US-Soviet
Relations:
Confrontation or
Cooperation?

Henry Kissinger (USA)

A lively worldwide discussion is on concerning the results of the meeting between Mikhail Gorbachov and Ronald Reagan in the United States and the future of Soviet-American relations. In the United States, different opinions are voiced, from positive to wholly negative. A special place in this spectrum is occupied by Henry Kissinger, a prominent Republican and a former US Secretary of State, who, while a spokesman for quite conservative quarters, holds more realistic views with regard to several important issues. Following is an interview he granted to Stanislav Menshikov, a WMR staff member.

How do you see the geopolitical future of the world, the constellation of powers at the beginning of the 21st century?

WE are living in a period in which the traditional relationships among powers are changing crucially. The United States represented 52 per cent of the world's gross product in 1950; at that time we did not have to worry about the balance of power because we were the balance of power. The fundamental American foreign policy problem at that time was to identify a difficulty and overwhelm it with resources. Today the United States represents maybe 20 to 23 per cent of the world's gross product. It is still the largest single economic unit in the world, but confronted now with a totally different set of foreign policy challenges.

At the moment the Soviet Union and the United States are by far the most powerful countries. By the beginning of the 21st century they will still be probably the most powerful countries. But at that point there will be several other countries of growing strength. Japan is clearly moving toward devoting at least 2 per cent of its GNP to military affairs. And since its GNP is growing and since its technology is advanced, by the turn of the century that will give it a considerable military force. From that base they can rapidly expand.

As to China, it depends on how one assesses its reform program. Chances are that it will make progress, so that by the 21st century China will become a more powerful country. India will also be growing in strength, and it is possible that Western Europe will unite. In fact, I believe that it is imperative that Western Europe unite now in the military field in addition to the political and economic field. The real issue is, will Western

Henry Kissinger (b. 1923), a former Harvard professor of international relations, has written several books on US foreign policy. He served as the President's national security adviser from 1969 to 1975 and as Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977. He is now head of Kissinger Associates, a New York-based private consulting agency.

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Europe seek its unity in neutralism or in some sense of self-reliance. That the Europeans have to decide.

So by the 21st century we will have five to six power centers in the world, each of them attempting to assert a greater role, at least in their immediate area. If that happens, the kind of global competition that the United States and the Soviet Union have had, where we have been competing in every part of the world, will not make any sense any more, and if, indeed, in the immediate period ahead, the Soviet Union and the United States were to slide, by mistake or by design, into a conflict, they would be exhausting themselves over issues that the evolution of history and of geopolitics may make irrelevant. If present trends in the world continue, if each side keeps encouraging every crisis everywhere and settles none, we run the huge danger that sooner or later something happens like World War I, in which none of the leaders had the slightest intention of producing the consequences that came about.

What is your conclusion as far as the relations between the US and the USSR are concerned?

I believe that the United States and the Soviet Union need to have a fundamental dialogue. I think that some arms control measures can be taken, but the issue of arms limitations is so complicated and creates so many temptations for the negotiators to achieve a unilateral advantage based on special technological knowledge that in the end it will not greatly improve the situation. Sooner or later the USSR and the US must have a political dialogue in which they will try to limit their competition, at least, in areas distant from their borders.

You do not mean an agreement to divide spheres of influence?

No, I do not say that we should divide the world into spheres of influence. But if we could all agree, for example, that neither of us will ship arms into Africa, and neither of us will engage in certain intelligence activities which will have to be defined precisely, then we would have taken one continent out of the military competition. We will still believe in our own ideology and, presumably, we will each make whatever propaganda we think is necessary. You cannot stop the spread of human intelligence, but though I do not think we should divide the world into spheres of interest, we should have sensitivity to special concerns. Close to the borders of each country we should be very careful not to engage in those actions that give the impression that one is trying to gain a military advantage or that one is trying to undermine the other, other than by one's convictions.

I do not want to get into a dispute, but the Middle East is not further from the Soviet Union than Nicaragua is from the US borders. So there must be some measure of closeness.

Yes, but there are also many historical circumstances. In the Middle East the United States has had an historical relationship with Israel and also

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with a particular group of other countries. But even there I would agree
that we should try not to turn the Middle East into an area from which the
Soviet Union should feel threatened.

But how would you consider the spread of the socialist system in the case when a left government comes to power as a result of elections or even as a result of internal revolution? Would that be something that would be considered a menace to the US even if it were not supported by the Soviet Union directly?

No socialist system has come to power by elections, as we conceive them.

Chile is an example of a left government which came to power through
the parliamentary procedure, but was overthrown with the help of the
US.

We did not like the government that came to power in Chile, any more
than the USSR would like a capitalist country established in an area with
which you have had a long historical relationship. In fact Allende
destroyed himself. We did not destroy Allende no matter what the various
sources may claim.¹

We are talking about the future. Suppose this happened again. Would you have to necessarily interfere?

In the future I would take a different view. If a left government in some
country came to power not with the help of Soviet intelligence or indirect
military support, in a free election, I would probably not like this, but it
depends where it is. It is certainly a difficult issue. But in those situations
we have two different problems. One is the existence of that government.
The second is what that government does. Let me take Nicaragua. If there
were not 10,000 Cubans and thousands of other advisers, and Nicaragua
did not receive $500 million a year from the Soviet bloc, then I would have
a different view of the Sandinistas than I do in the present situation, where
there is a Soviet involvement at the furthest distance in the world where the
USSR can be from its borders.²

Does that justify operations conducted to topple foreign regimes the
US administration doesn't like? But let us change the subject and talk
about nuclear arms. The Soviet Union is committed to a non-nuclear
world by the year 2000. Mr Reagan has been speaking about a world
free of nuclear arms, but presumably at a later date. What is your
view?

I think it an impossible goal. And I hope the Soviet leaders know this,
because I would hate to think that they are not realistic. I will explain my
point of view. The Soviet Union has a huge territory with eleven time
zones. It is impossible to have any assurance that you are not hiding a
certain number of nuclear weapons. We would therefore have to analyze

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how many weapons the USSR can hide. If the Soviet government were
prudent, it would realise that the same could be true in the United States.
So for this reason alone we would have to define the minimum number of
weapons with which we would be secure as a hedge against violations.
Second, there are Israel, India, China, France, Britain, all having nuclear
weapons.³

Israel is a nuclear power?

It is generally said that they are a nuclear power. It is not official, but for
purposes of arms control you have to assume the worst. I think it would be
reckless of the United States and the Soviet Union not to have enough
nuclear weapons so that any other nation or group of nations could
threaten them. We are therefore back again at what is the minimum
number of nuclear weapons we can live with. And this is a discussion I am
prepared to see happen.

How do you see the agreement to eliminate intermediate and shorter-range nuclear weapons?

I do not like the INF agreement, but I am going to support its ratifications because we cannot go on forever making agreements, not ratifying them, and spending years of efforts analyzing our problems. As to the INF agreement itself, from the very beginning I did not believe it was in our interest to propose 'double zero', because it was essential to have a link between the defense of Europe and the defense of the US. Also, my view has always been that if we want to zero, it could only be in relation to a substantial conventional disarmament. This has been my unvarying position since 1981. But the Western leaders for some time have had a tendency to make proposals that appeal to their domestic public opinion, and not to any long-term strategy. Nevertheless this is now gone and there is no sense debating it.

Helmut Schmidt has said recently that he does not believe in the Soviet
conventional threat, since the quality of arms and military personnel
have to be taken into account, not only quantity, when there is a
discussion of the balance of conventional forces. What is your view of
this issue? Do you agree with Schmidt?

Obviously, the Soviet Union traditionally has reasons to feel insecure. But
if it drives its sense of insecurity to the point where it feels safe only if
everybody around it is impotent, then it becomes a danger to everybody.
So the question is, can we define relative security between the Soviet
Union and its neighbours? Some people say it does not matter how many
tanks and soldiers the Soviet Union has, because their quality and morale
may be no good. I think this is a very reckless, nationalistic argument.
Serious people should sit down and analyze how many tanks and soldiers
have to be reduced on each side. And what the disproportionate number is

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which Gorbachov has agreed you have to reduce, and on that level we
could have a serious discussion.

Apart from mutual understanding concerning non-interference in
third countries, what other political modus vivendi have you in mind
between the Soviet Union and the United States?

There are some issues like world energy, world climate, world
environment, in which we certainly have a common interest to cooperate.
The fundamental decision we have to make is whether we think that by the
year 2000 none of us can outmaneuver the other or that by the year 2000
we have to be in a real equilibrium. If you have a lot of bureaucrats, each
strengthening his position unilaterally, the cumulative impact is to create a
great sense of insecurity and untrustworthiness. That is the problem.

Your general conclusion? Do you believe in a new détente, a period of
good relations, relaxation of tensions?

Good relations with the Soviet Union are possible. They should be based
on strict reciprocity, and on a common assessment of the future world
situation and of what we want to bring about. We should also put an end to
attempts at outmaneuvering each other. This is possible and desirable.

I give Gorbachov high marks for his courage in recognising the dilemmas
of his society. But my field is foreign policy, and my question is what
should we be asked to be paid in foreign policy currency for what a
prudent, courageous Soviet leader needs to do in order to make his country
stronger. I confess I do not have the imagination to assume that, if there
are no changes in foreign policy, a stronger adversary is necessarily better
for us than a weak adversary. I do not want to be misunderstood. I think
we should encourage Soviet reform when we can. But our main necessity is
to try to bring about a change in the international environment that has
caused tension for forty years. If these causes of tension cannot be
removed now, I would like somebody to tell me when this is possible.

So we must both develop a concept of where we are going. And it is all
the more important because undoubtedly we all in the West will soon face
a major economic crisis when the neglects of the last decades will become
evident and the markets will not solve them. It will require some act of
coherent leadership that restores confidence and a sense of direction. So
this is our necessity — with the world balance changing, major internal
changes occurring everywhere. And we must not make it too easy for
ourselves. There is an American poet who wrote: "We shall not cease from
our exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we
started and know the place for the first time".

*An Editorial Comment.* Henry Kissinger touched upon several important issues of Soviet-American relations, arms limitation, etc. To present the Soviet view of these questions, let us quote briefly from Mikhail Gorbachov's statement at the press conference in Washington on

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December 10, 1987, from his book *Perestroika. New Thinking for Our Country and the World* and his article 'Reality and Guarantees of a Secure World'.

From the Statement by Mikhail Gorbachov at the Press Conference
in Washington

"We can talk about a deepening political dialogue between the leaders of the Soviet Union and of the United States. Today the President and I issued a top-level Joint Soviet-American Statement . . . Summing up this conceptual part of our joint statement, I could say that at the highest level of our two states, it has been recognised that they are now emerging from the long period of confrontation, that they are really to leave it behind.

"You will agree that this is an important political result and an important political statement . . . That is the essence of the transition to a new phase in Soviet-American relations . . .

"The work which had been going on for many years to prepare a treaty eliminating intermediate- and shorter-range missiles on a global basis was completed in the course of the visit . . . Now that this has been done, now that signatures have been affixed to that instrument on behalf of the peoples of our two countries, we can speak about a major event, a history-making event, I would say. We can speak of a great success achieved through joint constructive effort . . . The percentages do not really matter. What does matter is that we have opened up a new phase in the real process of nuclear disarmament . . . So we can sincerely congratulate each other on having taken the first step toward a nuclear-free world."

From the article 'Reality and Guarantees of a Secure World':

"Unconditional observance of the United Nations Charter and of the right of peoples to sovereignty, choose the roads and forms of their development, revolutionary or evolutionary, is imperative for universal security. This also applies to the right of maintaining a social status quo which is exclusively an internal matter. Any attempts, direct or indirect, to influence the development of countries 'other than our own', to interfere in such development should be ruled out. Attempts to destabilize existing governments from outside are just as inadmissible . . .

"Recently, Soviet and American scientists have specially studied the issue of the relationship between strategic stability and the size of nuclear arsenals. They have arrived at the unanimous conclusion that 95 per cent of all US and Soviet nuclear arms can be eliminated without stability being disrupted. This is a devastating argument against the 'nuclear deterrence' strategy, the source of a mad logic. We believe that the 5 per cent should not be retained either. And then the stability will acquire a different quality . . .

"The question of a mechanism to prevent the outbreak of a nuclear conflict is more complex. Here I am approaching the most sensitive point of the idea of all-embracing security: much will have to be reappraised, rethought and improved. In any case, the international community should work out agreed measures to deal with possible violations of, or attempts

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to violate, the all-embracing agreement on the non-use and elimination of
nuclear arms. As to potential nuclear piracy, it appears possible and
necessary to consider it in advance and prepare collective measures to
prevent it.

"... While thinking of advancing towards a nuclear weapon-free world it is essential to see to it even now that security be ensured in the process of disarmament, at each of its stages, and to think not only about that, but also to come to agreement on mechanisms for maintaining peace at drastically reduced levels of *non-nuclear armaments*.

"All these questions were part of the proposals for establishing a system of international peace and security set forth jointly by the USSR and other socialist countries at the United Nations."

From the book *Perestroika. New Thinking for Our Country and the World*

"In the West they talk about inequalities and imbalances. That's right, there are imbalances and asymmetries in some kinds of armaments and armed forces on both sides in Europe, caused by historical, geographical and other factors. We stand for eliminating the inequality existing in some areas, but not through a build-up by those who lag behind but through a reduction by those who are ahead...

"We believe that armaments should be reduced to the level of reasonable sufficiency, that is, a level necessary for strictly defensive purposes. It is time the two military alliances amended their strategic concepts to gear them more to the aims of defence. Every apartment in the 'European home' has the right to protect itself against Burglars, but it must do so without destroying its neighbours' property."

¹ Hearings held in the US Congress in 1976-1977 showed that the CIA was active in operations to discredit the Allende government and to finance anti-government activities in Chile. —Ed.

² The presence of experts from socialist countries in Nicaragua is mostly connected with the assistance extended to that country in the construction of several food processing and consumer industry projects, port facilities, and with other economic, scientific and technological cooperation programs. The trade and economic blockade of Nicaragua by the United States reduced the US share in the volume of Nicaraguan foreign trade from 30 per cent in 1980 to zero in 1986. Meanwhile, the share of the socialist countries (including Cuba) increased from 1 to 40 per cent and that of Western Europe from 18 to 40 per cent. From 1981 to 1986 the USSR shipped to Nicaragua goods worth more than 700 million roubles (about 120 million roubles annually, or $170 million at the official exchange rate). — Ed.

³ India does not possess nuclear weapons. It conducted a peaceful nuclear explosion in 1974. At the same time, India has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. — Ed.

⁴ *Information Bulletin*, No. 3, 1988.

⁵ Mikhail Gorbachov, *Perestroika. New Thinking for Our Country and the World*, Harper and Row, New York, 1987; Collins, London, 1987.

* *Information Bulletin*, No. 22, 1987.

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Sharing Benefits Together

A joint Interview by Nuclear Physicists From China, the USA and Japan

Humanity's progress towards the turn of this millenium is something more than a simple movement in time. This is a vast qualitative evolution taking us from industrial to technological society. Today we can no longer live with scientific and technological progress as we have known it for some time now, when things 'bigger' and 'better' were achieved at the expense of nature and mankind and at the unjustified price of a peril to their very existence. A WMR staff member has been discussing these problems and the chances of international cooperation in tackling them with Chiyoe Yamanaka of Japan, Director of the Institute of Laser Engineering at Osaka University, Chen Zezun, member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Robert L. McCrory of the USA, Director of the Laboratory for Laser Energetics at the University of Rochester.

THE striking industrial advances of the 20th century have been challenging the world with immensely perilous and even disastrous effects. This is so not only in the military but in the civilian sector, too. Some paper-and-pulp operation — and who could question its purely peaceful uses? — can harm man and the environment no less than some chemical weapons like Agent Orange. Or acid rain. And what about nuclear energy? People know, and not just from hearsay, that this fascinating discovery of our century can heal and kill, create and destroy, provide life-giving heat and light or unleash the all-consuming conflagration of nuclear war. How can we secure only its peaceful uses to the exclusion of all others?

Ch. Yamanaka. Coming from a nation which is the world's only one scarred by the atomic bomb, I'd like to say that military nuclear power is a monstrous mass destruction weapon and should be outlawed. We should be pressing for moves to make it non-existent at all. My research pursues the peaceful uses of atomic power. This is both a scientific and a social choice.

R. L. McCrory. I think that most people hope that the one thing the world does not want to do is to build more nuclear weapons. I think we all want to find a way to reduce the numbers of warheads. My country does, Mr Gorbachov does.

But peaceful uses of nuclear energy are no guarantee in themselves against accidents, like those at civilian nuclear power plants. What happened at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union in 1986 and earlier in 1979 at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, US, shocked not just the Soviet and American people; it was a common human tragedy.

Appropriately enough, I am thinking back to 'The China

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