11/14/89

MEMO FOR HAK

FROM: Rosemary

RE: Nutrasweet - Edits

Nutrasweet is pushing to publish your Oct. 22nd address and Qs and As.

Christie told me at the beginning this was part of the deal but that ultimately you indicated you may or may not let them publish and wanted to see the text.

Text and Q/As attached.

A few highlights

--p 16 your criticism of Reagan

--p 20 I believe Yakovlev is the correct name

--p 32 your views on Deng's longevity and possible removal of Li Peng (this is Q/A)

--p 34 on South Africa

Can they publish as edited or with your changes?

____ Address only

____ Both address and Qs and As

rosemary

ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT THIS COPY PRINTED ON October 30, 1989

REMARKS OF DR. HENRY KISSINGER

DR. KISSINGER: Eric, and ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate very much being introduced by Eric Sevareid. I became acquainted with his thinking at the end of World War II when I read a book of his which moved me so much that I wrote him a letter, which I almost never do to authors. At that time, I wasn't even in college yet.

So he wrote me a very nice reply. I had no ulterior motive, and he had nothing to gain from answering me, so--

[Laughter.]

DR. KISSINGER: --it was the best kind of relationship to have. And of course over the years I have admired his contribution, and I miss it greatly today.

Now I have been struggling with your management for weeks to avoid having to talk about food. Since I am here and control what I am going to say, let me put your mind at rest right away. I will not talk about a subject about which I cannot handle the question period.

[Laughter.]

DR. KISSINGER: When I spoke at the World Food Conference for Food, I thought it was a pretty good speech, but there was no question period.

[Laughter.]

DR. KISSINGER: I just about exhausted my knowledge of

October 22, 1989 Presentation by Dr. Henry Kissinger

7

the subject at that time, and I will be glad to send you a
copy of my speech--

[Laughter.]

DR. KISSINGER: --which you can study with moderate
profit.

I will turn to a subject about which I can at least
handle the question period, which is the international
situation today [and then you can apply it to the food
situation. If you can't, you shouldn't be here.

[Laughter.]

DR. KISSINGER: Now we live in a curious and complex
period at this moment. The United States became involved in
international affairs for the first time in its history, at
least after the early first 20 years, for the first time in
its history [only] in 1945 under very extraordinary conditions
which reinforced every American preconception. That is to
say, we had an atomic monopoly, We had 50 percent of the
world's GNP, and we could therefore indulge our traditional
penchant for believing that we had a very unique role in
international affairs.

I am in the process, if I ever get the time, of writing
If one thinks about
a book on national attitudes toward foreign policy, or on
national values on foreign policy, or whatever elevated
title my publisher finally will give it, but the basic

inquiry is to see whether one can discern a basic pattern in
the way nations have approached foreign policy historically.

In my view, it is quite traceable. It is certainly
easy to trace in the United States. Every American
President that I have studied, which is from Theodore
Roosevelt through Ronald Reagan, believed, with one
exception, Richard Nixon, whom I will get to in a second...
every American President believed that America had a very
unique role in international affairs, America was immune to
the considerations of balance of power that characterized
European foreign policy, and
America alone among the nations of
the world would prevail by the purity of its moral
conviction, and by the example it would set for the world.

If you read what Woodrow Wilson said in 1918 when he
arrived in Europe, about how every previous approach would be
discarded in a new dispensation; and then even when he
failed to implement all his prescriptions, he consoled
himself with the view that we could only form a League of
Nations in which all the nations of the world would be
represented, they would settle all disputes on the basis of
abstract morality.

In 1960, I was an adviser to President Kennedy during
the Berlin crisis, 1961, 1962, and many of my friends from
Harvard were obsessed with getting the approval of Prime

9

Nehru for our policy on Berlin. I was like the skunk at the garden party when I kept saying: There is no American policy that can possibly get the support of Prime Minister Nehru on Berlin. And if he did, I would lose all respect for him. Why should India run a risk for involving itself in a city 3000 miles away on an issue that had no conceivable bearing on the problem of India, establishing its national identity, which was the overwhelming problem of India.

in close proximity When the Soviet Union was just one-and-a-half countries away and China was on India's border, there was no conceivable reason why India should support us. But I think you will find that every American President, with one exception which was Richard Nixon--Richard Nixon, who was not convinced of the inherent good will of Americans and was not about to trust any foreigner.

[Laughter.]

DR. KISSINGER: --and therefore he conducted policy on the basis of an assessment of risks and rewards. He tried to understand the permanent interests of this country and other countries, and tried to create an international system on that basis.

For his pains, he and then I found ourselves a unifying force in America. We got both the liberals and the

10

conservatives after us in opposition to us.

[Laughter.]

DR. KISSINGER: The liberals on the ground that we were insufficiently committed to human values and too obsessed with power; and the conservatives on the ground that we were not sufficiently vigilant about the communist danger, and less prepared to fight abstract ideological battles.

Even today I find myself in controversy with both the liberal and conservative wing of American politics on the issue of China. I do not believe that the Chinese, who have managed to govern themselves for 3000 years without a conspicuous contribution from the United States--

[Laughter.]

DR. KISSINGER: I will not find a way to resolve the current problems in a Chinese manner, which I will talk about later, but you will find a wide consensus that, in some undefined manner, believes we should bring about a pluralistic democracy in China, which I would welcome if it were to be transpired, but I don't have a clue how to bring it about, and I think that the attempt to involve ourselves in the domestic politics of China will involve a huge risk for the United States and is incompatible with my view of overall strategic objectives.

11

If you look at the history of American foreign policy and the history of American isolationists, in the '20s America withdrew from the world because we thought we were too good for it. In the '60s, the radical movement wanted to withdraw from the world because we were not yet good enough for it.

But in each case, our participation in the world was treated as an act of grace by the United States, and not as an inextricable involvement, or something unavoidable that we have to manage. I have mentioned this because the big major problem for the United States at this moment is that the patterns of thought that developed in the late '40s are disintegrating.

In that period we could operate by analogy to two simple heroic American experiences: World War II, and the New Deal. World War II taught us that aggression was unambiguous and that it would be resisted by mobilizing forces that could defeat the aggressor. The New Deal taught us that political unrest occurs because of social and economic inequalities which, if removed, would produce the underlying political stability. And for a few decades these theories could be applied more or less to international affairs.

In Europe it was true that if one's economic discontent

12

was removed, there was an underlying political framework. And it was to some extent true that the Soviet Union sitting in the center of the continent and pressing against its periphery had to be contained by military means, to some extent this was true—not to all extent. It was never true in the developing world that economic development would produce political stability. Indeed, in the developing world, economic progress is bound to produce political instability, at least for a considerable period of time. And it was never fully true that one could resist the Soviet Union simply by mobilizing military force.

At any rate, however, we are now living in a quite different environment. The Soviet Union represented as an expansionist power, a combination of two threats: communist ideology; and historic Russian expansionism.

Communist ideology is in irretrievable disintegration. Russian expansionism is tied to whatever power base exists in Russia and that, at least for a foreseeable future, is going to be much less than we experienced in the first 30 post-war years.

On the other hand, American military power is no longer as dominant as it used to be. The significance of nuclear weapons is no longer so unquestioned, and in fact leads to paralysis as much as it leads to a solution. And in many

13

parts of the world, new power centers are emerging.

Japan is becoming a super power, and in my view will soon be one even militarily. India is on the way to becoming a major power, as is Europe. is on the way to becoming a major power. And China has, in my view, a better chance of solving its problems than the Soviet Union. does.

This produces a need for a new conception of foreign policy for the next generation quite different from the one with which we are familiar.

Now in order to deal with this, let me make a few observations about events in the Soviet Union. The American approach to the Soviet Union has always been extremely ambivalent. There have always been two groups in America: those who believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry, and those who believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of theology.

[Laughter.]

DR. KISSINGER: The psychiatric approach, as it were, deals with foreign policy and relations among nations like relations among individuals, and it believes in demonstrations of good will and sometimes unilateral concessions, and it involves negotiations in the abstract, without often being able to define their purposes or effects.

The theological approach is often more interesting in

14

striking a pose than in developing a policy, but both agree
on *this* proposition: that foreign policy depends, above
all, on psychological attitudes. There is therefore a great
tendency in America to believe that foreign policy is about
conversion, *and* not about national interests.

I have an acquaintance who is of the view that there is
no such thing as a British accent; that the British put
this on in order to intimidate Americans.

[Laughter.]

DR. KISSINGER: If you can only catch an Englishman
unawares, like waking him up at 4:00 in the morning, he will
talk like a normal human being, even

[Laughter.]

DR. KISSINGER: Like a Midwesterner.

[Laughter.]

DR. KISSINGER: This is the American attitude towards
the Soviets. If you read *only* what is being said now *alone*,
but *if* you *read* what has been said in every decade about
every Soviet leader *without exception*, you will find the
same theme. In 1944, Senator Connally from Texas, *not* known
for his left-wing sympathies, *said the Russians at that
time*, Stalin *abolished the common term* which was an
organization dedicated to world revolution, *and this being
early 1944 and the Russians being near Moscow, *their* the* Soviet

capacity for world revolution was not highly developed.
Senator Connally said, "Russians for years have been
approaching the abandonment of communism, and the whole Western
world will be gratified by this happy combination of their
efforts."

Two years later, Harry Hopkins wrote from Yalta, "We have no doubt about the moderation and good will of Premier Stalin, but we do not know what sinister forces may be lurking in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to thwart his design."

Considering that Stalin had killed more Russians than
the Germans--

[Laughter.]

DR. KISSINGER: --looking for forces that might "thwart
his design"?

[Laughter.]

DR. KISSINGER:--That was quite an amazing statement.
Ten years later, the *Harold Tribune*, a Republican newspaper,
wrote about the Geneva Summit and said, "Lesser men might
have pitted strength against strength. It was President
Eisenhower's accomplishment that he drew the little band of
visitors from the other side of the Alba into the magic
circle of his good will and modified, if not yet their
policies, their attitudes from which their policies will

16

surely spring."

I mention this only to indicate that we are dealing
here with a fundamental American conviction that there is no real
difference, and that it is all a the product of the product of
misunderstanding.
So you can have President Reagan can go from announcing, or
Therefore denouncing the Evil Empire to dealing with Gorbachev like a
misunderstood Midwesterner, and to have him express even
today his profound regret that he was never given a chance
to show Gorbachev the swimming pools in the backyards of
America, for President Reagan is convinced that if Gorbachev
were ever given the such an opportunity, to see that the average
American has a swimming pool, he would abandon both
communism and expansionism.

[Laughter.]

DR. KISSINGER: Now this is a basic pattern of American
thinking.

Now my view is less exalted. First, let me make clear
that I do believe there is a great opportunity for progress.
will get in due course around 11:00.

[Laughter.]

DR. KISSINGER: But I have a number of convictions
based on some analogies.

First, I believe that the Soviet system of leadership
selection is extremely brutal. If you want job security in
October 22, 1989 Presentation by Dr. Henry Kissinger

17

the Soviet Union, you run an industrial plant. In the old system, you couldn't fail with it. They have no banks. There is no credit system. There is no market. You establish your output in negotiations with the planning mechanism and the ministry, all of whom have an interest in colluding with the manager.

Being a manager in the Soviet Union is a terrific job, under the old system. The political system, however, is ruthless in the extreme. No Soviet leader has ever retired with honor. In fact, no Soviet leader has ever retired.

[Laughter.]

DR. KISSINGER: They have all died in office, except one who was purged and became a non-person. No Soviet leader has ever survived his own death.

When I first came to the Soviet Union as an official, the coat of Breslau was everywhere. Today, his name has disappeared; his picture can't be found; his family has been thrown out of the house in which they lived; his son-in-law has been sent to prison. It is not a secure-making profession.

[Laughter.]

DR. KISSINGER: I therefore conclude that anyone who enters that competition is not a choir boy, not a western pacifist. He has a tremendous sense for power. And in fact