THE NEW YORK TIMES, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26, 1972

# The Kissinger Story

By JAMES RESTON

Henry Kissinger has got beyond the news: He is like most of the men of power in Washington: He is going to be left to the psychological novelists.

It is easy to criticize the role President Nixon has given him as principal foreign policy adviser, negotiator and private spokesman in the White House; but leaving that aside for a moment, it is hard to deny Dr. Kissinger's obvious intelligence, unfailing discretion and ceaseless energy.

His latest secret trip to Moscow, following on his quiet and meticulous preparation of the President's mission to Peking, is only the most dramatic illustration of the confidence and power Mr. Nixon has entrusted to him. And it is a tribute to them both that this confidential relationship endures despite Kissinger's insistence on expressing his independent judgments, even when these go against the President's inclinations and decisions.

Just before the White House announced that Kissinger had been conferring for four days with Brezhnev and Gromyko in Moscow, Representative Morris K. Udall, Democrat of Arizona, made a report to the House Civil Service Committee in which he accused Mr. Nixon of building up a "palace guard" of White House advisers who shape national policy without having to answer to either the Congress or the American people.

Well, it is true, and it is hard to deny, as Representative Udall charged, that this growing system of private unaccountable power, protected by "executive privilege," goes against the spirit of separate and equal constitutional powers. Even Dr. Kissinger, who grappled with such questions as a professor at Harvard, would agree that this is a valid constitutional question.

But there are human as well as constitutional questions involved here, and

given the President's assignment, which would go to somebody else, if not Kissinger, Kissinger's performance is beyond anything any other White House aide, from Roosevelt's Hopkins to Kennedy's Bundy or Johnson's Row, has been asked to sustain.

To master the details and complexities of the President's agenda in Peking and Moscow, to keep the summit meetings alive while American troops are in Taiwan and American bombers are over North Vietnam, to keep the fundamental differences straight and still find areas for agreement and common interest—all this is hard enough.

But. Kissinger has taken on other responsibilities almost as delicate and arduous. Somehow he has managed to keep a narrow line of communication open to the President's critics in the universities, the Congress and the press. He has been loyal to the President without ignoring or evading the opposition or assuming bad faith on the part of those who oppose the war.

And this has not been easy. He has been scalded and vilified by many of his former university colleagues and even by some of his oldest friends in the university community, but he has heard them out. He has tried to get around the constitutional question and the charge that he was both powerful and unavailable by meeting privately with Chairman Fulbright of the Foreign Relations Committee and other members of the Congress and submitting to the most searching questions.

Even in the heat of these endless crises over the war and trade and monetary policy, he has found time early in the morning before breakfast or late at night to listen to the passionate anxieties of the world he lived in before he got caught up, almost by accident, in the world of White House power.

He has been asked many times why he serves an Administration whose policies divide the nation; why use all this intelligence and energy for all this pointless misery and death? But, for all his doubts about the bombing and his yearning for unity, he does not accept the premise and goes on believing in the President's objectives.

So many ugly things have been said about all this and even thrown in his teeth: He loves power, loves all the notoriety and the secret trips in the night and the opportunity to put thought to action in the Kremlin and the Forbidden City (who wouldn't?), but through it all he has attempted many things most of his colleagues in this Administration have avoided, and rescued a respect denied others.

All this is obviously subject to argument, beginning with Udall's question about whether even good and intelligent men should be given such power beyond reach of the Congress; but something still has to be said for Kissinger.

How he performs this delicate and dangerous role is a miracle which defies physical and intellectual endurance. He felt confident about the President's visit to Peking because he had been there and probed the quality of Chou En-lai's mind. A couple of weeks ago he was worried about the Moscow trip because he had no feeling about Brezhnev. Now, presumably, he has. But how he goes on at this pace is a mystery, and intelligent and tough as he is, maybe even a danger.

We have a Government now of men, not really of laws and accepted procedures. We have an alliance with Chou En-lai but not yet with China. But if this is the way it is to be, it is not Kissinger's fault, and he is a man. He is an instrument of the President, but he has played his role with astonishing courage, patience and skill.

WESTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY

BOWLING GREEN, KENTUCKY
42101

Department of Government

Georg R. Bluhm

May 6, 1970

Dr Henry A. Kissinger
Assistant to the President
National Security Council, The White House, Washington, D.C.

A conversation with you one afternoon in October 1964 at Harvard remains unforgettable for me. I remember your subsequent interest in me, and particularly, that it was your initiative that brought me to the I.S.S. in London, where much provincialism in my thinking came to an end. Recalling this import upon my way, I feel urged to write this letter to you. And I hope, indeed, that you may be able despite all of your burden to read it personally.

I want to inform you about one project that I am going to realize now. I intend to write a book that attempts to line out a theory of West German foreign policy. In difference to Wolfram Hanrieder and Karl Kaiser, I plan a strictly systematic study, "ad usum Delphini": What rational goals could be pursued with rationalized methods in the given system (with reflection on the system's changing tendencies)?

Any sketchy outline is insufficient, to be sure. Nevertheless, I think I should indicate a few of my conceptual approaches:

The Bipolarity of the international system is coming to its end: The ascendency of Red China has opened a transitional period, which is not the least characterized by the-oft-asserted-Soviet inclination to arrangement and settlement with "the West." Moreover, bipolarity is outdated, because the American domestic structure does not legitimize appropriate policies, especially such policies which would be necessary to accomplish the "monopolistic" concepts of President Kennedy's shape of U.S. foreign policy. (I must admit, however, that the fundamental, underlying this feature of the American political process, namely the pretension of the unrestricted competence of the individual, is exactly what attracts me mightily to this country, and would render it extremely difficult and sad, should I ever go back to Europe and Germany.)

[L.C.]

The "Nixon Doctrine" has announced a remedy for that deficiency. As far as West Europe is concerned, the political union, at least as a Confederation would be required. Which leads to the German problem.

Here is my second conceptual fundamental: The main issue of West German foreign policy is not "reunification" or another "acceptable solution" of the German partition, e.g. a changed system in East Germany acceptable to, and bearable for, the population. It is rather the rejection and elimination of the Soviet control - and intervention- claim against the Federal Republic.

To clarify this facets, and other aspects, for instance the stagnation of Europe, possibilities, limits, and conditions of West German impact and initiative for the European advancement, and in this regard chances, effects, and requirements of the "Russian Option" of West Germany's foreign policy, I shall go to Germany this summer. (In the set of my personal values and preferences I regard that "Russian Option"--if it exists at all, what I try to find out--only as a lever to enforce the political unification of West Europe, if possible.)

X

I have got a modest grant of this university to do research in Europe. In Bonn I shall see Stoltenberg, Barzel, Strauss and some personal friends in the CDU, also Helmut Schmidt and perhaps Bahr and Dahrendorf. I want to know their perception of the given set of international conditions and their reaction in discussed alternatives, particularly for the improvement and correction of my own conception.

Allow me, please, to say it this way: If you were now still at Harvard, I would ask you to give me an opportunity to discuss with you my project, my approaches, and the various aspects of the problem. Under the given conditions, however, I want at least to inform you about my project and my next steps in its pursuit, and to express my deep regret, that your burden of work, and the requirements of your position may prevent such a chance. Should you, however, not regard it this way, I would like you to know, that I am prepared for an exchange of ideas and views under any requested condition, and in any arrangement to your convenience.

With my best wishes, I remain always

[LC]

Community Forum

CLEVELAND JEWISH NEWS Sept. 14, 1973

Why Nasser Portrait
At UFW Funeral?

We Jews are justly proud of our
liberal tradition in regard to
social justice. But sometimes I
wonder whether we are exploi-
ted.

Without entering into the con-
troversy regarding the United
Farm Workers, a picture and
news item regarding Cesar Cha-
vez appeared disquieting. The
New York Post, on Aug. 18,
carried an Associated Press
Wirephoto. It shows Chavez
leading a procession of mourners
through Delano, Calif., in
memory of Nagi Darfullah.
Yemeni farm worker. His death
resulted from a fight with a
sheriff's deputy.

Looming prominently in the
picture is a large portrait of the
late Gamai Nasser. What does
Nasser have to do with the
striking UFW? Was he such an
apostle of true social justice? I
found the Nasser portrait as
inexplicable as it was unaccept-
able in a march for freedom.

RABBI RUDOLPH M.
ROSENTHAL
Temple on the Heights

Kissinger Not First
Foreign-Born Secretary

On Aug. 31 you carried a story
in "The Jewish World in Brief"
section (page 4) in which it was

stated that "Dr. Kissinger...the
first Jew and the first foreign-
born citizen in U.S. history to be
nominated secretary of state...."

In the interest of accuracy,
may I point out that Albert
Gallatin, secretary of state under
Thomas Jefferson, was Swiss-
born. His part in the Louisiana
Purchase led to a river being
named after him in Montana, as
well as several other geographic
sites, including Gallatin Peak
and Gallatin Gateway, both south
of Bozeman.

WILLIAM J. BLUM
Cleveland

More Community Forum on
Page 15.

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## THE VALOR OF IGNORANCE

otherwise. War between wealth and militant energy has but one end, the old doom of the Purple Persian. Such a conflict is only a contest between the hollow panoply of warfare and an actual combatant; the plumed cadaver of a Cid against a live Moor; thunder and smoke on one side, lightning and fire on the other. The Battle of Issus, the Sack of Rome, Marengo, Sedan, Liaou Yang—such are the endless epitaphs of gold against steel, corpulence against muscle, pomposity against discipline.

Not unlike Midas, nations succumbing to the excess of gold soon come to beg deliverance from it. But not unto them is it given that they may turn to the waters of Pactolus for the washing away of it. The cleansing of their folly belongs only to those streams that drain down from the hearts of nations.

Wealth in the time of war, no matter how limitless, can do no more than provide arms and munitions, pay the salaries of soldiers, provide their subsistence, clothing and transportation. Gold illimitable cannot buy them valor, nor self-sacrifice, nor endurance, nor discipline nor military knowledge. Gold-purchased heroism is a conception only possible to a nation sunk in the lowest depths of commercialism. In fact, no heroic action has ever, in all the turbulence of the human race, been conceived and executed with ducats before and behind it. Gold may harness men for war, but it has never been able to make them conquer when opposed to those whose discipline has been kneaded into the marrow

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## THE VALOR OF IGNORANCE

of their bones and the inner chambers of their hearts.

The expense of conducting a war is not, simultaneously, the same with any two nations, notwithstanding the fact that the price of armaments may be identical to all of them. War expenditures are in proportion to the wealth of the nation itself. The cost of a war carried on by England or this Republic is manifold greater than if waged by any other nation. Should the United States to-day be obliged to place in the field the same number of men, for the same length of time, under the same conditions, as did the Japanese in their war with Russia, the salaries alone would nearly equal the entire war expense of the Japanese; while the total expense would equal a sum as proportionately greater as is the wealth of this Republic greater than that of Japan, plus its concomitant corruption.

In the Civil War of the United States, nearly two hundred millions were alone expended in bounties. Taking into consideration the increased values now prevailing in this country as compared to the values of that period, bounties would, under this head, be treble, or alone equalling the entire expenditure of Japan in the war with Russia. In addition to this, the non-American population at that time was comparatively insignificant, hence patriotism stood in proportionately high ratio, while to-day the heterogeneity of population is over fifty per cent. How much gold, therefore, would now be required to en-

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## THE VALOR OF IGNORANCE

list these people into the pain and sacrifice of war—
to coax them from their rich labors to die for a land
they regard only as the wide, fat fields of the harvest
moon?

The cost of prosecuting a war is not only propor-
tionate to the wealth of the nation, but the actual
maintenance of the individual soldier stands in ratio
to the cost of living and rate of wages. The wage
of a stone-mason, which is high or low according to
the opulence or the frugality of a nation, is in the
United States from four to five dollars a day; in
Japan, forty-five cents; in Europe, about ninety cents,
and other labor in like proportion. The high cost of
living that prevails in an opulent nation not only
necessitates high wages, but this in turn brings about
an increase, perhaps proportionate, perhaps excessive
as inflated by trusts, in the price of all materials,
foodstuffs, and munitions used in war as well as in
peace.

Thus, European nations in time of peace maintain
armies from three hundred and fifty thousand to
five hundred thousand men and officers, together
with reserves of regulars varying from two to five
million, with a proportionate number of horses and
guns, for the same money that the United States is
obliged to expend to maintain fifty thousand troops
with no reserve of regulars. Japan could support a
standing peace army exceeding one million men for
the same amount of money this Republic now spends
on fifty thousand. This proportion, which exists

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## THE VALOR OF IGNORANCE

in time of peace, becomes even more excessive in
time of war; for whenever war involves a country
there exists in all preparation an extravagance that
is also proportionate to the wealth of the nation.

During the last few years of peace, from 1901 to
1907, the United States Government has expended
on the army and navy over fourteen hundred million
dollars: a sum exceeding the combined cost to Japan
of the Chinese War and the Russian War, as well
as the entire maintenance of her forces during the
intervening years of peace. Yet to-day the United
States possesses no army, while the navy is only one-
half the size it should be to defend its shores.

Poverty never begets extravagance, and frugality
is never the offspring of wealth. Poverty is pro-
ductive of every human exertion, while wealth is the
parent of every form of corruption. The richer a
nation is in time of peace, the poorer it is in time of
war.

Corruption exists in direct ratio to the wealth of a
nation, or, if the nation is in a decadent state, as
India, China, and Spain, it is extant in vaster pro-
portions. Though the wealth of a nation may de-
cline, corruption remains constant in ratio to the
maximum wealth of the past.

A nation can become so rich that its wealth will
bankrupt it in a war with a country poor but frugal
and warlike.

Excessive national wealth is responsible for an-
other factor that even in itself is productive of utter

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## THE VALOR OF IGNORANCE

incapacity to execute warlike measures or even to prevent the collapse of a nation in war—the ener-
vation through luxury, feminism, theorism, or the
decay of martial inclination and military capacity.
This sooner or later begins to show itself in every
phase of life, from National Assemblies to Debating
Societies, Communism, Idealism, Universalism, and
innumerable other bright, fantastic tapestries that
the ingenuity of man weaves through woof and warp
of human hopes and their follies.

Wealth is a factor in the naval and military
strength of a nation only so long as it is regarded
in its true and subordinate capacity: to build battle-
ships, but not to fight them; to buy arms, not valor;
to manufacture powder, not patriotism. But when
wealth becomes so paramount in a nation's life that
it forms the chief ambition of individual efforts, then
the factors that constitute military strength fall
away.

The only poverty from which a nation suffers
in war is poverty resulting from the excesses of
opulence.

Only so long as national wealth remains entirely
subordinate to public honors and aspirations can it
be utilized to increase the greatness of a nation;
and only so long as the chivalry and virtue of a
people are held aloof from it can the country be con-
sidered as either free or rich. When wealth, how-
ever, becomes the master, no words can fitly de-
scribe the poverty of the state.

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## THE VALOR OF IGNORANCE

The contemplation of the inutility of wealth to
defend itself is not without bitterness, hence it is
that man and whole nations of men shrink from the
knowledge of its impotency. The sad sophistry
of commercialism points to vast cities adorned by
every accessory of luxury and art, to factories, crafts
and sciences innumerable; to education, the hum of
industry, millionaires, constitution and statistics as
illustrative of the power and resources of riches.
How, therefore, for in such manner do men reason,
can any nation or body or men lacking in these
capabilities, these apparently illimitable potential-
ities of civilization and power, contemplate other
than annihilation in war?

How pitiable is all this! Yet it has ever been
that man wilfully hides, not alone from those whom
they would deceive, but from themselves, the fact
that the forces of war are not identical with those of
peace. What is necessary to one has nothing to do
with the other. The genius of battle has no more
to do with that of peace than have the tides of the
sea to do with the building of the sand-dunes they
wash away; or lightning with the growth of the cen-
tury-old oak that it blasts forever in a second of
time.

Commercial acumen is necessary to accumulate
wealth, but that capacity possesses not the slightest
ability to prevent the destruction of its edifices or
accumulations. Nay, more, wealth so benumbs
man's ability to comprehend its limitations that,

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## THE VALOR OF IGNORANCE

unless both combatants are simultaneously suffering from the same green sickness of this misconception, it is self-destructive and its riches only add to the splendor of its sarcophagus.

Who were there among the marble cities of Greece, or within the purple empires of Darius, Egypt or India, with their wealth, scholars, merchants, theorists, commerce and gold-studded soldiery, that could conceive of a beardless youth coming down from the wild highlands of Epirus, from the bleak hillsides of Macedonia, to conquer, not one, but all of them?

Who, in the luxurious kingdoms of Asia, feared the skin-robed Hun; who, in Rome, dreaded the canine-toothed Goths and Vandals whose wealth did not exceed the skins that clothed them or the spear-heads and swords in their hands; whose revenues were no more than the leaves of forest trees, the thunder of heaven, the flints of earth?

Who, some thirteen centuries ago, could surmise that a melancholy epileptic would find in the rocks and sands and wandering tribes of Arabia a force to grind into small dust the most powerful empires in the world; and from India to France destroy governments, alter laws, customs and religions? Yet these things happened, and the fragile edifices of wealth crumbled in a day, and through his roaring funnel balance sheets of trade vanished like so much waste paper.

Who, in the fabulously rich empires of China,

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## THE VALOR OF IGNORANCE

India, Persia and the whole Asian world, as well as that of Europe, contemplated the issuance of the Scourge of God from the semi-mythical depths of Tartary? Yet this also came about one sombre day when, on the desolate banks of the Orkhan, Genghis gathered together his cow-tail banners from the nine desolate wastes of Shamo and swooped down upon the world. His numbers were fewer than the cities he razed; while his revenues were but his genius, his horsemen's valor and the milk of his desert mares.

A century ago, Europe watched complacently the self-devastation of France. The monarchy had been murdered; the nobility guillotined; commerce ruined; manufactures destroyed; the country-side was a tangled thicket presided over by a half-starved and tattered people. The wealth of the nation had gone up in the bonfire of the Republic. Suddenly, a little sallow man took hold of these famished people, this nation devoid of commerce, manufactures or revenues, and with its poverty conquered the whole of incredulous Europe.

Only a few years since, on some mountainous islands, a people little known fought among themselves with weapons as primitive as those of the siege of Troy. Their entire revenues were less than an American city, the cultivable land of the whole empire less than one-half the area of Illinois. Suddenly they also rose up, and, with the perennial power of poverty, in less than one decade disem-

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## THE VALOR OF IGNORANCE

bowelled the two vainest and vastest empires on earth, causing the whole world to whisper in old and stale wonder at this New Sun that rose, with the suddenness of an unknown comet, out of the Eastern Sea.

In these widely separated incidents of history we perceive how futile it is to consider wealth in the remotest degree a factor of military prowess. Every age with its diversity of weapons, every sociological and ethnological phase of humanity, whether in the Orient or the Occident, past or present, proves the invariability of these conclusions. The truth of this lies in the fact that wealth, no matter how vast, can never supply a nation with what constitutes the true material of warfare. All the riches of the world cannot supply national unity nor that perseverance which is unappalled by disaster. Yet unity of action and fearlessness of purpose has never, nor ever will, be lacking in whatever resources are necessary to carry on their conquests.

In a nation ruled by opulence, men and the souls of men are not only the valets of wealth, but the nation itself is obsequious to it. The government pursues its course through a labyrinthine way: the interests of countless individuals are paramount to those of state, and national ambition ceases to exist. The commonwealth in protecting individual interests resorts to expedients that are as temporary as the lives of those who make them. Yet to these transitory acts the integrity of national greatness is

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sacrificed. When war falls upon such a nation it becomes disunited. In the same myriad-minded manner that it carried on the mercantile projects of peace it attempts the conduct of a war; then disintegration, disaster and destruction ensue.

On the other hand, in a military power where individuals are considered only as instruments of its greatness, the dreadful intentness of its aims knows no discouragement, the straightforwardness of its progress no hesitation, the terribleness of its energy no fatigue. Neither property nor mankind disturb its calculations. It is systematic, simple in design, relentless in prosecution. Theories of finance carry with them no awe; revenues and commerce it takes as it finds them; millionaires and economists strike no terror to its heart, for the excise and stamp duties it levies are not on material resources, but on the souls and passions and ambitions of men. These resources are exhaustless, and so long as nations conceptualise these facts from themselves, so long must they suffer and be vanquished and die.