DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20319

NDU-AP

13 November 1978

Ms. Karen Gardner
1800 K Street, N.W.
Room 1021
Washington, D.C. 20006

Dear Ms. Gardner:

In accordance with our telephone conversation and Dr. Kissinger's earlier request, I am enclosing a copy of the transcript of Dr. Kissinger's lecture, including the question and answer period, which he delivered before the combined students and faculty at the National Defense University on 26 October 1978.

We would like very much to retain a copy of the transcript for ourselves, for future reference, but would not do so without Dr. Kissinger's authorization. We recognize that public release provisions of the Freedom of Information Act may make this undesirable from Dr. Kissinger's point of view.

We request that Dr. Kissinger or a member of his staff review the transcript with this in mind, as well as for possible security or policy considerations. We are temporarily holding a second, unclassified copy of this transcript, awaiting Dr. Kissinger's guidance concerning his preference as to its classification or ultimate disposition.

If I may be of any further help, you may reach me at telephone number 693-1075.

Encl

As stated

AN ADDRESS
HONORABLE HENRY A. KISSINGER
INDUSTRIAL COLLEGE OF THE ARMED FORCES
WASHINGTON, D. C.

26 October 1978

AMB KUBISCH: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

As you know, in our Distinguished American Lecture Series we try to get especially important and prominent Americans from all walks of life to come to the university and appear here. This morning we are indeed very fortunate to have such a person: The Chairman of the Board of Directors of the North American Soccer League.

(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)

We've been trying to arrange for Dr. Kissinger to come all fall, but it hasn't been easy. He has been more than willing. If I'm not mistaken, this is his 23d appearance here at one of the colleges, or the university here at Fort McNair. But he's unbelievably busy and very much in demand; and we've finally been able to work out this date. But I should tell you about what you should not expect to hear from him today.

At least, according to the Washington Post, he has stated publicly that he has made a firm decision that he will not make fun of the Carter Administration; he will not criticize its policies; and he will not contradict the President. "I will not do that," he has said,

(4)

"I will not compete with Andy Young."

(LAUGHTER)

You have Dr. Kissinger's impressive biography and extraordinary listing of accomplishments, and so I shall not repeat them. Let me merely make a personal comment. I've worked very closely with him, and for him, on a wide array of issues and problems, mostly in Latin America, but also in France, and for my three years as Ambassador to Greece, while he was in the White House as Secretary of State.

He was by far the toughest and most demanding boss I've ever had in my life. However, I think I speak for a great number of Foreign Office and State Department Officers when I say that he insisted upon, and got, the highest possible quality of work from us all; higher even than we thought we were capable of producing. Indeed, I've always felt that that was one of his goals. And under his leadership and direction I believe all of us served our country well.

We will hear from Dr. Kissinger for about 30 minutes or so, and then we will move into questions and answers -- and discussion -- and I will return to the platform at that time.

Please welcome the one-time goalie who has risen to be one of the most prominent and respected men of our time, Dr.

2

(4)

Henry Kissinger.

(APPLAUSE)

DR. KISSINGER: Jack; Gentlemen:

When one retires from public life, especially already suffering
from an acute case of paranoia. - -

(LAUGHTER)

One cannot help noticing little things — such as the absence of the
President - -

(LAUGHTER)

of the university, and the Commandant of the National War College.
And I guess the theory is, the Foreign Service has already been
so contaminated by me that they can't do any damage by introducing
me.

(LAUGHTER)

I very much appreciate what Jack has said. I wish he had
said that from a kneeling position at our - -

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

But it's a little tough to talk while kissing hands.

(LAUGHTER)

Of course, I've never had any illusions about what I repre-
sented. And it will take my successor a few years before he too

3

realizes that the Foreign Service is animated by the fundamental
conviction that whoever is Secretary of State could never have made
it into the Foreign Service on his merits. - -

(LAUGHTER)

And he took advantage of what is called "lateral entry" which creates
certain bureaucratic problems, - -

(LAUGHTER)

- - that can be overcome 10% of the time only by sheer terror.

(LAUGHTER)

I thought I would talk to you for half an hour, for two reasons:
One, so that you could all say that you were present at a historic
occasion. - -

(LAUGHTER)

And, in fact, if I place the verbs correctly in that half hour it will
be a doubly historic occasion.

(LAUGHTER)

The second is that I remember my term in office was divided
into two periods where I performed important sociological functions.
During my first five years in office I would be trotted out to various
peace groups as an example of a sociological phenomenon as to the
depths human depravity can reach.

(LAUGHTER)

4

In the last two years in office I would be trotted out to
various conservative groups as to the depths human depravity. - -

(LAUGHTER)

can reach. And so, I must give all of you an opportunity to ask
the penetrating questions which may have been prepared over the
last week or so.

I must tell one story about prepared questions and then I
will get to my remarks. I once had to accompany President Nixon
to one of our major commands, and the Commandant of that outfit
called me up and said, "What do I tell the President" -- as if he
hadn't already prepared it six months before. I said, "The one
thing that bores the President to distraction is to be told about
your weapon systems. He wants to know about the purposes of
your command. He doesn't care whether you have a side-flying
airplane or a tank that converts into a battleship. - -

(LAUGHTER)

He wants to know the mission and how that relates to national
strategy."

Well, this gave that General unbelievable pain, since what
he wanted to talk about were his weapon systems and why he
needed more money for them. And he thought it was absolutely
essential for the morale of his organization. And so I said, "Let's

5

(Y)

make a deal; you give a conceptual briefing, and then when you are
through I'll ask you a question about weapon systems. Then Nixon
will get mad at me and you can still do your stuff on weapons."

Well, he agreed to do that and gave the most boring, unen-
thusiastic - -

(LAUGHTER)

three-minute conceptual briefing, just rushing through it to humor
the madman of a security adviser. And so, then came the question
period and I asked my question. But I didn't ask it the right way
and he blew it. - -

(LAUGHTER)

And so, I let a few other questions go by and I asked it
again. He blew it again. - -

(LAUGHTER)

With that, his aide sent a note to me and said, "Give him another
chance." And so I asked my question a third time and the good
General said, "I'm so glad you asked that question, Dr. Kissinger,
the first slide, please." - -

(LAUGHTER)

And he went into his regular presentation.

I thought I would talk to you for a bit about some of the
issues I see ahead of us in the '80s, and to do it from a point of

6

(N)

view not as to who is to blame for what, or how did we get there
-- because you will all, when my book is published next year,
called "A Study of Infallibility," --

(LAUGHTER)

be able to judge for yourselves who is responsible for whatever
difficulties exist. I don't know who is responsible, but I do know
I had nothing to do with it. --

(LAUGHTER)

You might keep that in mind during the question period too.

(LAUGHTER)

But I think it is important to think about the '80s. Because, in the '80s, in my view, we are going to be facing a combination of currents that are likely to produce serious upheavals for awhile. And depending upon how we handle them, I think that at the end of the '80s, or starting in the middle of the '80s, we might see a fundamental change in the pattern of international relations and in the alignments of international relations as they have existed in the post-war period. I say this because I believe our principal adversary today, the Soviet Union, is militarily extremely strong and is likely to grow stronger over the next ten years. But in every other category of power it's going to be in extreme difficulty.

I think the Soviet system faces the dilemma that after 60

7

(Y)

years of Communist rule there has never been a legitimate succession in any Communist country. No Communist ruler has ever retired by a Constitutional process. There is no Constitutional process for replacing Communist leaders. They are either replaced by a coup, or a coup-like proceeding, or they die in office. And well they might because none except Lenin has survived even his own death, much less his retirement.

(LAUGHTER)

It is a structure of government operating by complicated balances among the bureaucracy -- much like the Department of State -- in which the decisions result from a manipulation of essentially feudal structures. And among these feudal hierarchies the military happen to be the one with the most clear-cut command structure; with a communications system; with a means of transportation which turned out to be decisive in both '57 and '64 leadership changes. And therefore in almost every bureaucratic dispute the military has to be paid off.

I do not think the Soviet leaders have a master plan, unless they have some boys in the back room whom they don't show to foreigners. The ones who meet foreigners struck me as unimpressive, pedestrian, bureaucratic, and so forth, but extraordinarily persistent. However, it doesn't make any difference what their

8

(N)

intentions are today; the balance of power produces its own opportunities. And those projected over the decade will have a major impact.

As I said, I think the political structure is bound to produce increasing complexities over the decade. The economic performance is incompatible with a system of total planning. But any other system is incompatible with the sort of Communist-controlled apparatus that has developed. So that, it will be increasingly difficult for the Soviet Union to have a major sustained growth.

And then, there's the problem of nationalities; there is the problem of China and Japan. And as one looks ahead 15 years at a state, after all, with a population of about 250 million; with a gross national product of less than half of ours, against which at this moment all the major states in the world are united -- China, Japan, Europe and the United States -- it should not be an unmanageable problem in preventing their expansion except in the categories of thought of those upon whom resistance depends.

The problems that I foresee, therefore, in the '80s are partly military and partly conceptual. And they are partly inherent in the process of change.

Let me make a few comments concerning the military side. We will soon be confronted with a SALT Agreement. And I shall

9

watch with great interest how the Joint Chiefs of Staff will manage
to adjust their position of 1976 to their position expected of them in
1978. It will be an interesting study to me of bureaucratic politics,
but I will leave that subject to that occasion.

I am not concerned here with a discussion of the specific
provisions of the SALT Agreement, because I do not think the
specific provisions of the SALT Agreement are the key issue. The
key issue, as I see it, is that by the 1980s we will have used up the
enormous capital of strategic superiority that we have in fact en-
joyed during the entire post-war period. That will be a dominant
fact in the '80s around which our defense policy must be built,
starting almost immediately. Because, if it is not, a price must
be paid mathematically somewhere down the road.

It has always been a characteristic of nuclear weapons --
and uniquely, of nuclear weapons -- that an upper limit of destruc-
tiveness can be reached beyond which it is difficult to assign a
concrete mission for their use. In every previous generation of
military men it would have been inconceivable that a country could
possess too much power for effective use. With nuclear weapons
the problem exists. The casualties are so out of proportion to
most of the objectives that are likely to be in dispute that we have
a paradox of enormous power and incommensurability with many

10

different issues. So that, minuscule powers can challenge super-
powers and get away with it.

But the problem we will face in the '80s is different still.
In the '40s we had an atomic monopoly. In the '50s and '60s,
and even as late as the early '70s, we had a substantial though de-
clining strategic superiority-- a superiority in this sense: In the
Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, in which the then-Administration
thought it was facing Armageddon, The Soviet Union had some 70
ICBMs which took 7 to 10 hours to fuel. And we had some 2,000
strategic delivery systems, not to speak of our forward-based
systems.

The Soviet Union faced a very real danger of losing its en-
tire retaliatory force if the crisis were to go beyond a certain point
and we launched a preemptive attack.

Even in 1973 -- 11 years later -- we went on the alert one
night in the middle of -- well, really, at the end of the Middle East
Crisis -- and the Soviets quit in about 18 hours. At that time the
Soviet MIRV Program was just starting. Half of their silos were
in the process of conversion. And therefore, though we would still
have taken enormous casualties, for old-fashioned Soviet Generals
-- and most Soviet Generals seem to be old-fashioned -- it was an
uncomfortable situation to think of the 10-to-12 thousand American

11

warheads against about the 2,000 they had -- and considering that part of their force was in the process of conversion, maybe less than that -- in an operational status.

By the '80s, two things will have happened in the Soviet Union: One, the generation of Brezhnev, Kosygin and so forth -- the generation that is now in office -- however rough they may be, was brought up in a period when they had a sense of Soviet technological inferiority in their bones; a generation that went through World War II and knows how precarious life is; a generation that went through the purges before and after the war and therefore has expended its reserve of excessive initiative -- that generation will be replaced with a newer generation trained in systems analysis. And they will note that our strategic forces will not have a rational objective. This is partly because of the nature of technology and it is partly because of deliberate decisions extending over a period of nearly 20 years, by the United States.

In the 1960s we developed a theory in our better universities and it spread to Washington, that it was destabilizing for the United States to possess a counter-force capability. It was considered dangerous because in times of crisis we might be tempted to preempt. And the Soviet Union knowing that we might attempt to preempt might be tempted in turn to preempt. Like many theories developed at

12

Harvard and MIT its brilliance was not dimmed by its lack of re-
lationship to reality. --

(LAUGHTER)

Because, after all, there is no law of nature that says we must
have a crisis. And to the extent that crises become more endur-
able they also become more likely. And to the extent that you make
crises more manageable they also grow less risky.

At any rate, in the '60s we designed our weapons deliberately
to deprive ourselves of a counter-force capability. Now, being ab-
sent from Harvard for 80 years my intellect is no longer as subtle
as it used to be and therefore I have great difficulty understanding
why it is stabilizing for the Soviet Union to have a counter-force
capability against us, but destabilizing for us to have a counter-
force capability against the Soviet Union.

Our weapons have been designed not to give us a counter-
force capability. Coupled with the torments we inflicted upon our-
selves during the Viet Nam War in which the defense budget was
used as a means to enforce it's hard to know what -- because we
were getting out anyway -- to enforce whatever it was that the
fashionable mood at that moment demanded, the practical result
of this was that for about four years we had to fight for our lives
for any new weapons system -- ABM's, MIRV's or whatever it

13

(Y)

was, passed by only the narrowest of margins and in a substantially
under-funded manner.

Then we had four years in which we did push various of these
systems -- the MX, the B1 and the Trident -- each of which has
either been abandoned or slipped into the late '80s. By 1982 our
Minutemen will be vulnerable. What the significance of that is we
can debate forever. What worries me a lot more is that their
strategic force will not be vulnerable, and that in a crisis there is
no plausible strategic threat that we will be able to pose.

And all the highly-praised cruise missiles in the world I
would not presume to debate whether they can be shot down or not.
All I would say is, they take so long to get to the target and they
are so unambiguously a second-strike weapon, that the control of
crises will become increasingly difficult for us.

In 1973 the Soviets quit 18 hours after we went on an alert.
In 1983 what will we do when the Soviet General Secretary sends us
a note on the "Hotline" and says, "You're on an alert and that's
very interesting; what are you going to do next?" What does the
threat, then, convey? Killing civilians is not a military policy,
especially when every study shows that the casualties on our side
in that sort of war will be even heavier, whatever that means at
that level of destructiveness. They don't dare.

14

In that period we will have the dilemma that some of us wrote about way prematurely in the '50s and early '60s; that we will have no strategic objectives for our strategic forces, and we will have no regional forces adequate to redress the balances in foreseeable circumstances, at least in most parts of the world, with the possible exception of Europe.

Never has there been an unfavorable balance of power that will not sooner or later be translated into a political advantage. My concern with respect to SALT is not in the provisions of the agreement; I would have to see them before I make a further judgment. My concern is, with or without SALT how are we going to handle the problem that I have described? What defense programs are we going to have to avoid what is certainly coming, and what we have been avoiding throughout the Western Alliance for a decade and a half; and what we're accelerating by stretching out or cancelling all those weapons which would give us at least a thin thread of plausibility in the employment of our strategic forces.

This is not a partisan issue. In fact, what our country has to learn is that foreign policy and security policy must not be a partisan issue. These programs cannot be changed every four to eight years. What we must have is a prolonged strategy over a substantial period of time.

15

The reason I think this problem becomes profound is because in the '80s too we will see the coming together of a whole series of trends: First, the trends in the developing nations. The fashionable thing to say is that we're identifying ourselves with the developing nations with Human Rights, economic aid, and so forth, and that we're going to sweep these countries into a new system oriented around us.

I have to say that if Human Rights were all that attractive, why is it not practiced more by the people whom we're trying to free on our side? I'm not against Human Rights; I'm saying that in Africa, in the Northern Tier, we are facing historic revolutionary changes that go far beyond the fashionable liberal slogans of our graduate schools. We are facing this anomaly demonstrably that no socialist economy has ever produced development comparable to market economies. Wherever in the world market economies have competed with Communist economies the market economies have done incomparably better.

Why, then, is it that so many countries opt for the socialist model in defiance of all developmental experience? They opt for it because the socialist model supplies an answer to the overwhelming problem of the new nations which is political authority; how you exercise and feed political power. Economic development alone that

16

(N)

does not answer the question of political legitimacy is bound to
produce enormous dislocations. It is certain to create new groups
that want a share of authority. And in the absence of some answer
to those questions the turmoil will accelerate.

Take the case of Iran. Until a year ago you could have said,
"Here is a country that moved from feudalism to middle class status
for the first time without a national revolution." But it didn't quite
work that way. And there you even had a strong central authority.
The very process of development has liberated forces which a
hereditary monarchy finds it almost impossible to deal with. And
we will see this problem for sure when you look at countries like
Pakistan, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco -- all of
Africa -- much of Latin-America.

And you ask yourself, is it possible that the present poli-
tical structures will survive in their present form for ten years.
You can make your own estimate, but I am not going to speculate
here about individual countries. All I will say is that even in the
absence of a Communist plan to create turmoil, turmoil will exist.
And the capacity to intervene and to back those forces with whom
one is politically aligned will be of crucial importance.

And in the '80s we will also see the playing out of the tend-
encies in Europe that used to go -- or that still go -- under the

17

name of "Eurocommunism," the loss of power there of the genera-
tion that grew up during World War II and to whom World War II
was still a significant experience -- and the post-war experience.

We see there too, who would have thought it possible even
three years ago that a German Defense Minister would complain
about NATO maneuvers on German territory. The problem should
be that they'd complain about the absence of maneuvers on German
territory. That says something about political currents in Europe
together with the economic structures they are forming to become
free of us.

By the middle '80s also we will face the fact that the Chinese
who now need us so badly and will put up with anything, will draw
their own conclusions, whatever they may be, about our adequacy
to maintain a global balance of power. There is no law of nature
that we remain in a permanent state of hostilities, nor is it a law
of nature that we shall be permanent friends.

The Chinese want from us the maintenance of an international
equilibrium to contain the Soviet Union. If that does not work with
our help they will look for other options. And by the early '80s
their technological lead will either have accumulated enough momen-
tum to enable them to do it, or maybe other changes will have oc-
curred.

18

(Y)

So, I would say that the biggest problem we face as a nation
is not the policies of any one Administration; the biggest problem
we face is how to think about a world in which we've had very little
intellectual preparation.

For foreign policy the United States has an idealistic tradition; a tradition of believing that we alone, of all the nations of the world, are going to prevail by the purity of our motives. And it breaks forth periodically in various kinds of campaigns.

Or else we have a pragmatic tradition; we will wait for a
problem to arise and become unambiguous. And then we will throw
resources at it.

And, we have a legalistic tradition; to try to transform an
international problem as much as possible into a juridical problem
and then say, "Let the Security Council deal with it." Or some
other international body, as if these had enough strike qualities of
their own.

What we do not have, except in occasional writings that are
not dominant, is a geopolitical tradition which is what we need.
Nations do not decide on the basis of abstract morality. We cannot
wait until a problem is unambiguous before we deal with it. In
1975 when I was in office we faced the problem of Angola. I could
not have cared less who governed in Angola from the point of view

19

of strictly national interest, as long as they came to power by
their own efforts.

But when the Soviet Union put in more weapons in a three-
month period than all the rest of the world put into all the rest of
Africa combined; and when the Cubans sent an expeditionary force,
we then had a geopolitical problem, not to be removed by slogans
to the effect that Africa should not be dealt with in an East-West
category, but that it should be dealt with as an African problem.
Which is another way of copping out and saying, "Whoever wants
to go in there can go in there, but we won't; it's an African prob-
lem."

Nor was it an overwhelmingly unambiguous problem. We
thought that if we stood there we would cool adventurism in Africa
for ten years. If we didn't we would face mounting crises. We
could not prove it and we were stuck. I'm not arguing now about
who was right in this debate; I'm saying the significant problems
will come up before us in a way that offer no pragmatic solutions.

The way to deal with crises is to face them before they get
out of hand; before everyone agrees that there is a problem.

When the Germans went into the Rhineland in 1936 they
changed the geopolitical equation, but they were not in themselves
threatening France. They could have been stopped with one division.

20

Five years later one had to pay 20 million lives for the moral certainty that Hitler was in fact a maniac bent upon world domination.

In short, what we need is a geopolitical perception of the world that understands that a combination of Afghanistan, South Yemen, and Ethiopia, whether we can do something about any one of them or not, represent a power reality that in the Indian Ocean makes the American role look less dominant, demoralizes our friends, and strengthens our possible enemies. And we then have to decide. No one can tell to what extent this perception has affected the turmoil in Iran.

This is the world that I foresee. As I have said, we have the resources and we still have the alliances. It should be possible to contain and to compete with a system that has produced so little for its people and that has specialized only in the accumulation of raw power. Because, if we do, I think the strains on their side over a historical period should be much worse than the strains on ours.

And then, of course, you always have a final consolation. I have been described as a Spenglerian pessimist. And you can assume that we retired ex-officials all suffer from the melancholy that seizes one when one no longer has a "No Parking" sign in

21

front of one's house - -

(LAUGHTER)

and before they have put the monument up at Mount Rushmore, - -

(LAUGHTER)

And so, you can console yourselves that I represent a state of
thinking.

You must remember that in every American textbook you'll
almost never find the phrase "balance of power" by itself. There
is always an adjective "outdated," or "anachronistic," or something
like that precedes the phrase "balance of power."

So, if you don't agree with me it may well be due to the fact
that you live in a period of more profound moral insights than have
been granted to those of us who have been concerned with outdated
concepts of equilibrium.

Thank you very much.

(APPLAUSE)

22

DISCUSSION PERIOD

MODERATOR: Dr. Kissinger has agreed to remain with us here for a question-and-answer period and a discussion. We will continue. I believe he is ready for your questions now. Who has the first question?

QUESTION: Dr. Kissinger, Joel Ticknor, State Department.

Since the Angolan episode in '75, do you see any change
in domestic attitude or perceptions of the problem which would--

DR. KISSINGER: In whose perception?

PARTICIPANT (continuing): In domestic perceptions of the problem, either the American public or the Congress, which would permit us to take a stronger action once again in Africa, should the Soviets, for example, decide to support Cuban adventurism in Southern Africa.

DR. KISSINGER: The first thing we have to do is to define what the issue is as a government before we can ask the question of public support. It seems to me that we cannot have a creative African policy as long as all of our actions can be ascribed to the fear of Cuban intervention, because as long as that condition exists, there is a maximum incentive to produce at least the threat of Cuban intervention and a maximum uncertainty about whether the United States is acting out of design or out of fear. There is something geopolitically wrong when foreign policy is animated by the fear of invincible Cubans. [Laughter] When a Caribbean country of eight

1

million can send expeditionary forces around the world to undermine
the American position—because that is operationally what they're
doing, whatever their intention may be—and when a superpower doesn't
know how to cope with this, that is a fact that must be noted.

Now here I diverge from at least some currents of thought
in Government. There is a thought that we can sort of dry up the
Cubans, that we can bring about an Egyptian type situation with
the Soviets, that we can get them expelled from these various
countries by the strenuous exercise of good will and working with
these people and meeting their needs. I don't believe this. I
don't believe that the Soviets were expelled from Egypt because
we worked with these people. They were expelled from Egypt because
Egypt lost three wars in which it was our deliberate strategy to
make sure that the side armed by the Soviets and supported diplo-
matically by the Soviets would not gain anything. And after that
had been established, then the Egyptians switched. And even then
it took a very great man to do it. [Laughter] I mean our strategy
was to bring this about, but it could have failed. But to say that
this can be the normal pattern of international behavior, I do not
believe.

To answer your question, we have two levels of necessity.
One is: Can we achieve, in our Government, a clear-cut perception
of our strategic necessity? Even when I was in office, I would...
think that the majority of my associates, at least in the African
Bureau of the State Department, totally disagreed with my approach

2

to Angola. They have since published it in *Foreign Affairs*. And when that happens, leaks are inevitable—and it then led to a public debate. And since Vietnam, it is no longer possible to assume that the Government might have a rational reason for its action, even though statistically it is improbable that the Government is always wrong. [Laughter]

The difficulty is that, first, there is no clear-cut conception within our Government. There wasn't when I was in office. There is, at least as far as this problem is concerned, in my view, less now than then.

Secondly, there is enormous hostility in the Congress to anything that looks like American intervention, especially since the myth of Vietnam has totally befuddled thinking. In the congressional and public image of Vietnam the impression is created that we woke up one morning and, lo and behold, there were 550,000 Americans in Vietnam. How they got there nobody knew, certainly not the Congress, certainly not the press, and that then a horrible mess ensued. The fact of the matter is, these troops went in there in full knowledge of everybody, with the full approval of everybody. Their unforgivable sin was that they didn't win. If they had won in a year or two, none of these criticisms that are being made today apply. But since then we have been paralyzing ourselves in every crisis by so attempting to calibrate our commitment that we would not slide into a total involvement, and thereby running the risk of one defeat after another. So my answer to your

3

question is: I think it is the duty of national leaders. We decided to support a covert operation in Angola at a time when there were eight congressional committees investigating the CIA, two months after we had gotten out of Vietnam, therefore under conditions where we knew leaks were probable (when I say "we," I mean President Ford and myself), against the opposition of much of the existing bureaucracy because we felt we had an obligation, when our perception was of a major effect on the international balance, to try to rally the public.

We didn't do that very well, and maybe in '75 it couldn't have been done. We were defeated as much by the conservatives as we were by the liberals because if you read the vote of the Tunney Amendment, it was the conservatives who helped put it over. But the fact that we did not do that particular thing very well does not excuse leaders not to do what they understand to be in the American interest. They must explain it to the American public, and I think the public will support it now. There will be a congressional problem, and to that I don't have an answer. But if we don't act, then five years down the road, when we have been reduced to irrelevants in the minds of many of these countries, we will see a whole series of upheavals whose causes will then seem extremely ambiguous.

QUESTION: Sir, Lieutenant Colonel Brown, Army. We use our technology to try to gain leverage on Russia--particularly computers

4

and oil technology. Do you believe this is a viable strategy?

DR. KISSINGER: The question of economic relations with the Soviet Union is one to which it isn't easy to give a clear-cut answer. On the one hand you can argue that if it were possible to create a nexus of relationships which creates enough vested interests in the Soviet Union in maintaining them, that as specific crises come up, they might have an incentive not to risk that relationship.

For example, it's an interesting question to speculate whether the Soviets would have gone into Angola with quite the vigor that they did in early '75 had the Jackson Amendment not been passed three months earlier. No one can prove this. At any rate, there was nothing that people on the other side of that debate could argue at that moment.

On the other hand it is equally true that whatever part of the Soviet economy you strengthen, even if it's mostly civilian, has the objective result of either helping military programs directly or helping military programs indirectly by freeing resources for their use.

In my period, what we attempted to do was to tie progress in economic relations to specific political conditions, and for about three years we approved no economic projects; then, to the violent displeasure, incidentally, of most of the leading journals of opinion who switched only to the other side after we adopted their original position. [Laughter]

5

We then, under the theory of linkage, since abolished, made
economic progress dependent on concrete agreements and on specific
restraints; nor did we give open-ended credits. We tied the credits
to specific projects, and we generally picked projects that would
take a long time to complete so that we would have the means of
withholding them. Whether that was the right middle course we will
never know because what we attempted to do was then thwarted by
congressional action, and now I think we are in the worst of all
worlds. We substantially cut off our credits and our economic re-
lationships. But, on the other hand, the Japanese and the Europeans
have extended about $50 billion worth of open-ended credit. More-
over, while the United States can insist on political conditions,
Western Europe and Japan cannot insist on political conditions.
They are much too weak in relation to the Soviet Union to enforce
them. And certainly at that magnitude of economic dependence it
is the debtor who gets the upper hand, not the creditor. So much
of the economy will soon become dependent, and so much of the
economic well-being will be dependent on East-West trade that it is
the Soviet Union that will be able to establish political linkage
with respect especially to Western Europe that this will become a
very major concern.

So I think that at a minimum what is needed is some coherent
Western policy that establishes some linkage between political per-
formance and economic action at some coherent credit policy so that
we are not financing Soviet military adventures all over the world

6

(lc)

and solving all of the Soviet internal dilemmas without getting
any political price for it.

QUESTION: Lieutenant Colonel Shroyer from the Industrial College. Your remarks didn't cover the Middle East, but would you comment, please. We have been reading in the paper the nearness of the peace agreements between the Israelis and Egypt. This morning's news announced the Israelis are going to strengthen their settlements in the Sinai, which seems to be contradictory to a peace settlement.

Will you comment, please?

DR. KISSINGER: Not strengthen the settlements in the Sinai, strengthen the settlement in the West Bank, because if they strengthen them on the Sinai, that would blow up the peace agreement, and that I didn't see.

I would say three things about the Middle East. First of all, I strongly support the Camp David agreements. They have gone in the direction in which we were attempting to head, and I consider them a logical extension of the strategy that we pursued. I don't say this to take anything away from the Administration. It's no criticism to say that the world was not created on January 20, 1977. [Laughter] It's a major accomplishment, and I think it's the absolute maximum that could have been achieved. Certainly it doesn't solve all the problems, but the dilemma in the Middle East was that if you attempted to solve all of the problems, you were going to solve no problem; and that the attempt to achieve

7

comprehensive solutions was certain to be exploited by the most
radical element. So I consider that progress.

On the other hand, of course, there are major things that
remain to be done. There is the West Bank problem; there's the
Golan Heights problem. I take what the Israeli government has done
as one of those examples where the domestic pressures now--every
government, certainly every democratic government, has the enormous
difficulty that it may have to make so many concessions to its
domestic opponents that it loses the coherence of its foreign policy.
It certainly cannot be in the interest of the peace process for the
Israeli government to announce now that they are going to expand
their settlements on the West Bank. It puts Sadat into the most
impossible position when he has already acted with enormous courage
and wisdom.

On the other hand, it is probable that the only way Begin
could get this through his cabinet was to make an announcement which
he knows to be dangerous. So we are in the international position
today where a leader tries to shift his domestic problems to some
other country, and this is true also in the economic field. How
long that can go on without something blowing, I don't know. I
think some way will be found around this. I think it was an unwise
decision. I think it will force our Government to disassociate
itself from it, it will force Sadat to do something, and it has no
concrete reality because what Israel will have to do now is to start
some process on the West Bank to go along with the process in the

8

Sinai; and it is against their own interest, I would have thought, to put themselves clearly in the wrong before the negotiations have even started. So that is a major problem.

But then we have two additional problems. One is that the impact of peace in the area is bound to have unforeseeable consequences. Israel has never lived either with frontiers or with peace. Israel has always lived in crisis conditions, and what will happen to the Jewish state under conditions of relative normalcy and to the support that it has had from the outside; what happens when Israel, which has had an international role out of proportion to its population will become another little Middle Eastern state is very difficult to foretell, but it is not difficult to foretell that it will be a major source of domestic adjustment.

The second problem is that the same conditions are bound to exist in Egypt. Everybody in the Middle East has, in a way, psychologically lived off the war. This has been their psychological cohesion. What happens when they have to face conditions of peace, when they cannot blame all their travail on some horrendous foreigner nobody can now predict. But I am also extremely worried that Egypt might face many of the difficulties that Iran has very recently confronted.

A third problem is that the big concern in the Middle East may shift over the next five to six years from the Arab-Israeli conflict to the Soviet encirclement that is so patently taking place--again what I have mentioned before I repeat: Afghanistan,

9

South Yemen, Ethiopia directed against the Middle East as a political concept. Now Iran, for a foreseeable future, will stop being a foreign policy factor. No matter what happens domestically, it is inconceivable that Iranian forces would fight outside of Iran as they did in Oman, for example. And whether this will encourage South Yemen to start up the insurgency in Oman again, and what that will do then to the Saudi Arabian peninsula: these will be the problems of the next five years which will require some very painful decisions.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, I'm Pete de Vos from the State Department. You spoke this morning of a need for the United States to develop a strategy in its foreign policy and to get away from the excesses of ideology and the excesses of pragmatism. Certainly this is what you spoke of during your eight years when you were chief architect of American foreign policy. My question is: Is it possible to instill the conceptual in the bureaucracy. The Carter Administration, for almost two years now, has been accused from many quarters of lacking a direction in its foreign policy.

DR. KISSINGER: I think it is a national necessity. It is what I thought our biggest task was when I was in office. We could not fully implement it because, for the first four and a half years, we were caught up in the Vietnamese war. And if you read today the debates that went on during the Vietnamese war, it is really hair-raising, leaving aside now who was right or who was wrong on either

10

side of the thing. It proved impossible for four years to have a
rational discussion of the national interest. Whether we were with-
drawing too slowly or not: that subject was debated. What was not
worth debating was that this was an administration dedicated to
victory that was trying to achieve, because of the psychological
imbalances of its leading members, some undefined objective. And
it was so contrary to what was being done. Therefore, all of the
Vietnam debate turned out to be irrelevant to this issue that I am
mentioning. Then we had one again. So we had only about two and a
half years of relative normalcy while I was in office where we
could do this.

Is it possible to do it with a bureaucracy? As you know
better than I do, I think the Foreign Service has the ablest group
of people with whom I have ever worked. But organizationally an
enormous premium is put on the self-will of the country directors,
who consider their role really to service their clients rather
than to carry out a national strategy. The organization of the
Department does not lend itself to the elaboration of a national
strategy. The organization of the Department generates foreign
policy on the basis of cables, and the whole machinery is geared
to wearing down the Secretary of State by flooding him with so many
cables [laughter] that he has the illusion that he is making deci-
sions but not the practical possibility of imposing a sense of
direction. So it is partly an organizational question. It is
partly a question that must be dealt with at the very beginning of

11

(LC)

an administration or it will never be massive because then events
develop their own momentum.

I would say the same thing; I know the Pentagon less well,
but the same thing is true in the Pentagon. I don't believe we
have a national strategy. We have JCS papers (God will punish me
for saying this in these hallowed halls) [laughter] that are drafted
as much as compromises between the various logistics operations of
the various services. But I think if you look at American military
history, you cannot say that strategic planning has been our forte,
logistics planning has been our forte. This is our great national
weakness.

Can it be done? I think we have the personnel to do it.
It takes more discipline than we generally have in our Government,
and it is an approach that will be resisted, especially my approach,
because I believe that there are realities of power that are inde-
pendent of the intentions of the chief actors and that, therefore,
it is senseless to quote protestations of good will, that there are
inherent realities that produce necessary temptations. This simply
is not the American tradition of looking at foreign policy, and yet
it is the way foreign policy has had to be conducted by most nations
throughout history.

In the 1950s we had 55 percent of the economy of the non-
Communist world. By the late 1980s we will have less than 25 per-
cent. That still makes us the single most powerful unit, but it
means we must now think strategically. We no longer have the

12

margins we had available before. I think it is our national
necessity. Can we do it? I don't know. We have to try it. We
have the personnel to do it, and reality will teach it to us any-
way. The only question is: Do we do it after disasters or before
disasters?

QUESTION: Dr. Kissinger, Lieutenant Colonel Espin, Army. My question concerns Iran on a hypothetical situation, that if the Shah were toppled and political turmoil ensued, do you foresee a situation in which the Russians, because of their strong conventional capability, would perhaps use that military power to take advantage of the situation? And if this were the case, what possible alternatives would be open to the United States?

DR. KISSINGER: First of all, Iran is really a classic case history of revolutions in this sense. The American myth is that revolutions occur where governments are oppressive. That is generally not true. Revolutions generally occur where conditions are getting better and where the government is not superoppressive. When people are very poor and the government is extremely brutal, there are no revolutions. The French Revolution occurred in the most enlightened, or in one of the most enlightened, European countries. The French upper class substantially accepted the principles in the name of which the revolution was fought, and, therefore, their resistance was not very determined. The king thought he was carrying out abstract principles when he joined the revolutionaries when they

13

came out of Versailles and went back into Paris with them. If he
hadn't done that, it might have stopped right there.

Now, you had in Iran the situation where the shah wanted
to move Iran to the position of a present modern European state.
He wanted to have Iran, by the middle eighties, in the condition
of France today. And he had nearly succeeded when he had begun to
break the feudal groups and established a middle class. But
hereditary monarchy is incompatible with a widely diffused, educated
group. A hereditary monarchy requires an aristocracy to support it.
He was breaking the aristocracy, as he had to if he wanted to achieve
development. So he faced the dilemma that Saudi Arabia will soon
face, which is, if you develop, you ruin the objective conditions
of your power, but if you don't develop, you stay so weak that you
ruin the objective conditions of your security. And how to settle
this problem--I don't know the answer.

Then I think, quite frankly, that we made our contribution
to Iran's difficulties. The shah's policy was largely based on
close friendship with the United States. We made our contribution
by, first of all, developing--making the friendship with him a
contentious domestic issue: Do we break the shah on the oil price?

I was consistently attacked for not being willing to take
on the shah on the oil price. I was not willing to do it because
I felt if we humiliated him--I didn't think he could get the oil
price down, but that was a minor problem. The major problem was

14

(LC)

that I was afraid if we humiliated him, we might so undermine his
authority that it would lead to the sort of situation. But it be-
came contentious in the last electoral campaign. We started putting
restrictions--not very real ones, more visible than real ones--on
military assistance. Then the combination that I have already
mentioned--Afghanistan, South Yemen, Ethiopia--showed that we were
no longer so predominant in that area. Then our human rights
campaign encouraged him into perhaps more rapid liberalization than
was wise and discouraged him from earlier repression. In any event,
as a hereditary monarch he does not have the brutality that a
totalitarian regime would have. He could have stopped these if he
had been willing to be totally brutal. Now he is in a position
where he is behind the power curve, in my view, because the more
concessions he makes the more he feeds the revolutionaries.

I know of no revolution that has been arrested, once it has
reached this point, by making concessions. A tenth of these con-
cessions a year ago would have been meaningful. Five times the
current concessions will just, in my view, feed the fire. Already
we have to consider that the Iran we will deal with in the future
will be quite different from the Iran we knew. For one thing, even
if the shah stays and even if he maintains his power (the second I
consider highly unlikely), they can no longer play a major role in
foreign-policy outside their immediate area.

Secondly, they will have to harmonize their policy much
more, in my view, with that of neighbors like Iraq because if Iraq

15

added its subversive capabilities to the existing subversive capa-
bilities, the position might become untenable.

Third, both the left and the right in Iran seem to agree
that the unquestionably pro-American orientation of Iran is not
acceptable to them--to the one for reasons of Moslem solidarity,
to the others for reasons of Marxist solidarity. So we will see a
major change in the Iranian position even without Soviet interven-
tion. In any event, the Soviet Union will have an enormous ability
now without overt intervention by backing these various groups,
through these covert operations which are beneath our moral
stature, to have a major impact.

Incidentally, if I have ever seen a country in which an
American capacity for covert support would be crucial but cannot
be implemented under present circumstances, it is Iran. So
already one has to say a major geopolitical change is occurring
in Iran. It will take two or three years to work itself out.
Whether the Soviets will intervene overtly, I think the Soviet
strategy, if they can manage it, will be to calm us down for a
year or two because if their analysis of the trends as I have de-
scribed to you is in their interest to let them proceed and maybe
accelerate and not get into a confrontation with us, which might
give us an opportunity to rally ourselves, it may get out of their
control. If the Iranian situation should be followed by something
in Saudi Arabia or Egypt (I mention Egypt only because apparently
they announced some sort of a plot there; I don't know how real it

16

was), then things could get out of control beyond even the Soviet
intention.

Certainly they now have an option which they didn't have
before. Now what do we do? If we don't have anyone in Iran who
asks for our support, we will be in a difficult position. On the
other hand, if we permit a reversal of alliances or even of an Iran
sliding into an Iraqi type position, that will be a massive
American defeat in the sense that in any new Middle East crisis,
the possibilities of oil embargoes would magnify. Even fleet
operations--there may be officers here who remember that when we
moved the Seventh Fleet into the Indian Ocean during the Middle
East war, we sent it first and asked for fuel from the Iranians
afterwards without any question that the Iranians would comply,
and indeed they did. If we had to ask ourselves whether that is
in fact possible, it would even complicate our fleet operations
there. That is the most minor issue, but it is still something to
be considered.

So I would think that what we have gained in Camp David
must be balanced, if one wants to draw up a balance sheet, against
what has been lost in Iran.

QUESTION: Dr. Kissinger, Joanne Perriens, National Security
Agency. How can we possibly not insure the hostility and lack of
confidence in the United States on the part of black African
nations if we continue to lend credence, legitimacy--

17

(LC)

DR. KISSINGER: If we do what?

QUESTION (continuing): --if we continue to indicate a belief in
the legitimacy or the credence or the possibilities in Ian Smith's
internal settlement or in South Africa's proposed plan for Namibia?

DR. KISSINGER: Let me give you my own assessment of the African
situation which, as the African Bureau of the State Department will
tell you with great pleasure, reflects the backwardness of a
morally underdeveloped mentality. [Laughter],

Let me tell you my assessment. Then I will deal with your
specific questions.

I think all African nations have an unusual problem. They
are not nations, due to no fault of theirs, in any of the senses
that nations were created in any other part of the world. They
have no common language. They have no common culture except in the
sense of being part of the African culture. Their borders reflect
no long, historical traditions but the administrative convenience
of colonial powers of recent vintage. All of the borders in Africa,
or most of the borders in Africa, were drawn in the course of the
nineteenth century, most of them in the second half of the nine-
teenth century, by colonial powers who divided tribes, put together
different cultural groups, and who could not have cared less about
creating new nations. In fact, if anything, they had an interest
in not creating new nations. So every African state faces the
anomalous position that the only lingua franca they have, the only

18

language that they all understand is the language of the former
colonial power.

For all of these African leaders, staying in office is an
enormous problem. Conversely, democratic forms become almost im-
possible to apply because they are so tied to tribal. In order
to have a democracy, you must have a certain sense of a unitary
or of a certain homogeneity in the population so that a minority
can have some hope of becoming a majority. In the state in which
there is a permanent minority the democratic process works only
with the greatest difficulty, as the Republicans are beginning to
find out in this country. Seriously, when a minority is tied, in
addition to linguistic, tribal, or racial lines, then the demo-
cratic process becomes very hard. All of these African leaders
have an enormous problem of staying in power.

Therefore, the introduction of relatively small outside
forces, like a few thousand Cubans, or Soviet advisors, and the
availability of large stores of arms is to them a major domestic
fact.

In 1975, on the issue of Angola, the majority of the
African countries in fact supported us. Countries which today
have shifted toward the radical side (like Zambia) were not only
supporting us, they were encouraging us. It was Kaunda who first
called our attention to Angola when he visited in April. Until
that time we had quite literally paid no attention to it. This is
a fact of life in Africa.

19

Let me add one more general point. The African nations have been divided crudely into two groups: the radicals and the moderates. In America, this is a crude simplification, but it will serve for these purposes, The American strategic division has to be: Is it more in the American interest to support the radicals, or is it more in the American interest to deal with the moderates? My judgment was that countries like Tanzania and Mozambique cannot be won over by the United States. I could be wrong on this. I am just telling you what my judgment was--that the closer we approached to them the more they went away from us. They need nonalignment for their domestic position. They have so many domestic pressures that they cannot afford to be perceived to be in the position of Sadat vis-a-vis the United States.

The paradoxical result of trying to cater to them is that the closer we go to them the more they move away from us. Conversely, I believe that we can get more support from that group if they are able to say, "We would have liked to do more, but those bastardly Americans wouldn't let us. Therefore, we are choosing this as the best of all courses."

My bias has been (I admit it) in the direction of, as it then was, Zambia, Zaire, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Senegal--that group of countries--rather than in the direction of Tanzania, Mozambique, Angola, where I just don't believe we can make any permanent gains except insofar as we can create structures in Africa that make the moderate model look more attractive.

20

Turning to the problem in Southern Africa, in Southern Africa we have the problem of white minority governments and black majorities and how to move the inevitable transition toward black majority rule in a direction that is compatible with our interests. Then you have to ask yourself: What is it that is compatible with our interests, and what is it that we ought to try to achieve?

Again, it is my view that our interest is to have the solution perceived to result from American volition and not from Cuban and Soviet pressure. Therefore, I am inherently uncomfortable when we are in bed with the side that is also supported by the Cubans and the Soviets. I know this is not the present view, but you can always console yourself with my low level of development. [Laughter] I am giving you just my views.

Second, I believe it is important in those countries, especially in Namibia and Rhodesia, to have a solution which establishes majority rule but also the concept of minority rights. I believe that we ought to have a solution in which the black majority and the white minority can coexist under black majority rule but nevertheless can coexist with each other; because, if we do not, the problem of South Africa will become the Vietnam of the eighties. It is already being geared up by the same protest groups in the same direction.

If we do not bring about an evolutionary process in Southern Africa which is dominated by us, there will be a race war because the South African whites are not going to quit; they are not going

21

(10)

to leave the country; they have no place to go. When you see whites and blacks killing each other on national television night after night, both our black and white communities are going to become polarized. And our white community is going to be split between radicals of the left and radicals of the right, and we are going to have the drama of the eighties repeated in a domestically much more acute fashion. So it isn't just the question of what happens in South Africa.

This was my view in 1976. Now you talk about the internal solution in South Africa--in Rhodesia.

We were the first ones who got Smith to agree to majority rule. When I went to Nyerere with this proposition, he said, "You're trying to perform a miracle. Miracles don't happen any more. It's ridiculous!"

Smith agreed to majority rule. He agreed to a plan that was drafted by the British Foreign Office which they later tended to sort of confuse and sort of pretended that we had done it, but it was a plan, the spelling even of which was British [laughter] and on which we previously had achieved the support of several of the black nations. That plan assumed that Nkomo and others would participate in the negotiations, as indeed they did.

I think we bear some responsibility for the blowup of the subsequent negotiations by encouraging the radicals too much and by giving them too many hopes that this plan could be fundamentally

22

changed. I have to say, in defense of Smith, that he has sub-
stantially implemented what he agreed to in Pretoria at the time.
It is also true that what we agreed to in Pretoria at the time as-
sumed that the other black leaders would join it, so there is no
legal obligation.

I have to tell you I believe that our total opposition to
the internal solution has been one of the obstacles to a solution
because I think Nkomo is the key to the settlement in Rhodesia.
I believe that Nkomo is. When I knew him I assumed that he would
become Prime Minister, and he was the only Rhodesian leader that
I dealt with, so I have nothing against Nkomo. But the fact that
Nkomo joined Mugabe means that he has concluded that the radicals
are the dominant force. The best way to get Nkomo over would be
to make it clear that the internal solution has a chance and that
his leading it is his route to power. If this does not happen, if,
under British and American pressure--it is no great achievement to
knock off Smith and four black associates with the combined
pressure of all surrounding black states, Britain, the United
States, the Soviet Union and Cuba. It is not going to be the most
difficult thing in the world.

When that is accomplished, then Nkomo and Mugabe enter
Rhodesia, and all the whites leave. The next phase will be a
civil war between Nkomo and Mugabe, so we will not have stopped
the fighting in which we will become substantially irrelevant.
The South Africans will learn that the first process of

23