DR. HENRY KISSINGER'S OFF-THE-RECORD SESSION

WITH STUDENTS AT GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY IN DEAN KROCH'S OFFICE, TUESDAY, March 22, 1977

Dr. K:

...uh, since I didn't really know what your major was, I thought it would be best if we conducted this as a question and answer session. Also that way, uh, if anything does get out, that and there is a riot I can claim incitement. So uh, why don't we do it on an informal basis with you asking me what is most on your mind.

Question: Maybe I'll lead off, and ask the first question, always the hardest. I was very impressed the other day with a question that I heard posed to you and was even more impressed by the answer. Uh, and I'll pose the question and see if you remember the answer. LAUGHTER. It was a question that Michael ledeen put to you at the Center, as to whether you felt that the detente policy had really led to the encouragement of rather broad-scale Euro-Communism that we are now facing in Europe and trying in some way to come to terms with.

Dr. K: Well, I don't remember the answer, and if you do, will you tell me afterwards...LAUGHTER...whether I'm roughly on the same subject. When you try to understand foreign policy you must see it not in relation to abstract considerations but in relation to/reality that was faced by those who had to make decisions at the time. The problem that we faced when the policy of detente was originated, and indeed I would say a problem that any administration faces, is that whatever our assessment of Soviet motives, and whatever our assessment

of Soviet intentions, we cannot overlook the fact that nuclear weapons have added a new dimension to the relationship among states. The traditional pattern of confrontation among states, the traditional pattern of gaining marginal advantages in the hope of transforming them into qualitative advantages, simply cannot apply, literally, in the nuclear age. A war would have consequences that could destroy humanity. And therefore any President and any Secretary of State have an obligation to deal with the problem of how to reduce the danger of conflict. And it is an unavoidable problem.

A Second issue, that was peculiarly true in the late 60's and early 70's, was that our domestic, that our domestic situation uh, that domestically there was a profound challenge to the authority of government based on the conviction of a significant segment of the population that the government was not doing enough for the prospects of peace. The Vietnam the Vietnam protest was in part generated by the feeling of some of the most sensitive and thoughtful members of the community, that their government had got on the wrong side of the peace issue. And therefore if we wanted to conduct a foreign policy at all, it was necessary to demonstrate that the government was concerned with the fundamental question of peace and war.

And thirdly, in Europe, the adherence to the Alliance and the friendship to the United States was becoming more and more an open issue, partly because of Vietnam and partly because of the same phenomenon that I've described in the United States.

So I would argue that it was essential for the United States, if it wants to conduct a long-term policy, to demonstrate that a major effort was being made to improve the prospects for

peace, to remove the causes of tension. I believe that this
was essential not only for the domestic support for our
our foreign policy, but for the support of the policy of
alliances in Western Europe and Japan and in other parts, and
in other parts of the world. Now, then the question arises,
Did this policy, however necessary, inadvertently strengthen
Euro-Communists? Now I happen to consider Euro-
Communism very much against the United States' interests. And
I'll be glad to discuss that later. But it is my judgment that
Euro-Communism was not encouraged so much by the policy of
detente but because of the malaise that seems to afflict all
industrial societies, east and west of the Iron Curtain, and
which tends to produce governmental instability or loss of
authority in all industrialized societies. Indeed it is a
curious phenomenon that, in the only place that Communism
seems to be gaining ideologically is in Western Europe. In
Eastern Europe one has the phenomenon that a dictatorship that
has been in power for over 30 years has not managed to get
enough popular support so that in any country of Eastern Europe
it could win a free referendum. That's an astonishing phenomenon,
because if you look at the Fascist countries of pre-World War
II Europe, they probably could have won a referendum after they
had been in power and had achieved a monopoly over the means
of communication. So you have this malaise. It
is a serious problem. I believe however, that one of the big
challenges we have in conducting foreign policy is to be able
to embrace several ideas simultaneously. The Soviet Union is
an ideological opponent. The Soviet Union is a SuperPower,
that will try to move into vacuums of power that exist around

Union, whereever it can, will make incremental gains. And our big problem is to prevent the Soviet Union from making these incremental gains and gradually accumulate them to a point where changes in these small trenches lead to a massive change. This puts our foreign policy a totally new dimension. Throughout most of our history, in fact I would say during all of our history, we, were either isolationists or we resisted overwhelming aggression. The big difference between us and the European countries prior to World War II was that the survival of European countries was threatened by changes that were incremental as far as the United States was concerned. No American leader could believe that who possessed Alsace-Lorraine had anything to do with American security, And no American leader thought that a gradual change in the balance of power could threaten the United States.

When you have a relatively narrow margin of safety you must act against potentiality of a threat because when the threat has become overwhelming, it is too late to do something about it. That has been the classic position of the European countries. Great Britain fought innumerable wars over who possessed Antwerp. British foreign policy It was a fixed principle of the policy that no major power should possess Antwerp, because Britain believed rightly or wrongly that its control of the seas depended on preventing the mouth of the Scheldt from being used as a haven in which large navies could be built up. Leaving us out the correctness of this assessment, Britain opposed great power possession of Antwerp even if it was voted unanimously by the population of Antwerp, and even if the government of that government was composed of archangels. It insisted that this was a basic security requirement of Great Britain. And it did so before anything had

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happened in Antwerp, *Now*, the dilemma of our foreign policy is, that most of our debate has been between isolationists and interventionists. The isolationists were of the view that we should keep our hands off all foreign entanglement. The interventionists were in favor of resisting evil, aggressive powers.

*In the interventionists therefore, couched their arguments usually in terms of some finite deadline in which some country would descend upon the world* [illegible] *to achieve world domination. Now luckily for American conduct of policy, the Germans, at least in World War II, were led by men who did go for world domination in one throw of the dice. And we have never had to face incremental changes.*

I tell you frankly, when I was in office, I was attacked quite seriously by conservatives who thought I was too soft on the Communists. But there was an important difference between me and many, most of the conservatives. The conservatives wanted a sort of an ideological crusade, and they were terribly excited about issues such as the low weight (F) of Soviet missiles, which I considered important but not central. I, on the other hand, was greatly concerned about the geo-political balance. I wanted us to be in a position where we could resist incremental changes. I thought, and I know there was next to no support for it last year, #I thought that if we acquiesed in Angola, having a government imposed on it, by the presence of 20,000 foreign troops, *this* would set a pattern in Africa that would make it harder and harder to return African developments to African nations. And that this would in time, [illegible], lead to an

accumulation of changes that were extremely serious. I
believe that this is still the case. We now see in Zaire the
consequence of our failure to do something to--that not the
consequences of our failure to something, but the fact that we
were staffed, stopped by the Congress from doing what was necessary
in Angola. If I'm right, that there are incremental changes
to the balance of power, then one needs a foreign policy that
is prepared to act before one can prove that the balance is
in fact, in jeopardy. One has to act before it is too late to do
something about it, always in ambiguous circumstances. So
Paul, my answer to your question is, yes, the Soviet Union will
try to achieve incremental gains. Those are those attempts
must be resisted with great determination, because whatever the
intrinsic significance of an individual gain, each of them sets
up a pattern that makes the next situation that much more difficult,
until the ground has been cut out from under you completely.

Jules. Did you say you have a basic difference between your
own position and that of the Tri-lateral Commission? ... [Inaudible]...
understand it? And do you think that the policies of the
Tri-lateral Commission's approach will substantially hold for the
whole direction of your own foreign policy.?

Dr. K.: Well, I don't want to offend my friend Erzezinski
because I have to admit that I have not read all of the reports
of the Tri-lateral Commission, with the attention that they
no doubt deserve. But you have to remember there's a
big difference when you're in office and out of office.

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Firstly, when you are out of office there is a great premium on criticizing. Secondly, when you're in office there is a great premium on criticizing. Secondly, when you're out of office you can afford to think more conceptually. In fact you have no choice, because you usually don't know.... what's going on. When you're in office you're overwhelmed with day to day decisions. And therefore, your orientation is much more practical and operational. Now theuh, uh, the Triilateral Commission, as I understood them, means some of their chief arguments were, one: they criticized unilateral approaches, and certainly, and certainly (??) the Commission theoretically I agree with them. Practically, I think if you examine the choices we had, especially with this back to the opening to China, at a time when we had no way of knowing whether a conversation with the Chinese would succeed, even in retrospect I don't see how we could have done it much differently. Because too much was at stake to permit a general discussion. Maybe after I returned we could have informed the Japanese somewhat earlier. It would surely have leaked, and I think any of you who know may have had to deal with Presidents--if a surprise announcement by the President is disturbing you, you have exceedingly great unhappiness in the White House. But I suppose that could have been perhaps done a little better. Now the Triilateral Commission advocated institutionally closer cooperation between Europe, Japan and the United States. And I strongly think it in fact we achieved it. It was from 1974 on, the relationships between Western Europe, the United States/were extremely close. I am leery of formal consultative machinery. Whenever you put a lot of emphasis on creating a formal institution for consul-

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tation, you use up your energy in disputes, in institutional
disputes. We have to keep in mind one other thing which is
unavoidable. There has to be closer, close consultation. And
our allies must have a sense of participation. But we mustn't
use consultation as an alibi for our inaction. What is
achievable at any moment can be determined either by the United
States asking its allies what shall we do; or what the United
States telling its allies what it thinks best to do, and the
reaction of the allies will differ importantly. Now at what
point it looks as if you're throwing you're weight around, at
what point you are creating a sense of impotence by too many
unilateral actions--that cannot be determined in the abstract.
But the main objective of the Tri-lateral Commission, I agree
with, as long as they are not too formalized. But if there's one
aspect of the Tri-lateral Commission that I missed--that is, were
you thinking of something specific?

Question: Is it just that there seems to me that the point to a strong orientation, as you said, Dr. Kissinger, towards Europe and... [inaudible]

Dr. K: Well, I know, they said we gave more emphasis
to our opponents than to our allies. Of course, let's see
what happens in the new administration after a year, because
you don't trust us in human relationships. I'm always suspicious
of people who tell me they are working hard at their relation-
ships. That usually means to me that they're in big trouble.
And how can I don't know what it means to work to give
more emphasis to Western Europe than Japan. We also it is
not

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if one keeps... concepts it would appear that... begins
to.... (airplane going past) on tape

Dr. K: There's absolutely no question that an authoritarian
state has a tactical advantage over a democratic state, And that
it can usually move with greater determination. Or to put it
another way, the requirements of leadership in a democracy are
infinitely more complicated than they are in an authoritarian
state, at least as far as this is concerned. Now, I do not
agree however, that a state has to be constantly on war footing
in order to preserve the balance of power. In fact, if it is
understood by its opponents that it will act to preserve the
balance of power, it will be rarely challenged. It is when there
is a grey area of doubt that the challenges occur. Now if you
look at the concrete cases, I can give you one example: in 1970
the Soviet Union was building a nuclear submarine base in Cuba.
Now we could have said, "what difference does it make--they have
nuclear submarines here anyways, and they can shoot missiles
at us from the Soviet Union. So, what great difference does it
make whether they have a few more nuclear submarines running
around?" On the other hand we felt that if this happened it
would lead to a sequence of events that would at least be perceived
to show a constant advance, and secondly we thought that it was
contrary to the understanding between Kennedy and Kruschev. So
we acted very strongly and very rapidly and the base disappeared
within a week. And we never even put much into the press about
it, except then we had the problem, of some people, including
people in the bureaucracy, that there never was a base there,
And that the whole exercise was unnecessary.

Take Angola last year. Im my judgment, which has now been confirmed by a Colombian Communist writing from Cuba, --if the Congress had let it alone, we would have achieved our principal objective which was to: "We didn't care which of the factions in Angola won; We wanted to prevent one faction from winning through the influx of Soviet arms, and Cuban troops. Once we got the Cubans out, we could have lived with various forms of arrangements, in Angola." Nevertheless you, the people of Angola, called attention to an important problem. If the democratic process cannot have democracy operating effectively without a minimum of confidence in the government, without a minimum of restraint, by the various power centers. If every power center within the country pushes its arguments to the absolute conclusion, ..

END OF SIDE ONE OF TAPE

TAPE #2

...or should do about it. If they become radicals, through outside influences, or through outside military forces, then we have a different situation. Then, what will inevitably happen is that practically all of the African states will go in that direction. That, in turn, is going to affect at least two major international events: ~~one~~, the evolution in southern Africa, and the evolution in the Middle East. In southern Africa it is in our interests, and of course, I think it is overwhelmingly in the interests of the people concerned, that the evolution take a peaceful and moderate form. If it takes a radical form, if the militants prevail, and if ~~one~~ becomes ~~the argument~~ that all issues are settled by the men with the guns, then we're going to have a major race war in southern Africa, within a measurable time, which will have profound consequences also for this country. Leaving aside the strategic implications of what happens, if all the uranium in the world, and all the chromium (chrome) is owned by one block of countries... but I don't even look at this.

The second area where it will have profound implications will be the Middle East. Because if the principal becomes established or the practice becomes established that only militant struggle achieves results, then a balanced solution/very difficult to achieve, and that is ~~However, you cannot prove~~ by the time you can prove that this analysis is right, it will be too late to do something about it. And this is one of the toughest problems that our administration had, and I see this administration has ~~enough~~ with respect to Zaire, of how to act on the basis of a guess, or of a judgment, you cannot prove right when it is made and which by the time it is proved right

Professor Robinson: Professor Kissinger, I'll call you by your only tenured title. You were quick in replying to Dean Krogh's first question, that distinguished between abstractions and the practical difficulties that confront men of affairs as they face a perilous world. At the same time it has struck me that more than one observer of international affairs, that the policy of detente has suggested to the balance of the world, that ~~the ante~~ in dealings with the United States, nuclear parity, ~~and~~ in a perverse sort of way, has perhaps suggested to the balance of the world that the way one gains the attention and cooperation and often even the tendency on our part to look the other way is to attain that degree of military superiority which requires that one be taken seriously. I wonder if ~~over the long haul~~ a policy that is not articulated in terms ~~if~~ of the abstractions, and it strikes me that/the history of warfare has shown nothing else it's shown the ease with which abstractions move people, the practicalities perhaps not~~ if ~~over the long haul, a well-intentioned policy, and one which was pacifistic in its larger projection, will not in fact be traced by the historians as a policy that led to an increase in risk-taking behavior, greater militarization, and a greater tendency on the part of those who don't really know where we will come down on an issue-by-issue basis, to take chances which they would not take were they able to anticipate from us an action based on, ~~my~~ a moral canon?

Dr. K: Well of course we have to see in these
actions, that are allegedly based on moral canon, as soon
as they were proclaimed, they had been "de-linked" from any
practical consequences. So you cannot necessarily assume that
because moral canons are proclaimed, that they will be guides
to concrete action. But leaving that aside, I'd answer yes
that you would have to consider it on two levels. People
forget now what the situation was like in '69 and
'72. If I had been meeting a group like this in '69, I would
have had to--I, there would have been basically two reasons:
1) Students would have liked to see a physical demonstration of the depths human
depravity can reach, and, and secondly, they would have
wanted to discuss with me all the war crimes that the adminis-
tration and its predecessors had conducted. Leaving aside the
students, (someone else said: "sounds more like Harvard than
Georgetown") --I, I don't know about Georgetown, but, but the
300,000 students that came down here twice, once in '69 and
in '70--they did not meet any organized faculty opposition in
any of the many campuses. They uh, where they uh, operated.
If Georgetown was different, I'm delighted. If it was differ-
ent however, it certainly didn't make its difference sufficiently
vocal to be known. But leaving aside what the students were doing, although at that time it was not
an insignificant reality, just go to your library and read what
all the organs of opinion, practically without exception
were preaching at the time. Read the _New York Times_ or the
_Washington Post_ or any of the papers, and you will
find that the big theme was the stupidity of the administration,

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the slowness in taking up ~~with, taking up~~ the options for peace, ~~but~~ the lack of comprehension of the necessities of the nuclear age. ¶ If we wanted to have any maneuvering room, at all, we had practically no choice, leaving aside, except to pursue the policies ~~of~~/policies that we did ~~(23)~~, Secondly, what completely is meant by the alternative to detente? What should we have done? Where ~~should, where~~ should we have confronted the Soviet Union? My view is, and has always been, if the Soviet Union puts one toe across the dividing line, we must resist with utmost determination, and this ~~(27)~~ was shown in Jordan in 1970, and in Cuba, throughout the Mid East War in 1973. ~~(24)~~ in this respect no concrete concessions were made to the Soviet Union ever, on true (23) political issues.¶ Unfortunately on the issue of strategic arms limitations, which became sort of a ~~symbolic~~ issue to many people, a theological debate developed in which the dividing lines were sometimes rather curious, because many of those who were for a tough position on SALT were usually not ready to defend a tough position on the concrete political issues that arose. ~~(25)~~ Paul Nitze (22, Nitze, 23, 24) Nitze, who was here, ~~was~~ willing to do it on both, and I don't include him ~~in~~ this category. But when people attacked detente in the abstract, it isn't so clear what it is that that they really thought the alternative to that policy was and how a non-detente policy should be conducted. Some of the rhetoric could ~~have, would~~ have been better if it had been less elevated and ~~less~~ if less had been planned for it. I never believed the phrase, "a generation of peace"--I never used it either.

~~(26)~~ but, ~~(27)~~ when a ~~tormented~~ President who had been tormented for four years finally had an opportunity to get hold of the

long as we had these huge surpuses of wheat, every administration
had an overwhelming desire, especially as election approached, to
get rid of this wheat to the Soviet Union. Kennedy would have done
it if the shipping unions hadn't stopped it, though the Johnson
tried to do it; the sale of wheat by President Nixon was in
fact handled by the Commerce and Agriculture Departments and was
never a major part of the debate, and the Administration suffered per-
haps from the illusion that the Soviets were doing us a favor
rather than the other way around, partly because we didn't know
about the tremendous shortage that they had in '72 until after
the sale had already been consummated by the very skillful use of
by the Soviet Union of our free market system. They simply bought
up a lot of futures before the Commerce and Agriculture Department...
so I would put that it was a mistake but it was not a mistake
where somebody said we're not going to gain Soviet good will by
selling them a lot of grain. It was in fact segregated from the
general negotiations and never brought up at the Summit,
which had only preceded the thing by three weeks, which was
smart of the Soviets, because they had made a big issue of it at
the Summit, then, we might have gotten involved in taking
a look at their needs. So that was just a foul-up, and now
let's look on the other issues--should we use trade to achieve
benefits from the Soviet Union? Absolutely. And indeed, the
Theory of Linkage was first developed precisely for that purpose.
What benefits can we gain from the Soviet Union? For what trade or
other economic benefits? On the whole, it has been
my view that the first thing we have to ask from the
Soviet Union is moderate behavior internationally. Now can we
our use/influence with the Soviet Union to bring about changes in

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their domestic structure? Well, this is the issue that now
remains to be seen. It is not true that ~~when, that~~ our adminis-
tration did not pay attention to the human rights issue. On the
contrary, when we came into office, four hundred Jews left the
Soviet Union. By 1973, we had brought it up to 38,000--a year.
Each of these figures is a year. We had as much to do with the
release of Solzhenitsyn as any other single group; probably
we had a decisive influence. We were alone responsible for the
release of P. Bukovsky. In Child we brought about the release
of at least 700 prisoners. But our tactic was not to make it
state to state confrontation. Our tactic was to use our influence
to keep it linked to other aspects of our relationship but not
make a formal confrontation. The reason for this was that if
we state formally that certain things must be done affecting the
domestic structure, we're affecting the very core of state
control, especially in the Soviet Union. And it's likely to be
resisted. And if we are not able to do something about it, we
demonstrate our impotence. Now, if we turn out to be wrong, if
this new policy succeeds, if you can do both a verbal challenge
and get human rights benefits, then I would be extremely delighted
because they will then have pursued our objectives with even more
effective methods. If they fail however, so far the evidence is
that the crackdown on the dissidents is stronger than it was
before. So far the evidence is that there is a great danger that
after a year of these declarations when there is no result, the
fate of the dissidents will be worse, than before, because we
will have been demonstrated to be impotent. But I don't want
to touch this yet. And if they succeed, then our tactics were wrong.
In objectives I don't disagree with what

is being put forward. I never have.

Yes. Could you speak up, we've got some National Airport noise?

OK. You used to say in reference to great statements that God sometimes punished them by pursuing their wishes too completely. Has it ever happened to you?

Well I never, I wish I was just going to say I never got into that dilemma.

Glenn: Reflecting on the decision-making process itself a little bit, do you have the constraints and sometimes support of popular demands, public opinion, and so on? In historical perspective, presumably this would get to be more important all along. What do you, where do we go from here on this--here and abroad we have the public's perception of the issues always being a counter in the best designed policy.

Dr. K: My impression is in the United States, the public isn't so much the problem in my last 18 months as Secretary of State I visited 45 cities. And wherever I went I had meetings--I had a big meeting in which there was a question and answer period--about 2-3,000 people. Then I had a small meeting of leaders, then I met newspaper editors and I tried to cover as many of the key elements of the community as I could. I don't think that this country is yet in the position where it is cynical about its possibilities, basically distrustful of its

government. On the other hand, our leadership groups,
especially those who have carried foreign policy either in
the press or in the Establishment, have been so shaken by
the events of the '60's and '70's that they sometimes seem to
have only one desire--to avoid a repetition of their version
of the Vietnam War. For example, when you read papers today
you have the impression that people woke up one morning and
found 550,000 troops in Vietnam. Nobody knew what was going
on; they were misled, lied to, double-crossed, and suddenly we
were in a war that no one knew anything about. I think if you
read journals of the period, or if you read, say, a book, by
Sorenson, the Kennedy book by Sorenson, you'll see that the
wisest people of that period, or at least the people who were
considered the wisest, including most of the leaders of peace
marches of six years later, were the ones who got us in there.
And that Congress voted appropriations year after year, and what
later looked like a credibility gap was a mistaken judgment. It
is true that President Johnson believed every year that he was
on the verge of winning. And he said so, and so did Walt Rostow,
but that wasn't a lie; that was his considered judgment. Certainly
there were tactical perceptions of it, but the main lines were not.
Now the impression is created--you send a million dollars worth
of medical supplies to Zaire, and for God's sakes you better stop
this because the next thing you know is you're going to have
500,000 troops in Africa. This is what it affects our decision
making now. And it is largely confined to the leadership groups.

A second concern that has arisen in the last two years is the
new role of the Congress. When I came to Washington in 1969, you
talk to leaders of the Senate and maybe 20 of the House, and

they could give you a pretty good estimate of what was possible
and what wasn't. And then you proceeded at your own risk. If
you could work out with them some agreement you had a high
probability that it would succeed. Today, there is no leadership
in Congress, there is nobody with whom you can make a conclusive
arrangement. Now this has the paradoxical consequence that it
enhances the role of pressure groups. You have a lobby, and
you have an ethnic lobby which can generate great passions. The
majority of the members don't really care one way or the other.
They can push things through that are of the profoundest jeopardy
to our national security. Not even talking now about such things
as the Tunney Amendment with respect to Angola, look at the
the Turkish aid matter. I cannot think of any other decision
which has hurt every party involved. It has hurt the Greeks, it
has hurt the Cypriots, it has hurt the Turks, it has hurt NATO,
it has made neutralism acceptable in Turkey, and if not settled
within a reasonable time it could lead--our bases in any event have not
been usable in two years. For what? In order to produce a
stalemate. The growth of the Congressional staffs is creating
a situation now where the staffs are negotiating with one's
bureaucracy on a daily basis. And Cabinet Officers are in danger
of losing control over their departments and Senators in danger
of losing control over their staffs. I once talked with a senior
Senator about--it was not a world shaking problem--in which the
Department had an interest. I proposed a compromise. He said
"look, I don't understand enough about this problem. Why don't
you get your staff member and my staff member together, and if
they agree, I'll agree." Now this is what makes the conduct of our
foreign policy very difficult. In addition to the amount of time

that senior officials have to spend before Congressional
Committees and if that doesn't end, then we will have real
difficulties.

Dr. Kissinger, where do we go from here and how much is the same
happening elsewhere?

Dr. K: The trouble is that in Europe the problems are different.
I don't think its public opinion that inhibits policy--it's the weakness of the economies and the smallness of the scale.
I think the Soviet Union has major problems conducting its own foreign policy, but theirs are different from ours. I'd rather have our problems than theirs because theirs are structurally, probably, insoluble. Because they have these complicated bureaucracies competing with each other. I was told I don't know how true this is, but I was told by a senior Soviet that when they have, say a SALT decision to make, the military cannot comment on a political judgment and the politicians, the foreign office, cannot comment on a military judgment. So every dispute between these two departments has to go up to the Politburo.
I was reasonably confident when Gromyko was not yet a member of the Politburo, that I knew more about Soviet deployments than he did, and they just gave him a minimum of briefing.
I think I don't know whether Paul agrees with me, but I think that Soviet foreign office participants in SALT decisions usually have an abysmal knowledge of the context, they knew their positions very well, but they didn't know the strategic situation and they therefore had no flexibility. So their system has their built-in rigidities which are much more severe than ours.

And you have to say that one of the problems in contemporary foreign policy making is that the internal structures of states are so much at the brink of anarchy that it becomes harder and harder to think of the global considerations.

In order to preserve a few moments for informal reception with Dr. Kissinger, I think we better make this the last question, and I'll give it to somebody who has earned it by standing throughout the seminar--Stanislawski (22).

Dr. Kissinger, some people not only economists, but even non-economists, have said that you somewhat neglected the economic side of foreign policy and they said that this perhaps explains why it was rather difficult to relate to the developing world. And I wonder how could you comment on this.

Dr. K: Its absolutely true that I neglected the economic side of foreign policy. When I came to Washington first, I didn't think I knew enough about economics to advise a President on making economic decisions. I therefore strongly favored the creation of an Assistant to the President for International Economics and George Schultz and Pete Peterson performed this role. It took me about three years to learn that you don't have to know a lot about economics to make these decisions. All of the important economic decisions that have to be made at a high level are essentially political in nature. They're not abstruse economic--they are political. After that, I became more active, and very active from '73 on.

With respect to your second question, the neglect of the

world. The idea that you have suffered all of this so that you can set up a system that can vote you out of office, is not all that self-evident. And this is one of the problems with respect to the developing world.

Well, I've not given you a satisfactory answer, but I do want want to stress that in my view the problem of the developing world is not primarily economic. And in fact it is my impression that the margin for additional contributions of the United States through public funds is very narrow, given our public attitudes.

Nodirator: Dr. Kissinger, on behalf of the students and faculty, thank you.

END OF TAPE