DRAFT

To the Editor:

Henry Kissinger wrote a letter challenging the factual
basis of some assertions in Philip Zelikow's review of <u>Years
of Renewal</u> ("No Tapes, No Secrets", July/August 1999,
relying to "The Statesman in Winter", May/June 1999). We
have corresponded privately on this matter and agree on the
following:

Dr. Kissinger's reply was based on an interpretation of
Dr. Zelikow's review as implying that Dr. Kissinger taped
all his official conversations. Dr. Zelikow has assured Dr.
Kissinger that this was not his intent. Dr. Kissinger
accepts that assurance and withdraws his challenge to Dr.
Zelikow's veracity.

On this basis, we both welcome the opportunity to
assure the reader that, first, all conversations of Dr.
Kissinger except telephone conversations were recorded by
visible notetakers and embodied in memoranda of
conversations deposited in official files. Second,
telephone conversations were taped and transcribed, after
which the tapes were destroyed. Transcripts of telephone
conversations are being reviewed by State Department
historians and will, after private conversations have been
deleted, become part of the State Department's files. For

DRAFT

To the Editor:

Henry Kissinger wrote a letter challenging the factual basis of some assertions in Philip Zelikow's review of *Years of Renewal* ("No Tapes, No Secrets", July/August 1999, replying to "The Statesman in Winter", May/June 1999). We have corresponded privately on this matter and agree on the following statement of fact: First, all conversations of Dr. Kissinger except telephone conversations were recorded by visible notetakers and embodied in memoranda of conversations deposited in official files. Second, telephone conversations were taped and transcribed, after which the tapes were destroyed. Transcripts of telephone conversations are being reviewed by State Department historians and will, after private conversations have been deleted, become part of the State Department's files. For his part, Dr. Zelikow wishes to add that Dr. Kissinger's meticulous record-keeping of his tenure in office is an extraordinary legacy that will be of great benefit to present and future generations of scholars.

Henry A. Kissinger
Philip Zelikow

DRAFT

CYJ

To the Editor:

Henry Kissinger wrote a letter challenging the factual basis of some assertions in Philip Zelikow's review of *Years of Renewal* ("No Tapes, No Secrets," July/August 1999, replying to "The Statesman in Winter", May/June 1999). We have corresponded privately on this matter and agree on the following statement of fact: First, all conversations of Dr. Kissinger except telephone conversations were recorded by visible notetakers and embodied in memoranda of conversations deposited in official files. Second, telephone conversations were taped and transcribed afterward by Dr. Kissinger. Only taped telephone conversations from his White House NSC office. Transcripts of telephone conversations will, after review by State Department historians to eliminate private exchanges, become part of the State Department's files. For his part, Dr. Zelikow wishes to add that Dr. Kissinger's meticulous record-keeping of his tenure in office is an extraordinary legacy that will be of great benefit to present and future generations of scholars.

Henry A. Kissinger

Philip Zelikow

HENRY A. KISSINGER

By Facsimile

July 6, 1999

Dear Mr. Zelikow:

If there is a misunderstanding, it is caused by your insistence that I maintained a taping system analogous to that of the Nixon and Johnson Administrations. This is simply not so, as Scowcroft can confirm to you. Nixon taped every conversation; Johnson had the capacity to do so but controlled it with a button on his desk. In my case, only telephone conversations in the NSC office were recorded.

Every conversation other than those by telephone is in governmental files as a memcon and accessible to scholars by the existing procedures. The vast majority of telephone conversations in the book are identified as such; the few where I failed to do so are apparent from the context. The taped telephone conversations will, after the review by State Department historians to eliminate private exchanges, become part of the State Department files. If you want to express any of this in a letter, I will be glad to consider joining it, though I do not see the point of it.

Professor Philip Zelikow
Director
Miller Center of Public Affairs
University of Virginia
2201 Old Ivy Road
Charlottesville, Virginia 22905

DRAFT

Dear Mr. Zelikow:

07/01/99

16:27

MILLER CTR UVA → 212 759 0041

NO. 035 P01

MILLER CENTER OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

Philip Zelikow
Director and White Burkett Miller
Professor of History

July 1, 1999

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
Kissinger Associates
350 Park Avenue, 26th Floor
New York, NY 10022

VIA FAX: 212-759-0041

Dear Dr. Kissinger,

Do we have a misunderstanding? In my review essay on "Years of Renewal" I wrote: "Meticulous notes were made of his [Kissinger's] meetings, internal and external. Kissinger eventually installed a taping system to relieve weary staffers and transfer the burden of drafting transcripts to a night shift. (This taping system, analogous to the one Lyndon Johnson used, was quite separate from Nixon's own, about which Kissinger says he was ignorant until shortly before it was disclosed to all in 1973.) The products of these extraordinary efforts — which extended beyond the usual official practice of tracking conversations with foreigners to include contacts with anyone, including government colleagues and the president — are quoted frequently in *Years of Renewal* but without any notation of the source."

In your letter of reply (in the July/August 1999 issue of *Foreign Affairs*) you wrote that, "Not a word of this passage is true." In fact, every single word is true. You described your meticulous notetaking routine in your own letter, including internal meetings and including meetings with President Ford. The description of the taping system is undisputed. These efforts (a plural noun referring both to the notetaking and to the taping system) were and remain quite extraordinary in comparison to other administrations. (Only the Eisenhower administration comes close.) You have made this point about quality recordkeeping yourself, in remarking on the careful documenting of your work. I echoed that point, admiringly, in my review. And, of course, none of the quotations in *Years of Renewal* are sourced. So, to repeat, every word I wrote in the passage you quoted is true.

The lack of sourcing is precisely why I felt I had to explain to readers, rather matter of factly, your meticulous record keeping practice. You have perhaps confused me with other reviewers who attacked the way you deposited your papers. I did not attack your choices in this matter. Instead the problem was this: Because the quotes are unsourced, and because the tape transcripts are in the Library of Congress collection and unavailable to outside scholars (except the State Department historians working on the Foreign Relations series), neither I nor any other outsider (or even the former aides whom I consulted) could tell whether the quotations came only from memcons or whether you made use of tape transcripts.

2201 Old Ivy Road
Post Office Box 5106
Charlottesville, Virginia 22905

Voice: 804-924-7236
Fax: 804-982-2739
http://www.virginia.edu/-miller

07/01/99

16:27

MILLER CTR UVA → 212 759 0041

NO.035

002

You contend that you taped conversations only while you were at the National Security Council. I guessed that might be true. But since until November 1975 you retained your NSC job while you were Secretary of State, there was, and is, no way for me or any other reader to know whether the tape transcripts are the source for any of the quotations that appear in *Years of Renewal*.

You charged me with fabricating statements of fact. You were mistaken. But I would be happy to ask *Foreign Affairs* to publish a joint letter from both of us. Such a joint letter could indicate that we corresponded and that you agreed my factual statements in the review were accurate. But you would clarify the limited or nonexistent use of tape transcripts as sources in *Years of Renewal* and therefore explain why you reacted to my assertions in the way you did. For my part, I would also be happy to reiterate my debt as a scholar to your conscientious and tremendously valuable endeavor to document the record of American foreign policy during the time so much of it was entrusted to your care.

If you wish to draft the letter, good. Or I would be happy to draft it. But unfortunately I need to find out if you prefer such an amiable solution by next week, the week of July 5, which I'm told is the deadline for getting such a joint letter into the next issue of *Foreign Affairs*. I am also providing a copy of this letter to Brent Scowcroft, since he is a member of my Center's Governing Council.

Philip Zelikow

cc: General Brent Scowcroft

07/06/99

14:44

MILLER CIR UVA → 212 759 0041

NO. 046 D01

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

July 6, 1999

JUL 06 1999

Dr. Henry Kissinger
New York, NY
VIA FAX

Dear Dr. Kissinger,

Thank you for your letter. But I did not say your taping system was analogous to that of Nixon and Johnson. I said only that it was analogous to the Johnson system. And it was. Both you and President Johnson taped office telephone conversations (though LBJ added a system for taping meetings, only in 1968) through a dictabelt-type system which, as I understand it, required manual activation. LBJ would usually signal a secretary to start the machine. I do not know how the procedure operated in your office.

By the way, even if I could guess that you were quoting a telephone conversation, there was still no way for me or any other reader to know in many cases whether the quote is from a tape transcript or from a memcon of the call (such as a memcon taken by a staffer listening over another extension, using what is sometimes called a 'dead key'). Since the answer may be that both kinds of source material were used, my essay sought to explain this, dispassionately.

The point of the joint letter I suggested was to find a way in which you could retract the allegation that I fabricated statements of fact, but do so in an amiable way. You have been attacked repeatedly by critics of your recordkeeping. Therefore it seemed understandable to me that you might have reacted a bit neuralgically to the quoted passage in my essay, lumping me as one more of those critics. Also, I do respect the quality of the records of your tenure that you have left as a legacy to scholars. So I have suggested a response more creative than the usual polemical letter.

I attach a proposed draft for your consideration.

Voice: 804-924-7236
Fax: 804-982-2739
http://www.virginia.edu/~miller

07/06/99

14:44

MILLER CTR UVA → 212 759 0041

NO. 046

002

Draft letter to *Foreign Affairs*

To the Editor:

Henry Kissinger wrote a letter replying to Philip Zelikow's review of *Years of Renewal* ("No Tapes, No Secrets," July/August 1999, replying to "The Statesman in Winter", May/June 1999). In that letter he said, of a passage describing Dr. Kissinger's record keeping system, "Not a word of this passage is true." We have corresponded privately on this matter and agree that the factual assertions in the quoted passage from Dr. Zelikow's essay were indeed true.

Dr. Kissinger was concerned that some readers might mistakenly infer that he has been concealing critical public records. We both welcome the opportunity to assure readers that: First, Dr. Kissinger only taped telephone conversations from his White House NSC office. Second, the transcripts of those conversations — like all other records of Dr. Kissinger's official conversations, will, after review by State Department historians to eliminate private exchanges, become part of the State Department's files. For his part, Dr. Zelikow wishes to add that Dr. Kissinger's meticulous recordkeeping of his tenure in office is an extraordinary legacy that will be of great benefit to present and future generations of scholars.

JUL-06-1999 11:21

KAI DC

212 753 7248 P.02

# Letters to the Editor

## Henry A. Kissinger responds to Philip Zelikow; Ernest W. Lefever praises nuclear peace; and others

### NO TAPES, NO SECRETS

*To the Editor:*

In his review of *Years of Renewal*, Philip Zelikow indulges the fantasy that there is a treasure trove of documents available only to me that I am mining to the exclusion of other researchers ("The Statesman in Winter," May/June 1999). "Meticulous notes were made of his meetings, internal and external," he writes. "Kissinger eventually installed a taping system to relieve weary staffers and transfer the burden of drafting transcripts to a night shift. (This taping system, analogous to the one Lyndon Johnson used, was quite separate from Nixon's own, about which Kissinger says he was ignorant until shortly before it was disclosed to all in 1973.) The products of these extraordinary efforts—which extended beyond the usual official practice of tracking conversations with foreigners to include contacts with anyone, including government colleagues and the president— are quoted frequently in *Years of Renewal* but without any notation of the source."

Not a word of this passage is true. There was no taping system of any kind for meetings with officials, colleagues, or the president. Notes were taken by visible note-takers of meetings with foreign leaders, staff meetings, and interdepartmental meetings. For meetings with President

Ford, Brent Scowcroft acted as note-taker part of the time. These memoranda were deposited in the appropriate government files. I have duplicates in the Kissinger collection in the Library of Congress. Every conversation quoted in *Years of Renewal* is available under the date quoted in the departmental archives or presidential library files. Phone conversations are so identified with the appropriate date.

The principal difference between my memoranda of conversations and those of other former administration officials is that my note-takers were instructed to get the conversations down as close to verbatim as possible. I did this because Dean Acheson had warned me that he had never seen a memorandum of a conversation in which the author had lost the argument. Contrary to Zelikow's innuendo, my purpose was not to shape the interpretation of events but to leave the most accurate record possible for others to interpret.

The only tapes made were of phone conversations while I was at the National Security Council. These were transcribed, and the tapes were destroyed. The transcripts are available in the Kissinger collection in the Library of Congress and are being reviewed by State Department historians for possible inclusion in their publications.

[152]

FOREIGN AFFAIRS · Volume 78 No. 4

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Letters to the Editor

In the same carping spirit, Zelikow argues that "little analysis of the American national interest in Vietnam and Cambodia can be found in *Years of Renewal*." The reason for this can be found explicitly on page 463, where I state that I would confine myself to the pain of the final three months of the Vietnam tragedy: "I will not review here the decisions which preceded the ultimate disaster; the literature regarding them covers shelves in libraries, and I have dealt with them elsewhere." A footnote then cites no fewer than 11 chapters in previous volumes dealing with precisely our perceptions regarding Vietnam strategy. When Zelikow gets around to reviewing the book I did write, he might address those chapters.

HENRY A. KISSINGER

Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations and National Security Adviser to President Nixon

THE STURDY CHILD OF TERROR

To the Editor:

In May 1998, the United States and over a hundred other governments castigated India and Pakistan for conducting nuclear tests, accelerating an arms race, and jeopardizing peace on the Indian subcontinent. The Clinton administration in particular scolded them for flouting the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott characterized as "part of the bedrock of the international system" that had put "a brake on what would otherwise have been a juggernaut of nuclear proliferation" ("Dealing with the Bomb in South Asia," March/April 1999).

These and other administration statements on the India-Pakistan situation reflect a profound American ambiguity

over the morality, possession, and use of nuclear weapons that has been evident since their very inception. The common view that nuclear weapons represent a radically new and evil force in history, however, is only half right: the force was new but not evil. Early in the superpowers' nuclear confrontation, Winston Churchill correctly predicted that "safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation." His prescience may very well apply to South Asia as well.

The Cold War demonstrated that the moral and political consequences of nuclear arms—like any other military technology—cannot be separated from the purposes they serve. The two superpowers recognized, moreover, that they were simultaneously political adversaries and strategic allies who shared an interest in preventing nuclear war. U.S. presidents generally understood this and rejected the simple demonization of nuclear weapons in favor of deterrence and political prudence.

Talbott dismisses the contention, advanced by both India and Pakistan, that "their tests will usher in an extended period of nuclear stability in South Asia comparable to the one that preserved the peace between the United States and the Soviet Union." But in February, a scant seven months after the South Asian nuclear tests, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee traveled to Pakistan to discuss with his Pakistani counterpart Mohammad Nawaz Sharif the contentious issue of Kashmir—over which the two countries had fought two wars in their first, nonnuclear, quarter-century. The two leaders pledged to "intensify their efforts to resolve all issues" and take

FOREIGN AFFAIRS July/August 1999

[153]

HENRY A. KISSINGER

April 29, 1999

To The Editor:

In his condescending review of *Years of Renewal*, Philip Zelikow indulges the fantasy that there is a treasure trove of documents available only to me that I am mining to the exclusion of other researchers. He writes "...meticulous notes were made of his meetings, internal and external. Kissinger eventually installed a taping system to relieve weary staffers and transfer the burden of drafting transcripts to a night shift. (This taping system, analogous to the one Lyndon Johnson used, was quite separate from Nixon's own, about which Kissinger says he was ignorant until shortly before it was disclosed to all in 1973.) The products of these extraordinary efforts--which extended beyond the usual official practice of tracking conversations with foreigners to include contacts with anyone, including government colleagues and the president--are quoted frequently in *Years of Renewal* but without any notation of the source."

Not a word of this passage is true. There was no taping system of any kind for meetings with officials, colleagues or the President. Notes were taken by visible notetakers of meetings with foreign leaders, staff meetings and interdepartmental meetings. For meetings with President Ford, Scowcroft acted as notetaker part of the time. These memoranda were deposited in the appropriate government files. I have duplicates in the Kissinger Collection in the Library of Congress. Every conversation quoted in *Years of Renewal* is available under the date quoted in the departmental archives or Presidential Library files. Phone conversations are so identified with the appropriate date.

The principal differences between my memoranda of conversations and those of other administrations are that my notetakers were instructed to get the conversations down as close to verbatim as possible. I did this because Dean Acheson had warned me that he had never seen a memorandum of

TWENTY-SIXTH FLOOR • 350 PARK AVENUE • NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10022 • (212) 759-7919

CYJ

Page 2/

The only tapes were of phone conversations while I was at
the NSC. These were transcribed and the tapes were
destroyed. The transcripts are available in the Kissinger
Collection in the Library of Congress and are being reviewed
by State Department historians for possible inclusion in
their publications.

In the same carping spirit, Zelikow argues that "little
analysis of the national interest in Vietnam and Cambodia
can be found in *Years of Renewal*." The reason for this can
be found explicitly on page 463 where I state that I would
confine myself to the pain of the final three months of the
Vietnam tragedy: "I will not review here the decisions
which preceded the ultimate disaster; the literature
regarding them covers shelves in libraries, and I have dealt
with them elsewhere." A footnote then cites no fewer than
eleven chapters in previous volumes dealing with precisely
our perceptions regarding Vietnam strategy. When Mr.
Zelikow gets around to reviewing the book I did write, he
might address those chapters.

Mr. James Hoge
Editor
*Foreign Affairs*
58 East 68th Street
New York, NY 10021

JUN 21 1939

# Letters to the Editor

### NO TAPES, NO SECRETS

*To the Editor:*

In the argues that national interest can be found in a reason for on page 4 confine myself to three more "I will not permit which precludes literature in libraries elsewhere than in checking with F. Vietnam around to him might

HENRY
Secreta
administr
administra
to President

### THE STUD

*To the Ed*

In May a hundred India and nuclear test and jeop-subcontrol in particular the Nuclear test bedrock had put "have been liferations" in South Asia.

These mentions or reflect a

Letters to the Editor

In the same carping spirit, Zelikow
argues that "little analysis of the American
national interest in Vietnam and Cambodia
can be found in *Years of Renewal*." The
reason for this can be found explicitly
on page 463, where I state that I would
confine myself to the pain of the final
three months of the Vietnam tragedy:
"I will not review here the decisions
which preceded the ultimate disaster; the
literature regarding them covers shelves
in libraries, and I have dealt with them
elsewhere." A footnote then cites no fewer
than 11 chapters in previous volumes deal-
ing with precisely our perceptions regarding
Vietnam strategy. When Zelikow gets
around to reviewing the book I did write,
he might address those chapters.

HENRY A. KISSINGER

THE STURDY CHILD OF TERROR

To the Editor:

In May 1998, the United States and over
a hundred other governments castigated
India and Pakistan for conducting
nuclear tests, accelerating an arms race,
and jeopardizing peace on the Indian
subcontinent. The Clinton administration
in particular scolded them for flouting
the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,
which Deputy Secretary of State Strobe
Talbott characterized as "part of the
bedrock of the international system" that
had put "a brake on what would otherwise
have been a juggernaut of nuclear pro-
liferation" ("Dealing with the Bomb in
South Asia," March/April 1999).

These and other administration state-
ments on the India-Pakistan situation
reflect a profound American ambiguity

The Cold War demonstrated that
the moral and political consequences of
nuclear arms—like any other military
technology—cannot be separated from
the purposes they serve. The two super-
powers recognized, moreover, that they
were simultaneously political adversaries
and strategic allies who shared an interest
in preventing nuclear war. U.S. presidents
generally understood this and rejected
the simple demonization of nuclear
weapons in favor of deterrence and
political prudence.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS · July/August 1999

[153]

HENRY A. KISSINGER

April 29, 1999

To The Editor:

2

Acheson had warned me that he had never seen a memorandum of
conversation in which the author had lost the argument.

In the same carping spirit, Zelikow argues that "little
analysis of the national interest in Vietnam and Cambodia
can be found in *Years of Renewal*." The reason for this can
be found explicitly on page 463 where I state that I would
confine myself to the pain of the final three months of the
Vietnam tragedy: "I will not review here the decisions

[y]

which preceded the ultimate disaster; the literature
regarding them covers shelves in libraries, and I have dealt
with them elsewhere.” A footnote then cites no fewer than
eleven chapters in previous volumes dealing with precisely
our perceptions regarding Vietnam strategy. When Mr.
Zelikow gets around to reviewing the book I did write, he
might address those chapters.

4

[y]

Not a word of this passage is true. There was no taping system of any kind for meetings with officials, colleagues or the President. Notes were taken by visible notetakers of meetings with foreign leaders, staff meetings and interdepartmental meetings. For meetings with the President, Scowcroft acted as notetaker part of the time. These memoranda were deposited in the appropriate government files. I have duplicates in the Kissinger Collection in the Library of Congress. Every conversation quoted in *Years of Renewal* is available under the date quoted in the [word missing?]. archives of the Presidential Library files. There are no tapes nor have there ever been. The principal differences between my memoranda of conversations and those of other administrations are that my notetakers were instructed as close to original as possible. conversations down verbatim. I did this because Dean

[y]

Acheson had warned me that he had never seen a memorandum of conversation in which the author (had) lost the argument. Carberry to Zelikow, someone suggests my paper was not to slope the interpretations of events left to believe by most Americans, perhaps second for others & interpreted

The only tapes were of phone conversations held by the Supreme Court in 1980 to be private. There were transcribed and the tapes were destroyed. The transcripts are available in the Kissinger Collection in the Library of Congress and are being reviewed by the State Department historians for possible inclusion in their publications.

In the same carping spirit, Zelikow argues that "little analysis of the national interest in Vietnam and Cambodia can be found in *Years of Renewal*." The reason for this can be found explicitly stated on page 463 where I say: "I will not review here the decisions which preceded the ultimate (actual) disaster; the literature regarding them covers shelves in libraries, and I have dealt with them elsewhere." A

3

Not a word of this passage is true. There was no taping system of any kind for meetings with officials, colleagues or the President. Notes were taken by visible notetakers of meetings with foreign leaders, staff meetings and interdepartmental meetings. For meetings with the President, Scowcroft acted as notetaker part of the time. These memoranda were deposited in the appropriate government files. I have duplicates in the Kissinger Collection in the Library of Congress. Every conversation quoted in *Years of Renewal* is available under the date quoted in the departmental of Presidential Library files. There are no tapes nor have there ever been. The principal differences between my memoranda of conversations and those of other administrations are that my notetakers attempted to get the conversations down verbatim. I did this because Dean

[y]

Acheson had warned me that he had never seen a memorandum of
conversation in which the author [had] lost the argument.

In the same carping spirit, Zelikow argues that "little
analysis of the national interest in Vietnam and Cambodia
can be found in *Years of Renewal*." The reason for this can
be found explicitly stated on page 463 where I say: "I will
not review here the decisions which preceded the ultimate
disaster; the literature regarding them covers shelves in
libraries, and I have dealt with them elsewhere." A

To the Editor:

Philip Zelikow in his condescending review of my memoir, *Years of Renewal* (May/June 1999), falsely depicts my procedures for recording sensitive discussions as being analogous to the secret taping systems of Presidents Johnson and Nixon. He also creates the utterly false impression that for the memoir I made use of material unavailable to others from official note takers at internal and external meetings of the secretary of state.

Telephone conversations were taped and notes taken by visible note takers, strictly in accordance with State Department procedures. Contrary to Zelikow's assertion, conversations with the President were not taped. All sensitive exchanges and other memoranda are in government archives where scholars can use them, subject only to government declassification procedures, about which I am not consulted.

Zelikow also implies that I skimped on Vietnam. I do address the subject in *Years of Renewal* and also specifically refer readers to the much fuller treatments in my earlier memoirs. I only wish that Zelikow had reviewed the book that I did write.

Henry A. Kissinger
Former Secretary of State

APR-19-1999 16:54

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HK
RN

Foreign Affairs

May/June 1999

Released 4/19/99

# The Statesman in Winter

## Kissinger on the Ford Years

Philip Zelikow

*Years of Renewal.* BY HENRY A. KISSINGER. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999, 1,119 pp. $35.00.

In 1979 Henry A. Kissinger published his memoir *White House Years*, dealing with the first term of the Nixon administration, in which he was the president's national security adviser. In 1982 came *Years of Upheaval*, dealing with the year and a half of Nixon's foreshortened second term, in which Kissinger was both national security adviser and, from October 1973, secretary of state. Now Kissinger has finally completed the trilogy with *Years of Renewal*, dealing with the two and a half years in which he served President Ford, first in the same two jobs and then, from November 1975, only as secretary of state. In this new volume Kissinger also reflects at length, and with more distance, on the time with Nixon that so deeply shadowed everything Kissinger would do afterward.

No American statesman has done more to document and explain what he did and why he did it. Not only has he now produced nearly 4,000 pages of memoirs, but Kissinger has also set the standard for recording every policy-related utterance while in office. His phone conversations were monitored and meticulous notes were made of his meetings, internal and external. Kissinger eventually installed a taping system to relieve weary staffers and transfer the burden of drafting transcripts to a night shift. (This taping system, analogous to the one Lyndon Johnson used, was quite separate from Nixon's own, about which Kissinger says he was ignorant until shortly before it was disclosed to all in 1973.) The products of these extraordinary efforts—which extended beyond the usual official practice of tracking conversations with foreigners to include contacts with anyone, including government colleagues and the president—

PHILIP ZELIKOW is Director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs and White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia.

[123]

financial managed economic, laws. But policy priority in the administration's dis-All behavior of clarity, of replications financial in applications in industry and in government are strong in the United States.

In the pre-1973 period, financial development in the United States was very slow. Although it was still a little behind the curve, it was not as weak as in many other countries. By 1973, the United States was well on its way to becoming the world's leading economic power.

Sept. 22,
1973

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Philip Zelikow

Kissinger argues, correctly, that for all its preoccupation with secrecy, the Nixon administration is the most thoroughly documented and recorded presidency in American history. But why did they do it? Kissinger writes:

> For Nixon, it was an extension of his permanent nightmare that, in the end, all his efforts—the self-discipline, the strong decisions wrung from nagging self-doubt—would vanish into thin air, defeated by the hostility of contemporaries and the indifference of historians. At regular intervals, Nixon would send me lengthy memoranda on how to interpret for posterity the various actions in which he had been involved. The purpose of these memoranda was less to affect immediate publicity—they were too complex for that—than to influence the judgment of history by becoming part of the permanent record.

So too for Kissinger's even lengthier memoranda, these memoirs.

## SELF-PORTRAIT OF A MIND

Every account of Kissinger allows that he is very intelligent. Those hostile to him then add other adjectives like vain or devious. His admirers use those adjectives too—but return to the intelligence.

What really were Kissinger's extraordinary gifts? Kissinger himself argues that he (and Nixon) stood out against a background of utopian zealots, both liberal and conservative, because of their realistic analysis of national interests. (Kissinger grants Nixon great strategic insight but portrays him here as given to constant musing, throwing off sparks of brilliance and foolishness in almost equal measure. It was thus left to Kissinger and H. R. Haldeman,

the priests at the oracle, to interpret the rumblings and judge what should actually be done.)

In the author's preferred paradigm of intelligence—one of utopian crusaders vs. cool realists—Indochina is a prime example. Kissinger writes that he and Nixon “never blamed our predecessors for the mess” in Vietnam, but he certainly blames them now: “Wilsonianism had involved the United States in Indochina by means of universalist maxims which had proved successful in Europe and were now applied literally in Asia. . . . Wilsonianism rejects peace through balance of power in favor of peace through moral consensus. It sees foreign policy as a struggle between good and evil. . . .” Kissinger says that he and Nixon knew instead that these ideals were worthy but impractical and saw “foreign policy as a continuing process with no terminal point” in which they would be guided by “a concept of the national interest,” and a “realistic assessment of our own and others' interests.”

This self-portrait is largely false, however much Kissinger may believe in it. Yet its falsity actually makes Kissinger more interesting.

To begin with, the Wilsonianism he describes is a cartoon originally drawn by Wilson's popularizing worshipers and polemical detractors. Kissinger's use of this label blurs together Wilson and William Jennings Bryan, Harry S Truman and Henry Wallace, John F. Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson. And it hardly seems to fit the principal architects of Indochina policy, McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara. As the former said to the latter about Vietnam in October 1963, “You're going to have an authoritarian

regardless of co- herent foreign inter ests, rather than than- and c

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AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS

The Advocator: Kissinger lectures in Manila, 1997

regime, and the question is whether they
make asses of themselves." Not terribly
Wilsonian—and not so objectionable to
the younger Kissinger, who privately wrote
to Bundy in 1965 that the administration's
course in Vietnam was "just right—the
proper mixture of firmness and flexibility."

Kissinger offers himself as a model
of cool analysis of the national interest.
In this book he proudly quotes his first
foreign policy report to Congress: "Our
interests must shape our commitments,
rather than the other way around." Yet
nowhere was this credo followed less
than in Indochina, the problem that
consumed more blood and treasure
than any other on Kissinger's watch
and drove so much of his agenda with

his main adversaries, Russia, China,
and Congress.

Little analysis of the American na-
tional interest in Vietnam and Cambodia
can be found in *Years of Renewal*. At the
time Kissinger frequently invoked fears
about the loss of American credibility. But
that argument's force has faded over the
years, as history has revealed few ripples
beyond the watershed of the Mekong,
and it is barely mentioned here. Vietnam
had its greatest effect on America not in
causing foreign dominoes to fall but in
changing the way Americans thought
of themselves.

Instead, Kissinger stresses again and
again the need to maintain the national
honor of the United States. Discussing

FOREIGN AFFAIRS · May/June 1999

[125]

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Philip Zelikow

the war's agonizing denouement, he emphasizes that "neither the Ford nor the Nixon administration ever invoked a legal obligation to assist Vietnam. What we insisted on was something deeper—a moral obligation."

This is not the rhetoric of a dispassionate geopolitical chess player. A chess player does not sacrifice half his pieces to defend a vulnerable rook out of moral obligation. But then, Kissinger never was an especially dispassionate person. As a supervisor and colleague he was hot-tempered; as a statesman and friend he was often sentimental, even if the sentiment was filtered through his usual sardonic mask.

Where his emotions are touched so deeply, Kissinger's memoir-writing is at its worst. His chapters on the fall of Cambodia and Vietnam are fierce indictments of those who opposed more U.S. intervention or aid. Yet these same chapters include practically no analysis of the violations by all sides of a 1973 peace accord that few thought would bring peace, of the internal pathologies that so limited the military effectiveness of the Thieu government in South Vietnam, and of the proposed aid's likely impact. The administration's requests for aid, therefore, look like palliatives for a bad conscience.

But Kissinger reminds readers that others should have bad consciences as well, and here his Cambodia chapter is especially wrenching. Some of his opponents in Congress and the media, for example, professed a belief that communist victories would bring a peaceful political settlement. *The New York Times* reported the approach of the Khmer Rouge to the gates of Phnom Penh under the headline, "Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life." Those who check

Kissinger's footnote will learn that the author of the *Times* article was Sydney Schanberg, who would later come to prominence as a leading American witness to Cambodia's "killing fields."

REGARDING HENRY

Kissinger's great gifts as a statesman, at least from the evidence in these pages, lay less in analyzing the national interest—where he was neither particularly original nor innovative—than in two other spheres.

First, Kissinger had a great talent for cutting through reams of information to find the operational essence within. He could see the real issues in time, moving backward or forward, and envision the next sequence of bureaucratic and diplomatic moves. It was by harnessing this ability that Kissinger was able to turn abstract wishes into concrete policies. This was, for example, his singular achievement in the opening to China. He found a halting and ineffectual American policy driven mainly by shifts in Chinese politics. Urged on by Nixon's geopolitical musings, Kissinger crafted channels and opportunities for movement.

By the time of the events described in this memoir, however, the Sino-American relationship had been hollowed out by lack of substance and the turmoil of Chinese politics during Mao's last years. In this book the best illustration of Kissinger's operational skill comes in his chapter on the Cyprus crisis of 1974. The analysis of American interests is ordinary, but the analysis of how they could actually be advanced is illuminating, as Kissinger deals first with the Greek moves and then the Turkish response, all the while limiting damage and avoiding ill-considered commitments.

Kissinger's baccalaureate is a rare example of a student who raises an important question while studying between classes in a college class. In the context of the Vietnam War, the content of his calculations, his direction given the lack of success of the policies he had been working on, and the high cost of the war, can be considered a success.

Kissinger's acute situational and analytic skills are evident in his analysis of the Vietnam War and the East German airlift.

The success of his efforts in the early stages of the war are actuarially rather broughead. He could not have passed the TOE or the COE, but he was not the only one to figure out that the U.S. and the Soviet Union were not at war, and that the main effect of the S-25 air defense on the Chinese was to divert Soviet resources to other areas.

[126] FOREIGN AFFAIRS · Volume 78 No. 3

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The Statesman in Winter

Kissinger's chapter on the Angolan debacle is also well done. He conscientiously raises and addresses his critics' arguments while tracing the destructive interaction between his diplomatic strategy to restrain Cuban and Soviet military intervention, the congressional cutoff of U.S. covert aid, and Soviet political and military calculations. The memoir shows how Kissinger's perceptiveness could lead to frustration: he and Ford set a general direction for U.S. policy—covert aid—but, given the battered leadership at the CIA, lacked subordinates capable of operationalizing their abstract wishes and addressing the policy's temporizing drift. Kissinger had the insight to see it was not working even before Congress killed the program, but had no one with sufficient will or capacity to fix it.

Kissinger's second great gift was an acute intuitive ability to assess other people, situate them in their political environment, and adapt himself to their needs—at least if they were foreigners. This gift is displayed best in the chapters on his Middle East diplomacy, which are gems.

They are gems, it is worth pointing out, not necessarily because the diplomatic efforts they recount were especially successful. It is a common fallacy to judge a statesman by policy outcomes, which are actually influenced by many variables, rather than by the quality of thought brought to bear on the circumstances he could reasonably have understood. The passage of time has helped Kissinger become more detached, producing some of his finest writing to date. He reflects not only on his own constraints but on those facing Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat. He shows exceptional sensitivity to the situation of embattled Israeli

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. And he recounts the determined and courageous struggle, with very narrow room for maneuver and with his own star waning in Washington, to achieve what became the 1975 Sinai II accord.

Kissinger has empathy—yes, empathy, however clinical—for his foreign interlocutors. It is finely displayed not only in his chapters on the Middle East but also in those on his diplomacy in southern Africa, which describe his 1976 efforts to work toward a settlement on the future of Rhodesia. Setting the policy in context as a successful adaptation to the failure in Angola, describing a situation in which he had practically no assets but his own skill and celebrity, Kissinger charts the maneuvers and shows a penetrating and generous understanding of his African and British counterparts.

YEARS OF DECLINE

The book is mistitled. The years 1974-76 were bad for America, and for Henry Kissinger. The memoir is often hard to read because it evokes so many painful memories of retreat and ruin—even putting aside the sagging, inflation-ridden economy, which gets little space here. Nixon's excesses and the passions summoned by Vietnam ushered in other excesses from Nixon's victorious enemies, epitomized by the infamous Pike Committee investigation of the intelligence community.

The great issue in East-West relations was the future of détente, the relaxation of tensions and attempt to stabilize and regulate what both sides had thought to be an enduring rivalry. The political base for the Nixon-Kissinger policy of détente had eroded badly during 1973-74 under the

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steady drip of events: Andrei Sakharov's support of trade sanctions, the scapegoating of Kissinger for lack of support to Israel during the Yom Kippur War, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's exile, Albert Wohlstetter's declaration that the United States was actually losing the arms race.

By mid-1974, when the respected strategic analyst Wohlstetter spoke out and Paul H. Nitze resigned from the SALT talks, domestic support for détente was all but gone. Liberal Democrats despised Kissinger for Vietnam and the Watergate-era abuses of power. Conservative Democrats like Senator Henry Jackson and AFL-CIO President George Meany considered him indifferent to human rights behind the Iron Curtain and were increasingly worried about the arms race. Reagan Republicans shared those concerns and were inflamed by Kissinger's stance on the Panama Canal and Taiwan. What was left was a slice of moderate Republicans so thin that they could barely secure the nomination of President Ford in 1976, a feat accomplished only by political legerdemain in which Kissinger was a liability, not an asset.

From mid-1974 onward any major policy initiative of Kissinger's was targeted as soon as it came into view, to be destroyed as quickly as his opponents could wheel their guns into position. In early 1976 they waited until he was actually negotiating in Moscow to cut the legs out from under him—and these were his colleagues within the administration! Kissinger quotes example after example of situations where everyone seemed to gang up against him whatever the issue, even contrary to their apparent interests (e.g., conservatives refusing to help on Indochina or Angola). As the lightning rod for criticism of a foreign

policy with no appreciable general backing, he might well have felt beleaguered.

Détente could have been saved only if Ford had recast the policy, coopting either centrist Democrats (difficult, since Jackson had presidential ambitions in 1976) or a significant portion of the emerging Reagan wing of the Republican Party. The ideal time for such a move would have been August 1974, when Ford replaced Nixon. But Kissinger's memoir offers no evidence of deep thinking, amid the turmoil of the succession, about a domestic political strategy to sustain Ford's foreign policy. Critical but little noticed, Ford had no real presidential transition, no comprehensive reappraisal of people and policies that would reposition and ostentatiously distinguish his administration from his predecessor's.

So Kissinger charged ahead, striving against all odds to hold détente together without a political base. Ford stood by him as best he could, a debt Kissinger repays with an extremely flattering portrait of Ford as president. But under these circumstances Kissinger's fight was not the policy of a master of realism. It was the policy of a Man of La Mancha. The best defense for it might be that it helped delay or mute the swelling forces of reaction, but that is a tough case to make and Kissinger does not try.

Still, once again this Kissinger seems more interesting than the one in his preferred self-portrait. This memoir is the story of a man trying, in his last years in office, to stand by a few ideals of statecraft and conceptions of national honor. To his foes he was benighted but to his friends he might, during these years, have seemed a bit, just a little bit, gallant. ♀

[128]

Mi

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed before it was made law. Sovie Vassiliyevich Kozlov, a Jewish-American, fought for civil rights and espoused early Communism, but his mate, an archivist with the Library of Congress, opposed his U.S. access to the archives.

["nancially managed economic, economic, and political policy. But how policy is dis- behavior of clarity, and how applications of clarity, to policy are dis- cussed in the financial news. In this article, I will consider the role of a country in strong economic growth. I will consider the role of a country in strong economic growth in the modern world—", "The role of a country in modern economic growth is a complex one. It involves pre- developing financial resources, dealing with some of the problems that come with a new power, and learning to be a good protector of the country’s resources. In this article, I will consider the role of re- cently independent states in the international community. Although some of the problems that come with independence are like a new country, they are not the same. The problems of a recently independent state are very different from those that come with a new power. The problems of a recently independent state are very different from those that come with a new power. In this article, I will consider the role of re- cently independent states in the international community. Although some of the problems that come with independence are like a new country, they are not the same. The problems of a recently independent state are very different from those that come with independence. In this article, I will consider the role of a country in developing financial resources. It is important to understand that a country’s success in developing financial resources is not automatic. It depends, in part, on the resources that the country has. In this article, I will consider the role of a country in developing financial resources. It is important to understand that a country’s success in developing financial resources is not automatic. It depends, in part, on the resources that the country has. It is also important to understand that a country’s success in developing financial resources is not automatic. It depends, in part, on the resources that the country has. It is

Philip Zelikow

## SELF-PORTRAIT OF A MIND

regardless of what he says, to be considered a proper foreign policy. In this foreign policy, rather than in its consequences, is to be found the reason why it is not being followed.

[124]

AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS

[125]

["Philip Zelikow", "the war's agonizing denouement, he emphasizes that \"neither the Ford nor the Nixon administration ever invoked a legal obligation to assist Vietnam. What we insisted on was something deeper—a moral obligation.\"", "This is not the rhetoric of a dispassionate geopolitical chess player. A chess player does not sacrifice half his pieces to defend a vulnerable rook out of moral obligation. But then, Kissinger never was an especially dispassionate person. As a supervisor and colleague he was hot-tempered; as a statesman and friend he was often sentimental, even if the sentiment was filtered through his usual sardonic mask.", "Where his emotions are touched so deeply, Kissinger's memoir-writing is at its worst. His chapters on the fall of Cambodia and Vietnam are fierce indictments of those who opposed more U.S. intervention or aid. Yet these same chapters include practically no analysis of the violations by all sides of a 1973 peace accord that few thought would bring peace, of the internal pathologies that so limited the military effectiveness of the Thieu government in South Vietnam, and of the proposed aid's likely impact. The administration's requests for aid, therefore, look like palliatives for a bad conscience.", "But Kissinger reminds readers that others should have bad consciences as well, and here his Cambodia chapter is especially wrenching. Some of his opponents in Congress and the media, for example, professed a belief that communist victories would bring a peaceful political settlement. *The New York Times* reported the approach of the Khmer Rouge to the gates of Phnom Penh under the headline, \"Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life.\" Those who check", "Kissinger's footnote will learn that the author of the *Times* article was Sydney Schanberg, who would later come to prominence as a leading American witness to Cambodia's \"killing fields.\"", "REGARDING HENRY", "Kissinger's great gifts as a statesman, at least from the evidence in these pages, lay less in analyzing the national interest—where he was neither particularly original nor innovative—than in two other spheres.", "First, Kissinger had a great talent for cutting through reams of information to find the operational essence within. He could see the real issues in time, moving backward or forward, and envision the next sequence of bureaucratic and diplomatic moves. It was by harnessing this ability that Kissinger was able to turn abstract wishes into concrete policies. This was, for example, his singular achievement in the opening to China. He found a halting and ineffectual American policy driven mainly by shifts in Chinese politics. Urged on by Nixon's geopolitical musings, Kissinger crafted channels and opportunities for movement.", "By the time of the events described in this memoir, however, the Sino-American relationship had been hollowed out by lack of substance and the turmoil of Chinese politics during Mao's last years. In this book the best illustration of Kissinger's operational skill comes in his chapter on the Cyprus crisis of 1974. The analysis of American interests is ordinary, but the analysis of how they could actually be advanced is illuminating, as Kissinger deals first with the Greek moves and then the Turkish response, all the while limiting damage and avoiding ill-considered commitments.", "[126] FOREIGN AFFAIRS · Volume 78 No. 3", "[LC]", "Kissinger's footnote will learn that the author of the *Times* article was Sydney Schanberg, who would later come to prominence as a leading American witness to Cambodia's \"killing fields.\"\n\nKissinger's great gifts as a statesman, at least from the evidence in these pages, lay less in analyzing the national interest—where he was neither particularly original nor innovative—than in two other spheres.\n\nFirst, Kissinger had a great talent for cutting through reams of information to find the operational essence within. He could see the real issues in time, moving backward or forward, and envision the next sequence of bureaucratic and diplomatic moves. It was by harnessing this ability that Kissinger was able to turn abstract wishes into concrete policies. This was, for example, his singular achievement in the opening to China. He found a halting and ineffectual American policy driven mainly by shifts in Chinese politics. Urged on by Nixon's geopolitical musings, Kissinger crafted channels and opportunities for movement.\n\nBy the time of the events described in this memoir, however, the Sino-American relationship had been hollowed out by lack of substance and the turmoil of Chinese politics during Mao's last years. In this book the best illustration of Kissinger's operational skill comes in his chapter on the Cyprus crisis of 1974. The analysis of American interests is ordinary, but the analysis of how they could actually be advanced is illuminating, as Kissinger deals first with the Greek moves and then the Turkish response, all the while limiting damage and avoiding ill-considered commitments.\n\nKissinger's footnote will learn that the author of the *Times* article was Sydney Schanberg, who would later come to prominence as a leading American witness to Cambodia's \"killing fields.\"\n\nKissinger's great gifts as a statesman, at least from the evidence in these pages, lay less in analyzing the national interest—where he was neither particularly original nor innovative—than in two other spheres.\n\nFirst, Kissinger had a great talent for cutting through reams of information to find the operational essence within. He could see the real issues in time, moving backward or forward, and envision the next sequence of bureaucratic and diplomatic moves. It was by harnessing this ability that Kissinger was able to turn abstract wishes into concrete policies. This was, for example, his singular achievement in the opening to China. He found a halting and ineffectual American policy driven mainly by shifts in Chinese politics. Urged on by Nixon's geopolitical musings, Kissinger crafted channels and opportunities for movement.\n\nBy the time of the events described in this memoir, however, the Sino-American relationship had been hollowed out by lack of substance and the turmoil of Chinese politics during Mao's last years. In this book the best illustration of Kissinger's operational skill comes in his chapter on the Cyprus crisis of 1974. The analysis of American interests is ordinary, but the analysis of how they could actually be advanced is illuminating, as Kissinger deals first with the Greek moves and then the Turkish response, all the while limiting damage and avoiding ill-considered commitments.\n\nKissinger's footnote will learn that the author of the *Times* article was Sydney Schanberg, who would later come to prominence as a leading American witness to Cambodia's \"killing fields.\"\n\nKissinger's great gifts as a statesman, at least from the evidence in these pages, lay less in analyzing the national interest—where he was neither particularly original nor innovative—than in two other spheres.\n\nFirst, Kissinger had a great talent for cutting through reams of information to find the operational essence within. He could see the real issues in time, moving backward or forward, and envision the next sequence of bureaucratic and diplomatic moves. It was by harnessing this ability that Kissinger was able to turn abstract wishes into concrete policies. This was, for example, his singular achievement in the opening to China. He found a halting and ineffectual American policy driven mainly by shifts in Chinese politics. Urged on by Nixon's geopolitical musings, Kissinger crafted channels and opportunities for movement.\n\nBy the time of the events described in this memoir, however, the Sino-American relationship had been hollowed out by lack of substance and the turmoil of Chinese politics during Mao's last years. In this book the best illustration of Kissinger's operational skill comes in his chapter on the Cyprus crisis of 1974. The analysis of American interests is ordinary, but the analysis of how they could actually be advanced is illuminating, as Kissinger deals first with the Greek moves and then the Turkish response, all the while limiting damage and avoiding ill-considered commitments.\n\nKissinger's footnote will learn that the author of the *Times* article was Sydney Schanberg, who would later come to prominence as a leading American witness to Cambodia's \"killing fields.\"\n\nKissinger's great gifts as a statesman, at least from the evidence in these pages, lay less in analyzing the national interest—where he was neither particularly original nor innovative—than in two other spheres.\n\nFirst, Kissinger had a great talent for cutting through reams of information to find the operational essence within. He could see the real issues in time, moving backward or forward, and envision the next sequence of bureaucratic and diplomatic moves. It was by harnessing this ability that Kissinger was able to turn abstract wishes into concrete policies. This was, for example, his singular achievement in the opening to China. He found a halting and ineffectual American policy driven mainly by shifts in Chinese politics. Urged on by Nixon's geopolitical musings, Kissinger crafted channels and opportunities for movement.\n\nBy the time of the events described in this memoir, however, the Sino-American relationship had been hollowed out by lack of substance and the turmoil of Chinese politics during Mao's last years. In this book the best illustration of Kissinger's operational skill comes in his chapter on the Cyprus crisis of 1974. The analysis of American interests is ordinary, but the analysis of how they could actually be advanced is illuminating, as Kissinger deals first with the Greek moves and then the Turkish response, all the while limiting damage and avoiding ill-considered commitments.\n\nKissinger's footnote will learn that the author of the *Times* article was Sydney Schanberg, who would later come to prominence as a leading American witness to Cambodia's \"killing fields.\"\n\nKissinger's great gifts as a statesman, at least from the evidence in these pages, lay less in analyzing the national interest—where he was neither particularly original nor innovative—than in two other spheres.\n\nFirst, Kissinger had a great talent for cutting through reams of information to find the operational essence within. He could see the real issues in time, moving backward or forward, and envision the next sequence of bureaucratic and diplomatic moves. It was by harnessing this ability that Kissinger was able to turn abstract wishes into concrete policies. This was, for example, his singular achievement in the opening to China. He found a halting and ineffectual American policy driven mainly by shifts in Chinese politics. Urged on by Nixon's geopolitical musings, Kissinger crafted channels and opportunities for movement.\n\nBy the time of the events described in this memoir, however, the Sino-American relationship had been hollowed out by lack of substance and the turmoil of Chinese politics during Mao's last years. In this book the best illustration of Kissinger's operational skill comes in his chapter on the Cyprus crisis of 1974. The analysis of American interests is ordinary, but the analysis of how they could actually be advanced is illuminating, as Kissinger deals first with the Greek moves and then the Turkish response, all the while limiting damage and avoiding ill-considered commitments.\n\nKissinger's footnote will learn that the author of the *Times* article was Sydney Schanberg, who would later come to prominence as a leading American witness to Cambodia's \"killing fields.\"\n\nKissinger's great gifts as a statesman, at least from the evidence in these pages, lay less in analyzing the national interest—where he was neither particularly original nor innovative—than in two other spheres.\n\nFirst, Kissinger had a great talent for cutting through reams of information to find the operational essence within. He could see the real issues in time, moving backward or forward, and envision the next sequence of bureaucratic and diplomatic moves. It was by harnessing this ability that Kissinger was able to turn abstract wishes into concrete policies. This was, for example, his singular achievement in the opening to China. He found a halting and ineffectual American policy driven mainly by shifts in Chinese politics. Urged on by Nixon's geopolitical musings, Kissinger crafted channels and opportunities for movement.\n\nBy the time of the events described in this memoir, however, the Sino-American relationship had been hollowed out by lack of substance and the turmoil of Chinese politics during Mao's last years. In this book the best illustration of Kissinger's operational skill comes in his chapter on the Cyprus crisis of 1974. The analysis of American interests is ordinary, but the analysis of how they could actually be advanced is illuminating, as Kissinger deals first with the Greek moves and then the Turkish response, all the while limiting damage and avoiding ill-considered commitments.\n\nKissinger's footnote will learn that the author of the *Times* article was Sydney Schanberg, who would later come to prominence as a leading American witness to Cambodia's \"killing fields.\"\n\nKissinger's great gifts as a statesman, at least from the evidence in these pages, lay less in analyzing the national interest—where he was neither particularly original nor innovative—than in two other spheres.\n\nFirst, Kissinger had a great talent for cutting through reams of information to find the operational essence within. He could see the real issues in time, moving backward or forward, and envision the next sequence of bureaucratic and diplomatic moves. It was by harnessing this ability that Kissinger was able to turn abstract wishes into concrete policies. This was, for example, his singular achievement in the opening to China. He found a halting and ineffectual American policy driven mainly by shifts in Chinese politics. Urged on by Nixon's geopolitical musings, Kissinger crafted channels and opportunities for movement.\n\nBy the time of the events described in this memoir, however, the Sino-American relationship had been hollowed out by lack of substance and the turmoil of Chinese politics during Mao's last years. In this book the best illustration of Kissinger's operational skill comes in his chapter on the Cyprus crisis of 1974. The analysis of American interests is ordinary, but the analysis of how they could actually be advanced is illuminating, as Kissinger deals first with the Greek moves and then the Turkish response, all the while limiting damage and avoiding ill-considered commitments.\n\nKissinger's footnote will learn that the author of the *Times* article was Sydney Schanberg, who would later come to prominence as a leading American witness to Cambodia's \"killing fields.\"\n\nKissinger's great gifts as a statesman, at least from the evidence in these pages, lay less in analyzing the national interest—where he was neither particularly original nor innovative—than in two other spheres.\n\nFirst, Kissinger had a great talent for cutting through reams of information to find the operational essence within. He could see the real issues in time, moving backward or forward, and envision the next sequence of bureaucratic and diplomatic moves. It was by harnessing this ability that Kissinger was able to turn abstract wishes into concrete policies. This was, for example, his singular achievement in the opening to China. He found a halting and ineffectual American policy driven mainly by shifts in Chinese politics. Urged on by Nixon's geopolitical musings, Kissinger crafted channels and opportunities for movement.\n\nBy the time of the events described in this memoir, however, the Sino-American relationship had been hollowed out by lack of substance and the turmoil of Chinese politics during Mao's last years. In this book the best illustration of Kissinger's operational skill comes in his chapter on the Cyprus crisis of 1974. The analysis of American interests is ordinary, but the analysis of how they could actually be advanced is illuminating, as Kissinger deals first with the Greek moves and then the Turkish response, all the while limiting damage and avoiding ill-considered commitments.\n\nKissinger's footnote will learn that the author of the *Times* article was Sydney Schanberg, who would later come to prominence as a leading American witness to Cambodia's \"killing fields.\"\n\nKissinger's great gifts as a statesman, at least from the evidence in these pages, lay less in analyzing the national interest—where he was neither particularly original nor innovative—than in two other spheres.\n\nFirst, Kissinger had a great talent for cutting through reams of information to find the operational essence within. He could see the real issues in time, moving backward or forward, and envision the next sequence of bureaucratic and diplomatic moves. It was by harnessing this ability that Kissinger was able to turn abstract wishes into concrete policies. This was, for example, his singular achievement in the opening to China. He found a halting and ineffectual American policy driven mainly by shifts in Chinese politics. Urged on by Nixon's geopolitical musings, Kissinger crafted channels and opportunities for movement.\n\nBy the time of the events described in this memoir, however, the Sino-American relationship had been hollowed out by lack of substance and the turmoil of Chinese politics during Mao's last years. In this book the best illustration of Kissinger's operational skill comes in his chapter on the Cyprus crisis of 1974. The analysis of American interests is ordinary, but the analysis of how they could actually be advanced is illuminating, as Kissinger deals first with the Greek moves and then the Turkish response, all the while limiting damage and avoiding ill-considered commitments.\n\nKissinger's footnote will learn that the author of the *Times* article was Sydney Schanberg, who would later come to prominence as a leading American witness to Cambodia's \"killing fields.\"\n\nKissinger's great gifts as a statesman, at least from the evidence in these pages, lay less in analyzing the national interest—where he was neither particularly original nor innovative—than in two other spheres.\n\nFirst, Kissinger had a great talent for cutting through reams of information to find the operational essence within. He could see the real issues in time, moving backward or forward, and envision the next sequence of bureaucratic and diplomatic moves. It was by harnessing this ability that Kissinger was able to turn abstract wishes into concrete policies. This was, for example, his singular achievement in the opening to China. He found a halting and ineffectual American policy driven mainly by shifts in Chinese politics. Urged on by Nixon's geopolitical musings, Kissinger crafted channels and opportunities for movement.\n\nBy the time of the events described in this memoir, however, the Sino-American relationship had been hollowed out by lack of substance and the turmoil of Chinese politics during Mao's last years. In this book the best illustration of Kissinger's operational skill comes in his chapter on the Cyprus crisis of 1974. The analysis of American interests is ordinary, but the analysis of how they could actually be advanced is illuminating, as Kissinger deals first with the Greek moves and then the Turkish response, all the while limiting damage and avoiding ill-considered commitments.\n\nKissinger's footnote will learn that the author of the *Times* article was Sydney Schanberg, who would later come to prominence as a leading American witness to Cambodia's \"killing fields.\"\n\nKissinger's great gifts as a statesman, at least from the evidence in these pages, lay less in analyzing the national interest—where he was neither particularly original nor innovative—than in two other spheres.\n\nFirst, Kissinger had a great talent for cutting through reams of information to find the operational essence within. He could see the real issues in time, moving backward or forward, and envision the next sequence of bureaucratic and diplomatic moves. It was by harnessing this ability that Kissinger was able to turn abstract wishes into concrete policies. This was, for example, his singular achievement in the opening to China. He found a halting and ineffectual American policy driven mainly by shifts in Chinese politics. Urged on by Nixon's geopolitical musings, Kissinger crafted channels and opportunities for movement.\n\nBy the time of the events described in this memoir, however, the Sino-American relationship had been hollowed out by lack of substance and the turmoil of Chinese politics during Mao's last years. In this book the best illustration of Kissinger's operational skill comes in his chapter on the Cyprus crisis of 1974. The analysis of American interests is ordinary, but the analysis of how they could actually be advanced is illuminating, as Kissinger deals first with the Greek moves and then the Turkish response, all the while limiting damage and avoiding ill-considered commitments.\n\nKissinger's footnote will learn that the author of the *Times* article was Sydney Schanberg, who would later come to prominence as a leading American witness to Cambodia's \"killing fields.\"\n\nKissinger's great gifts as a statesman, at least from the evidence in these pages, lay less in analyzing the national interest—where he was neither particularly original nor innovative—than in two other spheres.\n\nFirst, Kissinger had a great talent for cutting through reams of information to find the operational essence within. He could see the real issues in time, moving backward or forward, and envision the next sequence of bureaucratic and diplomatic moves. It was by harnessing this ability that Kissinger was able to turn abstract wishes into concrete policies. This was, for example, his singular achievement in the opening to China. He found a halting and ineffectual American policy driven mainly by shifts in Chinese politics. Urged on by Nixon's geopolitical musings, Kissinger crafted channels and opportunities for movement.\n\nBy the time of the events described in this memoir, however, the Sino-American relationship had been hollowed out by lack of substance and the turmoil of Chinese politics during Mao's last years. In this book the best illustration of Kissinger's operational skill comes in his chapter on the Cyprus crisis of 1974. The analysis of American interests is ordinary, but the analysis of how they could actually be advanced is illuminating, as Kissinger deals first with the Greek moves and then the Turkish response, all the while limiting damage and avoiding ill-considered commitments.\n\nKissinger's footnote will learn that the author of the *Times* article was Sydney Schanberg, who would later come to prominence as a leading American witness to Cambodia's \"killing fields.\"\n\nKissinger's great gifts as a statesman, at least from the evidence in these pages, lay less in analyzing the national interest—where he was neither particularly original nor innovative—than in two other spheres.\n\nFirst, Kissinger had a great talent for cutting through reams of information to find the operational essence within. He could see the real issues in time, moving backward or forward, and envision the next sequence of bureaucratic and diplomatic moves. It was by harnessing this ability that Kissinger was able to turn abstract wishes into concrete policies. This was, for example, his singular achievement in the opening to China. He found a halting and ineffectual American policy driven mainly by shifts in Chinese politics. Urged on by Nixon's geopolitical musings, Kissinger crafted channels and opportunities for movement.\n\nBy the time of the events described in this memoir, however, the Sino-American relationship had been hollowed out by lack of substance and the turmoil of Chinese politics during Mao's last years. In this book the best illustration of Kissinger's operational skill comes in his chapter on the Cyprus crisis of 1974. The analysis of American interests is ordinary, but the analysis of how they could actually be advanced is illuminating, as Kissinger deals first with the Greek moves and then the Turkish response, all the while limiting damage and avoiding ill-considered commitments.\n\nKissinger's footnote will learn that the author of the *Times* article was Sydney Schanberg, who would later come to prominence as a leading American witness to Cambodia's \"killing fields.\"\n\nKissinger's great gifts as a statesman, at least from the evidence in these pages, lay less in analyzing the national interest—where he was neither particularly original nor innovative—than in two other spheres.\n\nFirst, Kissinger had a great talent for cutting through reams of information to find the operational essence within. He could see the real issues in time, moving backward or forward, and envision the next sequence of bureaucratic and diplomatic moves. It was by harnessing this ability that Kissinger was able to turn abstract wishes into concrete policies. This was, for example, his singular achievement in the opening to China. He found a halting and ineffectual American policy driven mainly by shifts in Chinese politics. Urged on by Nixon's geopolitical musings, Kissinger crafted channels and opportunities for movement.\n\nBy the time of the events described in this memoir, however, the Sino-American relationship had been hollowed out by lack of substance and the turmoil of Chinese politics during Mao's last years. In this book the best illustration of Kissinger's operational skill comes in his chapter on the Cyprus crisis of 1974. The analysis of American interests is

The Statesman in Winter

YEARS OF DECLINE

[127]

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Philip Zelikow

Still, once again this Kissinger seems more interesting than the one in his preferred self-portrait. This memoir is the story of a man trying, in his last years in office, to stand by a few ideals of statecraft and conceptions of national honor. To his foes he was benighted but to his friends he might, during these years, have seemed a bit, just a little bit, gallant. ❧

[128]

N

The Business of Statecraft in the Cold War: A Journal of Historical Analysis

Foreign Affairs · May–June 1999

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## Review Essay

# The Statesman in Winter

### Kissinger on the Ford Years

Philip Zelikow

*Years of Renewal*, BY HENRY A. KISSINGER. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999, 1,119 pp. $35.00.

[123]

[L]

Philip Zelikow

## SELF-PORTRAIT OF A MIND

What really were Kissinger's extraordinary gifts? Kissinger himself argues that he (and Nixon) stood out against a background of utopian zealots, both liberal and conservative, because of their realistic analysis of national interests. (Kissinger grants Nixon great strategic insight but portrays him here as given to constant mussing, throwing off sparks of brilliance and foolishness in almost equal measure. It was thus left to Kissinger and H. R. Haldeman,

[x]

AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS

*The Advocator: Kissinger lectures in Manila, 1997*

[125]

Philip Zelikow

REGARDING HENRY

LC

The Statesman in Winter

YEARS OF DECLINE

[127]

LC

Philip Zelikow

Still, once again this Kissinger seems more interesting than the one in his preferred self-portrait. This memoir is the story of a man trying, in his last years in office, to stand by a few ideals of statecraft and conceptions of national honor. To his foes he was benighted but to his friends he might, during these years, have seemed a bit, just a little bit, gallant.®

[128] FOREIGN AFFAIRS · Volume 78 No. 3