The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies was established as an autonomous organization in May 1968. It is a regional research centre for scholars and other specialists concerned with modern Southeast Asia. The Institute's research interest is focused on the many-faceted problems of development and modernization, and political and social change in Southeast Asia.

The Institute is governed by a twenty-two-member Board of Trustees on which are representatives from the National University of Singapore, appointees from the government, as well as representatives from a broad range of professional and civic organizations and groups. A ten-man Executive Committee oversees day-to-day operations; it is chaired by the Director, the Institute's chief academic and administrative officer.

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CONTENTS

I Opening Address S. Rajaratnam

II American Foreign Policy:
A Global View Henry Kissinger

III Discussion

IV Closing Remarks K.S. Sandhu

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2 by the
East Asian Studies
Terrace, Pasir Panjang

Southeast Asian Studies

Private Limited, Singapore

Private Limited

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# I Opening Address

## S. Rajaratnam

Welcome to the second Singapore Lecture. The first Singapore Lecture inaugurated last year by Professor Milton Friedman dealt with finding solutions to economic problems which even the mythological invisible hand appears unable to guide in the desired direction.

Our speaker tonight, Dr Henry Kissinger, will deal with another facet of world crisis—the disarray in the conduct of international relations. Since international economics and politics are interrelated problems, what Dr Kissinger has to say tonight will, I am sure, bring illumination to the more fundamental source of the crisis which permeates almost all aspects of modern life.

The title of Dr Kissinger's talk suggests a presentation of American Foreign Policy not from a national but a global point of view. His title confirms my belief that a global power like the United States cannot limit itself to a foreign policy founded only on national interests, though many American politicians talk as though that were the case.

Dr Kissinger is an exception. As Secretary of State he more than his predecessors consciously and deliberately directed his country's foreign policy more in the European rather than American tradition and this more than his personal style is what made him so controversial a figure in his own country. It is my impression that as Secretary of State he was better understood, precisely for this reason, by his ideological adversaries in the Soviet Union, in China and even in the Middle East. They may not have appreciated the disconcerting moves he may have made from time to time in the power game but they knew that he was playing chess and not checkers—and in the dangerous game of power politics where calculated risks are taken it is very important for adversaries to know whether chess or checkers is being played.

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Dr Kissinger's topic is of crucial interest to non-Communist
ries like Singapore because our future, regardless of whether we
the Americans lovable or not, will depend on whether the United
 States or the Soviet Union wins the on-going contest for leadership in
the economy and world politics. The outcome of this contest will be
ed not in some remote future but in the lifetime of the vast
rity present in this hall.

Since one or the other of the only two contestants must win then,
far as this contest is concerned, neutrality will not preclude the
of us from becoming either beneficiaries or victims.

But what bothers some of us is whether an affluent, democratic
State is better equipped for the rigours and discipline of
st for world leadership than a lean and austere Soviet dictator-
I can think of no speaker better qualified to clear up these very
in doubts and anxieties than Dr Kissinger. You can decide after
whether to hedge your bets or not.

now have great pleasure in inviting Dr Kissinger to deliver the
pore Lecture.

Henry Kissinger

Mr Deputy Prime Minister, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I accepted the invitation to speak here with great eagerness.
Although Singapore is a relatively small country in terms of popula-
tion, I must say that in terms of its influence—when I was in
office—under the distinguished leadership that you have, Singapore
has always played a very significant role.

I want to take this opportunity to tell you how important for my
own intellectual development and understanding of this area has been
the constant friendship, and the occasional scolding, we have received
from your Prime Minister. The first time I met your Prime Minister, he
was telling my academic colleagues at Harvard that they didn't know
what they were talking about. Later, he appeared from time to time in
Washington, when I was in office, to recall us to our duty. So I am here
as an admirer of what has been accomplished here, and as a friend of
your leaders.

I believe that the Deputy Prime Minister has posed exactly the
right question for our period and exactly the question that the United
States must answer if free societies are to survive. The key question of
our period is whether the United States can muster sufficient under-
standing and sufficient resolution to maintain and to prevail in the
contest that is now taking place.

For the emotional balance of those members of the American
Embassy who may be here, I would like to stress that I speak in my
private capacity, and that you must receive the official formula-
tions from our Ambassador and his outstanding staff. At the same
time, I want to stress that I strongly support the main lines of the
foreign policy of the Reagan Administration, and that I make this

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qualification only so that I can talk to you as a philosopher and as an
observer. But you should remember that I am at ease about the main
directions of our foreign policy and that I support it.

The question that has been put to me is important because there is
no doubt that the United States has found itself in the post-War period
in a world for which very little in our historical experience has prepared
us. It had not occurred to Americans before the end of World War II
that we had responsibility for a continuing foreign policy. Until 1945,
the United States felt itself secure behind two great oceans, and it was
inconceivable to Americans that other peoples in distant continents
could affect American security. It was considered a basic principle in
the United States that nothing that occurred in Europe could possibly
affect the United States directly. And in both World Wars it took the
United States—three years in World War I, and two years in World
War II and an attack on our territory—before we committed ourselves
to maintaining the global balance of power. As late as 1947, an
American Chief of Staff could present the military budget to the
Congress with a statement, "This budget has been prepared without
any political considerations whatsoever, strictly on its military
merits", as if the relevance to the global balance of power was not of
concern to him.

Therefore, you have to understand that the post-War period has
been a rather painful process for Americans. When I read foreign com-
mentaries about the complicated dark designs of American strategy, I
sometimes wish they were true. The truth is much less complicated.
The truth has been that for much of the post-War period, the United
States has had reluctantly to understand that conflicts in distant parts
had a direct impact on America's future. The hardest lesson for us has
been implied in the question that your Chairman put at the beginning:
We have had to learn that the American national interest has to be
sought in the global interest, and that for the United States to believe
that it can protect itself by sacrificing others was only to put off the evil
day and to mortgage our own future.

I speak to you this frankly because you are all familiar with
debates that have had very unfortunate outcomes, such as the debate
characteristic of the period of the Vietnam war.

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There have been in the United States, until fairly recently, two
dominant schools of reflection about international politics. There has
been a school that has treated foreign policy as if it were a sub-division
of psychiatry. According to it, relations among nations are like rela-
tions among people; you achieve peace through the strenuous exercise
of personal goodwill, and you put people at ease by making unilateral
concessions. That was very much apparent during the Vietnam nego-
tiations, a great part of which I conducted: Many of our media
described the negotiations as if they were a detective story in which the
North Vietnamese would throw out vague clues and we had to guess at
the answer. And if somehow we didn't quite get the point that these
sensitive, put-upon North Vietnamese were trying to make, they would
be so offended that it was always our fault when the negotiations
failed.

The other school of thought tends to see, or has tended to see,
foreign policy as a sub-division of theology, as an example of the
eternal struggle between good and evil. By this theory one conducts
foreign policy by the strenuous condemnation of one's opponent, by
never having anything to do with him, and by isolating oneself as much
as possible from the impurities of a world that cannot be expected to
reach one's own moral exaltations. Thus in America there have been
periods of isolationism because we considered ourselves too good for
this world, and other periods of isolationism because we didn't
consider ourselves good enough for this world. The impact on inter-
national politics has not been fortunate in either case. I am tracing this
historical process so that you can understand that for the United States
the post-War period has also been a process of self-education.

Americans have had to learn that foreign policy is a process and
not a series of disconnected events. Contrary to our historical experi-
ence, we have had to accept the proposition that there are no final
answers in foreign policy, that every apparent solution is an admission
ticket to a new set of problems. We would like to think as a nation that
we can work for a day in which it can be said that the world is now at
peace, and everybody can live with a consciousness of harmony. But
history teaches us that almost every war that has occurred has broken
out between peoples who have been at peace. It is only in the Middle
East that wars occur between countries that are already at war.

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Therefore, the process, or the problem, of maintaining the conditions in which peace can be preserved is unending, and there will never be a period in which Americans can withdraw from the world. There can never be a period any longer in which we can say that our own selfish interest permits us to withdraw to the continental United States and let other nations fend for themselves, because, to the extent that we ever attempted to do this, we would simply produce a crisis of enormous magnitude for ourselves later on. A properly understood American self-interest must take into account the interests of those who depend on us and of our friends, and even must understand to some extent the interests of our adversaries. I believe that after a period of enormous national anguish, produced in part by a rebellion against a world which does not let us escape from it, the American people are now behind an Administration which agrees with the principles that I have put forward here—though they might express them, not having been born in Germany, in somewhat simpler language than is my habit.

Fundamentally, American foreign policy now realizes that there can be no peace in the world without a balance of power, that there can be no progress in the world without a significant American role. The balance of power is not something that we can “do” once and for all, but it is something that has to be tended with great care, by constant assessments, and careful analysis. In fact, the biggest problem in the conduct of foreign policy is that when one’s scope for action is greatest, the knowledge on which to base such action is at a minimum; when one’s knowledge is greatest, the scope for creative action has often disappeared.

So we, all of us, have to adjust our policies to new conditions whenever they arise. This, quite frankly, is one of the sources of the debate that is now going on between the United States and some of our European allies, about the nature of military strategy. It is no escaping American responsibilities to assert that technology and military capabilities have radically changed since the days that the Atlantic Alliance was first formed. It is a fact that nuclear stockpiles on both sides have grown immeasurably. Where I differ with our allies, or some of our allies, is that they seem to think America is seeking to escape the common defence when it calls attention to the new realities. In fact,

there is no escaping the common defence. If the United States is perceived to sacrifice the interests of friendly countries, much less the existence of friendly countries, all global structure and order will disappear. By the same token, if the United States is serious about the survival of its friends, it has a duty to put before them periodically an strategic assessment, and it has an obligation to invite them to participate in their defence.

It is simply not logical in our relations with European countries to assume that a continent that has a population larger than the Soviet Union and a gross national product larger than the Soviet Union cannot make a greater effort in the common defence, and especially when there are so many other areas of the world that cry for our attention.

With the same reasoning, one has to look at this part of the world. Almost miraculously, Southeast Asia has developed economically more rapidly than many expected, despite the set-backs in Vietnam, for which, quite frankly, our domestic debates bear a heavy responsibility. Despite this, there has developed here in this region a political self-confidence, and an attempt—a successful attempt—at the elaboration of its own destiny. It is in the American national interest that this process continues, and it is in our interest to prevent outside powers from imposing on this area a destiny which this area has not chosen, either directly or by the use of proxy forces.

Let me therefore now turn to some discussion of our principal adversary, the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union is the heir of the old Russian Empire and it has added to it an ideology that claims to be of universal significance. When your Chairman said that, however lovable the United States may or may not be, we are crucial to the future of this area, I must tell him that it is the American illusion that we are infinitely lovable, and that we can prevail because people like us. It is, I feel, the Russian knowledge that they are not particularly lovable, and that if they are going to prevail anywhere, it has to be by military force. We have, after all, the astonishing phenomenon that nowhere has a Communist government ever come to power by peaceful methods. Wherever a

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Communist government has been established, it has required the Red Army or at any rate a Communist military effort. Those areas controlled by the Soviet Union are ironically the only developed countries in which popular revolutions have taken place, or have been attempted, contrary to any Communist theory.

We face in the Communist system an opponent who, as your Chairman said, is austere and determined, maybe even implacable—an adversary that has spent several decades elaborating his military capabilities. But at the same time we have to realize that it is a system that is top-heavy and stagnating. On the one hand, it places great stress on what it calls "objective factors", which means the balance of power and material conditions. Nothing is more futile than to attempt to persuade Soviet negotiators through personal charm and good personal relations. The basic attitude of Soviet negotiators to their Western counterparts, or to their non-Communist counterparts, is like that of Western psychiatrists to their patients: No matter what we say, they think they understand us better than we understand ourselves.

They believe very strongly in so-called "scientific materialism" and in what they call "the correlation of forces". The only trouble is that if you look at the correlation of forces and at this scientific materialism, you find a society of great military power, but not one that, in any sense, can represent a meaningful wave of the future.

The Soviet system now has been in existence for 65 years. In that whole period it has had exactly three changes of top leadership. The first two (Lenin and Stalin) died in office. The third (Khrushchev) made the mistake of going on vacation without his colleagues. The fate of the fourth one is as yet open. Nobody has ever retired honourably from a top leadership position. There is no system of regularized succession. A few months ago the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union—one of the party congresses—met and looked over their top leadership, found that their average age was 74, and concluded that that same group was exactly what they needed for the next five years.

I find it difficult to believe that a system that does not govern itself

by any set of regular procedures can possibly continue in its present shape indefinitely. If one looks at the history of Soviet succession, new leaders have always emerged from a process that was essentially unpredictable when the process started. In a funny way, the Soviet system is run, not by organized, legalized procedures, but more like feudal system on the basis of personal loyalties to individual members of the Politburo.

The second major problem they have is that clearly a system total planning cannot possibly work. In fact, the more elaborated Socialist economies become, the less they seem to work. Wherever the world market economies have competed with planned economy there is no example of a system of Socialist planning that has ever done anywhere near as well as the market system. Whether you look in that area—where even today South Vietnam is still better off than North Vietnam—or if you look at South Korea and North Korea, or West Germany and East Germany, or Austria or any of its neighbours, that fact seems to be that it is impossible to run an economy in which managers know neither their suppliers nor their customers and a totally dependent on bureaucrats. The curious feature is that a system of bureaucratic planning leads to essential arbitrariness and corruption and can be sustained only by a system of black markets which is to say, free markets.

That gets us to the fundamental problem of all Communist societies, and especially all Soviet Communist societies, which is expressed in this paradox: What do you do with the Communist Party in Communist state? The Communist Party is needed to seize power; may be needed to establish a government. But once it is in power it produces a group of supernumeraries who are not needed for government, who are not needed for the economy, who are not needed for any function except to solve the internal and external crises they then themselves create. And therefore it is not accidental, as I mentioned before, that in industrialized countries the only revolutions that have been attempted are in Communist countries. And secondly, that these crises all concerned the role of the Communist Party.

That is the fundamental problem in Poland. Thirty-five year after the Communists established a monopoly of power—after the

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took control of all the media of communication, the secret police, the army, the open police and any other form of pressure the human mind can imagine—after all of this, there is not one Communist country in Eastern Europe where the Communist Party would have a chance of winning a free election.

Therefore, while it is possible to mention many mistakes that the United States has made, and while it would be idle to claim that the United States has not had very great difficulties of its own, our problems are problems of self-education, of policy, of gaining understanding. The Soviet problems are problems of structure—they are insoluble without a fundamental change in the Soviet system.

This being the case, we face this policy challenge: The temptation for the Soviet Union must be very great to try to extend its domination over the external environment, so that whenever they turn to the problem of domestic reform there is no conceivable competing centre of power in the outside world. But it is also true, if they should fail to achieve this domination of the outside world, that then the problem of domestic reform will become absolutely unavoidable. Conversely, the problem of American foreign policy is to deprive the Soviet Union of any hope that it can escape its domestic dilemmas by foreign adventures, either by foreign adventures that they generate directly or by foreign adventures that are conducted by proxy—by Cuba in Africa, or by Vietnam in Southeast Asia.

Therefore, all those who are concerned with the future of peace in this world must work together to prevent this. They must not believe that either the Soviet Union or its proxies can be appeased by conciliatory statements. My life span was significantly shortened by having to negotiate with the North Vietnamese for a period of over four years, and it is an experience I wish on all my mortal enemies. It is my conviction, based on experience, not that negotiations are impossible, but that negotiations must reflect a balance of forces. And without that balance of forces there is no magic formula, there is no gimmick, that can rescue us. It is an illusion to believe that a political solution is an alternative to a balance of power. A political solution is the result of a balance of power. Those are not alternatives; those are causal

relationships. Negotiations are not a substitute for strength but a result of strength.

As long as I have been in public life, I have advocated a policy of linkage, by which I mean that we should not permit our adversaries to pick, among all the problems that exist in the world, those which most relieve their difficulties and to negotiate on those, while continuing acts of pressure, intimidation and aggression elsewhere. It is surely not asking too much to ask Soviet forces and Soviet proxy forces to stay within their own national borders if they want expanded economic relations with the free societies. That has to be the major thrust of any negotiations that one can favour and that so many people urge upon us. I believe that if there were assurances that Soviet forces would stop blackmailing their neighbours, and if Soviet proxy forces in Vietnam and Cuba and elsewhere withdrew into their national territories, then new conditions would exist. But until these conditions have arisen, one should not believe that there is some abstract diplomatic formula that can substitute for resolution on the part of the free societies, and for their unity. I am sure that what I have said here is the current view of the American Government, and is strongly supported by the American public.

I would like to make a few additional remarks about relations between the United States and the developing world, because I do not want to leave the impression that the United States believes that all problems in the world can be subsumed under the category of East-West problems.

There is no doubt that what we witness in the developing world will, in retrospect, be seen as one of the great revolutionary movements in history, not in the Marxist sense, but in the sense of the expansion of human consciousness. After all, when the United Nations was formed there was something like 50 sovereign states in the world. Today, there are some 150 states, and each of them in its own way has to develop its own identity in a time period much shorter than anything that the European nations, the original nation-states, experienced. In fact, there is often a very important difference between the original nation-states and many of the states that have come into existence. The original nation-states were nations before they were states. Many of

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current Administration is not playing the game of slogans should be a
reason for reassurance to our friends and not a cause for debate.

I have tried to answer the points which your Chairman raised in
general terms. I want to repeat: Even the wisest American leaders are
bound to make mistakes now and then; even with the best of intentions
there are bound to be disagreements between us and friendly nations.
Fundamentally, however, I think it is the duty of the United States to
look after the global balance of power, and the global balance of
power is composed of a series of regional balances. For that, we need
the assistance of other countries. But it is not a duty we can delegate to
surrogates. However friendly they may be to us and however impor-
tant they are in their region, we cannot turn over Southeast Asia, or the
defence of Southeast Asia, to neighbouring friendly countries. We
must play an important role in it ourselves with the assistance of the
countries that are importantly concerned.

We face a difficult and austere adversary. But if a man came to
this earth from a distant planet and were given the balance sheet of the
strengths and weaknesses of the United States and its principal
adversary, he would be mad if he chose the Soviet side. Our problems
are soluble by our decisions. Their problems require structural change.

So I would say to you, ladies and gentlemen, not that history will
do our work for us, but something perhaps more fundamental: If we
do what we are capable of doing, we, all together and with strong
American support for your efforts, can do our job for ourselves.

Thank you very much.

### III Discussion

**Question:**

Mr Chairman, I have two interrelated questions on what is
perhaps the missing link in Dr Kissinger's masterly analysis because he
has not mentioned China at all.

The first question is: U.S. policy in the Asia-Pacific region rests
on the need to strengthen China as a counterweight to the Soviet
Union. At the same time, the U.S. wants to have close links with
ASEAN. How would America reconcile the arming of China with
ASEAN's fear of a militarily strong China?

The second question is: Washington's relationship with Beijing is
dictated by global strategic considerations. But there are some who
argue that by putting too much emphasis on the China card the U.S.
may, in fact, be provoking the Soviets to adopt a more adventurous
policy. Do you subscribe to this view, Dr Kissinger?

**Kissinger:**

Let me take the second question first, because it involves the
general principle of relationships between the United States and
China. Then I will discuss the impact on the ASEAN countries.

I have never believed in the so-called "China card", if it means
that we tighten our relations with China in order to punish the Soviet
Union, and by implication that we loosen our relations with China if
the Soviet Union behaves in a manner more acceptable to us.

After all, the Chinese have the longest continuous record of self-
government in history, and they did not get to this point by being any-
body's "card". I, therefore, believe that we have to base our relation-
ship with China not on fluctuating tactics with the Soviet Union but on

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the specific weight we assign to the various factors in our foreign policy.

In analysing the balance of power, one has to try to understand who is the weaker and who is the stronger; which is the threatened country and which is the one that is engaged in making the threats.

What brought China and the United States together was the fact that the Soviet Union built up about a million combat troops on the Chinese border and that the Chinese decided that they needed outside friends. It was not that we in Washington suddenly said, "Wouldn't it be nice if we had the Chinese on our side against the Soviet Union? Let's see whether we can get them involved against the Soviet Union."

From this it follows that given the importance historically, culturally, and physically, of China, the United States has an interest in the independence and territorial integrity of China even when we do not agree with its ideology. And the American interest in that is not in order to annoy the Soviet Union but in order to prevent the real balance of power from being overturned by some collateral event like the dismemberment of China, which would have the profoundest consequences not only in Southeast Asia but in many other parts of the world.

Of course, we have to conduct our policy with due prudence. And I don't deny that it is conceivable that we might do things which transcend the purposes that I stated and could have a provocative aspect. But a wise American foreign policy will not do this any more than a wise Chinese policy will do that. It is not in either of our countries' interest to provoke a Soviet-Chinese war, but it is in the American interest to help maintain the territorial integrity of China against Soviet military pressure. There is no doubt that there is in some ASEAN countries a fear of a rearmed China. Of course, at this moment, the United States is not supplying, to the best of my knowledge, any military equipment to China. And my estimate would be that in the foreseeable future whatever military equipment may be sold to China will not be of quantities that will rapidly make a decisive difference in the situation. But in any analysis of foreign policy, one has to look at the time-scale involved. It would seem to me that China

is almost certain to be preoccupied with its domestic necessities for the best part of the next generation, and that during that period, if the ASEAN countries continue to make the progress they have made in the last five to ten years, they will be able to create a bastion in this area that it would not be all that easy to attack, especially since one can also expect that under those circumstances the relations with the United States will become much stronger.

So I would say yes, I understand the fears that may exist, but they have to be put into some historical perspective. And what will happen in 25, 30 years—what assessment would one then make of the situation—would be difficult to say, because there will be other nations that will grow in power. If my analysis of the Soviet Union is correct, the Soviet Union will be more preoccupied with its domestic affairs. This area will have developed much greater strength of its own. There will be many factors that would be quite different 30 years from now, when China will have a greater military capacity than they have today. But it is certainly a factor one would take into consideration.

**Question:**

After the withdrawal of American military support to South Vietnam, which was interpreted by some people as being tantamount to desertion of an ally in the face of the enemy, there has been as you are undoubtedly aware, a considerable erosion of confidence in this area—and I presume in other areas—in the actual will and ability of American governments to carry out promises of support, which they have given to people who are in a very precarious position. Now, we are told by the new Administration that they will indeed support their commitments to these countries, but we've been told that before. Is it your opinion that the position of the American Government and of American society in general is now such that they really can give firm, and lasting, and consistent support to such commitments?

**Kissinger:**

The Vietnam war was a great national tragedy for the United States. The Nixon Administration inherited it from its predecessors, who then turned against the war they had themselves committed our country to and left us to fight it as best we could against the opposition

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of those who had originally committed us to it, which was an extremely
difficult situation. Even then I think we had achieved an honourable
outcome had not the Watergate crisis deprived our executive of the
authority to enforce the agreement. We had an agreement which we
had had every intention of enforcing when we made it. As a result of
totally unpredictable American domestic circumstances that can never
be repeated, we lost the capacity to enforce it. No agreement in history
has ever been self-implementing.

I believe that the American people have now seen the consequences of this abdication.

During the Vietnam war, a lot of fun was made of the so-called
"domino theory" by the opponents of the war. Every American has
now seen that there has been a terrible domino theory not just in
Southeast Asia, but in every other part of the world in which people
have depended on American promises. And I think one has to interpret the recent American election as an affirmation by the American
people that they are tired of retreat and that they will not accept the
proposition that the most ruthless are going to inherit the earth. Of
course, no one can ever make an absolutely certain prediction about
the future. But I would think that the recent election and the present
mood in America give a force to the pledges of the current Administration that in the more innocent period of the sixties and in the domestic
strife of the early seventies was not there.

You have identified our key problem, and it is to convince people
that we have now a settled policy that will be carried out over an
indefinite period of time by whoever is in office in the United States.
It's our biggest national problem. I believe we are on the way to solving
it. But you have raised an important question and I can only tell you
my best judgement.

### Question:

Mr Chairman, Dr Kissinger played a prominent role in settling the
Vietnam war. Since then we've had a take-over of the whole of Indo-
china by the Vietnamese and the Russians, and a near take-over of
Afghanistan by the Soviet forces. If Dr Kissinger were to be the

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Secretary-General of the U.N. today, what measures would he adopt
to rectify the situation in these two countries?

### Kissinger:

It is almost impossible when you are not in office to make a responsible statement about the detailed tactics one would pursue in given circumstances.

With respect to the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia, I
believe that the policy pursued by the ASEAN countries as supported
by the United States is essentially correct. I think that Pol Pot is a geno-
cidal murderer and I have absolutely no use for what he represents.
But, nevertheless, one cannot accept the principle that the Vietnamese
simply have the right to march into a neighbouring country, all the
more so as the last reason that they did it was out of human delicacy
about the conduct of their neighbour: His crime to the Vietnamese was
not how many Cambodians he was killing; his crime was that he
wanted to be independent from Hanoi. So I think we have to maintain
the principle that this was an illegal act. And I think we have to make it
as difficult as possible for Hanoi to maintain itself in that territory.

Again we do not, certainly the United States does not—and I
would be amazed if the ASEAN countries do—have any particular
interest in having Cambodia as any kind of military or political outpost
against Vietnam. If Vietnam wants security, that in my judgement is
relatively easy to arrange. What is not easy to accept is the proposition
that they can have security only by occupying all their neighbours.

With respect to Afghanistan, I would apply the same principle: I
would make it as difficult and as costly as possible for the Soviet
Union. In this respect, I must say that I am not happy with the fact that
18 months after the occupation of Afghanistan, every punitive action
that has been taken, including those taken by my own country, has
been withdrawn. This is hardly designed to discourage Soviet adven-
tures. The Soviets have to know in the future that military aggression
against their neighbours has certain irremediable consequences and
not simply a 12- to 18-month interruption of certain economic
deliveries.

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**Question:**

Mr Chairman, under what circumstances would the Soviet Union invade Poland, and if such an invasion should take place what kind of response could one expect from the United States and other Western countries?

**Kissinger:**

So that you can judge the answer which I will give you, I must tell you that I have been consistently wrong in predicting what the Soviet Union would do about Poland. I quite frankly thought they would invade during the last year. My reasoning was that for the Soviets the situation in Poland, whatever happens—whether they go in or not—is a disaster for the Soviet Union. It's a disaster because here you have a -called "workers' state", in which they create a trade union to negotiate with the workers' government, which is a fundamental offence to any theory of the Communist state. So the mere existence of Solidarity is an assault on Communist theory. Then you have the phenomenon of general, who is Minister of Defence, Prime Minister and Secretary- general of the Communist Party. Does that make the Party a sub- division of the army, the army a sub-division of the Party, or both of them a sub-division of the government? Is it bonapartism? Communism? What is it? Thirdly, the Soviets have a very serious problem in Poland. When they invaded Czechoslovakia and Hungary, they could foresee the consequences, in the sense that once they had established a civil authority it was likely to be obeyed and the countries are small enough so that authority could be enforced. I suppose if the Soviet Union put enough military power into Poland, they could also force authority. But a normal military operation will have consequences that are not that easy to foretell. So I think that the present Soviet strategy is to let the chaos deepen, and perhaps hope that the Polish people will turn against Solidarity as the cause of the chaos rather than against the Communist Party—or to use force, if they have to, by picking up a state of emergency, which the Polish government may do, by sending in selective forces rather than a blanket invasion.

What should be the Western reaction? I have always believed that even the Soviets use military force the first reaction is always panic, and people think that they are going to go on. The real danger is that it almost always followed by a Soviet peace offensive. And if the

Soviets destroy the free institutions in Poland, one way or the other, by the use of military force, then I think there have to be exacted penalties that are substantial and long-term in nature. I would think it is very difficult to imagine that we would continue arms control negotiations that are now going on. Secondly, I would think that serious economic penalties would have to be exacted.

We should be honest with ourselves in defining what we mean by 'economic penalties'. There are at least three kinds of questions. First, if there is some kind of economic restriction put on, does it apply only to new orders or does it also apply to existing orders? If it applies only to new orders, it will have no effect for two to three years and before then it will probably be abandoned. Secondly, does it apply only to the Soviet Union, or does it apply also to the East European regimes? Thirdly, if it applies to the East European regimes, does it also apply to East Germany or does it exclude East Germany? Those are questions that we must answer to ourselves. We don't have to announce it. But they will determine whether we are serious, and whether the penalty will have an effect. I think I have made clear in the way I pose the question what answers I would recommend.

**Question:**

Mr Chairman, I am not asking a question but I would like to know what Dr Kissinger thinks about the opposition that's going on in Friendly Europe towards American policy with regard to the arms that America proposes to put in Western Europe.

**Kissinger:**

Well, I tried to express what I think delicately at the beginning of my remarks, but I'll be glad to do it indelicately too. I think we are in an absolutely absurd circumstance. There is absolutely no doubt that the United States can defend itself in a nuclear war without basing nuclear weapons in Europe. There are thousands of Soviet nuclear weapons aimed at Europe.

The United States has now offered to put 572 nuclear delivery vehicles in Europe. Any freshman in college should be able to figure out that this cannot possibly be for our own selfish purposes. We could

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put them at sea. We can put them anywhere. We don't have to have them in Europe. We are putting them in Europe in order to prevent selective blackmail, in order to keep the Soviet Union from threatening Europe with nuclear war, and in order to create the automaticity of response which the Europeans claim they want.

Now the Europeans, or tens of thousands of them, are marching around the streets acting as if they are doing us a favour by taking these weapons, and all kinds of complicated negotiations have to be undertaken so that we have to prove that we have no aggressive intention, that we're really quite willing to give up all these weapons. We have not even deployed one of them there yet while the Soviets are building them by the dozens. And yet there was a recent NATO meeting in which we were asked to say we are prepared to go down to zero. We are at zero. It's the Soviets who are not yet at zero.

I once said to a non-aligned friend whose country seems to depend extraordinarily on the United States, which did not stop his passionate criticism of our action—I said to him, “Be careful what you recommend because some day we are going to accept your recommendation, and then where will you be?” And I would say that to some of our European critics: They shouldn't tempt us too much.

Comment:

Dr Kissinger, I speak as a European and of Britain myself.

Kissinger:

European?

Comment:

Until recently, you obviously know, the British were engaged in a similar dilemma about dominating the world. This we would periodically fight out between the French and the Belgians and the Dutch and the Danes and the Portugese. It seems to me—I will admit the British made a few mistakes in the past—that the greatest force at our disposal

is usually the crossbow and the twelve-pound cannon-ball. But now there is, it seems, the means a politician has at his disposal for exerting his power and influence or such awesome force that one weapon could alienate a major city—50 million people. One minor weapon could alienate the whole of Singapore, or the whole of London, or the whole of Washington. Surely there must be a point where everybody has to say that we have to at least stop manufacturing the weapons. Thank you.

Kissinger:

I agree with you about the contemporary dilemma. I think it is true that the destructiveness of modern weapons imposes on leaders a responsibility now that none of their predecessors faced. No previous leader had to confront the risk that he might destroy, in a very brief period of time, tens of millions of human lives.

On the other hand, the other side of this dilemma is that if one side pretends that it is prepared to do this, and the other side announces that it fears this more than anything else, it practically invites nuclear blackmail. So that the real dilemma is to avoid both war and surrender.

That has two aspects. I have in all my published writings since the mid-fifties warned against exclusive reliance on nuclear weapons for defence. I did so because I thought the point would come, that is now approaching, where these weapons are so fearsome that they will generate pacifism rather than resolution. And I therefore have always believed, and I believe today, that we must develop alternative strategies in which we rely less on nuclear weapons and more on other technologies, as we have after all in previous wars, so that we are not so completely dependent on this strategy you described.

I am afraid that simply stopping production will not be any answer because so many have already been produced. In fact the tendency in new weapons production is now in the direction of discrimination rather than of mass extermination. The mass-extermination weapons, as you know, have been more or less produced. So I don't think that your solution is the right one. But the problem you have stated is one to which we have to pay great attention. And it is one

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reason why I—even though, as you could tell from my remarks, I have taken a very dubious view of Soviet purposes and believe very strongly in establishing a military balance—was also always prepared to discuss questions of arms control in the nuclear field. We have this special responsibility. But we have to take care that these do not turn into unilateral disarmament, because unilateral disarmament will not even save us from nuclear war. It may make it more likely.

**Question:**

Dr Kissinger, given what you say about the attitude of the so-called friends, or the so-called non-aligned movement, coming back to the Polish question will you not think that the invasion of Poland, if it were being invaded by the Soviet Union, would be beneficial to the United States? And if so, in a cold way, will it not therefore be in the interest of the United States to encourage a possible invasion of Poland?

**Kissinger:**

That is not something we could possibly do. First, I don't think we would know how to do it, and secondly, it would be too cynical. In addition, I am not so sure that it would be all that beneficial. In the short term, yes, it would make certain things easier. But unless we answer some of the questions that I put earlier, if the pattern of previous events of this kind is followed, it won't be many months before people will say, "After all, the Soviets were provoked." And then a few more months later, people will say, "Now that there is so much tension, it is even more important to have negotiations than before."

I just don't believe that the unopposed use of military force by the Soviet Union is ever to our benefit. I remember in 1956, people were saying, after Hungary, "Now the non-aligned will be on our side. Now they have seen how evil the Soviets are." Then they said it after '68 in Czechoslovakia. Then they said it after '79 in Afghanistan. And it never happens. There are one or two U.N. resolutions, but if you look at the U.N. resolutions on Afghanistan, every succeeding resolution has been milder.

We wouldn't know how to do it. I wouldn't be all that much in

favour of it even if we did. It used to be said during the war that there was a British Naval Officer who said, "the way to deal with the submarine problem is to heat the ocean, and boil them to the surface". Somebody said to him, "How are you going to do that?" He said, "I have given you the idea. The technical implementation is up to you."

**Question:**

I find it a little bit difficult to understand the American system of government, witnessing, you know, the news reports on the lobbying that President Reagan has had to do in order to effect the sale of the AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia. Don't you think, Sir, that is the inherent weakness in the American system of government, that will prevent your effective execution of the global role of protecting the democracy against the expansion of the Soviet Union?

**Kissinger:**

There is no question that our system of government is extremely complex, and there is also no doubt that our system of checks and balances occasionally produces decisions that are against our global interests.

When I was in office, the Congress imposed an embargo on Turkey, which was, after all, one of the pillars of the NATO defence in the Mediterranean. On the other hand, you have to say that the decision that is implied by the AWACS vote would have been absolutely unthinkable 3 or 4 years ago. I had a marginal role in it; therefore, I was informed somewhat about the discussions. When the White House started out lining up a vote, the count was about 64 to 26 against it. And the fact that President Reagan succeeded in achieving a majority shows that a determined president, who knows what he wants, can with effort achieve actions that are in the international interest.

And I think that you could equally well argue, in fact even better argue, that it shows that some of the difficulties that I have described are being overcome. But there is no question, and we should not pretend otherwise to our friends, that the internal management of the American government is getting very complicated, that there are

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[LC]

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certainly countervailing forces to the trends that I have described. I
believe they are being overcome and managed, and if we have a
successful administration by President Reagan, I think the authority
of the executive will continue to grow. But you've certainly identified
the important problem.

Chairman:

One last question or the last two.

Question:

Thank you, Mr Chairman. Dr Kissinger, could I raise the
Afghanistan issue with you. The Soviet Union has not been very
successful in the invasion of Afghanistan for the past two years and
they are still there. They've got their feet wet, and should they decide to
stay in any further ground, they would have to commit quite substantial
resources. Under such circumstances, what are the options open to
them in view of the very expensive political and economic price they
have to pay, should they decide to move further? And how will these
options affect their strategy in Vietnam?

Kissinger:

I think that the Soviets in many ways are in a morass of their own
making. For them to maintain a military operation in Afghanistan, a
military operation in Vietnam, and a de facto military operation in
Poland—in the sense that they are keeping forty divisions around
Poland—is an enormous strain. If they increase their forces in
Afghanistan, it reduces further their capacity for intervention in other
arts of the world.

If I were the Vietnamese, I would begin to ask myself at what
point something has to give. And if you add Cuba to this list, the Soviet
economic resources are not infinite, to put it mildly. So I think that the
Oviets are facing enormous difficulties, and therefore it would be a
ity if we ease these difficulties before we have negotiated some
 political self-restraint and before we have got the Soviets back to their
own territories.

I think the same is true in Vietnam. I think if present trends

continue—with the crisis in Poland, the crisis in Afghanistan and the
crisis in Indo-China—and if the West does not supply the resources to
manage these crises, the Soviet Union sooner or later will have to make
some serious decisions: which of these crises it considers more impor-
tant, and which it will have to abandon, or whether it should make
some accommodation with the West.

After all, I can only repeat: We are not asking anything untoward
to ask the Red Army to stay within its own territory; this would still
leave them the largest land army and largest land area in the world. But
I think they have a problem. You know, there is a Russian saying about
somebody running into the village and saying, "Mikhailov is stuck in
the mud up to his ankles." And a fellow says, "Well, up to his ankles;
it doesn't sound so bad." And he replies, "Yes, but he dived in head
first."

Chairman:

Last question.

Question:

My question is a follow-up to the previous one on the AWACS.
Were you in favour of the Senate's approval of the AWACS to Saudi
Arabia, and what do you foresee as its impact on the peace process in
the Middle East?

Kissinger:

Was I in favour of it? Yes, I strongly supported the Administra-
tion's sale of AWACS, or rather I strongly supported the Senate
approval of the sale of AWACS. Whether the AWACS in the abstract
was the ideal issue over which to produce such a domestic debate is not
now relevant. I think that the Senate's refusal of the AWACS would
have damaged our relations with the Arab countries, undermined the
authority of the President, and would have been of no benefit to Israel.
So it would have had only disadvantages without any compensating
advantages. For that reason, I actively supported it. I called many
Senators, and I wrote an article in the *Washington Post* in its support.

The impact on the peace process? I think the sale of AWACS by

[L:C]

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