regime in South Vietnam stand on its own and take the risk of defeat. The only other option, as Kissinger recognizes, was to resort to unlimited military escalation on the assumption that the war had to be won or lost by the United States. But Kissinger for one had ruled out such a perspective of American military victory years before.

Vietnamization did not have to be negotiated with North Vietnam. It was a means to get the United States out of the war, not to end the war between the Vietnamese. The United States could no more end the war between the Vietnamese by peaceful negotiation than by military force. Civil wars that go on for long and as ruthlessly as the one in Vietnam cannot be ended by a third party, which has paid so heavy a price for its interposition that it desperately seeks a way out. The negotiations in Paris, then, could not be about Vietnamization. They were undertaken to find a way to bring the war to an end and thereby save South Vietnam from the risks of Vietnamization.

We are now approaching the crucial point, which Kissinger does his best to obfuscate by hiding behind a screen of excess verbiage.

IN THE PARIS NEGOTIATIONS, Kissinger holds that one thing was not negotiable—the survival of the Thieu regime in South Vietnam. That was the affair of American honor, credibility, prestige. The negotiable issues were the conditions for American withdrawal, short of abandoning the Thieu regime to its own fate. But there was one hitch. Thieu himself, who knew best, believed that American withdrawal under any circumstances was tantamount to the abandonment of South Vietnam and his regime. He had never accepted Vietnamization, but he had played for time or had hidden his true feelings in such a way that even Kissinger was misled. Thieu had to be bludgeoned into going along with the final settlement in Paris; his resistance was so great that Kissinger calls it “almost maniacal.”²¹

²¹ “All his life, he too had known only war; his entire career had been based on American support. A world in which the South Vietnamese would have to stand entirely

What, then, made the settlement “honorable”? The entire case is essentially based on one point. Until the end of 1972, as Kissinger saw it, North Vietnam had always insisted that the United States should, directly or indirectly, abandon the Thieu regime and replace it with a North Vietnamese-controlled “coalition government.” Once this demand was withdrawn in October of that year, the way was open for a deal between the United States and North Vietnam, the former to withdraw all of its forces, the latter to leave its forces in South Vietnam in place. The “peace with honor” rested, in the last analysis, on the North Vietnamese concession that it was not necessary to overthrow the South Vietnamese government in advance as the price of a cease-fire. Once Thieu realized that the United States was determined, one way or another, to withdraw its forces from Vietnam, even threatening to make a separate peace, he capitulated to the inevitable.²²

But what if Thieu were right that his regime could not long survive the complete withdrawal of American forces? In that case, the withdrawal implicitly, if not explicitly,

on their own was full of terrors that his pride would not let him admit [p. 1320]. . . . We had no way of understanding the primeval hatred that animated the two sides [p. 1325]. . . . What was success for us—the withdrawal of American forces—was a nightmare for our allies; even with a cease-fire they simply could not imagine how they would be better off without us [p. 1372]. . . . The South Vietnamese, after eight years of American participation, simply did not feel ready to confront Hanoi without our direct participation. Their nightmare was not this or that clause but the fear of being left alone [p. 1375]. . . . We failed early enough to grasp that Thieu’s real objection was not to the terms but the fact of any compromise. . . . And from his point of view Thieu was right [p. 1391]. . . . Peace involving American withdrawal was a traumatic event for the South Vietnamese. . . . That his [Thieu’s] methods were obnoxiously Vietnamese, that in the process [of balking] he nearly wrecked our own internal cohesion, does not alter the reality that he fought valiantly, that he was right by his lights and the realities of what he knew of Hanoi’s purposes [p. 1467].”

²² Nixon's version is characteristically disingenuous. First, he relates (as does Kissinger) that he sent a message on December 19 to Thieu about his “irrevocable intention to proceed, preferably with your cooperation, but, if necessary, alone.” Because Thieu made known that he had been faced with an ultimatum, which he had rejected, Nixon says that he was “shocked” and “I felt we would now be justified in breaking with him and making a separate peace with Hanoi”—as if he had not already threatened to make a separate peace.

[LC]

sealed the government of North Vietnam the Thieu regime depended on military pressure and the agreement on a token of submission. Thieu’s survival depends, of course, on the agreement that he makes with the United States, rather than on the agreement that he makes with the Soviet Union, which, because it is direct American, he writes, “survive.” But something must be agreed to on the terms of the agreement, and that is the equilibrium on the battlefields of Vietnam. “Equilibrium” never more than a short time can last. Much of South Vietnam to be lost. By drop of the South, or the North, or the American, or the Soviet, or the Chinese, or the Japanese, or the English, or the French, or the German, or the Italian, or the Japanese, or the Chinese, or the Soviet, or the American, or the North, or the South, or the United States, or the United Nations, or the world, or the earth, or the sun, or the moon, or the stars, or the center of the universe, it is not to be agreed to, but to be agreed upon, that they took the decision to secede from North Vietnam, to form their own government in South Vietnam, to take the side of North or South, to be either the winners or the losers in the struggle, and to end the war by force.

²³ “Our consular general in Hanoi, a Vietnamese by birth, has been an alien to both understanding sides” (p. 132).

²⁴ Foreign A

250

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sealed the fate of the South Vietnamese government. If American honor depended on the Thieu regime's survival, and that survival depended on continued, indefinite American military presence in South Vietnam, the Paris agreement of January 1973 was no more than a token offering to American honor and Thieu's survival. Kissinger himself virtually admits that the peace terms gave the South Vietnamese government only a theoretical, rather than a practical, chance to survive because it lacked the will to do so without direct American military support. The terms, he writes, gave South Vietnam the means to survive "theoretically." The reality was something else: "But they did not of themselves provide the sinews of confidence and cohesion in Saigon to maintain the equilibrium which had in fact been achieved on the battlefield." Kissinger's use of the term "equilibrium" is almost always elusive and never more so than here; an equilibrium that left North Vietnamese forces in possession of much of South Vietnam was hardly calculated to last very long.

By dropping its demand for the dismantling of the South Vietnamese regime in advance, North Vietnam did pay "some price" for the American withdrawal. But, as Kissinger spends pages assuring us, only the demand, not the determination, was dropped. The price was no more than a face-saving device; it could not have been more so long as the survival of the Thieu regime depended on the presence of American armed forces. The wonder is not that the North Vietnamese agreed to drop their demand; it is rather that they took so long to do so. Kissinger finally came to see that Thieu and Tho (Le Duc Tho, North Vietnam's main negotiator) were alike in their tactics and behavior; they were also akin in that they understood each other better than Kissinger understood either of them.²³

It is not altogether clear whether Nixon and

Kissinger were deceiving themselves or deceiving Thieu. The problem arises because of something that Kissinger says was "inconceivable" to him at the time. It was the idea that the United States could not conceivably fail in months or years to come to make good the private assurances given to Thieu by Nixon that failure by North Vietnam to abide by the terms of the agreement would bring "swift and severe retaliatory action" and a response "with full force" by the United States. McGeorge Bundy has sufficiently shown how inconceivable it is that Kissinger should have found this idea "inconceivable."²⁴ The more intriguing question is: Why did Kissinger find it so inconceivable?

The answer is, I believe, that he was moved by a confusion of motives and forces, some of which is still reflected in his book. He rejected victory by military escalation. But from time to time he was willing to resort to a "military showdown" and thought that "going for broke" militarily should be seriously considered. He protests that "in all conscience," we could not impose "an unacceptable peace on our ally" and then tells in the most agonizing detail how he helped to impose a peace that our ally considered to be unacceptable to the point of near hysteria and tears of rage. He makes the American engagement in Vietnam a struggle over a principle—"that America did not betray its friends"—and ended the war in such a way that its friends cried to high heaven that they had been betrayed. He was dead set against "a disguised form of victory" for North Vietnam, but that is what he eventually settled for. To avoid a disguised form of victory it was necessary, in his view, for the United States to "enforce" the agreement (which he mistakenly calls a "treaty"), as if a country that had found it politically impossible to maintain its forces in Vietnam could find it politically possible to send them back *en masse* to prevent a North Vietnamese takeover or, more realistically, to drive out the North Vietnamese after a takeover. He even makes a return of American forces to Vietnam inevitable or obligatory because North Vietnam's "single-minded quest for hegemony, we were certain,

²³ "Our constant search for some compromise formula illuminated the cultural gap between us and the Vietnamese because the very concept of compromise was alien to both Vietnamese parties. We had no way of understanding the primeval hatred that animated the two sides" (p. 1325).

²⁴ *Foreign Affairs*, Winter 1979/80.

251

would continue after a settlement." Despite this, he pretends or deludes himself that the resolution of the Vietnamese civil war could have been left "to the free decision of the people" or amenable to "a genuinely free political choice by the people."

What has this jumble of inconsistencies, contradictions, vain hopes, and *non sequiturs* to do with the hard, cold doctrine of geopolitics?

The answer is that geopolitics had little or nothing to do with it. The real force that drove the United States out of Vietnam, Kissinger admits, was the popular American revulsion against the war. To obey the will of the people went against the grain; to resist it indefinitely was, however, impossible. The defense of "honor" and "prestige" could only permit a delaying, rearguard action. The decisive reason Nixon and Kissinger could not go along with Thieu to the bitter end was, as Kissinger puts it, that such a course "would have guaranteed the collapse of all remaining support at home." After Nixon's reelection in November 1972, "he was determined not to have his second term tormented like the first by our national trauma. . . ." One part of Kissinger, as he himself makes clear, sympathized with Thieu's position; another part recognized that the United States was tearing itself apart socially and politically on Thieu's behalf and could not go on doing so much longer. This duality more than anything else drives Kissinger into going over the ground of the Vietnam negotiations interminably, sometimes veering one way, sometimes another, never quite—I suspect—convincing himself or the reader.

In the end, American honor à la Kissinger could have been saved only if the United States had been able and willing to send back sufficient force to Vietnam to save Thieu from collapse in 1975. This is the *reductio ad absurdum* of Kissinger's entire argument. If the U.S.-North Vietnam agreement of 1973

could not be expected to last, it followed that the United States had to be ready to renew the war in Vietnam at any time, in months or years, at a moment's notice—and Kissinger warned Nixon in advance that this was the logic of their course.²⁵ And why did the logic fail to work in practice? Kissinger's answer is that all would have worked out as planned "but for the collapse of executive authority as a result of Watergate." This can only mean, if it signifies anything more than a rhetorical last gasp, that the United States without Watergate would have "enforced" the Paris agreement by all means in its power, including the use of its own forces. Nothing else could have sufficed if, as we were already told, the real problem was that the American withdrawal caused the South Vietnamese to lose "the sinews of confidence and cohesion"—that, in effect, American forces had to carry the burden of the fighting as the *sine qua non* of the Thieu regime's survival. Honor wasn't saved. Dishonor, if it is understood to mean Thieu's collapse, was merely delayed. A country that as a result of popular revulsion could not stay in Vietnam could not expect to get back, Watergate or no Watergate. As for geopolitics, it was a bad reason for staying in but one of the best reasons for getting out of Vietnam.

VIII

Finally, something more must be said about the question with which we started: How did Kissinger do it?

Unusual personal qualities undoubtedly had much to do with it. Energy, stamina, even "megalomania" made his extraordinary career possible. He managed to embody a singularly potent combination—a sense of mission with a streak of opportunism. His intellectual facility impressed and intimidated. Yet all these personal characteristics hardly account for the extravagant adulation that he inspired. His record was not such as to merit the overwrought acclaim it drew from the media. Perhaps his greatest feat was to beat the President's media machine at its own machinations.

Kissinger has lots of fun with the frenzied

²⁵ "Thus, we can anticipate no lasting peace in the wake of a consummated agreement, but merely a shift in Hanoi's modus operandi. We will probably have little chance of maintaining the agreement without evident hair-trigger U.S. readiness, which may in fact be challenged at any time, to enforce its provisions" (p. 1435).

efforts of opportunistic evening "bizarre Vatican; deliberate the anxiety "exposure" But Nixon for Kissinger supposed press." By Nixon celebrity, his celebrity notes to "White House" his White belated request was the title of ""cheerily Safire Kissinger megalomaniacal media, ac- flattering, staffers and rage."

Kissing that of Nixon getting the *polloi* on cultivated columnists the New wrote as him; he readers al to the C Vietnam.

²⁶ William S. White 1975), pp. 6-7.

²⁷ James Re.

²⁸ Marvin K. Little, *Brown to the way: Geo- bill"*, pp. 5-6.

[L]

252

efforts of Haldeman and Ziegler to get “photo opportunities” for the President on the evening television shows. He recounts a “bizarre interlude” at, of all places, the Vatican; a “monumental traffic jam” deliberately staged in the center of Belgrade; the anxieties of Nixon’s advance men to get “exposure in prime television time” in China. But Nixon’s publicity hounds were no match for Kissinger. Midway through his memoirs, Kissinger modestly remarks that “I was supposed to be skillful in dealing with the press.” By the end, as previously noted, he had Nixon brooding about his “new found celebrity.” Lest readers miss all the nuances of his celebrity, Kissinger refers in the book’s notes to “a good account” of the mood in the White House in William Safire’s memoirs of his White House years. It tells of Haldeman’s belated realization that “superstar” Kissinger was the President’s chief competitor for the title of “#1 Peacemaker.” Kissinger himself “cheerily professed to be a megalomaniac”; Safire cheerily offers the opinion that Kissinger was no more than a “realistic megalomaniac.” Kissinger’s approach to the media, according to Safire, was “selective and flattering,” and it drove the White House staffers nearly out of their minds with envy and rage.²⁶

Kissinger's approach was different from that of Nixon's retainers. They worried about getting the picture of their chieftain to the *hoi polloi* on television news shows. Kissinger cultivated the *haut monde* of Washington's columnists and correspondents. The dean of the *New York Times* columnists sometimes wrote as if Kissinger had been dictating to him; he was even lured into deceiving his readers about Kissinger's alleged opposition to the Christmas 1972 bombing of North Vietnam.²⁷ (Kissinger admits only to the fact

that he did nothing to counter the deception; it is “one of the episodes of my public life in which I take no great pride.”) Two of Kissinger's hagiographers somehow managed to link him with George Washington; gave him credit for “humanizing” the Kremlin readers for a whole generation of Americans; and paid him tribute for having “co-opted” many of his potential critics—including themselves, it may be added.²⁸ A usually sober British correspondent in Washington appointed him “the second most powerful man in America.”²⁹ Another writer, favored with some 25 interviews with Kissinger and two of his closest aides, went even further—he had Kissinger “in real measure running the world” during the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war.³⁰

Why did they do it? A full study of the way the usually disenchanted, hard-to-please Washington media mentality was wooed and won by Kissinger would be needed in order to get at the roots of this phenomenon. One factor should not be missed. Kissinger as an intellectual in politics captured the allegiance and excited the imagination of a journalistic elite that is itself largely made up of intellec- tuals manqués. By selecting them as his chosen confidants and flattering them with his assiduous attention, he made them feel closer to the seat of power than ever before. Nixon's publicity peddlers tried to sell him from the bottom up; Kissinger sold himself from the top down. In the end, Kissinger's power over the American media may explain more about how he did it than his power over anything else.

## Postscript

I WISH TO CALL ATTENTION to an aspect of Kissinger's book that concerns the use of classified documents and is nothing less than scandalous. The book contains literally scores of direct references to and textual quotations

²⁶ William Safire, *Before the Fall* (New York: Doubleday, 1975), pp. 666, 669-70.

²⁷ James Reston, *New York Times*, December 30, 1972.

²⁸ Marvin Kalb and Bernard Kalb, *Kissinger* (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1974), pp. 3 (“He has come to be recognized as the very portrait of American diplomacy, the way George Washington is identified with the dollar bill”), pp. 5, 544.

²⁹ Henry Brandon, *The Retreat of American Power* (New York: Doubleday, 1973), p. 22.

³⁰ Edward R. F. Sheehan, *The Arabs, Israelis, and Kissinger* (New York: Readers' Digest Press, 1976), p. 38.

[LC]

253

from documents obviously of the highest
classification. Some are only a sentence or
two, some much longer.

I wondered how Kissinger could make use
of classified documents on such a large scale
and of such recent vintage. If they had been
declassified for him, could I or any other
scholar have access to them? Could one check
up on how he used these documentary
sources?

So I wrote a letter of enquiry to the
Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs of the
State Department. I received a reply dated
January 16, 1980 from Deputy Assistant
Secretary for Classification and Declassifica-
tion Clayton E. McManaway. The essential
paragraph in his reply reads:

With regard to quotations from any classified
Department of State documents in the book,
the quotations themselves are declassified, but
not the remainder of the documents from which
the quotes were taken. References to or
paraphrases of Department of State documents
appearing in the book do not reflect a decision
to declassify those documents, nor do references
to DOS views, opinions or policy positions
reflect a decision to declassify any classified

documents underlying or setting forth those
views, opinions or policy positions.

In effect, only quotations were declassified,
documents were not. By means of this dodge,
no one else can gain access to these documents
to determine how faithfully Kissinger made
use of them. Most of Kissinger's quotations
come from the White House and National
Security Council documents. Only the State
Department so far has replied to my inquiries,
but no doubt the system in all is identical.

This system is a political and intellectual
outrage. It is or should be particularly
abhorrent to historians and other scholars. It
enables political figures to control the history
of their own deeds or misdeeds. No partial
quotation can be properly understood
without its context. Selective quotation is a
frequent source of distortion and even
falsification. The only remedy is to declassify
any document of which a part has been
declassified. What is declassified for one
should be declassified for all. Whether or not
the present classification system is good or
bad is not here the question; the real issue is
whether government officials should be
permitted to make a mockery of it. ☐

[Lc]

254

MARINE CORPS GAZETTE
QUANTICO, VA.
MONTNHLY 23,000

OCT 1980

Bull. E. B.

WHITE HOUSE YEARS. By Henry Kissinger. Little, Brown, and Company, New York, 1979, 1,521 pages. $22.50. (Member $20.25)

reviewed by Capt D. E. Curfiss

One cannot read this book without assuming the attitude of a student. Dr. Kissinger means to teach. What an amazing journey! This book is incredible for many more reasons than can be described in a short review. I have never learned so much about such a short era of history in so little time. Still, one must be ready to devote more than the normal reading time to this cumbersome book. There are spaces where it takes sheer perseverance to continue on to the end. Throughout the effort, though, I was amazed by the mind, the initiative, and the involvement of this one man. The insights into how our government is organized and mechanized are awesome. The lessons on statesmanship are worthy of a scholar. The history is current and interesting. And the care with which Dr. Kissinger keeps all at a level that the layman can grasp is notable.

Henry Kissinger obviously is somewhere near the top of the zigzag in regards to scholarship, statesmanship, and craftsmanship in international politics. I am not qualified to criticize his philosophies, abilities, or intuition. But I did feel throughout this multitudinous journey with Dr. Kissinger that what he has to say was important, candid, and thorough.

The more liberal readers of Dr. Kissinger's account may disagree with much that he has to say, and many already have or will accuse him of being inconclusive and evasive on certain critical and notable issues. If you are expecting to read this book as the answer to Cambodia (or as a defense against William Shawcross' Sideshow) do not read it. If you are looking for answers to Bernstein and Woodward's charges against Nixon in The Final Days don't waste your time. Although Dr. Kissinger tells us much about both these issues, he did not construct his memoirs to answer his critics. He did not intend this to be a Nixon administration polemic. One must also keep in mind that this book is more a record than an assessment. Nonetheless it is a wonderfully informative work and sure to be placed on the lists of America's important historical documents.

During the height of his era on

center stage as the globe-trotting diplomat, Dr. Kissinger once said that fame had given him a tremendous advantage. "One can be boring and the listener thinks it is his fault." This is certainly true for the reader as well. But Dr. Kissinger is a natural writer. He has an ability to describe the scene and the people around him that surprises one on occasion. Between large swaths of boring passages on the SALT negotiations, for example, you will find a wealth of remarkably and easily readable passages.

There are several themes to this book. The first is the insider's view of Presidential politics and the functioning of a staff bound to serve the interests of that powerful man in order to keep their jobs. I particularly enjoyed the chapter where the new regime steps in to take over for a fame-duck Lyndon Johnson. It is amazing to see how powerless a President becomes once he is only holding his chair awaiting the arrival of the President-elect. The Johnson administration was especially helpful to Dr. Kissinger as he began to build up his staff. They gave him carte blanche access to all the necessary information. Dr. Kissinger was himself surprised by this until he realized that no one who was not an appointed office holder was any longer interested in Lyndon Johnson or what he had to offer. The worker bees pigeon-hole anything that won't create immediate havoc during such a period.

Dr. Kissinger is not above court gossip either. During the last days of President Johnson's tenure he was invited to the oval office. He was excited and anticipated a stirring and important briefing from this President who had been so involved with the world situation. What he got instead was a most quotable quote about a fear, genuine or imagined, of the media:

> He launched into a long soliloquy about the war in Vietnam. He urged that we apply military pressure and at

the same time pursue serious negotiations; he did not describe precisely what he had in mind for either course. He advised me to ensure that the bureaucracy was loyal; he had been destroyed, in part, he thought, by systematic leaking. "I have one piece of advice to give you, Professor," he said, and I leaned forward to profit from the distilled wisdom of decades of public service. "Read the columns," he added, "and if they call a member of your staff thoughtful, dedicated, and any other friendly adjective, fire him immediately. He is your leaker." I left the Oval Office determined to do my utmost to spare the new Administration the heartache and isolation of Johnson's waning days.

Another underlying theme is Dr. Kissinger's presentation of the kind of diplomacy necessary in the post-Cold War, post-containment era of geopolitics. His planning was toward geopolitical strategy. He wanted to establish a diplomatic theory of relativity so that incentives or pressures around the world could influence each other and significant events would tie world areas together. Dr. Kissinger feels that America has to realize its power limitations. Diplomacy and power cannot be separated. He thinks that our mission is the guardianship of the equilibrium of power throughout the world. For his book, we get not only a concept of diplomacy through the eyes of one of the most significant molders of our diplomatic posture in recent history, but the business of diplomacy as well.

This book is a defense of U. S. actions in the Vietnam War and Cambodia. It will help you understand why the Nixon administration handled the Shah the way it did. Agreement or disagreement are left to the reader's own judgment. All in all it is a fine work. Dr. Kissinger's assessment of people, places, and political psychologies are notable. He does a tremendous job of explaining why China was ripe for reopening and is frightening when he analyzes the Russian political mind. At any rate, it is an educational experience that all of us can gain much from, for Dr. Kissinger's is definitely the voice of experience.

I wish you luck as you embark on this journey with this book. It is well worth the countless evenings, but you will want time to devote to other serious matters and a lighter diversion before you begin your next semester with Professor Kissinger.

Marine Corps Gazette † October 1980

63

SHIPMATE
ANNAPOLIS, MD.
MONTHLY 15,000

SEP 1980

# Lucky Bag of Books

## White House Years

by Henry Kissinger. Little, Brown, and
Company. 1,521 pages. $22.50, 48 pages of
photographs.

This book should be required reading for anyone who expects to advance beyond lieutenant commander. It tells, better than anything else published so far, how the decisions are made that commit our nation's fighting forces. It is a well-written and readable text on practical diplomacy, the pitfalls, methods, and stresses of bargaining for our country's future.

Kissinger has little respect for the State Department bureaucracy. Timid, fearful of a mistake, desperate for a consensus position, ready to leak the most secret and vital information for a temporary bureaucratic advantage, the State and Defense civil service might not scare the Russians (to borrow Wellington's lines) but they should scare hell out of the rest of us. Kissinger believes that the only solution is a strong executive able to clamp down and dominate the bureaucracy.

The terrifying description of uncontrolled State Department negotiation, where the objective is always compromise on our side and no compromise from our Communist adversaries, should throw some light on present problems. Every compromise to "middle ground" introduced by our side becomes at once our new most extreme demands, with our antagonists expecting us to compromise again to new "middle ground," each time yielding more and more of our desired position. With "conciliation" preached on all sides, our unilateral surrender is leaked and headlined in the *New York Times* as heralding a new era of understanding.

Congress and particularly Senator Mike Mansfield come out a close second to the State Department as a hazard to our national health. Kissinger describes a muscling of all past Secretaries of State to oppose one of Mansfield's hair-brained moves to cut unilaterally our troops in Europe without any corresponding removal by the Soviets. He says that this was the first time in his public life that Nixon would have the Establishment, which he both revered and despised, whose approbation he both cherished and scorned, on his side.

Kissinger's description of Nixon is probably the characterization that will live in the history books. Kissinger found in him an insight and understanding of in-

ternational reality, a great sense of timing, and an ability to act resolutely, with a kind of desperate courage, in the national interest as he perceived it. But he had a reluctance to engage in face-to-face confrontations, to give direct orders, to discipline his subordinates, or, in fact, to disagree openly with any advocacy. This led him into an endless guerrilla war to circumvent his own subordinates. Kissinger describes him as a lonely, tortured, insecure man.

While Nixon didn't exert the strong control that would enable maximum use of bureaucrats who, if unchecked, seize every opportunity to advance their own private and parochial beliefs, he did exhibit that other virtue of the Chief Executive, the ability to hew out clearcut objectives and to leave the details to subordinates competent in such details.

There are some great quotations in this book, quotations that could well be taken to heart by anyone aspiring to be a successful President. On treating a crisis:

> "Passivity in a crisis leads to a mounting impotence; one is forced to react on issues and in contexts contrived to one's maximum disadvantage. By contrast, the side that has the initiative can occupy its opponent's energies in analysis. And since the opponent will always assume the worst contingency, even relatively minor moves can have a major cautionary effect, unless they are so pallably bluffing as to encourage contempt. For maximum effectiveness one's actions must be sustained; they must appear relentless, inexorable; hesitation or gradualism invites an attempt to test one's resolution by matching the commitment."

And further, "In my view what seems 'balanced' and 'safe' in a crisis is often the most risky. Gradual escalation tempts the opponent to match every move; what is intended as a show of moderation may be interpreted as irresolution; reassurance may provide too predictable a checklist and hence an incentive for waiting, prolonging the conditions of inherent risk. ... He [the leader] must be prepared to escalate rapidly and brutally to a point where the opponent can no longer afford to experiment."

Since this obviously requires some believable military power, Kissinger was a distressed observer of the Mansfield, Church, McGovern attacks on new weapon systems and defense funding.

Kissinger saw great dangers in relying

on "goodwill" to achieve any sort of agreement with the Soviet leaders, men who reached their eminence by the cold elimination of rivals who were also colleagues. He feared an erosion of distinctions between us, a decay of convictions, as American and Soviet leaders were portrayed in easy camaraderie. He points out that no period of coexistence with the Soviet system has proved permanent. On the other hand, crusading confrontation would exhaust our country and create unending international tensions. He advocates learning to live with the geopolitical challenge of the Communist powers, maintaining a global balance of power to block Soviet expansionism.

He says, "The management of a balance of power is a permanent undertaking, not an exertion that has a foreseeable end. . . . If equality of power is perceived, it will not be tested."

This requires an adequacy of conventional arms since confrontation cannot depend on nuclear exchange. We cannot again enter distant global challenges, as we did in Korea and Vietnam, unless we intend to pursue these challenges to a conclusive result. We must have the strength to protect our security and we must face the moral necessity of avoiding nuclear war.

He describes the U.S.-Russian position: "The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision. . . . Of course, over time even two armed blind men in a room can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room."

On Soviet responses, Kissinger exclaims, "It seems to me more useful, therefore, to view Soviet strategy as essentially one of ruthless opportunism. No chance of incremental gain must be given up [by the Soviets] for Western concepts of goodwill. . . . It is up to us to define the limit of Soviet aims. . . . A ponderous bureaucratic machinery and the complexity of collective leadership makes it rare that Soviet foreign policy shows great brilliance or even quick responses to fast moving events."

He points out that CIA activities under the old, less strict control of covert operations were aimed at supporting the security of our country, while the new doctrine justifies unlimited intervention to

Shipmate, September 1980

37

promote internal changes that not only do not promote our national security but may in fact be aimed at harming allies and supporters.

Kissinger states that Marxism in developing nations does not establish any sort of economic policy but serves rather as a formula for social mobilization and justification for absolute political power. Democracy has no appeal for leaders who have no intention of making themselves dispensable after struggling into supremacy.

And this superb description of superpowers at work:

> "Neither of the leaders having achieved high office through their mastery of detail, the only agreement they could reach at this point was on the untrustworthiness and inadequacy of their bureaucracies. 'If we leave all the decisions to the bureaucrats we will never achieve any progress,' said Nixon. 'They would simply bury us in paper,' Brezhnev assented happily."

It seems obvious that we have permitted individuals ignorant of history, not well supplied with common sense, and lacking the humility to comprehend anything not labeled as "fashionable" to decide matters of supreme importance to all of us. Whether the faceless horde of bureaucrats willing to accept and advance any senseless theory proposed by the self-appointed "elite," or those elected amateurs in Congress who subordinate national advantage to local politics, or the *New York Times* breed of newspapers, cast solid in a concrete mold of certainty, the actors in our national drama have mostly favored their private concerns, not our long range national well-being.

This quotation on the beginning of our Vietnam blood letting is an appropriate illustration:

> "When the Kennedy Administration sent those 16,000 advisors to Vietnam, I remember asking Walt Rostow, then Director of the Policy Planning Staff of the State Department, what made him think

> we could succeed with that number when the French had failed with several hundred thousand. . . . The French, he explained, as if teaching the alphabet to an illiterate, did not understand guerrilla warfare; they lacked the mobility of American forces."

If you want to know the problems, read the book. I must apologize if it threatens a long-held distrust of Kissinger, as it did for me. We do writhe at the death of our prejudices. The style is highly readable, with flashes of wit, frequently appealingly self-deprecating. This book will present a real problem for the died-in-the-wool Kissinger haters, who seem to be about equally divided between the doctrinaire liberals and the unyielding conservatives.

Cary H. Hall '40
Capt. USN (Ret.)

The Alumni Association records are the only ones anywhere that cover the Academy, service and civilian careers of our alumni. It is therefore important for historical and biographical purposes that they be as complete as possible, and all alumni who have not done so recently are urged to provide an updated biography for our records.

## New Navy Music!

SET SAIL is a stunning new two-record album of 39 musical selections performed by the Naval Academy Band, Glee Club, and Drum & Bugle Corps. Covering a period of more than 200 years of Naval history, they include Sea Chanteys, Naval Academy Fight Songs, Marches, Barbershop and Wardroom Songs.

Recorded with exciting performances and the finest in stereo sound!

Only $14.38 postpaid
(Maryland residents please add 5% tax)

U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Assoc.
Alumni House
Annapolis, MD 21402

38

Shipmate, September 1980

MRBOOKS

**WHITE HOUSE YEARS** by Henry Kissinger. 1,521 Pages. Little, Brown & Co., Boston, Mass. 1979. $22.50.

Of the many memoirs and analyses of the Nixon administration, Kissinger's volume covering his years as national security adviser is the outstanding historical contribution to date. The Harvard military intellectual who saw the globe in geopolitical terms, Kissinger understood power and equilibrium in the world. He knew the "linkage" of policies and never made light of image and honor. With Nixon, he molded a coherent strategy out of a perception of permanent national interest.

This volume covers the momentous foreign policy events of the Nixon first term—the historic opening to China, the Moscow summit and the protracted negotiations ending the Vietnam War. Historical frames surround Kissinger's astute renderings of Chou, Mao, de Gaulle and other world leaders. In these portraits, he captures the human and symbolic beneath the political animal. But more is encompassed here than great events and actors. This memoir is comprehensive for the period, tying all significant strands of foreign policy into a framework of historical trends. Kissinger presents acute judgments of the Cabinet and White House teams and domestic figures who influenced policy.

The most fascinating reading is Kissinger's secret trip to Peking in July 1971 to prepare the ground for one of the geopolitical shifts of the century—the rapprochement of Communist China with archimperialist America. Kissinger's chronicle of the negotiations with the North Vietnamese is enlightening and will frustrate revisionist historians. A

pandemic "end the war now" cynicism in Congress and the national media undercut US bargaining positions one by one. Kissinger documents the sequence with care. Time and again, the Nixon administration was whipsawed between the conjoining demands of Hanoi and the domestic critics. But, by 1972, troop withdrawals, the approaching end of the draft and the initiatives with China and the Soviet Union had disarmed the critics while isolating Hanoi. The North Vietnamese spring offensive failed. Peace with honor came. It could have endured, Kissinger says, but for the collapse of executive authority as a result of Watergate.

Kissinger's military judgments are balanced. Westmoreland fell into "the trap of substitution of logistics for strategy," but labored under political restrictions that "barred any of the major maneuvers that might have been decisive." For NATO policy, the "Come home, America" sentiment of these years was almost fatal. Senator Mansfield's annual attempt, in 1971, to cut the divisions in Europe was defeated only after Nixon called together a star diplomatic-military array from wiser times. Acheson, John McCloy, Lucius Clay, Lyman Lemnitzer and others issued a strong NATO statement that turned even *The New York Times* around, and the Mansfield Amendment was defeated.

Kissinger's sober look into the world of power is a corrective to the idealistic tradition in American foreign policy. That tradition eschews power as evil. Idealists see evil in America's exercise of its great power since World War II and are baffled by the consequences of "coming home." Thus, the Soviet seizure of Afghanistan surprised a later, idealistic adminis-

90

September

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BOOKS

tration. Kissinger notes Bismarck's dictum: "A sentimental policy knows no reciprocity."

America has not been at peace with itself since the fall of Saigon and will not be until vigorous historical debate occurs. That debate must set clear the causes of the political defeat in Vietnam and illuminate the course to be set if Americans expect freedom to survive in a world turned upside down by Soviet advance and American disarray. Unquestionably, this inside narrative of American foreign policy by a major participant will be a text for the debate of the 1980s.

John Romjue, Historian, Headquarters, US Army Training and Doctrine Command

CALLING A TRUCE TO TERROR: The American Response to International Terrorism by Ernest Evans. 180 Pages. Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn. 1979. $19.95.

Ernest Evans, a research associate at The Brookings Institution, has written a concise and highly readable analysis of the emergence of contemporary terrorism. By virtue of his own personal scholarly interest, the author focuses the content of his book on the use of terror by revolutionary substate groups out of power (nonstate actors) rather than states.

The book is divided into two parts and includes four appendixes that provide valuable information regarding terrorist incidents and United Nations documents on terrorism. The first part deals with the problem of international terrorism. In the introductory chapter, the author defines and subsequently discusses terrorism as one of four "ideal-type" strategies—coup d'état, insurrection, guerrilla war and terrorism—whereby a group out of power can effect violent social change.

Evans then presents six factors which he considers to have given impetus to the causes of terrorism in the post-World War II period. By then discussing specific tac-

tical goals that a strategy of terrorism seeks to accomplish, Evans further restricts the definition of terrorism. The impact that terrorism has made on the international system concludes part one. The author contends that when the international community perceives its interest are seriously threatened, it has reacted forcefully to certain manifestations of terror.

The second part of the book is devoted to American policy response to international terrorism. The author is primarily concerned with demonstrating that to obtain effective multilateral action against terrorism, the United States must be prepared to conduct terrorist negotiations in a political rather than in a humanitarian sense. Using the same "carrot and stick" inducements in negotiations on terrorism that are used in other types of negotiations would allow the United States three possible areas in which multilateral action could be taken against terrorism. These areas are bilateral accords, action by the Western nations to strengthen existing accords and regional accords.

This is a very timely book, most interesting and reflects an in-depth research effort. It is a significant contribution to the expanding literature in the field of terrorism and is extremely useful to both the student of terrorism and to the general reader.

Lt Col (P) James B. Motley, Study Analysis and Gaming Division, Joint Chiefs of Staff

FINLAND IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: A History and an Interpretation by D. G. Kirby. 253 Pages. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, Minn. 1979. $19.75.

The term "Finlandization," disappointed by the author, nevertheless symbolizes the unique and precarious situation in which the Finns have found themselves since their defeat by the Red

1980

91

MILITARY REVIEW

army in 1944. As events in Afghanistan have reminded us, any weak neighbor of the Soviet Union is a potential victim of aggression, and that alone is sufficient reason to warrant our concern and understanding. This scholarly and informative little book is a welcome addition to the scanty English-language coverage of the exceedingly complex history of modern Finland.

The author obviously tried—successfully, in most instances—to maintain a detached objectivity in discussing issues which are passionately subjective to many Finns. Where he failed was in apparently attributing benign motivation to Soviet foreign policy.

For example, on page 121, he declares that during the negotiations prior to the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939, "the Finns would not shift on the issues of vital concern to Soviet security, the establishment of bases in the Gulf of Finland and the readjustment of the frontier on the Karelian isthmus," without even mentioning the ominous implications of those demands for Finnish security—that is, abandoning their main defense line on the isthmus and permitting Red army units to outflank Helsinki.

Likewise, on page 133, he notes that Molotov demanded from Hitler in November 1940 "a free hand" in dealing with Finland. However, that ambiguous phrase is less revealing than Molotov's actual language, "a settlement on the same scale is in Bessarabia" (which had just been annexed by the USSR that year).

Other flaws include the noticeable absence of documentation for certain controversial assertions. But the book does contain a wealth of valuable data and analyses on both the domestic and foreign affairs of Finland, a nation which has had more than its share of turmoil during its brief existence as an independent and democratic state.

Allen F. Chew,
Combat Studies Institute, USACGSC

THE EVOLUTION OF SOVIET SECURITY STRATEGY, 1965-1975 by Avigdor Haselkorn. 139 Pages. Crane, Russak & Co., N.Y. 1978. $9.95 clothbound. $4.95 paperbound.

The collective security system the Soviet Union has developed among the nations along its periphery could have a major impact on future US strategy. This system, according to the book's author, Avigdor Haselkorn, was developed during the period 1965-75 and may provide a clue to better understanding the reason behind the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The author contends the system developed as a result of a Soviet perception that there was collusion between China and the West, with the resulting possibility of a two-front war.

Three security subsystems have been developed: the Warsaw Pact, the Middle East/Mediterranean area and the South Asia/Far East region. The author details many of the activities both within and between the various subsystems. He finds that there are three basic types of mutual support missions that are, or could be, performed within the overall security system: logistic support—bases, equipment, military advisers, and so forth; defensive support—the threat of military intervention by one subsystem in support of another; and offensive support—options where the system could be used to conduct military operations against an outside enemy.

The author develops his thoughts by looking at the various political-strategic actions the Soviet leaders have taken during the 1965-75 time frame—the massive Soviet internal military buildup and the development of external deployment forces—and by detailing the various mutual support activities that have occurred between the various subsystems.

After developing his thesis, Haselkorn concludes by describing his views of how the West has failed to understand Soviet objectives and strategy. One conclusion is:

> ... there is a tendency to conceive of

92

September

Book Reviews

The Real War

Richard Nixon. New York: Warner
Books, 1980. 320 pp. Maps. Ind. $12.50
($11.25).

Reviewed by Thomas H. Etzold

Thomas H. Etzold, professor of strategy at the
Naval War College, writes and reviews
frequently on topics of defense and diplomacy.

In the tradition of Frederick the
Great and George Washington,
former President Richard Nixon has
composed a political testament com-
prising political-strategic admonition,
moral exhortation, and professional
"tradecraft." World War III, Mr.
Nixon believes, began with the
movement of the Red Army into East-
ern Europe as World War II drew to a
close. It continues to this day, a
struggle that has become the first
truly global and total war in history.
Its outcome will, he argues, set the
direction of future world history.

With this book, Mr. Nixon hopes
to mobilize the American people—
their morale and resolve—for a great
struggle with Soviet power. "Laxity,"
as he writes, "is the affliction of the
comfortable, and this is why every
past civilization that has achieved
comfort has been destroyed by another
less advanced. Our task is to make
sure that this does not happen to us."
Mr. Nixon's concern rests in part on
his interpretation of Vietnam's politi-
cal effects. "The war in Vietnam was
not lost on the battlefields of Viet-
nam. It was lost in the halls of Con-
gress, in the boardrooms of corpora-
tions, in the executive suites of foun-
dations, and in the editorial rooms of
great newspapers and television net-
works. It was lost in the salons of
Georgetown, the drawing rooms of

the 'beautiful people' in New York,
and the classrooms of great univer-
sities. The class that provided the
strong leadership that made victory
possible in World War I and World
War II failed America in one of the
crucial battles of World War III."
Americans have come to doubt the
uses of power, but the real lesson of
Vietnam, and of World War II, is
that "unless we learn to use it effec-
tively to defend our interests, the ta-
bles of history will be turned against
us and all we believe in."

Although much in this book will
sound familiar to specialists in in-
ternational relations and security af-
fairs, individual points will interest
even the well-informed reader. The
chapter on the nature and uses of mili-
tary power shows particular strength.
Among other things, it sets out Mr.
Nixon's definition of that elusive
term, strategic superiority: "In our
hands it was the safety margin that
ensured that the Soviets would not
risk a nuclear exchange in pursuing
their goal of world domination. In
Soviet hands it becomes the margin
that enables them to proceed with
local aggression without expecting a
massive nuclear response." Mr. Nixon
also stresses the intimate connection
between economic policy and foreign
policy, between the national economy
and the national security. It remains
all too common, in informed discus-
sion and even in government, to deal
with defense concerns and economic
policy in isolation from one another.

President Nixon concludes by ad-
vocating a combination of traditional
containment ideas with a concept of
détente, the hallmark of his adminis-
tration's strategic outlook. "Contain-
ment, the task of resisting Russian
expansionism, must remain the sine
qua non of U. S. foreign policy, for if
we do not present the Soviets with
penalties for aggressive behavior, they

will have no reason to be deterred
from it. And détente, an attempt to
avoid possible fatal miscalculations, to
reduce differences where possible
through negotiation, and to provide
positive incentives for the Russians
and Chinese to cooperate with us in
maintaining a stable world order, is
only good sense in the nuclear age."

In all, this book contains much sen-
sible advice and a perspective deserv-
ing of serious consideration. Men and
women in uniform who would like to
contribute to public understanding of
issues important to them might well
buy three or four copies of this book as
gifts for friends and relatives. In an
election year, such a gesture might
well constitute one of the most effec-
tive civic actions open to a military
professional.

White House Years

Henry Kissinger. Boston: Little, Brown,
1979. 1,521 pp. Illus. Maps. Ind. $22.50
($20.25).

Reviewed by Major John C. McKay,
U. S. Marine Corps

A graduate of the Naval Academy and
commissioned in the Marine Corps, Major
McKay has been awarded the Bronze Star, the
Navy Commendation, and two Purple Hearts.
He has been selected to attend the Marine Corps
Command and Staff College, Quantico, VA.

Memoirs and histories share a cer-
tain commonality: they both reflect
the representation and interpretation
of certain facts. The memoir serves
chiefly as a vehicle to demonstrate the
participation of the individual in cer-
tain circumstances. The writing of
history, however, should go further by
illustrating and evaluating the signifi-
cance of these facts in the overall con-
text. Secretary of State Kissinger's
book, *White House Years*, the first of a
two-volume work, is definitely in the

*For details on ordering books and special
prices see the Book Order Service note in the
Books of Interest department.

Proceedings / September 1980

95

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NASA

Dr. Kissinger, left, has occupied positions—in this 1972 photograph, he was Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs—which afforded him a unique vantage point.

former category. But by virtue of Dr. Kissinger's position during the four years covered in *White House Years*, history—history in the making if you will—is the skeletal support on which the integumentary memoir rests.

The obtuseness of Dr. Kissinger's previous works, such as *American Foreign Policy* (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), is singularly lacking in *White House Years*. Yet, the intellectual grasp and in-depth understanding are still readily apparent in *White House Years* which is written in a clear, enjoyable style. But academic credentials, intellectual sophistication, literary talent, and an affinity for high positions in government do not in and of themselves assure a purpose, nor the validity of a particular work, especially one of this size and scope.

Dr. Kissinger has occupied positions which afford him a unique vantage point from which to comment on, analyze, evaluate, and perhaps even prognosticate the probable (or desirable) course of events in a broad strategic sense. But with *White House Years*, because of the proximity of events described, hindsight is a luxury we are not allowed to indulge in. Nevertheless, one is prone to question the details—and there is a plethora of

detail—that will remain unconfirmed for sometime to come. Because of the wide range of political and diplomatic events covered in Dr. Kissinger's book, from President Nixon's first inauguration to his announcement of the Paris Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam, there are bound to be more revelations not exactly in consonance with what Dr. Kissinger has told us. Thus, we have a memoir cum history, but the history remains naked on two counts: certain facts lack veracity, and the significance of the events covered are not evaluated in the context of geopolitics.

On a mundane level, the book offers fascinating descriptions and character portraits of a large cast of personalities. These are most certainly interesting and they do add an element of humanism to a prodigious work. But, a question of purpose arises. Are these short, though often lucid, portrayals sincere accolades of respect, or are they written in some utilitarian vein? Likewise, the vignettes offered by Dr. Kissinger provide relief from weighty topics. These reveal something of the author: his sense of humor and his ability to reflect a human side; but they are sparse oases in the complex geopolitics to which Dr. Kissinger tries to bring a sense of continuity, consistency, and purpose. And it is on this level, rather than the mundane, that the book must eventually be judged.

The book must be evaluated in the light of the formulation and execution of grand strategy; judged by the ability of the author to implement a consistency in our foreign policy. More than any individual since World War II, Dr. Kissinger brought to Washington a sense of need for consistency in American foreign policy. In addressing the challenges encountered during his tenure as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs—to end our involvement in Vietnam, defuse the Middle East situation, initiate SALT I, and carry out the foreign policy objectives of President Nixon—Dr. Kissinger attempted to erect the framework on which consistency could be maintained and through which grand strategy could be practiced. Although the

will and the means were there, the personalities of the individuals who could affect this scheme caused failure. The "back channel" modus operandi of the administration, in general, and Dr. Kissinger, in particular, led to distrust and divisiveness where the challenges required candor and solid unity. Petty in-fighting with Secretary of State Rogers, for example, often takes on as much importance as Russia's implacability or Le Duc Tho's intransigence. Dr. Kissinger obliquely acknowledges that the means to the end were inappropriate and self-defeating. Yet, Dr. Kissinger does possess a unique understanding and knowledge of foreign policy and the requirements it must serve.

Perhaps the conceptual framework needs modifying in order to provide the consistency. External pressures and challenges are only one part of the equation; internal pressures, to which a large portion of this book is devoted, are at least equally important. In the known aftermath of President Nixon's second inauguration, one may see a premature end to Dr. Kissinger's efforts at consistency, though the success or failure of implementation cannot be judged from this volume: Dr. Kissinger has not favored us with an analysis. Perhaps the second volume will provide more substance on this theme than has this first one.

## A Most Fortunate Ship

Tyrone Martin. Chester, CT.: Globe Pequot Press, 1980. 300 pp. Illus. Ind. $17.95 ($14.35).

Reviewed by Major Eric Steinbaugh, U. S. Marine Corps

During his career, Major Steinbaugh has been assigned to several cruises on board the USCGC Eagle (WIX-327). He is currently in the English Department of the Naval Academy, and is coauthoring an anthology of sea poetry.

Probably no other ship has become more endeared to generations of Americans than the USS Constitution. "Old Ironsides" has become more than a ship—she has become almost human. Her story is not a fairy tale of

96

Proceedings / September 1980

EMBASSY OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Belgrade, Yugoslavia

May 22, 1980

Dear Clarence:

It was, to say the least, interesting to hear from you
after so many years.

I struggled through the Chomsky "review" of Henry's
book, and concluded confirmed in my earlier belief that
he (Chomsky, not Kissinger) is neither a serious scholar
nor balanced individual. Asking him to review The White
House Years is about equivalent to inviting Adolf Hitler
to do a balanced review of Das Kapital. Words and phrases
like "deceit," "vapid," "scandalous," "pathetic attempts
at self-justification," "(Kissinger's) murderous conduct
of the war" (can a war ever be less than murderous?),
and "absurd 'geopolitical' fantasies" may be vivid, but
they are hardly scholarship.

Kissinger's book deals with a lot more than Viet Nam,
painful and tragic as that period was for all of us
(a claim to a degree of humanity for Kissinger, myself
and others of our ilk that I know Chomsky would dispute).
Yet Chomsky's review rants on at great length about
Viet Nam, and spends little time and no analysis on
anything else.

It is useless to waste time commenting on the details
of the "review." Better would be to suggest you read
the book -- if you haven't already -- and then make your
own judgments. The "if Chomsky is only half right"
comment of yours, by the way, also takes me back to
the McCarthy days, when I so often heard, "if McCarthy
is only half right, then . . ." (you can fill in what
inevitably followed).

I'm afraid I find a much closer association between
Chomsky and McCarthy than between Kissinger and the
Senator. There is the same intolerance for contrary

Mr. Clarence Karier,
College of Education,
Department of Educational Policy Studies,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
360 Education Building,
Urbana, Illinois 61801.

MAY 29 1980

- 2 -

opinion, the same substitution of violent adjective for
thought, and the same pathological delight in character
assassination.

I learned my lesson in 1950; I have also learned
since that the right has no monopoly on the McCarthy's
of this world. But Chomsky adds one other interesting
quality to an already obviously perverted personality --
a positive delight in wallowing in the sins of the United
States. It comes through time and again in his "review"
that we are not only no better than some of contemporary
history's least nice people; we are, by Chomsky's lights
even worse, and he loves it. Blind and naive as I may
be, and wrong as I know we Americans can sometimes
be, I still believe we are that corny last best hope of
mankind. So, I have no "light" to see and no "price to
pay" for an association with Henry Kissinger that I will
always value, and remain proud of for the rest of my
days.

Yours,

Lawrence S. Eagleburger
Ambassador

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [LC]

College of Education
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY STUDIES
360 Education Building
Urbana, Illinois 61801
(217) 333-2446

May 15, 1980

Ambassador Larry Eagleburger
American Embassy
Belgrade
Yugoslavia

Dear Larry:

I was just reading Noam Chomsky's rough draft of his review of Henry Kissinger's *White House Years* and I couldn't help but recall your rather close association with Kissinger. My thoughts went back to our college days when we used to argue over Joe McCarthy and how vigorously you use to support him. I also recalled how later on down the track you finally saw the light and tried to get the young Republicans to censor him and as a consequence you had difficulty with government clearance for foreign service. You paid a price then for taking a public stand on your beliefs.

I'm enclosing a copy of Chomsky's review with the thought that you might be interested in reading it. I cannot help but feel if Chomsky is only half right then your association with Kissinger might reasonably be compared with your earlier support of Joe McCarthy but then you may yet see the light. I do wonder, however, even if you did, would you now be willing to pay the price? The stakes, of course, are much higher.

I hope this note finds you in good health and spirits.

CJK:p1
Enc.

Review of Henry Kissinger, *White House Years*, Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1977

[LC]

In a study of Kissinger's foreign policy written before his memoirs appeared, Seyom Brown describes Kissinger as "the arch practitioner of the razzle-dazzle, 'can do' American pragmatism," his performance "a brilliantly executed series of improvisations," perhaps "more shuttle than substance." The 1500-page memoirs, covering Nixon's first term, confirm that assessment. Many pages are devoted to what Kissinger calls "philosophy" ("The statesman's responsibility is to struggle against transitoriness and not to insist that he be paid in the coin of eternity," "to strive, to create, and to resist the decay that besets all human institutions") and to the lessons of history ("there can be no peace without equilibrium and no justice without restraint"); 55). The discussion throughout is as vapid as these examples suggest. Our goal is "peace and justice" (70), "a global equilibrium" (192), "to find a trajectory toward a world where no one had ever been" (809). The statesman must struggle "to rescue some permanence from the tenuousness of human foresight" (747). The text is sprinkled with such words as "paradoxical" and "ironic." It would be a mistake to think that behind this lies some subtle "conceptual framework" or global design. Rather, Kissinger's memoirs give the impression of a middle-level manager who has learned to conceal vacuity with pretentious verbiage.

"Equilibrium was the name of the game," Kissinger explains (764). But what is "equilibrium,"? "Equilibrium" is secured by thwarting "Moscow's geopolitical ambition (764); "we would not ignore, as our predecessors had done, the role of the Soviet Union in making the war in Vietnam possible" by "massive supplies to North Vietnam" (133, 121) -- a reasonable stance, on the assumption that the United States owns the world. Still another threat to "equilibrium" was "Soviet aggressiveness in the Middle East" (801), as when anti-aircraft systems and military personnel were sent to Egypt after Israeli bombing deep inside Egypt using U.S.-supplied phantom jets. Other illustrations include "proxy wars by India and Syria" (1255), Hanoi's refusal to make peace on Kissinger's terms, Allende's electoral victory in Chile, all "facets of a global Communist challenge" (594). In the face of this

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global Soviet challenge, Washington must "strengthen security in an international system less dependent for stability on permanent American intervention" (765), [1014] or "the bulwark of free peoples everywhere" [43] in Guatemala, the Philippines, Chile, Iran, Indochina, the Dominican Republic, etc.

From many such passages, the meaning of "equilibrium" emerges clearly: it increases or declines as U.S. dominance of the global system increases or declines. Any such decline is part of a global challenge orchestrated by Moscow (or earlier, Peking; in 1969, Kissinger "still considered the People's Republic of China the more aggressive of the Communist powers" [173]). The problem we face is that the USSR is intent on "waging a permanent war for men's minds," "mocking the traditional standard of international law that condemns interference in a country's domestic affairs" by sponsoring "upheavals, revolutions, subversion" with no concern for "Western concepts of goodwill." They understand only "self-interest," so that there is no point in appealing to a sense of moral community" (117-125). They are so different from us, in these respects.

The world, unfortunately, sometimes falls to understand. Thus as "American self-doubt" became "contagious" in the 1960s, "European intellectuals began to argue that the Cold War was caused by American as well as by Soviet policies" (57), while "a vocal and at times violent minority" in the U.S. challenged "the hitherto almost unanimous conviction that the Cold War had been caused by even "alleged that our Soviet intransigence" alone (65). Critics sometimes [argue] [that] [our weapons] programs triggered Soviet responses rather than the other way around" (199).

We should learn, however, from the Cuban missile crisis, where Kennedy established "a psychological balance" so that some progress was possible (126); elsewhere, Kissinger notes that "Kurushchev's humiliation in Cuba was one cause of his overthrow two years later" and that "the Soviet Union, reacting in part to its humiliation in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, had undertaken a massive effort to augment its military strength across the board" (196-7). "Psychological balance"

equals "humiliation of the Soviet Union." U.S. military intervention and subversion [LC] contribute to "stability."

Our "malaise" is so deep that it requires not "expertise" but "philosophy," because of which the "ominous change" in the nature of power. "The capacity to destroy proved difficult to translate into a plausible threat even against countries with no capacity for retaliation"; power has "turned abstract, intangible, elusive" (66-7), as the peasants of Indochina can testify.

One should not try to assess such pronouncements, which abound, as if they represented some effort at analysis of contemporary history. Kissinger's conception of the U.S. role in the world is encapsulated in his criticism of pre-Kissinger policy as "oscillat[ing]" ...between optimistic exuberance and frustration with the ambiguities of an imperfect world" (57); the U.S. role, by definition, is invariably to overcome these imperfections. These are simply the effusions of someone with no understanding of history and no interest in it.

As in his academic writings, Kissinger reveals himself to be an unquestioning advocate of the use of American power to establish global dominance, a person who can be assigned the management of this power by others who are concerned with the real motives for its exercise, a question that is outside Kissinger's purview.

Kissinger claims that prior to his involvement in policy formation, there was no geopolitical tradition in the U.S., where "By 'geopolitical' I mean an approach that pays attention to the requirements of equilibrium" (914). This geopolitical concern for equilibrium, as history shows, usually suggests "siding with the weaker to deter the stronger" (915) -- which does not imply that the USSR should side with Vietnam or Cuba to deter the U.S. It is, of course, sheer nonsense to claim that Kissinger introduced the concept of "geopolitics" to American foreign policy. Others, who are concerned with fact, understand the concept in more rational terms. For example, *Business Week* (28 Jan. 1980) calls for a "revival of geopolitics," noting that 30 years ago "Washington planned protection of vital raw materials through intensive intelligence and military contingency operations," just an earlier (and realistic) analysis (7 April 1975) explained how "Fueled

initially by the dollars of the Marshall Plan, American business prospered and
expanded on overseas orders...No matter how negative a development, there was
always the umbrella of American power to contain it...The rise of the multinational
corporation was the economic expression of this political framework," though
"this stable world order for business operations is falling apart" in the mid-1970s.
But there are no such lapses in Kissinger's orations. The Marshall Plan, for
example, merely "expressed our idealism" (61), just as "American moral leadership"
did throughout the postwar period (380), with its utopian ideal.

Kissinger admires Bismarck's maxim that "courage and success do not stand in a
causal relationship; they are identical" (905). Courage, as he has explained in
his academic writings and illustrates throughout these memoirs, is the willingness
to smash opponents incapable of retaliation and to face up to the risks of an armageddon, for example, in
"going to the brink over Pakistan" (1293). He explains how "we might
inculcate habits of moderation" in the Soviet leadership (1204); this, immediately
following his prideful account of the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong and the
extensive use of B-52s in the densely-populated Mekong Delta and elsewhere in
the South ("bombing and mining had greatly improved Hanoi's manners" (1303),
demonstrative
that "only the fear of resumed military operations would keep Hanoi
on course"; 1431). The bombing was initiated in the full expectation that the
Russians would cancel the planned summit, a fact that does not deter Kissinger
from castigating the media for their similar assessment (1200, 1191). It is
not difficult to manifest "courage" of this sort when the enemy is too weak to
strike back and one trusts that others will not be insane enough to
respond with similar "courage."

While Kissinger has nothing to say about the goals or framework of policy, he
treats the reader to extensive detail on such world-shaking topics as the theory
of negotiation, the styles of various political leaders, their ranking on the humor
quotient, and so on. Throughout, he describes his masterful handling of negotiations
and his victories in single-handed combat over his tormentors, from "Ducky" (Le

Duc Tho) to university presidents and academic colleagues, who repeatedly reveal their illiness in his rendition of their interventions.

Kissinger's The reader's eye (brilliance is perhaps tempered slightly by account of a Russian report of) a Russian interpreter who reprises (Brezhnev's comparable achievements, which) recalls "Dean Acheson's famous dictum that no one ever lost a debate in a memorandum of conversation dictated by oneself" (1208).

Only in conversation with "the Colossus of de Gaulle" does Kissinger falter, and in an interesting manner. Kissinger attempts to explain to de Gaulle the U.S. must continue to pound Indochina because of a sudden withdrawal might give us a credibility problem." "Where?" de Gaulle asks. "The Middle East," Kissinger suggests. "'How very odd,' said the General from a foot above me. 'It is precisely in the Middle East that I thought your enemies had the credibility problem'" (110). One wonders whether de Gaulle left it at that, or proceeded further to demolish Kissinger's rationale for destroying Indochina. In any event, Kissinger records no response, and in fact nowhere explains how American "credibility" was secured by his murderous conduct of the war, though he repeating about one argument on analysis that the purpose was to establish a credibility, "in order to make it clear for the people of Indochina..."

Kissinger has been accused of treating the war in Cambodia, obviously enflamed by his initiatives despite pathetic attempts at self-justification, as a "sideshow."

His memoirs reveal that the characterization is largely correct: the war was extended to Cambodia to help achieve U.S. aims in South Vietnam; and "Cambodia was not a moral issue" (his emphasis; 515). But the criticism is too limited. Vietnam too was a "sidewhow." Not only for Kissinger, but his predecessors. For Kissinger, the war was fought to establish "credibility," and for his predecessors, "to show that the 'war of liberation'...is costly, dangerous and doomed to failure" (General Maxwell Taylor, February 1966) and to prevent a "domino effect," namely, the danger that social and economic successes in Indochina might cause ("the rot to spread"). There might have been a monitoring effect, and throughout the U.S.-dominated system, the only record of planning clearly showing Kissinger, of

["6.", "[L]", "course, merely repeats standard patriotic speeches: \"Our predecessors had entered in innocence, convinced that the cruel civil war represented the cutting edge of some global design\"; \"our entry into the war had been the product...of a naive idealism that wanted to set right all the world's ills and believed American goodwill supplied its own efficacy\" (226, 230). In fact, in the 1940s analysts clearly understood that in aiding France they were combating the nationalist movement of Vietnam, and despite later pretense, the clearer-headed (field operations coordinator of the U.S. Operations Mission John M. Paul Vann) always understood that this was true in South Vietnam, at least until U.S. might had succeeded in demolishing the society. Idealism and goodwill played as much of a role as they did when Russia invaded Hungary. Kissinger's account, which would embarrass a moderately well-informed high school student, cannot even maintain consistency. Thus we read that the Vietnamese have \"little sense of nationhood\" though \"they have fought for centuries...to determine their national destiny\" (231, 274).", "What is perhaps more interesting is Kissinger's complete failure to comprehend the dynamics of the Cold War. He says (and probably believes) that \"we became involved because we considered the warfare in Indochina the manifestation of a coordinated global Communist strategy\" (64). He also reports, correctly, that when the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia, \"they did so amid a smokescreen of accusations against the United States, West Germany, and NATO for 'interfering'" (116). Much the same is true when the USSR now invades Afghanistan, just as the U.S. was defending freedom from a global Communist conspiracy when it overthrew the government of Guatemala or invaded the Dominican Republic. The Cold War has been highly functional for the superpowers in mobilizing popular support for intervention in what they take to be their own domains, appealing to the threat of a powerful global enemy. But all of this is far beyond Kissinger's comprehension or concern.", "In his efforts to achieve \"equilibrium,\" Kissinger was beset by enemies on every hand, not only from within, but also the bureaucracy, Congress,"]

the media, his academic colleagues, arms control specialists, the young (who were not really) encouraged by modern psychiatry and the radical chic rhetoric of upper middle-class suburbia, overcome with despair over the "metaphysical despair of those who saw before them a life of affluence in a spiritual desert" (297, 299), the American public, and finally the world. During the 1972 Christmas bombings, a noble effort to achieve peace, "Not one NATO ally supported us or even hinted at understanding our point of view" (1453); "world opinion was oblivious to Hanoi's transgressions" and believed Hanoi "to be the victim of American 'oppression' when it had started every war in Indochina since 1954" (1425). This interesting fact 1500 pages do not suffice to provide any evidence for this repeated and essential claim. Again, it would be pointless, in this context, to enter into a detailed discussion of the actual facts -- say, the U.S. subversion of the 1954 Geneva Accords (Kissinger is outraged over Hanoi's "flagrant violation of the Geneva Accords" 18 years later; 1115), the massive U.S.-backed assault against the anti-French resistance in the South late 1950s, the U.S. bombing of the South in the early 1960s, the full-scale invasion of the South before there was evidence of the presence of any regular North Vietnamese forces, the successful overthrow of the government of Laos in 1958 after a Pathet Lao electoral victory, etc., etc. These Facts are plainly irrelevant to this style of discourse, and Kissinger never asks why the world was so oblivious of his version of them: that our "war to resist aggression had turned into a symbol of fundamental American evil" (56), unaccountably.

The most terrible enemies were the Vietnamese -- North and South. The "diplomatic style" of Hanoi was "maddening," with its "almost morbid suspicion and ferocious self-righteousness...compounded by a legacy of Cartesian logic," contrasting with the American style, based on "the American belief in the efficacy of goodwill and the importance of compromise" and "an ethic of tolerance" (259). Our client associates were "egregious," "despicable," and "outrageous" (1326, 1358), generating

8.

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in Kissinger "that impotent rage by which the Vietnamese have always tormented physically stronger opponents" (1327). Their methods were "obnoxiously Vietnamese," specifically, Thieu's "egregious, almost maniacal, tactics and his total insensitivity to our necessities" (1467). He applied "to us the elusive tactics Vietnamese reserve for foreigners" in an effort "to grind us down" (1322), just as Hanoi "sought to grind us down" (1329). In the real world context, remote from Kissinger's story, it was the Americans who were "grinding the enemy down by sheer weight and mass" (pacification chief Robert Komer); Kissinger, of course, saw none of this -- from his visits to Vietnam he recalls only "idealistic Americans working under impossible conditions to bring government and health and development to a terrified and bewildered people" (230). Americans, in their naïveté and idealism, were "ever unequal to the complexities of Vietnamese psychology" (1375). "Whether in making war or peace, Vietnam seemed destined to break American hearts" (1445). Even the Vietnamese language, "with its finely shaded meanings quite beyond our grasp," was an enemy (1325). By the end, Kissinger is virtually frothing at the mouth over the "arrogance" and "insolence" (his favorite word) of Vietnamese on all sides. The basic colonialist, indeed racist attitudes can no longer be concealed, as his frenzy mounts.

A man of deep sensitivity, Kissinger is appalled by the lack of compassion revealed by his domestic enemies (who were numerous: "all the press, the media and intellectuals have a vested interest in our defeat"; 1390) -- though there were occasions on which some of the press was "compassionate" (293, 1011).

The doves, he writes, "have proved to be a specially vicious Kidd of birds"; there was "no civility or grace from the antiwar leaders" (295).

The "most poignant fate" was visited on Robert McNamara, demoted to the rank of head of the World Bank (295). Walt Rostow was "mercilessly persecuted"; "not reappointed to his professorship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology" (2); he received a full professorship at the University of Texas. The example is typical of Kissinger's difficulties with the real world. True, Rostow was not reappointed --

9.

[Lc]

by a political science department no less hawkish than he. In fact, a group of antiwar students and faculty did initiate an inquiry to determine whether an issue of academic freedom arose, on the grounds that war criminals have a right to teach. But it quickly became obvious that Rostow's wartime record could hardly have been a factor in his rejection by his colleagues, who were not quite "antiwar leaders." Not even the most trivial example escapes Kissinger's mania for falsification.

Others too deserve "compassion," specifically, the Shah, "a pillar of stability in a turbulent and vital region". He was a "dedicated reformer" who was undermined by his successes" while "wrestling perhaps with forces beyond any man's control" (as contrasted, say, with the leadership in Indochina after the great peacemaker had completed his work). The Shah "understood that the dangers to Iranian independence had historically come from the north," and he was not from England and the United States. He had been restored to the throne in 1953 by American influence [sic] when a leftist government had come close to toppling him" (the Mossadegh government was "leftist," by definition, by virtue of the decline in "equilibrium" caused by its moves towards independence). He then pursued his "noble aspirations", though, to be sure, some of the methods were "unworthy of the enlightened goals." If the Shah was "authoritarian," this was "in keeping with the traditions, perhaps even the necessities, of his society." The "most implacable opposition" to him, as we see from the events of 1978, was narrowly based: landowners, mullahs, and "radicals." "Nor can it be said that the Shah's arms purchases diverted resources from economic development"; the U.S. simply tried "to match the influx of Soviet arms into neighboring countries" (1258f.).

As always, Kissinger wisely refrains from offering any evidence for his pronouncements, which, in this case, pass beyond his usual ignorance.

The factual record shows that the Shah's enlightened policies were a disaster for

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the great mass of the rural population and the urban poor, and that vast resources
were squandered while the government was still relying on foreign aid.
help of the huge Nixon-Kissinger program of recycling petrodollars by pouring
arms into the hands of the "guardian of the Gulf," with consequences that are well-
known. There is barely a phrase in Kissinger's account that rises above absurdity.

Kissinger describes how he visited Teheran after leaving Moscow, comparing
the grim atmosphere there with Teheran, where he "felt almost a physical sense of
relief" because of "the warm goodwill was tangible" and the visit "humanly
engaging," not dampened by the misery of poor peasants driven to urban slums or
by "a history of torture which is beyond belief" in a country with perhaps the
worst human rights record in the world, according to Amnesty International at about
the same time. His conclusion is that we should now show compassion -- to the Shah, not his victims. "The least we owe him is not retrospectively
to vilify the actions that eight American Presidents -- including the present
incumbent -- gratefully welcomed," such as murder, torture, and vast robbery
and corruption. We will "impress no one by condemning him now" -- at least no one
who counts, excluding, for example, Iranians or others in the Third World. As for
the possibility of examining our own record in applying "influence" to place this
tyrant on his throne, establishing and training his dreaded secret police, providing
the means for massive repression to end of his bloody rule, creating an economy
that squandered vast wealth while perpetuating, sometimes intensifying misery and
impoverishment -- that question, needless to say, does not arise.

It also goes without saying that no compassion is recommended for the beneficiaries of Kissinger's efforts to maintain "equilibrium" and "credibility" in Indochina, Chile, Bangladesh or elsewhere.

Kissinger's noble endeavors to achieve peace and justice are framed by the
Indochina war. The first challenge he faced was the "unprovoked offensive" launched
by Hanoi in February 1969 with "extraordinary cynicism," violating the "understanding"
reached the previous November when the U.S. ceased the bombing of the North (but
the bombing was in fact intensified).

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Hanoi did not stop to test the "professions of intent" of the new Administration, but moved at once "to step up the killing of Americans" (239-42). The story ends when Kissinger finally compelled Hanoi by massive force to accept peace on his terms, ~~after which he would have left~~ office, had his great achievement not been undermined by Watergate and renewed North Vietnamese aggression.

It was the "unprovoked offensive" of February that justified the "secret bombing" of Cambodia from March 1969, "after prayerful consideration" (253); then, as ~~at the time of the April 1970 invasion, "The precipitating issue was the~~ Communist sanctuaries from which the North Vietnamese had tormented our forces" (459), who, obviously, had every right to be in South Vietnam to "defend" the population, as they had been doing since U.S. forces began to engage in bombing of villages, defoliation, and forced population removal in the early 1960s, ~~the population at Hanoi~~.

A look at the facts reveals, as usual, a rather different story. Let us begin with the events of 1968-9. According to the Kissinger version, after the November bombing halt (redistribution, to be more exact), General Abrams undertook new tactics: he "concentrated on protecting the population" (236). Turning to the real world, Averell Harriman, who was U.S. negotiator in Paris, testified before ~~Congress that in October-November 1968, Hanoi's withdrawal of~~ Hanoi's withdrawal of 90% of its forces from the northern two provinces (Kissinger asks in early 1969: "Why did the NVA [North Vietnamese army] units leave South Vietnam last summer and fall?"; 238).

permitted General Abrams to move forces to the region near Saigon) to "strengthen our position there." ✓ The American command shifted to Abrams' new concept of "total war," with more aggressive tactics (aimed at the VC "infrastructure" and main forces).

By February, the rate of American-initiated contacts had increased 100%, U.S. military officers) reported with much gratification, thereby confirming Harriman's opinion that the February offensive was a response to U.S. actions. "Allien officials concede that the enemy offensive may be in part a reaction to this added pressure," along with the "accelerated pacification campaign"

12.

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(Terence Smith, "New U.S. Tactics Intensified Fighting," *NY Times*, 23 March 1969).

What of the "accelerated pacification campaign"? After the "bombing left," the U.S. command launched several campaigns of the fiercest campaigns of the war against the population of the South, for example, Operation SPEEDY EXPRESS in the Mekong Delta province (10 December 1968) of Kien Hoa, where there appear to have been no North Vietnamese troops, and where the "infrastructure" of the indigenous NLF, which was almost totally controlled the province, was decimated at a cost of thousands of civilian casualties by "a relentless night and day barrage of rockets, shells, bombs and bullets from planes, artillery and helicopters," along with B-52 attacks (some targeted on villages), defoliation, and ground sweeps that rounded up the population and sent them to prison camps (Kevin Buckley, head of the Saigon bureau of *Newsweek*). Or Operation BOLD MARINER, launched in January, which drove some 12,000 peasants from the caves and bunkers in which they had endeavored to survive constant U.S. bombardment, after which the land was levelled with artillery barrages and Rome Plows to ensure that nothing would grow in an area where the dikes had long been destroyed by U.S. bombing. Reporting from the Mekong Delta -- far from the "unprovoked offensive" -- Peter Arnett reported that the "conflagration...is tearing the social fabric apart"; as in "free-fire zones, the Americans could bring to bear at any time the enormous firepower available from helicopter gunships, bombers and artillery...fighter-bombers and artillery pound the enemy positions into the gray porridge that the green delta land becomes when pulverized by high explosives" (*NY Times*, 15 April 1969); he estimates that 90% of the "enemy forces" were locally recruited; other estimates are still higher). There were massive casualties, including the civilians who were being "protected" by the new tactics. Not a word about any of this appears in Kissinger's account of the "unprovoked offensive" launched with such "extraordinary cynicism" by Hanoi, justifying the "secret bombing" of Cambodia.

Kissinger's selective account is natural, on the assumption that the South Vietnamese were the only ones to be able to launch any attacks. It appears to be common to Kissinger and many

13.

of his critics. For example, in a critical review of the memoirs in the *NY Times* (11 Nov. 1979), Barbara Tuchman dismisses his anger over the "unprovoked offensive" on the following grounds: 1. "Is an offensive supposed to be bloodless? Is there something peculiarly shocking about killing enemy soldiers in war?" Kissinger says. 2. "Is it inappropriately indignant," she feels, saying nothing about the savage intensification of U.S. attacks in the South (regularly, against South Vietnamese civilians) that preceded the "unprovoked offensive."

What about the sanctuaries along the border from which the "North Vietnamese" were "tormenting our forces"? Sihanouk once referred to "the cynicism of the United States executive" in describing "our resistance" as "'foreign intervention' on our own soil." "Where then should our liberation armies go," he asked: "To the United States"? "Have the United States aggressors, through some operation of the Holy Ghost, become pure-blooded Indochinese?" The U.S. forces, of course, had sanctuaries extending from Guam to Thailand from which they battered all of Indochina. In fact, forces trained and organized by the U.S. had been attacking Cambodia from sanctuaries in South Vietnam and Thailand from the late 1950s (not to speak of an abortive CIA-backed coup in Phnom Penh in 1958), and increasingly from 1964, with many civilian casualties, especially in the South. The enormous U.S. military operations in South Vietnam in early 1967, aimed primarily at driving out the population, no doubt also drove many into Cambodia, where they became "North Vietnamese," the technical term for Vietnamese who did not follow American orders. It is interesting that as late as May 1967, after these operations, the Pentagon expressed concern that Cambodia was "becoming more and more important as a supply base -- now of food and medicines, perhaps ammunition later." The North Vietnamese forces in the South were drawn into the war -- exactly as U.S. planners had anticipated -- when the U.S. attacked the North in August 1964 and systematically from February 1965, simultaneously initiating far heavier systematic bombing of the South and a full-scale invasion. But according to Kissinger, North Vietnam had ruthlessly invaded Cambodia in setting up

14.

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"sanctuaries" along the borders, and many of his critics ~~agree;~~ Tuchman, for example, states that "the North Vietnamese were unquestionably the first to violate the neutrality of Cambodia -- as the Germans were of Belgium in 1914!"

If one accepts Kissinger's ~~unargued premises~~ and to organize its clients to attack Cambodia, as ~~many of his critics~~ to attack Cambodia from the late 1970s ~~and~~ many of his critics evidently do, then one might conceivably make a case for the "secret bombings" of sanctuaries from which American forces were being "tormented." It is the premises, however, which are cynical beyond description.

I have placed the phrase "secret bombings" in quotes for a reason. Kissinger asserts repeatedly that Cambodia never "claimed that there were Cambodian or civilian casualties" (249), that ~~unpopulated~~ "SECRETLY the border regions attacked were "unpopulated" (247), and that Sihanouk never objected to American bombing of Cambodia (250, and elsewhere). In fact, on March 26, a week after the ( Secret ) began, the Cambodian government condemned the bombing and strafing of "the Cambodian population living in the border regions...almost daily by U.S. aircraft," with increasing numbers of people killed and material destroyed, alleging that these attacks were directed against "peaceful Cambodian farmers" and demanding that "these criminal attacks must immediately and definitively stop..." At a March 28 press conference, Sihanouk emphatically denied reports that he "would not oppose U.S. bombings of communist targets within my frontiers," adding that "Unarmed and innocent people have been victims of U.S. bombs," including "the latest bombing, the victims of which were Khmer peasants, women and children in particular." He appealed to the press "to publicize abroad this very clear stand of Cambodia -- that is, I will in any case oppose all bombings on Cambodian territory under whatever pretext." The appeal was in vain. The bombs were "secret" in the sense that the media kept them secret; Sihanouk's statements have yet to appear in mainstream books or journals in the U.S. ■

On 3 January 1970, Sihanouk's government -- recognized by the U.S. -- issued an official声明 that it was not involved in U.S. and U.S.-client attacks on

Cambodia up to May 1969, including 5149 air attacks, with dates, places, casualties, photographs, etc. There was no mention in the U.S. press, to my knowledge, though the facts were readily available. [12]

The belief that these areas were virtually unpopulated," always untenable, was exploded by the reports of U.S. correspondents who entered Cambodia with the attacking U.S.-GVN forces in April. [13]

U.S. correspondent T.D. Allman reported in the *Far Eastern Economic Review* that in February 1970 a border area that Nixon and Kissinger describe as one of the most dangerous sanctuaries, he could find no Vietnamese, though "United States aircraft violate Cambodian air space and bomb and strafe Cambodian territory" regularly, causing many casualties. There are many similar eyewitness reports, all studiously ignored in this "history," and also by many of Kissinger's critics. [14]

These "oversights" are typical. Writing of Laos, also allegedly subverted and ruthlessly invaded by Hanoi with no provocation, Kissinger observes that "early in 1970 Laos briefly became the focal point of our Indochina concerns" because "A North Vietnamese offensive was threatening to overrun northern Laos" (451). He reviews the "history," which he says "is of some importance." A few things are missing, from the successful American effort to undermine a political settlement in the 1950s to the massive U.S. bombing in the late 1960s directed against the civilian population of northern Laos and intensified under Kissinger -- in yet another falsehood, he states that U.S. actions were accurately reported by the media, which in fact suppressed eyewitness reports of the bombing by Jacques Decornoy of *Le Monde*. Kissinger also forgets to mention that the "North Vietnamese offensive" restored the territorial division that had existed from 1964 to August 1969, when the CIA mercenary army swept through the area after the bombing of the civilian society that also escaped notice.

Kissinger's further claim that "the number of North Vietnamese

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troops stationed in Laos had risen to 67,000" by 1970 (450) when repeats a claim that in a Nixon speech of 6 March 1970 was a joke among the press corps in Vientiane (where I happened to be at the time). The standard U.S. estimate for some time had been 50,000 troops; Nixon's revised estimate was an attempt to substantiate charges about a "North Vietnamese invasion." But he had neglected to inform U.S. intelligence of this new influx of troops, so that the American military attaché in Vientiane was still repeating the 50,000 figure. As the head of the Time-Life bureau in Indochina, D.S. Greenway wrote, "The President's estimate of North Vietnamese troop strength in Laos was at least 17,000 higher than the highest reliable estimate in Vientiane, including the estimates of the Americans themselves." The 50,000 figure also merits comment. It does not distinguish forces in northern Laos (where the "invasion" took place) from those in the south, an extension of the Vietnam war. It does not distinguish combat troops from support and communication units, which military observers in Vientiane estimated at about 3/4 of the North Vietnamese force, not surprising since all supplies, including food, had to be brought through a heavily bombed area. It also might be recalled that U.S. planes bombing North Vietnam from Thai sanctuaries had been guided from American outposts in Northern Laos, quite apart from the earlier history of subversion that Kissinger ignores. In fact, Arthur Dommen, an American specialist in North Vietnamese on Laos, estimated that one combat regiment of North Vietnamese troops was available in northern Laos in 1968. There is a mass of relevant evidence on the topic, but what is striking is that in reviewing the "important" history Kissinger mentions literally none of it, just as he excises the entire American role.

Let us turn next to Kissinger's "peace." According to his version, the massive bombing of North Vietnam in 1972 drove Hanoi to accept a peace plan in October. However, even more favorable to the U.S. than "the terms we ourselves had put forward for two years" (1392). But after the November presidential election, Hanoi refused to negotiate with typical insolence, so the U.S. had to carry out the Christmas tasking to compel them to accept U.S. terms in January. As always,

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Kissinger wisely avoids the available documentation (such as the texts of the October and January agreements or his handwritten public analyses of them at the time). But even from the scattered and self-serving excerpts he selects, it is obvious that his story can hardly be taken seriously.

Space prevents a detailed analysis, but the basic facts are easily documented. The U.S. position had been that the GVN (Government of Vietnam, which, as Kissinger remarks, had been "put into office by a coup organized by our predecessors"; 1013), must remain as the government in the South, after which "free elections" might be held under its auspices; engagingly, Kissinger observes that "whoever controlled the government would win" (1031; see also 1311). The 1962 program of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF) demanded a share (which would no doubt have become the dominant share) in the governance of South Vietnam, which was to form a neutral zone with Laos and Cambodia, following "an independent, sovereign foreign policy" and proceeding towards "step-by-step reunification" as agreed in the 1954 Geneva Accords.

Naturally, the U.S. rejected any such idea, since it knew that its clients could not survive political competition in the South. The central provision of the October 1972 agreement was that there are two administrations in the South, the GVN and the PRG (the former NLF), which are to proceed to a political settlement in the South, then to reunification with the North. By agreeing to this formula, the U.S. abandoned its long-term program of imposing the rule of the GVN on South Vietnam.

Since the U.S. was obviously delaying, Hanoi announced the terms of the agreement on October 26. Kissinger then appeared on television to announce that "peace is at hand." A careful reading of his statement, however, revealed that he was rejecting the central element of the agreement: that the PRG is parallel and equivalent to the GVN in the South. Obviously, peace was not "at hand." Kissinger then attempted to modify the agreements in various ways, leading to the Christmas bombing after which the U.S. signed a treaty in Paris which differed in only the most

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insignificant respects from the October agreements -- which Hanoi had been
urging the U.S. to sign throughout the period when Kissinger claims that in their
insolence, they were refusing to negotiate.

This, however, is only half the story. Exactly as in October, though more
explicitly, Nixon and Kissinger announced at once that they were majoring on the
agreement that they signed in Paris in January. The treaty itself was based
on the principle that the GVN and PRG were parallel and equivalent parties and that
"Foreign countries shall not impose any political tendency or personality on the
South Vietnamese people." But the White House summary stated that "The government
of the Republic of (South) Vietnam continues in existence, recognized by the
United States, its constitutional structure and leadership intact and unchanged."
Nixon announced that the U.S. would continue to recognize and support the GVN
as "the sole legitimate government of South Vietnam." Its constitutional structure,
in an unamendable article, identified this government as representing all of
Vietnam and stated that "Every activity designed to propagandize or carry out
communism is prohibited" -- so much for the guaranteed open political competition
of the treaty. To dispel any doubt, the Thieu regime announced at once that it would
repress by force any support shown for the second of the two parties in the South.
Furthermore, it did so, and as all serious observers agree in essence
that the GVN went on the offensive in 1973 while the "enemy" responded in 1974.

In short, the text of the agreements of October and January represented a major concession by Kissinger, whereas theRENOWNED-TOBE primary previous commitment, which the interpretation of the text provided by Kissinger and Nixon maintained their long-standing commitment to impose the rule of the U.S. client regime in the South in defiance of the scrap of paper signed in Paris, leading to renewed warfare largely initiated by the U.S.-GVN and the over throw of the U.S.-imposed regime. A very different story from the one that Kissinger relates, but a story with the virtue of accuracy, and one that is documented and quite obvious to anyone who thinks whose eyes were open.

["19.", "Kissinger was aided in his deceit by the fact that the media (acceptably) the text itself. Thus the basis was laid for great indignation when there was a military response to the GVN land-grabbing operations, which (through) U.S. officials were proudly announcing (in early 1974). From the actual history, the Christmas bombings emerge as simply another chapter in a long history of murderous cynicism.", "The truth can even be disentangled from Kissinger's obfuscation. Thus, Kissinger reports a letter from Nixon on October 19 stating that (as the GVN "must survive as a free country" (sic), backing Kissinger's message to Thieu that \"the government we have recognized [the GVN] is the government of the Republic of South Vietnam and its President\" (sic; 1369, 1353). The reason for Kissinger's rejection of the treaty he signed was the familiar one; as Ambassador Bunker told Nixon and Kissinger on August 31, 1972: the GVN \"fear that they are not yet well enough organized to compete politically with such a tough disciplined organization\" (1324). Kissinger notes that he thought at the end \"that Saigon [the GVN], generously armed and supported by the United States, would be able to deal with moderate violations of the agreements\" (1359), though Watergate foiled this plan; nothing is said about the US-GVN violations which demolished the treaty in 1973, in accordance with Washington's clear rejection of its terms. On January 6, Nixon stated that \"he would settle for the October terms\" (1462), destroying Kissinger's rationale for the Christmas bombings, as does the text of the January treaty itself. Kissinger concludes by noting that on January 21, Thieu requested \"some unilateral statements by the United States that we recognized Saigon as the legal government of South Vietnam,\" which \"was consistent with our interpretation of the agreement,\" though flatly inconsistent with its text (1470) And so on.", "As usual, Kissinger has succeeded in establishing his version of the Western audience's military history. Thus, the British Michael Howard, reviewing the memoirs in the"]

20.

Times Literary Supplement (21 Dec. 1979), writes that "Those who opposed the [Christmas] bombing of Hanoi have not yonvincingly shown how else the North Vietnamese could be brought to negotiate."

[LC]

[Occasionally] Kissinger lets drop hints] that at some level of awareness he understood the true nature of the American war. The problem we faced was that our enemy was "fighting on familiar terrain," fighting a political war against our military war (232). The basic problem we faced was "psychological": "How does one convince a people that one is prepared to stay indefinitely 10,000 miles away against opponents who are fighting in their own country?" where "the Viet Cong infrastructure undermined the South Vietnamese government in the populated countryside," while the North Vietnamese "tempted our forces to lunge into politically insignificant areas" (232-3). By 1969, after seven years of American attacks against the rural population and four years of all-out war, the U.S. embassy in Saigon "estimated that a Communist infrastructure still existed in 80 percent of the hamlets" (236) -- though by then, much of the population had been "urbanized" by American military force. Kissinger asked an interagency committee "How do we know what the infrastructure is that we've destroyed?" (434) -- that is, the social organization of our South Vietnamese enemy, still survived, despite our attack? Another problem was that the army we organized in the South (ARVN) "would rapidly suffer desertions and loss of morale" if moved out of its home region, while the "North Vietnamese" could "hide in the population" (989-90); "attrition is next to impossible to apply in a guerrilla war against an enemy who doesn't have to fight because he can melt into them" (34; his emphasis). Worse still, ARVN "only rarely" had "conducted major offensive operations against a determined enemy," confining itself to "usually unopposed sweeps of the countryside in support of pacification" (992, 1002), attacks on the civilian population of the South. "The North Vietnamese hiding in the population and able to choose their moment for attack wore us down" (1005), referring to the pre-1968 period, when, as all agree (even Kissinger), the "enemy" was overwhelmingly South Vietnamese. Even

though U.S. force had succeeded in "improving the military position of our ally," [LC] "Thieu and his government were simply not ready for a negotiated peace" (1046, 1323). From 1966 to 1969 a scattering of statements of this sort, the truth emerges, despite Kissinger's heroic efforts to conceal it.

Throughout, Kissinger's memoirs keep to a comparable intellectual and moral level. Thus, he explains the "tilt" to Pakistan at the time of the atrocities in East Pakistan (which, it appears from his account, the U.S. never criticized, even in private) on the grounds that it was necessary to maintain the secrecy of the trip; however, it was not delayed by several months (854). Putting aside the hypocrisy of this argument, why was it necessary to maintain secrecy? As he makes clear, China did not approve -- indeed, it was much annoyed (740, 742). The only explanation for the secrecy is that the crucial "razzle-dazzle" would have been lost without it. So much for the massacres.

Kissinger defends his efforts to subvert Chilean democracy on the grounds that the anti-Allende vote" in 1970 was 62.7% (653), however, that the Christian Democratic vote (approximately equal to Allende's) went to a left-wing candidate "whose program differed from Allende's largely on procedural points and in his sincere dedication to the democratic process" (665). Thus the vote for Allende's program was actually two-thirds. As for Allende, "by definition his would be the last democratic election" (655), a pronouncement in blissful disregard of the fact that democratic elections continued under Allende, though never under the brutal regime that overthrew him in a U.S.-backed coup. A further proof that Allende was a committed totalitarian is that "various measures taken by Allende's government were declared to be unconstitutional and outside the law by the Chilean Supreme Court" (683) -- so we conclude that FDR too was a totalitarian. It is unnecessary to discuss Kissinger's account further; it is effectively demolished, with the documentation that Kissinger scrupulously avoids, by Armando Uribe in _Le Monde diplomatique_ (December 1979). To cite only one example, Kissinger claims that on

22.

[L.C]

receiving a message of congratulation from Nixon, "Allende gave no evidence of a co-ciliatory approach. The tenor of his administration was set" (680), so that one ~~can only~~ [not] obviously ~~blame the U.S. for~~ [not] ~~deterioration of relations.~~ Kissinger does not quote Allende's response. Uribe does, citing long passages from the official document in which Allende expressed the desire of his government "to maintain good relations with the United States" on the basis of mutual recognition of the "dignity" and "national interests" of the other party, among other reasonable and conciliatory remarks. Again, one can see why Kissinger is so careful to avoid documentation.

Not always, however. Thus Kissinger's claims concerning North Vietnamese sanctuaries are "confirmed" by a propaganda document issued by the Pol Pot government in late 1978 which was a bitter attack on Vietnam in the midst of a war in which the Pol Pot regime was facing annihilation. To this historian, the document provides credible evidence for "confirming" American charges against Vietnam. Kissinger does not even refer to the document, absurd as that would be, but rather to press reports concerning it (241, 506).

Occasionally, Kissinger makes the mistake of actually citing a source that is easily checked. Thus he claims that William Shawcross "excused the Khmer Rouge atrocities" and that Richard Dudman "alleged that there was insufficient evidence the atrocities ever took placem" (1485). Turning to his sources, we discover that Shawcross bitterly denounced the atrocities, concluding that the Khmer Rouge had turned Cambodia into "hell on earth." Shawcross then reports correctly that the ferocious American bombings of 1973 decimated the peasant army and cites an official history which show that heavily populated areas were being intensively bombed by B-52s. State Department studies and other sources confirm that Khmer Rouge policies became far harsher in 1973. A former Foreign Service Officer in Phnom Penh, now an academic specialist on Cambodia, testified before Congress that "the leadership hardened its ideology" in 1973-4 and that the incredible bombing of 1973 "may have driven thousands of people out of their minds"; "to a large extent I think American actions are to blame" for postwar atrocities.

23.

[LC]

alter
(David Chandler). Try as he may, Kissinger cannot make the facts with false
accusations levelled against people who have exposed his machinations, any more
than he can provide an answer to Lon Nol's ambassador to Washington, who said,
as the war ended: "Let's face it, you took advantage of us, of our inexperience.
As you are much cleverer than we are, you could induce us into this fighting...
If the United States had respected our neutrality then the fighting, the killing
and things might not have happened."

Kissinger's allegations concerning Dudman are no less scandalous. Dudman never
questioned that ample evidence of atrocities existed. Rather, he raised questions
about reliance on Vietnamese sources in the midst of a war and about the way evidence
was used to determine the scale of the deaths and killings, questions that
would be recognized as pertinent by any serious person, though it is hardly
surprising that they lie far beyond Kissinger's comprehension.

Kissinger's sections on the Middle East -- presented with characteristic
self-adulation -- review the early stages of his blunders which were a major factor
in setting the stage for the October 1973 war, specifically, his rejection
of Sadat's repeated overtures in 1971-2 and his blind insistence on interpreting
the Arab-Israel conflict as part of a global Russian challenge. As always, he
make: no mention of the U.S. role in stimulating conflict, for example, the vast
flow of armaments to Israel (including phantom jets, which began to arrive in September 1969),
raids in Egypt that precipitated the entry of Russian anti-aircraft systems and military
personnel, and to bomb the Suez zone so intensively that a million and a half people
were driven out, according to Israeli General Mordechai Gur. The Israeli
Ambassador to Washington, Yitzhak Rabin, reports his understanding that the Nixon
Administration favored the Israeli "deep penetration" raids and even further
escalation, so as to undermine Nasser. We learn nothing about this from
Kissinger. Similarly, in the Jordan crisis of 1970, Kissinger sees a Russian hand
-- they were "not helping to rein in their clients" (609). William Quandt, who

24.

[LC]

was deputy to Harold Scandlen, Sauders (Kissinger's senior staff assistant on the Middle East) from 1972 to 1974, comments on the basic "flaw" in Nixon's and Kissinger's view of the crisis, namely, their emphasis on its "global U.S.-Soviet dimension," whereas in fact the "Soviets adopted a cautious policy" and "warned against all outside intervention in Jordan," calling for a cease-fire. Kissinger describes the same facts quite differently, interpreting it as a Russian strategy of creating maximum fear of a possible American move" (627).

Kissinger makes clear that "there was no White House support at all" for State Department efforts to secure a settlement in 1971 (1279), well after Sadat's (in essential accord with the State Department's "Rogers Plan" offers to make peace on the pre-June 1967 borders), Kissinger's aim was to produce a stalemate until Moscow urged compromise or until, even better, some moderate Arab regime decided that the route to progress was through Washington (1279) -- as Sadat surely had, though Kissinger did not understand this. Even after Sadat's "massive purge of pro-Soviet elements in his government" (1283), the light did not dawn on him that he was in a stallion's way. Only after the Arab states willing, willing, and willing to press their clients toward stability, "Kissinger's policy was to continue to make for what he had striven by design (1266-1268)." Until some Arab state showed a willingness to flex separate from the Soviets, or the Arab states to show willingness to flex, the maximum Arab program was to be abandoned. The Soviets were prepared to dissociate from the maximum Arab program, we had no reason to modify our policy" of stalemate (1291) -- a statement that is remarkable not only for its startling ignorance (Saudi Arabia, for example, was not willing "to separate from the Soviets"?) but also for its obtuseness in refusing to move towards peace out of absurd "geopolitical" fantasies. Quandt's plausible conclusion is that Sadat "had risked his relations with the Soviet Union by moving against its supporters and by helping to crush a communist coup in Sudan in July. Not only had he failed to win the Americans to his side, but the Americans were considering new arms agreements with Israel. Frustrated and humiliated, Sadat decided to abandon the interim-settlement idea. The result was a two-year diplomatic stalemate," ended after the October 1973 war.

25.

Kissinger notes that in September 1971, the USSR indicated its willingness "to withdraw its combat forces from Egypt in case of a final settlement" as along the lines of Sadat's rebuffed offer, but "we had no incentive to proceed jointly with Moscow" because "There was no sign of the Soviet Union's willingness to press its clients toward flexibility" (838, 1288), where "flexibility," not defined, amounted to acceptance of Israeli control of territories occupied in 1967. The real story is that he assumed that "equilibrium," in his special sense of the term, would be served by maintaining the Israeli dominance that he regarded as unchalleggeable -- until forced to revise his assumptions after the October war to which he contributed so effectively.

Kissinger's memoirs abound in examples of the sort I have discussed. They reveal the enormous dangers posed to peace, minimal justice or humanity, even survival, by a combination of limited understanding, tremendous military force, and willingness to show "courage" by "going to the brink." The one great talent that Kissinger manifests here, as throughout his career, is a capacity to befuddle the media and public opinion. Academic scholarship also takes his preposterous statements about international affairs and his "geopolitical" inanities quite seriously, even in critical commentary.

As for the media, to take a perhaps extreme example, the book editor of the *Boston Globe*, who finds Kissinger "perceptive" and "humane" in his memoirs, writes that "Either we accept, or try to accept, what he is saying, given his massive ego, or wait for 20 or more years before making a judgment" (Margaret Manning, 28 October 1979). No other reaction is imaginable. In fact, a rather different assessment is suggested by one of the more profound thoughts that graced Kissinger's academic writings, his explanation that "the deepest problem of the contemporary international order" is the failure, on the part of people outside the West, who have not undergone the Newtonian revolution, to understand that "the real world is external to the observer." Reading these memoirs, one might conclude that Kissinger is really a man of the 16th century, in his weird sense.

Jan. 1980

Footnotes

[lc]

1. Seyom Brown, *The Crises of Power*, Columbia U. Press, New York, 1979, pp. 17, 11. assumptions,

2. For an analysis of Kissinger's assumptions, see V. Brodine and M. Selden, eds., *Open Secret: the Kissinger-Nixon Doctrine in Asia*, Harper and Row, 1972.

3. See William Shawcross, *Sideshow*, Simon and Schuster, 1979. On Kissinger's revision of his memoirs (and denial of same) after the appearance of Shawcross's book, see Wolfgang Saxon, "Kissinger Revised His Book More Than He Reported," *NY Times*, 31 October 1979.

4. *Supplemental Foreign Assistance, Fiscal Year 1966 - Vietnam*, Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, US Senate, 89th Congress, 2nd Session, 1966, p. 433; cited in Gareth Porter, *A Peace Denied*, Indiana U. Press, Bloomington, 1975, p. 36.

5. For details, see especially the articles by R. B. Du Boff and John Dower in *The Pentagon Papers*, vol. V, *Critical Essays*, N. Chomsky and H. Zinn, eds., Beacon Press, Boston, 1972; and my *For Reasons of State*, Pantheon, New York, 1973, chapter 1, section V.

6. For a concise review, see Nikki R. Keddie, "Oil, economic policy and social conflict," *Race & Class*, Summer 1979.

7. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, April-May 1971, p. 502 of *Hearings*; cited in Allan Goodman, *The Lost Peace*, Hoover Institution press, Stanford, 1978, p. 70. The general character of this book is revealed by its initial premise, that "In 1965, the security of the free world and the credibility of American power required our presence in Vietnam" (xvii). It contains many false claims (e.g., that Johnson sought negotiations in 1964-5), but is useful as showing how a strongly pro-government scholar views the negotiations history.

8. For extensive quotes from Buckley's article and original notes, see Chomsky and E.S. Herman, *The Political Economy of Human Rights*, vol. I, South End press, Boston, 1979, pp. 313ff.

9. For extensive citations, see Chomsky, *At a War with Asia*, Pantheon, New York, 1979, pp. 127-8. Only a few sentences appeared in the U.S. press, to my knowledge.

Footnotes - 2

[10]

10. _Pentagon Papers_, Gravel Edition, Beacon Press, Boston, 1972, vol. IV, p. 479.
For a comprehensive review of the _Pentagon Papers_ record on Cambodia, see _For Reasons of State_, chapter 3, pp. 202f.; see also _At War with Asia_, chapter 2, for other sources.

11. For sources and further details, see _The Political Economy of Human Rights_, vol. II, p. 288f.

12. _At War with Asia_, pp. 122f. Morning

13. See _At War with Asia_, pp. 160f., for a sample

14. See _At War with Asia_, chapter 2, for details concerning this and many other relevant reports, generally ignored in the U.S. press.

15. _Life_, 3 April 1970, cited with other reports in _At War with Asia_, p. 214.

16. See _At War with Asia_, chapter 3; _For Reasons of State_, chapter 2; and sources cited there.

17. See Goodman, _op.cit_, p. 156; and for substantial detail, Porter, _op.cit._; Chomsky and Herman, "Saigon's Corruption Crisis," _Ramparts_, Dec. 1974; Maynard Parker, "Vietnam: The War That Won't End," _Foreign Affairs_, January 1975; and many other sources.

18. For details, see Chomsky, "The Peace Hoax," _Liberation_, January 1973; "Endgame: the Tactics of Peace in Vietnam," _Ramparts_, April 1973; minimum letter, New York Times, Feb. 12 1973. For an on press duplicity, see my _unpublished notes_ on "Reporting Indochina: the news media and the legitimation of lies," _Social Policy_, September 1973.

19. For explicit references, see _The Political Economy of Human Rights_, vol. II.

20. Cited by Shawcross, _Sideshow_, p. 363, along with Kissinger's response to Yitzhak Rabin, _The Rabin Memoirs_, Little, Brown, Boston, 1979.

21. _Rabin Memoirs_, B.

22. William Quandt, _Decade of Decisions_, U. of California press, Berkeley, 1977, p. 124.

SUPPLEMENTAL CLIPS: SATURDAY, 24 MAY 1980

THE VIRGINIA
QUARTERLY
REVIEW

Volume 56

SPRING 1980

Number 2

THE WHITE HOUSE,
BUREAUCRACY, AND FOREIGN
POLICY: LESSONS FROM
CAMBODIA

BY MICHAEL NELSON

Henry Kissinger published Volume One of his mem-
oirs, *The White House Years*, through Little, Brown,
a subsidiary of Time, Inc.; released it through the
Book-of-the-Month Club, another Time, Inc. company; and
permitted *Time* itself to run lengthy prepublication excerpts
in the magazine's October 1979 issues. So perhaps it was not
so surprising after all that Kissinger chose *People*, Time, Inc.'s
hybrid of the old *Life* and the new *National Enquirer*, as his
forum to discuss how he put his 700,000-word, 1,521-page
opus together.

According to *People*'s Patricia Burstein, Kissinger "worked on the project for more than 15 months, encouraged by his wife, Nancy, and with Tyler, their beloved yellow Labrador, usually at his side." (*People*: "Will Tyler like your memoirs?"; Kissinger: "He is very understanding.") The desk at which he wrote overlooked New York's East River ("very consoling"); while planted there for some 40 to 50 hours a week (*P*: "How did you keep your weight down?"; K: "I just didn't get up and have a soda or sandwich"), Kissinger said he used "a combination of memory, notes I kept, plus documents to enable me to reconstruct what happened." Interestingly, this long period of research and reflection produced no second thoughts. "You must remember this—" he admonished Ms. Burstein, "if a serious person is conducting policy he will have thought through the implications of his actions when he took them."

Others, however, had been having grave second thoughts
about Kissinger's White House years. One in particular, a 32-
year-old British journalist named William Shawcross, was
proving to be a particular nemesis. From 1970 to 1974, Shaw-
cross had worked variously as a Vietnam reporter for *The*
*Sunday Times* of London, the Washington correspondent of
the *New Statesman*, co-author of a *Times* "Insight" book on
Watergate, and a visiting fellow on the staffs of Senator Ed-
ward Kennedy and Representative Les Aspin. His knowledge
of Indochina and of how Washington works proved in-
valuable when, in mid-1975, he began research for a book
about Cambodia, which had just fallen under the ruthless con-
trol of the Communist Khmer Rouge. Using the Freedom of
Information Act with great skill, Shawcross persuaded the
State and Defense departments, the C.I.A., the National Secu-
rity Council, and other government agencies to release "sev-
eral thousand pages of memoranda, cables, and internal his-

(CONTINUED NEXT PAGE)

[c]

CAMBODIAN LESSONS -- CONTINUED

tories" whose "classification ranged from 'Confidential' to
"Top-Secret-Sensitive-Eyes-of-Addressee-Only-No-Forn' (no
foreigners)." These documents, along with some 300 inter-
views of officials in the United States, China, and other coun-
tries (not including Kissinger, who refused to see him), pro-
vided the basis for Sideshow. Simon and Schuster published it
in April 1979, just as Kissinger was beginning the final revis-
sions of his own book.

Sideshow's thesis—which, as its subtitle, Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia, suggests, is that “They created the Khmer Rouge”—was vexing to Kissinger by itself. Shawcross argued—not originally, but with persuasive documentation—that the Nixon administration's 1969 secret bombing and 1970 “incursion” against North Vietnamese “sanctuaries” in eastern Cambodia had served only to drive Hanoi's armies deeper into the neutral nation's interior. There they and the previously dormant Khmer Rouge rebels had clashed with Cambodian troops, touching off yet another North Vietnamese-aided civil war. Inevitably, wrote Shawcross—given the “logic” of our foreign policy at the time—the United States escalated its involvement; propped up a new, inept but pro-American regime; and, through six years of bombing, ravaged with fire and sword the Cambodian countryside. A third of the nation's people became refugees; the capital city's population swelled from 600,000 to two million; starvation became commonplace in what had been a rice-exporting nation. This destruction, Shawcross continued, set the stage for the brutal triumph of the Khmer Rouge in 1975, the subsequent invasion and takeover by the equally merciless Vietnamese, and the mass suffering that has grown steadily more horrible ever since. “Cambodia was not a mistake; it was a crime,” Shawcross concluded: for the sake of preserving a futile policy in Vietnam, Kissinger and Nixon had callously laid waste to a neutral third party. Coming from the son of Hartley Shawcross, the chief British prosecutor at Nuremberg, this was an unmistakably pointed charge.

If Sideshow's contents were challenging enough to Kiss-
inger, the reaction to the book was, from his standpoint, even
worse. "It is the book you see carried openly, title showing, in
the corridors of power in Washington," reported Herbert
Mitgang in the May 13, 1979 Sunday *New York Times*. "No
book this year has been greeted with such respect by the criti-
cal community." General James Gavin, the renowned World
War II paratroop commander, said Shawcross "ha[d] written
the first truly significant book about our Indochina in-
volvement." When NBC refused to invite the author to ap-
pear on its "Today" program to discuss Sideshow, rumors
spread that pressure from Kissinger, a paid NBC consultant,
was the reason. A Sunday "Doonesbury" cartoon showed Kis-
singer telling a college seminar that American intervention in
Cambodia had begun "at the personal request of Prince Siha-
nouk," the nation's ruler in 1969. Asked by a student if he
could remember Sihanouk's exact words, Kissinger replied,
"Yes. He said, 'Henry, please drop three times as many bombs
on my country as were dropped on Japan in all of World War
II.'" (Columnist Anthony Lewis pointed out that this was an
understatement—the 539,129 tons of bombs that American
planes left in Cambodia were more than three times the ton-
nage that fell on Japan.)

It still is not clear how much all this affected Kissinger's fi-
nal revisal of his memoirs, but one can see the problem Shaw-
cross's book had created for him. Kissinger certainly did not

(CONTINUED NEXT PAGE)

29

[L.C]

want to dwell on *Sideshow*—after all, his own book was being written for the ages, for “people in the future (to) see how somebody in high office perceived his choices,” as he put it to *People*. By spending precious pages rebutting *Sideshow*, he would risk making Shawcross and his thesis a part of history, too. On the other hand, *Sideshow’s* astonishing critical success meant that to ignore it completely might be taken by reviewers and future historians as a concession that Shawcross’s charges were irrefutable.

Kissinger told *People* that he resolved his dilemma by merely “add[ing] one or two footnotes” to dispose of Shawcross’s “one-sided polemic.” This simply is not true, according to *New York Times* reporter Wolfgang Saxon, who saw Kissinger’s corrected galley proofs of Chapter 12, the major Cambodian chapter in *The White House Years*. Though *Sideshow* is mentioned by name only in footnotes 8 and 15, Saxon found evidence that Kissinger had made “many additions, deletions, and changes of phrases and paragraphs.” Certainly Chapter 12 is the most defensive and disputatious in tone—the experience of reading it is not unlike that of hearing someone argue aloud in his sleep with some unnamed tormentor.

Other prepublication activities by Kissinger also suggest that *Sideshow* was much on his mind. In August, he wrote a long letter to *The Economist* to argue that “the basic point of Mr. Shawcross’s book” is “obscene.” In his controversial October interview with David Frost on NBC, Kissinger came so primed to attack the *Sideshow* argument that he began answering Shawcross’s charges before Frost even raised them. (Kissinger: “It is total hypocrisy”; Frost: “I’ve not made that point—don’t, don’t give me points that I’m not making.”) Later that month, apparently having decided once again that to discuss Shawcross’s case was to dignify it, Kissinger denied to an interviewer in Frankfurt, West Germany that he had made any revisions as a result of *Sideshow* and dismissed the book as “a shoddy, outrageous work that is filled with inaccuracies.”

One result of all this posturing is that if there is a thorough defense to be made against Shawcross’s detailed indictment of America’s actions in Cambodia, Kissinger has yet to make it. In fact, to the extent that Kissinger treats *Sideshow’s* argument at all in his memoirs (without ever mentioning Shawcross by name), he does so in a way that sustains—sometimes inadvertently—*Sideshow’s* two major theses.

The first is that American policy toward Cambodia was shaped almost exclusively by the White House, not only without the counsel of the State and Defense departments and other executive agencies, but despite their counsel. Kissinger’s description of the week of decision-making that preceded the United States’ April 28, 1970 invasion of Cambodia is instructive. At an April 22 National Security Council meeting, he records, “the preferred course of the State and Defense departments” was “doing nothing” even though “the North Vietnamese were systematically expanding their sanctuaries.” Urged on by Kissinger and goaded to be tough by the vice-president (“Agnew was right,” is Kissinger’s verdict), Nixon decided to invade. Reluctantly, Secretary of State William Rogers and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird gave passive assent—until the day before the invasion, when on the basis of more information, they weighed in with last-minute doubts. “The final decision to proceed,” Kissinger concludes, “was thus . . . taken carefully, with much hesitation, by a man who had to discipline his nerves almost daily, to face his associates and to overcome the partially subconscious, partially

(CONTINUED NEXT PAGE)

[LC]

deliberate procrastination of his executive departments. The
fact remains that in Cambodia, Nixon was right. And he was
President."

Kissinger also lends inadvertent support to Shawcross's ar-
gument that American actions in Cambodia were taken with
little regard for the welfare of Cambodia itself, as a "side-
show" to our effort to exit Vietnam gracefully. In one typical
passage, Kissinger writes: "From an inexhaustible national
masochism there sprang the folklore that American decisions
triggered the Cambodia nightmare. . . . The military re-
sponses we made were much agonized over and in our view
minimal if we were to conduct a retreat [from Vietnam] that
did not become a rout." Later he adds that not invading Cam-
bodia was an option "we did not have, for the prospect it de-
scribes would have meant an overwhelming, insurmountable
and decisive menace to the survival of South Viet Nam."

In view of the evidence at hand, some critics have argued
that the major unresolved issue in the Cambodian controversy
is whether the Nixon-Kissinger policy was merely ill-con-
ceived and amoral or, as Shawcross insists, willfully in-
sensitive and thus immoral. The danger in pursuing such is-
sues—the “Who lost China?” dispute of 30 years ago is the
best example—is that they involve post hoc investigations of
personal motive and probity which invariably shed more heat
than light. Surely there is more to be gained from directing
our attention to the other, more serious issue that comes from
a close reading of *Sideshow* and *The White House Years*. The
issue is that of how foreign policy properly should be made
within the executive apparatus of a democratic society—by
the elected chief executive or the permanent bureaucracy.

II

To address this question adequately, we first need to go
back a few years. For though the 1970's now are commonly
regarded as the time when anti-bureaucratic feeling spread
leftward to span the political spectrum (primarily as a re-
sponse to the perceived failures of the Great Society's domes-
tic poverty programs), the truth is that the liberal turn against
executive bureaucracy already had begun a decade earlier in
the area of foreign affairs. Civilian foreign policy agencies
such as the State Department were among the chief villains of
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s *A Thousand Days* and the other in-
stant Kennedy administration memoirs, books which still
were celebrating blissfully the virtues of the domestic
agencies. Why this earlier, now unremarked turn? In *Bureau-
cracy and Foreign Policy* (the book which, I should make plain
at the outset, has shaped my thinking on the subject since its
publication by the Johns Hopkins University Press in 1972),
Francis Rourke suggests a plausible theory: "Former members
of the Kennedy administration led the way in attacks on the
role of bureaucracy in foreign affairs in part, perhaps, in an
effort to shift the blame for Vietnam from the political eche-
lons in which they had temporarily served to the career bu-
reaucrats they had always held in some contempt." Whatever
their motives, though, the ex-New Frontiersmen and their
scholar-allies offered a vigorously argued indictment of the
executive foreign affairs establishment. It is a case worth re-
viewing in any discussion of how foreign policy should be
made, in part because of its intellectual merits, which are
considerable, and in part because of its immediate practical
effects, which were venal. Indeed, both the personal, White

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House-dominated style of foreign policy making that the
Nixon administration employed and, equally important, the
wide acceptance of the legitimacy and virtues of that style at
the time, can be traced in no small measure to the effects of
the Kennedy liberals' anti-bureaucratic critique.

The wellspring of most pathologies in foreign policy mak-
ing, as liberal critics saw it, was bureaucracy's preoccupation
with its self-interests at the expense of all others. "It [was] ar-
gued," Professor Rourke observes, "that bureaucracies push
for policies designed to serve not so much the national inter-
est as their own hegemonic ambitions as organizations—com-
peting more for primacy in the governmental structure of the
United States than with any foreign adversary." This self-
ishness, the argument went, poisons agencies' behavior in
their two major areas of responsibility and power: first, as giv-
ers of information and advice to the president so that he can
make intelligent decisions, and second, as faithful agents of
policy implementation once those decisions are made.

With regard to the first area, it was said that the informa-
tion presidents were getting from bureaucracy often was
structured not to inform their actions, but rather to pre-
determine them. As a rule. Morton Halperin complained,
agencies like to channel the discussion the president hears
prior to decision into three options, only one of which is plau-
sible: "You can blow up the world, do as we say, or surrender
to the Kremlin." This is exactly what happened in the sum-
mer of 1964, James C. Thomson, Jr. records, when President
Johnson asked the departments to work up as wide a range of
possible Vietnam courses as possible and was advised almost
unanimously to bomb the North (or "blow up the world, or
scuttle-and-run"); Kissinger himself suggests only half in jest
that "a totally ignorant decision maker could satisfy his de-
partments by blindly choosing Option Two of any three
choices submitted to him." Ironically, two characteristics of
the structure of the foreign affairs bureaucracy that were in-
tended to enhance its accountability to the president—inter-
nal hierarchy and the consolidation of the military services
into a single Department of Defense—were said to have made
it all the harder for him to overcome these information dis-
tortions. "Hierarchy," notes Rourke, "ma[de] it impolitic for
subordinates to disagree openly with superior officials who
control job assignments and other avenues of career
advancement." (Franklin Roosevelt liked to quote the advice
one veteran foreign service officer gave to his colleagues:
"You can get to be a Minister if a) you are loyal to the serv-
ice; b) you do nothing to offend people; c) if you are not in-
toxicated at public functions.") As for consolidation, it meant
that the Army, Navy, and Air Force would speak with one
voice instead of three; disagreements that used to reach the
president's ears, taking up his time but also offering him sev-
eral realistic choices, now tended to be smoothed out first
within the Pentagon.

Liberal critics found equally severe pathologies of organi-
zational self-interest in bureaucracy's exercise of its second
important responsibility, that of policy implementation. The
story—apocryphal, some revisionists now say—of President
John F. Kennedy's discovery during the Cuban missile crisis
that his earlier order to remove American Jupiter missiles
from Turkey had been shelved by the State Department often
was cited as an example of bureaucracy's unwillingness to
obey directives it doesn't like. There was something to this; as
Rourke writes, "Bureaucratic resistance or incapacity may

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CAMBOOTAN LESSONS --CONTINUED

spell the doom of even the most modest policy proposals." A
more common and, perhaps, more important danger was said
to come when agencies did implement presidential policies,
but only after tailoring them to fit their own organizational
interests. Just as professions must profess if they are to flour-
ish, so must organizations try to organize policies in line with
their particular capabilities and long-established methods of
performing them—their standard operating procedures, or
"SOP's." Naturally, on most issues where there is any doubt
about what to do, State is predisposed to a diplomatic course,
the armed services to a military one, and so on. Once set in
motion, their SOP's for effecting these strategies of action
make any reversal or even change of the chosen course diffi-
cult to effect; like any body in motion, a bureaucracy tends to
stay in motion, sometimes with consequences that policy-
makers never intended. Again there is a certain irony in all
this. SOP's were justified because they made subordinates "go
by the book" and thus kept them accountable to those above.
But in limiting the independence and power of individual
low-level bureaucrats, SOP's also enhanced the independent
power of the organizations they served.

There was little to quarrel with, then or now, in the criti-
cisms of the foreign policy bureaucracy that liberals were
making in the mid-1960's. The political effects of their criti-
cisms, however, later would seem less agreeable. The State
Department's power, tenuous in the best of times because of
long-standing conservative opposition and the department's
lack of a domestic constituency, was shattered by this assault
from its traditional friends. A similar liberal-conservative con-
sensus kept Congress and the public as impotent in foreign
policy as ever; they were too dovish for conservative tastes,
yet not "reliable" enough to overcome liberal suspicions, born
of pre-World War II isolationism, that voters and their
elected representatives are, in Walter Lippman's phrase, "too
pacifist in peace and too bellicose in war." The power of the
military bureaucracy expanded to fill much of the vacuum,
another unpleasant consequence for liberals of their denun-
ciations of the civilian agencies. (Actually, the military's
power in foreign affairs had been growing ever since the post-
war decision to pursue cold war with a large defense estab-
lishment created a pork barrel that overflowed into virtually
every congressional district in the country and a large consti-
 guency of veterans to boot.) But, ex-New Frontiersmen argued
in the mid-1960's, all this was an acceptable price because
they were placing their chips on the White House (now that
it was unimpeded by stodgy State) to bring boldness and good
sense to foreign policy and to keep the Pentagon in line. Soon
after his appointment as Richard Nixon's national security ad-
viser, Kissinger told a reporter that he shared this sentiment:
"There are 20,000 people in the State Department and 50,000
in Defense . . . and they all want to do what I'm doing. So the
problem becomes: how do you get them to push papers
around, spin their wheels, so that you can get your work
done?"

In reflecting on this, with all the wisdom hindsight affords,
one is reminded of nothing so much as W. W. Jacob's "The
Monkey's Paw." The lesson of that classic story of two parents
who, granted three wishes, have them fulfilled but in ways too
horrible to imagine, is that sometimes it is best not to get
what you think you want. Liberals did, however. In the late
1960's and early 1970's, the effects of a foreign policy appa-

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ratus dominated by the military and the "wrong" kinds of powerful presidents became altogether clear. *Sideshow*, a book that somehow manages to combine lucid writing, scholarly rigor, and moral fervor, is the clearest and most persuasive account yet of what those effects were.

*Sideshow* is such a good book, in fact, that the only fully adequate summary of it would be virtually a full repetition of its 466 pages, the only complete discussion of its implications a book twice that length. In lieu of that, and in preference to a scatter-shot presentation of its high points, perhaps we should dwell instead on two of *Sideshow*'s more compelling images. One illustrates the undesirability of having the White House replace the bureaucracy as the chief generator of information and advice in foreign affairs, the other the impossibility of its doing so as policy implementer, bureaucracy's second major area of responsibility.

First, the "Nisim," which is what the Nixon White House called NSSM's, or National Security Study Memoranda. Nisims were a brainchild of Kissinger and Morton Halperin, his antiwar aide and former colleague at Harvard. They were meant to work as follows: a Nisim would begin when either President Nixon or his national security adviser (Kissinger) decided he wanted to find out all he could about a particular foreign problem or situation. Kissinger would circulate a two-to-three page memo among all the concerned agencies, asking that they send up whatever advice and information they had that was pertinent. The bureaucracy's varied responses would be collated by Kissinger—whose role, Halperin proposed, would be only that of a "traffic cop"—then passed on to Nixon for consideration.

In theory, the Nisim was a marvelous device for informing decisions—a sure cure for the pathologies of narrow bureaucratic information-giving the Kennedy alumni had been criticizing. Liberals applauded it as fervently as they had applauded Kissinger's appointment ("I'll sleep better with Henry Kissinger in Washington," Adam Yarmolinsky had said). In practice, though, Nisims served a less lofty purpose, at least on those issues that were of central concern to the Nixon White House. In practice, Shawcross shows, they were devices to achieve Kissinger's goal of "keeping the departments occupied and under the illusion that they were participating in the policy-making process while decisions were actually made in the White House." Thus did the traffic cop get all the cars snarled up, then drive off himself on a clear road.

To be sure, Kissinger's machinations meant that the White House was now free of the bureaucracy's information-gathering pathologies. But he and Nixon proceeded to relocate all of them within the White House itself. If executive agencies had been guilty of giving presidents only the information they wanted to give, so were Nixon and Kissinger guilty of receiving only that which they wanted to receive. In December 1968, for example, Kissinger forbade Daniel Ellsberg, whom he had asked for an options paper on Vietnam, from including unilateral withdrawal as one of the options. Later, when our Ambassador to Cambodia, Emory Swank, began expressing mild reservations about our policy there, Kissinger had him reassigned to Norfolk. (In the FBI, Siberia is Butte, Montana; in the foreign service, it's Norfolk). Secretary of State Rogers, who had been kept out of the early planning of the Cambodia invasion, weighed in at the end with some objections. Kissinger's response was to close his department's Cambodian desk out of all subsequent top-secret cable traffic. Secretary of the Interior Walter Hickel, who brought Nixon the bad news

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7

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that students were rebelling, was fired almost immediately. Eventually Rogers was booted out as well, to be replaced by Kissinger himself.

Biased advice, distorted reporting, hierarchic suppression of dissent—sound familiar? What’s more, the White House revived an old pathology, one traditionally associated with bureaucracy but less so in the Freedom of Information Act and whistle-blowing age: obsessive secrecy. Nixon and Kissinger were men driven by the need for secrecy in policy-making, and the more open—as well as leak-prone—bureaucracy influenced them. As a result, knowledge of the 1969 bombings of Cambodia was kept not only from the public and Congress, but also from the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force Chief of Staff—even the Pentagon’s secret records were altered on the grounds that they weren’t secret enough! Leaks are unpleasant and sometimes harmful, but they do have the effect of airing out policy for wider discussion. So tightly held was information in the Nixon administration that when General Creighton Abrams was planning the Cambodia invasion, he was unable to find out how many bridges his troops would have to cross—no one who could answer his question was cleared for the planning and thus could be asked.

Another defect of foreign policy making was unique to the White House-centered style. As cultural and impersonal bureaucratic influences on decision-making declined in power, so did the importance of presidential character grow. Professor Rourke reminds us that both Kennedy (whose first reaction to the Cuban missile crisis was "He can't do this to me!") and Johnson (who feared being "the first American president to lose a war") were prone to project their egos onto the world stage. But nobody did so more pathologically than Nixon. The decision to invade Cambodia, Shawcross shows, was charged with psychological overtones. Enraged by the protests of "bums blowing up campuses" and the Senate's rejection of his Supreme Court nominations (to Kissinger: "Those senators think they can push me around, but I'll show them who's tough"), Nixon resolved to launch the sudden invasion, then shocked even the military leaders who had supported it with his vitriol. The morning after American soldiers crossed the border into Cambodia, Nixon curtly interrupted a progress briefing by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to harangue them in locker-room language on the need to "electrify people with bold decisions." "'Let's go blow the hell out of them,' he shouted, while the Chiefs, Laird and Kissinger sat mute with concern." (George Smiley, the central character in John Le Carré's *Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy*, tells his superior that there is a lot to be learned from the cover an enemy agent chooses; if he constructs a false identity that is five years younger than he, for example, that tells you something about his vanity. Nixon's cover, H. R. Haldeman records in *The Ends of Power*, was instability. "'I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything.'")

The pervasiveness of the Nixon-Kissinger influence on the foreign policy-making of that administration makes it easy to forget just how powerful the Pentagon—more ascendant over State than ever in the wake of the ex-New Frontiersmen's assault—remained in the second traditional area of bureaucratic power: policy implementation. This, of course, is inherent in modern government; a small number of people may be able to decide what is to be done, but they must trust to large organizations actually to do it. With that trust goes a certain

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[LC]

delegation of power. Nothing illustrates this better than Shawcross's second image: the Air Force "fire hose."

The Air Force's posture within the postwar military has been that of the textbook bully: powerful but insecure. Its power comes from the primacy in modern warfare of air-delivered nuclear weapons. Its insecurity is born of air power's essentially trivial role in the limited wars that, ironically, are characteristic of the nuclear age. In Korea, the Air Force felt it had been slighted; in Vietnam, it decided, it wasn't about to be. By swinging its considerable political weight and by playing to Johnson and Nixon's desire to battle the North while keeping American casualties low, the Air Force got its foot in the door.

Air Force SOP's then came into play. Once bombers were assigned to Southeast Asia, they had to be kept busy. In a classified study, a senior Pentagon analyst likened the result to a fire hose "running under full pressure most of the time and pointed with the same intensity at whichever area is allowed, regardless of its relative importance in the scheme of things." In late 1968, the power of the fire hose was such that President Johnson was able to stop bombing the North without rousing military ire only because he allowed the Air Force to bomb Laos instead. When the Paris Peace Agreement of early 1973 ended the bombing in Laos and Vietnam, the full force of the fire hose was turned on Cambodia; over the next half-year, as many bombs were dropped each month on Cambodia as had been dropped on it in all of 1972. Explained William Colby: "Cambodia was then the only game in town."

The fire hose is only representative of the importance of the military bureaucracy's standard operating procedures in the implementation of our Indochina policy. All through the war, the Air Force dropped its bombs, despite a host of strategic studies that demonstrated the ineffectiveness of saturation bombing; the Army massed large troop formations for battle as in World War II and Korea, even though such tactics were inappropriate for guerrilla fighting; and the Navy, after decades spent perfecting procedures of sea battle, shelled the shores of Indochina's rivers as if there were enemy ships in the jungle. Sometimes the results were blackly humorous. From the start, for example, American military advisers insisted on remaking the primitive Cambodian army in the American brigade and division command model, even though its own more diffuse structure surely was better-suited to fighting guerrillas. In one instance, an American general insisted that Cambodian authorization forms be written in English, which few native officers knew. The Cambodians drew up a form in both English and Khmer. No good, said the general—it "had no ability to interface carbon paper between the copies." So he imported trained English-speaking Filipinos to take over from the Cambodian quartermasters. As for State's embassy people, Cambodia was such a "professional backwater" for them that most moved on as soon as they could, many without learning French, much less Khmer.

In Vietnam, liberal critics of bureaucracy had argued, the momentum of bureaucratic SOP's had drawn us deeper into war than anyone had intended. A modest decision in late 1964 to construct air bases had led inevitably to a second decision to assign ground troops to defend them, which—again, inevi-

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9

36

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CAMBODIAN LESSONS: -- CONTINUED

tablyled to a third decision to "search and destroy" the enemy soldiers who were attacking our defenders, and so on. Nothing illustrates better how this also happened in Cambodia than the code-name chosen for the supposedly one-shot secret bombing raid in early 1969: "Breakfast." It's a bounded image, one that can stand alone as intended or, at most (if the first raid was less than perfect), with a subsequent "Lunch" and "Supper." In Cambodia, though, each futile set of bombings led to another-to "Lunch," "Snack," "Dinner," "Dessert," and "Supper" before the image was exhausted and a new terminology had to be invented. A decade later, with Cambodians starving by the tens of thousands as a final consequence of these bombing missions, the irony of their code-names is Dickensian in its blackness.

III

The argument of mid-sixties liberals was that foreign policy properly should be forged not by "professionals" in the bureaucracy, but by the White House. The case they made- whatever their motives for making it-was a strong one: organizational pathologies inherent in large-scale bureaucracy mean that it simply can not act adequately in foreign affairs. The lessons of the Nixon years show the limits of this presidential position-namely that White House power does not bring about the national good automatically and cannot eliminate bureaucratic influence entirely-but they do not invalidate it. A close look at Kissinger's *The White House Years* helps show us why.

First, though, a statement of the fundamental, which no one has seemed to pay much attention to in any of this. The real defense of presidential ascendancy in foreign policy rests not, as the Kennedy alumni had it, on ostensibly pragmatic considerations of who-does-what-best, but rather on constitutional democratic theory. The president is the only elected member of the executive establishment. Unlike congressmen, he is in the branch of government whose constitutional duties and inherent institutional advantages of unified leadership, and ability to act flexibly and with dispatch mandate its primacy in foreign policy making. Unlike the career bureaucrats in that branch, he is elected by the people and can be held accountable by them for his conduct. The presidency is a political office, and in a democratic system, governmental legitimacy is rooted in politics.

What makes Kissinger's memoirs so interesting is that they show clearly that he doesn't believe any of this-democratic accountability is the least of his concerns. Thus, in his first meeting with the president-elect, Kissinger recalls, he told Nixon that the "goal of his diplomacy" should be to establish that American foreign policy is "related to some basic principles of national interest that would be maintained as Presidents changed." This is another way of saying that foreign policy should be divorced from politics, which in a democracy is always subject to change. It also is a way of saying that it should be divorced from elected presidents. Indeed, one of the really cruel things about Kissinger's book is his relentless effort to discredit President Nixon, who in his erstwhile courtier's account, comes across as a deranged bumbler whose foreign policy successes were due almost entirely to his willingness to listen to Kissinger.

Oddly enough, this disdain for democratic and even presidential politics shows through most clearly in Kissinger's dis-

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cussions of Nixon's two great foreign policy triumphs: the So-
viet summit and the China trip. Among other things, his
summit discussion shows, Kissinger doesn't like open govern-
ment. He still buys the hoary philosophy, which many feel
was discredited by World Wars I and II, that democracies are
at a disadvantage in their dealings with totalitarian regimes.
"Our internal divisions handed the Soviet leadership an op-
portunity to whipsaw us . . . ," he writes in one representa-
tive passage. "While the White House would try to gear our
response to overall Soviet conduct, the rest of our Govern-
ment would find innumerable ways, from press leaks to infor-
mal hints, to let it be known that it was ready, nay eager, to
start talking." By "White House," it is understood, Kissinger
means himself and his staff. Nixon, for his part, had fallen
prey to the temptation that "sooner or later every President
since Roosevelt" has yielded to, that is, "that he should take a
personal hand in East-West relations through face-to-face
meetings with the Soviet leaders." Why are presidents so
prone to this supposed failing? In part, says the understanding
adviser, because they are only human and "it is human to
yearn to make a decisive breakthrough toward peace." More
important, though, are the rude imperatives of democratic
politics, born of "an American public that finds it difficult to
accept the existence of irreconcilable hostility and tends to
see international relations' in terms of individual personal-
ities." Thus, in 1970 Nixon wanted to go to Moscow because
he "foresaw benefits for the congressional elections in the
fall," but Kissinger says he talked him out of it. What of the
Nixon-Brezhnev summit of two years later, which climaxed
with the signing of SALT I? A waste of time, Kissinger sug-
gests, but for the groundwork laid for it by him.

Kissinger's account of the China rapprochement offers still
a better example of his disdain for the influence of democratic
politics in foreign policy making. To arrange the Nixon visit,
he writes, required "an intricate minuet, so stylized that nei-
ther side needed to bear the onus of an initiative, so elliptical
that existing relationships on both sides were not jeopar-
dized"—so delicate, in short, that there was no room for poli-
ticians, bureaucrats, or citizens in it. Again, the president
comes across as Kissinger's loutish albatross ("This is a great
wall, said Nixon to the assembled press at the Great Wall,
placing his seal of approval on one of mankind's most impres-
sive creations"). Again, the State Department's influence is
ham-handed; its people intrude at the last minute to chal-
lenge Kissinger and Chou's "communiqué, in the preparation
of which they had had no part, . . . [with] a list of amendments
as numerous as they were trivial." Again, the aura of absolute
pre-trip secrecy is justified on grounds of some greater good.

Notwithstanding Kissinger's impressive contribution to our
new China policy, several points need to be made. First, the
costs of arranging the rapprochement secretly were great. As
Kissinger reveals in different parts of his book, the claim of a
need for total secrecy in approaching China was used vari-
ously to justify the administration's pathological and, later, il-
legal response to Daniel Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Pa-
pers ("Our nightmare was that Peking might conclude that
our Government was too unsteady, too harassed, and too in-
secure to be a useful partner"); its diplomatic tilt toward Pa-
kistan, which was conducting a campaign of what Kissinger
admitted to David Frost was "genocide" in Bangladesh ("a
demonstration of U.S. irrelevance would severely strain our

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precarious new relationship with China," an ally of Pakistan); and its tortuously slow withdrawal from Vietnam ("We might not achieve our opening to China if our value as a counterweight seemed nullified by a collapse that showed us irrelevant to Asian security"). Second, it is not at all obvious that these costs or the secrecy that spawned them were necessary. As Kissinger points out, in 1969 the militarily-weak Chinese were desperate for a counterweight to the Soviet Union, which had just bloodied them in a series of border clashes; he later adds that "For all their charm and ideological fervor, China's leaders were the most unsentimental practitioners of balance-of-power politics I have encountered." Why, then, the need for his "intricate minuet"?; why the alleged impossibility of a less "elliptical" approach by either of the powers when both regarded entente as so much in their respective national interests? Why, in short, this absolute secrecy, with its attendant lockout of all but a few White House personnel from the policy-making process?

The range of possible answers is endless, but one thing is certain: Kissinger regarded secrecy not as a necessary evil, but as something desirable in itself. He revels in telling how he fooled reporters and slipped covertly into China after a dawn drive masked in sunglasses and a hat "to ensure that no stray pedestrian spotted me"; his glee is unbounded when he recollects meeting North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho: "In Paris General Walters would lead me to an unmarked, rented Citröen. Walters would drive us to his apartment building in the Neuilly section of Paris, where he smuggled us by elevator from the underground garage. As far as his housekeeper was concerned, I was a visiting American general named Harold A. Kirschman." This may sound like James Bond stuff, but Kissinger's fantasy evidently was more American in its origins. He told interviewer Oriana Fallaci that he envied "the cowboy ... who rides all alone into the town, the village, with his horse and nothing else. ... This amazing, romantic character suits me precisely because to be alone has always been part of my style."

There we have it—the national security adviser as Lone Ranger, the authority of the White House his silver bullets, secrecy his mask, the president his Tonto. What this had to do with sound, democratically accountable foreign policy making escaped many people, and as the costs of Kissinger's brand of diplomacy became clear—in Vietnam, in Cambodia, and in Europe, Africa, and those other parts of the world he had little time for—the American consensus turned not only against his policies, but against the very idea of White House-based foreign policy making as well.

This new consensus, like its wholly anti-bureaucratic predecessor, is errant. The experience of Kissinger does not refute the case for presidential leadership in foreign affairs because, as he tells us, it did not build on the foundation of constitutional democracy upon which any such case, to be legitimate, must be built. Nor are Kissinger's failures evidence of bureaucracy's virtues (any more than, say, Nixon's guilt in Watergate is proof of Alger Hiss's innocence of perjury) or, for that matter, of Congress's, which some chastened liberal scholars hastened to demonstrate after the consequences of their earlier wish for White House ascendancy became clear. (To his credit, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. refuted the congressional primacy argument by accurately pointing out that even an avowedly anti-presidential congressional initiative like the War Powers Act, which requires Congress to approve a presi-

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dential commitment of troops to combat 60 days after the fact, is futile: it flatly gives presidents a power to begin war that the Constitution does not and asks Congress to review his decision at the very time when war fever will be at its highest).

The answer to the question of how foreign policy should be made in a constitutional democracy will be found by elected presidents who first accept the vital role of bureaucracy in the process, both as supplier of information prior to decision and vehicle for implementation afterward, then strive to weed out its pathologies so that it can be properly led. "An ideal system," writes Erwin Hargrove in *The Power of the Modern Presidency* (Knopf, 1974), "would give the President analytic help, provide for administrative follow-through and intergovernmental coordination for Presidential purposes, and achieve the primacy of the political perspective." Interestingly, Kissinger, in a wholly uncharacteristic passage of *The White House Years*, makes the argument for lodging such a system in the State Department about as well as it can be made. We should watch what he says, not what he did:

"I have become convinced that a President should make the Secretary of State his principal adviser and use the National Security Adviser primarily as a senior administrator and coordinator. If the Security Adviser becomes active in the development and articulation of policy, he must inevitably diminish the Secretary of State and reduce his effectiveness. Foreign governments are confused and, equally dangerous, given opportunity to play one part of our Government off against the other; the State Department becomes demoralized and retreats into parochialism. If the President does not have confidence in his Secretary of State he should replace him, not supervise him with a personal aide."

There are those, to be sure, who doubt that the State Department can be rejuvenated. State's steady decline in power since its postwar heyday, when it pioneered such innovations as the Marshall Plan and the containment doctrine, has made it one of the most cautious agencies in Washington. Caution has bred an unwillingness either to pursue its diplomatic tasks innovatively or to seek out new ones; State deliberately defers to the Pentagon on all national security matters, for example, which means that it never challenged military analyses of the situation in Vietnam. What is worse, caution has fed on itself, creating an organizational culture in which getting along means going along with bland convention, thus accelerating the spiral of decline.

Nevertheless, the task—for the reasons Kissinger offers—is an important one. A president who wishes to revive State will do well to consult I. M. Destler's *Presidents, Bureaucrats, and Foreign Policy*, a provocative study of the subject which Princeton University Press published in 1972. Destler argues that the only way that the goal of a vigorous, politically responsive State Department can be achieved is if it is given the power and responsibility to inform presidential foreign policy decisions, then coordinate their implementation. To this end, he suggests that presidents transfer the analytic expertise of the White House national security staff to State, giving the department the wherewithal and, one would hope, the confidence to develop policy options for him from a broad political perspective. At this stage, his secretary would have to see to it that this policy staff was linked institutionally to operational and budgetary decisions so that the cautious resistance of the department's many sub-units could be overcome. These reforms won't work, of course, unless the president is willing to back up his people and policies, making clear to all in gov-

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ernment that in the chain of command confidence runs from
him to the secretary, from the secretary to the department,
and from the department on out through the rest of the gov-
ernment's foreign affairs apparatus. To promote this goal, the
president might try to secure from Congress the right to re-
place many career foreign service officers and civil servants
with political appointees. In any event, he should pare down
the national security adviser's staff of 100 and insist that its
role really be that of a "traffic cop" in the advisory process.

Interestingly, there is evidence that Jimmy Carter may
have come to see the wisdom in all this, albeit a bit late in the
game. In early November 1979, he approved an Office of
Management and Budget report that traced his administra-
tion's foreign policy making deficiencies to the weak position
of the State Department within the executive branch. Over
the objections of the national security adviser and defense sec-
retary, the report suggested that State be given an active role
in the annual preparation of the military budget and in con-
tingency planning for possible crises abroad. (At present, such
plans—or SOPs—as do exist not only are solely products of
the Pentagon, but of a fairly small group of military officers
within it. Thus, contingency plans for possible political or
economic responses to foreign crises simply are not available
to the president.)

None of this will be easy—as Professor Hargrove points
out, “Presidents achieve fame for policy, not administration.”
But after years of foreign policy disasters like Cambodia, dur-
ing which presidents have achieved not fame but infamy for
their and the bureaucracy’s actions abroad, new presidents
may realize that the time and energy that reconstructing
State will require will be time and energy wisely spent by any
standard, including a political one.

14

The Supreme Court found that Snepp had violated a "fiduciary obligation" to show officials his manuscript — an obligation arising not from his promise but from the secret nature of his work. Without giving Snepp's lawyers a chance to argue the point, the court summarily decided that the government was entitled to take all of Snepp's earnings on the book, about $140,000.

If the law declared by the Supreme Court in the Snepp case applies to anyone else, it surely must apply to Henry Kissinger. Hardly anyone had greater access to secrets and hence had a greater "fiduciary obligation" to show the government his manuscript — all of the manuscript — before publication.

Here is a chance for the Justice Department to collect upwards of $5 million. Will it sue Kissinger? I think we shall wait a long time until either the department or the Supreme Court treat Kissinger as they do the powerless Frank Snepps of this world.

NORTH CAROLINA NEWSPAPERS
1940-1945

JUN 19 1940

Sydney J.
HARRIS

Two Kissinger Books
Give Readers Balance

The recent popularity of Milton Friedman's new book on his conception of "economic freedom" makes me wish that more book-sellers could and would adopt the novel marketing procedure of the three 999 Bookshops in New York City.

Anyone who buys a copy of Henry A. Kissinger's new book, "White House Years," (which sells for a hefty $22.50) is given a free copy of a new paperback, "Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia," by William Shawcross, a highly critical view of that same period.

INSISTING HE had no political axe to grind, the
bookshop owner explained, "It gives a different
viewpoint; and we thought it would be a nice balance."

In the first week of the offer, more than 30 people bought the Kissinger book, and only a few refused to take the other.

What appeals to me about this unique merchandising approach is that not only are books so frightfully expensive these days, but forums and debates and town halls of any kind have been fast disappearing from the American scene. (Even the so-called presidential "Debates" have been little more than reiterations of familiar positions with a little persiflage thrown in to make the participants seem more affable.)

AS ONE OF THOSE weak-minded people who always thinks the last argument he has heard is the most plausible — until the first fellow gets around to talking again — I would welcome a chance to get two opposing books for the price of one, with the opportunity to study both singly and together.

The fact of the matter is that nobody, no matter how bright or knowledgable, is totally right in his beliefs and judgments.

Everybody has gaps in his thinking, where prejudices and self-interest creep in, disguised as principles and sound generalizations. And most of the time, nobody qualified is around to expose these chinks in the armor.

Prof. Friedman is a persuasive protagonist of his ultra-conservative point of view, and it is hard not to agree with some of his proposals and conclusions.

But, equally, some of them strike me as willfully wrong-headed, although I am not expert enough to summon up the exact arguments to rebut him. I need an armored horseman of another color.

In the absence of public debate in modern society, this kind of private contention can prove a valuable substitute for dogma and deceit.

X7 BERL, VOGELBOSCH 44

JOURNAL
D. 13,219

JUN 10 1980

[c]

ON CLASSIFIED MATERIAL—

Kissinger gets
kid-glove deal

By ANTHONY LEWIS
N.Y. Times News Service

BOSTON — In the foreword to "White House Years" Henry Kissinger wrote: "Treatment of classified materials in this book has been worked out with the office of the national security adviser, Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, to whom I express my appreciation." The acknowledgment seemed routine. It was not.

The passage caught the eye of a publisher, Robert L. Bernstein, president of Random House. He wrote Brzezinski and asked "how the clearing of the Kissinger book was actually accomplished." The staff secretary of the National Security Council, Christine Dodson, replied:

"Prior to the publication of his book Dr. Kissinger forwarded to Dr. Brzezinski's office a very small part of the manuscript then prepared, in the form of disconnected brief excerpts. These excerpts were reviewed for possible classification problems; they were edited to indicate what we would require to clear the publication of those excerpts.

"The edited manuscript was returned and further oral comments were made to a member of Dr. Kissinger's staff to the effect that after the required changes, we were clearing what we saw and that NSC clearance of the book would have to await a review of the total manuscript.

"Dr. Kissinger never submitted any further materials for review. It is our judgment, therefore, that the passage you quote from the book's foreword vastly overstates, at least by implications, the degree of classification review to which the book was subjected by Dr. Brzezinski's office."

Government employees do not usually use language as colorful as "vastly overstates" in official correspondence. Evidently the National Security Council staff, and perhaps Brzezinski, felt that they had been used. They resented Kissinger's bland little effort to deceive the public into believing that his use of classified material in the book had their official approval.

The interesting point in the episode is what it shows about the disparate treatment of former government officials who write books about their experience. Robert Bernstein was curious about the handling of classified material in the Kissinger book because of what had happened to one of his authors, Frank Snepp. The contrast was staggering.

Kissinger, who had been privy to the highest secrets in the American system, made wholesale use of classified documents in his book. Some experts say that it discloses more current or recent national

security material than any ever published.

As Miss Dodson's letter indicates, the government was given a chance to make only a partial judgment on small portions of the manuscript. What was used was largely Kissinger's unilateral decision. Yet he has not been denounced by any official for allegedly compromising national security. He has not been sued. No court has lectured him. And he is expected to make more than $5 million on the book.

Frank Snepp was a line Central Intelligence Agency officer in Vietnam. Afterward he wrote a book, "Decent Interval," criticizing American policy at the end of the war. Because he did not show the manuscript to the agency, as he had promised to do, the government sued him for damages. It did not allege that he had disclosed any classified information at all. But it said the precedent of publishing without approval was dangerous.

There is also an important historical point about the treatment of classified material in "White House Years," a point made by Theodore Draper when he reviewed the book for the quarterly Dissent. On inquiry at the State Department, Draper found that Kissinger's quotations from secret documents had been declassified — but only those quotations, not the entire documents. Thus no one else could see the context of these passages to judge whether Kissinger had dealt with the material fairly.

"This system is a political and intellectual outrage," Draper wrote. "It enables political figures to control the history of their own deeds or misdeeds. No partial quotation can be properly understood without its context.

"What is declassified for one should be declassified for all. Whether or not the present declassification system is good or bad is not here the question; the real issue is whether government officials should be permitted to make a mockery of it."

BOONVILLE, IND.
STANDARD
W. 6,350

JUN 19 1980

all of their staffs. Now, in addition to the death of her young lover, Sharon Brand, a well known movie star, still glamorous, in spite of her 50 years, had disappeared from her suite.

Sharon Brand, and her latest young lover had come to the Beaumont to appear in the Dick Thomas Talk Show. Her lover had been found dead, mutilated, in an alley near the hotel. This death reminded the police and the press that 3 years ago, another young lover of hers had disappeared, evidently murdered. Is there a connection between these two deaths? Between these deaths and the Dick Thomas Show?

A lovely young journalist who thinks there is a connection waits in the green room to talk with the Thomas guests who are appearing on the show. But someone lures her away and kills her. Was any member of the band, any guest, any Thomas staff worker absent from the stage long enough to commit this crime? A running of the camera shots of the entire show does not reveal any suspect.

But when Sharon is brought back to Pierre's office with an elaborate tale of kidnapping, Chambrun solves all the mysteries of her past, and her present crimes.

This is not one of the best of the Chambrun stories, but it's fast, suspenseful.

### THEN CAME VIOLENCE by John Ball

"The man you want," said Chief Mac Donald of the Pasadena Police, "is Virgil Tibbs." He was speaking to two men from the State Department in California for a secret mission. What they wanted was security for the wife and children of the president of a new African republic which the US was sponsoring. His life and that of his family have been threatened. They want a black man who will live with this wife as her husband, in a quiet neighborhood, a plan they feel will give her a safe hiding place.

Virgil is to come and go in his job with the LAPD, to act as a husband and father, always, of course carefully guarded by MacGowan's men. The young wife, Miriam, is a lovely cultured intelligent woman, (and an excellent cook) and things go along well for awhile.

Then Virgil's job gets him into a complicated plot which causes him a great deal of work and worry. A number of robberies and killings lead him to suspect that the criminals are following orders from someone, or some organization, which is motivated by racism or some "John Birch" or Klan moral concepts.

With his usual thoroughness and skills, Tibbs follows every possible clue, and in spite of danger, uncovers the warped mind behind the crimes. What Virgil can't do is handle his emotions about his new family. But Miriam sensibly says they'll wait and see what the future holds.

### TRIPLE by Follett

Based on an actual theft of 200 tons of uranium in 1968, Follett has written a thrilling story about this episode. Three countries are involved: Israel, Russia and Egypt. Some years ago, three students at Oxford, one from each of these countries had met, and learning that Egypt was building a nuclear reactor, decide that everyone else should do the same.

Nathaniel Dickstein, a Jew, Rostov, a Russian, Hassan, a Palestinian, and an American are caught up in the plot. Dickstein gets the job of stealing the Uranium for Israel but is fouled up by Hassan. Now Rostov and his

### THE WHITEHOUSE YEARS by Henry Kissinger

Beginning with "Summons to Power" when Nixon asked him, a Harvard professor, about being Secretary of State, Kissinger's memoirs contain many interesting comments on world events and fascinating portraits of world leaders. He's not very complimentary about Nixon: "...a lonely tormented man...hated to give orders, so devious it was hard to know what he wanted...painfully shy, dreaded meeting new people, expected aides to prevent face-to-face confrontations...trusted the staff more than the Cabinet." And in this portrait makes this shrewd observation: the old adage that men grow in office has not been my experience. Most officials leave the office with the perceptions and insights they entered with. They learn how to make decisions, not what decisions to make.

His picture of Soviet leaders is timely, revealing. Kosygin, Gromyko, Dobrynin, Breshnev. He says that Breshnev is, or was, a copious consumer of alcohol, tobacco, although he had been warned about their effect on his health, and says that he is a mixture of crudeness and warmth is brutal yet engaging, cunning and disarming.

About Viet Nam, he goes into much detail, about Cambodia, North Viet Nam, and the bitter wrangling with Le Duc Tho and other leaders. In the effort to end the war, they found Hanoi unwilling to make any settlement that meant anything less than a sellout of Saigon. Henry fell out with Nixon at this time but his resignation was not acted on because of the Watergate scandal.

Then the war in Jordan, and another dramatic crisis, war on the Indian continent. Would the Chinese jump to Pakistan's side? Would the Soviets then move against China? If Russia threatened China, we could not stand idly by. He says, "Competing pressures tempt one to believe that an issue deferred is a problem avoided; more often it is a crisis invited." (This reminds the reader of the lethargy, prolocating of Nixon, Carter, Congress. It's a human trait; put it off; wait; maybe it won't happen.)

A wonderful portrait of Golda Meier. "an original," he says. Her craggy face bore witness of the destiny her people who have come to know...man's inhumanity." She had a penetrating mind, leavened with earthiness and a sense of humor. She cut to the heart of any matter. There are also excellent descriptions of the Shah, DeGaulle, and others.

Kissinger's wise analyses are convincing. The modern state spends more time in running bureaucracies than in defining their purpose...it favors the status quo, because it is familiar and it is not possible to prove that another course would produce better results.

The world will never be without problems. The argument that we should solve these problems before venturing into space programs will confine us for eternity. Columbus would never have discovered America if the 15th century had said it needed first to solve its problems.

And ends on a word of advice: Faith has provided the motive force for mankind's checkered odyssey. The crucial quality we need is faith in a future created in part through the acts of commitment.

(We understand that this 1500 word tome is only Volume One of the memoirs.)

MANCHESTER UNION
CLERK
MANCHESTER, N.H.
D. REYNOLDS

[L]

JUL 1 5 1980

New
England
Newsday

## Irene Corbally Kuhn

THE PULSE OF POLITICS, subtitled ELECTING PRESIDENTS IN THE ME-

DIA AGE is by James David Barber (W.W. Norton, $14.95). This is one of two timely books from this publishing house which are good fare in this curious election year. Mr. Barber is an old hand at the business of presidential campaigns and he examines the Presidents we elected

in the 20th Century from Theodore Roosevelt in 1900 to Richard Nixon, 1968-1973. He proves the country has always been stronger than any man chosen to lead it for four years or more. It will prove to be so, again, God willing, despite the fact elections seem now to be determined by electronic gnomes in television, and the new breed in print journalism, working their streets in a newly competitive way.

The second book, KENNEDY AND ROOSEVELT—THE UNEASY ALLIANCE ($14.95), is by a gifted young man, Michael R. Beschloss, only 25 years of age now, and a graduate student at Harvard. That James McGregor Burns has written the foreword to his first book is a tribute to Beschloss' scholarship and talent, for he has brought to life two extraordinary men in contrasting political traditions, social background, and philosophy. He has given his own generation, who were not even born in the times he writes about, a clear and comprehensive look at two leaders "in terms of the human dilemma confronting every lead-

# The Pulse of Politics

er; the uneasy alliance between the quest for power and the quest for purpose." The book is a significant contribution to contemporary history; and for older readers who remember the men and their special time, in World War II, it is full of hitherto unknown or unrevealed material told in a most compelling way.

HENRY KISSINGER-WHITE HOUSE YEARS (Little, Brown & Co., $22.50). I am late in reviewing this book because it is so heavy it is a burden to hold—five pounds on my bathroom scales, 1,521 pages (16 more if you count the extras—table of contents, foreword, etc.) And, mind you, this is the account only of Mr. Kissinger's first four years in the Capitol (1969-1973). Another volume is on the way. There ought to be a law against books of this size for general reading. Only encyclopedias have this privilege. And, having said this, I must admit Mr. Kissinger has given a fascinating inside look at Washington's dealings with the world in the first years of the last decade.

I do hope Mr. Kissinger will employ an editor to control his flood of prose in the next book, for this is an exceptionally important review of the way things were; and looking back, is often a good guide to future action. Mr. Kissinger is not about to retire from the scene; his talents are as undeniable as his ego and the controversy both stir up. His book, like an encyclopaedia, should be in every household which is interested in reviewing and studying the facts as a guide to political judgments.

As a change from politics, how about a look backwards when those at the top of the heap never had it so good? When the world was younger and we, as a nation, were much too innocent for our own good. It was only three years ago that Gladys Deacon, an American-born femme de fatale, died at the age of 96. Her biographer, Hugo Vickers, was a man possessed by the stories he'd heard of her, and tracked her down to talk to her in her final years, and, eventually, to do this book "GLADYS, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH" (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, $12.95), as vivid a story of a breath-taking American beauty as any piece of high blown fiction. To begin

with, her American expatriate father murdered her mother's lover while the doomed Don Juan was hiding behind sofa in a hotel in Cannes. When Gladys was only 14, she became fascinated with the engagement of the American heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt, to the Duke of Marlborough and wished she could have been in Consuelo's shoes. She said: "I am too young, though mature in the arts of world an's witchcraft."

It wasn't long before she was in the midst of a bohemian life, with men falling all over themselves just to be in his company, for she was a truly brilliant woman who knew intimately every artistic figure of that famous time that might be called the "age of indulgence." And, ironically, at the age of 40, after many years as his mistress when a divorce from Consuelo was virtually impossible, Gladys married the 9th Duke of Marlborough. And, to cap the irony, the marriage was not a success, and the Duke eventually had her evicted from Blendheim Truly, a fascinating biography, thanks Mr. Vickers's story-telling talent.

131, WC1R 2JU, State House, London W11

MAY 8 1980

Received at Office
Received at Station Number 1, 15th May
Junction B, University Avenue, Ayr, Ayrshire
Director, Braithwaite, Paul Taylor
Directors

Enc:

Yours sincerely,

With kind regards,

have for books to be included in the Guide.
in your comments on our reviews and any suggestions you might
in The White House Years on page 13. I would be very interested
of the Good Book Guide which includes a review of your book
We are delighted to enclose a complimentary copy of Volume 8

Dear Dr. Klaasinger,

3rd April 1980

United States of America.
Washington D.C. 20006,
1800 K Street, N.W.,
Suite 250,
Dr. Henry Klaasinger,

Telephone
01-3508185

P.O. Box 83
London 2W11 4BT

Braithwaite & Taylor Limited

THE GOOD BOOK GUIDE

Braithwaite & Taylor [n]

[LC]

## Thè Oldest Profession

### Hilary Evans

Two bedraggled ladies in crumpled negligées slouch on a settee: 'I wonder', says one mournfully, 'I wonder why they call us *filles de joie*?' Hilary Evans' elegant, witty little book is objective and comprehensive - a history of prostitutes of all sorts from the harlot of the *Epic of Gilgamesh* (2000 BC) to the Dilly Boys of the 1970s; no moral attitudes are taken, and the author is sympathetic to just about everyone except the prurient and the puritan. But the illustrations are the thing: cartoons, engravings, paintings and photographs of such famous grandes Horizontales as the magnificent Cora Pearl (£6,000 a night, *she* claimed), the skittish Marguerite Bellanger, and the motherly Léonide Leblanc, together with such rarities as Miss Josie Arlington's advertisement for her 'complete and thorough sporting house' at 225N Basin Street, New Orleans, and the tariff of a German Military Brothel of 1917: *Für die ganze Nacht, 30 Mark; für 1 Stunde, 10 Mark.*
David & Charles p255 ₮ 79
£7.50 WSX112

## World Affairs

### The White House Years

### Henry Kissinger

This is not a modest book - but it is a substantial and important one; well written and well edited. Volume One of Kissinger's monumental work (being the 'White House years' as opposed to the 'State Department years'); it describes America's foreign policy during 1969-1973 from the vantage point of the man who was more responsible than any other for shaping it. That Henry Kissinger carried on his own very personal brand of diplomacy (despite White House attempts to 'lower his profile') long before he became Secretary of State, is made very apparent here as he describes his secret trip to China; the first SALT negotiation; the middle east crises; the Chile crisis (Allende was overthrown by his own incompetence, says Kissinger, without American help); his defence of the Christmas bombing of Cambodia ('the only key to peace was the overthrow of the established government'); his relationship with Nixon and other world leaders.

His involvement with the Vietnam Peace negotiations brings him firmly into centre stage - indeed the titles of the book's four parts - *Beginnings, The Start of the Journey, From Turmoil to Hope and From War to Peace* - indicate the context in which Kissinger sees his own contribution.

There remains a lot more to learn about this foreign born Harvard *summa cum laude*, a disciple of Nelson Rockefeller who secured an unparalleled reputation at the centre of the American - indeed the world - political forum. Perhaps that will be revealed in Volume Two of this absorbing work. Meanwhile, this is essential reading for anyone attempting to understand the conduct of modern American foreign policy.

Michael Joseph p1546 ₮ 79
£14.95 WDA105

### The Powers That Be David Halberstam

A fascinating, probing anatomy of the powerful American media and its enormous influence on both America and the world. David Halberstam, the Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist, describes in detail the relationship between Presidents and the media from Roosevelt - 'who took over the town and the radio waves as well' to Lyndon Johnson, the first of two Presidents to feel himself driven from office by the

press, who noted 'All of politics has changed because of you guys in the media'.

Halberstam's narrative - richly interwoven with intimate anecdote - focuses on four giants of the communications industry: C.B.S. (particularly fascinating on the meteoric rise of William S.Paley, his massive personal influence, and the power struggles within his organisation); *Time Inc.* (whose dynamic, fact devouring founder, Harry Luce, was 'at least as influential as the Secretary of State'); the *Washington Post* (whose coverage of the Watergate scandal effectively removed the President from office) and the mighty Chandler owned *Los Angeles Times*.

Halberstam's book makes riveting and at times alarming reading as he identifies the impact of the media on topics of universal concern. He illustrates the power of individual reporters (*Time*'s Bureau Chiefs became surrogate U.S. Ambassadors in important posts around the world); the effect of Vietnam, 'a war in which journalists made their reputations and generals lost theirs'; the ability of a photograph to persuade millions (*Life* magazine's startling picture of a U.S. marine lying in a foetal position shook the confidence of its readers); and the polarisation of power in Washington. Long gone are the days when a president could yell - as Roosevelt once did at a dozy reporter - 'Belair! I don't care what paper you represent, you are here on my sufferance and when you're here you will take notes'.

Chatto p784 ₮ 79
£9.95 WDP100

### The Climate of Treason Andrew Boyle

As the title indicates, this is much more than just a story of treachery. It is a thoroughly researched, carefully written and always readable (indeed, compulsively so) study of the unhealthy political, social and cultural climate that spawned the likes of Burgess, Maclean, Philby, 'Maurice' whom we now know to be Anthony Blunt, and 'Basil' a British physicist 'turned' by the C.I.A.. Andrew Boyle's painstaking research records the lives of Burgess, Maclean and Philby in particular detail - emphasising the influence of their family; their early schooling and of course Cambridge of the 1930s and the 'select' group known as 'The Apostles'. By firmly establishing the story in its social context he lends much more substance to the conclusions implied or drawn in subsequent chapters.

Producing startling new evidence especially, but not exclusively, concerning Burgess' 'slightly older and quieter shadow', Anthony Blunt - Boyle recreates the period and then incorporates a thriller with authority and confidence. His book is as deftly woven as were the intrigues of his subjects.

Hutchinson p448 ₮ 79
£8.95 WSX115

### Vakil Abad Richard Savin

No nation has a monopoly of horror. The British, after all, invented the concentration camp, if the Germans brought that idea to the apogee of terror. Nor do particular regimes enjoy a prerogative of oppression, and if the present government of Iran seems to be as intransigent as that of the Shah, here is a book which goes some way towards explaining the summary execution of so many prison governors and guards. Richard Savin was thrust into Vakil Abad, one of Iran's worst jails, after arrest for alleged drug smuggling; he remained there without trial for thirty months, and here records a chilling story of torture, rape, mass killing, petty tyranny, religious and political bigotry. No-one will read the book with pleasure, but it will certainly form another stone in the cairn to be raised in commemoration of man's general inhumanity to man.

Canongate p240 ₮ 79
£6.95 WSX114

13

[L]

# REVIEW OF
1979

This year's annual review offers you a retrospective from three different angles. *The Editors' Choice* of the most important, original or interesting books published during 1979... *Literary Prizes* in which Ion Trewin discusses the variety and value of prizes awarded during 1979 and identifies the major winners... and the *GBG Bestseller List* for 1979 based on the number of copies sold through our book supply service to Good Book Guide readers around the world between January and December 1979.

## Editors' Choice

### Life on Earth David Attenborough

A remarkable volume which, as a comprehensive history of nature, is without rival. All the major events in the evolution of life are described in a most lively and readable form told, in so far as possible, in the terms of plants and animals alive today.

The book boasts a combination which it is difficult to beat – an authoritative but natural communicator; photography of unparalleled clarity, beauty and wonder, and a subject of universal consuming interest and relevance – the story of life itself.

Collins p320 79

£8.95 NLH101

### Arabia Through the Looking Glass

Jonathan Raban

A brilliant book in which Jonathan Raban, known chiefly as a radio and television dramatist, describes his travels through half-a-dozen Middle Eastern countries. He records his adventures and the people he met with an urbane, sardonic wit, but also with great enthusiasm and sympathy, showing considerable insight into the Arab mind and the problems of sudden, overwhelming prosperity and the impact of Western culture.

Collins p348 79

£6.95 TRC122

### A Distant Mirror Barbara W.Tuchman

Barbara Tuchman's absorbing account of 'the Calamitous 14th Century' is history at its very best. One of the most tormented of periods, it was a time of plagues, war, taxes, brigandage, bad government, insurrection and schism in the church; it was the time of the Black Death (which killed one-third of the population from Iceland to India between 1348 and 1350), the 'hundred years war', of Popes and anti-Popes, of Chaucer and Boccaccio, the Sorbonne and Oxford, of cults of death, flagellants, debauchery and despair. Barbara Tuchman's narrative focuses on the life of a French nobleman, Enguerrand de Coucy VII, 'most experienced and skilful of all the knights of France', whose lifetime ends with the century. His father dies at Crecy, his mother from the plague; he fights the English at fifteen; marries the daughter of the King of England and becomes involved in the typical pursuits of his time-feuds, parleys, religious wars and the final, fateful crusade against the Turks.

Macmillan p736 79

£9.95 LPF102

### A Bend in the River V.S.Naipaul

A superb example of V.S.Naipaul's talent to grip the reader's attention by stealth. *A Bend in the River* is set in an African state where the turmoil, the tyranny and the bloody change wrought by independence have succeeded the colonial calm. Naipaul's state is going through its adolescence: people, tribes and towns are destroyed only to re-emerge and reform. The central figure is Salim, a businessman of Indian stock who finds himself a stranger in a township that is having to cope with revolution, destruction and re-birth. A land that has seen Indian, Arab and European masters is now in the hands of Africans. Starting as a shadowy figure, Salim's character gradually develops, alongside his relationship with his mistress and the inhabitants of the town, eventually emerging into sharp focus. Full of insights about the past, present and especially the future of the African continent.

Deutsch p296 79

£5.50 BTR103

### The Nuclear State Robert Jungk

This book argues that the development of nuclear energy will not only lead to unacceptably high risks for future generations, but will also bring in its train forms of security and limitations of personal freedom that are incompatible with democracy. Protection against terrorists or just plain human error requires a conformist, regimented and authoritarian society, he argues. The author draws on his detailed knowledge of nuclear energy to describe specific weaknesses in the production processes; he gives many examples of mishaps that have occurred and paints an even more horrifying picture of future possibilities as the nuclear energy programme expands.

An important contribution to a question on which many people have strong feelings but few are well-informed.

Calder p168 79

£2.95 WSX106

### The View in Winter Ronald Blythe

Subtitled 'Reflections on Old Age', Ronald Blythe's new book recreates a vanished world through a series of interviews, poems and essays on the problems of old age. His lively septuagenarians and octogenarians remind us of past pleasures and hardships, the sense of loss and the immense changes they have witnessed. But central to his book is our changing attitude towards age itself. Age was venerated in the past because it was considered an achievement bringing with it wisdom and experience. Now it is considered commonplace and experience is derided. Ronald Blythe treats this poignant dilemma with humour and humanity. As the old farrier says, 'I've got no work and no wife, but I've got what I've done, haven't I?'

Allen Lane p352 79

£6.95 WSX109

### The Book of the Body

This illustrated encyclopedia of health, medicine and the body represents a major publishing breakthrough. Illustrated books about the body tend to fall into two categories – highly technical ones for the medical student and watered-down general versions for the layman. The first are written in such a way as to be unintelligible to the ordinary person and the second omit even quite important areas of information, in the belief that laymen either cannot handle them or perhaps that it is just not good for them to know. This is the first book to explain, with the help of 800 drawings and two-colour diagrams *exactly how the body works* in a clear and straightforward way. It does not tell you how to cure yourself but simply tells you exactly what is going on with everything from digestion to a pulmonary embolism. If it uses scientific terms, they are always clearly explained first. Neither glossy nor beautiful, it has 14 parts covering General Considerations; The Heart and Circulatory System; The Blood; The Respiratory Organs; The Digestive System; The Genitourinary System and Reproduction; The Nervous System; The Endocrine Glands; Muscles and Bones; The Teeth and the Palate; The Skin; The Sensory Organs; Infectious Diseases and Tumors. Part Two – The Heart and Circulatory System – for example, covers not only the structure and function of the heart but also explains the power exerted by the heart, the energy supply, assorted disorders from high and low blood pressure and fainting to obstructions and circulatory collapse.

An unsensational, solid, responsible book for anyone wanting to understand exactly how the body works.

Allen & Unwin p544 79

£6.95 KKM111

### The Complete Guide to Painting and Drawing Techniques and Materials

Colin Hayes

This fully illustrated, practical guide to all the popular techniques used in painting and drawing today, is a very professional production indeed. 250 full-colour illustrations (and 300 two-colour and black and white photographs) are reproduced to support the basic principles of drawing and painting. Individual works (old masters; Hockney drawings; exterior murals) are analyzed and the materials and techniques used are clearly explained and illustrated. A panel of working artists gives the reader practical advice on what tools to use, what effects can be achieved and information on the scope and versatility of the chosen medium – with separate chapters on oils, acrylics, tempera, fresco, pastels, charcoal, pen and ink, pencil and airbrushing. Useful advice too on drawing aids, print making, presentation and storage. An excellent idea – constructive, clear, stimulating and very practical.

Phaidon p224 79

£9.95 YSP101

14

The Huntsville Times

HUNTSVILLE, ALA.
D. 51,400 SUN. 55,613

[L]

OCT. 24 1979

# Kissinger Stands to Make $5 Million From Memoirs

By JAMES L. ROWE Jr.
Washington Post News Service

NEW YORK — Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's memoirs, probably the most sought-after manuscript of the decade, will bring the former Nixon administration official as much as $5 million.

The memoirs, which formally went on sale in book stores Tuesday, represent one of the most lucrative properties in publishing history.

To the giant media conglomerate Time, Inc., however, the venture represents one of the largest amounts risked by an American publisher. Three Time subsidiaries — *Time* magazine, publisher Little, Brown and Co. and Book-of-the-Month Club — bought up all-important North American rights. All told, sources estimate, the three Time subsidiaries spent close to $3 million.

To recoup their investments, both Book-of-the-Month and Little, Brown are putting high price tags on the 1,521-page volume, which must become a huge best seller to make money. Publishing sources said that at the least, all of the books now in print would have to be sold for there to be a profit.

Kissinger owns the worldwide book and serialization rights — the memoirs will appear in 17 languages. Foreign publication will bring the former secretary of state another $2 million or more, it is estimated.

All contracts in the United States were signed before Kissinger had put so much as a word on paper, according to his agent, Marvin Josephson. Neither Josephson, nor any other principals, will confirm exactly the amounts Kissinger is getting.

Little, Brown has priced the volume at $22.50.

Book-of-the-Month, which acquired rights to the book before the club was bought by Time in late 1977, will charge its 1.75 million members $17.95 for the book, the highest price it ever has set for a single-volume main selection.

selection but it is not known by how much.

More than a dozen publishers wanted the Kissinger book. Both *Newsweek* and *Time* sought serialization rights and Book-of-the-Month Club and Literary Guild wanted the volume.

"Let's face it," said one publishing source. "Kissinger is charming, controversial and brilliant and was at the center of one of the most controversial administrations in American history. It was a seller's market from the start."

Josephson, who heads up one of the largest talent agencies in the nation, personally handles only two clients: Steve McQueen, the actor, and Kissinger.

"And he drove the best bargain ever without a manuscript or even an outline," said Ralph Graves, editorial director of *Time* magazine, which bought the right to serialize 35,000 words of the 750,000-word book, for an estimated $450,000 to $500,000.

(AP Laserphoto)

HENRY KISSINGER
Memoirs Are Hot Item

9

EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CAN.
JOURNAL
P. 159,730

APR 1 2 1980

# Sheer detail
what counts

*The White House Years*
*by Henry Kissinger*
*Little, Brown, $25*

By BARRY FRIZZELL

Dr. Henry Kissinger served as adviser and Secretary of State for President Nixon. A Harvard intellectual student of history, he moved in the circles of the super rich and powerful.

That call to service from Nixon was to transform him from a relatively obscure Harvard professor to an international figure. Through the force of his personality Kissinger was to leave his own personal mark on this period of American history.

To understand the book and the man, it is perhaps appropriate to recall the words of William Gladstone on Bismarck:

> "He made Germany great and Germans small."

Within the quote resides an implicit linkage of Bismarck's state, Kissinger's books on the diplomacy of the 19th century, ("My motive was to understand the processes by which Europe after the Napoleonic wars established a peace that lasted a century ...) and of course the Germanic mind of the author.

Although often couched in self-deprecatory humor, Kissinger's manner and mind is that of the elitist with an eye for detail. If peace persisted for a century was it perhaps due to the immense skill of a select few statesmen who were able to manipulate and persuade differing factions to a more amenable course?

The White House Years is a huge work of about 600,000 words that minutely traces the conversations and events from the time of Kissinger's call in '68 to the signing of the Vietnamese peace accord.

The real value of the work lies in the detailed record and analysis of a turbulent and dramatic time in American history, moreover, its description of the inner workings of statesmanship within and outside the nation state.

The events of such a history are recent and familiar to most. It is instructive though, to point out several of Kissinger's themes.

One of them is the role of the Eastern Liberal Press. To Kissinger it brought a simplistic morality to an often ambiguous world. As Kissinger noted: Often the U.S. was negotiating not with Hanoi but with itself. In editorials, emotion was consistent but not any logic or penetrating analysis. The press rejected linkage.

In the light of the events of the past five years, SALT I without linkage is at best naive. It fails to recognize the general principles of Soviet leadership:

> To the industrial democracies peace appears as a naturally attainable condition; it is the composition of differences, the absence of struggle. To the Soviet leaders, by contrast, struggle is ended not by compromise but by the victory of one side.

To Kissinger the press has lost its ability to see; it is the wisdom of a fashionably short memory.

With a Jewish childhood that remembers Hitler's Germany and his family's flight from it, the world assumes the shape not of darkness but rather the possibilities of it.

To Kissinger then, the chess players, the statesmen, are the tactical bodyguards against such departures in the night.

He might reason such failures to see as having roots in the flight of our intellectuals. Those whose purpose it is to instruct and define and create "a moral compass" have largely left our world.

Sadly then, if the public at first loves Kissinger as "Super K" and then loathes him later as a manipulator, the fault lies not with him but with us and our own departures into apathy.

If democracy exists through an effort of will on a field of fire, our own generals (our intellectuals) have fled to safe villas for tea and more civilized company, researching perhaps their surreal questions. The administraters and tacticians are left — directing phantom armies who are themselves only excited by proxy wars from the bleachers of the nation's football stadiums. Is it a wonder then, that the Dr. K.'s of the world hear whispers of their own godliness?

Mr. Frizzell is a free-lance writer.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
MONITOR
BOSTON, MA.
D. 200 000

NOV 2 1979

New
England
Newslin

[LC]

Kissi
WAR &

In this book review, Henry Kissinger's memoirs are discussed by Monitor diplomatic correspondent Daniel Southerland in light of his own experience covering the wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Bangladesh. From this perspective, Southerland voices occasional skepticism — and in some places takes issue with Dr. Kissinger. Despite the criticisms he calls the 1,522-page *White House Years* (Boston: Little, Brown. $22.95) 'well worth reading.'

By Daniel Southerland
Staff correspondent of
The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

I spent a good part of the four years described in Henry Kissinger's massive book of memoirs covering three of the wars he writes about — in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Bangladesh.

In none of those places did the United States, in the final crisis, at least, attain its desired ends.

In Vietnam, in my view, much more was involved in Saigon's troubles and ultimate downfall than the loss of American public support and the congressional restrictions in US assistance that Dr. Kissinger dwells on in his book. Corruption, disunity, and, above all, a chronic South Vietnamese dependence on the Americans rather than on their own leaders produced conditions that seemed to make an eventual rout of Saigon's Army inevitable.

The peace for which Dr. Kissinger shared a Nobel Peace Prize never materialized. The Vietnam "cease-fire" meant land-grabbing and intensified attacks from both sides. About the time Dr. Kissinger was receiving his peace prize, I recall watching South Vietnamese fighter planes flying daily bombing raids near Route 13 north of Saigon.

In Cambodia, it is true that, as the former adviser to President Nixon contends, the American and South Vietnamese invasion of 1970 bought considerable time both for the latter's Army and for the Americans as the US pursued their troop withdrawal from Vietnam. But the subsequent US bombing deep inside Cambodia, much of it based on faulty intelligence, contributed, along with North Vietnamese attacks, to the ruin of that country. I am not talking here about the earlier, secret bombing of Vietnamese bases just inside the Cambodian border with Vietnam which, in my view, had a much more limited effect on Cambodia.

Then there was the Indian-Pakistani war of 1971. From the perspective of East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, the Nixon-Kissinger 'tilt' toward West Pakistan appeared to make little sense. The United States was seen to be siding with a brutal West Pakistani suppression of Bengali nationalists. But Dr. Kissinger argues in his book, "White House Years," that the US tilt, which included sailing an American aircraft carrier into the Bay of Bengal, caused the Soviet Union to restrain India, thus averting the destruction of West Pakistan and preserving the US opening to Pakistan's supporter, Communist China.

The Kissinger conclusion that Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was bent on crushing West Pakistan is apparently based largely on an intelligence report that is unavailable to the public. If that report was reliable, then the tilt makes more sense now than it did then from the perspective of the beslested East Pakistani capital, Dacca. It should be noted, however, that some scholars still have their doubts as to whether Mrs. Gandhi really intended,

once she had conquered the Pakistani Army in Bangladesh, to turn then to the west and dismember what was left of Pakistan.

A last point to be made from my experience in parts of Asia outside Indo-China: Mr. Kissinger contends that the credibility of the United States in the eyes of its friends in Asia and elsewhere depended on its steadfastness in Vietnam. But I would argue that, when it came to many Asians, the US had already suffered a grievous blow to its prestige, thanks precisely to its original involvement and subsequent persistence in the Vietnam war. At the least many Asian friends of the United States harbored exceedingly ambiguous feelings about that involvement.

Selig S. Harrison, senior associate of the Carnegie Establishment for International Peace, asserts in his book "The Widening Gulf" that Japanese leaders "had viewed the deepening American embroilment in Vietnam as a damaging demonstration of reckless ineptitude fundamentally affecting their entire image of the United States."

At the same time, Mr. Harrison contends that the economic bonanza Japan enjoyed as a result of the war "was undoubtedly the determining reason for the studied dissemblance marking the Japanese response to the war."

Having laid out at the start some of the skepticism I developed from on-the-spot experience with the Nixon-Kissinger approach to a good part of Asia, let me go on to say that "White House Years" is a book well worth reading.

For one thing, it is not just one book, it is half a dozen books wrapped into one: It is, among other things, a collection of deft sketches of the psychologies of a number of world leaders. It offers new insights into the decisionmaking, as well as the loneliness and vulnerability of President Nixon. It is a book about executive-branch battles with Congress and desperate White House attempts to enhance Mr. Nixon's public image. And it is a book about bitter bureaucratic infighting, with Mr. Nixon and his assistant, Henry Kissinger, invariably pitted against the State Department.

At one point, Secretary of State William P. Rogers is reported to have accused presidential assistant Kissinger of attempting to foment a crisis in the Middle East. At another point, during the 1970 Syrian invasion of Jordan, Mr. Kissinger favored a rapid, brutal escalation of American countermeasures in the region, including the deployment of naval forces. Mr. Rogers, on the other hand, advocated slow, measured escalation.

President Nixon agreed with Mr. Kissinger.

"In my view, what seems 'balanced' and 'safe' in a crisis is often the most risky," writes Mr. Kissinger in his memoirs. "Gradual escalation tempts the opponent to match every move; what is intended as a show of moderation may be interpreted as irresolution...."

And further: "Nixon and I held that if we wished to

From "White house Years"

[L]

inger's

PEACE

avoid confrontation with the Soviets, we had to create rapidly a calculus of risks they would be unwilling to confront, rather than let them slide into the temptation to match our gradual moves."

Both in its elegant style and ability to inform, "White House Years" is in a class with "Present at the Creation," the record by the late Secretary Dean Acheson of his service at the State Department. One difference is that Mr. Acheson ranged over many more years, with half the words. Covering his first four years as President Nixon's assistant for national-security affairs, from January, 1969, to January, 1973. Mr. Kissinger's book is, at 1,522 pages, not only double the Acheson book in length but also a good deal longer than Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace."

Dr. Kissinger surpasses the Acheson diplomatic history, and most others, when it comes to dealing with what he describes as the "accumulated impact of accident, tangibles, fears, and hesitation" on a policymaker. Historians, he says, rarely do justice to the psychological stress that bears down on a top-level decisionmaker. The Kissinger book excels in that regard, piling on minute-by-minute detail in a description of the 1970 crisis in Jordan, for instance, until it reads like something out of a first-rate thriller.

Dr. Kissinger concludes that in the midst of such turmoil, there is little time for reflection. And even when there is time for considerable analysis, momentous decisions are rarely produced by profound discussions among the leading policymakers. Those officials are so hard pressed, according to the former secretary of state, that most of them "leave office with the perceptions and insight with which they entered."

These top officials, he says, "learn how to make decisions, but not what decisions to make. . . . Unsure of their own judgment, unaware of alternatives, they have little choice except to follow the advice of the experts."

One great strength of President Nixon, in Mr. Kissinger's view, was that when it came to major decisions, such as the opening to China, he often went against the advice of many of the experts.

"Events came to our assistance, but I doubt whether the rapprochement [with China] could have occurred with the same decisiveness in any other presidency," Mr. Kissinger writes. "Nixon had an extraordinary instinct for the jugular."

"Nixon viscerally understood the essence of the opportunity and pushed for it consistently. He had the political base on the right, which protected him from the charge of being 'soft on communism.' And his administrative style lent itself to the secretive, solitary tactics the policy required.

"If the NSC [National Security Council] system of elaborating options interested him for anything, it was for the intelligence it supplied him about the views of a bureaucracy he distrusted and for the opportunity it provided to camouflage his own aims."

"There was a marginal difference in our perspectives. Nixon saw in the opening to China a somewhat greater opportunity than I to squeeze the Soviet Union into short-term help on Vietnam; I was more concerned with the policy's impact on the structure of international relations. . . . But these differences rested on the same fundamental judgment: that if relations could be developed with both the Soviet Union and China, the triangular relationship would give us a great strategic opportunity for peace. . . ."

"Our relations to possible opponents should be such, I considered, that our options toward both of them were always greater than their options toward each other."

Dr. Kissinger asserts that, of all the China-scholars and other experts who were consulted at the time, none

mentioned such "geopolitical opportunities" or the possibility that the Chinese might have an incentive to move toward the United States without American concessions, because of a Chinese need for an American counterweight to the Soviet Union.

All of this is vintage Henry Kissinger, global strategist. And many Carter administration officials pay him the compliment of agreeing with much of it. What Mr. Kissinger is often faulted on is for paying so much attention to potential big-power adversaries — the Soviets and Chinese — that he neglected allies. It is often said also that he, and especially President Nixon, oversold the benefits of détente with the Soviets.

Mr. Kissinger does not pretend to be Superman. He admits to mistakes, one of them being a failure to give the Japanese any advance warning of the results of his secret trip to China in July, 1971, and the subsequent announcement that President Nixon would be going to Peking. He defends the secrecy of his trip, however: "The outcome of the trip was not foreseeable; we did not want to risk inflating expectations, generating pressures, and forcing the two sides to take public positions before the results were known. The shock effect of the reversal of positions would have been inevitable no matter how the trip had been handled. . . ."

At another point in the book, Dr. Kissinger says: "The truth is that neither I nor my colleagues possessed a very subtle grasp of Japanese culture and psychology. We therefore made many mistakes; I like to think that we learned a great deal and ultimately built an extraordinarily close relationship after first inflicting some unnecessary shocks to Japanese sensibilities."

Mr. Kissinger also is apologetic at several points concerning his strained relationship with Secretary of State Rogers, describing Mr. Rogers as too proud, himself as too intellectually arrogant, and both of them as too insecure to meet regularly and work out their differences.

While he saw advantages in President Nixon's penchant toward secrecy and lonely decisionmaking. Dr. Kissinger acknowledges that Mr. Nixon "disained any effort to instill a team spirit," and thus "perversely created the maximum incentive for strong-willed subordinates to evade his directives."

Mr. Nixon is portrayed more than once as flying into a monumental rage over bureaucratic evasions of his orders.

The relationship between the President and his national-security adviser is described as an uneasy one at times, especially when the President did nothing to prevent his public-relations men from casting all blame for a particular failure on Dr. Kissinger, leaving him in the aftermath of the pro-Pakistan tilt, for example, to take the blame for a policy that had fallen into public disfavor.

"The policy became my policy," Dr. Kissinger writes. "For several weeks, Nixon was unavailable to me. . . . The departments were not admonished to cease their leaking against me. Nixon could not resist the temptation of letting me twist slowly, slowly in the wind. . . . And then suddenly it was all over. The crisis on the subcontinent did not linger and so there was no focal point for festering criticism. I was soon enough returned to favor with the President, and we resumed our previous wary relationship — close on substance, aloof personally."

Daniel Southerland, the Monitor's diplomatic correspondent in Washington, served as its correspondent in Saigon from 1970 to 1973. He traveled with Henry Kissinger to Europe in December, 1976, on the latter's last overseas trip as Secretary of State.