May 11, 1971

New York, N.Y.

MR. SHUMWAY: I have explained the ground rules to Jerry.

This is off the record and not for distribution.

I will turn the meeting over to Dr. Kissinger.

MR. GREENE: May I interrupt once more? You mean by "off the record" it is not for attribution to anyone at the White House?

DR. KISSINGER: What are you going to say? "High Administration officials? "

MR. GREENE: No, sir, Doctor. The same rules you have all the time.

MR. FLYNN: Somehow, we will get it in the papers.

DR. KISSINGER: I find it most useful when I talk to people at this level that I can be more candid if there is no attribution at all. If you write it, it is your own idea. That way I can be most candid. I think the best way of handling it would be for me to answer your questions, rather than for me to make any statement.

MR. GREEN: [Nodded agreement.]

MR. FLYNN: I have given you a list there of the men. You notice that most of them are editorial men, key executives of the Editorial Department, and most of the questions will probably come from them as a starter.

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[LC]

Not to be too serious in the beginning, I thought it would be interesting to learn in 10 or 20 words if you were concerned and are still concerned about being kidnaped.

DR. KISSINGER: I have to say one thing: I would be very unsuitable to work on the Daily News because I can't express any thought in 10 or 20 words. (laughter)

MR. FLYNN: All right.

DR. KISSINGER: No, frankly, I am aware of the story and of the allegations, but I haven't given it any thought and I haven't changed anything in the pattern of my life except for the fact that I am now accompanied by Secret Service people, which has its drawbacks.

MR. FLYNN: I gather that has bothered some of the young people in the White House also, some of the younger people.

DR. KISSINGER: I don't know whether it has but it may have bothered some of the younger people I have been out with. (laughter)

MR. FLYNN: I give up. I think Jerry has a question that he wants to start off with which is in a more serious note.

MR. GREENE: Doctor, I assume that you read this very nice needle job that Emmett Hughes did in The New York Times magazine several weeks ago in which he had some rather pointed things to say about your distaste for the President. I wonder if you would be good enough to give us your opinion of the President before you took the job and after two years of working with him.

-3-

DR. KISSINGER: Well, actually, I read the first page of the Emmett Hughes article, and I hadn't reached a verb, so I thought this was something I wasn't going to go through. Then the next day, when I came into the office, some of my associates were rather unhappy with it.

Let me say two things: One, the particular quote he ascribed to me I don't remember making, and, indeed, I can't imagine an occasion where I would have made it. But that is basically irrelevant because it is perfectly true that before I met the President, which was after his election, I shared, with somewhat less intensity, the general academic view of the President.

I was opposed to him as a candidate. I supported Nelson Rockefeller in '60, '64, and '68, and I think the best way to describe my feelings toward the President was that I was uneasy about him. I really didn't know what he thought. I didn't know what his views were, and I had a general intellectual aloofness toward him.

I don't remember the particular quote, and I do not believe I made it, because it is too crude a version of my views, but it doesn't matter, because I was opposed to him.

Now, -- except for a handshake at a cocktail party once, literally just a handshake -- I met the President for the first time on November 25, 1968, after he had been elected and when he asked me to meet with him.

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[LC]

The absolutely last thing that was on my mind was that he would
offer me any position, much less the position I now occupy. I must say
it took an enormous amount of courage on his part to offer so sensitive
and so crucial a position to somebody whom he had never met and whom
he had never worked with. He had no reason to believe I would start with
a position in his favor.

Now, nothing is more impudent than a Presidential Assistant who goes
around talking -- and obviously you would not expect a Presidential
Assistant to say negative things about his principal. You couldn't expect
that, but I will try to give you as fairly as I can what my judgment is.

First of all, this job is such a grueling job both physically and emotionally
that unless there is complete rapport between the President and the principal
assistant in the White House, it is unmanageable. It would be an unmanageable
relationship, because you are constantly on call and you don't have a huge
bureaucracy to support you.

The essence of the job is to understand the intangibles of what the
President wants and to make sure he gets it and not to do it simply by the
routine application of bureaucratic rules.

My respect for the President has grown constantly since I have met him.
I read with great interest many of the articles that are being written about
him. I must say honestly I have yet to see one that seems to me to catch

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[LC]

either his strength or his weaknesses accurately.

He is an enormously complex, very complicated, very subtle man, very private man. Therefore, with the usual journalistic tendency to put individuals in neat categories, you cannot do him justice.

In his policy thrust in the field with which I am familiar, there is invariably more to it than meets the eye. He was not one of the better poker players in the Pacific for nothing.

I have seen three Presidents in action. He is very systematic. He is, strange as this may seem, more open to different points of view than any other President that I have seen. In fact, the most dangerous thing for a man to do is to go into his office and tell him what he thinks he wants to hear, because he may simply be testing the man.

When he makes a decision, he will go over the issues carefully and say, "If I do this, what will happen? What about that argument?" So he is extremely thoughtful.

In crises -- and we have had our share of them -- I have never seen him lose his composure. He approaches them in an extremely thoughtful manner. His general tendency is to try to do more than he says. He is not flashy, as you all know, in the presentation of what it is that he is trying to do, preferring to rely on having the thing accomplished.

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[L]

He knows more about foreign policy than any national leader that I have met, and knew more about foreign policy when he entered office. He has, whether you agree with him or not, a very coherent picture of what it is that he is trying to achieve.

Now, you take the China policy for example, again leaving out what you think of it. As long as I have known him, he has had it in mind to bring China into the equation of other dealings with the Communist world, and he has systematically worked at that.

Now, we were lucky on that policy in this sense: that there was either no public concern with it, or nobody believed it was possible. So he could unfold that policy at his pace, and while I can't say that we knew that the ping-pong move was going to come, we were quite certain that something was going to happen this year. How the Chinese were going to make their move toward us, we didn't know. But that there would be a move over, say, the next nine months, we were reasonably confident on the basis of a lot of things that had been going on.

Conversely, the thing that is driving us crazy in Vietnam is that when he says he has a plan, he isn't just talking. But it is awfully hard to play chess when you have to explain every move you are making to a bunch of kibitzers and argue with them about six alternative moves you might have made. Even if the kibitzer happens to be right, anybody can make one move. The problem is how to make 10, and it doesn't do you any good to take a

[L]

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kibitzer's advice on the next move, since he isn't playing the game.

So there we have been enormously handicapped.

If I can just say one other thing about Vietnam, I think the President
has pursued a very subtle, and actually, considering what he has been
up against, I think quite effective policy on Vietnam. We are caught in a
dilemma. If in order to get a negotiation started, we give Hanoi everything
that they want before the negotiations start, there can't be any negotiations.
There can only be surrender.

On the other hand, to quiet down public opinion in the country, or at
least our critics, we should be unambiguous -- the President isn't foolish;
he understands that. Therefore, to the extent that we are trying to keep
things ambiguous our opponents can have a field day.

[Addressing Mr. Greene] You have been at enough of these press conferences or backgrounders. They can be extremely ingenious in thinking of 50 questions that get at the issue of "When are you going to get out? What residual forces are you going to leave? Under what conditions?" and so forth, hoping that we will say something that is inconsistent with something else, and then they have a credibility gap on top of the ambiguity.

But the basic strategy is quite simply that we want to leave something
uncertain in Hanoi's mind so that they have to negotiate to get a definite
assurance. That is the basic strategy. Therefore, it is easy enough for
outsiders to play games with us.

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[L]

Well, I have gotten away from the subject, but I have to say -- and
you will be able to check me after my turn in office is over -- I will say
the same thing after I leave this office.

The President has been very thoughtful. He has been entirely non-
political in the conduct of foreign policy. No man interested in politics
would have gone into Cambodia in May of a Congressional election year and
braved the storm that we were certain was going to descend on us. If he
had wanted to play straight politics, he would have had innumerable excuses
for sticking the Democrats with the collapse of our effort in Vietnam, but
he has had the view that he will be in history books a lot longer than he will
be in newspapers. He believes he has a responsibility, as he said at his
last press conference, not just to what the young people think tomorrow,
but what they will think of him five years from now. So, I must say, I
have found it a most impressive intellectual performance -- and whatever
views I may have expressed before 1968, whatever views I may have held --
and as I said, I don't believe I expressed a view -- I no longer hold, and they
were based on ignorance. I had never talked to the President at that time.

MR. FLYNN: Do you think it is realistic to -- I will put it a different
way. Do you think the public, in their present mood, can be convinced
that the program which you have in Vietnam can and will be carried out before,
let's say, the end of '72, or before. The impression that we have is that it is

[1c]

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more or less in line with what Bunker said in his interview; i. e. it will
be necessary to maintain rather substantial forces of some sort in
Vietnam far beyond '72, both militarily and economically.

DR. KISSINGER: There is no question that we have to maintain a
substantial economic base there. There is also no question in my mind
that if we gave a deadline for the military, that in two months we would
be under the gun with the economic program. A significant percentage
of our opponents will not rest as long as Thieu is in office, and if Thieu
goes, as long as anybody that the Viet Cong described as unacceptable
to them is in office. If you look at the history of the negotiations with
the North Vietnamese you will see this.

If it is a matter of party -- we have carried out the minority platform
of the Democratic Convention, the one that the Democratic Party wouldn't
adopt in 1968. We have carried it out without the collapse of Saigon. Now
the very people who got us into the war, but wouldn't accept our current
program, are accusing us of being for the war, whatever that means, and
the whole debate is being structured around who is for the war and who is
against the war. Against the war meaning willing to give in to all the
demands that the North Vietnamese are making. This is really what it
amounts to, and that is given the elegant label of being against the war.

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We offered them a cease fire. We have offered them free elections. We have said publicly that the Communists can have that part of the political party with which their popular strength concurs. We have offered mixed commissions to run the elections. -- And then we are accused of wanting to perpetuate the war, of being responsible for the killing. -- We have cut down the air operations by 50 percent; eighty-five percent of the air operations right now are taking place in Laos, which has no significant population, and yet the debate is taking this position.

Are we going to have enough public support? I don't know. No war has ever had to be fought under these conditions, and when so much of the leadership of the country has taken such short-term views.

But, on the other hand, the President feels he has been elected -- hell, if the President wanted to go before Congress and say, "I have tried to save the honor of this country. I believe that what you people want is going to destroy domestic tranquility and international peace," as he does believe, "but I can't do it; I can't risk any more sacrifices, and, therefore, I am getting out next month," it would be a great ploy. But his view is, "Sure, it is a great ploy, and a few years from now the consequences will be the same, maybe a little better for me and for him, but that doesn't change the fact that he believes it is going to be disastrous for international order and for domestic stability."

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[lc]

If you look at Chamberlain after Munich, 95 percent of the people supported him. Fifteen months later he was through.

MR. FLYNN: Yes.

DR. KISSINGER: The public does not forgive its leaders for producing disasters, even if those disasters are done at their bidding.

I don't know whether we will have enough public support. The President feels that he must do what he thinks is right and that he can't give up until it is overwhelmingly clear that there is absolutely no public support. This is a tragic period in our national history, and the real tragedy is that we are within sight of success, I'm not saying victory but I think we can say with good conscience that we are nearing that point where they can do it. The objective ought to be essentially to help them take care of themselves. If they then can't make it after this many years, it will clearly be their own inadequacy, but we can say with good conscience that they can do it. Whether we will be able to realize that, I can't say. We think they probably can, but it is not going to be easy.

MR. FLYNN: When the Presidential candidates say we are going to end the war, what do they mean?

DR. KISSINGER: They mean that they'll end the military participation of the United States. We cannot end the war if North Vietnam continues to fight. We are in this position, and the only way we can end the war would

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be complete and mutual withdrawal. As long as North Vietnam has
resources, as long as North Vietnam gets mass supplies from the
other countries, as long as all of that is true, they can continue fighting
and we can't end the war. Many of our critics say "yes, we can end our
participation," but it is impossible to end the war, because the war
continues.

What they are really saying is that we ought to cooperate to defeat
the South. There are only three ways to end the war: negotiation, defeat
of the North Vietnamese, or defeat of the South. -- Our critics won't let
us defeat the North Vietnamese. They are making it hard to negotiate,
so then the only thing that is left is to make it impossible for the South
Vietnamese. We have been involved there for eight years and I wonder
if the American people can live with that over a period of time -- even if it
gives us a temporary sense -- the dishonor of overthrowing the structure
that we, ourselves, have built up. We do have a responsibility to several
million people who have every reason to believe that throwing in their lot
with us was in the best interest of their country, and in our interest too.

So we have rejected, in effect, colluding with North Vietnam to destroy
South Vietnam. That is the one thing we have rejected, and that is what I
mean. Of course, there is a possibility, which we have not excluded, and
indeed I think it is a chance that is better than in a long time, were it not
for our domestic situation, that the North Vietnamese might decide that they

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[Lc]

will make a temporary settlement, because their military situation isn't
very brilliant at the moment. It isn't clear that they can win a war against
the South Vietnamese any more, so there is a chance that the war could end
by negotiations.

MR. FLYNN: Under the Vietnamization program, how many support
elements will be needed there for more than the year or year and a half?
By that I mean elements that can train the Vietnamese, not just foot soldiers
and guerrilla fighters, but helicopter pilots and sophisticated aircraft
pilots and mechanics to repair the aircraft. We can't pull everybody out,
no matter what the doves want us to do.

DR. KISSINGER: We have made a study and we are in the process now
of refining it. We have a rough figure in mind, which I don't want to give,
but it is so absurdly below what's there now. You know, when you consider
that when we came in we had 550,000 troops there, our figure is a fraction,
and most of them can be advisers, rather than organized units. Any fair
estimate would have to say that we essentially concluded what normally would
be considered active participation in the war.

MR. HAGERTY: Dr. Kissinger, could I put a point, which I think
is terribly hypothetical, but if now you were not being harassed by people
in this country about the war, would your policy be very different?

DR. KISSINGER: No, but we would have a much better chance at
negotiation.

[Lc]

MR. HAGERTY: But it would be the same, you would be withdrawing
at the same speed?

DR. KISSINGER: Essentially, yes. I think when the records of this
Administration become public, it will be clear that even before we came
into office -- I mean even before the President took his oath of office, when
we were in New York here, we had laid out the general strategy. I mean,
we didn't have the individual figures -- but we worked out the general
strategy within the first week of being in office. More or less in the first
10 days we pretty well decided when the first troop announcement to draw
them out was going to be, and we have in general terms, I would say, essentially
followed the strategy that we laid down.

Actually, if you want to know, in September and October 1969, there were
a lot of the President's advisers who, when he announced his speech of
November 3rd, were telling him all sorts of good ideas he should throw in,
and all urging him to make concessions -- the steps that we would go through
in the months to come.

If you remember the speech of November 3rd, he didn't do any of those
things. He said he had a plan, he was going to stick to that plan, and he
offered nothing other than to explain why he was doing what he was doing,
and then six weeks later, on the exact date that he had announced in June,
he made his next announcement. In fact, for the first two years, the rates have

[c]

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remained constant. We have slightly increased it, but we had always
had it in mind to increase it at this time, and we will prove it once
the documents are available. They essentially demonstrate what would
be happening now, although in my view we would have a much better
prospect for negotiation.

By all objective standards, the North Vietnamese problem is extremely
difficult. They can no longer get supplies by sea through the port of
Sihanoukville. Now they have to ship everything down the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
They also have to defend the Ho Chi Minh Trail now, which they didn't
have to do before, so a lot of supplies are being used and never get into
Vietnam.

We have made a most painstaking analysis. We don't believe they could
launch an attack in the southern half of Vietnam, which has 75% of the population,
before '72. No matter what happens, they can launch attacks in the northern
half of Vietnam, but their military prospect, in purely military terms, is not
all that brilliant. They have Cambodia, now, as an open flank. -- Psychologically
this would be as good a time for a negotiation that we have had since the war began

MR. JAMES: What in retrospect is the assessment of the South Vietnamese
Army's performance in Laos?

DR. KISSINGER: I will give you my own personal assessment, which I
would just as soon not have repeated.

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[L]

MR. JAMES: Yes, sir.

DR. KISSINGER: I don't know if there are any more rules, but this is strictly off the record. My assessment is this:

First of all, I think we are not guiltless in the military planning that we did. I think our military planners were a little overconfident, and we did too much by the numbers. We did not take into account sufficiently that this was the first time that the South Vietnamese were using their own air controllers. For example, we didn't have a forward air control post for the operation, so that any time the South Vietnamese asked for tactical aircraft, they had to compete with all other demands for tactical aircraft in the theater. They were given high priority, but we didn't have the post until two weeks after the operation started.

As a result they didn't have things clearly earmarked that could come in in five minutes -- so we made some mistakes. And then we probably adopted tactics that were overconfident.

Now, given that situation, given the fact that they were outnumbered about three to one, that they confronted an enormous concentration of artillery which the North put in there and that North Vietnam stripped itself of all combat divisions (leaving only a division and a half in all North Vietnam which is why they were so worried about an invasion) -- given all these factors, most of the South Vietnamese units really fought extraordinarily well;

[L]

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the Marines fought extremely well. Some of the Rangers and airborne units fought less well at first, the reason being that they had been used in the past as sort of a cavalry, and here they were thrown in fixed positions confronting tanks and without the air support which they were used to. But towards the end of the operation the airborne got very good.

So on the whole, considering that they were outmanned, and the planning left something to be desired, they inflicted enormous casualties on the North Vietnamese.

We are getting reports now, reliable ones, not what our people are saying but things the NVA are saying to themselves. All over Laos they are saying, "We have 500 wounded here, 800 wounded there." So the South Vietnamese inflicted heavy casualties on them.

On the whole then, they fought really surprisingly well. Robert Elegant, for example, had a long article -- I don't know whether you saw that in the Los Angeles Times last week -- in which he made the same point.

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[LC]

You gentlemen can determine yourselves what we paid for it psychologically, but in terms of supplies used up, disruption, casualties inflicted, we made impossible what must clearly have been their plans to make an attack in the northern part of South Vietnam.

We set back their timetable by about six months, and we shook them severely. We didn't knock them out, though we might have done it.

That is my assessment of the Laos operation and they did very well.

MR. MAURY: Dr. Kissinger, has Secretary Rogers' trip brought us any closer to an easing or solution in the Middle East?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, of the problems we face, the Mideast is probably the most dangerous. In Vietnam we are going through a lot of anguish, but we know what we are doing and we know how to succeed, and there is no danger of escalating. All during the Laotian thing, while people were speculating about the Soviet Union and about China coming in, we knew the Chinese were not going to come in. We knew, and were absolutely confident of that.

But in the Middle East we are dealing with Israel on the one side and the Arabs on the other, both of them more concerned with their local problems than they are with international stability. Each of them is tied to one of the great powers, and neither of the great nuclear powers is really in full control of what their friends in the Middle East will do.

Also, there is a problem in the sense that generally you make a peace
settlement which makes everybody happy -- equally happy or equally
content. In the Middle East, the best you can do is make a settlement that
makes everybody equally unhappy. There is no way in which you can
satisfy the contenders.

Now, for a while we were trying to get a total settlement and that went
through many phases. I believe now in retrospect that such an approach
was bound to fail because it just involved too many complications. It also
involved too many domestic problems for all the participants. You could
have a situation where each of the governments might be willing to do
something that is absolutely tremendous but is precluded by its domestic
structure.

MR. FLYNN: Isn't that what we are confronted with in the United States?

DR. KISSINGER: That is right. It is not an unfamiliar situation to us.

So what we are now trying to do in the Middle East is to work out a
series of partial solutions, not that they will settle all the problems, but
that they will gain enough time so that then perhaps one can take another
step six months to a year later. Right now the matter under the most
active discussion is the opening of the Suez Canal which the Israelis first
suggested in December. It wasn't picked up, but then in March there was
more interest in it and they have now made a formal proposal.

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[LC]

The Arabs have made a formal counterproposal, more or less. They haven't actually been put to the two sides, but the Israelis and the Egyptians have told us more or less what they have in mind, and there are some points of agreement.

Everyone agrees that the Israelis should withdraw from the canal, including the Israelis, before it can be opened. Everyone agrees that if there is a settlement, that there must be an extended cease fire. How long that cease fire should be still remains an open question. Everyone also agrees that there should be some demilitarized zone between the two parties.

They don't agree whether the Egyptian armed forces can be permitted to cross the canal and they don't agree on the depth of the withdrawal. Nor do they agree on what happens next. So you shouldn't expect any dramatic solution. I think there will be months of negotiations, but we believe the differences can be bridged.

Now, if there should be a Suez settlement, actually we will pay a price, because opening the Canal will help the Soviets. On the other hand, as far as the Arabs and Israelis are concerned, it will be harder for them to get at each other; one, because with the canal open to shipping, there will be that deterrent to starting military action along the canal again; second, with the demilitarized zone between them (even if Egyptian forces should cross the canal, which the Israelis have not agreed to, they will have to be very

[L]

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small in number) the threat of war will diminish and this will give a calmer atmosphere. Then perhaps we could have another partial settlement on some other frontier issue.

A canal settlement then can perhaps get us another year, and while that is not consistent with the American folklore that every problem has a permanent solution, I think in the Middle East if you can avoid disaster and prolong the state of peace and prolong the cease-fire, you are doing rather well.

MR. O'NEILL: Did we offer Israel any kind of guarantee this time? They were a little disappointed in the guarantee they got last time.

DR. KISSINGER: We have offered to participate in the guarantee of that particular settlement. Actually, they weren't disappointed so much in the guarantee they got. They were disappointed in the implementation of the guarantee.

MR. O'NEILL: So-called "rectification."

DR. KISSINGER: I would have thought that they should look for an international force, or some physical barrier between the two sides. That would be helpful, but the test will be in the implementation of guarantees and not in the written document.

[L]

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MR. JAMES: Do you have any assistance from the Soviets in working with the Arabs on this since we probably have more influence with the Israelis? Are they helping or standing aside, or opposing?

DR. KISSINGER: They are not visibly opposing because they are in a dilemma. Ultimately they will have to deal with us, and that is the point we are beginning to reach. Since the Russians cannot force a settlement without running a major risk of confronting us, what they have done up to now is to stand on the sidelines. They have not been helpful.

MR. O'NEILL: On that score, a minute ago you mentioned that one of the key elements in the President's China policy is to introduce China into the Communist equation, I think you put it. By that I assume you are talking about the interplay between China and Russia, and the extent to which our involvement with China complicates Russia's policy and China's involvement with us does the same thing.

DR. KISSINGER: You probably could say that but it's not our purpose.

MR. O'NEILL: I know. The question is: To what extent do you think that this move, if it follows on, will affect Russian policy vis-a-vis us, and how?

[Lc]

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DR. KISSINGER: First of all, let's see what is the Russian policy towards us. Let's see what it is, and its effect.

It is true Russia is no longer governed by Stalin, but it is governed by a group of men who are exercising a more or less collective leadership. There is the preeminence of one man but it is still a collective leadership. It is a group of men now in their middle and late '60s who made their careers during Stalin purges, each of whom fought to the top.

You have to come to the conclusion that job security is not the most --

MR. FLYNN: Not prevalent.

DR. KISSINGER: On the other hand, they are handicapped by a complicated bureaucratic structure in which, for example, every member of the Politburo can read every cable that every Ambassador sends in. Every decision has to be formally approved by the Politburo, but not every member of the Politburo takes an interest in every issue.

There are many pressures. On one hand they are in the situation of a religious or quasi-religious orthodoxy -- on the other they are a great power. As a religious orthodoxy there is really no allowance made for conflict between them and another Communist state. Yet their most intense rivalry occurs with other Communists.

[L.C.]

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They have the looming shadow of China on the one side. If you want to understand what that means, imagine if we had a frontier of 6,000 miles with 800 million Mexicans, and if those Mexicans claimed every territory that we acquired in the 19th Century, and were building nuclear weapons. In addition the Chinese accuse them all over the world of being traitors to the cause of Communism. This I think gives you some sense of their point of view.

The Soviet Union therefore has some incentive to cool things with us, but they are constantly told if they cool things with us, then the Chinese can attack them on the grounds of ideology. If they follow the Chinese on the line of ideology, they would like to cool international tensions enough in order to give them a little maneuvering room, but not enough so they become vulnerable. They are therefore constantly going back and forth through it, so they are constantly oscillating back and forth.

So this is their present policy. Now, what are we doing with Communist China? The Communist Chinese are different in the limited contact we have had with them.

We have no illusions about Communist China. We don't believe that there is suddenly going to be an enormous reconciliation. These men who moved 6,000 miles, who were on the Long March, who took us on when they were terribly weak, who have taken on the Indians and have taken on the Soviet Union -- they are not going to be charmed by us. We are not going to change their views by ping-pong teams.

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[LC]

It happens to serve their interest at this moment to open a line to us; one, because they are scared of Russia. The Russians have more divisions facing China than they have facing Western Europe. And, two, they are beginning to be afraid of the growing power of Japan.

Therefore, they are somewhat reordering their priorities, and it serves our purposes, because we can't accept the proposition that the Communist country [Russia] should represent all other Communist countries in their dealings with us. We may not do better, but can't do any worse by dealing with them. But we have to be careful; if the Russians get the idea that we are lining up with Communist China against them, then they could be triggered and it might exaggerate the relation, but we are not going to do that.

We have no more reason to give a blank check to Peking than we have to give a blank check to Moscow. We are going to play this game on an assessment of what we think is best for the United States and what we believe is best for world peace. We want to prevent whoever may be more aggressive from realizing their designs.

It would be very foolish of us, and wrong, if we use whatever is going to happen with China to needle Moscow, or fell in with China or with any Chinese ploy that is directed against Soviet territory or against Soviet interests. All we want to do is open our own communications with Peking, and settle our own differences, whatever they may be, with Peking. We

[Lc]

-26-

want to see what communicating with Peking can do.

MR. CORWACK: Dr. Kissinger, you are no doubt familiar with what Secretary Laird has said recently about new Soviet missiles; would you give us your thoughts on this development?

DR. KISSINGER: The Soviet missile build-up is another good example of what I am talking about with respect to the Soviet strategy.

If the United States, in the middle of SALT negotiations, started new missile holes, developed new radars, and did all these other things, our intellectual community would be climbing the walls. But in the selective morality in which we operate, this is now considered quite different.

MR. FLYNN: Yes.

DR. KISSINGER: In any event, we have been spoiled by the postwar experience when suddenly a weapon was introduced that totally upset the balance of power.

If you study military history, advantages are usually not achieved by one spectacular advance. In that respect, one has to be impressed by the massiveness and the scale of the Soviet military build-up, which has not slowed down. If it continues another few years without an agreement, it is going to force us, even if McGovern gets to be President in '72, reality is going to force us into doing something unless we want to become a second-class nation.

[L.C.]

-27-

It isn't that they are going to attack us one morning and leave
us totally defenseless; it is, rather, that in the crises one can see
developing around the world, we will lose the ability to act intelligently.

At the time of the Cuban missile crisis, we had 200 missiles
and they had 40, and theirs were out in the open. We had 1,400
airplanes and they had 200. Therefore, no matter what happened, we
were going to prevail. We were stronger locally, and overwhelmingly
stronger strategically.

Today they have more land missiles. They are catching up
with us in the submarines. We still have more airplanes, but that,
with that large number of missiles, is not all that crucial. Their
missiles are larger, have more powerful warheads and, therefore,
more versatility in their uses, at least over a period of time, and in
a crisis.

I mean, you ask yourself, if you were President, would you use
the American strategic nuclear arsenal under those conditions? That
is what we are going to be running up against. They have worked at
this with enormous determination, and so far we are still hoping to
make some progress this year, but time is running out.

MR. CORWACK: What do you think of the course urged by some
columnists that the President get up and tell the people everything he
knows about the situation?

[Lc]

-28-

DR. KISSINGER: He will be forced to do that if the present trends continue.

MR. O'NEILL: Does this all mean that your optimism for the SALT talks of a year ago has disappeared?

DR. KISSINGER: No, I think the SALT talks are at a point that if the Kremlin came to us tomorrow morning with a serious proposition, it could be settled. We know now what it will take to make initial progress and to get the thing done. It is just a question of whether they want to use the talks to keep us quiet while they are building or whether they want to settle.

They have not yet, as of this afternoon, made that move. They could make it next week. They could make it at Vienna or Helsinki or any time they choose. It isn't an analytical problem any more. They know what is needed.

So their version of a SALT agreement as it stands now is that we have got to tear down the one strategic weapon we are building, and perhaps

-29-

build a new one around Washington, while they are free to build
their offensive weapons. Now, I don't see how any serious person
can expect us to accept this.

We are not asking them to stop offensive deployments while we
continue building up defensive ones. I think it is possible to come up
with a solution to this. There are a lot of technical issues, but if
they make the political decision, I think we can fairly easily settle it.

MR. FLYNN: Isn't the trend of the United States at present
rather discouraging from the standpoint of the Administration. I'm
thinking of the people, the strong voice in Congress and out, opposing
any build-up of our defensive or offensive power, the talk about a
voluntary army instead of the draft army, the refusal to approve the
military budgets, the talk that the military budget and the stopping
of the Vietnam War will make huge funds available for domestic
welfare purposes -- is there a trend toward isolationism?

DR. KISSINGER: You know, the Carthaginians, after they won the
battle of Carthage, could have solved all of their problems if they hadn't
insisted that only foreigners could fight their wars, and not much has
been heard from them for the last 2,000 years.

One reason I was on the telephone before is because apparently
Senator Mansfield today introduced a resolution, which they are trying

-30-

to roll through Congress this afternoon, cutting our forces in
Europe to 150,000, cutting it by 100,000, and by even more; cutting
them in half.

MR. JAMES: Is that in part because of the monetary crisis
there?

DR. KISSINGER: All I know is what I was told on the telephone.
He has been after that for a long time. So we have a good deal of
isolationism in this country, no question about it. The only trouble
is we are now a world power and our own preference can't change
the facts of the situation.

What we are going to produce if this keeps up is either an attitude
of adaptation to the Communists similar to Finland, in which all the
Russians have to do is tell the Finnish President who is unacceptable
in their cabinet and he goes, or a nationalism in which each country
will look inward.

We could produce both of these things simultaneously. I spoke
to a Senator this morning who used to be one of the only Senators I
know who went from dove to -- I don't want to say "hawk" -- to a
different position, and he said after a trip to Vietnam he has come
to the conclusion that if the present attitude continues, we are not just
going to lose the war in Vietnam, but World War II as well.

-31-

[Lc]

MR. FLYNN: I agree with that.

DR. KISSINGER: And that is true. On the other hand, I have
to say that when you are in the position in which we now find ourselves,
in which the President finds himself and I find myself, you can't be
discouraged or encouraged; you can only do what you think must be done,
and then you have to see whether the public will support you.

I studied history. I was an historian before I went into this sort
of work. I know that five years from now we are going to look back on
this period as a bit of hysteria. People will wonder what the argument
was all about, and many things that now seem so overwhelmingly
important will seem much more irrelevant.

A few weeks ago I was at a conference, -- and this should not be
written -- the Bilderburg Conference, in which many leading Europeans
and many leading Americans participated. Most of the Europeans were
left of center, and there were some of the younger Americans there.

There was one Congressman who was going on and on about American
genocide, and that led a Danish Socialist to get up and say, "I will tell
you, I sat under American bombs in World War II, and I thank God that
your fathers were stronger than you are."

Another younger American said, "We Americans are no longer
interested in power. We are interested in morality and we first have

[lc]

to improve ourselves before we can exert our influence in international
affairs.

The Foreign Minister of one country got up and said, "In the 20's
you were isolationists because you were too good for this world. Now
you are isolationists because you are too bad for this world. Don't you
see that it is a disaster either way."

This is our great national tragedy at the moment. In the 20's at
least there were other countries to carry our burden, however inadequately,
and as it turned out, they couldn't do it, but right now no one can do it if
we can't do it.

In the next decade, particularly the ones that are most avidly
demonstrating against us are going to pay the price for it if they win.
They better pray that they lose.

Just like the Oxford students who in the 30's said they weren't going
to fight for King and country, and four years later they were forced
to do just that.

MR. GREENE: Doctor, I know you told me you had another
appointment.

DR. KISSINGER: I will be glad to go another 10 minutes.

MR. BAEGER: I would like to ask a question.

-33-

[LC]

You are mentioning our country's weaknesses and strengths, how can we spiritually or morally, somehow physically, can we get back on the track of strength?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, I will tell you, I think this is still a strong and basically healthy country. Whenever I get off the Eastern Seaboard, or even on the Eastern Seaboard and don't talk to my kind of person, I feel that this is a healthy country. This isn't a cynical country, but we have some massive problems which don't happen to be in my view the ones that are often described.

I believe the young generation does have a complaint. I don't believe it is ecology and Vietnam. I believe that the bureaucratic society, the materialistic state is the problem.

After all, we say our young people are disaffected because we allow slums. The Netherlands has no Vietnam and no slums and no race problems and they still have riots. There are riots in universities in every major country in the world, no matter how the universities are governed, no matter what the social structure.

I think some of it has to do with the almost philosophical void created by a materialistic upper middle class society. I think in our country we face the additional problem -- I don't know if you want me to go on with this -- but my own feeling is, the heavy interest in psychiatry. The young people have had the hell analyzed out of them all their lives. And from the age of 17, when they are adolescents and have to find out who

["[LC]", "they are, they find they have a pal, but not somebody with whom\nto identify. You have to get a sense of identification only in reaction\nto somebody, and, therefore, the more one tries to approach them, the\nmore they retreat from you, until they finally go into violence. This is\nthe one place where they figure my generation -- and they are right --\nhaven't got the guts to follow them, or can't follow them.", "So, then, there have been many, many failures, and when you\nlook at the record at the universities, for example, the university\nriots get out of control not when they start. That is when they are\nusually managed; but when the teachers step off the podium and ask,\n"What do you want?" Then the students despise them.", "Secondly, it infuriates them because they don't know what they\nwant. They haven't got the foggiest idea. An 18-year old comes\nto Washington and takes it as a matter of right that they can have\na meeting with me or the Secretary of State or other officials.", "Now, what do we need? Well, there is no substitute for having\nleaders who really believe in something instead of this frantic looking\nfor public opinion polls. You see it in Washington. You know the leaders.\nYou know how sensitive they are to what they take to be the swings of\nopinion. The very people, who are now trying to force us out of war\nthis year, in January said they were responsible and not before the\nend of '72. Do you remember that?"]

-35-

[LC]

MR. FLYNN: That is correct.

DR. KISSINGER: Now, suddenly, they discovered the tremendous virtue of getting out at the end of '71. What has changed? The fact that they think it is now popular. The very people who in May and June last year were trying to run us out of office by making government impossible, in October were claiming that they were in full support of the President's Vietnam policy and it didn't make any difference who they voted for.

Above all, and this is not a partisan thing, something that the government does has to succeed, this is the reason why it is so essential. -- There is nothing to be won in Vietnam any more except our self-respect. That is the only thing that is left at issue.

If we get out of Vietnam as an act of governmental authority, so that the young people have to say to themselves, "We didn't like the sons of bitches, but by God they knew what they were doing and they did it," then they still won't like it, but at least we would have the beginning of a basis for talking to them. But if we get ourselves run out of a situation against our judgment and on the basis of no reasonable argument, on the basis of naked people waving the Viet Cong flag from monuments in front of the Capitol, and have a panicky group of legislators who go along with them, if that happens, we will have six months of quiet and then we will wake up with a hangover.

- 36 -

[1c]

That is why the President has held so firmly on Vietnam. I remember the early days of his Administration. I said to him once -- this, of course, has to be again not written about -- I said to him, "Why don't you say 'I didn't get us into the war. We are in there now and the problem isn't what we are doing there or how we got there, the problem is how are we going to get out.'"

He said at that point, "38,000 Americans have died, and I owe something not only to those who are demonstrating, most of whom are in no danger of dying in Vietnam, but also to the mothers who have had sons killed there, and to the hundreds of thousands who have been wounded and have left part of their lives there." He said that he had no right as President of the United States to say that three nincompoops as President had gotten us involved in some horrible mess and didn't understand how. He had to say that there had been some purpose to it.

Now, he didn't take the easy road, and what we have to remember is this. A colleague of mine from Harvard wrote in a foreign policy magazine, "Nothing succeeds like failure." Well, I don't know where he gets the evidence for that because once you break confidence, nothing can restore it -- World War II didn't hurt European society, but World War I killed them because the European public never again had the confidence in their leaders. The European leaders never had the confidence to act on the basis of what they knew about the future, but couldn't get conveyed to their public.

- 37 -

[LC]

If we lose that in this country, then we are going to become a fearful, withdrawn society, and that is what is at issue in this present turmoil. If it weren't for that, we would have quit long ago.

MR. FLYNN: Without getting into domestic affairs, this rebellion against taxes, which seems to be developing even at the grassroots level, must have had some effect on international affairs, particularly on the budget.

DR. KISSINGER: You know, I think there are two separate things going on. One, there is a systematic attack on all authority now going on which is using Vietnam, but which will use other things as soon as Vietnam is over.

Secondly--and this is done by those who do not like the country, or at least this present structure of our society--Secondly, there is an instinctive rebellion against the bureaucratic state in almost every country of the world, in which man finds himself part of a huge machine and that he cannot get control of the lever. Now, I think that happens to be the overwhelming problem of our country, and the tendency is to shove more and more into governmental channels. More and more is removed from the realm of where the individual can know what he can do by his own action, or have a choice about his priorities. That, I think is the problem.

This is what he is trying to undo in Britain, over the most fearful obstacles. It is what DeGaulle, to some extent, tried to undo in France,

- 38 -

[LC]

but it took an overpowering personality to bring it about.

That part I don't consider unhealthy, the revolt against taxes, not as much, but I don't say that every displeasure with the modern day is necessarily wrong. I think there is a lot of it that is healthy. Even some of the uneasiness of the young people could be positive if one didn't indulge them.

MR. JAMES: Doctor, without getting into the issues, one has the impression, and I think you mentioned it, that the President has tremendous knowledge and expertise in the field of foreign affairs, and one gets the impression that he is intensely interested in this and that he spends a great deal of time on it. From your association with him, could you tell us about his interest and occupation with domestic issues, which is close to us, such as the problem of big cities, and so forth?

DR. KISSINGER: I really can't, because I am a good argument against universal suffrage where domestic issues are concerned. If he were ever reduced to asking my opinion about domestic issues, you really would be in trouble. -- I know he spends a lot of time with his domestic advisers. He never discusses them with me, which shows good judgment on his part.

MR. FLYNN: Could I have one more? From the schedule that the President has laid out, and from the several times he has put emphasis on the October 15th announcement --

[Lc]

-39-

DR. KISSINGER: November 15th.

MR. FLYNN: Well, now, he changed that back and forth.

DR. KISSINGER: He means November 15th.

MR. FLYNN: Well, won't that be pretty much a Viet-
nam finale as far as the Administration is concerned? Won't
you have to lay before the public at that time the final elements
of your wind-down plan?

DR. KISSINGER: Probably. It will come pretty close
to it, yes.

MR. FLYNN: You mentioned Japan. Do you think that
Japan is going to re-arm; and second, the other question,
which is, I think, related, where does Taiwan and Nationalist
China fit into the Far Eastern problem?

DR. KISSINGER: I am speaking now as Henry Kissinger,
not for the Administration. The Japanese have so much of a
sensitive touch that they think they can adjust to anybody and
still remain Japanese.

- 40 -

They went from feudalism to Emperor worship to democracy in a
matter of a week each time. I must tell you that, candidly, the toughest
negotiators I have encountered in this job have been the Japanese.

Now, it is in our interest to remain on good terms with them, and
they could really upset the situation in the Far East if they switched into
an anti-Western pattern. Therefore, we have to maintain some presence
in that area. That is relevant. So it is quite possible that if they become
convinced of our withdrawal, that they will draw very drastic conclusions.

Now, the Nationalist Chinese, they have been very good friends.
They have behaved loyally toward us. They have been very impressive.
There is no doubt that as our approach with Communist China proceeds,
developing through a very painful period, we will not move by selling
out Taiwan. Still, it will change some of the facts of life, and we have
to recognize this, but we will stay in as close touch with them as we can.

We have gone to great lengths -- the President, particularly, has
a great regard for Chiang and we will not abandon them, but it is going
to be a very delicate period for both of us.

MR. FLYNN: As more and more countries recognize Red China
and Nationalist China immediately breaks off relations, is that going
to pose a serious problem for Nationalist China, where they will have
no normal diplomatic relations with any of the major countries except

the United States?

DR. KISSINGER: Yes, that is true, The only thing one can say is, this doesn't seem to bother the Chinese as much as Westerners. I mean, the Communists manage to survive it. For a Western country it would be almost intolerable, but I can't quarrel with your observation.

END (AT 4:50 P. M.)

[L]

This Copy For

BACKGROUND BRIEFING
(SALT NEGOTIATIONS)

AT THE WHITE HOUSE

WITH DR. HENRY A. KISSINGER,
ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR
NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS; and
AMBASSADOR GERARD C. SMITH,
DIRECTOR, ARMS CONTROL AND
DISARMAMENT AGENCY.

10:55 A.M. EDT

MAY 20, 1971

THURSDAY

MR. ZIEGLER: Gentlemen, we are going to tell you
this as quickly as we can, because we know that a number of
you will be on the air and on deadline.

Henry will cover with you briefly what the President
will announce at noon, and then we have some papers to give you.

We prefer, in your use of this material, when you
go on the air, that you not refer to a White House backgrounder
as such, but just use the material based on your own infor-
mation. What Henry says you can refer to as "indications are
that the White House feels," but no direct quotation.

Q Why is that?

MR. ZIEGLER: I prefer to do it at this time.
You will have another briefing at 12:45.

DR. KISSINGER: Let me just say two sentences, and
then I will answer your questions.

As you know, the negotiations on the strategic
arms limitations have been deadlocked. The Soviet Union has
taken the position that there should be limitations on defensive
weapons only. We have taken the position that the limitation
should include offensive weapons as well.

You will remember the various statements in the
President's press conferences, and in the World Report, and
so forth. You will also remember that there were references
to the fact that we think that there has been a lot of the
technical groundwork done, and that what was required was a
political decision to move these talks forward, and that then
progress could be made. It was in the President's World Re-
port, and in various backgrounders, and so forth.

Now, what this joint announcement does is to estab-
lish a negotiating framework in which the relationship between
offensive and defensive weapons is agreed to, and which will,
therefore, make it possible to make relevant the previous
technical discussions which have been hung up because of the
absence of this negotiating framework.

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[Lc]

- 2 -

Secondly, we believe that this statement, which is
being released simultaneously in Moscow also represents the
political decision of both governments to make significant
progress and that, therefore, we are hopeful about the
evolution of these talks.

That is all I want to say now. I will be delighted,
of course, to answer questions.

MR. ZIEGLER: I will hand this statement out to you.

DR. KISSINGER: At 12:00 Noon today the President
will read this statement. Moscow radio will announce the
same statement simultaneously.

Q This is all he will read?

DR. KISSINGER: He will add a sentence at the front
and at the end.

Q Dr. Kissinger, is the shorthand of this that
we have given in to them on the subject of discussing defen-
sive missiles before moving on to offensive?

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[L]

- 3 -

DR. KISSINGER: First of all, we don't want this thing discussed in terms of "Who gave in to whom?" The meaning of the statement is that offensive and defensive weapons will be discussed simultaneously and that the agreements will be concluded simultaneously, "together" which means simultaneously.

Q Well, that is what the supposition has been.

DR. KISSINGER: Well, we have taken the position all along that these agreements, to be meaningful and fruitful, have to reflect the interests and convictions of both sides and we really think it would not be helpful, nor exactly correct, to say who gave in to whom. It is a fact that they have taken the view that there should be defensive talks only. We have taken the view that offensive weapons had to be included.

There is now, if you people hadn't beaten us silly, I would have said this, a "linkage" between those two subjects in the sense that they will be dealt with simultaneously. But both sides have made adjustments in their views and it represents a joint effort.

Q Is this a significant breakthrough in the SALT talks? How long have they been hung up on this issue?

DR. KISSINGER: They have been hung up on this issue for over a year. We consider it a significant breakthrough.

Q When does this actually start and where, Henry?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, Gerard Smith is returning to Vienna tomorrow. There will be some preliminary talks in Vienna and they will decide there how to conduct the rest of the negotiations, the modalities will be worked out starting next week of how to negotiate the details. There are a lot of technical details that have to be settled: the kinds of radars, numbers of missiles, the nature of the offensive limitations, how the agreement is to be expressed, and so forth.

On the other hand, as you remember, it was pointed out in the President's World Report that there are two levels of issues here. There is the technical level on which the negotiations have been going on rather well. There is the political level of a will to come to an agreement. Now, we believe and we think the Soviets believe now, that we can, with political will on both sides, make significant progress on these technical issues.

But I don't want to prejudice them by now getting into a lot of technical details. The major point is that we have established a negotiating framework in which both sides can feel that they can proceed and that we are approaching these negotiations with the attitude of making significant and rapid progress and that we believe the Soviets do too; otherwise there would not be any point in making this announcement.

MORE

Q The agreement to make the simultaneous announcements were worked out here between Washington and Moscow, or in Vienna?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, we don't want to go into the question of where all these negotiations took place.

Q Well, I am not sure that I see the significance of this and I confess that I am not very expert on the SALT talks. But in this the President is simply saying they have agreed to concentrate on limiting ABMs first.

DR. KISSINGER: I don't see where the word "first" comes from?

Q This year?

DR. KISSINGER: It says they will concentrate this year and together with it they will also agree on offensive limitations.

Q It says "on certain measures."

DR. KISSINGER: On certain measures for this reason: The ABM is a clearly defined subject. You can't just limit some ABMs. The offensive weapons involve many categories, bombers, submarines. Therefore, we will not be able, this year, or whenever this initial agreement is concluded, to include every conceivable offensive limitation. Therefore, the phrase "certain measures" was chosen to say that there will be some offensive limitations included, together with the defensive limitations, but that negotiations will go forward on the remainder of the weapons not covered.

Here is Ambassador Smith who will have to go do the actual negotiating.

Q Do you see this as part of a change the Soviet attitude on negotiations on other subjects too?

DR. KISSINGER: As I have told some of you before, we have taken the view that Brezhnev's speech at the 24th Party Conference was, on the whole, a constructive document and that it leads in the direction of possible negotiations with us and the possible easing of relations.

We have also always taken the view that progress in one field of negotiation would help progress in other fields of negotiation. So, we do think that if there is significant progress here that it will ease relations in other fields. Obviously, it reflects a political decision on the part of the Soviet Government.

I might say that this whole thing was triggered by a Presidential initiative early this year in which he determined to break the deadlock. He took an initiative and after that there were many exchanges and both sides made significant contributions to this evolution.

Q What was the initiative?

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[lc]

- 5 -

DR. KISSINGER: I don't want to go into that.

Q Have you been discussing a meeting with
President Kosygin in the near future?

DR. KISSINGER: No. Our concern has been to
concentrate on this issue.

Q Are there any other details you can give
on how this evolved?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't think it would be
useful to go into the details of the negotiations, except
to say that they reflected a serious attitude by
both sides to narrow the differences and to give the
negotiations a political impetus at the highest level
and now Ambassador Smith will be negotiating the details
and that will be a difficult, complex job.

Q Dr. Kissinger, is there a possibility of a
preliminary agreement this year now?

DR. KISSINGER: There is a possibility.

Q Dr. Kissinger, you said "at the highest
levels." I didn't quite get that. Before that you said
this initiative was worked out "at the highest levels."

DR. KISSINGER: I said that there was a Presidential
initiative earlier this year and after that I said this
set in motion a series of discussions which have culminated
in this statement and in the political impetus that both
Governments are now giving their negotiators to go ahead
and concentrate this year on settling the range of
issues found in this statement.

Q The statement speaks of "will agree" and that
kind of language. Are you all that certain that we will
agree in the end?

DR. KISSINGER: We have a delicate problem.
It is that we do not want to put ourselves in a position
where we cannot negotiate these details with the
precision and complexity that they deserve. This involves
the essential elements of national security for both sides.
We have also always had the view that an agreement, to be
lasting, must take into account the serious concerns of
both sides. To try to take a unilateral advantage
in SALT negotiations is absolutely suicidal because no
country is going to put themselves at an absolute dis-
advantage in negotiations.

So we will have tough negotiations and we will conduct
them with precision and care.

We are hopeful that with good will and political
intention on both sides to make progress, that we can make,
hopefully, significant progress this year and perhaps
even come to an agreement this year.

On the other hand, we do not want to set this in
concrete. This is our hope.

Jerry, do you want to say something? Is that a

[L]

AMBASSADOR SMITH: Yes.

DR. KISSINGER: But it is not senseless to say we will agree this year because we will agree as far as we possibly can.

After all, Jerry and his delegation have had what we believe are the best discussions on the limitations of strategic arms that have ever been held between Soviet delegations and Americans, private or otherwise.

However, there has not been a previous decision on what has to be limited, so much of what they did could not be brought to a point. Now that they have a negotiating framework, some of the previous discussions become relative to the process of framing an agreement and a lot of details remain to be settled.

Is that a fair statement?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: I think so. What we are trying to do here is take a pragmatic bite. Before we were working like ships passing in the night. The Soviets have been hammering about one type of concern that they have and we have been hammering on a different plane.

Now we have a specific political impulse. Henry says "A negotiating framework," which, it seems to me, will put a completely new type of relevance in our exchanges. So, I think the prospect is good that we are going to make some substantial progress this year.

I would stress, though, that there is a large number of very tough, knotty issues between us that the political impulse is not going to solve overnight. We have a lot of hard bargaining and I would not like to give any impression that we see the end of the tunnel and it is next week or anything like that.

Q Can you be more specific on what type of problems you are talking about?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: I would rather not because the specificity is what we will be getting into with the Soviets.

Q Are these technical problems?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: Some are technical. Some have semi-political implications.

Q Why do you feel this political decision was made by both sides?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't want to speculate on why the Soviets did it. It has always seemed to us -- and I suppose the Soviets have come to this view -- that the strategic arms race cannot lead to any permanent advantage for either side.

MORE

[L]

What advantages you can gain are marginal
and when they start becoming significant, the other side
will try to catch up. Therefore, you get into a spiraling
escalation which can happen here.

So we have always had this view and it would be
reasonable to suppose that as the Soviets study their
weapons program and ours that they will come to
comparable conclusions.

Secondly, both sides face the problem beyond the
arms race, whether the traditional national rivalries
of gaining little advantages, accumulating little
advantages over the others, are really relevant to the
conditions of the contemporary period.

So if there was ever going to be significant
progress in our relationship, we have now proved over the
last two years that we can hold firm. We have proved
that we will not unilaterally disarm.

Having done that, we feel that the conditions
exist for moving to more positive achievements in our
relationship. So we have not really had to make a
new decision, except to try to find modalities by which
the deadlock could be broken.

We had a rather rigid negotiating deadlock and
we felt that some impetus might be given to breaking it.

On the other hand, one has to say in fairness
that the Soviets, too, took significant steps in making
this possible. Therefore, now, of course, as Jerry has
pointed out, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.

But whether the Soviet Union has made this
analysis or whether they have their own reasons, domestic
and foreign, for trying to make progress in our relationship,
I don't want to speculate.

But I would not be surprised if they came to
conclusions roughly comparable to ours.

Q It seems to me that our position has
been changed in this.

DR. KISSINGER: You keep saying that and I don't
understand it. The only reason I am not more emphatic
is that I don't want you to write that the Soviets
gave in.

MR. ZIEGLER: I don't think Gene understands
where the deadlock rested.

DR. KISSINGER: The deadlock was that the Soviet
Union has taken the position that there should be an
agreement to limit defensive weapons only; that
offensive weapons should not now be the subject of
negotiations; that they should be left to a later
phase of the negotiations.

I think we are going to give out some quotations on
this. The President has taken the position in both his
report and in many press conferences that there had to be
a relationship between defensive and offensive weapons;

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If that mix was established, we have always
said, rapid progress could be made.

Now, what this does is establish this relationship.
They will be discussed simultaneously -- "they" meaning
offensive and defensive. But it would be unfair
and incorrect to say that the Soviets yielded because
this is not a question of who yielded to whom.

Q You don't have to have a defensive agreement
before you go on?

DR. KISSINGER: You do not. The essence of this
understanding or statement or agreement is that the
two will be done in parallel.

Q Could I ask you, do you expect that
the current pace of deployment of offensive and defensive
weapons on both sides will continue during this new
phase of the SALT negotiations?

DR. KISSINGER: I would expect that, yes, but I
would also think that this new phase of SALT negotiations
is likely to be briefer than the previous phase and
since the rate of deployment of all these weapons
is relatively slow, that if there is an agreement fairly
quickly or in a matter of months, this is the best
way to get these deployments under control, rather than
on the basis of unilateral steps.

Q You talked about a preliminary agreement
which I guess is what you mean about this next phase.

DR. KISSINGER: I didn't use that word "preliminary."

MR. ZIEGLER: A questioner used the word
"preliminary."

Q You talked earlier about "preliminary."
I wonder what you mean by that, being concluded possibly
by the end of this year?

DR. KISSINGER: If I used the word "preliminary"
I did not intend to. I think I said "limited." I think the
term is interim agreement and what I mean by that is the
following: When we all started out in these negotiations
we were talking about comprehensive agreements that
limited all defensive and strategic systems, MIRVs,
everything. This has turned out to be an enormously
complex issue to negotiate in detail and a very time-
consuming one.

So we are looking forward to this year, getting
an agreement or agreements that concurrently limit both :
ABMs and some categories of offensive weapons, that when
these are concluded we will go on to other agreements
that take care of the remainder of the offensive
weapons and whatever other issues remain left in the interim
agreement.

So the reason you used the word "interim" as
a term of art is that you distinguish it from the compre-
hensive one which takes care of every weapon systems,
that is, weapons for strategic war, and so that we don't
give the impression that whatever Jerry Smith will negotiate
this year is the end of the process.

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We would tend to use the word "interim" agreement." That is the significance of that phrase.

AMBASSADOR SMITH: Yes, I would throw in the thought, though, that "interim" should not be considered here in the sense of short-term. This is really a first and significant cut at the problem. It will not solve the whole problem. We would then go on to try to broaden this thing, but we are not thinking about some arrangement that will just hold for a year or two.

Q How is the announcement being made in Moscow? Are they going to use identical language?

DR. KISSINGER: They will use almost identical language.

Q Who will read the announcement?

DR. KISSINGER: Their method of doing it is somewhat different from ours. As I understand it, they will read it on Moscow radio and they will then have it also on the Tass wire and in every newspaper tomorrow morning, Moscow time. This will be 7:00 p.m. Moscow time when it will be released there.

Q Will the President say anything other than this?

DR. KISSINGER: I think he will have one or two sentences at the beginning and at the end, but he will have no substantive elaboration.

Q One question: At an earlier briefing relative to SALT, you said we had gone about as far as we could go, our position was fairly clear but we now had to wait for a political willingness from the Soviet Union to come forward. Now the question is, the Presidential initiative that you mentioned earlier, does this advance the supposition beyond that point you referred to?

DR. KISSINGER: The Presidential initiative suggested a way by which the deadlock could be broken. Again it is only fair to point out that the Soviet Union also had some ideas on how the deadlock could be broken and they were amalgamated in the final conclusion. You do not in these negotiations get a compromise and a solution unless both sides are willing to settle. I cannot stress often enough that the attempt to get unilateral advantage in negotiations of this magnitude ruins the attempt that we are trying to make.

Q Did the President have direct contact with any Russian officials during these stages of negotiation?

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DR. KISSINGER: I just don't want to go into the methods by which these communications took place, for obvious reasons.

MR. ZIEGLER: Before you leave, none of this should be discussed, moved on any wire or broadcast or transmitted until after the President makes his announcement. The purpose of doing this is to give you a feeling of what the announcement is so that when he makes it those of you right on deadline can properly communicate it. No comment on wires.

Q None?

MR. ZIEGLER: It is for after he is finished. It is not to be transmitted to any girl or moved on the wire or broadcast anywhere until after the President finishes his statement. I would urge you not to discuss this with your colleagues or anywhere else because the Soviets are extremely sensitive about pre-release of any matters when we have a firm agreement about the time of release.

Q Not transmitted on the wires?

MR. ZIEGLER: That is correct. This cannot be transmitted to any bureau until the President finishes making his statement. This is not to be transmitted.

END

11:26 A.M. EDT

This Copy For HAK

AT THE WHITE HOUSE

WITH DR. HENRY A. KISSINGER,
ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR
NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS,

11:30 A.M.

MAY 20, 1971

THURSDAY

MR. ZIEGLER: The reason we are doing this is that this is totally OFF THE RECORD until the President makes his statement.

The President has met with the leadership this morning, and met with the Cabinet this morning.

What the President does in this statement, which will be released simultaneously in Moscow -- which is 7:00 p.m. their time, 12 Noon our time -- is establish a framework for the negotiations at the SALT talks.

As you read this, you can see that it breaks the stalemate that has existed in the SALT talks for over a year, the stalemate relating to the interrelationship of defensive and offensive weapons.

MR. SCALI: There is one central piece of paper. That is the announcement. All of the rest of it is the background information.

Q There is no agreement here except to treat one at a time?

MR. SCALI: The first time they are going to be discussed simultaneously. If you read the language, that is what it means.

MR. ZIEGLER: Pete, previously the position had been, the position that the Soviets had taken, was that there should be negotiations only on defensive weapons. The President, in all of his statements, including the foreign policy report and other reports, has indicated there should be an interrelationship between defensive and offensive weapons.

This sets the framework for a simultaneous discussion on defensive and offensive weapons systems.

Q Have they agreed to do it this way?

MR. ZIEGLER: This says that the two governments have agreed to theoretically break the stalemate and will negotiate on defensive and offensive weapons.

Q In other words, it is exactly what we had asked?

MR. ZIEGLER: Because of the complexities of it, let's wait until Henry gets in here. I just wanted to give you a fill.

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Q The language is a little awkward here. The
second sentence in the first paragraph.

MR. SCALI: Yes.

MR. ZIEGLER: Let's wait until Henry gets here to
explain that portion. The key sentence here is "agreed to con-
centrate this year on working out an agreement for the limi-
tation of the deployent of antiballistic missile systems
(ABM's). They have also agreed that together with conlud-
ing an agreement to limit ABM's, they will agree on certain
measures with respect to the limitation of offensive strategic
weapons."

Q The awkward part here is "together with con-
cluding an agreement," which makes it sound like it is con-
secutive rather than simultaneous.

MR. ZIEGLER: It is simultaneous.

Q In other words, we say in the first sentence we
are going to concentrate on ABM's, but whatever goes forward
on the ABM's, there will be no agreement on anything until they
are both agreed together.

MR. SCALI: Yes.

MR. ZIEGLER: Let's let Henry handle these questions,
because he has been involved in it. I don't want you running
off in your own mind here until Henry gets here to cover this.
He knows the complexities of it.

But just very simply, this means that this breaks
the deadlock in terms of what is discussed. This says they
will discuss ABM's and offensive weapons simultaneously.

Gentlemen, we have only a short time. What Henry
says is "White House officials." Please do not attribute
this portion to a backgrounder, but you can refer to "the
White House feels," or "It is the White House view."

We are going to have a backgrounder at 12:45. We
are doing this because you are on tight deadlines.

DR. KISSINGER: Let me just make one point quickly.

First of all, as you know, these talks have been
going on on two levels. There have been some very good
technical discussions that have clarified many issues, but we
haven't been able to resolve the fundamental issue, which was a
deadlock as to the negotiating framework.

The Soviet Union has taken the position that there
should be an agreement confined to ABM's first. We have taken
the position, which the President has expressed at many press
conferences and in several meetings, and in his World Report,
that there had to be a mix between offensive and defensive
limitations; there had to be a relationship between offensive
and defensive weapons.

What this statement does, which is being released
simultaneously in Moscow in exactly the same language, is to
establish a negotiating framework. The negotiating framework

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is that we will negotiate offensive and defensive limitations simultaneously, and that the nature of these limitations and related matters, the kind of agreements and so forth, that will be settled in the negotiations.

So we have broken the negotiating deadlock. We have a negotiating framework. The framework makes the previous discussions now relevant, because we now know what they refer to.

Another point to remember is this: You remember that in the year-end backgrounder I said that the President stressed very emphatically in his World Report that what was needed in the talks was a political decision at the highest level to make progress; that the technical discussions were going rather well, but what was lacking was the political decision.

This statement reflects the political decision by both governments to make progress; otherwise, there would be no point in making it. Both sides have tried to move their positions together. There was an initiative on our side in January, and there were some initiatives by the Soviet side.

It was a complex process. It brought us to the point at which we believe the serious concerns of both sides are being adequately reflected.

Q Two questions, Henry, if I may:

One, when was the agreement actually reached to release a statement to this effect?

DR. KISSINGER: The agreement to release the statement to this effect was reached last week. The specific date was settled in the early part of this week. We knew it before the Mansfield vote, and during the entire Mansfield discussions, but we have deliberately not used it because we think that this is a bipartisan issue and we did not want to use it for a particular vote in the Senate. This is why we have not made any reference to it, or any indication.

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Q But it wasn't conveyed to Senator Mansfield or
any others?

DR. KISSINGER: No, because we thought it was
inappropriate to take advantage of this development, which
affects really the security of the whole world, to affect
a particular Senate vote, however strongly we felt.

Q You suggested it would have an effect on
future troop negotiations for withdrawals. You are saying
that?

DR. KISSINGER: No. What I am saying is we have
taken the position, from the beginning of the Administration,
that progress in one area would help progress in other areas.
In this particular case where the issue of mutual troop
reductions is so closely related as a subject matter in the
arms control field to strategic arms, we believe that progress
in this field is bound to have a favorable effect in other
fields. And we think that if significant progress is made
here, if the United States and the Soviet Union can agree
to limit those weapons on which their very survival depends,
that this is likely to affect other aspects of their
relationship across the board.

Q The other question I wanted to ask is this:
To see if we are reading it right, some of us agree that
there will be talks on the ABM and then consecutively talks
on the offensive missiles, but that the agreements will be
simultaneously meshed in. Is that wrong?

DR. KISSINGER: That is wrong. Frankly, for the sake
of getting exactly the same text in Moscow and Washington,
the usual eloquence which you associate with White House
announcements is lacking. It is clear that the negotiations
will take place side by side.

Q Why then the "together with concluding an
agreement" and concluding an agreement to limit ABM's?

DR. KISSINGER: This means they will agree on certain
measures. The agreement will be simultaneous, but not the
discussion.

Q That is what we are getting at.

DR. KISSINGER: No. I mean the discussions will be
simultaneous, also.

Q That is awkwardly put here.

DR. KISSINGER: That is awkwardly put, but, look,
I can't get into the whole negotiating background.
But I can assure you as a fact about which there will be no
dispute that the discussions will be substantially simultaneous.
When I say "substantially", I can exclude that they may start a
week first on one subject, but the main body of the discussions will
be simultaneous.

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Q Is the makeup of the talks such that that
can take place?

DR. KISSINGER: There are many ways you could do it. They could break into a working group on offensive weapons and a working group on defensive weapons. I don't want to prescribe to Jerry how to organize the conference. But there is no question that growing out of the discussions which led to the statement was the fact that the discussions on both will be simultaneous.

Q When will this start; this week?

DR. KISSINGER: Jerry Smith is going back to Vienna tomorrow. He will sit down with his Soviet counterpart to work out a procedure on how to go ahead from here and how to make progress from here. On DEEP BACKGROUND, it is not unlikely that they will interrupt for a few weeks while they get themselves organized and resume again.

Write that as your own speculation.

Q Who is going to announce this in Moscow, the Foreign Ministry or who will actually make the announcement?

DR. KISSINGER: They have a slightly different
procedure from ours.

Q Who is going to read this statement or release this statement?

DR. KISSINGER: As I understand it, it is going to be announced on Moscow radio at 7 o'clock sharp as a government statement. It will be read as a government statement on Moscow radio.

Then it will be put into every Soviet newspaper
tomorrow morning, Moscow time.

This will be 7 p.m. Moscow time.

Q Is it correct to say that this is exactly what we have been asking right along? Is it correct for me to say this?

DR. KISSINGER: It meets our concern that there should be defensive and offensive limitations, but we have also tried to take account of some of their concerns.

So I don't think we should start this process
by making a scoreboard and saying, "Score one for the United
States," because it really wouldn't help us, if it got filed
back to Moscow now as the Administration claims a great
victory, because it wouldn't be fair either, because it
isn't that.

We have, in the discussions that led to that
statement, made certain adjustments which are more of a technical
nature and which will become apparent in the negotiations.

What we are trying to do in this is reflect the
fact that if we are going to have peace in the world, it has

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to be on the basis that both countries take into account the
legitimate and serious concerns of the other and not that
we are trying to use these negotiations to score a point
here or there.

Q But there is hard negotiation ahead, because
now you are getting down to the nut of the matter, are you
not?

DR. KISSINGER: Yes, hard negotiations ahead,
but we have a commitment on both sides at the highest
levels to make them succeed.

Q Did Semyeomov and Smith reach this agreement
between themselves?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't want to discuss where it
was reached, but I think it was reached at somewhat higher
levels.

Q In other words, was the Hot Line used between
the White House and Moscow?

DR. KISSINGER: No. But I don't want to go into
it. But this resulted from a Presidential initiative and the
President was closely involved at every stage.

MR. ZIEGLER: Gentlemen, we have given this to you
not for the purpose of you filing now. You are not to use
this information. File it with your newspapers or bureaus
after the President has made the statement.

Q We can go with the statement, though?

MR. ZIEGLER: Absolutely not, not until after the
President has made his statement. We have covered this with
a couple of other people. Do not file the thing until he
finishes speaking.

THE PRESS: Thank you.

END (AT 11:50 A.M. EDT)

Now, what this statement reflects is a joint decision by the Governments of the United States and the Soviet Union to break this deadlock with respect to the negotiating framework so that we can go forward in negotiating limitations on both defensive and offensive weapons.

Now, with respect to the specific question, we have taken the view from the beginning, and it has been expressed very often at meetings, that in negotiations among major countries, and especially on issues that affect the national security of the country so intimately, it is wrong to try to take unilateral advantages, and it is wrong to think of it in terms of who made a concession to whom.

Any agreement, to be lasting, must reflect the best interests of both sides, and must reflect the best judgment of both sides. Therefore, I don't want to speculate as to which sentence reflects a concession by whom. Obviously, we could not have gotten to this point if there had not been a willingness on both sides to take seriously into account the point of view of the other side.

In this sense, it represents a joint effort, and I do not want to speculate with respect to any part of it as to who made a concession to whom, because the totality has to be looked at as an attempt by both sides to take into account the view of the other.

You remember the President, in his World Report, said we have made some progress on the technical side, and what is needed now is a political decision to give impetus to the negotiations. We consider that this represents the impetus.

We do not want to speculate on what the measures are. This is to be negotiated by Ambassador Smith, and will become apparent as the negotiations develop.

Q Dr. Kissinger, why have we now agreed, apparently, to split off an agreement on ABM from the total package where, in the past, we have not?

DR. KISSINGER: I think that is a misreading of the statement. If you read the statement carefully, you will find that there will be a concurrent agreement on ABM's and an agreement on some limitations with respect to offensive weapons.

The problem is, ABM's are one weapon category, and they can be encompassed in one particular negotiation. Offensive weapons, it has generally been agreed, even before this, will have to be approached in several steps before the whole range of them are covered, but there is a clear understanding that we have not agreed on a separate negotiation. These will be conducted concurrently, and the agreements, as the statement says, will be concluded concurrently. The modalities and the terms are something for the negotiators to work out.

Q Dr. Kissinger, this may be more of a semantic question, but when the President says this is an agreement to agree on certain weapons, to agree on certain weapons later?

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DR. KISSINGER: Not later. It says "together with the limitation on defensive weapons, there will be an agreement on certain measures with respect to offensive weapons," which means not every last offensive weapon.

Q Does that imply that perhaps on substance, you are further along on an agreement on offensive weapons, rather than ABM's, and this will fall into place easily once the ABM agreement is worked out?

DR. KISSINGER: I can only repeat: This should not be read as saying there will first be an ABM agreement and then there will be an offensive agreement. It should be read as saying that the two will be discussed concurrently. What it does mean is that it will not include all offensive weapons.

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Q What should we consider as possible here, bombers, submarines, Minuteman missiles? Are all those possibly part of this package?

DR. KISSINGER: In answering, let me throw in another question, FBS, in this agreement.

Seriously, what is to be included in this negotiation should not be prejudged on the basis of any briefing here. As a general observation I think it is safe to say the following: In order to expedite an agreement, the effort will be to pick out of the total range of systems that are being discussed, and issues that are being discussed, those that we can move ahead on most effectively, but I don't want to prejudge the negotiations.

Jerry, do you want to add anything to this?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: I would only say that as most of you know, this FBS question has been a source of blockage and when we come to talk about offensive controls under this new political thrust that we are getting today, we certainly are going to try to not be blocked by this FBS question. And that suggests to me a general proposition that the broader the offensive controls that one seeks, the closer one gets to being blocked again by the FBS question.

So I think this is what Henry is getting at when he says that we are thinking about less than a complete, comprehensive control in the offensive field.

DR. KISSINGER: Exactly. Let me say one other thing: Obviously in discussions that involve the highest levels of the Government, and when both Governments make joint announcements of this kind, one has to assume that there is a political will to work out solutions.

We are not going to approach this with the attitude of a sharp lawyer of where we can find a loophole, because we recognize the Soviet Union is not going to let itself be maneuvered into a position because we can find a formulation that we can twist into a potential disadvantage to it.

Similarly, we are confident that the Soviet Union will not approach us in the same spirit. If this announcement has the effect which we hope it will have, then it will have to be guided by the attitude of emphasizing the constructive aspects and this is going to be the approach that we will take.

Q Dr. Kissinger, was this statement as read by the President today representing any significant departure from the position he stated in his March press conference on March 4?

DR. KISSINGER: We have maintained that there had to be some relationship between offensive and defensive limitations. As I said, we have tried to take into account some of the Soviet views with respect to the modalities of this. They have taken into account some of our views about relationships.

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I don't want to speculate, as I said before. You
can read both statements and I think they are rather self-
explanatory.

Q Henry, for this whole exercise of major
American principle it has been that there must be
control on the number of Soviet launchers with a
sub-control on SS-9s.

Is that in or out, especially the SS9 sub-control, under this formula?

DR. KISSINGER: I do not believe, without going
into the details of your categorization of operation, that
either side will give up any of its basic principles in
order to reach an agreement.

Q= Is that a basic principle, the SS9 selling
to the United States?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, I will only maintain that we will stick to the basic principles that we have.

Q Just in terms of what you are calling
modalities and semantics, could you explain the peculiar
structure of "This year we will concentrate on working
out agreements," and the second sentence, "Without
ending this year we will conclude an agreement which"?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, there are two explanations.

Q I want the real one. (Laughter.)

DR. KISSINGER: Both of them were going to be
real ones. One is that this was going to be a joint
announcement in Moscow and Washington and was supposed
to be verbatim, the same, in both places, which meant
that the process of mutual concession had to operate
also in the drafting of the statement and, therefore,
it may lack the eloquence which you usually associate
with White House pronouncements. (Laughter.)

The second explanation is that the text is really
quite self-explanatory. We will concentrate this year
on the agreement. Together with this, which you can say
is also covered, we will agree on offensive limitations.
This has no additional significance to the one I have
described.

Q The second sentence is not saying "at the
same time" or "also this year," the second sentence lacks
that specificity. It has no meaning.

DR. KISSINGER: The two will be achieved concurrently
and will be concluded concurrently and about this there
is no question, and I am sure there will be no dispute.

Q In one piece of paper or in two?

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DR. KISSINGER: How this will be written down on paper, we will have to leave to Vienna.

Q Well, the President said in discussing this "translate this understanding into a concrete agreement." Now that seems to me one agreement, not two parallel or concurrent agreements.

DR. KISSINGER: The nature of the agreement that is to be worked out, and the way it will be formalized, we will want to leave for discussion with the other side in Vienna and maybe subsequent.

Q Dr. Kissinger, what did you sacrifice for this agreement?

DR. KISSINGER: I really would like to stress the point that we have looked at the issue of the limitation of strategic arms, and we have always made it clear that it is one of the key objectives of this Administration. The Administration unanimously holds the view that it is in the interest of both of the countries that are conducting the negotiations and in the interest of the entire world to formalize the fact that in the strategic arms race neither side can gain a decisive advantage and that in an unchecked arms race both sides and humanity as a whole lose.

Therefore, we did not consider that this is a question in which we sacrificed something to get something. It is not a horse trade. It is an effort in which, peculiarly, if we can work out the right kind of arrangement, both sides will benefit and humanity will benefit. We have not approached it, nor do I think the Soviet Union has not approached it, from the point of view of trading with each other. Because when the basic survival of mankind and of our countries is at stake, neither side should put itself at a disadvantage.

The thing that will make it worthwhile is to feel that we have, in our common interests, achieved something.

Q Sir, in order to balance off and say that you get something more than you had, you almost have to know what you have given up.

DR. KISSINGER: No, because there are a whole range of issues: what sort of offensive weapons should be covered, how you cover offensive weapons, what is the relationship between the offensive and defensive negotiations. You have different weapons and theory on both sides.

Then the problem is, with the best intentions in the world, different views are likely to develop. Within our own Government there are different views as to the elements of security. So the problem is whether one can find a way in which the basic objectives of both sides can be achieved without getting hung up on legalities or technicalities and with keeping in mind the overriding objective of enhancing the security of everybody.

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Q Mr. Smith, there is some implication in the statement that there were two tracks to this negotiation, the technical one at Vienna and Helsinki, and a political one at higher levels of Government. Were there more than one tracks involved in reaching this agreement, and if so, was there both technical and political discussion at Vienna.

AMBASSADOR SMITH: It seems to me as a general proposition in any negotiation of this sort there are not one or two, but more tracks, and there were in this case. I would say it was both a political and technical discussion at Vienna and there certainly was political discussion in Washington. I don't think it would be profitable to try to identify the direction and nature of each one of those tracks.

Q The President refers to discussions at the highest level of Government. Did he and Premier Kosygin and Chairman Brezhnev exchange meassages?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't want to go beyond what the President said on the subject.

Q The second sentence in which it says "They will agree on certain measures" seems to suggest a binding commitment of the two States to reach an agreement. Can either side exclude the possibility that after a year or a certain period of time they will fail to reach an agreement?

DR. KISSINGER: Again, we expect that now that a negotiating framework has been set that the pace of negotiations will accelerate, so we are not talking about an infinitely protracted negotiation. This is just a subsidiary point.

Now can either side conclude that there will be no agreement? Of course not. These are technical, highly difficult subjects and it cannot be excluded that there will be no agreement, and if there is no agreement either side cannot pull out a piece of paper which says you are obliged to come to an agreement because of what you have said here. But there is a will of both Governments to achieve an agreement, combined with the work that has already been done and the declaration of intent that has already been expressed, we believe that there are good prospects. It cannot be excluded but neither side would have made this statement if they thought this was a highly probable outcome.

Q What does this mean in a broader framework outside of the SALT talks? You have made an important political decision in this subject. Do you see this as having an effect on Berlin talks or mutual troop reductions in other areas?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, we have stated from the beginning of the Administration that there is some connection between negotiations in one field and negotiations in other fields, in the sense that if there is progress in one area it contributes to the general atmosphere in other areas.

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Therefore, without negotiations being conditional, one on the other, it is plausible that if there is progress in SALT, that it will have a favorable effect on other negotiations; that at least the attitude by which the SALT deadlock was approached could carry over into such negotiations as, say, Berlin.

Now this is particularly true with respect to negotiations on the mutual reduction of forces because here we are talking of a parallel field. In this sense we believe that progress in SALT will have a good effect on other negotiations and especially on other arms control negotiations.

Alexis, do you want to add something to that?

MR. JOHNSON: No.

Q Does that mean that progress in the mutual reduction field in Europe, particularly, would, therefore, have to wait until we see if there is progress in the SALT talks?

DR. KISSINGER: No. I said specifically we are not making these conditional one on the other. Let me say a word about the mutual reduction which is a subject to which one finds occasional references in the press lately. (Laughter.)

First of all, this Administration has worked on the problem of mutual reduction of forces for well over a year. We have engaged in extensive studies in the Defense Department, the Arms Control Agency, the State Department, and the National Security Council, looking toward a negotiation of mutual reduction of forces long before the issue reached the degree of public notice that it has. There were references to it in the last NATO communique.

We were on the verge of submitting the result of these studies to the NATO Council when this recent Senatorial debate developed. Now as the Department of State has repeatedly pointed out, we are prepared to enter these negotiations. We propose to enter them in the same manner that we have conducted the SALT negotiations; that is, on the basis of very careful preparations, full consultations with our allies, and on the basis with the Soviet Union with the same kind of seriousness that has been shown in the SALT talks.

So you must not expect any dramatic, overwhelming development rapidly. We are prepared to enter these talks. We have done serious work with respect to it. We will now have to consult with our allies to achieve a common position with them and after that we are prepared to talk with the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries. This is not a very prolonged process of consultation, but still it has to be a serious one. But the two are not conditional one on the other. They can be carried out in parallel and we have also so conceived them, but they can give impetus to each other.

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Q When we first moved into the SALT talks we wanted some mix of offensive-defensive. The Russians also wanted to talk about offensive and defensive, and then the Russians wanted to talk only about ABM. They never ruled out some kind of offensive connection at some point, as I understood it.

Now what has happened here that moves it further along? Is it that you discussed it enough that you know you can make a political agreement; whereas, before it was exploratory, or what has happened?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't want to speculate on Soviet decisions. It is true that SALT discussions have been like a stately minuet over the years, and the sides have not always maintained the same positions, not in this Administration. But it is true, for example, that three years ago when we first entered SALT discussions, or when the idea of SALT was first proposed, we proposed defensive limitations only, and the Soviet Union advocated offensive and defensive limitations.

When the SALT discussions started nearly a year and a half ago, both sides were talking about the principle of offensive and defensive limitations. Later the Soviet Union emphasized defensive limitations as a separate agreement initially, to be followed by others.

Now there has been a formula found by which the two positions could be made to approach each other. I can only speak for our side. On our side, the decision was made on the ground that we were interested in the substance of progress and we were looking for a formula to bring the two sides closer together.

Without speculating on Soviet motivations, their behavior would indicate that it was very similar.

Q Can you interpret the language that says "concentrate this year to work out an agreement"? Does it mean that you expect an agreement this year?

DR. KISSINGER: This is the sort of speculation that comes back to haunt you.

Q But it is on paper here.

DR. KISSINGER: No. What is on paper is that we can control the fact that we will concentrate this year. That we will do. It will not come back to haunt us. Whether it will lead to a result this year, we are hopeful that now that we have given these negotiations, on both sides, the political impetus, that the negotiations can be accelerated, and we will certainly try to bring them to a conclusion, hopefully this year.

But we cannot commit ourselves to any particular deadline on this because a lot of very complex issues remain to be decided upon, which men of good will can disagree on.

Q Since we are having so much trouble with the ambiguity or the awkwardness of that first paragraph, what assurances do you have that the Russians are reading this in precisely the way you are?

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DR. KISSINGER: This statement, obviously, reflects preceding discussions. Therefore, we are certain that they will be interpreted in the Soviet Union along the lines of the general description that has been given here. Of course, if either side is determined to obstruct an agreement, it can do so, but if it wants to do that, it will not have to find a legal-istic formula.

There are so many technical issues which can be made insoluble, if one doesn't wish an agreement, that the capacity for obstruction is infinite in these negotiations. You have to assume that when serious people at the highest levels have engaged themselves in making some progress, that they are then not going to act like petty lawyers trying to find some legal-istic way out.

But it is safe to assume that there are other dis-cussions than the formal statement that are reflected here.

MR. ZIEGLER: We have time for only a few more ques-tions.

Q Doctor, going back to this same sentence again, the whole statement so carefully avoids saying that there will be simultaneous negotiations on offensive and defensive weapons. Again, this wording that you will agree on certain measures involving offensive weapons when you reach an agreement on ABM, have those "certain measures" already been identified? It certainly reads that way.

DR. KISSINGER: It is hard for me to imagine that there can be simultaneous agreement unless there are simul-taneous discussions. Therefore, since the statement says "together with the agreement on ABM's, there will be an agreement on these measures," it is clear that there will also be simultaneous discussions.

Q But have those measures been identified?

DR. KISSINGER: Have the measures been identified? I don't want to go any further. This is going to be negotiated.

Q You speak of a new framework in the talks between the two nations. You also speak of accelerated talks, now that this agreement has been reached. Does this mean right away you will be pursuing this agreement in Vienna, or will you wait for the next phase in Helsinki in July?

DR. KISSINGER: It is more probable that the imple-mentation of this statement will wait for the next stage of the talks in Helsinki. I think it would be appropraite that Ambassador Smith, who will have to bear the brunt of this task, should perhaps make an observation or two, if only to straighten out my syntax. Ambassador Smith?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: I think on the last question, we probably will be winding up pretty shortly in Vienna, and I would think that we would get into the main body of this new phrase when we resume in Helsinki. I think we will be resum-ing fairly quickly.

I would like to throw in one further thought: The word "deadlock" has been used today, and that is quite correct. It must be. The President used it this morning. (Laughter)

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But it seems to me that one should distinguish be-
tween the deadlock he was talking about, which is at the gen-
eral level of what is going to be constrained under the agree-
ment, and the sort of situation that we have been wrestling with
the Soviets on for almost a year on a number of technical matters
that would have to be faced up to regardless of the scope of
the agreement.

On that latter point, I would say we have not had a
deadlock; we have had very useful conversations with them at
each stage of our discussions.

I don't want to give my Russian friends the impres-
sion that we have just been spinning our wheels. We have found
it a very useful exercise, and we feel we have been negotiating
with them fruitfully.

Q When are you going back to Vienna, Jerry?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: Well, I have been saying I am
going back tomorrow for the last four or five days, so I am
hesitant to answer, but I think I will go back tomorrow.

Q Can you or Henry tell us when this statement
was, in fact, agreed upon by the two governments; what day?

DR. KISSINGER: There was a general agreement reached
about 10 days ago, and the final details on Tuesday; that is, the
final details about release and so forth. But we didn't think
it was appropriate to raise this issue while the Senate vote
was still pending.

Q So it was agreed on before Jerry came back
from Vienna?

DR. KISSINGER: No.

Q After he came back?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, I don't know when, exactly,
he came back.

Q Was it before or after, Jerry?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: I don't see any use in trying to
trace down the specific minutes.

Q You may not, but I do.

DR. KISSINGER: But you won't get any help from us.

Q Why is it that the President says that this was
reached at the highest levels, and none of you will concede
what the highest levels are? That is ridiculous.

MR. KISSINGER: Because we are fighting among cur-
selves. (Laughter)

END

(AT 1:25 p.m. EDT)

[L]

This Copy For

AT THE WHITE HOUSE

2:12 P.M. EDT

MAY 20, 1971

THURSDAY

DR. KISSINGER: Let me make one trivial point, just in case it comes up. Somebody called my attention to the fact that Tass in Moscow published a slightly different version. The authentic version has been or is in the process of being released by the Soviet Embassy, and it will be word for word the same one, and it will also be published by Tass the same way.

So there must have been some sort of a translating screw-up. I mean, they must have used an independent translator. It is unimportant, but just in case it comes up this afternoon, you should know that the authentic version is the Soviet Embassy version, which either has or is in the process of being released, which is exactly the same as ours.

Q Henry, would you like to make some remarks, or shall we start asking you questions?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't know how many of you were at other briefings, so I will make some very brief remarks.

As you know, and as we have said in Presidential statements, the World Report and press conferences, and backgrounders out of here and elsewhere, we have said negotiations at Vienna and Helsinki have really gone along on two levels: One is that there have been technical discussions which have been at a very high level; that is to say, they have been more serious and more detailed than any other exchange of these matters that has taken place between the Soviet Union and the United States, or probably in history, between adversaries who have so many political differences.

However, these discussions which have been conducted by Ambassador Smith and the Russians have not led to a result because they have lacked a negotiating framework. There has been a deadlock not along the whole spectrum of negotiations, but on the specific issue as to what the subject of negotiations should be.

The Soviet Union has taken the position that there should be an initial agreement confined to ABMs. We have taken the position that the President expressed in his World Report and that he has repeated on a number of occasions at press conferences, that any agreement should include offensive as well as defensive weapons; that there should be a mix of limitation of both offensive and defensive weapons.

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Because that issue had not been resolved, the other issues which were really quite good could not be brought to a focus.

Q Can you give us some idea of what you call "clearing the underbrush"?

DR. KISSINGER: You know, they concern such technical issues as --

Q Detection?

DR. KISSINGER: Radar limitations and matters of this kind. We have maintained the confidentiality of these discussions very well up to now.

Let me conclude first what I think has been done, and if Ambassador Smith wants to, he can make a comment as to the nature of the other discussions that have taken place.

What this announcement really does is to establish the negotiating framework. It establishes the modality by which we can handle offensive and defensive limitations and, therefore, how to bring the previous work that has gone on, and that now, of course, will have to continue, to a negotiating focus.

Secondly, it represents something that we have referred to previously, again in the World Report, and you will find some backgrounders which referred to it, in which it was said that we think on the technical level the negotiations have gone well, but what is needed is a political decision to bring them to a conclusion.

You remember that, Marvin. In fact, you and I talked about it once. In fact, I remember you asking me what sort of political decision.

Well, it is this sort of political decision; that we are going to establish a negotiating framework and that we will do it with the attitude of bringing matters to as rapid a conclusion as is consistent with a serious approach to the subject.

Those are the two principal achievements, or significance of this.

One thing I feel very strongly about, and which the President feels very strong about, all of us feel very strongly about, is the natural temptation, as has been expressed in some questions put to us, to say: Who yielded in this negotiation? Did they move to your point of view or what did you give up to get this? Let me make two points:

One is, the initial decision to try to break the deadlock was taken by the President early in January, and he took certain initiatives at that point. But as the discussions that grew out of this Presidential initiative developed, there were, of course, significant Soviet contributions as well.

What I would like to get across, and a point on which we are all agreed, is this: In many respects these are the most important negotiations in which we can be engaged. They affect the very survival not only of the Soviet Union and the

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United States, but maybe of all of humanity. In such negotiations, one can't apply the traditional categories as to who won or who lost, because if we do a good job, we will all win, and if we do a bad job we will all lose.

The dumbest thing you can do is to try to score a negotiating point with your adversary, because even if you got away with it, it could never stick. No country is going to make its survival dependent upon some document which was drawn by some sharp lawyer to put it at a disadvantage.

So our whole attitude here is that this, peculiarly in the negotiations, is where both sides have the obligation to look at the other's point of view, and things are done for the mutual benefit, or they are not going to be done at all. So I don't think we should encourage speculation as to who moved to whose position.

We have tried to take into account some of the Soviet concerns. I think it is correct to say that they have taken into account some of our concerns, and we have worked out a modality by which Gerry and his associates believe that we can now make progress, given good will on both sides.

One other point perhaps to stress is this: When we get into negotiations, if they go the way we hope they will go, we will never have to refer to either this statement or to the discussions that led to this statement, because obviously there have been exchanges that are embodied here. If either side has to drag out a statement and say "Here is a sub-clause which obligates you to do the following," we are already in trouble.

The assumption is that this expresses our intent, our attitude, and the framework, and that we are now going to move it, given the backing of the highest levels on both sides, which we know exists. We are going to move it forward now to the conclusion that we hope both sides want, and if they want to obstruct it, as I said in the 12:45 briefing, if either side wants to obstruct it, they don't need a legal clause. There are so many technical issues by which to screw up the negotiations that they can be stalemated very easily, so this is the framework to keep in mind.

Gerry, do you want to say a word about the sort of things that were discussed?

Q Just a point of clarification. At the outset, you said negotiations had been going on in Vienna and Helsinki at two levels, and you started out saying the technical, but you did not say what the other was.

DR. KISSINGER: They were political discussions as to the negotiating framework. The negotiating framework has been stalemated. When we said we have broken the deadlock, it gives the impression that nothing has been achieved at Vienna and Helsinki, and that would not be right. A lot has been achieved, except the negotiating framework, and that has been broken.

Q Can you clear away the underbrush?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: What are the ground rules?

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MR. ZIEGLER: The same as before. "White House
officials."

AMBASSADOR SMITH: The sort of things we have been talking about with the Soviets is: Regardless of what weapons systems or how broad the agreement may be, what would be the total number of launchers that each side would have? Is the launcher a proper thing to try to control, or is it something else? Is it a missile itself? Should submarines be controlled; and if so, what kind, the diesel propelled submarines or nuclear subs? Should strategic bombers be included, and if so, does it include reconnaissance planes? Should surface missiles be included on surface ships?

In the ABM, you get into questions about how many
each side should have, what sort of controls on radar should
you have? Are early warning radars to be controlled, as well
as specifically ABM-associated radars? How do you go about
verifying this arrangement? Are there techniques that one
could think of to help what we call national means of veri-
fication, because we are talking about a deal that would not
have any on-site inspection?

We are confident that both sides have adequate
means of verification, so we don't have to have this old block-
age of on-site inspection getting in your way.

Well, that is a sampling. There are a hundred other
problems, but we have made, I think, good progress in getting
a good measure of common ground with the Soviets on this type
of problem, and it has not been easy.

DR. KISSINGER: That is why you should not think that the negotiations are only starting today. That is why we believe, with this framework, what Jerry has already done can be brought to a focus, and what remains to be done can be hopefully put into this framework.

Q Why has the political intent that you talked
about before, Henry, happened now, in your judgment, on our
side and the Soviets?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, I have to say in fairness that on our side it always existed. At first we sincerely thought that there was a common intention to go the comprehensive route of offensive and defensive limitations. The stalemate on the framework didn't really become apparent until the summer.

Then the President took an initiative early in
January hopefully to bring it to a conclusion by the time
Gerry went back to Vienna at the end of March.

Q Could you tell us what that was?

DR. KISSINGER: No. It was just some ideas on how to
break the deadlock. But I don't want to leave the impression
that the Soviets then just accepted; they made significant con-
tributions, too..

Q Didn't they present an ABM draft?

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DR. KISSINGER: Oh, yes; that was done. That was
what produced the deadlock, so this took a little longer to
work it out. Why the change came on the Soviet side, I think
perhaps the way to sum it up is this: We are now at a point
where the Soviet Union and the United States have had two
years of dealing with each other in this Administration. We
expressed our intent of negotiation, not confrontation. They
made a general statement of a similar kind.

Then, through faults that I don't now want to assign,
we got ourselves into a situation which began to verge more on
the confrontation than the negotiation side; that is, we began
the negotiations, but they seemed to be stymied by events in
the Middle East, by deadlocks, Cuba, and so forth.

So early this year, around the turn of this year,
certainly on our side it became clear that if progress were
to be made in a time frame in which the Administration could
still bring about the changes it wanted, it would have to be
in this year, because next year other events are going to
absorb increasing intention.

I suppose on the Soviet side the same realization
occurred. They could look at the situation last year, and
while you can debate who won or lost in these crises, in the
deeper sense they just deepened the stalemate and magnified the
risks of conflict.

So I suppose if you look at what the Soviet Union
has been doing this year, and if you look at the Brezhnev
speech at the 24th Party Congress, they seem to have come to
the conclusion that with troubles with China, with unrest in
Eastern Europe, maybe they, too, at least on the level of state
relations, ought to see what can be done to improve relations
or maybe they have just concluded nothing so drastic but that
on the level of political relationships in the strategic arms
race there can be no victors; that as soon as one side gets
more than marginally ahead, the other side will try to catch
up, and in the process of trying to catch up, will just spark
the race that will harm our security.

So whatever the reason, I think there has been a
serious effort on both sides to narrow the differences. If
that attitude continues, we can make major progress in SALT, and
maybe in other areas as well.

Q On that point, do you relate the timing to the
Party Congress?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, these discussions actually
bracket the Party Congress, but I think probably that the Party
Congress gave an impetus to it.

Q When did you get an agreement to put out this
statement, and by what channel?

DR. KISSINGER: We think it is not helpful to go into
a discussion as to what channels were used and who talked to
whom at what point, because it is hard to keep the confidential-
ity of these relationships if that is done.

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In general, we have had an agreement in principle on
this for some time, for well over a week, and then final details
in the past several days. We didn't think we should get that
involved in the Mansfield amendment.

Q Did you hold off, then, because of the Mansfield amendment?

DR. KISSINGER: No, quite frankly. Did we hold off?

Q Releasing this. It comes the day after. I
know you had to work it with Moscow.

DR. KISSINGER: Well, we had to work it with Moscow.
I suppose there was some flexibility in the date, but it would
have started it off in the worst possible way if we had thrown
it into the time frame of the Mansfield debate. But the basic
idea was conducted quite independently. The Mansfield thing
was an accident in that sense.

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Q Clear up a sequence that we instant analysts
may or may not be guilty of over-simplifying. One,
about the time the talks originally started there was
an indication that we were interested in discussing ABMs.
Then, there was a lapse in time and to everybody's
apparent surprise the Russians indicated that they were
interested in discussing ABMs. Then our position came
out more clearly that we wanted to discuss ABMs only in
the context of a package of defensive and offensive weapons
which brings us up to now, and this two-sentence thing
which to us -- and I am not sure this is a consensus --
but the way this reads with the ABM first and the offensive
second, that we have now got a sequence process.

DR. KISSINGER: No. First of all, let me get
the statement straight, because obviously the statement
reflects some discussions. Nobody could produce such a
turgid statement without a long discussion.

Q It took time to work that out.

DR. KISSINGER: You have to admit it takes more
than one attempt to produce that. There is no doubt that
discussions on offensive weapons would parallel discussions
on defensive weapons. That doesn't mean there couldn't be
some week or two where they are taking place, but in
general we are not talking about a two-stage process. Now
what the modalities and formalities are and so forth,
that is to be worked out in the negotiation.

But let's review the history briefly. When the
SALT idea was first originated years ago in the previous
Administration, when it first started we indeed proposed
limiting ABMs or to confine it to ABMs. That was in the
previous Administration. At that time the Russians
rejoined that it had to include offensive weapons.

Indeed, way back, I remember a Pugwash meeting
at which the American side raised the idea of defensive
limitations and the Soviet academician Millionshchikov,
who headed the Soviet delegation, said he heard a lot of
nutty ideas in his life but this was so insane he wondered
how any serious person could mention it. Because he said
defense is a national right and it could not be considered.

But, at any rate, they insisted that it should
include offensive limitations as well. This was about how
the matter stood when this Administration came into office.

We then developed a comprehensive package including
offensive and defensive limitations. In the process
of presenting this package to the Soviets, the Soviets
took the position not that there should not be a compre-
hensive agreement, but that the way to make progress is
to confine the initial agreement to defensive weapons.
And we took the position that the initial agreement should
include both offensive and defensive weapons. We
recognized that it could not include all offensive
weapons since that was too complex a subject.

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Then the Soviet Union proposed an ABM treaty was easier, always saying this would make the agreements easier. The debate that took place in this country was: Is one more likely to get offensive limitations by having an initial agreement confined to defensive weapons or is one more likely to get offensive limitations by having them both together?

What we have attempted to do is to break that deadlock by finding a modality which made it possible to have some offensive limitations together with defensive limitations. That is a sort of evolution of it.

Q What does concentrate mean here?

DR. KISSINGER: The word concentrate -- you have to read them together because to concentrate on the agreement on ABMs, but together with that agreement there will also be offensive limitations.

Q Henry, the language which interests most of us, I think, is that as you have outlined in your chronology and as most people understand, the Russians have been saying let's talk about defensive limitations first and then we will go on and talk about limitations of offensive arms. This statement seems to say to me that we are going to talk first and conclude an agreement to limit ABMs and also, parallel, as you say, certain measures will be agreed upon with respect to the limitation of offensive strategic weapons. I confess, it sounds terribly close, to me, to what the other side has been saying, ABM as dominant, leading as part of the package to offensive weapons.

DR. KISSINGER: John, on the other hand, if you wanted to play that game, we could say that they have up to now insisted that there should only be a defensive limitation and we could say this is a tremendous success because they have now agreed to limitations on offensive weapons concurrent with limitations on defensive weapons.

Perhaps the fuzziness of this language is due to the fact that both sides want to avoid that. If they had said there will be a joint agreement on offensive and defensive weapons, everybody would say, all right, they have yielded to the American side. If we said there will be first an agreement on defensive weapons and then an agreement on offensive weapons, it would be clear that their view had prevailed. So this is clear.

There is no doubt, I can only repeat, as someone who is familiar with the discussions that have preceded this, that the discussions on offensive weapons will precede conclusion of any agreement.

So, in other words, they will parallel the ABM negotiations.

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Q And you said there is no question about a
two-stage negotiation?

DR. KISSINGER: No, there is no question about the
fact that they will be substantially concurrent.

Q Does that mean that any agreement concluded
on defensive weapons would be contingent upon an
agreement on limitations of offensive weapons?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't want to prejudge how Jerry is
going to conduct the negotiations, but I would be amazed
if he conducted them by saying first let's do nothing but
defense and then let's do nothing but offense. I don't
know how he proposes to organize it, but it seems the
more reasonable thing is to have these two roughly in tandem
with each other so they will wind up the same way.

Isn't that a reasonable assumption?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: Yes. I don't anticipate any
difficulty in having these run concurrently. As Henry
said, maybe we will spend a week or two on one side of
the equation and a week or two on the other. But I don't
see that we will sit down for two or three months and
work out the ABM agreement and then put it on the shelf
and then sit down and see what we can do in the offensive
field, because there is an interrelationship and what
you do in the defensive field depends on what progress
you are making and what type of controls you are getting
in the offensive field. So they have to parallel.

DR. KISSINGER: I can assure you that no matter
how this is worded, there is no doubt in the record that this
is the understanding. If they don't want an agreement,
they are not going to go and pull out a document with
Jerry and say we interpret this statement this way and
therefore it will be only this. There are 100 ways they
can obstruct it and there are 100 ways we can obstruct it.

Q Suppose you had not come to this mutual
announcement and agreement at this time? Would the talks
have gone on?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, there was never any question
that we would maintain a relationship between defensive
and offensive weapons. We never had any doubt about that.
The President has always been clear about that.

But we were going to see what modifications might
be possible in our August 4 position to elicit Soviet
interest. So, this should speed up the process. It is not
a totally new departure. We believe that everything that
has gone before is relevant to what has now been decided.
It is not a new departure in our sense.

Q Granted that these things are not going to
be pursued or concluded on two separate levels, offensive
and defensive. Nevertheless, do you envision once all the
ducks are in a row on respective sides an agreement on
defensive weapons and a concurrent or subsequent or connected
agreement on offensive weapons or an overall agreement on
both?

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DR. KISSINGER: We don't envision a subsequent, that is out of the question. That is clearly understood. There is no doubt whatever that it will be concurrent and that is not a debate that I believe the Soviets will raise.

Q The discussion as opposed to the agreement?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't believe that Jerry will have to waste any time on the issue of whether the agreement will be subsequent or concurrent.

Now whether it will be one document or two separate documents, that is something that we ought to leave open for a number of reasons. One is that there is a difference between ABM and offensive weapons in this sense: Whatever is decided on ABM can really encompass the totality of the ABM problem. We wouldn't just say, "let's take Spartan launchers"-- at least I don't anticipate that we will take just one weapon system.

Similarly, though, it is clear that whatever is decided on offensive weapons will deal with only a part of the offensive weapons.

I am really now just speculating, but it is conceivable that the offensive agreement will have a different character from the defensive agreement precisely because it is just a step towards a more comprehensive one.

But I don't want to speculate on how this will be worked out in practice, except to point out that there is this essential difference between the offensive discussions and the defensive ones. I would suspect that the ABM discussions will pretty much conclude the ABM issue.

Don't you think?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: Yes. I think what Henry just said is the key to understanding this whole thing and for my money it is the key to understanding some of this turgid prose, because whatever we do in the offensive field, it is going to leave substantial work still to be done. We will have subsequent negotiations.

My hunch is that if we make a deal on the ABM side, as Henry says, that ought to pretty much button up the matter, because it is a more finite problem and a more understandable problem.

For instance, there are 64 ABM missiles in the Soviet Union deployed and none in the United States as yet. And this is a problem that is more manageable than figuring out how are you going to equate X-thousand ICBMs and bombers on some of which argument would be made that they are mediums and others would say they are heavies, to say nothing about forward-based systems in Europe and the Far East.

So I don't think one should expect that the same sort of treatment is going to be given to both sides of the equation. Maybe it can. I don't rule it out as a possibility.

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Q What does the development as surfaced today do to the Administration's position on pushing or not pushing legislation on expanding the ABM?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't want to speculate on Congressional reaction. I can only tell you what our position is.

Q That is what I wanted to ask.

DR. KISSINGER: Our position throughout has been that the best way to limit the deployment of ABMs or any other weapon is to have a SALT agreement. We believe that the best way to get a SALT agreement is to continue what we are doing. Now we heard the argument two years ago that to have an ABM would ruin SALT.

I think it is safe to say today that it has perhaps accelerated it because it has been the issue in which the Soviets have been most interested. We were told last year that if we put it in escrow or continued it would hurt us and it has turned out not to be true. So we believe that it should continue.

Now, we are approaching the new phase with the attitude that we are not talking now of another 18 months process. We should know in a few months whether this approach today was just a flash in the pan, a temporary thing, or whether it reflects a significant intention to come to an agreement.

In those few months there wouldn't be enough ABM deployment to affect the matter very greatly.

On the other hand, if the Soviet Union should get the idea that merely by expressing an intention to establish a negotiating framework they can get us to stop, it might prolong the negotiation. So we believe that we should continue the programs and at the same time we should, of course, make the greatest effort possible to come to an agreement.

You can be certain that when an agreement is reached there will be no ABM deployment inconsistent with that agreement and nothing will be built in this interval that could significantly make it more difficult if the interval is of the time mentioned that we are thinking about.

If this is a significant breakthrough, then we do not believe we are in one of these endless processes. We believe then that we are talking of a much shorter time period.

Q Then if I read you right, you believe it possible sometime this year to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union that would embrace ABM and to a limited extent some offensive weapon systems?

DR. KISSINGER: That is correct. That is possible. Now you remember, we don't want to build a fire under Gerry: and we don't want to put him in a position where the Soviets believe that he has to come to an agreement, because our whole approach to these negotiations has been, to be precise, to do what is in our best analytical judgment

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best for the security of both sides and Gerry will continue
with that approach. But we think it is possible to have
an agreement which will be good for both.

Q When will the first American ABM be launched?

MR. SCALI: We have some background material
which has all of that including the status and how far
along.

Q If you are thinking in terms of the next
seven months, we will not have a deployed ABM.

AMBASSADOR SMITH: No, nowhere near it.

DR. KISSINGER: You should not think, necessarily,
that an agreement will eliminate all ABMs. We are talking
about limitations on the deployment.

Q Should we assume we are much closer to an
agreement such as on forward-based aircraft such as the
Russians have targeted in Europe?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't think I want to go into that.
I would think that if one is approaching it with the
attitude that Gerry has described that any offensive
limitation will be, by definition, not complete, but perhaps
the best way to make progress is to bracket out the most
contentious items and concentrate on those where the
definition is clear.

Q In that connection, Henry, is it possible
that we might find ourselves discussing forward-based
aircraft in terms of a European security conference or
other discussions with the Russians on troop levels?

DR. KISSINGER: If there are negotiations of the
mutual reduction of forces, and this is a term of art
which we don't want to spend too much time on, but it is
now the general belief that mutual reduction of forces
should not be discussed at a European security conference
but at a separate negotiation, partly because there is a
NATO agreement that there can't be a European security
conference unless there is a Berlin agreement, and we don't
want to apply the same conditionality to mutual reduction
of forces. But that is a tricky point that only the
experts are concerned with. If there is a negotiation
on mutual reduction of forces, then it is clear that what the
Soviets call forward-based systems will be part of that
negotiation.

Q So would you bracket that out as contentious?

DR. KISSINGER: If those two negotiations were
going on concurrently, then it would be easy; it might
not be easy, but at any rate there would be a negotiation
on that subject and it might make it easier to bracket
it out.

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- 13 -

Now let me say a word about the mutual reduction of forces, though you haven't asked me about it, simply because there has been so much speculation about it on television and in the press.

The first thing to say is that is not an idea that we picked up as a result of recent developments. We have been working on mutual reduction of forces for a year within the Government and, really, we have tried to do some very thoughtful studies on the subject.

You will find a four or five page discussion of it in the State of the World report this year and some reference to it last year. We have, within the Government, reached a point of sufficient consensus of approaches to it that we were ready to put it to the NATO Council at about this time regardless of what happened domestically in this country.

Therefore, we are proceeding on the course we were going to take anyway of putting it before the NATO Council within the next few weeks to get an allied position.

Now the Brezhnev speech and the Kosygin reference, of course, make it clear that the Soviet Union is also interested in the subject. So what we now have to do is to find a way of negotiating this. Because on the one hand we cannot negotiate it bilaterally, but on the other hand if every ally of every country is in the conference room it is going to be the damnedest brawl you have ever seen. This is something we are in the process of trying to figure out how to do.

Secondly, we would like to approach that negotiation much as we approached the SALT negotiation. We have done a lot of analytical work to create building blocks upon which positions could be put together. Again we have tried to look at it from the point of view that in our best judgment is mutually beneficial. We have not tried to gain unilateral advantages as a result of the various approaches we have developed.

So whoever is going to do the negotiating or however it is going to be developed, we would probably like to approximate it to the SALT pattern in exploring the analytical framework first and then developing positions out of that and seeing how they fit together.

We have pretty well completed our internal analysis of the subject and are ready within the next weeks to take it up at the NATO council.

Q Is anything going on at all about an agreement to stop all underground testing?

DR. KISSINGER: Jerry?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: Not in the SALT talks. In the other arms control forum we have in Geneva there is a good deal of pressure for banning underground tests with the Swedes, the Mexicans, and I would expect in the coming months there is going to be more pressure. Some people think that the capability to detect underground explosions and identify if they are nuclear or not, that one can make a treaty without on-site inspection. I am not as

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clear as some people on that, but it is going to, I think, be
a subject of a good deal of discussion.

Q You have not dealt with it in the SALT talks?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: No. But in my hat as Director
of ACDA, I have been dealing with this problem for years.

Q Does this apply in any way to limitation of
the deployments of SS9, the continued deployment of the
SS9?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't want to speculate on what the
outcome of the negotiation would be.

Q In the interim period?

DR. KISSINGER: In the interim period I would suspect
that the Soviet Union will follow the principle they have
followed thus far not to stop their deployment.

On the other hand, we would also anticipate that
it would be one weapon system we are, of course, most
interested in.

AMBASSADOR SMITH: Going back to the possibility
of American unilateral suspension of Safeguard, it seems
to me from talking with the Soviets now for two years
that they would be almost incredulous if that sort of a
plum fell into their lap. Their position is "We understand
that you are going to go ahead with your programs. We have
gone ahead with ours." But what they don't like is
the rhetorical flourish that we put on it
sometimes that is a bargaining chip to put real pressure
on the Soviet Union. They have told me time and again,
"You cannot talk to a great nation like the Soviet Union
in terms of bringing pressure to get us to change
our position." That is what gripes them, not the
fact that we are going ahead with our weapons programs and
I think they just wouldn't believe it if we said at
this point the thing to do is discontinue the program.

Q Is there anything coming out in the Moscow
press or radio today about this statement?

DR. KISSINGER: They have published a statement
which has some slight divergence from this one but that
is going to be straightened out.

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Q Any claims about a concession?

DR. KISSINGER: No. They have just published a statement.

Q You said earlier this year it became clear that if progress were to be made, it had to be made this year, because next year other things would be happening. Are you talking about SALT?

DR. KISSINGER: No, I am talking about the whole context of Soviet-American relations. If you try to make significant progress in an election year, they have to figure whether they are helping one candidate or another; whether that is the candidate that they are going to be dealing with; whether whoever is making the agreement can carry it out.

So if we are going to put this thing on a new track, this is the year that some initiatives had to be made.

Q You also mentioned troubles with China and Western Europe. Is the Chinese factor an important one?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't want to speculate. I will say we are not doing anything as petty as try to pit China against the Soviet Union. That would be a disaster. The worst way to make progress with the Soviet Union is to threaten them with Communist China.

If you asked me why, in a general way, they might be more interested in agreeing with us maybe not because of what we do with China, but because of the fact that they have this sitting on their border, but not because of our policy toward China. Our policy toward China is not designed to pressure the Soviet Union.

Q I am not talking about intention.

DR. KISSINGER: But I think the existence of China is the problem with the Soviet Union, not what we do with it. In our view, it is very hard to conceive of a peaceful world in Asia in which 800 million Chinese are treated as nonexistent. That is the problem and that is what we are trying to do. We are just inching our way toward a relationship that is not even civil yet.

END

(At 3:02 p.m. EDT)

89

WITH U.S.-SOVIET AGREEMENT

MOSCOW (AP)-HERE IS THE MOSCOW RADIO STATEMENT ON THE AGREEMENT ANNOUNCED TODAY BY UNITED STATES AND THE SOVIET UNION ON NEGOTIATIONS TO LIMIT STRATEGIC ARMAMENTS:

"THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE SOVIET UNION AND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, HAVING ENDORSED THE PROCEDURE AT THE SOVIET-AMERICAN NEGOTIATIONS ON LIMITING STRATEGIC ARMAMENTS, HAVE AGREED TO CONCENTRATE THEIR EFFORTS IN THIS CURRENT YEAR ON PREPARING AN AGREEMENT ON LIMITING THE DEVELOPMENT OF SYSTEMS OF ANTIMISSILE DEFENSE.

"THE AGREEMENT ALSO PROVIDED THAT AT THE CONCLUSION OF AN ACCORD ON ANTIMISSILE SYSTEMS SOME MEASURES WOULD BE AGREED ON IN THE FIELD OF LIMITING OFFENSIVE STRATEGIC ARMS.

"THE TWO SIDES PROCEED FROM THE UNDERSTANDING THAT ALL THIS WILL CREATE MORE FAVORABLE CONDITIONS FOR SUBSEQUENT TALKS ON LIMITING STRATEGIC ARMAMENTS AS A WHOLE WHICH WILL ACTIVELY CONTINUE."

THE TRANSLATION IS UNOFFICIAL.

TASS LATER PUBLISHED THIS TRANSLATION:

"THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE USSR AND THE USA, HAVING EXAMINED HOW THE SOVIET-AMERICAN STRATEGIC ARMS LIMITATIONS TALKS PROCEED, AGREED ON CONCENTRATING EFFORTS THIS YEAR ON PREPARING A TREATY TO RESTRICT THE LAUNCHING OF THE ANTIMISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEMS.

"AN AGREEMENT HAS ALSO BEEN REACHED THAT WHEN CONCLUDING THE AMD TREATY CERTAIN MEASURES WILL BE AGREED UPON IN THE SPHERE OF LIMITING STRATEGIC OFFENSIVE ARMAMENTS. IN THIS THE PARTIES PROCEED FROM AN UNDERSTANDING THAT ALL THIS WILL CREATE MORE FAVORABLE CONDITIONS FOR SUBSEQUENT STRATEGIC ARMS LIMITATION TALKS AS A WHOLE, WHICH WILL BE VIGOROUSLY PURSUED."

PD233PED 5/20

PRESS RELEASE

NEWS AND VIEWS FROM THE USSR

SOVIET EMBASSY, INFORMATION DEPARTMENT

1706 18TH STREET, N.W., WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009

TELEPHONE ADams 2-3426

Moscow, May 20, 1971

SOVIET-AMERICAN TALKS ON STRATEGIC ARMS LIMITATIONS

The Governments of the Soviet Union and the United States, after reviewing the course of their talks on the limitation of strategic armaments, have agreed to concentrate this year on working out an agreement for the limitation of deployment of antiballistic missile systems (ABMs). They have also agreed that, together with concluding an agreement to limit ABMs, they will agree on certain measures with respect to the limitation of offensive strategic weapons.

The two sides are taking this course in the conviction that it will create more favorable conditions for further negotiations to limit all strategic arms. These negotiations will be actively pursued.

This Copy For

HAK

IN THE ROOSEVELT ROOM

AT THE WHITE HOUSE

4:02 P.M. EDT

MAY 20, 1971

THURSDAY

DR. KISSINGER: Let me straighten out one point first.

There was a Tass announcement in Moscow which had a
slightly divergent text from ours, but the Soviet Embassy has
put out the authentic version, and Tass in Moscow has now put
out the authentic version.

Q Do you mean verbatim the same?

DR. KISSINGER: Verbatim the same.

Q How did that happen, do you think, Henry? Was
it just a mistake?

DR. KISSINGER: I think so. I think what happened
was that they translated the English text back into Russian and
then the Russian version of the English text back into English.
You know, it has to be some sort of translation problem.

Q Tass is saying something quite different here
on the first statement.

DR. KISSINGER: I don't think we have any problems
here.

Q The Embassy statement mentions the Soviet
Government first.

Q Big deal.

Q Actually, there wasn't too much difference be-
tween the Tass version as opposed to the Radio Moscow version
and the English text, because they say "upon concluding."

DR. KISSINGER: Well, at any rate, there is no sense
debating the difference between an unauthentic text and an
authentic text since they have now put out the authentic one.

Q Which was printed in Izvestia?

DR. KISSINGER: The Russian version. I will get off
this subject now, but if anyone wants to play games, if anyone
wants to obstruct an agreement, there are a thousand ways to
prevent it without playing games with texts. It would be so
stupid to start playing games with texts that involve this
level of government.

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Q Which level?

DR. KISSINGER: To involve the highest level of the government.

Q Can you clarify the "highest level" business?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't want to go beyond what has already been said earlier, and that is that the President took an initiative in order to break the deadlock which was developing in these negotiations; that out of this grew a series of exchanges which clarified and modified both points.

I think most of you were at the backgrounder at noon and now can read it. In such an exchange, it would be wrong to tote it up as a score as to who won and who lost and who accepted whose point of view, because with such a procedure, for such an agreement to be meaningful, it has to be one that reflects both points of view and is one that both sides see as in their interest and as protecting their security.

Q Henry, why can't you say that he had an exchange with Kosygin or with Brezhnev or Podgorny, or with whom?

DR. KISSINGER: Because we want to maintain the confidentiality of the relationship, and because we don't see any particular purpose to be served in saying who did what, and where, as long as the basic process is understood.

Q You said "the highest level," and that would indicate Kosygin. You said "government".

Q Did Gerry Smith bring back this agreement with him, or was it conducted government to government, this general agreement you mentioned earlier?

DR. KISSINGER: This is a process that had many levels, and there were many different channels for several different aspects. Of course, without the negotiations in Vienna and without the work that had been done by Gerry Smith, we could not have reached this point, but obviously there were also other channels used, so it is a conglomerate of various aspects.

Let me clarify one point which Gerry had already mentioned at the end of the briefing at noon: When we speak about deadlock in Vienna, we ought to be clear about what we mean by "deadlock."

We have always taken the position that there were two levels, two aspects to these negotiations. One was the technical aspect: What is an offensive missile? How do you define and count it? What is a defensive missile and what is the radar limitation, and how do you define a radar that is relative to ballistic missile defense, and that sort of question.

On that level, throughout, the exchanges have been serious, at a high intellectual level, and considerable progress has been made in establishing the analytical base of any agreement and the divisions have been narrowed.

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The other level was that of defining what the agree-
ment should be about; that is to say, the relationship between
defensive and offensive limitations. On that level, there had
indeed been a deadlock.

Now, the President pointed out in his State of the
World Report that what was needed was a political decision to
make progress and a political decision to break the deadlock;
what the negotiation was to be about, and, indeed, where the
negotiation was supposed to go.

It was in that direction that he undertook his initia-
tive early in January. I seem to recall that one or two of
you encouraged us in that direction without necessarily knowing
what we were doing.

Now, it is also in that context that this statement
has to be looked at. First, it represents a way of breaking
the particular deadlock that had developed about the subject
matter of the agreement. Secondly, it also represents a
political impetus by the top levels of the government to
negotiate, because obviously if one wanted no agreement on
either side, there are better ways of getting no agreement than
to make such a statement and then, like petty lawyers, find a
clause that enabled you to prevent an agreement, which you can
prevent in 500 ways.

So that is the dual significance that has to be under-
stood here. Now, having said this, there are a lot of highly
complex, technical issues, and our points of view in several
respects are likely to be very far apart.

We have believed all along that any negotiation such
as this, to be successful and to last, and to bring about the
permanent benefits we want, must be seen by both parties as
truly enhancing their security. If they constantly feel that
they have made a disadvantageous arrangement, then the resulting
sense of malaise will magnify all the problems.

So we are going to go at these negotiations with
great care and precision, and we are sure they will, also. But
we are also going at these negotiations with the attitude that
this is not a negotiation that either side wins or loses. This,
more than any other negotiation, is one that both sides win, or
both sides lose.

It is foolish to attempt to get an advantage in such
a negotiation, because an agreement could not possibly stick.
It is self-defeating to try to outsmart the other side, because
even if you do it in a week or two of negotiations they will
find it out soon enough, and that, again, goes for both sides.
That is the spirit with which we will approach this negotia-
tion.

Q What are these points on which you are far apart?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, I don't want to go into the
details of the negotiation. I am always afraid I am making
Gerry's already difficult life even more complex.

Gerry, do you want to respond to that?

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AMBASSADOR SMITH: Well, I think that we still have the problem that, until you can understand the extent of the offensive control that you can get -- and now we have evidence that, contrary to their previous position, some offensive control seems to be reachable -- until you can understand the dimensions of that control, it is very difficult to decide on what level of ABMs makes sense.

I would say that is one area in which we have to cut away a good deal more underbrush before we know that we are on the right track. That is the relationship of it.

Now, in the offensive field, we still have got to understand a lot better what restraints the Soviets are interested in working out with us. There is an inherent asymmetry in that they are building launchers, building silos, and we are not. Most of our construction is on the defensive side. Most of their construction is on the offensive side. How do you put these two things together?

Now, in a first agreement there probably is not going to be any control of MIRVs, so that the sort of program we are engaged in, Minuteman-3 and Poseidon, presumably will not be the subject of constraint in the first agreement; whereas, the launcher program that the Soviets are engaged in could be the subject of constraint, presumably in the first agreement.

That is the sort of asymmetry that makes up for this gap that remains between us, and there are several more.

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- 5 -

DR. KISSINGER: But the gaps on many of the technical issues have been narrower than the gap on the conceptual issue of what it is that one wants to get at, and we have made some progress.

Q How can you get an agreement on silos exclusive of an agreement on MIRVs?

DR. KISSINGER: That has been the existing framework of the negotiations.

Q But the silo may hold multiple warheads.

AMBASSADOR SMITH: Let me take a try at that, Henry.

I think the difference is, if you are making a first approach you are making quantitative approach, not qualitative, you can see when a new silo is going up. This is relatively easily verifiable. You can make an agreement that will not interfere with modernization and will limit silo construction, but will not limit MIRV introduction into missiles.

The whole question of how you would verify a MIRV agreement is more difficult than how you would limit silos.

Q Would you regard as one of the remaining gaps to the question of whether an ABM limitation would apply to capital authorities or to missile sites or is that agreed?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: That is what I was trying to add in my first answer. Until you get a better feel for what the offensive controls are going to be, it is very difficult to plump down for either national capital or defense of Minuteman or a complete ban.

Q So there is no understanding covering that?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: There is none at the present time.

Q Jerry, do I correctly gather that therefore these two areas of agreement, defensive and offensive have to be related to each other, they are conditional on each other in part?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: That is correct.

Q So one does not come ahead of the other although through negotiations one might be negotiated, not necessarily simultaneously?

DR. KISSINGER: There is a clear understanding, first of all, that they will be concluded simultaneously. But in order to conclude them simultaneously there has to be a similar simultaneity of discussion. We don't want to say if they decide to talk about ABMs for two weeks, say that there must be on alternate days discussion of offensive weapons, but it is clear that the agreements will be reached simultaneously and that the discussions will be substantially concurrent.

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- 6 -

Q Is that, though, as far as an agreement that
the two parts, offensive and defensive, would wind up
in one document since we have always been talking
about a treaty for submission to the Senate?

DR. KISSINGER: There is this difference to
begin with: An ABM agreement, whatever its nature,
substantially exhausts the ABM field. That is, it can
cover those aspects, all the aspects that are relevant
to ABM.

An offensive limitation, in the present negotiating
context, even of our August 4 proposal, will not exhaust
the whole subject of offensive weapons. So that in its
nature a limitation of offensive weapons will have a
different character from a limitation of defensive weapons.
It will be a less definitive discussion of the subject.

Now whether that suggests that there should be
two different documents or whether it means that
they should be included in the same document, what the degree
of formality of a more or less final arrangement as
against a more or less interim arrangement should be,
this is a matter that will be negotiated by Gerry.

But those are some of the considerations
that bear on it.

Q But your intent, if your assumption still is,
as I assume, to present eventually the Senate with something
to ratify, is that whether it is technically one or two
documents, the Senate would be asked hopefully to ratify
something that covers both offensive and defensive
systems, to whatever degree, as you mentioned. In other
words, you would not go up there with an ABM-only treaty first,
or would you?

DR. KISSINGER: We have, frankly, not reached the
point of what the document will look like. We would cer-
tainly not go up with an ABM agreement without having an
offensive agreement of a significant kind.

I want to leave open the degree of formality only
because this is something that Gerry will have to work out.

Gerry, do you want to say something about that?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: Well, I don't think one should
just assume that a treaty is the only way to handle an arms
control agreement of this sort. There are other ways to
do it.

I think my statute, for instance, refers to a
"treaty or other agreement which is submitted for Congres-
sional approval." One's mind jumps to "treaty" in that
sort of a circumstance.

It may very well be that that is the desired out-
come. One might even say that that would have the inside
track, presumably, but I don't think one should rule out
right now the possibility of some other form of solemn
agreement besides a treaty.

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Q This statement arrests the treaty and points it to an executive agreement, or something like that.

AMBASSADOR SMITH: I don't think that is the intention. I think the intention is to be neutral on this subject until we get further down the road.

Q I can understand how a political reaffirmation of reaching an agreement will be helpful at the talks, but wouldn't the same people be talking about ABMs and missiles at the same time? Therefore, what is the difference whether you have one on one day or take up one on another, since that is what you have been doing all along?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: I don't think there is any difference in talking about one on one day and one the next. I think it is a very strong kick in the tail from the top of the government indicating that a political nettle has been grasped here that perhaps was not grasped as sharply as it has been after this announcement.

DR. KISSINGER: Up to recent months, I think it has been correct to say that the Soviet preference for an ABM-only agreement had expressed itself in practice in considerable unwillingness to discuss in any detail offensive limitation, and also our reluctance to agree to a defensive limitation only has given a somewhat hypothetical character to the defensive limitations.

Now that the political direction has been set and the basic framework established, the negotiators on both sides can give a much clearer focus to their discussion pointing to a specific resolution.

Q It reads to me as if we were talking about a defensive agreement here and an offensive agreement brought in by the tail. You have about 15 words on offensive. It seems there is a coloration to a basic agreement to get at ABMs. Obviously you would not agree with that, but the way it is phrased, you have a very short phrase on offensive and a long one on defensive.

DR. KISSINGER: That is one thing we didn't do, count the words. The impression we have is that there are two sentences; one dealing with defensive limitations and the other dealing with offensive limitations.

If you consider, in addition, that both sides have the problem of coming up with a statement that is of a nature where it cannot be necessarily claimed that one adopted the point of view of the other, I think there can be no doubt, if one looks at the context of the discussions that led to this agreement, that they will be concluded concurrently.

If you assume that the negotiators on both sides know the interests of their countries, and will not agree to limitations that are not acceptable, they are given substantial equivalence in the outcome. What the formality is in which this is expressed, that has been left open for a variety of reasons, including some of those I have given.

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Q Do you have a comment on the strategic reasons which may have been behind the Russian agreement to this?

DR. KISSINGER: Let me make a point in connection with the previous question.

No one can exclude that when these talks re-assemble in July, and Gerry and Semyonev get down to --

AMBASSADOR SMITH: That had not been agreed to yet.

DR. KISSINGER: I thought it was.

AMBASSADOR SMITH: Only with the caveat.

DR. KISSINGER: Well, when these talks reassemble, whenever this will be, no one can exclude that in the second week Semyonev wouldn't pull out some record of this discussion and give it a clever lawyer's interpretation and say, "This precludes or this forces us to do certain things on which the record is perfectly clear that we have said what we want."

If he does that, the degree of confidence one can have in the sort of discussions that produced this will be shaken, if not destroyed, and if he does that, it is hard to see why we went through this whole exercise, because they could have done that by just not agreeing.

So one can't exclude it, but this would then tell us something about a significant political decision, and not about poor drafting.

Conversely, Gerry wouldn't force them into an agreement by producing a document which reflects the clarity with which we usually express ourselves here, but, rather, they will agree when it is in their interest and when they have made the decision to go ahead.

This is how we look at this exchange. We can't guarantee against bad faith. We would think it is an odd way to proceed, if this is their intention, but they can have no doubt about our view, and there is no question on the record of what this implies.

Let me answer Mr. Wilson's question, which is, as I understand it: What strategic pressures on them produced this sort of decision?

Well, I don't want to speculate on their motivation, but it is conceivable that they have concluded that the strategic arms race can have no conclusive outcome; that it is possible to achieve marginal advantages, but as soon as these advantages threaten to become significant, the other side will undertake compensating steps, and that puts them in a spiral.

Therefore, it is not only extremely costly, but by definition it is inconclusive. Therefore, they might have decided that while they would like to bring it to an end on terms most advantageous to them, they are ready to bring it to a conclusion.

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That does not exclude extremely tough bargain-
ing. I know there is a theory that they are doing this
to lull us while they are pushing their build-up. On
this, one can only say they certainly cannot do this with-
out its being visible.

We think that if this statement today is to lead
to anything, the results should be obvious within a few
months, at the latest, of the beginning of the process of
negotiating. In that interval, they certainly cannot
build enough to make any difference at all.

Then the adequacy of our agreement, whatever it
is, should protect us against an upset of a strategic kind.
If they are trying to lull us, then they have to do something
visible and we have to have enough confidence in our judgment
of the strategic situation.

If we see they are continuing to engage in an
all-out strategic arms race, and if they protract these
negotiations as if nothing had happened, so it is only to
become a short, tactical interlude, if we then permit them
to get ahead of us, it is our fault. So the safeguards
really have to be our awareness of the situation.

Q In order to get them to add offensive mis-
siles at the talks, did you have to discuss forward based
systems?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: Henry, I would prefer not to
get into the anatomy of this process.

Q You mentioned it this morning, Gerry, at the
briefing, forward based systems.

AMBASSADOR SMITH: I mentioned it in this context:
that contrary to the ABM, where there is just one system,
in the offensive field there are a number of them going
from strategic bombers to ICBMs and submarine-launched
missiles to forward based systems.

We have run into a constipation on this forward
based system. I would foresee the next phase of the
negotiations as an attempt to in some way get around the
forward based system block. That is why I would think
that the limitations that we would negotiate on offensive
systems will not be fully comprehensive.

Q You mean after?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: No. I mean as we get into this.

DR. KISSINGER: I think it is safe to say that in
order to get to this point, no system that was not pre-
viously the subject of negotiations has been added to it.

Q Could I ask either of you whether Brezhnev's
public interest in the Central European arms and troops
issue, including nuclear; helps provide a way out, has up
to this point provided a way out of this FBS roadblock; or
if it hasn't figured in at this point, could it?

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DR. KISSINGER: I think as the negotiations develop, obviously, what is defined as FBS will be part of another context.

Q Say that again?

DR. KISSINGER: What the Soviets call forward based systems in the SALT context would be part of the Central European context. It would not be called forward based systems.

AMBASSADOR SMITH: It is not completely that way, Henry, because the Soviets are not only interested in forward based systems in Europe, but in Asia.

Q Whatever it is that we have left out of SALT, don't you include it in what we have left out of MBFR?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: The Soviet interest in forward based systems is not in so-called tactical nuclear weapons. They are thinking of weapons that have delivery systems that are capable of putting nuclear weapons on Soviet targets.

Most of the tactical nuclear weapons you hear about in Europe do not have delivery systems of this type.

DR. KISSINGER: The question was: Did we add FBS to get this agreement? The answer is no.

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[LQ]

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Q. My first question is, in what you got today, did the MBFR thing play any role? And your answer is no?

DR. KISSINGER: In the discussions leading up to this, the MBFR was not a factor. On the other hand, with the important qualification that Gerry made, that they are concerned with forward based systems that can reach Soviet territory wherever that forward based system can be located, the MBFR negotiations will include probably the bulk of the land based FBS systems with which they are concerned.

Now, I do want to make some points about MBFR, because that has been the subject of rather intense discussion. First, we have dealt with MBFR in this Government for well over a year before it was ever the subject of public speculation, we had undertaken intensive and painstaking studies of MBFR.

You will find several pages of discussion of it in the last State of the World Report. I believe there was a reference to it even in the previous State of the World Report. But whether there was or not, it has been studied at considerable length and with the same attitude that characterized our preparations for SALT; that is, to say, to try to create building blocks out of which various approaches could be developed.

Prior to the discussion of the Mansfield Resolution, indeed around the middle of April, we had decided that our internal deliberations had reached a point where they could be presented to the NATO Council in order to develop a common position.

This will go forward within the next few weeks. Then we will be prepared to enter negotiations with the Soviet Union and its allies and we hope to approach them with the same general attitude that has characterized our SALT discussions; that on issues of security of such consequence, the negotiations have to be precise, thoughtful, with both sides making an effort to look at the real concerns of both sides.

As it happens, in MBFR you have intellectually a more complex issue, even, then the SALT because the weapons are so incommensurable on both sides.

We should not stampede ourselves into negotiations and give the impression that all that remains to be done is give a percentage withdrawal. is to be taken. We are ready to undertake it and we expect that during this year it will develop.

Q. Would it be proper for us to assume that the question is still open on whether air-carried forward based systems are to be included in the MBFR discussions, left to those discussions?

DR. KISSINGER: In the MBFR discussion, land-based forced on both sides would certainly have to be included.

Q. But Gerry says ---

DR. KISSINGER: What Gerry said was when the Soviets talked about forward-based systems in Vienna they find as FBS not only weapons based in Europe, but weapons based anywhere, including at sea, that contain weapons capable of reaching the Soviet Union.

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Q. But could the FBS question be given to the MBFR discussions?

DR. KISSINGER: The MBFR discussions, by definition, can concern themselves only with those weapons systems that are in Europe. We are talking about mutual balanced force reductions in Europe. So, it is not a policy decision by which you exclude something. Any weapon system based in Europe will be part of the discussion. Any system based in Japan will not be part of the MBFR discussions.

Q But planes of the Sixth Fleet are based in Europe and so are land-based in Europe.

DR. KISSINGER: I don't want to get into a MBFR discussion. Central Europe would probably not include the Mediterranean, or maybe it would. All I am saying is, we have troubles enough defining the SALT agenda by the time we enter negotiations with the Soviet Union. What we probably will do is to do something -- just speculating -- similar to SALT. We will show various ways in which this can be handled with various degrees of comprehensiveness.

Q What can we say about the FBS question regarding the SALT discussions and in terms of this statement today?

DR. KISSINGER: Gerry, I don't know how much of this FBS discussion has become public.

AMBASSADOR SMITH: Chal has told us a lot about it.

To show you what a fine advanced state our preparations for MBFR are at, Henry has already asked me if, in addition to SALT, I can handle that negotiation.

So, we have the personnel problems solved there.

DR. KISSINGER: Now you have the maximum answer you are going to get on FBS. (Laughter)

Q Would you tackle one political question that relates to both of these things? Despite the long background of discussion and study behind both of these, they came at a very fortuitous time for you.

DR. KISSINGER: Which?

Q Both the movement toward MBFR and the announcement today. Why did the Soviets chose to do that? They helped the Administration, I think.

DR. KISSINGER: We are in the habit of claiming excessive credit in my office, but we would not claim that we had anything directly to do with Brezhnev's speech. In fact, we would even not claim that we had anything indirectly to do with that speech. (Laughter)

As far as this announcement is concerned, the timing is entirely gratuitous. This subject has been worked on for four or five months. It is coming to a point now at a time when neither side could possibly predict that the Mansfield Resolution would be on the table and it would have been wrong to hold it up.

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The timing of the announcement and the general
outline was set before. What we did not do was use it in
the debate on the Mansfield Resolution because we thought that
this was an issue that affected so much and should not become
itself a part of the immediate Senatorial discussion, however
important that discussion was.

As far as the Brezhnev speech is concerned, I don't
believe that they did it to help this Administration. I think
they did it for their own reasons, as an evolution of a policy
they have adopted to serve their own purposes. It would be
wrong to believe that those purposes are benevolent towards
us.

What we must see is whether in carrying out a
policy which may, indeed, from their point of view, have a
long-term hostile intent, we, pursuing our own policy, can
serve purposes which we believe are in the overall interest
of this country.

But I think it would be totally wrong to think
that they did this in any way to help us. On the contrary,
I think you can say that despite the fact that it might or
might not have a temporary beneficial effect, they went ahead
and did it.

Q When was the decision made, exactly?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't want to give the exact date.
The agreement in principle as to timing was about ten days
ago and the final decision was a few days ago.

Q Did it come up in the Beam-Gromyko conversation
of May 7th?

DR. KISSINGER: I just don't want to discuss what
was discussed where and by whom.

Q What significance do you see to the silo
construction work now going on in the Soviet Union?

DR. KISSINGER: I find it hard to speculate on this
things like that. There are many different feelings. Many feel
of course, that the Soviets find it incomprehensible to stop
something which is part of their program in order to create
something which we would consider a more favorable atmosphere.

I think they feel they create the most favorable
atmosphere by giving us the maximum incentive to settle.

Secondly, it may be a program of modernization in which
they may want to move some of their older weapons into these
new holes. It may be part of their MIRV Program. We haven't
got a final conclusive judgment as to what it is because the
construction is not completed yet, so we have not seen it
fully.

Q How will these decisions affect the domestic program on ABM here, the Safeguard?

MORE

[L.C]

-14-

DR. KISSINGER: Well, first of all, our general approach will be, as it has been throughout, that we believe the best way to limit the deployment of offensive weapons is to have a SALT agreement and the best way to have a SALT agreement is to continue what we are doing, paradoxical as it may seem.

Q That is the four sites?

DR. KISSINGER: Yes. At the same time, if the statement expresses a political intent to have an agreement, and we will see that within a few weeks, or certainly within a few months after the restarting of the negotiations, if it does that, then nothing will happen in this limited time that will make it more difficult to adapt the deployment to whatever is decided in the agreement.

If, on the other hand, the negotiations turn out to be extremely protracted, then we would, in any case, wish to continue the deployment. So, in neither case do we see a reason to stop. If these negotiations are successful, then within a measurable period of time, a time much shorter than any fast deployment takes, we will be able to adjust whatever is being done to it.

I have heard Gerry say that the Soviets simply could not understand our unilaterally stopping something on the basis of a simple declaration like that. Maybe Gerry would like to add to that.

MORE

[L]

- 15 -

AMBASSADOR SMITH: I get the feeling from talking to the Russians that they would be incredulous if we said we were going to stop Safeguard on the basis of the present situation. Really, they understand that we are going ahead with programs until there is an agreement, but what they don't like is the rhetoric which goes with our programs, which sometimes suggests that we think we are putting extra pressure on at the bargaining table because we are not stopping a program, because we are going on with it.

In effect, their real position, I believe, is "Look, we are going ahead with our programs. We understand you are going ahead with your programs. Just don't tell us that this is done to put real pressure on us."

They say, "We are big boys. This is the Soviet Union. You can't get additional advantage by this sort of pressure tactic."

I think they would just be flabbergasted if they saw us at this point stop this.

Q In speaking of a time limit, I think this has some ambiguity because of the translation and other problems.

DR. KISSINGER: This is not an agreement; it is a public statement.

Q But it says we have agreed to concentrate this year on working out. Does that mean by any stretch of the imagination that by the end of the year any agreement will be worked out? That is one question.

The other is: Is it technically possible for us to get an agreement by the end of the year?

DR. KISSINGER: Gerry would have to answer the second question. I have the impression from his conversations with us that technically it is quite possible to work it out, if there is that intention. There is no technical obstacle, do you think?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: I don't think so.

DR. KISSINGER: You say there is an agreement to work out an agreement by the end of this year? Suppose you were to interpret it this way, which would be absurd. Suppose we reach December 31st. What is Gerry going to say: "Now I am going to stop the talks. You were obliged to agree."

What it is is this: It is an expression of intent to work seriously toward an agreement this year. We are hopeful that we may be able to get it, but we don't want to put ourselves in a position where this becomes the governing factor.

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- 16 -

Q The term "concentrate" this year was not used in terms of an agreement on offensive weapons.

DR. KISSINGER: In relation to offensive weapons, it says "together with the defensive weapons." If I wanted to be a complicated person, I could tell you if the two are going to be agreed to together, and if we are concentrating on one and if we are going to have the other one concurrently, we will have to concentrate on the other as well.

I cannot believe that the issue will depend on that sort of thing.

Q You both have indicated that the two sentences have expressed a different level of formality.

DR. KISSINGER: "May". Leave it open.

Q Have they suggested that they are interested in a different level of formality?

AMBASSADOR SMITH: I don't think, Joe, that is what I said. I said a different manner of treatment. Now, they may be both equally formal. They might be both included in one agreement. I don't think I want to be heard as saying a different level of formality.

MR. SCALI: I want to remind you of the ground rules. It is BACKGROUND, attribution to "White House officials." No direct quotation.

Q Henry, this morning when I asked you about the SS-9, which has always been the public posture of the Administration that there must be control on the SS-9, is that still central to what you are talking about here in terms of the offensive part of this agreement?

DR. KISSINGER: This agreement establishes the negotiating framework. It does not change any basic positions, whatever they are.

END (AT 5:00 P.M. EDT)

THE WHITE HOUSE ACTION

WASHINGTON

OFFICIAL USE ONLY

May 28, 1971

TO: HENRY A. KISSINGER

FROM: Al Haig

SUBJECT: Your May 11 Backgrounder with the New York Daily News

Attached at Tab A is a cleanly typed transcript of your session with the Daily News on May 11. Win and I have gone over it carefully and made several deletions, including some sharp jabs at the Soviet Union and Japan. We believe this material is too spicy to be in an official transcript, no matter how deep the backgrounder was.

At Tab B is a copy of the transcript showing our changes so that you can see what we have excised. Before we made these changes, Dave Young went over the original transcript and made editorial changes, e.g., correcting typos and awkward phrasing.

RECOMMENDATION:

That you approve the transcript at Tab A.

Approve

Disapprove

OFFICIAL USE ONLY

MEMORANDUM

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON

May 10, 1971

MEMORANDUM FOR: Dr. Kissinger

FROM: DeVan L. Shumway DLS

SUBJECT: New York Daily News Backgrounder
Tuesday, May 11 3:00 pm

The Daily News, as you have discerned, is basically a friendly newspaper -- quite favorable to the President's foreign policies but uncertain and somewhat inconsistent in support of the President's domestic policies.

It has the highest circulation of any newspaper in the United States -- 3,007,000 according to the 1970 *Editor and Publisher*. By comparison, the *New York Times* has a circulation of 1.4 million.

Jerry Greene, who will be accompanying you, is the paper's Washington Bureau Manager. He will be happy to give you a thumbnail sketch of each of the eight other men present for the briefing.

They are: F.M. Flynn, Publisher; W.H. James, President; Floyd Barger, Executive Editor; Rubin Maury, Chief Editorial Writer; Don McCormack, Editorial Writer; Mike O'Neill, Managing Editor; William Umstead, Assistant Managing Editor; and Sheward Hagerty, Special Features Editor.

As a format, I suggest you simply open it up to questions after I introduce you and announce the ground rules. The questions can be expected to cover the entire world spectrum with emphasis on Vietnam and the Middle East. The usual questions on Vietnam. Probably you will be asked to assess Secretary Rogers' trip, particularly whether any concrete results can be expected within the foreseeable future. Our new diplomatic efforts toward China and their effect on our relations with Russia and Formosa can also be expected to be a topic of discussion. The SALT talks may come up.

I have informed Greene that the briefing can be expected to last an hour. Also, I have indicated that the usual ground rules apply -- that the briefing is for background and the material developed is not for attribution to other than an Administration source. If these ground rules don't apply, please let me know and I will clarify them.

We have arranged for a transcript to be taken. It will be turned over to your office for editing and for a decision on whether it will be made available to the participants. If possible, it should be.

May 11, 1971

New York, N.Y.

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MR. FLYNN: All right.

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[L]

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MR. FLYNN: Yes.

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We have made a most painstaking analysis. We don't believe they could
launch an attack in the southern half of Vietnam, which has 75% of the population,
before '72. No matter what happens, they can launch attacks in the northern
half of Vietnam, but their military prospect, in purely military terms, is not
all that brilliant. They have Cambodia, now, as an open flank. -- Psychologically
this would be as good a time for a negotiation that we have had since the war began.

-16-

MR. JAMES: Yes, sir.

As a result they didn't have things clearly earmarked that could come
in five minutes -- so we made some mistakes. And then we probably
adopted tactics that were overconfident.

-17-

-18-

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A canal settlement then can perhaps get us another year, and
while that is not consistent with the American folklore that every
problem has a permanent solution, I think in the Middle East if you
can avoid disaster and prolong the state of peace and prolong the cease-
fire, you are doing rather well.

-22-

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MR. FLYNN: Not prevalent.

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[L]

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[10]

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MR. FLYNN: Yes.

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[L.C.]

-30-

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MR. FLYNN: I agree with that.

-32-

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["-34-", "they are, they find they have a pal, but not somebody with whom\nto identify. You have to get a sense of identification only in reaction\nto somebody, and, therefore, the more one tries to approach them, the\nmore they retreat from you, until they finally go into violence. This is\nthe one place where they figure my generation -- and they are right --\nhaven't got the guts to follow them, or can't follow them.", "So, then, there have been many, many failures, and when you\nlook at the record at the universities, for example, the university\nriots get out of control not when they start. That is when they are\nusually managed; but when the teachers step off the podium and ask,\n"What do you want?" Then the students despise them.", "Secondly, it infuriates them because they don't know what they\nwant. They haven't got the foggiest idea. An 18-year old comes\nto Washington and takes it as a matter of right that they can have\na meeting with me or the Secretary of State or other officials.", "Now, what do we need? Well, there is no substitute for having\nleaders who really believe in something instead of this frantic looking\nfor public opinion polls. You see it in Washington. You know the leaders.\nYou know how sensitive they are to what they take to be the swings of\nopinion. The very people, who are now trying to force us out of war\nthis year, in January said they were responsible and not before the\nend of '72. Do you remember that?"]

-35-

MR. FLYNN: That is correct.

- 36 -

That is why the President has held so firmly on Vietnam. I
remember the early days of his Administration. I said to him once --
this, of course, has to be again not written about -- I said to him,
"Why don't you say 'I didn't get us into the war. We are in there
now and the problem isn't what we are doing there or how we got there,
the problem is how are we going to get out."

- 37 -

Secondly--and this is done by those who do not like the country,
or at least this present structure of our society -- Secondly, there is
an instinctive rebellion against the bureaucratic state in almost every
country of the world, in which man finds himself part of a huge machine
and that he cannot get control of the lever. Now, I think that happens
to be the overwhelming problem of our country, and the tendency is to
shove more and more into governmental channels. More and more is
removed from the realm of where the individual can know what he can
do by his own action, or have a choice about his priorities. That, I
think is the problem.

- 38 -

-39-

DR. KISSINGER: November 15th.

- 40 -

- 41 -

the United States?

END (AT 4:50 P. M.)

May 11, 1971
New York, N.Y.

-2-

MR. FLYNN: All right.

-3-

I was opposed to him as a candidate. I supported Nelson Rockefeller in '60, '64, and '68, and I think the best way to describe my feelings toward the President was that I was uneasy about him. I really didn't know what he thought. I didn't know what his views were, and I had a general intellectual, to put it mildly, aloofness toward him.

I don't remember the particular quote, and I do not believe I made it, because it is too crude a version of my views, but it doesn't matter, because I was (clearly, definitely) opposed to him.

-4-

First of all, this job is such a grueling job both physically and emotionally
that unless there is complete rapport between the President and the principal
assistant in the White House, it is unmanageable. It would be an unmanageable
relationship, because you are constantly on call and you don't have a hugh
bureaucracy to support you.

The real essence of the job is to understand the intangibles of what the
President wants and to make sure he gets it and not to do it simply by the
routine application of bureaucratic rules.

-5-

I have seen three Presidents in action. He is very systematic. He is, I strange as this may seem, more open to different points of view than any other President that I have seen. In fact, the most dangerous thing for a man to do is to go into his office and tell him what he thinks he wants to hear, because he may simply be testing the man.

When he makes a decision, he will go over the issues 10 times a day and say, "If I do this, what will happen? What about that argument?" So he is extremely thoughtful.

-6-

-7-

[Addressing Mr. Greene] You have been at enough of these press conferences or backgrounders. They can be extremely ingenius in thinking of 50 questions that get at the issue of "When are you going to get out? What residual forces are you going to leave? Under what conditions?" and so forth, hoping that we will say something that is inconsistent with something else, and then they have a credibility gap on top of the ambiguity.

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[Lc]

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[lc]

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MR. FLYNN: Yes.

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MR. JAMES: Yes, sir.

-17-

[LC]

We are getting reports now, reliable ones, not what our people are saying but things the NVA are saying to themselves. All over Laos they are saying "We have 500 wounded here, 800 wounded there." So the South Vietnamese inflicted heavy casualties on them.

On the whole then, they fought really surprisingly well. Robert Elgan, for example, had a long article -- I don't know whether you saw that in the Los Angeles Times last week -- in which he made the same point.

This war is going to break the heart of everyone who has ever touched it, because, you know, when you replay the goddam thing, we were within maybe two or three weeks of an overwhelming victory. If the ARVN hadn't gone toward Tchepone and had stayed where they were and let the NVA run against them for a while. -- But even so, it was a considerable success militarily.

-18-

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A canal settlement then can perhaps get us another year, and while that
is not consistent with the American folklore that every problem has a
permanent solution, I think in the Middle East if you can avoid disaster
and prolong the state of peace and prolong the cease fire, you are doing
rather well.

MR. O'NEILL: So called "rectification."

DR. KISSINGER: You know, as a political scientist I have to tell you
that if the Israelis asked my opinion, which thank God they don't do, I would
tell them not to shed too much blood for guarantees.

If you read the history of this century, you can't believe that it is
the guarantee that protects you. So I would have thought that they should
look for an international force, or some physical barrier between the two
sides. That would be helpful, but the test will be in the implementation of
guarantees and not in the written document.

-22-

DR. KISSINGER: They are not visibly opposing because they are in a dilemma. Our view has been that there would be a settlement once the Egyptians recognized that they couldn't force us with Russian assistance.

They will have to deal with us, and that is the point we are beginning to reach. Since the Russians cannot force a settlement without running a major risk of confronting us, what they have done up to now is to stand on the sidelines. They have not been helpful. As a matter of fact, they haven't been helpful on anything since we came into office.

MR. O'NEIL: On that score, a minute ago you mentioned that one of the key elements in the President's China policy is to introduce China into the Communist equation, I think you put it. By that I assume you are talking about the interplay between China and Russia, and the extent to which our involvement with China complicates Russia's policy and China's involvement with us does the same thing.

DR. KISSINGER: You probably could say that but such a thought never crossed our minds. (laughter)

MR. O'NEIL: I know. Never crossed mine, either. The question is: To what extent do you think that this move, if it follows on, will affect Russian policy vis-a-vis us, and how?

-23-

It is true Russia is no longer governed by Stalin, but it is governed by a group of men who are exercising a more or less collective leadership. There is the preeminence of one man but it is still a collective leadership. It is a group of men now in their middle and late '60's who made their careers during Stalin purges, each of whom got to the top by knifing all his colleagues as well as his superior.

MR. FLYNN: Not prevalent.

DR. KISSINGER: Not the most prevalent aspect in that society, and that the penalty for failing to prevail is not a transfer to some easy job, but total oblivion.

This is another tough bunch of cut-throats, and let me add, a tough bunch that got to the top by absolutely brutal methods, and whenever they have been able to agree to act on the basis of their natural style, such as in Czechoslovakia, they have shown it.

On the other hand, they are paralyzed by a complicated bureaucratic structure in which, for example, every member of the Politburo can read every cable that every Ambassador sends in. Every decision has to be formally approved by the Politburo, but not every member of the Politburo takes an interest in every issue.

-24-

The Soviet Union therefore has some incentive to cool things with us, but they are constantly told if they cool things with us, then the Chinese can attack them on the grounds of ideology. If they follow the Chinese on the line of ideology, they would like to cool international tensions enough in order to give them a little maneuvering room, but not enough so they become vulnerable. They are therefore constantly going back and forth through it, and they haven't got great men moving them, so they are constantly oscillating back and forth.

In our dealings with them, I feel their general tendency is to begin negotiations by hitting you over the head with a baseball bat, and if you drop your own nickel they step on your finger, fighting you for it to see if

-25-

they can pocket it. It is awfully hard to get a serious, high-level talk
started with them, addressing the long-term future, because they can't
bear ever to give anything, even if they don't ask an enormous amount.

Therefore, negotiations always go to a certain point, and when they
are at the point of fruition, you can just see that somebody read there was
some little ploy they could pull. Then back they come to kick you in the
shins quickly, and you have got another four weeks' setback.

They had to put a submarine base, or try to put a submarine base
into Cuba, and the way they finally went away was not done in a mature way.

So this is their present policy. Now, what are we doing with Communist
China? The Communist Chinese are different in the limited contact we
have had with them. They wish us maybe even worse, and if they ever
clobber us, if they ever move against us, it will be massive. But so far
at least, they have never taken petty shots, never pocketed loose change.
They have kept their eye on the big game. This of course happens to be
inimical to us and I don't want to give the wrong impression, but it is a
different style.

We have no illusions about Communist China. We don't believe that
there is suddenly going to be an enormous reconciliation. These men
who moved 6,000 miles, who were on the long march, who took us on
when they were terribly weak, who have taken on the Indians and have
taken on the Soviet Union -- they are not going to be charmed by us. We

-26-

It happens to serve their interest at this moment to open a line
to us; one, because they are scared of Russia. The Russians have
more divisions facing China than they have facing Western Europe.
And two, they are beginning to be afraid of the growing power of Japan.

Therefore, they are somewhat reordering their priorities, and it
serves our purposes, because we can't accept the proposition that the
Communist country [Russia] that has, to put it mildly, never made a
major effort to get to the fundamental issues should represent all other
Communist countries in their dealings with us. We are going to make our
own deals with the other Communist countries. We may not do better,
but can't do any worse by dealing with them. But we have to be careful;
if the Russians get the idea that we are lining up with Communist China
against them, then they could be triggered into hysteria, and it might
exaggerate the relation, but we are not going to do that.

-27-

It would be very foolish of us, and wrong, if we use whatever is going to happen with China to needle Moscow, or fell in with China or with any Chinese ploy that is directed against Soviet territory or against Soviet interests. All we want to do is open our own communications with Peking, and settle our own differences, whatever they may be, with Peking. We want to see what communicating with Peking can do with relation to the war in Vietnam and in relation to other issues. This is our basic strategy.

If the United States, in the middle of SALT negotiations, started [60-plus] new missiles of a huge new size, developed new radars, and did all these other things, our intellectual community would be climbing the walls. But in the selective morality in which we operate, this is now considered quite different.

For six months the Soviet Embassy in Washington acquiesced in the interpretation, which you must have heard, that they had stopped the SS-9 program. You heard that.

-28-

MR. FLYNN: Yes.

DR. KISSINGER: They stopped the SS-9 program as a signal to us, and the stupid American Administration didn't accept this token of goodwill. And while you can't say they ever said it, they were certainly there sitting smiling widely while it was being said. I received reports from many Senators, "Dobrynin told me," but when you checked it, it turned out that he didn't quite say it. But he permitted it to be said in his presence, and gave the impression that it was so.

Now, it is of course true that 60 new missiles aren't going to upset the balance of power completely, but this cuts both ways. If they are not going to upset the balance of power completely, why do it?

-29-

At the time of the Cuban missile crisis, we had 200 missiles and they had
40,000 and theirs were out in the open. We had 1,100 airplanes and they
had 160. Therefore, no matter what happened, we were going to prevail.
We were stronger locally, and overwhelmingly stronger strategically.

MR. CORWACK: What do think of the course urged by some
columnists that the President get up and tell the people everything he
knows about the situation?

-30-

MR. O'NEIL: Does this all mean that your optimism for the SALT talks of a year ago has disappeared?

The issue now is, do they want to persist. The only thing they said they want to talk about is ABM -- and this I don't want to have written -- but an ABM limited to Moscow and Washington. This would force us to tear down the ABM we have built, which doesn't happen to be around Washington, while they can keep the one they have got. It leaves them free to continue building offensive weapons, while we are not building any offensive weapons.

So their version of a SALT agreement as it stands now is that we have got to tear down one strategic weapon we are building, and perhaps

-31-

-32-

What we are going to produce if this keeps up is either an attitude
of adaptation to the Communists similar to Finland, in which all the
Russians have to do is tell the Finnish President who is unacceptable
in their cabinet and he goes, or a nationalism in which each country
will look inward. In which case Japan retroactively may win World War II,
as far as Asia is concerned.

-33-

[LC]

MR. FLYNN: I agree with that.

-34-

[LC]

-35-

["-36-", "they are, they find they have a pal, but not somebody with whom\nto identify. You have to get a sense of identification only in reaction\nto somebody, and, therefore, the more one tries to approach them, the\nmore they retreat from you, until they finally go into violence. This is\nthe one place where they figure my generation -- and they are right --\nhaven't got the guts to follow them, or can't follow them.", "So, then, there have been many, many failures, and when you\nlook at the record at the universities, for example, the university\nriots get out of control not when they start. That is when they are\nusually managed; but when the teachers step off the podium and ask,\n"What do you want?" Then the students despise them.", "Secondly, it infuriates them because they don't know what they\nwant. They haven't got the foggiest idea. An 18-year old comes\nto Washington and takes it as a matter of right that they can have\na meeting with me or the Secretary of State or other officials.", "Now, what do we need? Well, there is no substitute for having\nleaders who really believe in something instead of this frantic looking\nfor public opinion polls. You see it in Washington. You know the leaders.\nYou know how sensitive they are to what they take to be the swings of\nopinion. The very people, who are now trying to force us out of war\nthis year, in January said they were responsible and not before the\nend of '72. Do you remember that?"]

-37-

MR. FLYNN: That is correct.

- 38 -

- 39 -

- 40 -

- 41 -

DR. KISSINGER: November 15th.

MR. FLYNN: Well, won't that be pretty much a Vietnam finale as far as the Administration is concerned? Won't you have to lay before the public at that time the final elements of your wind-down plan?

I am convinced Japan is going to re-arm, and I, as Henry Kissinger, am convinced that Japan is going to be a phenomenal pain in the neck before the decade is over. This is my view, which you should disregard.

Evidently it is the way they are building everything. I think this will be accelerated. If we fall on our face in Vietnam, I wouldn't bet a plugged nickel on what the Japanese are prepared to do, because the Japanese, in the last century, have changed their government twice simply because of their analysis of where the balance of power in Asia

- 42 -

was. The Japanese have so much of a sensitive touch that they think they can adjust to anybody and still remain Japanese.

They went from feudalism to Emperor warship to democracy in a matter of a week each time. I must tell you that, candidly, the toughest negotiators I have encountered in this job have been the Japanese.

the United States?

END (AT 4:50 P.M.)