AN INTERVIEW
KISSING

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger discusses the Soviet Union, Richard Nixon, Watergate, President Reagan, conservatives and the future of America.

Henry Kissinger has served in two Republican administrations, as chairman of the National Security Council under President Nixon and as Secretary of State under President Ford. Prior to joining the Nixon administration, Kissinger was a foreign policy professor at Harvard University.

Widely known in political, media and academic circles as the principal architect of the Nixon administration's policy of detente with the Soviet Union, Kissinger remains as one of the most controversial and colorful figures in American public life.

**CD:** On September 28, 1980, on "Meet the Press," you said that you thought President Reagan would produce a "more measured, a more careful and a less idiosyncratic foreign policy" than the Carter foreign policy. Do you think that Ronald Reagan has done this?

**KISSINGER:** I think he has done exactly this, yes. His foreign policy has

John Lofton, CONSERVATIVE DIGEST editor, interviewed Henry Kissinger recently in the latter's Manhattan apartment.

been less personalized than President Carter's. It has been more careful, less reckless. I think he has done this, allowing for the fact that any new administration has to get its feet on the ground.

**CD:** Are there a couple of things you can say you like about what the President has done on foreign policy or maybe a couple of things that bother you?

**KISSINGER:** What I've liked is the buildup in the defense budget, the firmer tone in our foreign policy, less breast-beating, less guilt and less assertions of infinite American guilt.

What I liked less was the amount of time it took to get a coherent voice in the pronouncements of his subordinates and to establish a relationship between the rhetoric and the actions. But on the main line I strongly support his foreign policy.

**CD:** In March of 1976, campaigning in Florida, candidate Ronald Reagan blasted your stewardship of foreign policy as having "coincided precisely with the loss of U.S. military supremacy" over the Soviets.

My question is, to what extent if any do you think the policies that you advocated while in office are to blame for our present military inferiority vis a vis the Soviets?

**KISSINGER:** Well, I have read—I

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have heard candidate Reagan say this and I've read this in your journal, too, so these arguments are not new.

CD: They must be true. [laughter]

KISSINGER: No. What it means is that the people who were not in office had no idea what we were up against.

I think if you look at the record of the administrations in which I served, you will find that I always supported the highest option defense program that the Pentagon recommended. That whenever the Joint Chiefs of Staff needed support for their position for a

administrations.

But this is one of those charges that was made in that period in which I have to say the conservatives simply didn't know what they were talking about, and in which there was no geo-political battle. It was a time when there was no period in which the Soviets tried to make a gain, which the administrations which I served did not try to resist.

CD: Let me try a couple of examples that underlie my general question. In 1968, as a presidential candidate, Richard Nixon stressed the need for what he called "clearcut military superiority" over the Soviets. The Republican Party platform also advocated this.

In their 1974 book about you titled "Kissinger," Marvin Kalb and Bernard Kalb say that you felt that it was unattainable, this superiority, in the 1970's, so you recommended to Mr Nixon that the word sufficiency be substituted for superiority as the goal of American military policies. Is this true?"

KISSINGER: I frankly don't remember whether I recommended that or not. I do not believe, and I've said so consistently, I do not believe that a clearcut strategic superiority on which we can rely the way we relied in the 1950s is achievable. The numbers of weapons needed is so large and the calculations so esoteric that no leader would rely on it. We are better off being superior but we cannot rely on it the way we did in the 1950s. And I have therefore consistently favored, from my earliest writings in the 1950s, a buildup of conventional forces and a buildup of forces suitable for regional defense.

As a practical matter, the military program of the Nixon administration, however you describe it, whether one used the word superiority or sufficiency, which is really a semantic point, was the maximum that in the judgment of President Nixon and myself was attainable from the Congress. We pushed the antiballistic missile defense at a time against all opposition. We maintained the MIRV missile program.

Every strategic weapon that now exists was started in either the Nixon or the Ford administration. And whether you describe that as superiority or sufficiency is really an almost semantic or liturgical issue.

strong military program, I always supported it.

The reason for the relative decline in the American position in that period was a combination of Vietnam and Watergate and a Congress that consistently cut the defense budget for the first five years of the period we were in office. And after President Ford came in, we increased the defense budget.

But at no time did my policy ever envisage a lower defense budget. Yes, I believe in negotiations with the Soviet Union, a position which President Reagan himself is now pursuing and more along the lines that I find difficult to distinguish from previous Republican

I do not frankly remember what I may have said at every last meeting. I was in favor of—I've always been against the mutual assured destruction (MAD) theory. I have always believed that we needed a counter-force capability. I have not believed that once the Soviets had a thousand-plus missiles that our margin of superiority could never be of the same size as in the 1950s so that we could rely on strategic weapons for deterrence the way we did in the 1940s and 1950s.

This is an era of technology that has nothing to do—because if you have 10,000 warheads and a 95 percent kill ratio, you still have 500 left at the end—enough to devastate the adversary's population centers. And for this reason, I have from my first writings believed that we have to strengthen other elements of our defense.

But that is a technical military point. This is not a point that has anything to do with the determination to resist Soviet military aggression.

CD: Well, if your position all along was what you said it has been on the superiority question, then it's entirely possible that you did seek to talk Mr. Nixon into dropping superiority in place of sufficiency.

KISSINGER: No, it is not entirely possible. We have to separate two things. On the military program, I never recommended to President Nixon that he adopt a smaller program than the one he in fact adopted. Whether I told him to describe it by the word sufficiency or by the word superiority, this I cannot remember.

My recollection is that he used this word at a press conference to everybody's astonishment including my own.

CD: In your 1979 book, "The White House Years," you say that you shared President Nixon's instincts against unilaterally giving up the Anti-ballistic missile (ABM). But in the same book, the 74 book by the Kalbs they say that in a March 9, 1969, National Security Council (NSC) meeting, you argued strenuously against the NSC recommendation that the United States deploy an ABM system on the grounds that it would escalate the arms race and thereby jeopardize the long-range prospects for Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) and unnecessarily antagonize the Soviets.

KISSINGER: Totally wrong. I was

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always for the ABM.

**CD:** All right. In your 1961 book, "Necessity for Choice," you wrote about the dangers of an over-emphasis on a "realism" which because it is seen as being entirely outside the observer, may produce a certain passivity and a tendency to adapt to circumstances rather than to master them.

It may also produce, you said, a gross underestimation of the ability to change, indeed, to create reality. I'm wondering if, looking back, you would agree that you fell into this very trap you warned about.

What I'm alluding to specifically is what you wrote in your 1979 book, "White House Years," that it might have been wiser to have met the issue head-on and had an all-out national debate on the U.S. defense posture in 1969, a debate which of course did not really occur.

**KISSINGER:** Well, that permits no clear-cut answer. Any statesman has to choose between—he can never separate himself totally from his assessment of reality because if he pursues completely unrealizable goals he will suffer a shipwreck.

On the other hand, there is the danger—

**CD:** Did you say a shipwreck?

**KISSINGER:** A shipwreck. On the other hand, there is the equally great danger that is implicit in that quote, that you become so enamored with reality that you specialize in manipulating it rather than changing it.

Our choice was between producing an all-out debate on this issue and losing it or getting what we could and preserving the essence of our military forces for a better day, that day being when we had completed the Vietnam war on what we considered honorable terms.

The fact that this is not a simple problem is shown by the fact that I invited a leading conservative, whom I don't want to mention, to dinner in Washington in the first six months of my coming in and asked him whether he could help mobilize some conservative support for us on the Vietnam issue. I thought this was closely related to our perception of national defense.

He said he was sorry to tell me that that horse had left the barn and that was no longer possible. All I'm saying is that, looking at it—

**CD:** Can you be explicit there? What exactly do you mean, that—

**KISSINGER:** Well, he meant that once Johnson had given up his victory and once the bombing halt existed it was no longer possible to mobilize public feelings or conservative feelings on that issue.

What I wrote in "White House Years" I put down as a hypothesis. I don't know whether, if we had to do it all over again, I would take that gamble. We had to preserve the essence of our national strength and our national honor in near civil-war conditions. Should we have forced it into an even greater showdown than already existed?

It's an arguable point. That one, I quite frankly, am still asking myself. I have no clearcut answer. I do not remember many volunteers, however, for those barricades. And I don't know what you people were writing at the time, but—

**CD:** Well, of course, a lot of times it's kind of hard to volunteer for a war which you don't know is being waged, particularly if the war is not being waged. One reason why volunteers don't show up might be is because nobody is fighting.

**KISSINGER:** By our lights, we were fighting. And it was hardly a secret. There were huge demonstrations:

**CD:** But enough to get volunteers is the question. There's no doubt you were fighting.

**KISSINGER:** Well, but we were fighting for what we thought was—

**CD:** Well, take the ABM thing. My recollection is that the ABM fight was a crucial fight, that you won it in the Senate by one vote, and yet the President of the United States never went on national television to make the case for why we even needed an ABM.

Is that not correct? He never went on national television to make a national case about why ABM was needed.

**KISSINGER:** I don't remember that. I know I was on the Hill, even though this was not my job.

**CD:** Let me ask you about one allegation concerning your view of reality. And I'd like to get all the way through this before you deny it.

In his 1976 book, "On Watch," former Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Zumwalt tells of a conversation he had with you in late 1970 in which you

supposedly told him how you thought the U.S., like so many earlier civilizations, had passed its historic high point. You supposedly said it was your job to persuade the Russians to give us the best deal we could get while recognizing that historical forces favored them.

Admiral Zumwalt says that you realized in the light of history that you would be seen as the one who negotiated terms favorable to the Soviets but the American people had only themselves to blame because they lacked the stamina to stay the course against

the Soviet Union, which is "Sparta to our Athens."

**KISSINGER:** Well, that's a great line—especially since Athens won the Peloponesian War. I have absolutely no recollection of it. And my wife, who was on the train with me to the Army-Navy game has no recollection of it. No one else has ever heard me say that. But it is basically senseless to try to reconstruct a conversation after twelve years separated from its context. And it is absurd to have to justify such a fragment when there is a lifetime of writing and speaking on communism available. Maybe I said this about Vietnam, probably not at all. It is not my view. So

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you have to understand what Zumwalt
said in the light of later controversies.

CD: Would you deny those senti-
ments? Did you feel that way then?

KISSINGER: I never felt that way.

CD: What are you saying? That Ad-
miral Zumwalt could have got you
confused with someone else on that
train or that he just made this up out of
whole cloth or what?

KISSINGER: I have always de-
nied that.

CD: Have you ever talked to him
about it?

KISSINGER: No. If I debate with
everybody who writes, and after 1974

ROBERT BROWN/WALL STREET JOURNAL

If you look at the
record of the
administrations in
which I served, you
will find that I always
supported the highest
option defense
program that the
Pentagon
recommended.

and 1975, it became the fashionable
thing, including by many people
whom I had remembered on a rather
different side, to attack me for being
insufficiently vigilant, I would have
done nothing else.

I have always denied this quote. And
where he got it from, you'll have to ask
him.

CD: Well, okay. Of course, in the
book he says he got it from you. But
you say he didn't, so—

KISSINGER: He didn't. It's not
my view and I don't think you'll find
anyone who's ever heard me say any-
thing like that.

CD: Well, of course, this Zumwalt

quote goes far beyond any—but let's
get off that, because you've denied it,
and he says it in that—

KISSINGER: And, also, let's get
another thing. I agreed to this inter-
view not in order to be a defendant in a
trial. If you want my views on things,
I'm happy to give them.

CD: Well, in a way I think this inter-
view could perform a valuable func-
tion because there's a variety of things
that a lot of conservatives think are se-
rious issues. And this gives you an op-
portunity to respond to them.

KISSINGER: But conservatives
can get my views if you ask me some-
thing about what I think about events.
You have expressed your views about
me and your magazine has. But so
ahead.

CD: All right. In a new booklet au-
thored by former CIA analyst David
Sullivan and published by the Texas
Policy Institute, titled "The Bitter Fruit
of SALT: A Record of Soviet Duplicity,"
Sullivan charges that, the Soviets en-
gaged in negotiating deception during
SALT I and SALT II and that they have
violated both agreements.

Do you agree with this?

KISSINGER: What he means (by
negotiating deception, I don't know.

CD: Really?

KISSINGER: I'd have to know
what he means by negotiating
deceptions.

CD: All right. I'll refer to the booklet.
He means that they tricked us, they
said something to us that wasn't true,
they lied.

KISSINGER: I would assume the
Soviet Union negotiates with us in
their typical manner, which I tried to
describe in my two books, which is to
try to squeeze every last advantage out
of a negotiation. On actual violations,
I'm familiar with one which they
stopped when we called it to their
attention.

CD: What was that?

KISSINGER: That had to do with
turning on radar for antiaircraft weap-
ons, radar associated with antiaircraft
weapons, in an ABM mode. They did
that, I forget how many times, and we
protested. And, at least during my pe-
riod in office, it didn't happen again.

What they did do, I don't know
whether you call that lying or how you
would characterize it, they would have
the tendency to insist that every new
weapon they were building was a

modernization of an old weapon,
while every new weapon that we were
building was a totally new weapon
and therefore they were permitted to
do what was proscribed.

When you negotiate with the Sovi-
ets, you know you're going to have to
guard against this sort of chiseling.
And that undoubtedly went on.

CD: Was it just petty chiseling?

KISSINGER: It depends on your
assessment of whether—

CD: Well, I'd like yours. I'm very in-
terested as to whether or not you found
out subsequently that they did any-
thing that you found out were just lies.
I'm not talking about hard-ball negoti-
ating, but just lying.

KISSINGER: You are asking me
about SALT I and SALT II.

CD: Yes.

KISSINGER: I cannot honestly
think of a flat-out lie. On the other
hand, they undoubtedly attempted to
use these negotiations to get the maxi-
mum advantage to themselves.

I like to believe that we also at-
tempted to get an advantage for our-
selves. And our problem was that at
that time the Soviet Union was build-
ing 200 missiles a year and we were
building none. And we thought that we
would never catch up unless we put an
end to the numerical buildup. So that
within the constraints of the numerical
buildup they developed a whole new
set of missiles.

You can call that lying.

CD: Sure.

KISSINGER: It was certainly
against the spirit of what we were try-
ing to do.

CD: Since 1972, the Soviets have de-
ployed 60 new missile submarines in
four new or improved classes, hun-
dreds of new missiles of three new
types and more than 250 "Backfire"
bombers.

This being the case, how could you
write in your book in 79, "The White
House Years," that the 72 SALT accords
stopped the Soviet strategic buildup
and that they then switched to an ener-
getic qualitative improvement? The
things I just cited seem like quantita-
tive buildups to me. SALT I didn't stop
the Soviets.

KISSINGER: The Soviets did not
build up, did not increase, the number
of delivery vehicles they had in 1972 in
the field of land-based strategic mis-
siles. They increased the number of

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