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NEWSMAKER SATURDAY

**AIR TIMES:** Saturday, March 16, 1991, 1:30 & 5:30PM, ET

**ORIGINATION:** Washington, D.C.

**TOPIC:** The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

**GUESTS:**
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI
Former National Security Adviser

HENRY KISSINGER
Former Secretary of State

**MODERATOR:** Charles Bierbauer - Newsmaker Saturday

**EXECUTIVE PRODUCER:** Elissa Free

**ASSOCIATE PRODUCERS:** Kelly Wallace
Susan Reichley

**CONDITION OF USE:** Credit "Newsmaker Saturday" (CNN).

EDITOR: This is a rush transcript provided for the information and convenience of the press. Print and broadcast media are permitted to quote this transcript provided credit is given to "NEWSMAKER SATURDAY" (CNN). Video and audio cassettes are available upon request to the media. For further information, please contact Eileen Murphy at (202) 515-2924.

(c) Copyright 1990, Cable News Network, Inc.

NEWS TRANSCRIPTS, INC. - (202) 682-9050

NEWSMAKER SATURDAY (CNN) - March 16, 1991

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MR. BIERBAUER: Will a national referendum on preserving the Soviet Union help prop up Mikhail Gorbachev's rule, or will it only dramatize the crumbling of the communist giant? Can the U.S. and Soviet Union make any headway on arms control while Gorbachev struggles with his domestic problems?

Welcome to NEWSMAKER SATURDAY. In Washington, I'm Charles Bierbauer. We'll ask Henry Kissinger, secretary of state in the Nixon administration, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to President Carter, today, on NEWSMAKER SATURDAY.

MR. BIERBAUER (on tape): On Sunday, Soviet citizens will be asked to do something they have never done before--express their view in a national referendum. The question: Do you consider it necessary to preserve the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal, sovereign republics.

SOVIET PRESIDENT GORBACHEV (in speech to nation, 3-15-91): Success of the referendum will open up the possibility to implement reform . . . will open the way for all our "grand plans."

MR. BIERBAUER: Ultimately, Gorbachev's future as well as that of the Soviet Union may be on the line.

Six of the 15 republics--including the three Baltic states--are refusing to play Gorbachev's game. U.S. officials worry more about what lurks behind Gorbachev should he fail and fall.

PRESIDENT BUSH (Ottawa news conference, 3-13-91): I will continue to deal with the president of the Soviet Union. That is the government that's accredited and that is the government with which the United States government will deal.

MR. BIERBAUER: Secretary of State James Baker is in Moscow trying to get U.S.-Soviet arms control talks back on track.

SECRETARY OF STATE BAKER: Very frankly, I would hope that we can continue on and make progress to overcome these problems in arms control.

MR. BIERBAUER: A Bush-Gorbachev summit--postponed from February--hangs in the balance of those talks. But much more hangs in the balance for Gorbachev in his referendum and apparent obsession for holding the Soviet Union together.

We'll talk first with Dr. Henry Kissinger, when we return in a moment.

(Commercial announcements)

CHARLES BIERBAUER: Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger joins us from our New York bureau. Dr. Kissinger, Mr. Gorbachev's referendum on Sunday poses the question to Soviet citizens: Do you consider necessary the preservation of the U.S.S.R.? Is this referendum going to move anything, or does this lead in fact to setting the stage for confrontation?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, it's a very French referendum, because there's almost no rational

(L)

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negative answer you can give to the question as it is posed. They don't give an option of independence for the various republics, which happens to be the key issue. My guess is that it will be a stage in the continuing struggle.

MR. BIERBAUER: And a "No" answer is almost unlikely.

DR. KISSINGER: A "No" answer is almost out of the question, and it is so rigged that it takes only a 50 percent vote in the whole country so that the individual republic's expression is subsumed in the expression of the largest republic, which happens to be Russia.

MR. BIERBAUER: Well, in Russia, though, you have the situation where the president of the Russian republic, Mr. Yeltsin, is becoming more and more the strong opponent of Mr. Gorbachev, or does that only become a public perception, that he really doesn't have the power to challenge Gorbachev?

DR. KISSINGER: I think at this point nobody in the Soviet Union knows exactly what power they have, because until somebody calls on some organized force for assistance and sees whether that organized force obeys, it is very difficult to judge who has the real authority. There's no question that Yeltsin is challenging Gorbachev. On the referendum he has added a clause for the Russian republic that the president of the Russian republic should be elected by universal suffrage, and that will probably pass. And that is to distinguish himself from Gorbachev, who has never been elected by a general vote to anything. So I think the struggle will continue. Six republics have already indicated that they won't participate in the referendum; several others will not accept the result of the referendum. It will give Gorbachev a certain additional authority to try to bring about the unity of the country. But I think it is simply a stage in a struggle that will go on for awhile.

MR. BIERBAUER: Is Mr. Gorbachev's objective now perhaps more his own personal political survival rather than that of the union?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, I'm sure that Gorbachev would like to preserve the Russian empire as it has developed over a period of 400 years, and the Soviet state as it developed over a period of 80 years. That has now been bound up, however, also with his own political position. But the political position of almost everyone in the Soviet Union is bound up with the outcome of the struggle that is now going on. It is hard to imagine that Gorbachev and Yeltsin can both survive three years as political figures, for example, in this current situation.

MR. BIERBAUER: Well, can the Soviet Union as an entity even survive? Could it survive the breaking off of the three Baltic republics and two or three of the other republics, the Georgians, the Armenians, and the Moldavians?

DR. KISSINGER: I think it probably could survive the splitting off of the three Baltic republics, though Gorbachev seems to have a different view, because the outside world has never fully accepted the incorporation of the Baltic republics. But at some point of the separation of these various republics, the whole system is going to come apart. And even today, when they're technically part of the Soviet Union, many of the republics have done things that are barely compatible with a unified

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state. Some of these republics have introduced their own language as the official language; the Ukraine, which has a population of over 60 million, has introduced a form of its own currency whereby the Russian ruble is legal tender only if you have some sort of Ukrainian identity document to go with it. So the process, this process of challenge, can be affected by the referendum only if Gorbachev then goes to repression and imposes central rule by force. And I would doubt that he has that much power. We will see that within the next six months.

MR. BIERBAUER: There are some that I've talked with in the White House who say that there is just so much instability there that there is a fear that Gorbachev will invoke the use of force or will be brought to that by the military.

DR. KISSINGER: One would have to say that if the Soviet Union is to be preserved as a unified state, the use of force, at least in some republics, is almost inevitable. And the prediction for the Soviet Union, the likely prediction, would have to be chaos and repression occurring simultaneously.

MR. BIERBAUER: If that is the case, is the U.S. in--clearly a difficult but an unsustainable position by continuing to deal with Gorbachev, or is there no alternative? Secretary of State Baker is in fact in Moscow on the eve of this referendum.

DR. KISSINGER: We are right to deal with Gorbachev because he is after all the president of a country we recognize and that still exists. It would be a mistake, however, to ignore the various other forces, and we should begin a dialogue on those subjects where it's clearly appropriate with the various republics--on distribution of food, for example, and on other issues. Especially since all of these republics constantly send emissaries to the United States, reciprocal visits would be appropriate.

MR. BIERBAUER: Another key issue on Mr. Baker's agenda is arms control, to try and get the START, the strategic arms agreement, back on track and get compliance with the conventional agreement in Europe. Is it urgent to do so now while there is still some semblance of order in the Soviet Union?

DR. KISSINGER: I think the conventional arms agreement certainly has to be rectified--the Soviet Union has to go into compliance with it. There are three divisions that they have assigned to their naval forces that are in clear violation, and then they have moved over 20,000 tanks east of the Urals, which are not a violation of the letter but a violation of the intention of the agreement. With respect to START, I have my doubts whether that is still a significant negotiation, because if one looks at the military programs of both sides, they seem to me to tend towards stability, towards leveling off in any event. And I would like to know who controls the weapons and who is supposed to obey the agreement before I would put huge pressure behind it.

MR. BIERBAUER: Let me just move quickly onto one other area before we run out of time. The Soviet role in the Middle East--are they still playing a useful or are they hedging towards a disruptive role?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, we can't tell that yet. The test of it is whether they will ask those

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Arab countries with whom they have influence, the number of which is shrinking, to make comparable
sacrifices to those which we will be obliged to ask of our friends in Israel, and that is the test of
whether they'll be useful.

MR. BIERBAUER: What would you define as a comparable sacrifice?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, whether they are willing to enter into negotiations, whether they are
willing to have exchange of people, something that defines a normal relationship between states.

MR. BIERBAUER: "They" being who, the Syrians?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, for example, Syria will; the Soviet Union still has a measure of
influence. The number of states in which they have special influence is shrinking, but one has to think
of the Soviet Union in the next phase of the Middle East as a continuing Middle East country, because
their 60 million Moslems will become a more and more important factor.

MR. BIERBAUER: Dr. Kissinger, I thank you very much. Appreciate your being with us today.

DR. KISSINGER: Glad to be.

(Commercial announcements)

MR. BIERBAUER: Dr. Brzezinski, thank you for joining us. Let me reflect on one thing that Henry Kissinger said. He thinks force is almost inevitable to bring things under control in the Soviet Union. Do you agree?

DR. BRZEZINSKI: Yes, I basically agree. It seems to me that the process of disintegration of the Soviet Union is so far advanced, that any effort to halt it, not even to reverse it, will require some use of force. I hope it will not be used because it will not be a solution; it will make things worse. But I can see how some people in the Kremlin might be tempted to use it.

MR. BIERBAUER: Which some people? Mr. Gorbachev included?

DR. BRZEZINSKI: Perhaps Gorbachev, but in the first instance, the KGB and the party. I think one has to realize that Gorbachev's power now rests largely on these two institutions. He started off as the leader of the party, the only monopolistic party in the Soviet Union. That party has largely disintegrated. The state machinery is in chaos. So the only thing that is left with which to govern are the KGB and the army. And they both want to preserve this centralized multinational state.

MR. BIERBAUER: Is the use of force in some ways just as necessary to the West as it is to the Soviet Union? Is instability a greater danger for everyone?

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DR. BRZEZINSKI: I think we have to realize that a coercive stability is a prescription for an eventual explosion, and that could be terribly dangerous. Yes, in an ideal world, we would prefer to have no instability, but I personally think that the transitional instability is inevitable and necessary, because eventually what is now the Soviet Union has to become, at best, a pluralistic confederation, but in many respects it will also have to entail the secession from the Soviet Union of some of the non-Russian nations which do not wish to remain being ruled by Moscow.

MR. BIERBAUER: Do you see Gorbachev accepting that, but simply needing time to get through the process?

DR. BRZEZINSKI: No. I think that there is a very interesting difference between Gorbachev and Yeltsin. When Gorbachev speaks of Russia, Rossiya, he speaks still in this kind of mystical, romantic sense of Russia being the motherland of a number of nations, embraced together by this notion of a community which is called Rossiya. When Yeltsin speaks of Rossiya, he speaks much more of a nation-state. The difference being, perhaps, in the first instance, the equivalent would be Britain-England, Wales, Scotland, but subsumed under one word, Britain. In the second case, England, specifically the home of the people who are English. These are these two alternative meanings of the word "Russia," and I think Gorbachev has this romantic, historical concept of Russia.

MR. BIERBAUER: What about his approach to solving a problem, this referendum this weekend? Is that sort of lurching from one quasi-solution to another, or does it buy him time?

DR. BRZEZINSKI: I think if he had proposed that referendum three years ago it would have been viewed as a forward step, and he might have gotten the endorsement of many of the non-Russian nations. Now, it's not only a belated step, but it's going to aggravate the national tensions, it's going to dramatize the disunity. And I think it's important for us in the West to send him a signal, that while we continue dealing with Moscow we inevitability will have to deal with the non-Russian nations as they gain their institutional sovereignty, and I would favor some action after the referendum whereby we begin to initiate some form of informal relationships with the non-Russian republics.

MR. BIERBAUER: The sort of signal that Secretary of State Baker sent this week by meeting precisely with those representatives?

DR. BRZEZINSKI: Yes, but I would go further than that in two respects. One, I think we ought to initiate the practice of occasionally sending cabinet-level missions to the capitals of the so-called Soviet republics, so that we develop a relationship of dealing with them.

And secondly, we ought to devise some form for having permanent, quasi-diplomatic representation in these republics, perhaps modeled on the system that we devised for dealing with Taiwan on a continuing basis, after we recognized the Chinese communist regime in Beijing. It's called The American Institution in Taiwan; it's allegedly not official, so it doesn't pose a problem in our relations with the government in Beijing, and yet it represents America.

MR. BIERBAUER: But doesn't that presuppose a splitting off of these entities from what is now the Soviet Union?

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DR. BRZEZINSKI: I think eventually in some case that'll happen. Eventually, in some cases there will be new arrangements, perhaps as I said a confederation, and one would hope that the leadership in Moscow would accept that this is the only arrangement that's compatible with pluralism, and that in fact is compatible with effective economic reforms. I think it's terribly important for Gorbachev and his associates to realize that a centralized system run from Moscow is now incompatible with any notion of a free market system.

MR. BIERBAUER: Well, and yet what Mr. Gorbachev seems to be saying is that you still have to have that kind of a centralized system.

People I talk with at the White House say that they worry much more about what lurks behind Gorbachev, what could indeed succeed him, or could be pulling the strings--as you suggest, the KGB or the military--and that a destabilized Soviet Union is worse than a reassertion of central control.

DR. BRZEZINSKI: But you know that's like saying that the division of the world into two rigid camps during the cold war is better than the fragmentation that'll follow our victory. First of all, I'm not sure that's the right judgment; secondly, it's an irrelevant judgment because it is happening; the existing Soviet Union cannot be preserved as a democratic state. A democratic Soviet Union is an oxymoron. The only way you can preserve the Soviet Union as a centralized state, quote, unquote, stable, is by force, and that will eventually produce an explosion.

I think we ought to strive to ease the processes of transforming the Soviet Union into a pluralist state, and try to communicate even to Gorbachev the notion that eventually a democratic Russia that permits a confederation and secession is more likely to be a Russia that's prosperous, that will--truly begins to develop.

MR. BIERBAUER: Does still the potential of a state that's run by force put an added premium on getting an arms control treaty with the Soviets? Mr. Baker seemed to indicate that they didn't make much progress this week.

DR. BRZEZINSKI: What worries me is that there is an effort to preserve a centralized state. The army and the KGB will be more important. They will be resistant to signing any comprehensive disarmament treaties, and what's worse--they may initiate an effort to delay, or even to cancel Soviet troop withdrawals from Germany and Central Europe, because the army has been very unhappy about these commitments to withdraw. And for a number of years, still, there's going to be a sizeable Soviet troop presence in East Germany. If the army came directly to power in Moscow, there's the possibility that this arrangement would be halted, revised, or perhaps even canceled.

MR. BIERBAUER: So that suggests that getting a treaty is urgent?

DR. BRZEZINSKI: It's desirable, but we should have no illusion that if there is this coercive stability in Moscow, that it'll be any easier to get such an arrangement.

MR. BIERBAUER: Well, in that light, should they proceed and try and get it within this sort of six-month window that they've set for a summit between Mr. Bush and Mr. Gorbachev?

DR. BRZEZINSKI: Of course it's desirable, but we also have to recognize the fact that in a

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sense we have a strategic standdown right now. Both sides are committing fewer resources to any significant arms race in the strategic area. We are getting in effect a kind of tacit accommodation. I'd like to see it institutionalized, but I don't think it's as critical as it was some years ago.

MR. BIERBAUER: Dr. Brzezinski, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for joining us as well on NEWSMAKER SATURDAY. In Washington, I'm Charles Bierbauer.

(The following brief segment was taped for airing on CNN's Moneyline on Friday, March 15, 1991.)

MR. BIERBAUER: Dr. Brzezinski, the debt agreement, or a debt agreement with Poland, what are the prospects of really helping the Polish economy, and what's the West's obligation to Poland?

DR. BRZEZINSKI: I think it's generally recognized in the financial circles in the West, and of course it's very much recognized by the reformers in Poland, that the very significant relief in the debt burden is critical to Poland's capacity to move forward with the transition from a communist type economy to a free market economy. And we must be aware of two things: One, the Poles are making that transition on the most ambitious of scales, more so than any other formerly communist country, and the Polish economy is the biggest one in Eastern Europe. Its success or failure, therefore, will provide an object lesson for others. If there is debt relief for Poland--and I hope there will be--I think it will stimulate Western investment in Poland. Without it, I don't think there will be much Western investment in Poland, and without Western investment in Poland, the reforms will run out of steam, productivity will decline, the GNP will drop, and eventually the reforms will fail. It's as brutal and as central as that.

MR. BIERBAUER: Does Lech Walesa have to go home with that sort of thing in hand?

DR. BRZEZINSKI: Yes, I think so. I think his visit will be viewed as a very major political, economic failure if he doesn't get a decent agreement on this issue.

MR. BIERBAUER: What is the significance of the debt agreement to the prospects for the Polish economy and to the West's obligations to really help Poland succeed?

DR. BRZEZINSKI: I think it's absolutely central, and everybody in Poland knows it, and I think the financial community in the West realizes it as well.