State of the Union

Roll 7

Interview with Henry Kissinger

Q: Looking back to when you became national security assistant in 1969, could you describe the political changes brought about by the war in Vietnam, I'm thinking partly of - of the Congress, and explain the difficulties that it created for you and President Nixon in the conduct of foreign policy?

07:02:08

WS

A: Of course I was a novice in Washington when I came. Er, I had never dealt with the Congress before, I'd never testified before a Congressional committee, and I'd never had a press conference before. So I cannot - I wasn't so conscious of the political changes. However, I can indicate some areas in which - which were striking to me. I came to Washington from Harvard so I - and I believed that with a generous er, policy that took into account the anguish of the protesters, we would be able to forge a national consensus which would get us out of the war on honourable terms. Er, that turned out to be totally wrong. Er, the people who had gotten us into the war and who had put 550,000 troops there, were leading peace marches within six months. They were reading lists of war dead in churches which were their own, the dead they had caused. And we adopted by May of the year we came into office, which we came in in January, by May we had a adopted the programme of Robert Kennedy, that the Democratic er, convention had not

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accepted. And that did not er, suffice to create a
consensus. In other words, we were not prepared
intellectually for the fact that the so-called opponents
of the war - I say so-called because it did - took no
great wisdom to be against the war, the question was how
to end it. But the so-called opponents of the war moved
from position to position until finally they had reached
the point where they just wanted to get out as long as
we got our prisoners back. Er, that was totally
unexpected for us, that you had no platform on which you
could stand. Secondly, within my experience, the
leadership of the Senate disintegrated. When I came
there were 4 or 5 people who could tell you what
the mood of the Senate would be and who could help you
get it. Er, achieve a consens - a majority. And
therefore you could make some agreements with them. In
the 8 years that I was in Washington that disintegrated
completely. Er, you had to make separate deals with
about 100 Senators who, knowing that this had to be
done, were beginning to form alliances with each other,
so that every pressure group, every national pressure
group was supporting every other national pressure
group. Greeks were supporting jews, Amenians and so
forth. So you suddenly found yourself in the situation
where the merit of your policy was subsidiary to a kind
of coalition building which was more appropriate to
domestic politics than to international politics. And

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that is the change that I witnessed in my time in
office.

Q: So how did you go about trying to - to live with that, given the complexity of the problems you were dealing with and the assertiveness of these individuals and then the enormous staffs that they acquired to give them expertise which would enable them to challenge you on all sorts of things?

07:05:21

MS

A: One has to keep in mind not only that the staffs they developed, but who would join these staffs. Er, usually the - the members of these staffs were individuals of very strong convictions who were trying to use the Congressional platform to implement not a basic philosophy of policy, though they did that too, but who sought to legislate day-to-day tactics. A significant minority of them were foreign service officers whose advance to being secretary of state was slower than they thought er, it should be. And who, as a res - and who then were trying to implement from the Congress what they had not been able to achieve in the department. And this had the additional problem that every sorehead in the department had a place er, to er, to present his er, the policy that was overruled, so you first had to fight a battle within your department, then the defeated element in the department would go to the Congress and you'd have to fight it again, and after that they went to the media. So an enormous amount of

your energy er, is devoted to the management of - of
essentially domestic affairs and it is very hard simply
to formulate a policy. Then you have an additional
problem with the Freedom of Information Act. So that
every wacky cable that comes in by every sore-headed
ambassador, you can't let it sit there, because of the
danger it will either get leaked or requested by the
Freedom of Information Act. So you have to waste time
preparing a reply so that you can er, defend yourself
er, all of this is an interference that makes it very
complicated, it takes time, I'm not saying all of it is
bad, but all of it is time-consuming.

Q: Now, as the war dragged on, pressure - (interruption)
As the war dragged on the pressure for public scrutiny
and accountability grew and at the same time you were
planning to bring peace through the talks in Paris. Was
there a conflict between the necessity to perhaps step
up the military campaign to get the North Vietnamese to
make concessions that was necessary if you were to have
an honourable peace on the one hand, and the resistance
of the population, the media and the Congress to what
you felt might be necessary?

07:07:46

CU

A: Well, there's a difference between er, er, public
accountability and tactical management. I think, in a
democracy there has to be public accountability for the
major - for the basic direction of er, of foreign

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policy. But there were two problems in connection with
the handling of the Vietnam war. One was the detail of
public accountability that was required. That is, we had
to keep putting forward every detail of our negotiating
position, and always confronted by people who would go
three steps further, so that I would go to Paris and say
here is our last proposal and they would say Senator so-
and-so has already been here and given us the following
proposal and we know that it will be legislated within a
measureable period of time. Er, that was one thing. The
second point was a philosophical perception. Er, most of
our critics, and indeed most Americans, are convinced
that the way to fuel the negotiations by creating an
atmosphere of goodwill. They will not accept the
proposition that a negotiation is encouraged by a
combination of pressures and incentives. So every time
we took a military action we were accused of undermining
the atmosphere for negotiations encouraged by the North
Vietnamese. All the experience indicates that what in
fact speeded up negotiations was military pressure. So
we were constantly being asked to make unilateral
gestures of self-restraint as a means of encouraging
negotiations, which in turn had the practical
consequence of removing the incentive of the Vietnamese
to negotiate.

Q: Well now, looking back at what's happened under
Carter and the - the - the Reagan administration, do you

07:09:40

WS

think it's now too difficult for a President to
reconcile these two demands, that he be effective -

A: No, I think - I think - I think this: I think the biggest mistake we made with respect to the Vietnam war is that we did not present early in the Nixon administration the option between victory and getting out. And that we thought we could manage this by creating a consensus. I think this is a mistake every other administration has made, er, after us, in rela - now it's being made in relation er, to the Contras. And now we're being told that we should negotiate rather than exercise pressure, as if these were alternatives to each other. And I think the only safe course is for the administration to put forward its honest view of what is needed to achieve what settlement. Er, and then er, either win or lose. I think the attempt to put forward, as we did too, the most of what you think the Congress will support, not what you think you need, then let the Congress chop away another 20 per cent of this, keeps you permanently in a position where you're always doing enough to be engaged and never doing enough to bring it to a conclusion. And where foreign governments can use our domestic procedures to defeat us if foreign policy.

Q: But isn't there a problem that if you go public and say 'we want to win the war in Vietnam, we want to topple the regime in Nicaragua,' you'll get absolutely

07:10:59

MS

nowhere because the public will not -

A: -- It's better to be defeated this way than er, you
do - you don't get any awards for losing the war - a war
with moderation. And if you're in a war, the first
decision you have to make is whether it is worth being
in a war. Er, if you are in a war, you must win, there's
no er, General Macarthur was right in saying there's no
substitute for victory.

Q: And is the corollary of that is - if you cannot support - if you cannot get public support to be in the war -

A: If you cannot get - achieve, oh, it depends how you
define victory. If you cannot achieve politically viable
objectives you shouldn't be in the war.

Q: Fine. Now, you've been both national security
adviser and secretary of state, and looking back at the
conflicts that were obvious during the fall of the Shah,
and to a degree now during Irangate, when secretary
Shultz didn't know what was going on, could you explain
to us, because it's not understood in Britain and
elsewhere, why Presidents feel it necessary to have two
foreign policy advisers, wouldn't one make it simpler
and more easy?

07:12:06

CU

A: Of course I was at one time er, both security adviser
and secretary of state and relations between the offices
were marvellous at that time. But er, I think the reas -

I think there is a reason why every president since
Eisenhower has felt it necessary to have er, both of
these er, offices. The secretary of state is the head of
a very large bureaucracy, er, that bureaucracy is
composed of the ablest people in the - in the
government, but also extremely self-willed. Er, and
with the - and holds the conviction that probably the
secretary of state and certainly the President, could
never have passed the foreign service examination and
could never have been in er, in their job. So they
think they know things better. I used to say when I was
in office that the state department bureaucracy gives
you three choices, nuclear war, unconditional surrender
and their preference. So if you expose the President to
this in its naked form er, he in effect is deprived of
all real choices. And you need a security adviser who
makes sure that all departments interested in foreign
policy get a hearing. Who makes sure that the real
choices are presented. What he has to restrain himself
from doing is to start an operation of foreign policy of
his own, which happened in the Iran er, in the Iran
case. It didn't really happen so much under Nixon.

Q: Yes, but leaving aside the question of operational
matters for -

07:13:50

MS

A: But I don't think in our - in our government, which
secretary Shultz said it is a seething debating society

[Lc]

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in which nobody, including himself ever accepts an
answer and keeps going into the debate. Unless you have
somebody that helps the President understand what these
people are really recommending.

Q: But in other governments, say in our - say, in our government, the foreign secretary will no doubt advise the prime minister as to what they should do. The prime minister then doesn't turn to someone of equal authority or even a superior official who says 'ignore what he says, do what I say.'

07:14:27

WS

A: Well, in practice it doesn't really happen this way, because when you have er, the best protection for the secretary of state is to have the closest possible relationship with - with the President. Er, it didn't happen to Dean Acheson, it didn't happen to John Foster Dulles, er, it didn't happen to me and it didn't really happen to Dean Rusk over the Nix - certainly not under Johnson. So it happens only if the President feels in some way uncomfortable. And one has to remember another thing: the secretary of state or defence has to testify before Congressional committees, and therefore there are some battles they are very reluctant to fight. Er, I got a reputation of being very skillful in handling the press. Er, I'd never had a press conference in my life before I came to Washington. The reason I got involved in press conferences was because none of the departments wanted to brief on the Vietnam war. I can assure you I

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did not have to fight representatives of the defence or
state departments off the platform. They were happy
enough to have the White House carry the burden. And the
great temptation in the government is that all the good
news is - is er, announced in the departments and all
the bad news is shoved into the White House. That in
turn gives the security adviser over a period of time a
disproportionate influence, but it is usually er, the
result of abdication by the departments, and after all
the security adviser, if you say he's got a big staff,
you're talking about 50 people. Why should 50 people be
able to outwork 15,000 if the others do their job
properly?

Q: Now you've been criticised for (interruption) Right,
one of the things that interests us most is the
restraints and constraints that have been placed on the
institution of the Presidency, by the Congress and by
the media, and we would like you to give us your view as
to whether it's possible to reconcile the electorate's
obvious wish that the President stand tall, speak for
America and be effective on the one hand, but do it
within the constitution and within all the restraints
that are placed upon him by the other branches of
government.

07:16:58

A: Well, I think you have - you have a number of
problems. You have first that the issues are not only

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complex but are outside the experience of most Americans. Americans have no experience with foreign policy. And they have no experience with irrevocable disaster. So that there is a great tendency to personalise foreign policy and to put it on the basis of good individual er, relations and to think that every problem has an answer that is final. The idea that every problem solved is an admissions price for an - other problem into all eternity, is psychologically resisted. So any demagogue can attack any existing policy on the ground that there is a final answer that hasn't been er, delivered yet. Secondly, the Congress has intruded in the conduct of foreign policy in an extremely tactical manner. Of course the Congress has to approve the major directions of policy, but now they are legislating individual tactical moves. And we're in the position in conducting our foreign policy like a chess player who's playing against a conventional opponent who makes his moves and doesn't explain them, while we have to explain every move to 535 kibbitzers publicly, so that the opponent can hear it, and occasionally one of kibbitzers makes a move for you which, brilliant though it may be, has no relation to an overall design. That's the second problem. Third, there's the media. When I came to Washington, there were a number of senior diplomatic correspondents who knew a lot. Now the media have a tendency to try to find some scandal or some stupidity or some credibility gap. And since all the

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tough decisions are really 50-50, it's not very hard to
find a prediction that didn't turn out to be correct,
especially the easy problems get solved before they get
to the White House. So we live in an atmosphere of
incipient credibility gaps. Fourth, the bureaucracy is
so enormously complicated and - and not - enormous
amount of energy has to be spent on purely management
aspects of an adversarial process. And fifth, there's
the type of person who now becomes either President or
Presidential um, candidate.

Q: Yeah, could you explain to us what the difficulty is
there?

07:19:23

CU

A: Well, for - to become a Presidential candidate today,
or increasingly so, you almost have to be a rich,
unemployed ego-maniac. Er, you have to serve, you have
to be - you have to be willing and have the time to
spend three years raising 15 million dollars, which is
what it takes in thousand-dollar packets. Er, that
means you have to promise every pressure group whatever
it may desire. You have practically no time to ask
yourself what it is you want to do when you get into
office. So a huge gap develops between what it takes to
get elected and what it takes to govern. And they reach
office in a state of total exhaustion. So they are
generally better at presenting a policy than in devising
a policy now. There are big differences, this would not

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be true at all of Nixon. Er, who had thought a lot
about foreign policy. Er, it wouldn't be, funnily
enough, true even of Ford, who was appointed. Er, but -
and I don't want to go into whom it applies to and whom
it doesn't except to say as you look at the candidates
of both parties that tends to become an increasing
problem. And in any event they are much more - they're
exorbitantly conscious of the public relations
pressures, and all of this creates a sort of fitfulness
in foreign policy.

Q: Now, given this fragmentation of your political
process here, are you very concerned that this is not
the last of these Presidential crises and that we might
even be moving in the future to a fundamental crisis
that will lead to some sort of - ?

07:21:08

WS

A: Well, one has to distinguish er, issues. Nobody can
prevent the President from making a mistake. Nor can
you prevent the President from taking advice from
whomever he wants to. Dean Rusk used to say 'if he wants
to consult his chauffeur, who's gonna stop him?' Er,
what creates er, but one has to distinguish a crisis
from a mistake. Er, in - in my view the sale of arms to
Iran was a horrendous mistake in judgement, but it was
not worth tearing the American political system apart
over. Er, it was just an egregious mistake. In a
parliamentary system some heads would have rolled, er,
and one - one would have gone on. Our system er, is

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different. But it wasn't - all I'm saying, it wasn't a scandal.

Q: Yeah, but are you saying -

A: But the way the media and the Congressional committees go into it, it creates the impression of a scandal, er, even though it really isn't. What creates the mistakes however, is lack of preparation of the top people for the substance of the jobs that they have to do. If they don't understand - take er, take the Iran, the overthrow of the Shah, if you read the memoirs of the various people, there were serious people who believed that you could take the Iranian army away from the Shah and attach it to Khomeini. Now, for that you have to be a child. Er, Khomeini er, had survived in er, exile for decades, er, he was serious man, he was a dedicated revolutionary. He wasn't gonna be cheated out of the fruits of his years of exile by having us foist the army er, on him. Moreover, in the whole history of Iran the army had fought either for itself or for the Shah, they'd never fought for a mullah before. So unless you have some feel for this - then we were trying to construct a civilian government with a fellow called Bhaktia. He may be an estimable man. His highest position had been deputy minister of labour, he'd been around the coffee houses of Teheran. Where was he gonna get the authority from to - to fight Khomeini? Yet you get these hot ideas coming up in our bureaucracy all the

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time. Now, for that, that's not a structural problem,
that's a conceptual problem. That requires some sense of
history, some sense of geography, er, I often ask myself
if you gave a blank map of the middle east to leading
Americans with the borders drawn in, how many of them
would get half the countries right? I know nobody would
get all the countries right. And yet they have to make
major decisions, and out of this grows er, grows
confusion.

Q: Now, you'd say if this had happened in a
parliamentary system heads would have rolled. You don't
have a mechanism for that. Where do you - how do you see
the way out of it so that if Presidents make mistakes
some method can be found for dissipating it before it
becomes a monumental crisis?

07:24:21

MS

A: I er, I don't know whether the er, the er, the
curious thing about our investigations is er, that for a
month or two you read nothing else, and then suddenly it
disappears. And at this moment when you're taping me,
you find next to nothing about Iran in the media. Er,
though maybe when the hearings start again it will start
all over again. I think one has to distinguish what one
is - what one is looking at. In the case of Iran, of
the sale of arms with Iran, that was a bad mistake. One
has therefore to examine the assumptions that were made
about the mistake. What these characters were writing to
each other on computers that really were a substitute of

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telephone conversation and every er, statement made by
some character trying to show off to some other
character of being exhausted and getting it off his
chest, that's rather fascinating psychologically but
it's not of the essence of the problem. I don't think
anybody can survive er, a record of everything he says -
says during the course of a day in his office.

O: I'd just like to bring you back to our central
concern, which is this conflict between the President's
need to be publicly accountable for everything and the
need to be effective -

07:25:54

CU

A: Look, I can give you a theoretical answer, but I haven't got the foggiest idea how to implement it. You need Presidents and secretaries of state who are more conceptually-oriented. You need a Congress that will focus on the goals of foreign policy and not on the tactics. You need media that understand that foreign policy is not made by finding some hot item that no one else has yet discovered, but by understanding er, the trend in foreign policy. You need a bureaucracy that understands that strategy is more important than winning or losing every miserable fight. Having said this however, I haven't told you anything because er, I think we have a problem, and I think there has to be progress in each of these categories.

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Q: You must be very concerned then that the response to Irangate will be further constraints placed on the President by an even more assertive Congress?

07:26:55

WS

A: Well you see, what you need is both a more thoughtful President and a less constrained one on detail, but er, one who is accountable for the major direction of his policy. Er, I am concerned that America will - is not able to generate at this moment a coherent national strategy. Britain in the 19th century through all changes of its government had certain basic principles. One would not permit one country to become dominant in Europe. That was not disputed between the parties. One would not permit Antwerp to fall into the hands of a major power, even if archangels were governing that major power, because it threatened British command of the seas, and there were a few maxims like this: 'sea route to India', that were unchallenged. So Britain did not have a super-brilliant foreign policy in the 19th century but it had an extremely steady and reliable one. And that built up a lot of credit. We do not have a parallel consensus on what the essentials of American survival are. And therefore every new American administration begins with a reassessment, and that in itself is a factor of insecurity for foreign leaders. And it also means that there is, as Shultz said, an endless debate going on in Washington that never stops.

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