refine our thinking on how the legitimate interests of the Palestinian people can be met in an overall peace.

To this effort we pledge our continued energies, and in this effort we count on continuing to work closely together with the leaders of the Arab nations.

## The Middle East and the World Economy

We and our friends in the Middle East, of course, have other common concerns beyond the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In the Middle East, as elsewhere in the world, the United States seeks to help build a durable framework of peace that will free the energies of peoples to pursue the great social, economic, and human objectives of mankind.

Central to this is the global dialogue on the interdependence of the world economy, in which we and the Middle East countries are important participants. This dialogue is well begun.

The Middle East has a unique position and a unique responsibility. At a time when many countries, particularly developing countries, face problems of inflation and stagnation, slackening production and growing unemployment, balance-of-payments deficits, and great uncertainty about prospects for foreign borrowing and investment, the oil-producing countries of the Middle East have reaped great benefits from sharp increases in oil prices. But they have done so at a heavy cost to all other countries.

I want to express the appreciation of the American people to those Arab countries which at the recent OPEC [Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries] meeting tried to assert a sense of global responsibility.

Cooperation is a two-way street. The

United States is willing to assist you in the achievement of your development goals, but we hope that you will in turn show understanding of the needs of the rest of the world. Inflation hurts us all. In your region it is exacerbated by manpower shortages, transportation bottlenecks, and other factors which impede the rapid achievement of impressive industrial and agricultural goals. We and other industrialized countries have cooperated and will continue to cooperate in meeting these extraordinary needs. We have made practical proposals before the seventh special session. We look forward to the forthcoming producer-consumer conference to work out these issues in a cooperative spirit.

We are natural partners, not adversaries. Consumers must have reliable access to oil supplies at reasonable prices. To invest their new oil wealth, the producers must become major participants in the global financial and economic system. And to convert their new wealth into goods, they must become major importers of our products. We are ready to cooperate with the countries of the Middle East in linking our economies on equitable terms.

Our interdependence is a fact, and the Middle East has a great responsibility in the global economy. Unilateral actions to advance national interests will serve no nation's interest if the results are to weaken the world economy. All of us must conduct our policies with the objective of fostering global growth and stability. The United States has attempted to wield its power in this spirit.

## The United States and the Middle East

The important changes in our relations in recent years, which have brought our peoples and our governments closer together, are irreversible.

As old patterns of thought change and dramatic new events take place, it is not surprising that searching questions are asked and conflicting voices are heard. This is true today in the Arab world, and it is true in this country; for changes of percep-

tion never come easily or proceed smoothly. The present debate in the Middle East over the latest step toward peace has its counterpart today in my country. The American people are now increasingly conscious of both the complexities and importance of our interests and involvement in the Middle East.

The statesmanship and demonstrated commitment to peace of leaders in the Middle East have played an important, indeed a decisive, role in this process. The progress that has been achieved and the progress that will be made is due to their realization that Arab goals can best be achieved in the framework of U.S.-Arab cooperation, and not by confrontation. The United States will not shrink from its responsibilities-unless our efforts are rejected by the countries in the area.

I believe also that the discussion now going on in our Congress and in our country as

a whole attests to the seriousness with which we approach our responsibilities. When vote is taken in the Congress, it will be clear that we will not abandon our efforts to bring about a solution which will abandon those in the Middle East who have long sought our support, and it will be neither will we interrupt our quest for a solution which neither will nor cease our efforts to improve relations with the Arab world.

The end result, I am convinced, will be a forging of an even sounder foundation based on national consensus, for U.S. interests with all of the countries in the Middle East. And I hope that the time will come soon when we who are assembled here will look back at this time as the period we took the turn toward a final peace.

Therefore let us raise our glasses operation between the United States and Arab friends and to the fulfillment of aspirations of the Arab nations, and nations, for peace, justice, and well-being.

## The Western Hemisphere: Our Common Future

*Toast by Secretary Kissinger*¹

This is the third year I have enjoyed the considerable honor as Secretary of State of the United States of meeting with you for lunch at this Center for Inter-American Relations. I do so this time, as before, as an expression of the importance that we, the people of the United States, attach to our friendship with our fellow nations of the Western Hemisphere.

The Western Hemisphere has for centuries represented the hope of mankind. And so it does today. The United States is

convinced that if we and our Latin American friends, with whom we have a true spirit of cooperation, can solve the problems of the modern age we can again be a beacon to humanity.

It makes a difference to the people of the United States that the nations of the hemisphere share a common heritage. We were born in the same struggle against foreign domination and colonial tyranny. We have a proud history of mutual support in time of trouble. We have a generation of successful practical experience with mechanisms of operation on our political and economic challenges.

Two years ago I suggested that we begin a dialogue for a more creative cooperation in

¹Given at a luncheon at the Center for Inter-American Relations at New York on Sept. 30 honoring Latin American Foreign Ministers and Permanent Representatives to the United Nations (text from press release 507).

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Department of State Bulletin

244

A TIME TO HEAL

consider the package as a whole. Mansfield said my request was impractical. "You may be right, Mr. President," he went on, "but it's just not possible." Albert agreed with him. "I understand what you want to do and why you want to do it," he said, "but I'm not in any position to destroy committee jurisdiction, to interfere with the established rights of a committee. If I tried to do that, it would create horrendous internal problems in the Congress."

Congressional resistance to my proposals didn't apply only to energy. Increasingly, both houses of Congress were giving me a hard time on foreign policy. The first battleground was Cyprus. On February 5, the suspension of arms deliveries to the Turks, originally voted by Congress in October, went into effect. Not only was that action likely to impede our hopes of achieving a just settlement of the Cyprus issue, it also posed a threat to the security and political stability of the entire eastern Mediterranean, and I urged the Congress to reconsider a decision so clearly contrary to our national interests. Using quiet diplomacy, Henry Kissinger had persuaded the foreign ministers of both Greece and Turkey to meet with him in Brussels to resolve their differences. But when the Turks heard what Congress had done, they stayed home. I couldn't blame them.

Congressional irresponsibility also led to new problems in other parts of the world. Wishing to punish Arab nations that had taken part in the 1973 oil embargo against us, the sponsors of the Trade Act of 1974 had tacked on an amendment that barred me from extending routine tariff preferences to countries that belonged to OPEC. What the lawmakers overlooked was the fact that at least five of OPEC's member states—Iran, Venezuela, Ecuador, Nigeria and Indonesia—had refused to participate in the embargo. Yet because Congress hadn't thought to provide an escape clause, these friendly countries were being penalized. The Venezuelans, in particular, were outraged, and even though I reassured them that I would ask the Congress to remedy its mistake as soon as possible, they stayed angry for months afterward.

No foreign policy challenges occupied more of my time in the early months of 1975 than the deteriorating situations in both the Middle East and Indochina. Negotiations between Israel and Egypt

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about the return of the Sinai had reached a dangerous stalemate. For the past twenty-five years, the philosophical underpinning of U.S. policy toward Israel had been our conviction—and certainly my own—that if we gave Israel an ample supply of economic aid and weapons, she would feel strong and confident, more flexible and more willing to discuss a lasting peace. Every American President since Harry Truman had willingly supplied arms and funds to the Jewish state. The Israelis were stronger militarily than all their Arab neighbors combined, yet peace was no closer than it had ever been. So I began to question the rationale for our policy. I wanted the Israelis to recognize that there had to be some quid pro quo. If we were going to build up their military capabilities, we in turn had to see some flexibility to achieve a fair, secure and permanent peace. What we wanted most was new momentum diplomatically.

To make sure that they got the message, I gave interviews to *Time* magazine and NBC-TV. "Every day that passes [without a new accord in the Middle East] becomes more dangerous," I told *Time*. I made it clear that there was "a substantial relationship at the present time between our national security interests and those of Israel." Then I added, pointedly: "But in the final analysis, we have to judge what is in our national interest above any and all other considerations." I was equally blunt on NBC-TV. The Israelis, I knew, were adamantly opposed to a Geneva conference as a forum to settle their disputes with the Arab states. Kissinger and I agreed that Geneva was not the route to take. Our purpose at Geneva should be only to *ratify* previously negotiated bilateral agreements. If we went there to *negotiate* those agreements, the conference would be at the mercy of different radical interests and break down into volatile procedural squabbles. We would never get to real negotiation on the substantive issues. We'd fail in the attempt to ensure lasting peace, and the psychological effects of that failure would virtually guarantee another war. Yet if we saw no meaningful progress soon toward a new Israeli-Egyptian accord, I said on NBC, the U.S. would be "forced" to abandon our step-by-step approach, and we would have no alternative but to turn to a comprehensive approach via a Geneva conference.

The strategy appeared to be working. Within days, we had received signals from both sides that they were moving to a position

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where they would at least talk about progress. Early in February, Kissinger left Washington on a ten-day trip to the Middle East, and he achieved reasonably encouraging results. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, he said, was trying to be flexible and to accommodate the Israelis' concerns about their security. The Israelis, however, while encouraging our efforts to push for a lasting peace, were being very tough in their demands. To make matters worse, Prime Minister Rabin's Labor Party commanded only a thin majority in the Knesset, which gave him little room to maneuver. A hard-liner, he also had proved a tough negotiator. Despite these obstacles, Henry told me that nothing was more critical than a new Sinai accord.

In March, Kissinger resumed his shuttle between Cairo and Jerusalem. Again, the Egyptians bent over backward. Again, the Israelis resisted. Henry pushed and pushed—and then pushed some more. Finally, agreement was reached on the *framework* of a new accord. Israeli forces would pull back about thirty-five miles from the eastern bank of the Suez Canal, and the new dividing line between the two adversaries would be in the vicinity of the strategic mountain passes of Gidi and Mitla in the Sinai desert. The Israelis would return the oil fields at Abu Rudeis on the Gulf of Suez, and the Egyptians would be able to use a road that linked those fields to the rest of the country. Even though Sadat and Rabin acknowledged that this was only a first step and that eventually the Israelis would have to give up more of the territory they now occupied, both leaders seemed satisfied in principle with what had been worked out.

Then the fragile agreement threatened to come apart. Once an agreement had been reached in *principle*, the Israelis insisted that they wouldn't move back past the crests of the two passes. That seemed fair enough, except that they couldn't—nor could anyone else—show us a map and say where those crests were, or precisely where the oil field road lay. As the talks dragged on, Rabin became less flexible. He fought over every kilometer. I wouldn't call it nitpicking—I didn't doubt for a minute that he really wanted peace, and I recognized that the Israelis had a fundamental reluctance about giving up any territory in return for what they saw as only promises of good will—but he didn't seem to understand that only by giving you get something in return.

White House photo by David Hume Kennedy

Early 1975. A difficult foreign policy decision. There were many.

April 28, 1975: I met with the National Security Council to discuss evacuating Americans from South Vietnam. On Kissinger's right: Deputy Secretary of State Robert Ingersoll and CIA Director William Colby. To my left: Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, Deputy Defense Secretary William Clements, Rockefeller and JCS chairman George Brown.

The Israelis kept stalling. Their tactics frustrated the Egyptians and made me mad as hell. Both Henry and I had received firm assurances from Rabin that a line could be drawn that would be acceptable to Israel. But Rabin now seemed afraid of his Cabinet's response. He would not—or could not—deliver on commitments he had made.

Kissinger returned from the Middle East shuttle on the evening of March 23, and I made a point of greeting him personally when his helicopter touched down on the South Lawn of the White House. Henry was deeply disappointed by the Israeli attitude. He was worried that Sadat, who had gone along with many of our suggestions, would never work with us again. He might be driven into the radical Arab camp along with hotheads like Colonel Muammar Qaddafi of Libya, and if that ever happened, it would damage not only Israel's interests but our own as well.

Next morning in the Cabinet Room we briefed Congressional leaders of both parties on the results of Kissinger's trip. Asked about this meeting later by reporters, Senator Mansfield said that the Administration had decided to "reassess" its policies in the Middle East. When Nessen asked me what I thought he should say about that, I told him that he could call Mansfield's remarks "correct" and that, in an indirect way, he could indicate that we thought the Israelis had been dragging their feet.

Predictably, our "reassessment" jolted the American Jewish community and Israel's many friends in Congress. The Israeli lobby, made up of patriotic Americans, is strong, vocal and wealthy, but many of its members have a single focus. I knew that I would come under intense pressure soon to change our policy, but I was determined to hold firm. On March 27, I met in the Oval Office with Max Fisher, a prominent Detroit businessman who was chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel. Max was a lifelong Republican and a close friend. He had served as an unofficial ambassador between the United States and Israel for years, and his contacts at the highest levels of both governments had often helped us bridge over misunderstandings. I said I thought it was imperative that we see new momentum toward peace in the Middle East, that my comments about reassessing our policies there weren't just rhetoric. I was not going to capitulate to pressure, and if the impasse continued, I might have to go

January 20, 1977. I asked the helicopter pilot to circle the Capitol for a last look.

David Hume Kennerly/PHOTO QUEST

Andrews Air Force Base. Our farewell to Washington and the beginning of another life.

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public on where we stood and why. I didn't have to ask Max to get the message back to the Israelis. Word would spread very quickly that I meant what I said.

Meanwhile, other foreign policy crises were demanding more and more of my time. Foremost among them was the stepped-up war in South Vietnam and Cambodia. From the beginning of our involvement in the area, I had always thought that we were doing the right thing. Our policy was a natural outgrowth of decisions we had made at the end of World War II. In the immediate postwar period, the U.S. mounted a foreign aid program to help rebuild the shattered economies of countries all over the world. We helped scores of nations-allies, potential allies and even potential adversaries-and those aid programs formed an integral part of America's foreign policy and national defense strategy. The basic thrust behind them was the desire to eliminate, or at least contain, Communist aggression around the globe.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, our aid programs in Vietnam were not too different from the programs we maintained elsewhere, with the exception of the fact that the French were still a major factor there. Then Dienbienphu fell to the Communists; the French withdrew and the U.S. role began to change. Slowly we became the military backup for one of the two contending factions in the country. Even by the late 1950s, we were only providing the Saigon regime with military and economic aid plus the services of several hundred advisers. We were not committed fully to the nation's defense. Yet. A decisive change in our level of commitment came, of course, in April 1962, when JFK sent 15,000 military advisers to help the South Vietnamese in their struggle against the Viet Minh, later called the Viet Cong. From that point on, escalation followed escalation, and at one point in the mid 1960s we discovered that we had committed 550,000 Americans to save our beleaguered ally.

In retrospect, legitimate questions can be raised about our involvement in the war. Had our civilian and military leaders made a sufficient analysis of the conditions there? Had they stopped to consider that our world commitments might already be too great, and did they have a clear idea of what their military objectives were? The answer to these questions is probably no. The question can also be

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asked: Could we have won the war? There, I think, the answer is yes, although I'm not as sure of that today as I was in the late 1960s when, as House Minority Leader, I called upon LBJ to stop pulling our best punches in Vietnam. At that time, I felt certain-given four basic assumptions-that we would prevail.

The first assumption was that we would use our military power fully and appropriately. The second was that the South Vietnamese forces would build to a level sufficient for them to defend themselves. The third was that the people of South Vietnam would support the war effort, and the final assumption was the continuing support of the U.S. Congress. To varying degrees, none of these assumptions proved out.

The war dragged on and on, and the damage it caused this country both domestically and internationally was truly staggering. Our greatest loss, of course, was the 57,000 American dead and the more than 100,000 who suffered serious injuries. Next came the loss of U.S. prestige around the world. The conflict created deep divisions among the American people and discredited our military. Lastly, LBJ's decision to provide both guns (the war cost us $150 billion) and butter without a tax increase had resulted in a terrible disruption of our economy. It would take America a long time to recover from these wounds.

In January 1973, the U.S. finally negotiated a settlement that made it possible for us to remove our combat forces and bring home our prisoners of war. If necessary, we agreed at the time, the U.S. would back up the terms of the Paris peace accords, and we would continue to provide adequate military and economic assistance to South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese, however, never considered the Paris peace accords as the end of the conflict. They had an estimated 160,000 troops in South Vietnam at the time, and they violated the agreement flagrantly by sending an additional 300,000 men into the south. They also sent in massive amounts of modern equipment and launched offensive military operations.

In the face of this situation, the U.S. failed to respond. Watergate had so weakened the President that he was not about to take a major military action, such as renewed bombings. Moreover, by November, Congress had succeeded in passing the War Powers Act of 1973,

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suspect; elections were scheduled in June, and it was probable that the Communists would score heavy gains. All these were serious problems whose resolution would affect the course of our own future security. Yet they paled when compared to the ones we faced in the Middle East.

Since the collapse in March of Kissinger's tireless shuttle diplomacy, I had talked to a number of outside authorities including former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, former Under Secretaries of State George Ball and Eugene Rostow and former Senator J. William Fulbright. Additionally, at the suggestion of my old friend Max Fisher, I met on several occasions in the Oval Office with leaders of the American Jewish community. What bothered me most was the claim by some of those leaders that inasmuch as I was suggesting the possibility of a reassessment of our policy toward Israel, I must be anti-Israel or even anti-Semitic. That was just not true; and I told these groups:

> In all my public life, I have never wavered in my support for a free and secure Israel. There was never one vote or one speech that could be interpreted otherwise. All of my life, I have had great respect for the Jewish people. I feel that way today, and anyone who says I don't doesn't know me at all.

> It is *because* of my affection and admiration for the Jewish people and the state of Israel that I'm so concerned about the lack of progress toward peace in that part of the world. We *must* have progress soon if we are to avoid another war, the fifth in thirty years. Quite frankly, Israel's leaders have not been as quick to recognize this as I had hoped they would be. They have not been as forthcoming as I wanted them to be. Now, I have always believed in maintaining the national integrity of Israel, but always within the context of maintaining world peace and—above everything else—within the context of protecting the national interests of the United States. What this means is that the leaders of Israel and the American Jewish community here simply can't hold up a legitimate settlement and expect me as President to tolerate it.

In mid April, Foreign Minister Yigal Allon flew to Washington for lengthy talks with Kissinger. Henry had wanted to see if there had been any "give" in the Israeli position since the collapse of the talks

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in March. Even Allon, one of the more moderate members of his country's cabinet, was not about to show any give. I decided to increase the pressure a bit.

For the past several weeks, the Israelis had been engaged in a not very subtle campaign to discredit Kissinger. He had been their hero after the 1973 war; now, all of a sudden, he was their adversary. Because Henry was a Jew, the Israeli hard-liners said, he was bending over backward to be "fair" to the Arabs. He was "out-Gentiling the Gentiles"; he was "sabotaging" Israel's interests. The charges were utterly false, of course. No one had worked harder to achieve a just and lasting peace in the Middle East than Henry Kissinger, and to see him attacked that way was reprehensible.

The high-stakes poker game continued. Early in May, we announced that I would be meeting Egyptian President Sadat in Salzburg, Austria, during the first week of June. Only after I'd talked with him would I meet with Rabin. Always before, American Presidents had met with the Israelis first. The fact that I had said I wanted to establish a personal relationship with Sadat seemed to worry the Israelis, and they decided to launch a counterattack. On May 21, I received a letter signed by seventy-six Senators urging me to "be responsive" to Israel's request for $2.59 billion in military and economic aid. Although I said publicly that I welcomed the letter as an expression of Senate sentiment, in truth it really bugged me. The Senators claimed the letter was "spontaneous," but there was no doubt in my mind that it was inspired by Israel. We had given vast amounts of military and economic assistance to Israel over the years, and we had never asked for anything in return.

Quite apart from that, the letter—especially its tone—jeopardized any chance for peace in the Middle East. For the past several weeks, Kissinger and I had been urging the Israelis to come up with new ideas for a just settlement of the Sinai dispute, ideas that I could present to Sadat when I met him in June. At that meeting I planned to make the same request of the Egyptian president. Once I had his ideas, I could relay them to Rabin, and we could get the negotiations back on track again. Because of the letter, however, the Israelis didn't want to budge. So confident were they that those seventy-six Senators would support them no matter what they did, they refused to suggest

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any new ideas for peace. "Concessions will have to be made," they were saying in effect, "but we will make none of them. Sadat will have to make them all. And if Ford disagrees, we will show him who's boss." I thought they were overplaying their hand. For me, that kind of pressure has always been counterproductive. I was not going to capitulate to it.

From the perspective of our European allies, I'm sure that the NATO meeting loomed as a very significant opportunity. They would have a chance to talk with the new American President, whom many of them had not met before. Shortly after eight o'clock on May 28, *Air Force One* touched down at Zavantem Airport outside Brussels. The next morning, in an effort to see what progress we could make toward reaching a settlement of the Cyprus dispute, Kissinger, Scowcroft and I met with the prime ministers of Greece and Turkey. We had a working lunch with West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt; we visited with Danish officials, then sat down with Portugal's new Prime Minister Vasco dos Santos Gonçalves.

In my speech to the NATO conference later that afternoon, I was candid about the challenges we faced. "Because of the United States' long involvement in Indochina," I said, "[recent] events [there] have led some to question our strength and reliability. I believe that our strength speaks for itself: Our military power remains and will continue to remain second to none—of this let there be no doubt; our economy remains fundamentally sound and productive, and our political system has emerged from the shocks of the past year stronger for the way in which it met a severe internal test. Our actions will continue to confirm the durability of our commitments."

I listed areas where we as NATO allies still had work to do. Obviously, we had to maintain a strong and credible defense. We had to improve the process of political consultation between member states, and we had to develop a realistic agenda for bolstering our alliance. In the future, Spain could make an important contribution to our mutual security. We had to consider ways to integrate her forces with others in the West. Then I got to the heart of the matter: "We must preserve the quality and integrity of this Alliance on the basis of unqualified participation," I said, "not on the basis of partial membership or special arrangements. The commitment to collective defense

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must be complete if it is to be credible. It must be unqualified if it is to be reliable."

On May 31, I flew to Spain to discuss the status of negotiations governing continued U.S. use of four military bases there. The U.S. recognized Spain's contribution to Europe's defense; even though our NATO allies had just rebuffed our suggestion that the Alliance consider Spanish membership, it was far from the final vote on the question. Less than twenty-four hours after arriving in Madrid, I was airborne again—this time to Salzburg and my meeting with Sadat. The weather in Spain had been fair; rain clouds hung low over the Salzburg airport, however, and when *Air Force One* taxied to a stop, I tumbled down the ramp. Literally. What happened was this: Betty and I were descending the steps. I had my right arm around her waist to help her, and I was carrying an umbrella in my left hand. Two or three steps from the bottom of the ramp, the heel of my shoe caught on something. I had no free hand to grab the rail, so I took a tumble to the tarmac below.

I jumped to my feet, unhurt, and thought nothing of the fall. So I was quite surprised when Ron Nessen told me later that reporters covering my trip were bombarding him with questions about my "missteps." Had I been off balance because I was exhausted? Had Dr. Lukash examined me? Had I misgauged distances? Ron asked me how I thought he should handle such questions. I told him not to worry about them. There was no doubt in my mind that I was the most athletic President to occupy the White House in years. "I'm an activist," I said. "Activists are more prone to stumble than anyone else. If you don't let their questions get under your skin, they'll realize that they're just wasting time, and they'll start to focus on something else."

I was wrong. From that moment on, every time I stumbled or bumped my head or fell in the snow, reporters zeroed in on that to the exclusion of almost everything else. The news coverage was harmful, but even more damaging was the fact that Johnny Carson and Chevy Chase used my "missteps" for their jokes. Their antics—and I'll admit that I laughed at them myself—helped create the public perception of me as a stumbler. And that wasn't funny.

On June 1, the Egyptian president and I met three times—first

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when he hosted a working luncheon in a beautiful resort overlooking Lake Fuschl, then later that afternoon at a famous old ornate government building called the Residenz, and finally in the evening, when Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky held a state dinner in our honor. Sadat, a slim, baldish man who combined a professional soldier's erect posture with an aristocratic air of elegance, had deep-set eyes and a quiet, thoughtful voice. But he was very precise in everything he said. He told me how bitter he was at the Soviets. They had mistreated him and tried to bludgeon him by threatening to take away all military aid. He described with pride how he had thrown them out of his country and forced them to stop using the naval base at Alexandria. Under no circumstances, he said, would he let them back.

Their departure, of course, had caused problems for him. The Soviets had stopped sending him arms. He needed spare parts for his planes and tanks. His generals had told him that if he couldn't get those parts, they couldn't do their job. Sadat didn't know how he could satisfy them. His economy was in terrible shape. He couldn't feed, house and arm his people simultaneously. That's why he desperately wanted peace.

Now he came to the point and asked what new ideas I had brought from Israel for him to consider. I had to admit that I had none, because the Israelis said they had none to give. Sadat's expression didn't change. He puffed on his pipe and was silent for a while. Then he looked me in the eye. "All right," he said. "We are willing to go as far as you think we should go. We trust you, and we trust the United States."

I told him that Kissinger and I were in complete agreement on one point: If there was no new movement toward peace, if we couldn't find some new formula over the course of the next few days, then the prospects for war would increase. Sadat nodded. Something, he said, had to be done to avoid a confrontation between Egypt and Israel in the Sinai Peninsula. Then he came up with an idea. Why couldn't there be a buffer zone around the Gidi and Mitla passes, in which the United States could keep a limited number of nonmilitary personnel? These individuals, he went on, would be responsible for surveillance. They would monitor troop movements and warn either side of an im-

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pending attack. That way, both countries would have protection. He thought a force of about two hundred civilians should suffice to do the job.

Henry and I agreed that this idea made sense. The Israelis would have to approve it, of course; so would Congress, but I felt confident that implementation of this plan would break the diplomatic deadlock and start a new movement toward a lasting peace. Finally, Sadat and I talked about his country's need for military and economic assistance. Because of the strong objections of the Israelis, I said, we couldn't supply him with offensive weapons. We might, however, be able to provide some C-130 transport planes. I told him I'd ask Congress for $800 million to help his economy. Additionally, I said we'd talk to other Arab states and try to persuade them to be more generous to him in view of the risks that Egypt was taking for peace.

If the Israelis had discovered that the proposal to station civilian technicians in a Sinai buffer zone had come originally from Sadat, they might have rejected it out of hand, so when I returned from Europe and briefed the Cabinet on the afternoon of June 4, I was purposely vague about the specifics of the Salzburg talks. Sooner or later, those specifics would surface in the press. Both Henry and I recognized that. Yet if Sadat's proposal could be perceived as an American—or even better, an Israeli—plan, it would have a far greater chance of acceptance. Much depended upon the press. If some alert reporter sniffed out what had happened at Salzburg, everything could come unstuck. In order to retain "face" in the Arab world, Sadat would have to deny that he had offered any peace plan to the Israelis.

Fortunately, the press didn't ferret out the news, and on June 11, Israeli Prime Minister Rabin arrived in Washington. For the first time since the collapse of the Kissinger mission in March, I sensed that we were about to make progress. Clearly, Rabin had been shaken by our decision to "reassess" our policies in the Middle East. Instead of arguing over which country was to blame for the breakdown of the talks in March, he wanted to move forward. He asked if I had any ideas as to how peace could be achieved. I replied that "one suggestion we have been considering" involved stationing civilian technicians in a Sinai buffer zone. We'd have to get the Egyptians to

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agree, I said, and we'd also have to gain the backing of the Congress. Still, it was an idea that might break the current impasse. Rabin seemed intrigued. He said he'd take the idea back to Israel and let me know his government's response.

Nearly two months earlier, in a speech at Yale Law School, I had outlined my thoughts about crime. And I had promised my audience then that I would give Congress proposals to deal with the problem. On June 19, I sent a special message up to Capitol Hill. "For too long," I said, "the law has centered its attention more on the rights of the criminal than on the victim of crime. It is high time that we reverse this trend."

I suggested mandatory prison terms for federal offenses committed with firearms or other dangerous weapons, and the same for hijackers, kidnapers and traffickers in hard drugs. Fines or prison terms, I added, should relate directly to the gravity of the offense. Fines were woefully low and did nothing to deter offenders whose *business* was crime. For antitrust legislation I recommended that maximum fines be increased to $100,000 for individuals and to $500,000 for an organization, to make the penalty commensurate with the crime.

I had always opposed federal registration of guns or the licensing of gun owners, and as President, I hadn't changed my views. At the same time, I recognized that handguns had played a key role in the increase of violent crime. Not *all* handguns—just those that hadn't been designed for sporting purposes. I asked Congress to ban the manufacture and sale of these "Saturday night specials." Turning to white collar crime, which in 1974 had cost Americans an estimated $40 billion, I said that Attorney General Levi would undertake new initiatives to coordinate all federal enforcement and prosecutorial efforts in that area.

By the end of the third week in June, the economy appeared to be well on the road to a balanced recovery. Over the past six months the inflation rate had been cut in half—from 12 percent per year to 6 percent—and my advisers were saying that it might drop to 4 percent by 1980. The unemployment rate for May had been an unacceptably high 9.2 percent, but that figure, too, was beginning to de-

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cline. Virtually every economic indicator was pointing up instead of down. If this trend continued, my advisers maintained, we could actually have a budget surplus of $22 billion by 1980.

In ten and a half months as President, I'd done everything I could to force Congress to hold the line on federal spending. And considering the fact that Republicans constituted a minority in both houses of Congress, I'd been more successful than anyone had expected. Since August 1974, I had vetoed thirty-three bills. Congress had overridden me on only four of those occasions, and the net result was a $6.35 billion savings. The Democrats had complained, of course, that I was "thwarting the will of the majority"; they had accused me of "obstructionism" when I had used the veto to block some of their irreversible spending schemes. But the truth is that I had no other tool to use. The veto was the single most powerful weapon at my disposal to force Congress to recognize fiscal restraint and to keep the economy on track.

Early in 1975, for example, I had asked Congress to pass legislation that would extend public service jobs and provide summer employment for thousands of young people. An appropriation of $1.9 billion, I thought, would be sufficient. Congress labored and brought forth an elephant. The legislation it passed was $3.3 billion *above* my budget request. On May 28, I vetoed the bill. One week later, the House sustained my veto. Then Congressional leaders sought a reasonable compromise. They began to slice away the pork barrel provisions of the earlier bill and produced legislation that extended 310,000 public service jobs and created 840,000 summer jobs at a total cost of $2.07 billion. That was slightly higher than the figure I had originally proposed, but it was far less expensive than the "Christmas tree" measure that I had been forced to veto earlier.

Another case in point was the Emergency Housing Act of 1975. I had asked Congress to give the housing industry a necessary shot in the arm. In addition, I'd called for a bill that would protect citizens who were threatened by mortgage foreclosure on their homes because of the recession. Congress responded with a bill that was much too expensive. Believing that it would damage not only the housing industry but also the entire economy, I vetoed it and the House sustained my veto. The executive and legislative branches then bar-

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Since Kissinger's unsuccessful mission to the Middle East in March, we had been engaged in a war of nerves with Israel. Perhaps "test of wills" would be a better phrase because Israel was—and is—a valued ally. But even friends disagree, and that's what had happened to us. When Rabin and his colleagues saw that I wasn't about to bow to any home-front political pressure they could exert, they were ready to resume serious bargaining. Their reaction to Sadat's proposal to station American civilian technicians in a Sinai buffer zone was positive. So positive, in fact, that Henry thought he should return to the area soon. I gave him my okay, and on August 20 he left for Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Over the next ten days he shuttled from one capital to the other in fervent pursuit of our goal. If Henry could eventually persuade the Israelis to withdraw not only from parts of the occupied Sinai but also from parts of the Golan Heights and the West Bank of the Jordan River, then it was likely that he could convince Arab leaders that Israel really wanted peace. If he failed in this first step, both of us realized, the prospects for another war would increase.

The Israelis wanted to address each occupied area separately, and even before they would discuss a new Sinai pact, they demanded two concessions from us. The first was a written promise—a memorandum of understanding—that before the U.S. moved in any direction affecting the future of the region, we would notify them. I had no problem agreeing to that. The second concession was more troublesome. The Israelis were always insisting that we supply them more military equipment than our own experts thought they needed and far more than I thought we could afford. Initially, we had agreed to provide them $1.5 billion worth of arms. They would have to pay us back half that amount; the rest would be a loan with an understood forgiveness feature. The Israelis, however, wanted more. Their shopping list included sophisticated weaponry that even our own forces hadn't received yet. Pentagon officials urged me to refuse this new request. Israel, they pointed out, already had the third-largest air force in the world. She could destroy all her neighbors. It was a tough call. Nothing was more important to the Israelis than their own military security. If we provided the hardware, we could convince the Israelis that they were secure. Then they might be willing to accept

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some risks in the search for peace. In the end, I decided to approve a larger initial increment than the Pentagon recommended.

Now the talks focused on the most minute details. The Israelis had long insisted that their forces couldn't pull back beyond the crests of the mountains that overlooked the Gidi and Mitla passes. Eventually we came up with charts pinpointing the location of the crests that both sides accepted. That's when we began to make real progress. The Israelis made some concessions; so did the Egyptians. A force of between 100 and 150 U.S. civilian technicians, it was agreed by both sides, would be stationed in the buffer zone between the Israeli and Egyptian armies. They would not be there as "policemen"; their role would be to monitor activity in the vicinity of the passes. Finally, on the morning of September 1, Kissinger telephoned me from Jerusalem. He had achieved success at last, and he was jubilant. He and Rabin were about to initial the peace documents. He was going to fly to Cairo, where he and Sadat would repeat the ceremony. I telephoned both leaders, congratulated them personally and urged them to keep the peace process moving. But first I called Henry back. "This is a great achievement," I said. "And I know that the American people will be most grateful for the successful efforts that you made."

On September 4, after briefing bipartisan Congressional leaders on the Middle East accords, I flew to the West Coast to give speeches in Washington, Oregon and California. One of the most important was an address before a joint session of the California legislature on the subject of crime. Next morning, after breakfast in Sacramento, I left the Senator Hotel and walked across the capitol grounds toward the office of Governor Jerry Brown. I wanted to talk to him about the crime bill that I had submitted to Congress and also about federal-state differences on welfare and the drilling of offshore oil. Because I had never met him before, I also wanted to size him up as a potential Presidential candidate.

The weather that morning was clear; the sun was shining brightly, and there were several rows of people standing behind a rope that lined the sidewalk to my left. They were applauding and saying nice things; I was in a good mood, so I started shaking hands. That's when I spotted a woman wearing a bright red dress. She was in the second or third row, moving right along with me as if she wanted to shake

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my hand. When I slowed down, I noticed immediately that she thrust her hand under the arms of the other spectators. I reached down to shake it—and looked into the barrel of a .45 caliber pistol pointed directly at me.

I ducked.

"This country is in a mess. This man is not your President," the woman was reported to have yelled, but I didn't hear her. I do remember seeing Secret Service Agent Larry Buendorf reach for the woman's hand and wrestle her to the ground. Ernie Luzania and other agents grabbed me immediately from the rear and hustled me along the sidewalk into the capitol. It was important, I thought, to avoid panic, so when I saw that the danger had passed, I told the agents to slow down. "Everything is all right," I said. Governor Brown was waiting for me in his office; members of our respective staffs were there, and we concluded our business without my mentioning the incident, which he learned about after I left.

Following my meeting with Brown and a speech to the legislature, I returned to the hotel, where I telephoned Betty and told her that I was fine. The Secret Service agents had assured her that everything was all right, but she sounded concerned. Every President receives threats—I was getting about a hundred per month—but I had never worried about them because of my confidence in the professionalism of the agents guarding me. That confidence, I told Betty, had not been misplaced; Buendorf and the other agents had done a superb job.

Only after my return to Washington did I receive a full report on the woman who had tried to murder me—Lynette Alice ("Squeaky") Fromme, a twenty-six-year-old disciple of mass killer Charles Manson. (On November 26, she was convicted in federal court of trying to assassinate me and was sentenced to spend the rest of her life in prison.)

Squeaky Fromme, I thought, was an aberration. There had been misfits and kooks in every society since the beginning of time. I didn't think California harbored a larger number of these people than any other part of the country, so I wasn't overly concerned about my personal safety when I returned to the state on September

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19. My schedule was crowded for the next three days. I gave interviews to groups of reporters, participated in ceremonies at Pepperdine University and the Stanford University School of Law, spoke at an insurance convention in Anaheim, then flew north again to San Francisco. There, on September 22, I addressed the annual meeting of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades unions and attended a luncheon of the World Affairs Council of Northern California.

Shortly before three-thirty that afternoon, I stepped out of the hotel entrance and walked toward the armored Lincoln Continental that would whisk me to the airport. Groups of people stood on both sides of the entrance and there was an even larger crowd of three thousand or more across the street in Union Square. Dick Keiser, the head of the Secret Service detail, had advised me not to cross the street and shake hands in the crowd. I waved once or twice as I walked toward the car.

Bang! I recognized the sound of a shot, and I froze. There was a hushed silence for a split second. Then pandemonium broke out.

Agents Jack Merchant and Ron Pontius forced me down behind the car. Then they opened the door and pushed me inside. Rumsfeld and the agents piled in on top of me; somebody shouted, "Go," and the car took off. I don't think anyone ever drove to the airport faster than we did that afternoon, but I wasn't worried about setting a new speed record. What did bother me after we had traveled several blocks was that the agents were still on top of me in the back of the car, and they were heavy as hell. "Hey," I said finally, "will you guys get off? You're going to smother me."

*Air Force One* was waiting at the airport. Kennerly, cameras slung around his neck, was standing at the top of the ramp as the agents hustled me up the steps. "Other than that, Mr. President," he asked with a smile on his face, "how did you like San Francisco?"

That broke the tension of the moment. I grinned and stepped inside to my compartment. Kennerly followed me there. So did Rumsfeld, Hartmann, Nessen and Dr. Lukash. Stewards appeared with drinks, and we began to relax. Betty had been visiting friends in Monterey for the past several days. She was flying north to meet me

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tion and election approached, partisanship would flourish, making it impossible to discuss complex issues like SALT in a rational way. So Henry really wanted the Moscow talks to succeed. For a variety of reasons, most of them unfair, he had been going through exceedingly difficult times. Early in January, in fact, he had come into the Oval Office and handed me a "draft" of his letter of resignation as Secretary of State. His motivation, he explained, was political. Conservatives still blamed him for my dismissal of Schlesinger, although he had had nothing to do with it. That made him a liability to me in the primary fight. Unselfishly, in order not to embarrass me, he would step aside. Pointing to the letter, he said, "This is what I'll send you if my resignation will help."

I was shocked by the idea. His resignation was something I simply couldn't accept. The country needed him—I needed him—to implement our foreign policy at this difficult time.

Later, after he had left the Oval Office, I reflected upon the problems Henry faced. In the early days of the Nixon Administration, he had misjudged the political situation, which was understandable for a person not familiar with partisan politics. Because of his steadfast views on Vietnam, he assumed that he would have the support of such staunch conservatives as Senators Barry Goldwater, Strom Thurmond and John Tower whenever he needed it. So he ignored the hard-liners of the party. He did too little to educate them about what he was doing and why. Instead, he concentrated on trying to build up support among liberals in Congress. He also wooed the press, and in turn, many reporters idolized him. His face appeared on magazine covers, his name and accounts of his "romantic entanglements" in gossip columns everywhere. He was "Superman," "Henry the K," the "secret swinger" who was about to end the war in Vietnam. He could do no wrong.

The first jolt to Henry's reputation had come in May 1970, when U.S. forces had moved into Cambodia. Just before the action took place, Henry had briefed me as Minority Leader, explaining that several hundred thousand Communist troops were operating against us from "safe" bases inside Cambodia. Then he had asked my opinion as to what the Congressional response would be. "Difficult but manageable," I had replied, and my judgment was correct. What neither

of us had foreseen was the furor that the incursion would provoke outside Congress. Liberals pounced upon him savagely, the first in a long line of attacks still to come.

In 1972, Nixon and Kissinger had negotiated an interim SALT accord with the Soviets. Conservatives had been suspicious of the role Henry had played and they had expressed their doubts vocally. After the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Henry had made a valiant attempt to bring peace to the Middle East. Somehow, the idea got around that he was leaning too hard on Israel, and that had cost him support in the American Jewish community. A former assistant of his on the NSC staff, Morton H. Halperin, had filed a civil suit against him (and others), claiming that he had been responsible for approving wiretaps the FBI had placed on the telephones of seventeen individuals—including Halperin—during the Nixon years. Press reports about this had cast shadows upon his personal integrity and damaged his credibility.

Nor did the attacks cease when I became President. Simply because Nixon had appointed him, Henry remained a target for Nixon-haters who didn't have the former President to revile any more. Inside my Administration, he became a target as well. In a well-meaning but misguided attempt to establish my credentials as a President who was knowledgeable about foreign policy, some members of my staff leaked stories to the effect that I had overruled Kissinger on several decisions. Reading such nonsense in the press upset me enormously. The stories were totally inaccurate—there never was a conflict of any significance between us—yet I'm sure that some of them were believed. And this hurt a proud and sensitive man.

Finally, Kissinger remained the favorite target of liberal Democrats on Capitol Hill. In the wake of war and Watergate, Congress had passed bill after bill restricting the President's power to conduct foreign policy. When Henry tried to warn doubting lawmakers that their actions could imperil the nation's security, his admonitions were dismissed. Congress knew better, Congress explained, and Congress would decide what to do without any help from him.

So during the fall of 1975, Kissinger's relations with Congress had deteriorated. That wasn't his fault. Congress simply was more rebellious, more assertive of its rights and privileges—and also more irre-

CHALLENGE FROM THE RIGHT

355

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A TIME TO HEAL

sponsible—than it had been for years. Proof of this had come in November, when the House Select Committee on Intelligence approved three resolutions which said that Henry was in contempt of Congress because he had failed to comply with three subpoenas that the committee had served on him.

Throughout that committee's existence, I had bent over backward to cooperate. I had instructed officials to turn over documents relevant to the committee's probe of the CIA and other intelligence agencies. I had also taken steps to make sure that the sort of abuses which had occurred in the past would not happen during my Administration. Yet the committee, which was determined to stick it to Kissinger, wasn't satisfied. On November 7, it issued seven subpoenas on the Executive Branch for additional documents, demanding all that material in just four days. We decided to comply with four of those subpoenas, but not the remaining three. The first, addressed to Kissinger by name, called upon him to provide "all documents relating to [the] State Department recommending covert action... to the National Security Council and its predecessor committees from January 30, 1961, to [the] present." I knew that the State Department had made no such recommendations during my time in office, so those documents wouldn't embarrass me. Clearly, however, they contained highly sensitive military and foreign affairs assessments and evaluations. Also, they revealed the consultation processes that Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon had employed before making key decisions in the Oval Office. After checking with Attorney General Levi, I determined that these were the sort of documents that I could withhold on the grounds of Executive privilege, and I told Henry not to honor that subpoena. The other subpoenas demanded papers dating back to January 1965. We had already turned over some of the documents covered by these subpoenas, and we were doing our best to review the others as quickly as possible.

On November 19, I wrote the committee chairman, New York Democrat Otis G. Pike. "This issue," I said, "involves grave matters affecting our conduct of foreign policy and raises questions which go to the ability of our Republic to govern itself effectively."

After reviewing the facts of the case and stressing once again that I had done everything I could to cooperate with the committee, I

urged Pike to reconsider the resolutions his committee had approved. I offered to send officials from the Executive Branch down to Capitol Hill to elaborate on the points I had made. "I believe that the national interest is best served through our cooperation," I concluded, "and adoption of a spirit of mutual trust and respect."

Fortunately, Pike backed off and on December 11, the committee withdrew its recommendation that Kissinger be cited for contempt. Thus he and I were spared what would have been a catastrophic confrontation with the Congress.

But another rebuff quickly followed, this time involving the U.S. position on SALT which Henry had prepared. The opposition came from Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and I recognized that they held the trump card. The Senate would have to ratify the new accord. If Rumsfeld or the Joint Chiefs testified against it, there was no way that the Senate would ever go along with it.

After several intensive NSC meetings, I told Henry to take two proposals to Moscow on January 20. The first tried to build on the agreement that Brezhnev and I had reached at Vladivostok. It proposed incorporating the Backfire bomber into the treaty—with the exception of the 120 aircraft that had already rolled off Soviet production lines—and counting it as a strategic weapon. Cruise missiles on our bombers were to be counted as MIRVs, as were those on our surface ships and submarines. The Soviets, Henry and I agreed, were likely to reject this, so I approved an acceptable alternative that still satisfied our own security needs. In this second proposal we said we would limit the Soviets to 275 Backfire bombers by 1981, with specific restrictions on their deployment and operations. We proposed banning long-range cruise missiles from our submarines—although we insisted on our right to keep adequate numbers of the short- and medium-range variety—and we suggested deploying these missiles on up to twenty-five of our surface ships. Then we recommended that both sides cut their agreed-upon total of 2,400 ballistic missiles by roughly 10 percent.

Not surprisingly, the Soviets rejected the first proposal. But they seemed interested in the second. Brezhnev, in fact, hinted that he might be willing to accept a cut of more than 10 percent. Agreement,

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AMERICAN PRESIDENCY SERIES

Donald R. McCoy, Clifford S. Griffin, Homer E. Socolofsky
General Editors

George Washington, Forrest McDonald

John Adams, Ralph Adams Brown

Thomas Jefferson, Forrest McDonald

James Madison, Robert Allen Rutland

John Quincy Adams, Mary W. M. Hargreaves

Andrew Jackson, Donald B. Cole

Martin Van Buren, Major L. Wilson

William Henry Harrison & John Tyler, Norma Lois Peterson

James K. Polk, Paul H. Bergeron

Zachary Taylor & Millard Fillmore, Elbert B. Smith

Franklin Pierce, Larry Gara

James Buchanan, Elbert B. Smith

Abraham Lincoln, Phillip Shaw Paludan

Andrew Johnson, Albert Castel

Rutherford B. Hayes, Ari Hoogenboom

James A. Garfield & Chester A. Arthur, Justus D. Doenecke

Grover Cleveland, Richard E. Welch, Jr.

Benjamin Harrison, Homer E. Socolofsky & Allan B. Spetter

William McKinley, Lewis L. Gould

Theodore Roosevelt, Lewis L. Gould

William Howard Taft, Paolo E. Coletta

Woodrow Wilson, Kendrick A. Clements

Warren G. Harding, Eugene P. Trani & David L. Wilson

Herbert C. Hoover, Martin L. Fausold

Harry S. Truman, Donald R. McCoy

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Chester J. Pach, Jr., & Elmo Richardson

John F. Kennedy, James N. Giglio

Lyndon B. Johnson, Vaughn Davis Bornet

Gerald R. Ford, John Robert Greene

James Earl Carter, Jr., Burton I. Kaufman

The Presidency of
GERALD R.
FORD

John Robert Greene

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KANSAS

© 1995 by the University Press of Kansas

All rights reserved

Published by the University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, Kansas 66049), which was organized by the Kansas Board of Regents and is operated and funded by Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University, Kansas State University, Pittsburg State University, the University of Kansas, and Wichita State University

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Greene, John Robert, 1955-

The presidency of Gerald R. Ford / John Robert Greene.

p. cm. — (American presidency series)

Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.

ISBN 0-7006-0638-6 (cloth : alk. paper).

ISBN 0-7006-0639-4 (paper : alk. paper)

1. United States—Politics and government—1974-1977. 2. Ford,

Gerald R., 1913- I. Title. II. Series.

E865.G74 1995

94-20037

973.925'092—dc20

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.

For Patty, T. J., and Christopher

THE PRESIDENCY OF GERALD R. FORD

with a wide margin of target error—the Tomahawk had long been passed over by American weapons planners in favor of ballistic missiles, which carried their nuclear payload at supersonic speeds to an unlimited array of targets. Kissinger saw the remaining American cruise arsenal as a good bargaining chip, since even these outdated missiles were supposed to be a decade ahead of Soviet cruise technology; thus he was willing to throw them into SALT II's scrap heap as a sop to the Soviets. The Tomahawk, then, was excluded from the aggregate total of 2,400 strategic delivery systems allowed to the Americans. An angry Jackson reinvoked images of Yalta, charging Ford with weakening America's defense by daring to consider the junking of any of its weapons systems.

Neither the issue of the Backfire nor the Tomahawk was resolved during the Ford presidency. With the quiet help of Schlesinger and the Pentagon, Jackson and other Senate opponents of the treaty were able to delay a Senate vote on the ratification of SALT II. As the election drew nearer, Ford spoke less and less about the treaty; during the campaign, one could hardly tell that a treaty was before the Senate. Although Ford claimed in a 1988 interview that the passage of SALT II would have been "guaranteed" in a second Ford administration, it did not happen in the first.²¹

As détente with the Soviet Union was being reassessed in the national debate, so too were American relations with Israel. When the Nixon administration came to an end, it was in the process of turning its Middle East policy from a disaster to a triumph. Nixon clearly saw the fine hand of the Soviet Union behind every action of Egypt, Syria, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO); Arab violations of the truce following the 1967 Six Day War therefore could not be tolerated. Yet it is equally clear that Nixon found the Israelis to be an aggravating ally, intransigent in their demands and less reasonable in their view of the future of the Middle East than Nixon believed the new Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, to be. Nixon thus pursued a policy that attempted to strike a balance of power in the Middle East, avoiding any plans or proposals that might polarize the two powers and perhaps lead to a showdown in the region between the United States and the Soviets. In short, Nixon's policy satisfied no one and angered the Israelis, who felt that they had been abandoned. When Egyptian and Syrian forces attacked Israel in October 1973, precipitating the Yom Kippur War, Nixon dragged his feet in sending help to the Israelis. Yet when Golda Meir's forces regrouped and surrounded the invaders, Nixon quickly intervened and forced Israel to accept a truce. The Israelis were angry, but

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the war had turned the Middle East into a foreign policy priority for Nixon. He used the postwar lull to initiate "step-by-step diplomacy"; agreements would be negotiated one at a time between each Arab nation and Israel as a prelude to a general peace in the region. After several months of shuttle diplomacy by Kissinger, agreements had been signed leading to the military disengagement of Egyptian and Israeli forces (the Sinai I Accord) and to the disengagement of Israeli and Syrian forces. Despite the initiation of a general peace conference in Geneva, however, Watergate interrupted the search for a region-wide peace treaty.

When Ford took over the White House, the next move in step-by-step diplomacy was the negotiation of an agreement between Israel and Jordan. But Ford had also inherited a new, untested Israeli government. Both Meir and her defense minister, Moshe Dayan, had stepped down in the wake of public disappointment over the result of the Yom Kippur War. They were replaced by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Foreign Minister Yigal Allon, and Defense Minister Shimon Peres. As one observer has noted, "Golda Meir may have been tough and difficult to deal with, but at least she was in control of the government. It was less clear that Rabin could guide the divided country through a complex set of negotiations."²² As a governing troika, the new Israeli leadership not only was untested but they also bickered with each other. Rabin could promise only that new elections would be called before Israel would take any steps toward agreement with Jordan. After a meeting with Rabin in October 1974 Kissinger fumed to Joseph Sisco, the NSC's expert on the Middle East: "We are racking our brains to find some formula, and there sits a prime minister shivering in fear every time I mention the word Jordan. It's a lost cause."²³ On 10 September 1974 (two days after the pardon announcement), Rabin met with Ford in Washington. Ford later recalled that at the end of two days of talks, "we hadn't made much progress," and he asked Kissinger to set up an October trip to the Middle East.²⁴

The stalling by the new Israeli government created a vacuum, and Yasir Arafat, chairman of the PLO, quickly stepped in to fill it. During the last week of October the leaders of the Arab states met in Rabat, Morocco. They announced that only the PLO—not Jordan—could negotiate with Israel on the future of the West Bank. Jordan's King Hussein, faced with virtual unanimity in favor of the measure, capitulated and joined in the consensus, thus ending, for all intents and purposes, any hopes of an immediate Jordanian-Israeli compact.²⁵

Rather than abandoning the Middle East until after the congressional elections, Ford and Kissinger decided to turn their attention to the

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negotiations then under way between Egypt and Israel, but significant stumbling blocks stood in the way of a new Egyptian-Israeli accord—a Sinai II. Egypt wanted Israel to withdraw beyond the Mitla and Gidda passes and to give up their control over the Abu Rudeis and Ras Sudr oil fields. Israel's demands were more global. Not only did they refuse to give up the passes and the oil fields, but they also demanded that Egypt renounce its state of belligerency and required that any such agreement be of long duration. At the end of the second round of meetings, Kissinger proclaimed that he would go to the Middle East and that Israel would have to drop its demand for nonbelligerency.

In early February Kissinger began another round of shuttle diplomacy. He reported to Ford that Sadat was trying to be flexible but that the Israelis were intransigent. Sadat told Kissinger that he would agree to announce that the struggle between the two nations would not be solved by military means, that anti-Israeli propaganda would be stopped, and that the economic boycott would be relaxed. The Israelis, however, continued to demand an agreement of nonbelligerency, and they refused to consider abandoning either the passes or the oil fields until their demands were met. By March Kissinger had persuaded the two sides to subscribe in principle to a new agreement—Israeli forces would pull back about thirty-five miles from the eastern bank of the Suez Canal and the new dividing line between the two enemies would be in the vicinity of the strategic mountain passes of Gidi and Mitla in the Sinai desert. The Israelis would return the oil fields at Abu Rudeis on the Gulf of Suez, and the Egyptians would be able to use a road that linked those fields to the rest of the country. Yet even after the agreement had been met in principle, the Israelis continued to be intransigent, and there were signals suggesting that Rabin and his cabinet would reject the proposals crafted by his own negotiators. The stakes were high—a Sinai II Accord could be the means to snap the Ford administration out of its doldrums. Ford decided to up the ante.

On March 21, when Kissinger arrived in Tel Aviv, he learned that a letter from Ford had that day reached the prime minister. In it the president observed that "Kissinger has notified me of the upcoming suspension of his mission," and he stated his "profound disappointment over Israel's attitude in the course of the negotiations. . . . I have given instructions for a reassessment of United States policy in the region, including our relations with Israel." Such blunt language was virtually unheard of in diplomatic correspondence. And it backfired. Instead of caving in to Ford's threat, the Israelis stiffened their resolve. Reacting in kind, Sadat rejected all Israeli demands and refused to make a public statement of nonbelligerency.

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"REASSESSMENT"

For Kissinger, the disintegration of the Sinai II talks was a bitter blow. On March 23, he gave a tearful farewell at Ben-Gurion Airport and returned to Washington the next day. On his way home, seething with anger, he called Rabin a "small man," and back in Washington, he criticized the "lunacy" of Rabin's cabinet. Ford was even angrier; a golden opportunity had been lost, and he held Rabin personally responsible. Ford met with congressional leaders on March 23 to discuss the situation in the Middle East. When he emerged from the meeting, a grave Mike Mansfield told reporters that the administration was going to "reassess" its policies in the Middle East; Ford ordered Nessen to tell reporters that this observation was "correct."26

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to meet with Solzhenitsyn for "cosmetic" reasons.³³ He turned down this second offer but issued to Solzhenitsyn an open invitation to visit the White House after the Helsinki summit had been completed. The visit, however, was no longer important—the confrontation had been the issue. Ford remembered that "as soon as I issued the invitation, everyone seemed to lose interest in arranging the meeting. Helms never pushed it again, and Solzhenitsyn himself was reported to be too busy to come to Washington."³⁴

As he struggled with the Solzhenitsyn affair, Ford prepared for his second and final meeting with Brezhnev. Seeking economic ties to the West and military security in their Eastern European satellites, the Soviets had been pushing for a conference to discuss the boundaries of Eastern Europe for over a decade. Recognizing that a significant part of the Soviet agenda was achieving formal acceptance of their occupation of the Eastern European satellites, the West had balked at such a conference until the early 1970s, when détente made it possible. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) had thus begun in Geneva in spring 1973. The Soviets used the meetings to work toward a European settlement and an economic agreement with the West. Given the political climate surrounding the Jackson-Vanik amendment, however, they were also forced to address the issue of human rights. This element slowed down the process, but by summer 1975 the conference had prepared an agreement, the "Final Act." It called for the peaceful settlement of disputes, greater economic and scientific cooperation, and a freer movement of peoples, ideas, and information among the thirty-three signatories. It also confirmed the post-World War II borders of Eastern Europe as permanent, and it called for the nonintervention of any nation in the internal affairs of another. Although the Final Act contained a provision that allowed for these frontiers to be changed "by peaceful means and by agreement," the Republican Right immediately attacked the agreement as a sellout.

Once again Ford was caught between the Right and détente. Kissinger was adamant that Ford attend the conference. In a briefing paper written for the president, Kissinger argued that "the United States has participated in CSCE with restraint" and that its intentions were lofty: "to maintain Alliance cohesion; to insist that the CSCE's declarations are political, not legal; and to seek such possibilities of easing tension between East and West as might be possible." Most important, Kissinger reported, "The CSCE results are not wholly what the Soviets wanted. The documents are not legally binding. . . . Our rights to Berlin have been preserved. *The Soviets did not get an agreement to a post-CSCE European Security Arrangement designed to undermine NATO.* . . . *Beyond that, the philosophy which permeates most of the*

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"LET'S LOOK FEROCIOUS"

CSCE's declarations is that of the West's open societies."³⁵ The Republican Right, once again invoking images of Yalta, argued that the Final Act sold the peoples of Eastern Europe into a permanently servile status. Scoop Jackson publicly called upon the president not to go to Helsinki, and various ethnic groups promised that they would not support Ford in the upcoming election should he attend. Ford, however, believed that the potential gains from the trip outweighed the drawbacks. It offered him the opportunity to meet with Brezhnev again, to defuse the Backfire controversy, and to get a SALT II treaty that the Congress would accept. It did not happen.

Ford met twice with Brezhnev on July 30; both times it was clear that the early amicability between the two leaders had vanished. The events of the past eight months had left a bitterness in Brezhnev that was exacerbated by his failing health. A heated argument between Ford and Brezhnev began over American interference in the Middle East and then shifted to the issue of the Backfire. Ford based his new objections on new intelligence reports about the bomber's capabilities; Brezhnev snapped, "Our figures are right. We know what the plane can do. Your figures are wrong." A second meeting, immediately following the conclusion of the conference, also yielded little.³⁶ The exchange ended any hope of getting a SALT II treaty before the American presidential election.

Ford's speech to the closing meeting of the assembly on 1 August 1975 confirmed the severity of the differences between the two superpowers. Trying to send both Brezhnev and the Republican Right a message, Ford spoke slowly and with conviction:

> To my country, these principles are not clichés or empty phrases. We take this work and these words very seriously. We will spare no effort to ease tensions and to solve problems between us, but it is important that you realize the deep devotion of the American people and their government to human rights and fundamental freedoms and thus to the pledges that this conference has made regarding the freer movement of people, ideas, and information.

The Right immediately skewered the Helsinki Accord as a sellout to the Soviets. Reagan announced that he was "against it, and I think all Americans should be against it."³⁷ To make matters worse, Ford had gained nothing from his support of the accord: SALT II was lost, and Brezhnev had become intractable. Détente was dead, and from Ford's point of view it had died in vain.

Badly needing a foreign relations victory before the upcoming election, the administration began to evaluate its Middle East reassessment.

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Lasting only three bitter months, Ford's policy changes had been an angry response to what the administration perceived as Israeli intransigence in the Middle East peace process. Negotiations on Israel's request for F-15 fighter planes were suspended, a shipment of missiles was indefinitely delayed, and scheduled visits by Israeli diplomats were canceled. In fact, Ford was so angry at the scuttling of Sinai II that he wanted to ensure that Rabin understood his reaction personally. On 27 March 1975 Ford met with Max Fisher, a Detroit businessman and chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel who had served as an adviser to Nixon on Jewish matters and was a good friend of Ford's. Fisher's biographer reports that Ford told Fisher that he held the Israelis responsible for the breakdown of the talks, and, quoting Ford, that "Rabin andalon misled us into thinking they would make the deal. I never would've sent [Kissinger] if I didn't think we had an agreement. The Israelis took advantage of us." Fisher agreed to go to Israel to assess the situation. When he arrived, Meir told him that the rift was not the fault of the Israelis but a result of Kissinger's leaks to the press. Rabin told Fisher that he too was upset about Ford's impression that the Israelis has deliberately misled him.³⁸

Ford's demand for a reassessment had long since turned into a strategic blunder. Just as they had done when faced with Ford's threatening note of 21 March 1975, the Israelis again refused to budge. Moreover, they had been joined by the American Jewish Community, who held Ford and Kissinger accountable for deserting an ally. Most of the Jewish community's wrath was heaped on Kissinger, and much of it came from the direction of Capitol Hill. The American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) had been buttonholing congressmen, who in the midst of withdrawal from Vietnam and the increasing revelations about Kissinger's role in Watergate-related transgressions were more than happy to see the secretary of state fall from grace. Spurred on by AIPAC, which was particularly vile in its characterizations of Kissinger, seventy-five senators sent Ford a letter in May urging him to be "responsive" to Israel's request for $2.59 billion in aid and to support Israel's demand for "defensible" frontiers. Ford was angered by this latest intrusion of Congress into the diplomatic process: "It really bugged me. The senators claimed the letter was 'spontaneous,' but there was no doubt in my mind that it was inspired by Israel."³⁹

Facing the worst barrage of criticism in his public career, Kissinger was forced to back down. He told Ford he was concerned that Sadat would give up on the process and be driven into the arms of a more radical Middle Eastern leader, such as Muammar Qaddafi.⁴⁰ In April Kissinger met with a bipartisan foreign policy group, including George

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"LET'S LOOK FEROCIOUS"

Ball, McGeorge Bundy, Cyrus Vance, William Scranton, and George Shultz; they recommended an end to the step-by-step process and a return to the more comprehensive idea of a Geneva Conference that would include both the Palestinians and the Soviets. Yet Ford was still angry. Early in May he announced that he would go to the Middle East to meet with Sadat; then he would meet with Rabin.

After a stopover at the NATO summit, Ford held three meetings with Sadat in Salzburg on June 1. The Egyptian president struck Ford as a reasonable man who was angry over his treatment by the Soviets and open to a rapprochement with the United States. Sadat suggested that the way to Sinai II might be through a proposal for the creation of a Sinai buffer zone around the Gidi and Mitla passes, monitored by U.S. civilians. The next week, during a visit to Washington, Ford and Kissinger suggested the idea of the buffer zone to Rabin without telling the prime minister that it was Sadat's idea. Rabin expressed interest, and when his cabinet agreed that it was an acceptable place to begin, Kissinger began a round of shuttle negotiations.

Yet Israel's resistance to American interference had not abated. When he arrived in Israel, Kissinger's hotel was surrounded by mobs shouting "Jew boy! Jew boy, go home!"—an epithet Nixon had used on the Watergate tapes to describe Kissinger.⁴¹ In private negotiations, Rabin upped the ante, pressing the United States for more arms than the $1.5 billion that Ford had previously promised to provide. Desperately needing a foreign policy victory, Ford agreed.

In separate ceremonies on September 4, Egypt and Israel signed the second Sinai Accord. Israel conceded two strategic Sinai passes and returned the Abu Rudeis oil fields, and Egypt granted nonmilitary Israeli cargo passage through the reopened Suez Canal. The buffer zone between the two armies, policed by some 150 civilians, was proclaimed. Both sides agreed not to resort to military action. In a secret side agreement with Israel, Ford promised not to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as long as it refused to accept Israel's right to exist and also guaranteed weapons supplies for Israel as well as oil, if necessary.⁴² Even so, Israel refused to ratify the agreement formally until the U.S. Congress had acted. In exasperation, Ford told a meeting of the bipartisan congressional leadership: "They are not the easiest people to deal with."⁴³

155

ing campaign, based on positioning Ford as presidential. Several of Ford's younger advisers, including White House photographer David Hume Kennerly and speechwriter Don Penny, argued that a change was necessary. They persuaded Ford to fire Dailey and to turn to James Jordan, head of Batten, Barton, Dursten and Osborne, Inc, (BBD&O) in New York. Jordan produced campaign commercials that came to be known as "slice of life ads," in which he used professional actors to play Ford supporters who talked about issues such as high prices. According to Kennerly, "It was an attempt to try to shake loose a kind of a constipated organization and make them do something."³⁵ The ads were terrible; the actors looked stilted and phony as they read their lines. The commercials were soon canceled, Dailey was restored to the campaign, and Penny and Kennerly were temporarily personae non grata among the campaign staff.³⁶

Jordan's advertisements certainly did not help the situation in California, but the campaign was lost there already. Despite a ferocious attack from Spencer, who zeroed in on a statement Reagan made in an Ohio debate that he would commit U.S. troops to Rhodesia if the African nation asked for them ("When you vote Tuesday, remember: Governor Ronald Reagan couldn't start a war. President Ronald Reagan could"), Ford made little headway. Reagan won California as expected, but Ford won New Jersey and Ohio. The situation was tenuous, and the nomination could now go either way. It is in this light that many observers have interpreted the last foreign policy crisis of the Ford administration; indeed, many question whether the evacuation from Lebanon was even a true crisis.

By 1975 the Palestinian population in Lebanon—enlarged by the refugees flowing in after Israel's conquest of the West Bank in the 1967 Six Day War and from the 1970 Jordanian Civil War—numbered around 350,000. They could easily be considered an army in exile, fronted by the Palestine Liberation Organization and increasingly in control of the city of Beirut. The Palestinians had begun retributive raids into Israel by 1970, and the Israelis had responded in kind. The Lebanese could not control the Palestinian presence, nor could they play a meditative role in the conflict between the PLO and the Israelis. Lebanese Muslims tended to support the Palestinians, seeing them as part of a pan-Arab cause against the Israelis. Opposing the Muslim and Palestinian guerrillas were the Christian Maronites who made up the Phalange, a group who balked at the Palestinian presence in their homeland, arguing that the Palestinians had strangled democracy in their country. The Phalange

168

"I DIDN'T TAKE REAGAN SERIOUSLY"

had allied themselves with the Israelis. The scene was perfectly set for slaughter.

It began on 13 April 1975, when the Phalange stopped a bus loaded with twenty-seven Palestinians and killed everyone on board. What would become known as the Lebanese Civil War had begun, and it quickly threatened to take on an international dimension. Supporting the Phalange, Israel began air raids on Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon; backing the PLO, the Syrians supported raids into Israel. The attacks soon turned into a bloodbath. In December 1975, on a day that Lebanese remember as Black Saturday, four Christians were found shot to death in East Beirut. Reports suggest that a Christian leader, Bashir Gemayel, gave orders to kill forty Muslims in retaliation. Christian road-blocks were set up, and as Muslims stopped to pay their tolls, they were taken from their cars and hacked to death by hooded men with knives.

Ford hoped that the United States would be able to remain neutral in the crisis until after the election. But by early January the Christians had made advances and the PLO had entered the war in earnest. West Beirut, which the PLO controlled, was a city in chaos, and Palestinians were beginning to fire upon other Palestinians. In early June, ostensibly to stabilize the situation, the Syrians entered Lebanon in force to save the Christian Maronites, but their presence did little to help, and much to increase, the mobocracy in Beirut. On June 16 U.S. Ambassador Francis E. Melloy, his economic aide, Robert O. Waring, and their driver disappeared in Beirut. They were found dead—without their shoes or socks—on a beach near Beirut. Immediately, attention shifted to the fourteen hundred Americans living in Lebanon. With a speed unprecedented among Ford's advisers, the decision was made to evacuate the U.S. nationals by sea.

Whether the Americans in Lebanon were in any real danger remains a question. Indeed, despite the deaths of Melloy and Waring, many of those directly affected by the crisis said that their lives were never threatened and that they wanted to stay—only 116 Americans and 147 third-country nationals chose to be evacuated. Nevertheless, the administration soon shifted into crisis mode. Unlike during the Mayaguez crisis, when Nessen kept the press at bay, the evacuation of Lebanon was deliberately made into a media event. On June 20 television crews were invited to film an embassy official as he opened a garage door; inside were two American Marines, bearing, as the official told the camera, the bodies of Melloy and his aides. In the background, an unidentified aide yelled, "Come on. Let's not waste time. Let's go."³⁷ Later that day a navy landing craft evacuated the 263 Americans and Europeans from Lebanon. The only shots heard were those from PLO guards who

169

fired into the air to keep journalists away. Indeed, the Palestinians, perhaps hoping to ingratiate themselves to the United States, helped the Americans leave.³⁸

The timing of the evacuation was missed by no one. Reagan was quick to charge Ford with manufacturing a crisis for his own political gain, but Reagan was not the only critic. The British embassy privately made it clear that it deplored Ford's actions and attributed them to being part of his election campaign.³⁹ If favorable publicity was Ford's goal for the evacuation, however, no independent source has come forth to confirm that motive. At any rate, the long-range impact of the crisis was negligible. The primary election campaign had shifted into its final phase—one that Ford would control.

As the primaries came to a close and state conventions began their work to choose the remaining delegates, Ford was 170 votes short of the nomination and Reagan 270 short. Convinced that Reagan would be no more than a minor irritant, the Ford campaign had done a terrible job of laying the groundwork for a blitz on the state conventions. Yet it was the sort of campaigning—barnstorming from convention to convention, speaking with individual delegates rather than making public speeches in front of huge crowds—that Ford did best. As minority leader and as vice president, Ford had run this type of campaign for two decades as he crisscrossed the country campaigning for congressional candidates. For this election Ford combined his love of close-range campaigning with a skillful use of the incumbency. Delegates were invited to the White House, patronage jobs were dangled everywhere, and Ford offered every state convention a marquee speaker: the president of the United States. This blitz kept Reagan from taking control of the process. By the end of the last state convention, Ford had closed the gap and was reported as having 1,102 first-ballot delegates—28 shy of the nomination. Reagan had 1,063, short 67 votes, and 94 delegates were still reported as uncommitted.

John Sears later reminiscned about those final weeks of the campaign: "The incumbent could offer them anything. And he could do it. So we were in a position where if we just stayed and did nothing, we were gonna be beaten."⁴⁰ Sears took a gamble unprecedented in American political history and persuaded Reagan to announce his running mate before the convention had even assembled in Kansas City. Despite Reagan's having gone on record with his statement, "I do not believe you choose someone of an opposite philosophy in hopes he'll get you some votes you can't get for yourself," that was precisely the strategy

170

Sears had come to believe was Reagan's last chance for victory.⁴¹ Sears had been beating the bushes for a liberal Republican who would consent to run with Reagan and, without securing Reagan's approval for the venture, had sounded out Richard Schweicker. The Pennsylvania senator would certainly appeal to liberal Republicans. He had been given an 89 percent approval rating from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action and was the only senator to receive a 100 percent rating from the AFL-CIO's Committee on Public Education (COPE); conversely, the Americans for Conservative Action gave him a rating of 8 percent.⁴² Schweicker would later say that his decision to join Reagan "was not so much based on differences of philosophy, but more out of belief that Ford could not win" and that he thought "it was necessary for the future of the Republican party to unite the Eastern and the Western wings."⁴³ For his part, Reagan was primarily interested in capturing the huge Pennsylvania delegation. Thus, on July 26 Reagan announced one of the oddest political combinations in recent history: he would pair himself with "a man of independent thought and action" who "has not become a captive of what I call 'the Washington buddy system.'"⁴⁴

The announcement elicited a combination of incredulity and derision. Conveniently forgetting their criticism of Ford at the time of the Rockefeller withdrawal, many conservatives charged Reagan with selling out. But even more important, Schweicker could not swing Pennsylvania to Reagan. Congressman John Heinz of Pennsylvania, a Ford supporter, told Jack Marsh not to worry too much about Schweicker "because he is not too much 'on the in' with the hard core, regular Republicans in Pennsylvania."⁴⁵ Heinz's assessment certainly turned out to be true: six previously uncommitted Pennsylvania delegates immediately declared for Ford, and the Pennsylvania delegation eventually gave Ford 93 of its 103 votes. Reagan found he had cast aside much of his conservative base and gained nothing in return. Ford thus entered the Kansas City convention with enough delegates to win on the first ballot.

Sears had one last trick up his sleeve. Speaking before the rules committee on Monday, August 9, he proposed that the party require that every nominee disclose his running mate before the convention began. Sears tried to position the amendment, Rule 16C, as a grand reform, but it was pure politics; Ford supporters called it the "misery loves company" amendment. Ford was in control of the rules committee, and Sears's Rule 16C was defeated as expected. As Sears prepared to challenge the committee's ruling on the convention floor, however, his proposal almost caught on. In the forty-eight hours before the convention formally opened, Ford's short list for vice president had leaked

171

NOTES TO PAGES 114-22

35. Horan to Davis, 2 Apr. 1975, Ford PP, WHCF-Subject Files, EX SP 2-3-36 (1).

36. Prados, *President's Secret Wars*, pp. 340-41, and Jeffrey T. Richelson, *The U.S. Intelligence Community* (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1985), p. 234.

37. Wayne S. Smith, "A Trap in Angola," *Foreign Policy* (Spring 1986): 72.

38. Prados, *President's Secret Wars*, p. 345.

39. Ibid., pp. 338-46; Robert S. Litwak, *Detente and the Nixon Doctrine: American Foreign Policy and the Pursuit of Stability, 1969-1976* (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 175-90.

40. Gerald Ford, "United States Foreign Intelligence Activities," Executive Order 11905, *Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents 12* (1976): pp. 234-43. An excellent summary of this Omnibus Order can be found in the papers of Michael Raoul-Duval in the overhead transparencies that he produced to explain the act to various constituencies (Raoul-Duval Papers, Intelligence Coordinating Group Files, AV 84-207B).

## CHAPTER EIGHT. "REASSESSMENT"

1. Roderic H. Davison, *Turkey* (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968), pp. 34, 62-63, 88-89, 151-53, 159-63; George Lenczowski, *American Presidents and the Middle East* (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990), pp. 142-43; Roger Morris, *Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy* (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), pp. 271-76; Robert D. Schulzinger, *Henry Kissinger: Doctor of Diplomacy* (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), pp. 175-76; Tad Szulc, *Then and Now: How the World Has Changed since World War II* (New York: William Morrow, 1990), p. 366.

2. Leo Cherne, comments in *The Ford Presidency: Twenty-two Intimate Perspectives of Gerald R. Ford*, ed. Kenneth Thompson (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1988), p. 53.

3. Joseph Sisco, comments in ibid., p. 328.

4. Partial copy of Kissinger testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 19 Sept. 1974, Ford PP, Wolthuis Files, box 2, Intelligence Investigations-Chile.

5. Kissinger, *Diplomacy*, p. 181.

6. Sisco, comments in John Prados, *Keepers of the Keys: A History of the National Security Council from Truman to Bush* (New York: William Morrow, 1991), p. 354.

7. Walter Isaacson, *Henry Kissinger: A Biography* (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), p. 605.

8. Melvin Laird, "Is This Detente?" *Reader's Digest*, July 1975, p. 57.

9. Tad Szulc, "Pentagon Cool," *Washingtonian Magazine*, (Oct. 1974), p. 3.

10. Schulzinger, *Diplomacy*, p. 216.

11. Howard M. Sachar, *A History of the Jews in America* (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), p. 911.

210

NOTES TO PAGES 122-39

12. Isaacson, *Kissinger: Biography*, p. 614.

13. Gerald R. Ford, *A Time to Heal; The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford* (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), p. 138-39; Isaacson, *Kissinger: Biography*, p. 616.

14. "Principles of Agreement on Proposed Waiver of Jackson-Vanik Amendment," 17 Oct. 1974; Kissinger to Jackson, 18 Oct. 1974; Jackson to Kissinger, 18 Oct. 1974, Ford PP, Brent Scowcroft Name File, box 2, Jackson folder.

15. Ford, *A Time to Heal*, p. 139.

16. Harry Gelman, *The Brezhnev Politburo and the Decline of Detente* (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984), p. 148.

17. John Newhouse, *War and Peace in the Nuclear Age* (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), p. 247, and Sachar, *Jews in America*, p. 919.

18. Ford, *A Time to Heal*, p. 214.

19. Newhouse, *War and Peace in the Nuclear Age*, p. 248.

20. Taken from meeting agenda (prepared by Scowcroft), 27 Nov. 1974, Ford PP, WHCF, box 32, folder FO 6-2 Executive.

21. Gerald R. Ford, interview with author, 1 Sept. 1988.

22. William B. Quandt, *Decade of Decisions: American Policy toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1967-1976* (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), p. 258.

23. Isaacson, *Kissinger: Biography*, p. 631.

24. Ford, *A Time to Heal*, p. 183.

25. Quandt, *Decade of Decisions*, p. 257.

26. Ford, *A Time to Heal*, p. 247.

## CHAPTER NINE. "THE RUNNING"

1. John Robert Greene, *The Limits of Power: The Nixon and Ford Administrations* (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1992), p. 103.

2. George C. Herring, *America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975, 2d ed.* (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), p. 261.

3. Ford interview with Jerrold L. Schecter, 10 Feb. 1986, GFL, pp. 4-5. Letter quoted in its entirety in Nguyen Tien Hung and Jerrold Schecter, *The Palace File* (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), p. 240.

4. Hung and Schecter, *Palace File*, p. 241-42.

5. Thieu to Ford, 19 Sept. 1974, Ford PP, WHCF Executive, folder CO 165-2.

6. Springsteen to Scowcroft, 11 Oct. 1975, Ford PP, WHCF Executive, folder CO 165-2 [declassified]; Ford to Thieu, 24 Oct. 1974, Ford PP, WHCF Executive, folder CO 165-2.

7. Memcon, 13 Sept. 1974, Martin, Kissinger, Scowcroft, Ford, Kissinger-Scowcroft Files, Temporary Parallel File, box A1, dated folder [declassified].

8. Arnold R. Issacs, *Without Honor: Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia* (New York: Vintage Books, 1982), chapter 8, *passim*, and William Shawcross, *Side-show: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia* (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), pp. 344-48, 355.

9. NYT, 29 Jan. 1975, p. 1; Ash to Ford, 14 Jan. 1975, Presidential Hand-

211

NOTES TO PAGES 135-41

writing File, GFL, box 22, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Aid-South Vietnam folder [declassified].

10. Martin to Von Marbod, 17 Jan. 1975, NSC Convenience Files, GFL, box 6.

11. Kendall to Friedersdorf, 12 Mar. 1975, Ford PP, Friedersdorf Files, box 13, Indochina-January-March 1975 folder.

12. CODEL meeting with President Thieu, meeting transcript, 27 Feb. 1975; telegrams from American embassy, Saigon, 3 Mar. 1975, Ford PP, Wolthuis Files, box 5, Vietnam visit folder. Anecdotes on the visit of the delegation can be found in Hung and Schecter, *Palace File*, pp. 252-62.

13. Kim Willenson, ed. *The Bad War: An Oral History of the Vietnam War* (New York: New American Library, 1987), p. 316.

14. Hung and Schecter, *Palace File*, pp. 286-87.

15. Weyland to Ford, 4 Apr. 1975, Ford PP, WHCF Executive, box 59, folder CO-165-2; "Report to the President of the United States on the Situation in South Vietnam," Ford PP, Scowcroft Parallel File, box 1, Country File-Far East (Vietnam) folder [declassified]. Full report is in NSC Convenience Files, GFL, box 7, folder 012700173.

16. David Hume Kennerly, *Shooter* (New York: Newsweek Books, 1979), p. 174, and Gerald R. Ford, *A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford* (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), p. 253.

17. Hung and Schecter, *Palace File*, p. 310.

18. Scowcroft meeting notes, 14 Apr. 1975, Kissinger-Scowcroft Files, Temporary Parallel File, GFL, box A1, memcons, dated folder [declassified].

19. John Prados, *Keepers of the Keys: A History of the National Security Council from Truman to Bush* (New York: William Morrow), p. 366.

20. Telegram, American embassy Phnom Penh to secretary of state, 6 Apr. 1975, WHCF, Subject Files, GFL, EX FO 3-2, 1 Apr. 1975-10 Apr. 1975 folder [declassified].

21. Walter Isaacson, *Kissinger: A Biography* (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), p. 639.

22. Nessen handwritten notes, 16 Apr. 1975, Nessen Papers, box 294, dated folder.

23. Willenson, ed., *Bad War*, pp. 309-10.

24. Ibid., p. 311.

25. Robert D. Schulzinger, *Henry Kissinger: Doctor of Diplomacy* (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), p. 201.

26. Milton Friedman, interview with author, 22 July 1988.

27. Robert Hartmann, *Palace Politics: An Insider's Account of the Ford Years* (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980), p. 323.

28. Nessen handwritten notes, 28 Apr. 1975, Nessen Papers, box 294, dated folder.

29. Editor's notes, in Willenson, ed., *Bad War*, p. 321.

30. Prados, *Keepers of the Keys*, p. 367.

31. Nessen handwritten notes, 29 Apr. 1975, Nessen Papers, box 294, dated folder.

212

NOTES TO PAGES 141-48

32. Isaacson, *Kissinger: Biography*, p. 647.

33. Ron Nessen, *It Sure Looks Different from the Inside* (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1978), p. 112.

34. Ibid., p. 109.

## CHAPTER TEN. "LET'S LOOK FEROCIOUS"

1. McCloskey to Brooke, 20 June 1975, Ford PP, Buchen Files, Subject, box 25, Mayaguez general folder.

2. Richard G. Head, F. W. Short, and R. C. McFarlane, *Crisis Resolution: Presidential Decision Making in the Mayaguez and Korean Confrontations* (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1978), p. 103.

3. James Nathan, "The Mayaguez, Presidential War, and Congressional Escencement," *Intellect* (Feb. 1976): 361.

4. Christopher Jon Lamb, *Belief Systems and Decision Making in the Mayaguez Crisis* (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1988), pp. 9, 81.

5. Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, *Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers* (New York: Free Press, 1986), p. 60.

6. Gerald R. Ford, *A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford* (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), p. 276.

7. Head, Short, and McFarlane, *Crisis Resolution*, pp. 109-12.

8. David Hume Kennerly, telephone interview with author, 14 Sept. 1988.

9. "Possible Scenarios for Recovery of Ship and Crew" [top secret, undated], Ford PP, Buchen Files, Subject, box 25, Mayaguez general folder.

10. Head, Short, and McFarlane, *Crisis Resolution*, p. 113.

11. Memcon, telephone conversation, Scowcroft and Ford, 2:23 a.m., 13 May 1975, Ford PP, Scowcroft Parallel File, box 1, Office Files, Cambodia folder [declassified].

12. Ford, *A Time to Heal*, p. 277.

13. Marsh to Buchen ["Summary of the NSC Meeting"], 13 May 1975, Ford PP, Buchen Files, box 25, Mayaguez general folder [declassified].

14. Memcon, telephone conversation, Scowcroft and Ford, 8:10 p.m., 13 May 1975, Ford PP, Scowcroft Parallel File, box 1, Office Files, Cambodia folder [declassified].

15. Memcon, telephone conversation, Scowcroft and Wickham, 8:15 p.m., 13 May 1975, Ford PP, Scowcroft Parallel File, box 1, Office Files, Cambodia folder [declassified].

16. Memcon, telephone conversation, Scowcroft and Wickham, 9:48 p.m., 13 May 1975, Ford PP, Scowcroft Parallel File, box 1, Office Files, Cambodia folder [declassified].

17. Memcon, telephone conversation, Scowcroft and Ford, 9:50 p.m., 13 May 1975; Scowcroft to Wickham, 9:54 p.m., 13 May 1975, Ford PP, Scowcroft Parallel File, box 1, Office Files, Cambodia folder [declassified].

18. Head, Short, and McFarlane, *Crisis Resolution*, pp. 116-18.

213

NOTES TO PAGES 148-55

19. Ibid., p. 131; Walter Isaacson, *Henry Kissinger: A Biography* (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), p. 650; Lamb, *Belief Systems*, p. 91.

20. Scowcroft notes of meeting with bipartisan congressional delegation, 14 May 1975, Ford PP, Scowcroft Parallel File, box 1, presidential memoranda, conversations folder [declassified].

21. Capt. Thomas D. DesBrisbay, "Fourteen Hours on Koh Tang" (USAF Southeast Asia Monograph Ser. 3, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), p. 116; Head, Short, and McFarlane, *Crisis Resolution*, p. 132-33; Lamb, *Belief Systems*, pp. 21-31.

22. Lamb, *Belief Systems*, p. 93.

23. Ford, *A Time to Heal*, pp. 282, 284.

24. Lamb, *Belief Systems*, p. 98.

25. Ibid., p. 87.

26. Ron Nessen, *It Sure Looks Different from the Inside* (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1978), p. 129.

27. Ford, *A Time to Heal*, p. 284.

28. Friedersdorf to Ford, 16 May 1975, Ford PP, Buchen Files, Subject, box 25, *Mayaguez* general folder.

29. Meany to Ford, 18 June 1975, Scowcroft Files, Name File, box 3, Solzhenitsyn folder.

30. Helms and Thurmond to Ford, 23 June 1975, Scowcroft Files, Name File, box 3, Solzhenitsyn folder.

31. Marsh to Scowcroft, 23 June 1975, Scowcroft Files, Name File, box 3, Solzhenitsyn folder; Clift to Kissinger, 26 June 1975, Scowcroft Files, Name File, box 3, name folder. Kissinger schedule proposal for Ford, undated, Scowcroft Files, Name File, box 3, Solzhenitsyn folder.

32. Isaacson, *Kissinger: Biography*, p. 658.

33. Nessen handwritten notes, 2 July 1975, Nessen Papers, box 295, dated folder.

34. Ford, *A Time to Heal*, p. 298.

35. Kissinger to Ford, briefing paper, Ford PP, Scowcroft Parallel File, box 1, presidential and Kissinger trips, Helsinki folder [declassified] (emphasis Kissinger's).

36. Ford, *A Time to Heal*, p. 303-4, and John Newhouse, *War and Peace in the Nuclear Age* (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), p. 257.

37. Ford, *A Time to Heal*, p. 300.

38. Peter Golden, "Max Fisher, Diplomat," *Detroit Free Press Magazine*, 3 May 1992, pp. 12, 21.

39. Ford, *A Time to Heal*, p. 287.

40. Ibid., p. 247.

41. Isaacson, *Kissinger: Biography*, p. 635.

42. Ford, *A Time to Heal*, pp. 308-9; George Lenczowski, *American Presidents and the Middle East* (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990), pp. 151-52; William B. Quandt, *Decade of Decisions: American Policy toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1967-1976* (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), p. 275; Janet

214

NOTES TO PAGES 155-63

and John Wallach, *Arafat: In the Eyes of the Beholder* (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990), p. 348.

43. Meeting notes, 25 Sept. 1975, Ford PP, Wolthuis Files, box 2, dated folder.

## CHAPTER ELEVEN. "I DIDN'T TAKE REAGAN SERIOUSLY"

1. Lou Cannon, *Reagan* (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1982), p. 199.

2. Garry Wills, *Innocents at Home: Reagan's America* (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1987), pp. 328-29.

3. Gerald R. Ford, *A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford* (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), p. 294.

4. *NYT*, 20 June 1975.

5. "Fred" to Jerry Jones, 20 June 1975, Ford PP, Jones Files, box 23, PFC folder no. 1.

6. Jones to Rumsfeld, 29 July 1975, Ford PP, Jones Files, box 23, PFC folder no. 1.

7. Callaway to Ford, "Weekly Report Number One," 15 July 1975, Ford PP, Cheney Files, box 14, dated folders.

8. Donald Rumsfeld, interview with author, 7 April 1989.

9. Gerald R. Ford, interview with author, 1 Sept. 1988.

10. Robert Hartmann, *Palace Politics: An Insider's Account of the Ford Years* (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980), p. 303.

11. David Hume Kennerly, telephone interview with author, 14 Sept. 1988.

12. See, for one example, Rockefeller interview, 15 April 1976, WHO-TV, Des Moines, Iowa, RAC, video no. 91.

13. Armbrister interview with Rockefeller, 21 Oct. 1977, Cannon Papers, box 35.

14. Robert D. Schulzinger, *Henry Kissinger: Doctor of Diplomacy* (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), p. 219.

15. Gary Paul Gates and Bob Schieffer, *The Acting President* (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1989), p. 59.

16. Transcript, "Meet the Press," 7 Dec. 1975, in Nessen Papers, Campaign Subject File, box 32, Callaway folder.

17. Ford, *A Time to Heal*, p. 333.

18. David Chagall, *The New Kingmakers* (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), p. 76.

19. Elizabeth Drew, *American Journal: The Events of 1976* (New York: Random House, 1976), p. 46.

20. Ronald Reagan, *An American Life: The Autobiography* (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), p. 201; David W. Moore, *The Super Pollsters: How They Measure and Manipulate Public Opinion in America* (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1992), pp. 197-200.

215

NOTES TO PAGES 164-71

21. Wayne Valis memo for the file, 10 Mar. 1976, Nessen Papers, Campaign Subject File, box 32, Campaign—general folder.

22. Cannon, *Reagan*, p. 213.

23. Chagall, *New Kingmakers*, p. 85.

24. Schulzinger, *Henry Kissinger: Diplomacy*, p. 226.

25. Ford to secretaries of state and defense (NSDM 302), 18 Aug. 1975, Ford PP, staff secretary: White House Special Files Unit, box 6, Panama Canal Treaty Negotiations, 1975 folder [declassified].

26. Roger S. Leeds, "The Panama Canal Treaty: Past and Present United States Interests," *Foreign Service Journal* 53 (March 1976): 6; news release, Department of State, Jan. 1975.

27. Paul B. Ryan, *The Panama Canal Controversy: U.S. Diplomacy and Defense Interests* (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1977), p. 123.

28. Transcript in Nessen Papers, Campaign Subject File, box 39, Reagan address folder.

29. Schulzinger, *Henry Kissinger: Diplomacy*, p. 228.

30. See *Ann Arbor News*, 5 May 1976, p. 49, and comments of Ron Nessen in *The Ford Presidency: Twenty-two Intimate Perspectives of Gerald R. Ford, ed.* Kenneth W. Thompson (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1988), p. 188.

31. Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad, *Saturday Night* (New York: Vintage Books, 1987), p. 188.

32. Gerald R. Ford, *Humor and the Presidency* (New York: Arbor House, 1987), pp. 47-48, and confidential interview with author.

33. Ford, *A Time to Heal*, p. 387.

34. Ibid., p. 382.

35. David Hume Kennerly, telephone interview with author, 14 Sept. 1988.

36. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, *Packaging the Presidency: A History and Criticism of Presidential Campaign Advertising* (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 337-38, and Ron Nessen, *It Sure Looks Different from the Inside* (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1978), pp. 212-14.

37. Robert Fisk, *Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon* (New York: Atheneum Press, 1990), p. 84.

38. Fisk, *Pity the Nation*, p. 84; John Prados, *Keepers of the Keys: A History of the National Security Council from Truman to Bush* (New York: William Morrow, 1991), p. 373; Janet and John Wallach, *Arafat: In the Eyes of the Beholder* (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990), p. 349.

39. Fisk, *Pity the Nation*, p. 84.

40. John Sears, telephone interview with author, 19 July 1988.

41. *Los Angeles Times*, 12 May 1976.

42. "Inside Congress," clipping in Nessen Papers, box 40, Schweicker folder.

43. Reichley interview with Richard Schweicker, Reichley Papers, box 2.

44. Jules Witcover, *Marathon: The Pursuit of the Presidency, 1972-1976* (New York: Viking Press, 1977), p. 462.

45. Marsh to Ford, 26 July 1976, Ford PP, Friedersdorf Files, box 3, campaign, May-July 1976 folder.

216

NOTES TO PAGES 172-78

46. Garry Wills, *Lead Time: A Journalist's Education* (New York: Penguin Books, 1983), pp. 203, 208.

47. Ford, *A Time to Heal*, pp. 400-404; David Hume Kennerly, *Shooter* (New York: Newsweek Books, 1979), pp. 215-16; Nessen, *It Sure Looks Different from the Inside*, p. 238.

48. Ford, *A Time to Heal*, p. 404.

49. Armbrister interview with Rockefeller, 21 Oct. 1977, Cannon Papers, box 35.

50. Nessen handwritten notes, 15 Aug. 1976, Nessen Papers, box 297, dated folder.

51. Videotape, Ford acceptance address, White House Communications Agency, GFL, videotape F 658-F 659.

## CHAPTER TWELVE. "THE NO-CAMPAIGN CAMPAIGN"

1. Walter LaFeber, *America, Russia and the Cold War*, 4th ed. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1980), p. 289.

2. Gerald R. Ford, *A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford* (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), p. 378.

3. Elizabeth Drew, *American Journal; The Events of 1976* (New York: Random House, 1976), pp. 90-91.

4. Robert Shogan, *Promises to Keep: Carter's First 100 Days* (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1977), p. 41.

5. Jimmy Carter, *Why Not the Best?* (Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman Press, 1975), p. 103.

6. Michael Raoul-Duval, interview with author, 8 Apr. 1989.

7. David Chagall, *The New Kingmakers* (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), p. 93, and Jules Witcover, *Marathon: The Pursuit of the Presidency, 1972-1976* (New York: Viking Press, 1977), p. 530.

8. Original copy in Ford PP, Dorothy Downton Files, box 1, campaign strategy folder. Quoted in Martin Schram, *Running for President, 1976: The Carter Campaign* (New York: Stein and Day, 1977), pp. 252-68; Ron Nessen, *It Sure Looks Different from the Inside* (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1978), pp. 244-45; and Witcover, *Marathon*, pp. 530-35.

9. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, *Packaging the Presidency: A History and Criticism of Presidential Campaign Advertising* (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 346-47, and Malcolm MacDougall, *We Almost Made It* (New York: Crown Publishers, 1977), pp. 115-19.

10. L. Patrick Devlin interview with Doug Bailey, 7 Jan. 1977, in L. Patrick Devlin Papers, GFL. See also L. Patrick Devlin, "President Ford's Ad Man Reviews the 1976 Media Campaign [Interview with Doug Bailey]," *Indiana Speech Journal* 13 (Apr. 1978): 16.

11. Samuel E. Becker and Elmer W. Lower, "Broadcasting in Political Campaigns," in *The Great Debates: Carter vs. Ford, 1976*, ed. Sidney Kraus

217

JONATHAN RANDAL

THE TRAGEDY OF
LEBANON

Christian Warlords, Israeli Adventurers
and American Bunglers

Revised and Updated Edition

The Hogarth Press
LONDON

170 • The Offhand Americans

demonstrate the error of this septuagenarian's ways to the Maronite leadership before more damage was done. "Early in the war, Malik claimed that Marines would land at his beck and call. As the months dragged on and no Marines came, he would admit, 'Yes, they are late, but they will come.' He caused me a lot of grief. I'd say, 'On the basis of talking to American diplomats and journalists, I conclude the United States will not help us.' But I was young, and he had Sheikh Pierre's ear. He and Chamoun were old confederates from the 1950s. Remember our mentality. Sure, the embassy said no Marines, but we were hoping for another *divine surprise*, another Iraqi revolution—anything, anything at all. Malik kept saying, 'Don't worry, I'll go to the United States, I'll do something on television, and it's public opinion that counts in America.' When we asked him where he got his information, why and how he was so sure all the time, he was evasive or tried to hint the White House was involved, but I think it was mostly just ex cathedra. We wanted to believe that any little nuance in the most mundane State Department statement was favorable to our cause."

During the year before and the year after the fighting began in April 1975, Kissinger by all accounts neither could nor would devote time to Lebanon. As much as anything else, it was his modus operandi that explained the neglect. He liked to act in a given situation when crisis point had been reached, then turn his total attention to it. Until it was too late, for both Lebanon and Kissinger, Lebanon never made it to the top of his list of priorities. For Kissinger the months of early 1975 were taken up by the initially unsuccessful effort to negotiate the Sinai II disengagement agreement. The Lebanese government at first did not oppose Sinai II, but it warned the American embassy "not to forget Lebanon," where, after all, rival Arab powers had long jockeyed for position and made their predilections known in the newspapers they subsidized in Beirut, and where now they were even more noticeable, since they were helping to subsidize their own private armies among the many militias that could be found all over Beirut. Then Indochina collapsed in April. Kissinger's increasing vulnerability over Angola further occupied his time in the fall of 1975. Yet Kissinger's lack of concern for Lebanon was surprising, given his detailed interest in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, the other Arab neighbors of Israel. Small, complicated, bothersome, Lebanon nonetheless bordered on Israel, and for

that if for no other reason might have commanded more interest. Had not Lebanon been ready for years, in the words of that old saw, to be "the second Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel"? To be sure, that meant Lebanon did not want to be the first to do so. Now Egypt, the fairest catch of all, had set out to become the first.

Aside from positing the American mood against involving U.S. forces in shooting wars overseas, the kindest explanation for Kissinger's non-performance was that he was the victim of his own spotlight technique, which concentrated totally on any given problem that happened to be immediately at hand, and relegated everything else to the status of Ultima Thule, with no shading of concern. Despite his miracle-worker reputation, Kissinger could never deal with more than one crisis at a time.

Kissinger indeed forgot Lebanon. Nor did he instruct his ambassadors or listen to their information—even those who should have been directly involved in his projects. In Washington, the diplomatic cables from Beirut rarely got out of Sisco's in-basket. Younger staff members tried to dissuade Godley from cabling so much in the months leading up to the war, prompting Godley to note that he knew Kissinger wasn't reading him, but that others had to know the situation. He was expressing the professional diplomat's standard defense against being ignored back at the State Department. He had done his duty. But his staffers thought that he was, as one put it, "pissing into the wind." By their own accounts, official policymakers in Washington stumbled around without any feel for the unfolding Lebanese drama. In July 1975 the fighting eased off, only to start up seriously again just before Kissinger successfully concluded the resumed Sinai II negotiations on September 1. Perhaps inevitably, the renewed fighting in Lebanon prompted those Arab states opposed to the Sinai agreement to charge that the United States was behind the trouble in Lebanon. Did not the fighting conveniently distract attention from the disengagement deal? A diplomat intimately involved in the negotiations confided later, "I don't think Kissinger was particularly unhappy with the Lebanese trouble, but it was not part of any plan of his."

But in a part of the world where people are given to blaming the outsider—and also expect salvation to come from abroad—the American absence from a scene so long considered to be its own amounted to a plot. My friends sneered at what they considered my feigned inno-

The Offhand Americans • 171

172 • The Offhand Americans

cence when I protested against such interpretations. For them the reason the fighting continued was that the two major foreign players in the 1958 crisis—the United States and Egypt—were now not directly involved.

In any case, as Lebanon skidded toward national suicide over the months, no American plan of any kind emerged. The Vatican clearly saw the dangers, however. In November 1975, the Pope dispatched Paolo Cardinal Bertoli, the first of a series of high-ranking emissaries, to talk moderation to the Maronites. Like the others who followed, his mission was of no avail. He left muttering, "These people are not Christians"—at least, so Beirut gossip had it. On his heels followed former French Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville. General de Gaulle's long-time Foreign Minister, and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's emissary, proved no more successful despite his personal prestige and the prestige France had enjoyed with the Maronites for centuries past.

In spite of daily evidence to the contrary, then, the conventional wisdom maintained that the Lebanese were reasonable folk and would come to their senses and stop. A prominent Lebanese banker friend of mine used to dismiss my catalogue of murder and mayhem, invoke the fact that the Moscow Narodny Bank building was under construction as proof the Russians still had faith, and argue that I should, too. Then, one fall day, construction on the building stopped. Soon thereafter, my friend left for Brazil, following hundreds of thousands of other foreign and Lebanese residents into exile.

Much to the surprise of Lebanese of all persuasions—and to many Palestinians—the United States still did nothing, at least nothing visible to the naked eye. "It was a Greek tragedy waiting for a deus ex machina, and it should have been us," a senior American diplomat said, years later. "But we were stuck in a classic limitation of power. Intervening was the only thing to do, and it would have been costly—a real donnybrook, not a walkover like 1958. Because of Vietnam, we couldn't do anything effective, and the Syrians were blocked from doing anything effective as well."

So confusing was American forbearance in any major crisis that many Middle Easterners became convinced that the CIA must have had a well-defined policy of its own—with or without the Ford administration's formal blessing. They assumed that the clandestine policy

was to help the Christian militias remain in the game despite their own obstinacy, which kept them tottering on the brink of collapse; the purported goal was to weaken the PLO and please the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. Mossad, the argument ran, had to be mollified and its crucial cooperation guaranteed, especially since a series of highly publicized CIA scandals had shaken foreign confidence in the American agency's discretion and reliability. After all, Mossad's links with the CIA covered the Soviet bloc as well as the Middle East. Variations on this theme were developed by Eveland in *Ropes of Sand* and by a disaffected former Kissinger aide, Roger Morris, in his book entitled *Uncertain Greatness*. Both in their books and in conversations they suggested that the CIA station in Athens helped—as did Israel itself later, at American request—to supply surplus and captured Soviet weapons to the Christian militias in Lebanon. Eveland admitted he had "no positive proof," but insisted he had "talked to people who should know, and I believe them."

These suggestions were transformed into incontrovertible fact by the Lebanese. Senator James Abourezk of South Dakota, for example, was cited as an unimpeachable source who buttressed the charges made by Kamal Jumblatt, the leader of the Lebanese Left, and others that the CIA had given Israel $250 million to stir up the war in Lebanon and to channel arms and ammunition to the Christian militias. In fact, what Abourezk had said was that the State Department had told him the CIA had provided $70–$80 million to Israel to buy support in the United Nations among Black African delegates, and he had never heard whether Israel in fact actually spent the funds for that purpose. He was aware of rumors that some or all of that amount was used as Jumblatt and his friends suggested, but such assertions were virtually impossible to prove or disprove.

Pleading against their likelihood were a number of factors. One was the very disarray of the CIA, whose past covert operations were subject to minute Congressional scrutiny during 1975–76. Also difficult to credit was Morris's thesis that the CIA acted in Lebanon without Kissinger's knowledge—and much to his fury, when he was said to have discovered its antics later on. If the investigations of the CIA produced one central truth, it was that the agency does not operate on its own. Rather, it obeys orders from the executive branch. And during the Ford administration, Kissinger was the executive branch when it came to foreign policy and intelligence matters. True, the CIA had

The Offhand Americans • 173

174 • The Offhand Americans

maintained links with the Phalange in the 1950s. And no less an
erstwhile comrade-in-arms than Dany Chamoun, commander of his
father's Tiger militia, insisted that the CIA gave the Gemayels' Pha-
lange several million dollars through Lebanese Army channels in 1974
and 1975. (Admittedly, Dany made this accusation in July 1980, only a
day after the Gemayels' militia liquidated the Tigers.) Even some
American diplomats in Beirut during the 1975-76 fighting wondered
whether the CIA was helping the Christians in late 1975. Yet during
the civil war itself, the Christian militias constantly complained that
the United States was doing nothing to help them.

It was just this kind of confusion—plus the CIA's own record—that prompted senior American diplomats active in Middle East affairs for the past generation to refuse to deny outright any possible involvement by the agency. And even those Middle East hands who had worked with Kissinger could never be totally sure what he was up to. All they could conclude was that there was no indication the CIA was involved in covert operations in Lebanon. Even CIA operatives in Lebanon itself, who readily admitted their numbers were increased during the civil war to provide in-depth reporting of events, doubt the covert-operations theory. "First of all, we would have had to have a policy," a CIA officer said, "and we sure as hell didn't have one." Both the embassy and the CIA station were so out of touch with Lebanon that when President Franjieh appointed a retired brigadier general to head a short-lived military government in May 1975, neither had any notion of who he was. But could the CIA have run a covert operation in Lebanon unbeknownst to the Beirut station chief? "It's just possible," a CIA man then in Beirut commented later, "that things were going on that we didn't know about."

By late autumn 1975, Western—and especially U.S.—paralysis was so
patent that Syria and Israel, those two regional archenemies, decided,
together and with American tolerance, to take Lebanese matters into
their own hands. A Palestinian-dominated, radical Lebanese state as a
mutual neighbor was an unpleasant prospect, now that the Christians
were so clearly on the defensive in the Lebanese struggle. The Syrians
dangled before the Christians a strategic alliance, and the Israelis saw a
windfall: by tolerating a Syrian military presence in Lebanon, which by

normal Zionist standards should have been anathema, Israel could bog
down the only major Arab army that tactically was willing to use force
to bring to heel that other prime foe, the PLO. The United States was
ostensibly motivated by a desire to limit the war, to prevent total
anarchy in Lebanon from taking hold and spreading to the rest of the
Middle East. Whether Kissinger realized that such a policy would lead
to a carve-up of Lebanon and the continuation—rather than the end—
of violence is moot.

The Syrians were the first to be seen to act. In a deal with Israel
brokered by the United States, on January 22, 1976, they moved
Syrian-controlled regular troops of the Palestine Liberation Army
(PLA) into Beirut to stop the wholesale looting and lawlessness. But
Dany Chamoun, months before, had reactivated his father's long-
standing relationship with Israel and had begun a series of visits to the
Jewish state to arrange for arms shipments to the Tigers.

At American insistence the Syrian military entry into Lebanon in
January was so delicately executed that two other more obvious and
massive, but still partial, similar operations were required before the
Palestinians and their Lebanese allies got the message. Early that
month, Kissinger received a distinguished Israeli visitor in his seventh-
floor State Department office. The Israeli said that Lebanon now
represented a matter of crucial national interest to his government,
which was determined to help the increasingly beleaguered Christians.
The several accounts of the meeting differ on what Kissinger's reaction
to this was. In one version he did not demur and indeed said nothing.
In another he is supposed to have replied, "OK, but don't use Ameri-
can military equipment." "You watch," a witness to the meeting
purportedly commented to a colleague, "Israel will take all this as
American backing."

Ghassan Tueni, the newspaper editor and Lebanon's ambassador to
the United Nations, tells this story. About the same time as the
meeting in Kissinger's office, a Lebanese Christian leader was talking
to a 'high State Department official who was justifying the Syrians'
entry into Lebanon on the grounds that their armed presence would
"check the Palestinians." "But," asked the Lebanese, "who will check
the Syrians?" The answer was simple, candid, and very Kissingerian.
"The Israelis, of course." Tueni adds that no one seems to have asked
the logical follow-up question, "But who will check the Israelis?" That

The Offhand Americans • 175

Syrian
involvement

X

176 • The Offhand Americans

unanswered question was to cause increasing grief over the years to all parties involved in the Lebanese imbroglio. Even if it had been able to turn back the clock, Israel, despite its protestations of goodwill, had little interest in a stable Lebanon as long as its principal adversaries, Syria and the Palestinians, were bogged down there. Intervening at minimal cost, Israel could—and did—turn the pressure on and off the entire Arab world by raising the level of violence in Lebanon whenever it suited its purposes. It was the Middle East equivalent of the game the Russians played so assiduously with the Western Big Three in Berlin, until the status of the former German capital was settled in 1972.

Short of a real policy, in 1976, the Israeli-Syrian deal Kissinger brokered looked about the best that could be cobbled together. Syria was to send into Lebanon just enough troops to stop the anarchy. The United States encouraged Israel to supply the Christians with arms just sufficient to prevent them from going under, but not so many as to cause problems. The United States believed that it was in no position itself to provide weapons, and Israel was conveniently close enough to move fast.

With Israel and Syria thus oddly, if only temporarily, allied, they were now free to gang up on the Palestinian commandos, no matter what promises had been made. Throughout much of 1976, Israeli and Syrian naval vessels patrolled different sectors of the Lebanese coast to deprive the Palestinians of resupply. Both countries supplied arms and ammunition to the Christian militias during the long siege of the Palestinian refugee camp at Tal Zaatar. Given the Middle East's propensity for jumping to conclusions, these ad hoc arrangements doubtless smacked to local observers of a Kissinger plot. American intelligence analysts, who are convinced the CIA was technically "clean," are prepared to believe that the Israelis were not above hinting they were acting on behalf of a United States that could not afford to be seen so obviously involved because of its domestic political tribulations. A retired high-ranking CIA specialist on the Middle East remarked, "Oldest trick in the game."

Soon after the Syrians sent the PLA into Lebanon in January 1976, Godley left Beirut to undergo an operation for cancer of the larynx. He was never to return. Soon the Syrian peace team—Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam, Army Chief of Staff Hikmat Shehabi, and Air Force Commander Naji Jamil—were trapped in the endless luncheons

The Offhand Americans • 177

that are a distinguishing and paralyzing characteristic of Lebanese politics. In its first outing as a regional superpower, Syria proved butter-fingered, and its representatives floundered unconvincingly between offstage Byzantine intrigue, public mediation, and crude displays of military force. Like its three dozen or so predecessors, the January cease-fire began to show familiar signs of collapsing. Backed by the Palestinians, a Moslem brigadier general named Aziz Ahdab seized Lebanon's state-run radio and television on March 11 and declared that Franjieh was through. But with virtually no troops backing him, "General Television," as he was dubbed, succeeded only in setting off the most destructive round of fighting to date. The army, which had begun to split apart in January, thanks largely to PLO backing for a Sunni lieutenant named Ahmed Khatib and his self-styled Lebanese Arab Army, now broke clearly along Christian and Moslem lines. Dissident Moslem artillerymen shelled the Presidential Palace and forced Franjieh to flee to the Christian heartland. The Christians were pushed out of their remaining West Beirut strongholds as Palestinians and Lebanese leftists unleashed a major offensive in the mountains above the capital. Once again, church bells sounded the tocsin. Like it or not, Lebanon once again had forced its way back into the headlines.

In Washington in March, Kissinger was going down an airport receiving line with his official guest, King Hussein of Jordan, when he noticed L. Dean Brown, a short, feisty man who once had been ambassador to Amman and had recently retired from the foreign service to head the Middle East Institute. Brown had a reputation for handling himself in tough situations: in 1970 he had driven in an armored car to deliver his credentials to the King of Jordan during the Black September fighting between the Jordanian Army and the Palestinians. Now Kissinger called him to the seventh-floor offices of the State Department; forty-eight hours later, Brown arrived in Beirut. It was March 31, 1976. His only instructions were to write his own. There were two provisos: the Christians were to be told yet again that landing the Marines was out; they were also to be told the United States wanted them to be "strong so that they could negotiate" an end to the fighting.

Brown's first order of business was to have a history of the war written, despite protests from George Lambrakis, the young chargé d'affaires in the embassy, who was clearly out of his depth, and who

178 • The Offhand Americans

fruitlessly pointed out that the State Department had received two
daily "sitreps"—detailed reports—since the fighting began almost a
year earlier. Kissinger—and doubtless Brown as well—wanted to know
who the players were, a tacit admission that the Secretary had failed
during the past to follow the steadily worsening crisis with any assidu-
ity. In the embassy itself, Brown's arrival prompted no great enthusi-
asm. There was a general feeling that after such neglect the United
States could do little of use, even if it so chose. Nor was the staff
convinced that the administration meant to grapple with the problem.
From Washington came rumors suggesting that President Ford and
Secretary Kissinger had dispatched Brown largely to deprive Ronald
Reagan, Ford's serious challenger for the Republican presidential nom-
ination that summer, of the argument that the administration had been
derelict in attending to the festering Lebanese mess.

The Christians had no such doubts. With less than seventy-two
hours' worth of ammunition left, they couldn't afford to. They were
overjoyed. Finally, the Americans had understood! But these illusions
were short-lived. The Christian warlords pressed Brown for a defini-
tion of what Kissinger meant by wanting them to be "strong." They
quickly came away with the impression that the United States meant
that they should get Israeli help. Chamoun, in the April 2 entry of his
published diary, indirectly confirmed that he for one had never be-
lieved the Americans themselves would help. He had another string to
his bow. "Exchange of views with important visitors who insist on
remaining anonymous," he noted, in describing his meeting with Israe-
li Defense Minister Shimon Peres on an Israeli gunboat anchored off
Jounieh harbor. "The conclusions are positive," he wrote. "They will
bear fruit if the hostilities are protracted and if our forces continue to
face a strong opponent."

Yet again, the Syrians in fact moved first and promised the Chris-
tians the help that the United States could broker with Israel but not
itself deliver. The Syrians were clearly against the PLO. Ten days later,
Zuhair Mohsen, Syria's man in the PLO, laid it squarely on the line.
"Lebanon can only be saved by the U.S. Sixth Fleet or the Syrian
Army," he said, waving his Cuban cigar at me, "there is no other
solution. Two divisions would be needed at the very least, and more
would cross the border if necessary. Three quarters of the people of
Lebanon would welcome any force that can halt religious strife and

theft in this country." As it turned out, his erstwhile allies in the PLO
and their Lebanese friends did not get the message. Syrians disguised as
members of the pro-Syrian Saiqa Palestinian commandos began lifting
the siege of Zahle in the Beqaa valley. Syrian armor moved across the
border and dug in—at first three miles, and then farther, inside Leba-
non. When the Syrians invaded in earnest in June, exactly two divi-
sions were used. With the Syrian Army involved to the hilt in Lebanon,
Israel stepped up its aid to the Christians. A stalemate had begun that
lasted until Israel invaded Lebanon in earnest in 1982.

Although the Christians had been saved by Syria—and then had taken out what they thought was an insurance policy with Israel—they were not happy. The West, especially the United States, had once again let them down, even though they had been so sure that this time Washington understood. Now they were to take their own peculiar revenge. Within days, they started circulating as gospel the news that Brown had allegedly offered to ship all Lebanon's Christians off to the United States and Canada. Never mind that the Sixth Fleet—like all good tales, this one's effect depended on a modicum of authentic-sounding detail—could scarcely handle more than a few thousand of the million or so would-be refugees conjured up in this dream, unless Brown had suggested an evacuation plan of Dunkirk proportions. Yet to find fault with the particulars was the first and fatal step toward accepting that the scheme in broad outline had some validity. Thereafter, American denials only served to reinforce the Christians' peculiar vision of their plight. If the Americans would not help, then the Americans would become the major villains. The Sixth Fleet story was the Christian leaders' defiant way of telling the United States that they would stay put. Never would the Christians become latter-day Palestinians and desert the land that they insisted (somewhat fancifully, in this constantly invaded part of the world) had been theirs for six thousand years. (In my 1980 interview at his luncheon table in Zghorta, over locally distilled arak and cigars, I asked Sleiman Franjeh point-blank about the story. Everyone else who was said to have been a witness either denied it or claimed to have heard it solely from him. Drawing on his ivory cigarette holder in vaguely Rooseveltian fashion, Franjeh grunted. Kissinger, he intoned, "is not an American—he's a Zionist." Perhaps, I said, but how about Brown and the Sixth Fleet? I pressed for elucidation. Franjeh disdainfully referred me

The Offhand Americans • 179

300

REGIONAL AND GLOBAL CONSTRAINTS

Sarkis, expressing his conviction that Lebanon would not be trans-
formed into a "Syrian satellite."¹² Ambassador Brown later stirred
controversy by commenting in an interview that American oppo-
sition to Syrian military intervention in Lebanon had been unwise.
By objecting to military involvement, he said, the United States
aroused Syria's suspicions of American intentions in the Middle
East. Moreover, by influencing Syria to decelerate its military ad-
vance, additional and unnecessary bloodshed had been caused.
Brown believed that Syria had succeeded in providing security for
the beleaguered Maronites and creating conditions conducive to
the restoration of constitutional government. Brown's remarks de-
parted from the official American position, and he quickly received
a telegram of reproof from the State Department.¹³

Despite formal criticism of Brown's remarks, speculation per-
sisted that he may have been articulating a new, more receptive
American attitude toward direct Syrian intervention in Lebanon.
Early in April, Henry Kissinger described Syria's role in Lebanon
as "highly responsible," and President Ford said that the United
States did not expect Syria to take control in Lebanon. Even after
Syria had introduced some regular military units into Lebanon on
9 April, the United States was sanguine about their objectives.
Kissinger contended on 23 April that "the danger of outside in-
tervention has been reduced," and that "it is our impression that
they [the Syrian forces] are there as part of the immediate situation
and not a permanent feature of the Lebanese scene."¹⁴ Tacit Amer-
ican approval of Syria's military escalation persisted after the large-
scale intervention of regular Syrian forces in June.

The American attitude reflected gradual recognition of a con-
vergence of interests between the United States and Syria. The
United States believed that Syria was in a position to impose order
in Lebanon, thereby averting two outcomes that both Syria and
the United States opposed. First, the partition of Lebanon would
be forestalled, with its potentially destabilizing implications for the
region. Second, the emergence of a regime dominated by the Leb-

¹²Naseer Aruri, "The Syrian Strategy and the Lebanese Conflict," in *Lebanon: Crisis and Challenge*, Special Report, no. 1, ed. Fouad Moughrabi and Naseer Aruri (Detroit: Arab American University Graduates, 1977), p. 24.

¹³Stookey, "The United States," pp. 237-238.

¹⁴Aruri, "The Syrian Strategy and the Lebanon Crisis," p. 24.

Superpowers on the Sidelines

301

anese National Movement and Palestinians, and perhaps respon-
sive to Iraqi and Libyan interests, would be prevented. The United
States and Syria were both concerned that such a regime might
provoke hostilities with Israel, into which Syria might be drawn.
By contrast, a satisfactory outcome to the Lebanese crisis might
enable President Asad to resume participation in the American-
sponsored peacemaking process with Israel.¹⁵

Superpower Proxy?

The preceding analysis suggests that Syria, while remaining a client
of the Soviet Union, developed a convergence of interests with
the United States during the Lebanese Civil War. Other observers
have explained Syria's behavior through a variety of conspiracy
theories, all of which share the assumption that great powers are
capable of manipulating the behavior of regional actors. In ana-
lytical terms, conspiracy theories offer a hierarchical image of the
international system in which small states regularly serve as proxies
for the great powers.

The curious feature of conspiracy theories about the Lebanese Civil War is that Syria is alternatively portrayed as a proxy of the United States or the Soviet Union. For Western commentators accustomed to thinking of Syria as a Soviet proxy, the notion of a Syrian-American conspiracy is preposterous. Yet the evidence for Syrian-American coordination of policy during the war, while not sufficing to substantiate a conspiracy theory, is actually more convincing than evidence of Syrian-Soviet complicity.

Those who believe there was collusion between Syria and the
United States in Lebanon argue that President Asad was part of
Henry Kissinger's "game plan" for a Middle East peace solution.
Once Egypt, Syria, and Jordan agreed to participate in Kissinger's
diplomacy, only the PLO was an obstacle to achieving a "Pax
Americana." From the U.S. perspective, no better candidate for
a "police mission to bring the PLO in line" could be found than
"progressive" Syria. Syria initially assumed that it could co-opt
the PLO and suppress the Lebanese left. When the PLO main-

¹⁵Stookey, "The United States," pp. 238, 245.

302

tained its alliance with the Lebanese National Movement, Asad considered direct intervention against both. He could not proceed, however, without American assurance that Israel would be restrained from counterintervention. The "task of securing a clearance was assigned" to King Husayn, who lobbied on Syria's behalf during a visit to the United States in March. Husayn conveyed assurances to President Ford that Syria would withdraw quickly from Lebanon once it reversed the trend toward leftist ascendancy. The United States was requested to keep Israel from intervening once Syrian forces advanced across the border.

The results of the Syrian intervention represented "a diplomatic coup for the United States." The elements of Kissinger's peace proposals had already been assembled, and once Lebanon was "pacified," the United States and Syria could perpetrate a "final solution" to the Palestinian problem in the name of a Middle East settlement. Henry Kissinger declared in Congressional testimony on 17 June:

> It is quite possible that as the situation in Lebanon is being resolved ... we can go back to the peace process. I believe that the events in Lebanon may have crystallized forces that may make a return to the Middle East peace negotiations more hopeful.

The reason that Kissinger could afford to be so optimistic is that he felt assured of the cooperation of America's Syrian "proxy," in pursuing "a special brand of Vietnamization in the Middle East."¹⁶

This conspiracy theory suggests that Syria's quest for regional influence was merely one facet of a grand design derived from Syrian-American collusion. In this line of argument, Syria attempted to consolidate its position in the inter-Arab arena—through influence over Jordan, Lebanon, and the Palestinians—to enhance its capacity to achieve a settlement in the Arab-Israel arena. The crucial obstacle to be overcome was opposition by the Palestinian Resistance. Once the Resistance was "tamed," Syria could negotiate with Israel for the return of the Golan Heights (captured in the June 1967 War) and perhaps for a solution in the West Bank that would further advance Syrian influence. While this

"Aruri, "The Syrian Strategy and the Lebanese Conflict," passim.

Superpowers on the Sidelines

303

process would further Syria's own regional ambitions, the conspiracy theorists perceived a guiding American hand in the background, using the Syrian proxy to advance the United States' own objectives in the Middle East.

The premises of this argument are invalidated by the foregoing analysis, which indicates the primacy of Syria's regional objectives and the limited utility to Syria of the American connection. The superpower that did possess substantial leverage over Syria was the Soviet Union. Syria's deep military and economic dependence on the Soviet Union meant that Soviet preferences could only be flouted at substantial cost. In the Lebanese Civil War, however, the absence of Soviet vital interests in the outcome of the confrontation permitted Syria substantial autonomy in pursuing its regionally based priorities. Nevertheless, a divergence of views in the latter phase of the war gave rise to a serious crisis in Soviet-Syrian relations. No one could convincingly argue that Syria was serving as a Soviet proxy in Lebanon in June-October 1976, although some Western observers insisted on sustaining this image.

By contrast, during the 1970 crisis in Jordan, American policymakers took it for granted that Syria was intervening as a proxy for the Soviet Union. The Jordanian crisis engendered substantial tension between the superpowers because of this American assumption. When hostilities first broke out between Palestinian guerrillas and King Husayn on 17 September 1970, the United States hoped to deter Syrian or Iraqi intervention that would further challenge the King. On 18 September, Henry Kissinger solicited and reportedly received assurances from the Soviet Union that Syria would not intervene.

When Syrian tanks began to cross the border into Jordan under a PLA banner the next day, President Nixon and Henry Kissinger felt that they had been deceived. Anger at Soviet duplicity was linked to American annoyance over Egyptian violations of a cease-fire accord that had taken effect along the Suez Canal in August 1970. Contrary to the provisions of the American-negotiated cease-fire, Soviet-made surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) were advanced toward the banks of the canal. Nixon and Kissinger regarded the Syrian intervention in Jordan as a second test of American will by the Russians, and determined to respond forcefully.

The American military response to the Jordanian crisis thus

304

served the twin purposes of supporting King Husayn and responding to a perceived Soviet challenge. A decision to move the Sixth Fleet and alert the 82nd Airborne Division was taken even before Syrian tanks crossed the Jordanian border. A further selective alert of American forces in the United States and Europe occurred on 19 September. As plans were formulated for an American-supported Israeli military response, a U.S. aircraft carrier moved to within sixty nautical miles of the Israeli coastline and established direct communications with the Israeli government by 21 September. This American show of force was accompanied, on the diplomatic level, by daily meetings between Assistant Secretary of State Joseph Sisco and Soviet Chargé d'Affaires Yuli Vorontsov. In one of these exchanges, on 20 September, Sisco reportedly declared:

> Remember, you are to report very carefully to the Kremlin that we cannot give you any assurance whatsoever on the question of Israeli intervention or American intervention, directly in this situation.¹⁷

Was the American perception of the Syrian role in the Jordanian crisis as a proxy intervention accurate? According to one interpretation, “[w]hile the available evidence does not indicate that the Soviet Union precipitated the Syrian invasion of Jordan, it is clear that it acquiesced in and gave support for the Syrian move.” A Soviet official subsequently acknowledged that Soviet advisers accompanied Syrian tanks to the Jordanian border. Three possible considerations may have motivated Soviet behavior. Most important was the close Soviet relationship with the Jadid regime in Syria. The Soviet leadership did not want to jeopardize these ties by opposing the Syrian initiative, just as it hesitated to criticize the Egyptian missile buildup near the Suez Canal for fear of antagonizing the Egyptian elite.

Second, the Soviet Union stood to gain if the Syrian intervention achieved its apparent objectives. If King Husayn was overthrown, one of the strongest supporters of Western influence in the region

¹⁷Robert Freedman, "Detente and U.S.-Soviet Relations in the Middle East During the Nixon Years," in *Dimensions of Detente*, ed. Della Seldon (New York: Praeger, 1978), pp. 93-94; Dowty, "The U.S. and the Syria-Jordan Confrontation," pp. 174, 177, 182, 189.

## Superpowers on the Sidelines

would be eliminated, and perhaps the Soviet Union could cultivate ties to a successor regime. Third, even if Husayn prevailed, he might be obliged to make further concessions to the Palestinian guerrillas in Jordan. The Palestinians, in recognition of Soviet support for their cause, would then be further available as a "potential lever of Soviet influence in the Middle East."

In this view, the Soviet leadership was surprised by the American show of force on behalf of Husayn, and was obliged, reluctantly, to tone down its support for the Syrian intervention. Moscow Radio supported a suggestion, on 22 September, for an Arab summit conference to resolve the crisis, apparently seeking a face-saving device to help the Syrians out of a difficult situation. It is impossible to judge, however, whether the Syrian decision to withdraw their armored forces from Jordan on 23-24 September was primarily due to Soviet advice, to the American-Israeli military buildup, or to Defense Minister Asad's refusal to provide air support for the invasion.¹⁸

A more convincing interpretation suggests that the United States overestimated Soviet leverage over Syria at the time as well as the degree of Soviet involvement in the Jordanian events. The United States was preoccupied with the global dimension of the crisis, which was perceived as a Cold War confrontation testing American resolve. In its concern over checking Soviet expansion, the United States was unable to distinguish the global from the regional aspects of the crisis. In fact, however, Syria was acting in furtherance of its regional goals, with scant concern for Soviet objectives. Internal rivalries within the Syrian leadership were more important than superpower reactions in affecting the pace and the scope of the Syrian intervention, although Soviet warnings may have contributed to Syrian restraint and its ultimate decision to withdraw.¹⁹

## Strains in Soviet-Syrian Relations

The fact that a superpower and its client may have different objectives and priorities during a crisis comes as no surprise. During

¹⁸Freedman, "Detente and U.S.-Soviet Relations," *passim*.

¹⁹Dowty, "The U.S. and the Syria-Jordan Confrontation," pp. 177, 187; Quandt, "Lebanon, 1958, and Jordan, 1970," pp. 222-223.

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Index

'Abdallah (king, Transjordan), 244-45

Abdelmecid (sultan, Ottoman Empire), 35

Afghanistan, 333-34

Aflaq, Michel, 70

African states, 324-25

agro-cities, 64-66

Ahdab, Aziz al-, 193-96

Ahmad, Ahmad Iskandar, 141, 336

'Alawis (Nusayris), 52, 64

Lebanese Shi'is and, 112

in Syria

in Army, 66, 70

under Asad, 78

on Asad's Lebanon policy, 237

in coups d'état, 69

Muslim Brethren on, 332

on policy toward Israel, 273

in society, 104

Alexandria Protocol (1944), 59, 249

Algeria, 256

Alon, Yigal, 282

Amal (Shi'i organization), 157

Amin, Hafizullah, 334

Angola, 318-19

Arab Deterrent Force (ADF), 231, 253

creation of, 229, 255-56

Iraq and, 258

oil-producing states and, 261

opposition in Lebanon to, 230

Syrian Army as, 27, 325-326

Syrian plans to withdraw, 336

termination of mandate of, 335

Arab-Israeli wars

of 1948, 122, 271, 272

of 1967 (Six-Day), 70, 120, 243, 273

of October 1973, 134, 247-48, 270

Arab League

Alexandria Protocol of (1944), 249

Arab Liberation Army created by, 271

Egypt as leader of, 245

founding of (1944), 59

Lebanese Civil War and, 251-56

as constraint on Syria, 322

inter-Arab force established by
(June 1976), 217-18

Iraq actions on, 258

Libyan boycotting of meetings
of, 258

October 1976 meeting of, 27, 225, 227-30

OAU compared with, 324-26

oil-producing states in, 261

PLO membership in, 264

PLO supported by, 26, 119

Yemen crisis ignored by, 323

Arab Liberation Army, 271-72

Arab nationalism, 242, 324

Asad's, 75

in Ba'thi ideology, 73

as constraint on Syria, 25-26

partition of Lebanon and, 279

post-World War I, 51

Syrian ethnic groups and, 63

Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), 120

Arab Security Force, 253-56, 259

Arab Socialist Party (Syria), 74

349