**Theological Cast.** In obscuring the real issue, which I admit is a valid one, the opposition has often raised three other objections: verification, reduction, and human rights. We run a great risk of finding that each of these slogans can be used against a long-range sustainable strategy. I have already stated my views about reduction. Somebody has to explain two things to the American people — in what specific way the reductions being discussed improve our security. That should be something that is objectively determinable. And what other consequences flow from this reassessment of the strategy? I do not believe that is very easy. And therefore many of the current discussions have a theological cast.

Second, verification. Verification cannot create a good agreement — it cannot make a bad agreement valuable. It can only make a good agreement enforceable. And I believe that, if you study the INF agreement, for example, you will find that the verification provisions may be barely adequate with respect to INF, which reduces itself to zero, and in which the Soviets have already achieved a great deal by the fact of the agreement, and therefore have a low incentive to violate it.

**Analyzing Violations.** But when you get into strategic forces, it is not enough to extol the benefits of the reductions. There has to be a careful analysis of the scale of the violation necessary to overturn the equilibrium, in which the lower the total numbers, the greater the possibility that an otherwise minor violation could be decisive. And there has to be some analysis of what to do when a violation is discovered.

We have known about a radar in Krasnoyarsk, which happens to be 1,000 miles from where it is permitted. But our public discussion has been whether it is significant strategically. It is a new doctrine that insignificant violations of an agreement are permitted — an insignificant violation the size of three football fields, 1,000 miles from where it is permitted to be. These are problems that require analysis.

**Need to Develop Criteria.** Now I am not saying that we cannot and should not negotiate with the Soviets. I believe it has been clearly demonstrated that we will not maintain public support or alliance cohesion without negotiation. But we need to define properly the causes of tensions. We need to define the remedies.

The Chinese approach to negotiations with the Soviets in effect says, "Glasnost" is your problem, and we don't care what kind of suits you wear. We have three problems in our relations with you: Soviet troops at our borders; Soviet troops in Afghanistan; and above all, Vietnamese troops supported by the Soviets in Cambodia. One of them has to be solved before there can be improvement. Three have to be solved before there can be normalization.

I hold no brief for those three objectives. But they have the advantage of concreteness, and they permit criteria by which progress can be measured. Is it impossible for the democracies to develop their own set of criteria? On a basis that takes everybody's interests into account, but still precise criteria on which a truly reciprocal negotiation can be based? That is the fundamental issue of our period. It cannot be solved by slogans. And in that sense, I think the real issue of East-West relations is within ourselves.

6

Kissinger blasts arms cut policy,
says negotiations endanger SDI

By Martin Sieff
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger delivered an outspoken attack last night on the administration's strategic arms reduction policy and expressed concern that the Strategic Defense Initiative is in danger in current U.S.-Soviet negotiations.

"I find it difficult to understand the advantage to our security of any of the agreements which have been concluded or are in negotiation," Mr. Kissinger said in remarks to a Heritage Foundation forum.

"The damage cannot be undone," he said in reference to the intermediate nuclear forces agreement signed last month by President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. "But this process must not be repeated with a 50 percent reduction [in strategic arms] now under negotiation..."

"I cannot visualize how the agreement could be verified or how even one of the categories of weapons could be negotiated between now and June," Mr. Kissinger said.

"I have opposed the distinction [in negotiations] between research and development of SDI and its deployment," the former national security adviser noted. "We might negotiate the size of SDI or the rate of deployment, but I am very worried that the deployment ban and the linking of other distinctions to the strict interpretation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty will lead to the atrophy of SDI.

"We are selling SDI without getting anything for it at all," he said.

Mr. Kissinger said he supported SDI not as a means to live in a nu-

Henry A. Kissinger

clear free world, but to protect the U.S. retaliatory force against third country attacks and small scale hostilities.

"It seems to me irresponsible for a government in a world with nuclear weapons to tell its people that their security depends on the capacity of the other side to destroy them without doing what they can to protect them," he said.

"I am not saying that we cannot and should not negotiate with the Soviets." Mr. Kissinger said. "But we need to define properly the cause of tensions with them and the remedies."

He praised the Chinese approach in negotiations with the Soviet Union.

"They say glasnost is your prob-

lem, but we have three problems with you. One, of them has to be solved before there can be an improvement in our relations, and all three have to be solved before there is normalization," said Mr. Kissinger.

The verification agreements for the INF treaty, Mr. Kissinger said, "may be barely tolerable. The Soviets have already achieved a great deal by the fact of the agreement and therefore have a low incentive to violate it."

Verification in connection with a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty now being negotiated in Geneva raises much more serious questions, however, he said. "There has to be some incentive on what we do when a violation is discovered," Mr. Kissinger said.

Verification, he said, "cannot make a bad agreement valuable. It can only make a good agreement enforceable."

Mr. Kissinger insisted that "the fewest wars have been started by arms races. The greatest have been started by unresolved political issues. Therefore it seems to me necessary to address these issues."

He argued that it is still not too late to restore geopolitical linkages to the cuts in superpower strategic arms now being discussed.

"The linkage I feel very strongly about is that we cannot precede without an explicit linkage on conventional disarmament and an opening of negotiations on political issues [such as Central America and Angola]," Mr. Kissinger said.

"Otherwise we slide into a world in the 1990s where foreign policy dilemmas will multiply, without our having the capability to handle them," he said.

SUPPLEMENTAL: THURSDAY, 11 FEBRUARY 1988

Washington Inquirer

22 JANUARY 1988

Pg. 1

# Kissinger Warns of Danger

By THOMAS G. GULICK

Henry Kissinger told this reporter that the prospects for world war "are greater" if the U.S. continues on its present course of arms control negotiations with the Soviets together with increased cutbacks in the Strategic Defense Initiative and a continued ban on SDI deployment.

Responding to our question following his major address at The Heritage Foundation last Friday, Kissinger added that the prospect of a U.S. war with the Soviets would depend on what happens inside the Soviet Union over the next decade.

"I foresee possible conflict in Eastern Europe, for instance," Kissinger said. Earlier, in his speech at Heritage, Kissinger asked the question: "What will happen in Eastern Europe if these reforms [of Gorbachev's 'perestroika' movement] continue?"

The Kissinger speech, a possible attempt by the former Secretary of State to court the conservative community in the face of a possible Bush presidency, according to one conservative political analyst present at the gathering, attacked the current drive to sign sweeping arms control agreements with the Soviet Union on

the part of the Reagan Administration. Kissinger was particularly adamant in denouncing the apparent attempt by the Administration to quickly conclude an agreement with the Soviets for a 50% reduction of strategic nuclear weapons—possibly as early as this June. Kissinger said he could not "visualize how that agreement could possibly be negotiated [that soon]."

Kissinger said he endorsed the Strategic Defense Initiative but said he felt it would atrophy if a ban on SDI deployment and "linking of other restrictions to the strict interpretation of the ABM treaty [continued]."

In addition to developing and deploying SDI, Kissinger said that the concessions made to the Soviets by the Reagan Administration in the INF Treaty should not be repeated in U.S. negotiations with the Soviets over a possible 50 percent cut in strategic nuclear weapons.

"It is absolutely inconceivable," said Kissinger, that all nuclear weapons can be abolished "as the President seems to believe." He added that any attempt to negotiate away all nuclear weapons would be payed for at a "high price, including SDI."

As to the Soviet Union's true strategic objectives, Kissinger said that the Soviets: "... are probably not planning a first strike, which is not saying they do not want a superior military capability."

He added that he felt the Soviets would rely strategically on their superiority in conventional weapons, "the Eurasian land mass and their interior lines of communication, and that their current strategy is to deprive the West of the capacity and the will to use nuclear retaliation against conventional [military] pressure, or

attack."

He said that the Soviets, given present U.S.-Soviet nuclear deployments and U.S. lack of SDI, could achieve a first-strike capacity, while the U.S. could not. U.S. first-strike capacity diminishes even more, he added, if the U.S. agrees to a 50 percent cut in strategic nuclear forces in negotiations with the U.S.S.R.

Kissinger said there must be some linkage between the negotiation of nuclear disarmament and conventional [weapons] disarmament. The Soviet conventional military forces to date have achieved numerical superiority over both U.S. and NATO forces in Europe, which at least one expert says is the focus of a Soviet strategy of intimidation or actual military attack, providing that the possibility of U.S./NATO nuclear retaliation can be neutralized.

The high-ranking Czech defector, Major General Jan Sejna, who had access to the Soviet global strategic plan, maintains that Soviet long-range strategy calls for a nuclear first-strike on the U.S. and an overland invasion of Western Europe, given Soviet achievement of superiority in strategic nuclear forces. The current U.S. edge in those forces, Sejna told this reporter, prevents a Soviet first strike on the U.S. The object of this strategy, according to Sejna, would be the Soviet seizure of European wealth, industry and technology in order to bolster a dying Soviet economy. Sejna says that because of this Soviet strategic plan the rapid deployment of SDI systems is imperative. He also believes that the real objective of all current Soviet arms control overtures is the effective destruction of the American SDI.

## TERROR... CONTINUED

even though they are somewhat behind us in technology. They are much more likely to launch an attack on the United States—or even more likely on some third country—when they are certain that their strategic-defense system can deal with any retaliation.

This is the real danger that must be avoided. They will not attack because they fear our defense. They may attack when they no longer fear our retaliation.

Thus, the only American course of action that will lead to a safer world is to persuade the Russians that we have a secure military reserve, that our defense will prevent their attack from achieving its objectives.

We are still, as President Kennedy said, being "tempered by a hard and bitter peace." In such a peace, it is important to recognize our strengths, to use them to preserve technical leader-

ship, to seek friends and allies where we can, and to know our adversaries.

We should have faith in our ability to deal with the problems we face. This is the way great nations have always behaved. ☐

Hans Mark is the chancellor of the University of Texas system. He is currently a member of the Strategic Defense Initiative Advisory Committee for the Department of Defense. He was formerly deputy administrator of NASA and Secretary of the Air Force.

B 17

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

29 JANUARY 1988

Pg. 3-1

A site near Fort Worth is a finalist for the world's largest atom smasher. What will it do? Even scientists can only speculate about what they will learn from the

# Super collider

STORIES BY JACKIE KOSZCZUK

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

WASHINGTON — It's a high-dollar adven-
ture in superlatives.

It's called the world's largest scientific in-
strument.

And at $4.4 billion, the proposed Superconducting Super Collider is perhaps the most expensive public works project, aside from the space program, since President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal of the 1930s.

Texas and six other states are vying to host

the project. In
many cases they're
offering the U.S.
Energy Department
shopping publicly
financed incentives.
In return, the
winner hopes to get
jobs and an infu-
sion of cash into its
economy.

What will the
mammoth instru-
ment do eventual-
ly?

Even the nation's
top physicists can
only guess what the
world's newest and
most sophisticated

atom smasher would mean for the future of
technology and industry in the United States.

"It's hard to imagine what kind of practical
results are going to follow," said Nobel laure-
ate Steven Weinberg, a physicist at the Univer-
sity of Texas at Austin.

Weinberg, who won the Nobel physics prize in 1979, served on a committee that last month narrowed the field from 36 proposed sites to the present contenders. Included was a site near Waxahachie, 35 miles southeast of Fort Worth.

"In a way it's like the space program."
Weinberg said. "I don't know what you think
you are going to learn by going to the moon,
but you wind up learning a lot by going there."

The super collider, to be far more powerful
than existing accelerators, would bash atomic
particles together, splitting them into even tini-

er particles of matter, and, it is hoped,
revealing the unknown forces that
guide them.

Because the super collider is so much
larger, the beams have room to accel-
erate to speeds not possible in smaller
atom smashers already in operation.

But it may be 20 years before knowl-
edge gleaned from the huge machine
can be applied, said Austin Gleeson, a
physicist at UT in Austin who served
on Gov. Bill Clements' advisory panel
on the super collider.

He likened the super collider's poten-
tial to the development of nuclear pow-
er, which began with research into the
atomic nucleus in the 1940s.

"It was not until the 1980s that 10 percent of our power was generated by nuclear plants," he said. "There's a long process for all of these things. The point is, you don't get the benefits 40 years later if you don't start now with the fundamental research."

Uncertainty over practical gains

from the super collider has ignited de-
bate in the scientific community over
its cost.

> Supporters defend its yet unlocked potential and are quick to point out advances in medical, energy and defense technology that have spun off from the design phases for the super collider.

Detractors call it a white elephant that will gobble public money and predict it will starve scientific endeavors offering more tangible gains for society.

"Why don't they be honest with us?"
said Rustum Roy, director of Pennsyl-
vania State University's Program on
Science, Technology and Society.
"Why don't they just say, 'We want to
do nothing but science, and we'd like
you to pay the bill for us.'"

But all agree that as particle accelera-
tors go, this one would be smashing.

The super collider would be able to hurl beams of subatomic particles through an underground tunnel at nearly the speed of light.

When the beams cross paths at obser-
vation points along the tunnel, the high-
energy collisions would simulate condi-
tions less than one trillionth of a second
after the so-called Big Bang at the cre-
ation of the universe.

Of eight accelerators operating
around the world, the super collider's
atomic collision course of about 53
miles would dwarf even the largest, the

CONTINUED NEXT PAGE

B 18

THE SUMMIT

# The Dangers Ahead

The former secretary of state calls for ratification of the INF treaty, but warns against making deep cuts in our nuclear arsenal during the next round of arms talks

BY HENRY A. KISSINGER

On the first day of the Gorbachev visit, I found myself at a Soviet Embassy reception for "public figures"—a term that seemed to cover everyone from rock stars and evangelists to professors and former cabinet officers. Circulating urbanely

through the ornate Victorian reception rooms, Gorbachev stopped to chat with me. It was necessary to change international relations, he said. Everybody would have to re-examine previous assumptions. He was counting on my contribution.

A little later, while addressing the entire assembly, Gorbachev again invited me to give him the benefit of my views about the future of international relations. With most of the audience in near rapture, I was reluctant to respond in the language of geopolitics. But had I done so, I would have said something like this: "Mr. General Secretary, the arms race is a symptom of tensions that go back at least 40 years and transcend personalities. I do not believe that peace is as easy to establish as a mood. A change of conduct is needed, an end to the tendency to exploit every dissatisfaction to weaken the existing structures. The United

States and the Soviet Union should see what kind of a world we want in the year 2000, and, if we agree, work back from there."

I was in Washington thanks to the courtesy of President and Mrs. Reagan, who invited me to all the public functions of the first day, including the state dinner. The mood of euphoria overwhelmed controversial subjects. The president did invoke human rights and regional conflicts, but one could not avoid the impression that these utterances were largely to placate restive right-wing critics. The old cold warrior was clearly preoccupied with nuclear disarmament. He also reflected a quintessential American dream: that history can be reversed by good will. As he told anecdotes deploring each society's ignorance of the other, he clearly yearned to show his guest the goodness of American life—and thereby alter the misconceptions that the president seems to believe cause Soviet intransigence. "A stranger is just a friend [you] have yet to meet," he said in his welcoming statement.

But Gorbachev is the representative of a system that prides itself on discerning "objective reality." He was in relentless pursuit of a strategic objective: to accelerate the loss of confidence in American strategic power, which throughout the postwar period has been the principal counterweight to Soviet conventional preponderance. His unvarying theme was that nuclear weapons must be abolished

in this century. Hence the INF agreement should be followed rapidly by a 50 percent reduction in strategic forces. And he advanced a very clever formula that would doom SDI by indirection, thus avoiding the need of formal approval by President Reagan.

I could sympathize with the near ecstasy of the American delegation as it culminated years of dedicated and able work. I had been there myself. And I recognized that President Reagan's persist-

ence, both in strengthening America's defenses and in pushing SDI, had been instrumental in getting the Soviets to negotiate. But I could not shake a melancholy feeling as I watched the leaders of the country whose nuclear guarantee had protected free peoples for 40 years embrace Gorbachev's evocation of a nuclear-free world—a goal put forward, if with less mandate, by every Soviet leader since Stalin.

This most conservative of postwar presidents seemed bent on ending his term by dismantling the concepts and practices that have shaped Western strategy for four decades. During that time, American world leadership has been based on our ability to protect distant friends and to act as an engine of world economic growth. Now the summit was meeting at a time of economic crisis. And the end of the arms-control "process" being propa-

gated so enthusiastically at the summit may be to leave the United States with no meaningful nuclear option whatsoever.

I hope that the summit will not turn out to be "historic"—that overworked term—in that sense. But it might yet deserve that appellation if it becomes the occasion for the United States to cease evading its problems and to embrace the following agenda:

* The INF agreement, with all its failings, should be ratified. Failure to do so would wreck the Atlantic alliance.

* Any future reduction of strategic forces must be synchronized with a substantial reduction of Soviet conventional forces.

* Accepting the Soviet formula for SDI, or any variation of it, would doom the program of strategic defense.

* The Atlantic alliance must develop a realistic policy on both military strategy and arms control. This can no longer be accomplished by the United States alone. A "European identity" on defense matters should be encouraged.

* World peace requires urgent attention to regional conflicts—not simply those that have occurred already but those that will inevitably accompany the emerging transformation of the global balance of power.

* Foreign policy cannot be designed to "help" a foreign leader. Gorbachev has a right to insist on equitable agreements. But in the

Gorbachev greets Kissinger

BORIS YURCHENKO—AP

> **'We should see what kind of a world we want in the year 2000, and . . . work back from there'**

34 NEWSWEEK: DECEMBER 21, 1987

conduct tests during the moratorium that will enable it to develop deployable weapons at its end, or SDI is finished. The moratorium itself is a huge obstacle to SDI, since no moratorium has ever been abandoned by the United States. We are still observing both the SALT I and SALT II treaties. In a period of shrinking budgets, the military will surely lose its enthusiasm for a program that it can neither deploy nor test adequately. And there will be huge reluctance to risk the START reductions by abandoning SDI.

This is not the occasion to discuss the strategic merits of SDI. A serious debate has in fact never occurred. President Reagan weakened his case by presenting SDI as a means to achieve perfect defense against the entire Soviet arsenal. It was easy for opponents to punch holes in so extravagant a vision. In the process, a thoughtful examination has been neglected of some important intermediate options: defending ballistic-missile sites against major attack; defending the population against small-scale "terror attacks"; defending against third countries.

In drafting the START agreement, great care must be taken that

we do not slide by indirection into what the president has clearly refused explicitly. It would be a fateful decision to leave our population defenseless against a wide range of foreseeable dangers, while basing our strategy on the very weapons that produce this danger. The 50 percent reduction raises enough problems on its own. It must not be achieved at the cost of SDI.

**Conventional arms:** The Atlantic alliance must not, in the name of arms control, make the world safe for conventional war. Whenever a nuclear accord is in the offing, studies magically emerge "demonstrating" that conventional deterrence is feasible. But history is a more reliable guide than systems analysis. For millennia, conventional armies that on paper were evenly matched—and thus should have been deterred from fighting—went to war because their leaders drew different conclusions

from the same data. To be sure, NATO can do much more to improve its conventional defenses. But that is a far cry from relying on them for deterrence.

Yet reliance on conventional deterrence is exactly where advocates of a "nuclear-free zone" in Europe are seeking to take the alliance. In the aftermath of the INF agreement many influential Europeans, especially in West Germany, are calling for a third zero option—the removal of tactical missiles. Since the tactical weapons left in Germany are of a range able to reach only other German targets, such a reaction is understandable. For the alliance as a whole, however, it is bound to be disastrous. A nuclear-free zone logically implies the adoption of a "no first use" concept, because otherwise the zone would still be under nuclear threat from weapons outside. And once the alliance has proclaimed that it would not use nuclear weapons first, it is committed to accepting defeat with conventional weapons rather than escalating to nuclear war. The neutralization of Central Europe, the goal of Soviet policy for 40 years, will then be nearly complete.

The Soviet emphasis on nuclear disarmament is therefore understandable. What is less understandable is the West's acquiescence in a process that is equivalent to Goliath proposing an arms-control agreement to David that begins with the elimination of slingshots.

The Soviet leaders have thrown out vague hints of a readiness to explore "asymmetrical" reductions in the conventional field. But hints are not negotiating positions. A precise scheme is needed. When conventional-arms talks are at last joined, the West must keep in mind that the Soviets have two large advantages: a preponderance of force and shorter lines of communications. The former means that even unequal cuts may leave the Soviets with enough power to stretch NATO defensive forces to a point where a breakthrough becomes easier. (Rand Corporation studies indicate that reductions must be 5 to 1 in the West's favor to prevent this from happening.) Shorter lines of communication mean that any Soviet forces that are "withdrawn" could be pulled back a few hundred miles and be kept in a position to return rapidly. They would also be closer to other pressure points such as China or the Middle East. Therefore, any serious conventional-arms-control scheme would have to require the dismantling of those Soviet forces being reduced. And experience with German disarmament after World War I shows how complex designing an inspection system for that

purpose can be.

**Arms-control doctrine:** When I was a young professor at Harvard in the '50s, a group of colleagues and I met almost every Saturday to analyze the implications of nuclear technology. Together with similar groups at other universities, we developed the new intellectual discipline of arms control. It was based on the premise that nuclear weapons were so destructive that for the first time in history, they made negotiated stability not only desirable but necessary.

Since then, arms control has developed a life of its own. It used to be argued that arms negotiations should be an essential complement to broader strategic and foreign policies. Today the tail comes close to wagging the dog. Now we are lucky if arms control leaves room for strategy and foreign policy.

The nature of the American domestic debate compounds the

problem. Philosophical opponents of arms control rarely state their real views—that the Soviets are inherently untrustworthy, or that détente saps the American will to resist. Instead, they emphasize buzzwords like "verification" or "reduction," without relating them to strategic theory or foreign policy.

Reagan's erstwhile paladins are being hoist with their own petard. For years they blocked arms control by invoking the need for real cuts and verification. Now they are being confronted with agreements that have these attributes but in the process erode the strategy of four decades.

Neither verification nor reduction are ends in themselves. Effective enforcement requires three elements: knowledge of a violation, a concept of how significant the violation is and some relevant preplanned counteraction. No doubt the inspection provisions for the INF treaty are intrusive—a significant and welcome precedent for future agreements. But they may also turn out to be irrelevant. Whatever Soviet violations they might uncover, the United States is in a poor position to respond. No European country—with the possible exception of Britain—would agree to a new deployment of American strategic missiles on its soil.

The situation is nearly as complex among the allies. For years too many European leaders have permitted President Reagan to be

With Britain's Margaret Thatcher

PRESS ASSOCIATION

## ‘We have more to lose from European impotence than from a stronger European identity’

36 NEWSWEEK: DECEMBER 21, 1987

pilloried as a bellicose cowboy—and themselves to be cast as mediators between the superpowers. Now they cannot express their uneasiness about the INF agreement without serious political damage. In any event, they have no alternative theory.

The alliance as a whole has never had a coherent arms-control policy. Whether Gorbachev planned it that way or fell into it as a result of the vacuum in the West, the next steps in nuclear-arms control are fraught with controversy at both ends of the nuclear spectrum. The nuclear-free zone in Central Europe propagated by some German leaders is opposed by us and most of our allies. But the pressures in that direction will increase. At the same time, after the 50 percent reduction is negotiated, a new president will have nearly irresistible temptations to continue the process. At that point, the Soviets are likely to insist that British and French forces be counted as well. Whether we then choose to take disproportionate cuts or press our allies to join the process, arms control is in danger of turning into a Soviet weapon to split the alliance rather than a tool to achieve stability.

**European identity:** A coherent strategy requires Europe to assume a greater responsibility for its own defense and foreign policy. For four decades U.S. "leadership" has been identified with prescriptions that originate in Washington and are later discussed with our allies. An elaborate consultative machinery has developed. But in the end, political decisions depend on the ability to assume operational responsibility. In the long run, it is demoralizing for a continent that has been looking after its own defense since the advent of the modern state system to abdicate this essential attribute of sovereignty. For the Europeans to contribute more seriously to defense and foreign-policy issues, they must establish a stronger identity in these matters. America has opposed such a development lest it encourage European separation from the United States. But in the end, alliances

are held together by shared interests, not by consultative machinery.

I cannot imagine any security threat that would lead European leaders to conclude that they are better off without American support. Indeed, the defense field is precisely the area in which European and American interests are most congruent. Specifically, the United States should encourage attempts to revitalize the Western European Union as a forum for elaborating European defense and arms-control policies. We have more to lose from a sense of European impotence than from a stronger European identity.

**Regional conflicts:** Lip service continues to be paid to resolving regional conflicts, but there is no sense of urgency in this area. It has become ritualistic, like an opening prayer. Yet more tensions arise between the superpowers as a result of political conflicts where their interests intersect than as a result of weapons deployment. Almost all clashes in the postwar period have occurred at such points of intersection—Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, the Middle East. It is dangerous to emphasize symptoms while neglecting causes. And those conflicts of which we are aware are only the tip of the iceberg.

To look 15 years ahead is to see a radically different world. By

then, Japan will have considerably more military power. China will be much stronger. India is likely to be the key country in South Asia, and the Islamic world will have undergone a radical transformation. Some Latin American countries may have become world powers. Europe may be either united or irrelevant.

These transformations cannot possibly occur without crises. And U.S.-Soviet relations will be a key element in maintaining the peace. There is no evidence that this incipient transformation in the global balance has received systematic attention within the U.S. government, let alone been discussed at a summit. Yet in the long run it will have more far-reaching implications than the technical issues that occupied the American and Soviet negotiating teams last week.

**Gorbachev's role:** The euphoria sweeping Washington was inspired less by Soviet policies than by Gorbachev's personality. He was greeted as though he were the *deus ex machina* to solve all the West's dilemmas—a communist leader who will bring peace and tranquillity without any real effort on the part of the free countries.

Business leaders and public figures were nearly abject in their eagerness to celebrate a new era, and reluctant even to imply that grave issues remained to be solved or that any relationship might be established between their investments and Soviet international conduct.

But are these attitudes realistic? Do they in fact do justice to the real choices facing the Soviet leadership? Listening to this obviously thoughtful, seemingly open-minded general secretary, it is easy to forget that he has emerged at the top of what must be the toughest competition in the world—one in which nice guys finish last and losers are rarely heard from again. He has never tolerated from basic communist doctrine. And how could he, never having held any position other than as a member of the communist hierarchy?

Even assuming his intentions are conciliatory, he can be

expected to go only so far by himself. Reality no doubt imposes at least a respite on Soviet foreign adventurism, perhaps even an end to it no matter who governs in Moscow. But Gorbachev, as any prudent leader, is unlikely to court unnecessary domestic problems. He will not volunteer changes in political and strategic arrangements that powerful factions within his bureaucracy would find unpalatable. Obviously, he will push those programs most advantageous to his own country. Nor can we blame him for accepting proposals that should never have been made.

I do not know how Gorbachev would have reacted if approached in a less sentimental manner and presented with a comprehensive program that would reduce nuclear and conventional weapons simultaneously. Or how he would have responded to a serious attempt to discuss the U.S.-Soviet role in the world a decade or so ahead of us. I am convinced that he has the intelligence and imagination to make a significant and constructive response. And if he refused, we would at least understand the nature of the challenge better than we do now.

The failure to test Gorbachev seriously may be the great missed opportunity of this summit. There is still time to restore a balance to the East-West dialogue. But first we must recognize that Gorbachev cannot save the West. We must do that ourselves.

Reagan and Gorbachev last week

WALLY MCNAMEE—NEWSWEEK

# ‘The failure to test Gorbachev may be the great missed opportunity of the summit’

NEWSWEEK : DECEMBER 21, 1987 41

NATIONAL AFFAIRS

# The Menace on the Roads

## Drunk driving emerges again as a deadly issue for law-enforcement officials

The drunk-driving problem is back. After all the justifiable handwringing over cocaine abuse, attention is returning to the much larger problem of driving while intoxicated. There is a simple reason: drunks are suddenly killing more people on the highways. After declining since 1982, the number of alcohol-related traffic fatalities increased last year by more than 1,600, to 23,987 (chart). That unexpected rise has set off fresh alarms. Last week the Harvard School of Public Health announced a new effort to publicize the crisis, a move that public officials immediately applauded. "I fear that we're starting to backslide," says Barry Sweedler of the National Transportation Safety Board. "We had progress and now we have to redouble our efforts."

ROGER SANDLER—BLACK STAR

Getting the message across: Los Angeles cop says, 'Touch your nose,' a driver breathes into her 'ignition interlock,' anti-drinking ad

Despite the recent upswing, there has been considerable progress since the early 1980s, when a grass-roots movement led by "victims' groups," such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), focused attention on the problem. Alcohol-related traffic fatalities are still more than 4 percent lower than during the alcohol-fueled carnage of 1982, when 25,166 people died. Last year authorities recorded 1,793,300 drunk-driving arrests, an increase of 39 percent over the 1977 figure. State penalties and treatment programs are also stiffer. The drinking age has been raised to 21 in every state but Wyoming. Fifteen states now impound cars or license plates belonging to drunk drivers. Massachusetts may lift the licenses of taverns found to have served five patrons convicted on drunk-driving charges. Tiny Tuscarawas County in Ohio puts bright orange plates on autos of drivers with suspended licenses—in case they're tempted to go out for a spin.

Still, social attitudes toward drinking and driving have been slow to change. "In the U.S. we lack a strong national consensus on this issue," argues Jay Winsten, director of Harvard's Center for Health Communication. In part that stems from the confused role alcohol plays in our society—one part happy hour, one part mayhem. "People have to remember that alcohol is the most criminogenic substance in America," says James B. Jacobs, a New York University law professor and author of a forthcoming book, "Drunk Driving: An American Dilemma." "It's heavily involved in murders, rapes, assaults and drunk driving. It's a much-abused drug, and there's no magic legal wand we can wave over it to make the problem go away."

Uncertain about cures, states are trying to keep drunks off the roads. There is widespread use of traffic checkpoints where drivers can be tested on hand-to-nose coordination. Twenty-two states now permit

police officers to automatically lift the driver's license of anyone who flunks a Breathalyzer test or refuses to take one. And 17 states impose mandatory license suspensions for first-time offenders who are convicted in court. Studies have shown that drivers who have lost their licenses are subsequently involved in fewer accidents than those who receive other punishments. "We're not saying it's 100 percent effective, but we know it does reduce accidents and arrests and it's the only thing we know that does significantly," says Paul Snodgrass, a regional alcohol coordinator of the national highway safety board.

Minnesota is proving Snodgrass correct. Thanks to its stringent revocation policy, last year alone more than 42,000 drunk drivers lost their licenses for at least 90 days. Highway fatalities for the year totaled 572, compared with 763 in 1981, despite an increase in driving miles. This year, says Forst Lowery, the alcohol-pro

42 NEWSWEEK: DECEMBER 21, 1987

SUPPLEMENTAL: TUESDAY, 1 DECEMBER 1987

ARMS CONTROL ISSUES

Los Angeles Times

22 NOVEMBER 1987

Pg. V-1

Dealing
FROM
Reality

By Henry A. Kissinger

NEW YORK

As controversy envelops almost every foreign policy issue, a growing nostalgia develops for the spirit of compromise and bipartisan ship marking America's entry into world affairs during the decade following World War II. But nostalgia misinterprets America's current dilemma. During the period of bipartisanship, there was agreement on fundamentals; compromise adjusted differences over method. Today, conflicts are philosophical; compromises are likely to combine the disadvantages of every course of action, witness the Reagan-Wright agreement on Nicaragua. So long as conflicts persist, America will continue to wallow in self-absorption.

In designing foreign policy, any nation must answer at least three questions: 1) What is its concept of national security? In other words, what international changes is it prepared to resist? 2) What is its national purpose? That is, what goals will it seek to achieve? 3) What resources are available for either of these ends?

The U.S. leaders of the bipartisan postwar era answered those questions with great assurance. Their concept of security was formed by Hitler's forces

attacking across recognized military frontiers and the failure of the democracies to resist at an early stage. Their political goals were legacies of the New Deal, the threat to political institutions produced by a world depression. The leaders of that period could implement their assumptions because the United States had a nuclear monopoly—and for two decades afterward, a vast margin of superiority—enabling it to assume the role of world policeman without analyzing the long-term implications. More-

over, America could overwhelm economic problems with resources because it produced 52% of the world's gross national product. The immediate postwar era seemed to vindicate America's historic image of itself: chosen by destiny to spread virtue to the rest of the world.

Two decades of domestic discord eroded this self-assurance and history changed the circumstances in which it was applied. A nation that produced over half the world's GNP represented the balance of

power all by itself. But today, when the United States generates barely a fourth of the world's GNP, concern with equilibrium and with setting priorities has become as necessary as it is distasteful to the traditional American approach to international affairs.

The American domestic drama for two decades has been the inability to reconcile traditional expectations with realities. Ever since the collapse of the Nixon Administration effort to base foreign

President Reagan can still leave a historic legacy by raising the foreign policy debate to a conceptual level; precisely because his is a lame duck Administration, he can afford to recall America to its vision and its duties.

policy on some concept of permanent national interest, the public debate has been polarized between those who seek to turn all international conflicts into a confrontation between good and evil and those who believe that America's contri-

bution to world politics is not power but virtue. Both schools of thought are hostile to geopolitical analysis.

East-West relations illustrate this point. They are being treated either as a morality play or as an aberration caused by temporary conditions, by the defective character of Soviet leaders or by their ideologically-based suspiciousness. Whatever their starting point, American Presidents have, in the end, opted for the psychiatric explanation of

CONTINUED NEXT PAGE

23

Inside the Pentagon

13 NOVEMBER 1987

Pg. 3

MARINE CORPS EYES ISRAELI FLIR FOR AH-1W TO BEEF UP PERSIAN GULF MISSION

The Marine Corps, in cooperation with Israel, is seeking to procure the Israeli Cobra Laser Night Attack System (CLNAS) for the AH-1W (Whiskey model Cobra) as part of a joint effort to upgrade the Cobra aircraft and provide the Marine Corps' Cobras with the needed night-vision capability for use in the Persian Gulf. Sources say that the Marine Corps views the CLNAS as a more cost-effective solution to its needs for a night-vision capability than the Army's Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) system, already in use on myriad Army aircraft. Sources say that a U.S.-Israeli Memorandum of Understanding has been drawn up, and that Congress has reprogrammed money to fund the effort.

Many sources view CLNAS as the next move in a major, ongoing turf battle between the Army and the Marine Corps over the Persian Gulf attack helicopter mission, with recent reports detailing Army efforts currently underway in the Gulf using the OH-58D Army Helicopter Improvement Program aircraft (Inside the Pentagon, Nov. 6, p7). Some sources assert that the Marine Corps chose to procure a system other than the Army's FLIR to limit the Army's role in the mission, while other sources insist that the Marine Corps sought 12 FLIR units from the Army but was told that they were "needed for Army missions." Additionally, at presstime sources are questioning the wisdom of using the two-bladed AH-1W in the Gulf because of the noise. There had been a drive in the Marine Corps, sources say, to add two more blades to the helicopter to "quiet the chopping." Whether that will be done before the aircraft are deployed in the Gulf is not known.

CLNAS is described as a thermal imaging FLIR for the M65 gunsight for the Cobra. Sources say that the system is adaptable to ships, remotely piloted vehicles, and troop uses. Sources anticipate that the system will enhance the M65 gunsight vis-a-vis increased laser and night-vision capabilities. CLNAS is a cooperative effort between the U.S. and Israel, and officials say they anticipate joint production in both countries.

REALITY...CONTINUED

Soviet conduct. They have sought to cultivate improved personal relations with Soviet counterparts as a key to world peace. From Nikita S. Khrushchev to Mikhail S. Gorbachev, this has focused the domestic American debate on the significance of reform in Moscow, on whether Soviet leaders have become more enlightened rather than on Soviet international conduct.

In the entire post-war period, there has been amazingly little analysis of the content of peaceful coexistence—the avowed goal of U.S. policy in all administrations. What exactly is it that the United States wants the Soviet Union to stop doing? What is the American notion of cooperative conduct? In the contemporary situation, is glasnost or human rights progress enough—or are other changes necessary? Can four centuries of Russian expansionism be due to personalities or do

they reflect more permanent geopolitical and strategic elements? The absence of criteria causes domestic disputes to fester. The reluctance to endow peaceful coexistence with political content produces a near-obsession with arms control, confusing symptoms with causes and threatening to open a gap between strategy and arms-control policy in which each checkmates the other.

For two decades at least, the dilemmas of nuclear parity have been obvious. In the past, nations went to war because the consequences of defeat were worse than the consequences of conflict. But when nuclear war guarantees tens of millions of casualties in a matter of hours, this equation is far from self-evident. Yet strategists and arms controllers pursue incompatible courses in seeking to escape the dilemma. Strategists seek to resurrect the period of nuclear superiority while arms controllers make little provision for the possibility that, for the Soviets, arms control may not be a cooperative enterprise but a strategy to weaken democracies still considered as adversaries.

Until recently, the strategists dominated the executive branch and strove for accurate counterforce nuclear weapons, largely blocked by Congress, and for the Strategic Defense Initiative, which is at

best a decade away. The arms controllers dominate congressional thinking and too many of them resist accurate counterforce weapons, strategic defense or any other limited application of nuclear weapons; they argue that this would open the door to a nuclear war that in the end cannot be limited.

But it is not possible to make the initiation of nuclear war absurd while relying on it as the principal deterrent to Soviet preponderance in conventional forces. One or the other course must be modified. After the prospective arms-control negotiations are completed, when warheads are reduced, strategic defense is postponed for at least a decade and uncertain thereafter, how will the United States implement its declared strategy? Does anyone believe the democracies will build up conventional forces under current conditions of fiscal stringency when the new secretary of defense is being widely praised for his willingness to reduce the defense budget? In short, strategy and arms control are on different, potentially incompatible tracks, each with its own constituency. Sooner or later a grave price will have to be paid for making domestic politics paramount at the expense of national security considerations.

CONTINUED NEXT PAGE

24

ARMY

DECEMBER 1987

Pg. 6

Terminally Guided Mortar Bomb. A U.S.-British team has announced plans to develop an 81-mm terminally guided anti-tank projectile which could be fired from mortars used by the armies of both countries. The team of British Aerospace's Army Weapons Division and System Planning Corporation of Arlington, Va., plans to "offer

a highly effective 'fire and forget' capability to infantry confronted by tanks and armored personnel carriers" in a system known as Merlin.

While the U.S. Army is currently not engaged in any contracts to develop a terminally guided mortar round, leaders within the infantry community are reported to be enthusiastic about the prospect of such an

indirect-fire antiarmor capability. The Army began purchasing the highly successful British 81-mm mortar as the M252 in 1984.

The teaming agreement provides for joint development, manufacture and marketing of a family of terminally guided, armor-piercing projectiles of various calibers. The first Merlin rounds are to be tested next spring, according to a spokesman. ☉

REALITY...CONTINUED

A society divided over how to deal with the relatively straightforward problem of overt military aggression will necessarily have even greater difficulty with more ambiguous challenges. America no longer has a bipartisan foreign policy because either it is divided over fundamental objectives or the objectives on which there is consensus reflect no recognizable international reality. If there exists a bipartisan agreement on any subject it is the need to promote the spread of democracy globally. But how realistic is this objective? That the United States prefers democratic regimes to repressive ones goes without saying. That America should be prepared to pay some price for its preferences is also obvious. But it is dangerous to forget that Western democracy is home-grown in a small corner of the globe and that it took several hundred years to evolve there. It was fostered by special characteristics of Western civilization that have so far not been duplicated.

No other civilization has developed such absolute concepts of justice and such an insistence on the limits of temporal power. No other group of societies has evolved a concept of natural and religious law defined by hierarchies not controlled by temporal authorities. No other history has witnessed such a constant struggle for freedom in ever new forms. In the West, the accumulation of excessive power at the center has been the principal concern of political theorists; in most other societies the concern has been to buttress, not to weaken or balance central authority.

But to what extent are these concepts a guide for day-to-day policy? Hardly a day passes without some congressional stricture against some foreign country or some Administration pronouncement on appropriate domestic con-

duct all over the globe. Oddly enough, as U.S. resources are shrinking, the drive toward global intervention seems to be increasing. There are egregious human-rights violations that must be pro-tested and, if necessary, penalized. But can we really sustain the role as schoolmaster for domestic politics everywhere in the world? Do we really know enough to advise and sometimes intrude on domestic politics from Asia to Latin America? The implication that domestic reform is America's overriding foreign policy objective has two consequences: Actual negotiations, with Nicaragua for example, assume the abstract quality of a political science seminar on elusive and reversible concepts of democratization while more tangible subjects related to national security—such as Cuban and Eastern Bloc advisers and the size of Nicaragua's armed forces—are neglected. In the longer term, this attitude becomes the alibi for an incipient isolationism, providing an escape into choices involving little apparent risk.

Global interventionism works best with friendly regimes dependent on U.S. support and least well with hostile ones protected by the U.S. reluctance to use force. In either event, the American capacity to undermine is not matched by a capacity to construct. Revolutions are made by a coalition of resentments. But when the demolition is complete, a fierce struggle between previous allies is nearly inevitable. Given the attitudes toward covert action—among the public and in Congress—and, more, the ignorance of the intangibles of political processes, the risk is great that America may be making the world safe not for democracy but for the most highly organized mili-

tant and ruthless groups.

America's unresolved contradictions risk opening a huge gap between ends and means in the pursuit of incompatible objectives. This would be serious enough in a bipolar world. But Japan, Western Europe, China and possibly India all have the capacity to become major players by the end of this century. As American military and economic preeminence declines, other nations are less likely to listen to U.S. preachment and more likely to return to the balance of power policies that have shaped their histories. This in turn may accelerate America's turn toward isolationism, thus undoing the creative efforts of a generation.

Three years ago, when President Reagan won overwhelming re-election, I wrote that he had a unique opportunity to reconcile the domestic debate and to take bipartisanship beyond the least common denominator. This has not happened. But the President can still leave a historic legacy by raising the debate to a conceptual level. Precisely because his is a lame duck Administration, he can afford to recall America to its vision and its duties. He has nothing to lose by raising the issue of the relationship between power and diplomacy, of the content of peace and the nature of global progress. And the presidential candidates who now claim to have "solutions" can better serve their country by participating in a national debate over philosophy and concepts rather than gimmicks. If this does not happen, America may become the scold of international politics while losing the capacity to shape events. ☐

This is one of a series of articles former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger is writing for The Times.

25

Henry Kissinger

End of a Communist Illusion

Washington Post

Sunday, October 25, 1987

Recent conversations with Chinese leaders have convinced me that the Congress of the Chinese Communist Party that has just opened in Beijing is likely to mark the rare example of a ruling group that voluntarily diminishes its dominant position. Of course the scope of government in a country of 1 billion population is comparable to nothing else. The majority of China's provinces each has a population larger than those of the most populous European states. Most of China's dynasties have each lasted longer than the entire history of the United States. China thus has a perspective all its own. About no other society would it be possible to repeat the apocryphal story of a Chinese leader's reply to the question of what he thought of the French Revolution: "It is too early to tell."

The task of governing China is made all the more daunting by its people's extraordinary mix of individualism and fierce sense of cultural uniqueness. Rulers have often despaired of achieving coherence by any means other than monolithic rule only to be submerged in the end by the elemental common sense of that multitude that defends its fundamental values by patient endurance. At the height of his power, when complimented by Nixon on having changed the face of China, Mao replied: "No, I have only changed Beijing and a few of its environs." I thought then he was being polite; I now know he was prophetic.

Indeed Mao's intuition of the ultimate futility of his doctrinal obsessions caused him to unleash the frenzy of the Cultural Revolution. But in the end the Chinese people outlasted the violent attempt to impose an unnatural conformity by destroying all ancient values. Ironically, the Cultural Revolution brought about the exact opposite of its intention: it guaranteed reform. Every contemporary Chinese leader has survived a decade of degradation, imprisonment and deprivation. Far from being broken by the ordeal, they emerged serenely determined to reform the system that made such suffering possible.

This legacy is the principal reason to be optimistic about the poignant task Deng Xiaoping has set for himself: to abandon, at the end of his life as a revolutionary, his movement's quest to bend reality to theory. Deng is fond of saying that he is neither a reformer nor a conservative, but someone "who has sought truth from facts."

That truth as it will emerge at the party congress is likely to contradict almost every previous Communist practice elsewhere: it will reject detailed central planning; it will implement two principles that are revolutionary in Communist terms: that a Communist state can prosper only if the Communist Party abandons the detailed supervision of government and if the government loosens its grip over the economy.

Experience everywhere, including the Soviet Union, has demonstrated that direct central planning cannot work, but only China has been prepared to face the full implications. In the absence of markets—that is, a forum that balances preferences—the planner in the end will impose his

more or less arbitrary judgments. As a result, the goods that are wanted are not produced, and the goods that are produced are not wanted.

Moreover, central planning provides next to no incentive for quality or for innovation. Since all a manager produces will be bought by the relevant ministry—indeed that is why it is in the plan in the first place—quality is not a consideration. And innovation throws the whole complex planning edifice out of kilter. Above all, the centrally planned state, far from producing a classless society, ends up by enshrining class stratification. Where goods are allocated rather than bought, the real rewards are the perquisites of office: special stores, hospitals, educational opportunities for cadres.

How to overcome the dilemma that it is impossible to run a modern economy by central planning but that no Communist state has ever been run without central planning? Deng and his associates propose a practical Chinese solution: they will redefine the role of the Communist Party and the nature of planning. The Communist Party will be confined, at any rate in theory, to general directives. To this end apparently all the intermediate Communist control bodies in the factories and the government offices are to be abolished or at least sharply reduced. The government will be confined to what the West would call fiscal policy: legislation, taxation and indirect controls. Markets will play an increasing role. Even interest payments will be permitted, though under the euphemism of "legitimate income from nonlabor efforts."

If implemented, this will mark a watershed in Communist theory and practice. Millions of party cadres—as many as half of the total—will be transferred from their privileged positions into other jobs. China would remain a one-party state, but, except for general directives, economic life will follow its own momentum subject primarily to indirect controls. In time such decentralization must spill over into the political system; it will surely alter the relative weight of various elements of the power structure.

In reforms of such sweep, the intentions of the central government do not automatically translate themselves into action. Deng and his colleagues are certain to encounter on the part of the millions of cadres whose prerogatives are threatened the foot-dragging opposition which Chinese bureaucracy has perfected over the centuries. And these cadres will have the pretext that the transition from central planning to markets cannot be smooth.

For example, to weed out inefficient enterprises, prices should be permitted to rise. But Chinese leaders understandably fear the impact of inflation on a society used to price stability for 40 years, and they know that the collapse of the Kuomintang regime was accelerated by uncontrolled inflation. They therefore move with great care in experimenting with dual pricing mechanisms, with some prices controlled and others free—a process that in other countries has always proved transitory and that in any country is certain to generate frictions.

Moreover until a new generation of industrial managers can be educated, the Chinese leaders may face resistance, even from some of the executives. In a market economy, the manager is an entrepreneur; he needs initiative to develop products and to find markets and credit. In a centrally planned economy, the manager is a politician manipulating the status quo. His skill consists of negotiating safe production quotas with the relevant ministries. Neither ministry nor manager has an interest in setting ambitious goals because failure to reach the goal will subject both of them to penalties. The centrally planned economy, of which the economy of the Soviet Union is the leading example, tends toward collusion between governmental and industrial quasifeudal fiefdoms. The centrally planned totalitarian state faces as its central challenge the irony that it can rarely find out what is in fact going on until reality overwhelms theory by a crisis. It therefore oscillates between stagnation and purges. The attempt to achieve total predictability winds up in chaos.

The quickest way to train a new generation of managers is to encourage foreign investment, which generates resources and trains personnel. But historically China has lived in a world of its own. The suspicion of foreigners and the passion to maintain China's identity have been magnified by the century of foreign exploitation that followed the opium wars. Moreover, China has no tradition of settling disputes by recourse to courts—a basic principle of Western commercial relationships. In China, the guarantee of contracts has resided in the personal relationship of the parties. Hence, there has been resistance to the arbitration clauses that are the staple of Western commercial contracts.

Communism has added its own obstacles. The unwary foreigner often finds himself either engulfed in a bog of regulations or in endless negotiations between competing ministries or both. And the pool of talent in a country whose universities were closed for a decade during the Cultural Revolution has been thin. Thus one reason for the slow pace of negotiations in China has been that trained people were in short supply. These obstacles cannot be removed rapidly, but it is my impression that great efforts are being made to overcome them.

The two Communist giants have thus come—nearly simultaneously and quite separately—to the conclusion that the traditional Communist system is unworkable. They agree, too, on the key reforms necessary. But the odds of success of Chinese reform seem to me higher. For Deng and his colleagues, reform is a passionate commitment tested in the travails of the Cultural Revolution; for Mikhail Gorbachev and his colleagues in the Soviet Union, the impetus for reform is more technocrat-

continued

NEWSWEEK October 12, 1987

INTERNATIONAL

Kissinger: A New Era for NATO

After an INF accord, creative diplomacy will be needed to save the alliance

BY HENRY A. KISSINGER

I was born in Europe and became secretary of state of the country that gave me refuge—an inconceivable elevation anywhere else in the world. I have known both sides of the Atlantic intimately, and maintaining close ties between them has always been a priority especially close to my heart. And for a long period it was my good fortune to observe an American policy based on that same commitment. Americans have every reason to take pride in what their leaders have built in 40 years of bipartisan effort on Atlantic relations. America, the daughter of Europe, repaid its heritage by contributing idealism and resources to the old Continent in its darkest hour. And it added to the values of human dignity and freedom that it inherited from Europe an innocence and idealism that have made it a beacon to oppressed peoples everywhere.

To be sure, like many Americans I have often been exasperated by shortsighted European actions and by the tendency among some of our allies to shift the burden of difficult decisions onto the United States. With the passage of time, it has become increasingly evident that the alliance cannot live forever on the capital accumulated in the great decade of creativity that produced the Greek-Turkish aid program, the Marshall plan and the Atlantic alliance. While in office in 1973, I appealed for a rededication of the two sides of the Atlantic. "The next generation of leaders in Europe, Canada and America," I pointed out, "will have neither the personal memory nor the emotional commitment to the Atlantic alliance of its founders... On both sides of the Atlantic, we are faced with the anomalous situation in which the public mind identifies foreign-policy success increasingly with relations with adversaries..."

That effort at renewal foundered on European fear of American domination and on tactical mistakes on my part. But the situation I foresaw a decade and a half ago is now upon us. A grave crisis of confidence has developed. Concern about America's intentions has always been inherent in the military inequality between the two sides of the Atlantic and their geographic separation. What is new about the current situation is that America is being doubted not by its traditional critics but by its oldest friends.

The crisis has been triggered by the imminent agreement to eliminate medium- and shorter-range nuclear missiles from the arsenals of both superpowers. Its provisions will no doubt be fully debated when it comes up for ratification before the Senate. But the debate will miss a crucial point. Domestic political support for stationing American missiles on the Continent has disappeared in all the European countries. In that sense, the negotiations have already created a new reality. Hence, nonratification is not an option.

It will be the task of American foreign policy to find constructive ways of dealing with that new reality. At the moment, the groups that have most consistently supported close Atlantic cooperation are in disarray. For over a generation, they have accepted as an article of faith that American nuclear weapons were needed to counterbalance Soviet conventional superiority—and that deployment of American missiles on the Continent was an essential component of that strategy. They now find the most conservative U.S. administration

of the postwar era stigmatizing nuclear weapons with arguments all but indistinguishable from the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament.

They experienced the shock of Reykjavik, where the superpowers were on the verge of agreeing to scrap all missiles (including those of our allies). They have seen enormous pressure put on the Federal Republic of Germany to accept the withdrawal not only of the American medium-range missiles on its soil but also of Pershing 1A's, German-controlled missiles located there for a decade and a half. The fact that the last four NATO commanders are themselves deeply uneasy about the agreement compounds the Europeans' anxiety. The internal political debate within the alliance will never be the same again.

The administration justifies the pending agreement by pointing out that the Soviets will give up more warheads than the United States. But the Soviet Union is not in the habit of making unequal agreements. Its quid pro quo is a goal that the Soviets have sought for a generation: sepa-

SYGMA

Pressure tactics: One of the German Pershing 1A missiles slated for removal

NEWSWEEK : OCTOBER 12, 1987 57

INTERNATIONAL

rating America from its European allies.

This is a particular problem in the Federal Republic of Germany. No other country is in as precarious a geographic, political and psychological position. West Germany is still a relatively new state with an artificial capital and essentially arbitrary frontiers that rose out of the shock and despair of a disastrous war. Across mine fields and barbed wire that divide it from East Germany, it faces at least 20 Soviet divisions in a high state of preparedness. No other country so desperately needs steadiness and sensitivity from its allies. Frequent shocks threaten its fragile self-confidence and hard-won new moorings. An eminent European leader said to me shortly after Reykjavik: "The [medium-range] missiles were a corset that ties Germany to the West. You are now destroying that corset and we will have to pay the price for it."

In addition, if the president persists in his assault on nuclear weapons and establishes denuclearization as a pre-eminent American objective, a crisis with the European nuclear powers, Britain and France, is certain. They do not accept his proposition that their security is enhanced by eliminating all nuclear weapons; nor do they believe it is possible to defend Europe entirely with conventional forces. Under the shock of Reykjavik, they are acquiescing in the withdrawal of American weapons stationed in Germany—but primarily as a means of staving off U.S. pressure to give up their own nuclear forces. If that calculation proves mistaken, they will fiercely resist any assault on their nuclear forces.

The NATO crisis can thus be summed up as follows:

■ The apparent change in a military doctrine pursued by the past five administrations places the predominant burden of nuclear defense on weapons based in the United States or at sea. This is occurring at a time when congressional budgetary pressures have put in doubt plans to develop new weapons necessary for a more flexible strategy.

■ In the process, many Europeans are convinced, a gap is being created that in time will enable the Soviet Union to threaten Europe while sparing the United States. In technical terms, the defenses of the two sides of the Atlantic will be "decoupled."

■ This fear is all the greater because the Soviet conventional superiority has not been reduced. Because of that imbalance, administration invocations of its horror of nuclear war send a shudder through the Europeans, who worry that America may recoil before its nuclear commitments.

All this makes it probable that Europe will seek new directions in the years ahead. Some countries will be tempted to maneuver between East and West and to extend

the administration's denuclearization rhetoric to battlefield weapons. Others will go in the opposite direction and seek to build up their own nuclear forces. In either case, the old pattern of American tutelage will end. While America can no longer prevent these trends, it should try to channel them in a constructive direction. It should endorse the existing European nuclear forces, support their coordination, and encourage a greater European identity in defense and arms-control matters. Where it is feasible, it can strengthen political cooperation between the two sides of the Atlantic. Where it is not, it can at least limit the extent to which disagreements are pushed.

## How Did the Crisis Arise?

From the beginning, NATO has faced a fundamental dilemma: it confronts a threat from a single country, while the alliance is composed of many (lately 16) sovereign states, the strongest of which is separated from most of the others by some 4,000 miles. A coalition, no matter how close, can never be—or appear to be—as cohesive as a single state. America has acted as if a legal commitment could make NATO a single unit. But Europeans, with their experience of fragile alliances, have always sought more tangible guarantees. Even in the early days of NATO, when the United States possessed clear nuclear superiority, the allies insisted on a substantial American military presence on the Continent. It made little sense in terms of the prevailing military doctrine of "mas-

sive nuclear retaliation"; but it provided reassurance because it was believed—at least subconsciously—that the United States would have no choice except to defend its own forces.

In the '60s, the Soviet Union began to edge toward parity, and in the '70s the United States and the Soviet Union entered into arms-control negotiations aimed at making nuclear attack militarily unproductive. To some extent, they have succeeded in that end. But a nuclear standoff puts the side that can escape defeat only by the use of nuclear weapons at a clear disadvantage. When nuclear war loses its military rationale, the inevitable question arises whether any nation would risk national suicide for an ally—no matter how close their ties.

The Europeans have never believed that conventional weapons, by themselves, are reliable deterrents; too many European wars have broken out when forces were roughly equal. NATO thus came to rely on American nuclear forces to offset a Soviet conventional threat beyond a certain threshold. But, insecure about relying entirely on a United States arsenal located so far away, our allies sought a claim on American decision making. For defense-minded Europeans, the issue has not been whether the United States had the technical ability to reach Soviet territory from America or from the sea. It was whether America would use that capability in defense of European interests and survival. Atlanticist Europeans reasoned that long-

Harsh memories: Waiting for a U.S. air drop during the 1948 Berlin crisis

58 NEWSWEEK: OCTOBER 12, 1987

INTERNATIONAL

range nuclear weapons in Europe would
provide the indispensable link between
American strategy and European defense.

To be sure, this point of view was never unanimous. A significant portion of European opinion always believed that Europe should rely less on the United States and instead mediate between East and West. The debate became virulent when America sought to deploy medium-range American missiles in Europe in the early '80s. In the end these missiles were introduced only after riots and demonstrations that shook the domestic tranquillity of many countries for months. It is impossible to understand the European reaction to the forthcoming INF agreement without considering what the current leaders went through when the missiles were installed. And the fact that the agreement is supported by some American hard-liners with arguments first advanced by the opponents of missile deployment has added to the psychological havoc.

**Balance of power:** The confusion and anger have been particularly acute in the Federal Republic of Germany. Germany was the last major European state to be unified. Its founding was not the result of a popular movement; it was a decision taken by the princes of the various German states, under the dominant influence of Prussia. Precisely because democracy and nationalism were at odds in Germany for the better part of a century, German populism has always had an abstract romantic quality and lacked a sense of proportion. This turned the strategic problems produced by Germany's geographic location into a permanent source of instability for Europe. Before unification, Germany had for centuries been the battleground on which its neighbors fought to maintain the European balance of power. After unification, Germany sought—understandably, if unwisely—to achieve security against all its neighbors simultaneously. But this effort paradoxically produced Germany's worst nightmare: a coalition of neighboring states. For if Germany was strong enough to defeat all its neighbors simultaneously, it was clearly strong enough to overwhelm them individually. Thus Germany's effort to escape its strategic predicament made the first world war all but inevitable. For centuries Germany has been either too weak or too strong to ensure peace in Europe.

It was the West's good fortune that in the period following World War II the new West German state was led by a truly great man, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. Adenauer understood that Germany could find its emotional bearings and overcome the legacy of distrust only by resisting the temptations of geography and attaching itself firmly to the Western Alliance. He acted courageously and painfully, while the Soviet Union was turning the eastern

third of the country into a communist out-
post—and while a passionate domestic op-
position was accusing him of giving up the
option of unification in favor of the West-
ern Alliance and the American connection.

Kurt Schumacher, the leader of the So-
cial Democratic Party (SPD), was the chief

What is new
about this
crisis is that
America is
being doubted
by its oldest
friends

spokesman for that point of view. His party had heroically resisted the Nazis and included some of the most admirable men in German politics. But precisely because the SPD represented one of the few elements of historic continuity, it advocated a policy that amounted to dressing up traditional nationalism in neutralist garb—that is, trading Western ties for unification.

The opponents of NATO only gradually came to terms with German integration into the West. Adenauer's legacy proved so strong that in the '70s two distinguished Social Democratic chancellors, Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt, were able to make major contributions to Western policy (in part because a staunchly pro-Western core of German public opinion forged during the bitter debates of the '50s provided a hedge against adventurism).

Still, Schumacher's legacy proved almost as lasting as Adenauer's. His disciples never completely overcame their doubts, and when Chancellor Schmidt proposed the deployment of American medium-range missiles on German soil, the upheaval in his party helped bring him down. Since then, the SPD has pursued an agenda much closer to the spirit of its first leader than of its last chancellor—one that stresses national issues, antinuclear policies and German autonomy. And since the third German party—the Free Democrats—can survive only by maneuvering between the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, any weakening of the Christian Democrats is bound to jeopardize the steady course of German policy.

I have known the Christian Democratic leaders who have responsibility for foreign policy and defense for decades. After a life-

time of unquestioning support for Ameri-
can policies, they find themselves adrift in
an unfamiliar world in which American
briefers parrot the slogans of their antinu-
clear adversaries. They resent the pres-
sures that caused them to give up their own
450-mile-range missiles, the Pershing 1A's.
(To be sure, Washington denied applying
any pressure. However, its claim that it was
on the verge of a historic agreement implic-
itly put the onus on Germany if the talks
failed.) After the INF agreement goes into
force, the nuclear missiles left in Germany
will be unable to hit targets outside East or
West Germany. No government in Bonn is
likely to sustain support for a strategy un-
der which only Germans are threatened by
nuclear retaliation from German soil.

As they grow more and more disillusioned with America, heretofore pro-Atlantic Germans may seek an emotional outlet by promoting the so-called "German question." To be sure, the Soviet Union and its East European allies have no conceivable interest in actual unification. But they do not need to agree to unification to influence German policy. The notion that the fate of Germany under communist rule should be eased is gaining momentum. By manipulating that slogan, the communists could discourage the Federal Republic from making further pro-Western moves without paying the price of actual unification.

Most European leaders share this assess-
ment of the German situation. And the
leaders of Britain and France are bound to
wonder whether if the START talks pro-
gress their own nuclear forces will eventu-
ally be subjected to the same pressures as
the Pershing 1A's in Germany. The disar-
ray in the alliance will then be complete.

What Should Be Done?

No one should pretend that there is a
simple remedy to a crisis that has been
building for a decade or more. Nor will the
old standby of multiplying reassurances
work. A NATO summit—now being dis-
cussed in Washington—would act as a brief
tranquilizer, at best. Before the NATO
heads of government meet, the United
States must make up its mind about what it
wishes to say and how it can elicit a reliable
long-term consensus.

A few principles can be stated here:

■ It is imperative for the United States to establish a relationship between its rhetoric and its strategy, and between its defense and arms-control policies. President Reagan cannot keep repeating the goal of denuclearizing the world without further eroding the American nuclear commitment to Europe. Moreover, somebody must face the fact that slogans of denuclearization are impossible to fulfill—and hence irresponsible. So many nuclear weapons have been produced and the territory of both super-

NEWSWEEK : OCTOBER 12, 1987

59

INTERNATIONAL

powers is so vast that it would be impossible
to ensure that all these weapons have been
eliminated. No arms agreement could do
away with the knowledge of how to make
these weapons. Any negotiation would
have to take into account open as well as
clandestine programs in new nuclear coun-
tries. In short, it cannot be in the interest of
the democracies to keep avowing objectives
more sentimental than realistic—and to
stigmatize the weapons on which the de-
fense of the West must for the foreseeable
future be based.

* The popular sport of Europe-bashing must end. This is not the time to settle old scores, however real. America's traditional friends need reassuring, not lecturing. In particular, a time of nuclear withdrawal is not the occasion to push for so-called "burden-sharing" by threatening to remove conventional forces. What is most lacking, after all, is an agreement on precisely what burden is supposed to be shared.

*It is urgent that allied strategic doctrine be reviewed. The relationship between conventional and nuclear forces is in the process of being lost. I have argued for 30 years that the threshold at which nuclear weapons have to be used should be raised much higher. But a few realities must be faced: the United States will not restore the draft. And no Western nation will substantially increase its defense budget (indeed, the trend is in the opposite direction). The practical problem, therefore, is to define a realistic threshold for conventional forces—and for once to meet it.

At the moment, the potential for distrust
between the two sides of the Atlantic is
paralyzingly deep. An increasing number
of Europeans, especially in Germany, want
to remove battlefield nuclear weapons
from their soil. The practical implication of
that would be to shift the risks of nuclear
deterrence from the most threatened coun-
try entirely to the most distant ally. By the
same token, the administration's sugges-
tion that battlefield weapons can substi-
tute for medium-range missiles creates the
reverse impression in many European
minds—namely, that America seeks to
confine nuclear devastation to European
territory. The alliance can no longer avoid
a precise definition of who, in times of cri-
sis, has what nuclear responsibilities and
in what time frame.

* The American nuclear forces assigned to the NATO commander should be more precisely defined. Now that any major nuclear response to Soviet aggression against NATO will have to come from the seas or from America, some of the weapons earmarked for that purpose should be placed more immediately and visibly under NATO control. The American strategic weapons "assigned" to NATO now belong to the alliance in name only. A defined number of warheads fall into that category,

but no specific submarines—and the sub-
marines on which the warheads are sta-
tioned are constantly being rotated. But as
former NATO commander Bernard Rogers
has pointed out, there will be no way for the
Soviets to distinguish NATO-assigned
forces from the overall U.S. strategic force.

The Soviets
will not be
stupidly
impatient. The
democracies
need to save
themselves

A flexible nuclear response is therefore
becoming almost impossible. Some con-
crete measures that give the NATO com-
mander a greater and continuing role in
overseeing the weapons earmarked for Eu-
ropean defense are essential, as well as
some method of clarifying which part of the
U.S. strategic forces serves the purpose of
flexible response.

*Defense policy must be related to arms-control policy.* It is quite predictable that the Soviet Union will apply the Reykjavik model to conventional forces—and sooner rather than later. A numerical scheme seemingly advantageous to the United States will be put forward—say, to start with, the withdrawal of two Soviet divisions for one American division. But no such scheme can alter the geographic reality of Soviet proximity to Europe. And the inevitable corollary would be a freeze on NATO's remaining conventional forces. Unless carefully designed, such schemes could enhance the Soviet conventional advantage by forcing smaller NATO forces to be stretched thin against an aggressor with the option of concentrating its forces. Until there is an alliance agreement on a desirable conventional threshold, no criteria exist for assessing conventional reductions.

Similarly, it is certain that pressure for denuclearized zones within the alliance will mount. In my view, the denuclearization of central Europe would open the floodgates of neutralism, encouraging no-first-use doctrines that imply that the alliance prefers to be defeated by conventional forces than to use nuclear weapons. This is undoubtedly why Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has rejected any further nuclear reductions in Europe until

allied and Soviet-bloc conventional and
chemical weapons are brought into bal-
ance. She has seen the alliance drifting
perilously close to self-imposed military
impotence in which START negotiations
remove the rationale for retaliation with
strategic weapons. INF negotiations pre-
vent retaliation from European territory
and conventional talks threaten to freeze
an unfavorable conventional equation.

*The United States should encourage a greater European sense of identity in defense matters. In the wake of Reykjavik and the tentative INF agreement, the Europeans are sure to seek greater self-reliance. The only open question is whether those efforts take the form of neutralism or of common European defense. The current governments in Britain and France will almost certainly accelerate their nuclear buildups, giving that priority over conventional reinforcement; the defense-minded element in the rest of Europe will strive to foster a specifically European conception of security. The United States should encourage these trends, for the alternative is neutralism.*

**European identity:** Allowing Europe to assume greater responsibility for its own defense will in the long run strengthen Atlantic ties and help Germany overcome its sense of isolation. Washington for a generation has supported the Common Market, which inherently involves competition with America. It should therefore abandon its historic reserve and welcome a European identity in defense, which in the end is bound to spur Atlantic cooperation. There is no foreseeable East-West conflict in which Europe will not be better off without American support. This is why, if the British and French can agree on coordinating their nuclear forces, the United States should encourage it as an important first step toward a greater European role in nuclear defense.

To symbolize its confidence in the new
arrangement, America could allow a Europe-
an. Meanwhile, the secretary-general, the
political representative of NATO, might be
American—a reversal of traditional roles
that would demonstrate that the alliance is
adapting to new political conditions.

A few weeks ago, a European in a senior
position of responsibility told me that
though he agreed with my analysis, he had
concluded that opposition to what was in-
evitable would reduce his effectiveness.
"Remember," he said, "that even Churchill
would have gone down in flames had Hitler
not been stupidly impatient."

My wise European friend had a point.
The Soviets will not be stupidly impatient.
The democracies will have to save them-
selves. By dealing with the new realities
creatively, they can yet revitalize their
alliance.

NEWSWEEK · OCTOBER 12, 1987

Henry Kissinger

Washington Post

# America's Contra Muddle

Tuesday, July 28, 1987

As the Iran-contra hearings alternate between mind-numbing detail and star performances, the central issue of the balance between the executive branch and Congress is in danger of being neglected.

The conventional wisdom that modern-day presidents and their agents in the executive branch have a tendency to break laws is too simple and too self-denigrating. The overwhelming majority of public officials endure the pressures and harassments of official life because they want to make a contribution to a better world.

The real issue is not whether officials are entitled to substitute their judgment for that of Congress—not even the most zealous White House staffer would claim that—but whether our system of checks and balances is moving excessively toward the former with ever less concern for balance between the coequal branches of government. Nearly insoluble constitutional and personal dilemmas arise when each branch of the government acts on the premise that the other is producing disaster and must be thwarted at all costs.

There were serious errors of judgment in the Iran-contra affair, ranging from the decision to ransom hostages with arms to the arming of a country whose victory would imperil the interests of the industrial democracies, to pursuing covert policies totally contradictory to publicly stated positions. But these do not amount to a crisis of institutions.

These arise when each branch of government pushes its prerogatives to the limit, destroying the self-restraint without which the system cannot work. The conduct and funding of contra operations clearly fall into this category.

On the formal level the case is obvious. The executive branch cannot be allowed—on any claim of national security—to circumvent the congressional prerogative over appropriations by raising its own funds through the sale of government property. But equally, Congress has an obligation to put forward a clear-cut expression of what it desires. And both branches must seek to settle controversial issues not by legalisms and subterfuges but by a serious national debate setting forth premises, opportunities and risks. This is emphatically not what has happened.

The administration is of the view—which I share—that Sandinista rule in its current form is a long-term threat to the stability of Central America and hence to the security of the United States. It has therefore sought to bring pressure on the Sandinista regime, either to induce it to become more democratic or, failing that, to overthrow it (though that latter objective has never been made explicit). The administration considers the contras a key element of a new political structure in Nicaragua.

The reaction of Congress has been ambivalent. The Vietnam-born reluctance to be drawn into a conflict in Nicaragua has been matched by a hesitation to assume the blame for a collapse of the Nicaraguan anticommunist resistance.

The result has been a series of compromises, which is the way Congress decides on legislation. This process in foreign policy

tends to combine the disadvantages of all policy choices. Thus the impression created by the Iran-contra hearings that the administration violated a clear-cut congressional mandate is misleading, for the mandate has been anything but clear-cut.

There have been at least six different versions of legislation affecting contra aid, each of them authorizing support for the contras but encumbering that aid with restrictions that varied from year to year and that largely contradicted congressional consent to the principle of support for the Nicaraguan resistance.

* From Dec. 21, 1982, to Dec. 7, 1983, there was a prohibition against using funds to "overthrow" the Nicaraguan government; by implication other contra activities were permitted if not encouraged, and the term "overthrow" was never defined.

* From Dec. 8, 1983, to Oct. 3, 1984, there was a ceiling of $24 million on intelligence support for military or paramilitary activity inside Nicaragua, thus blessing as well as financing these enterprises.

* From Oct. 3, 1984, to Dec. 19, 1985, Congress reversed course and prohibited military or paramilitary support. Indeed for nine months no new funds were provided for any purpose, though existing funds could continue to be expended. After Aug. 15, 1985, humanitarian aid to the contras was reinstated to the extent of $27 million.

* From Dec. 19, 1985, to October 1986, intelligence support was again permitted, though it was limited to advice and to communications equipment. At the same time the State Department was authorized to solicit humanitarian assistance from third countries.

* On Oct. 18, 1986, Congress appropriated $100 million in humanitarian and military assistance after a 10-week hiatus while a meeting to reconcile technical differences between the versions of the two houses was stalled by opponents of contra aid.

What message was Congress seeking to send? What was the rationale for approving assistance to the contras but constantly changing the amounts and the conditions for using them? What rationale underlay the amounts approved? And how was the administration to interpret a congressional intent that changed so often? Did Congress approve the contras, leaving only the scale of support at issue? Or was Congress seeking to destroy the Nicaraguan resistance while being unwilling to assume responsibility?

Clearly Congress provided neither continuity nor criteria to which even the most scrupulous administration could orient itself. And all the while the contras in the field, not governed by congressional cycles, were in danger of collapsing before a new congressional appropriation could be passed. Of such stuff are institutional crises made.

This in no way seeks to justify the specific measures the Reagan administration took to deal with its very real dilemma of how to keep

the contras alive from congressional cycle to congressional cycle. Neither self-financing nor lies to Congress can be excused. Nor were the administration requests to Congress free of disingenuousness. For example, were the sums requested by the executive branch based on an achievable strategy, or did they reflect a judgment of what the traffic would bear? Be that as it may, to focus exclusively on administration transgressions is one-sided and misleading; congressional incoherence and ambivalence require comparable attention.

The fundamental mistake made by the Reagan administration was to seek to achieve by indirection what it should have faced head on. It should have bent every effort to bring about a national debate on the choices before the country with regard to Nicaragua and to force a congressional vote on the minimum means required to achieve its view of national objectives.

There were at least three choices:

* To coexist with the Sandinista regime unless it introduced high-performance Soviet military equipment into Nicaragua.

* To bring pressure on Nicaragua to return to the inter-American system by expelling foreign—especially Cuban—advisers and reducing its military forces to traditional Central American levels in return for the United States' not challenging the Sandinista political structure.

* To overthrow the Sandinista regime or at a minimum (and improbably) to change its character so that the Sandinistas became one political party in an essentially pluralistic process in which the contras also participate.

The only option achievable without military pressure—contra or United States—is the acceptance of the Sandinista regime without any conditions other than the exclusion of Soviet high-performance military equipment. The overthrow of the Sandinistas, on the other hand—the third option—would almost certainly require U.S. troops.

The irony of the American political process is that each of the two coequal branches of the government chose an option at the opposite end of the spectrum, but supplied means inconsistent with its preferences. A large militant minority in Congress pursued the illusion that diplomacy was an alternative to pressure. But while it is possible to debate the nature of the pressure, and of reasonable objectives, diplomatic success presupposes a balance of penalties and incentives. In the end, a hesitant majority recognized this reality and voted reluctantly for some contra aid, though never enough for even minimum objectives. This institutionalized ambivalence.

On the other hand, the administration's real objective has been the overthrow of the Sandinista political structure. This is unachievable by the means it has requested, which at best are enough for the second option: the expulsion of foreign advisers and reduction of Nicaraguan military forces. This institutionalized stalemate.

(continued)

I make these criticisms with considerable sympathy and diffidence, for the administration in which I served reacted with similar ambivalence to comparable congressional challenges. In retrospect the Nixon administration's crucial mistake over the war in Vietnam (which it inherited) was not to insist on an up-or-down vote regarding its judgment on how to conclude the war. This would have required Congress to assume responsibility for its actions, would have avoided prolonged national anguish and would have brought a clear-cut resolution one way or the other. The Reagan administration will face the same endless controversy, and I fear the same unfortunate outcome, if it continues to finesse a national debate over Nicaragua.

Restoration of a sense of direction in foreign policy requires an end to hypocrisy and sanctimony. The administration must either ask for resources consistent with its objectives or reduce its objectives to attainable resources. Congress must stop carrying water on both shoulders, approving the principle of contra aid but salving its conscience by restrictions that doom it. It is, as well, time to stop the self-righteous claims that secrecy is in itself evil, especially in covert operations. What makes an operation covert is that parts of the government and Congress are excluded from full disclosure. It is imperative to debate the nature of the group that must be privy to information; it definitely must include some element from Congress. But in a world where the lines between domestic and foreign policy are eroding, the United States cannot be the only major country without a covert capability.

The United States urgently needs three things: 1) a compact between the executive and legislative branches defining the proper role for each with some precision; 2) a reassessment of how to conduct covert operations, and 3) a long-term program for Central America.

A vital democracy must be able to set realizable goals, and that must begin with mutual respect between branches of the government based on the conviction that serious people are dealing seriously with each other for the good of this country.

©1987, Los Angeles Times Syndicate

Washington Post
Sunday, September 6, 1987

Henry Kissinger

# Real Bipartisanship on Central America

Since the Iran-contra hearings, bipartisan-ness in U.S. foreign policy has become the slogan of the day. That goal is not merely desirable; it is essential. But while excessive partisanship has contributed to many recent shipwrecks of American foreign policy, grave damage can also be done when bipartisanship becomes a largely political and tactical maneuver.

In the great days of bipartisan American foreign policy—from the Truman Doctrine in 1947 till roughly the Vietnam War—there was substantial agreement on foreign policy objectives. Disagreement concerned means. Exactly the opposite is the case with respect to Central America after the accord between the president and the speaker of the House, Jim Wright. Bitter antagonism over objectives remains. Such consensus as exists relates to tactical moves which are stated in the vaguest terms and are unrelated to realistic schedules or implementing machinery.

The Reagan-Wright accord, which set a deadline of Oct. 10 for bringing a democratic process to Nicaragua, was superseded within days by the Guatemala City peace plan of the heads of government of Central America, who set a different schedule and criteria. In the era of true bipartisanship, executive and legislative compromises supported an agreed national strategy. On Central America they have become substitutes for it.

The predominant (though not exclusive view) in the Reagan administration is that the Sandinista regime in Managua is a threat to the security of its neighbors and ultimately of the United States. Therefore, the administration seeks to achieve not so much specific concessions as a transformation of the Nicaragua government into a pluralistic democracy. Inevitably the anti-Sandinista resistance is for the administration an essential, perhaps a decisive, component of a post-Sandinista political order.

The administration's critics, on the other hand, in large part are opposed to the so-called freedom fighters as a matter of principle. They consider American support for the guerrilla war as insupportable under international law and immoral. Many see the Nicaraguan resistance as the principal obstacle to a settlement. Hence the contras are treated by critics as at best a bargaining chip to be abandoned with greater or lesser good grace.

Neither side reveals its full, or perhaps even its real, agenda. The predominant group in the administration views the Central American peace program as a tactic to oblige Congress to vote the requested amounts for contra aid before adjournment. Many opponents of contra aid seek to use the peace plans to delay such a vote and to turn the domestic debate into a haggle over terms by which the contras can be abandoned.

I have considerable sympathy for the basic analysis of the administration. The fact remains that there has been next to no relationship between the administration's fierce rhetoric and its actions. The contra aid so far requested could not achieve the administration's stated objectives by military means; it would be at best enough for a prolonged stalemate. The administration owes the American public answers to these questions: 1) Are there any terms other than the overthrow of the Nicaraguan political structure for which it would settle? 2) If so, what are they? 3) If the answer is no, what precise effort is required to achieve its goals?

The opponents of contra aid, on the other hand, have refused to accept the reality that without the contras there would not have been any movement on the negotiating front. They must answer the question whether they are prepared to take the responsibility for perpetuating a Marxist-Leninist regime in Managua unconstrained by either security restrictions or human rights provisions. And if they are not, by what means are they willing to insist on what terms?

If these questions are not answered, we will slide into a situation where policy is suspended between a search for victory with insufficient resources and a call for diplomacy drained of incentives.

In an atmosphere where liturgy dominates substance, the one objective on which both supporters and opponents of contra aid agree—the establishment of pluralistic democracy throughout Central America—threatens to turn into an evasion of the fundamental issues. The bipartisan Central American Commission (of which I was chairman)—the last genuine bipartisan effort on the subject—concluded unanimously in 1984 that Nicaragua would be an overwhelming threat to all its neighbors so long as it continued to rely on thousands of Cuban military and intelligence advisers, was armed by the Soviet Union and retained its Cuban and Soviet-bloc-trained intelligence command and intelligence structure. Turmoil in Central America would ultimately affect the security of the United States 500 miles to the north and of the Panama Canal 300 miles to the south.

One would therefore assume that at a minimum an American peace plan would address specific threats to our security and put forward concrete proposals to reduce or eliminate them, especially as Soviet military assistance and Cuban support have both increased far beyond 1984 levels. But the Reagan-Wright peace plan as well as Guatemala City peace plan made only the vaguest references to Cuban and Soviet-bloc military and intelligence advisers or to the size of Central American armed forces. They focused primarily on the establishment of democratic institutions throughout Central America.

But diplomacy cannot always be equated with social and political engineering. Even with the best will in the world, the Guatemala City peace plan would produce an inherently one-sided negotiation. Managua's goal of ending American support for the contras is unambiguous and easily verifiable. Once carried out, it is irreversible. On the other hand, the achievement of pluralistic democracy permits few objective tests. It is a process that in the West was based on an evolution over centuries and occurred in industrialized societies. Do we really know enough in effect to design institutions for small countries with different histories and economic circumstances? Democratic reform, moreover, can be fairly easily reversed, especially in an agrarian society where there are few indigenous historical roots and where the government believes in a totally different philosophy.

In any event, in Central America good will is likely to be in short supply. Pluralistic democracy is based on the equal status of all political forces; Marxism-Leninism affirms the dominant role of the Communist Party. Western-style democracy is unthinkable without rotation in office. Marxist-Leninist parties insist that as the vanguard of history they cannot permit a reversal once they have seized power. That the dedicated, able and ruthless Sandinista leaders would violate their own deeply held convictions, voluntarily put their own power up for grabs and turn their government into a genuine pluralistic democracy requires a leap of faith of which I am not capable. The Sandinistas may allow some of the trappings of pluralism, as they did shortly after they came to power, but surely with the afterthought of reversing course when objective conditions have changed. And these will have changed as soon as the Nicaraguan resistance is abandoned by the United States. In any event, the various peace plans contain few criteria by which to judge progress, no enforcement machinery and no sanctions.

Ironically, the objective on which the Sandinistas and the Reagan administration may most likely agree—albeit tacitly—is to get through the rest of the president's term without having taken irrevocable decisions. The Sandinistas probably calculate that the more time they gain, the less likely will American public opinion support a serious effort to modify either their domestic or their security policies. At the same time the politically and ideologically oriented elements in the Reagan administration—and they are the majority—seem more concerned with avoiding the impression that they have accepted the Sandinista regime than to explore security arrangements such as expelling communist-bloc advisers and reducing Central American armed forces.

(continued)

In these circumstances it would be a contri-
bution to the seriousness of public discourse to
recognize that an overall settlement is simply
not possible in any time frame relevant to
congressional decisions on contra aid. An issue
as complex as the democratization of Central
America cannot be negotiated by the deadline
of Nov. 7 put forth in the Guatemala City
agreement. And if by some miracle it were,
there would be no way of knowing whether it
would be observed. Thus the only overall
settlement for Central America achievable
quickly would require abandoning long-held
positions of the other Central American gov-
ernments and much that is in America's long-
term security and political interest. But that is
not the real choice. It is too late in the Reagan
administration to resolve fundamental issues of
philosophy and of strategy or to adopt the
organizational remedies that might end the
fitful aspect of much of American foreign
policy. But it is emphatically not too late to
make sure that issues are dealt with in the
calmest possible atmosphere and after a
thoughtful debate. The elements of cease-fires
and of protecting human rights in the Guate-
mala City plan deserve careful exploration, but
that requires separating them from contra aid.

At this point both sides in the domestic
debate can make their best contribution by
keeping open the options for the future. The
administration must face the fact that it has
never sought the means to achieve its objec-
tives. It cannot avoid either scaling down its
demands or presenting their real price. If it
does so, it will become clear that the present
effort—which is the maximum Congress is
likely to allow—can do no better than to
continue a stalemate.

The opponents of administration policy
should not take upon themselves the historic
responsibility of perpetuating in this hemi-

sphere a Marxist-Leninist regime without any
safeguards with respect either to security or to
human rights. They should accept the fact that,
whatever they think of the Nicaraguan resis-
tance, without them there would never have
been even this much movement in the negotia-
tions. Above all, the United States cannot
without isolating itself abandon those who have
relied on its promise in every decade and on
every continent.

Thus, both sides of our domestic debate
should have an interest in the following steps:

A. The various peace plans should place much greater emphasis on elements that are concrete and verifiable—especially the withdrawal of communist-bloc military advisers and intelligence personnel from Nicaragua, the establishment of a severe limit on Soviet-bloc military aid, the creation of a ceiling for armed forces in Central America and an end to U.S. military maneuvers in Honduras.

B. The provisions of the Guatemala City peace plan dealing with democratic institutions should be made much more concrete. It is surely not too much to ask the Sandinistas to accord the same recognition and rights to their armed opposition that President Jose Napoleon Duarte of El Salvador has offered to his guerrilla opponents.

C. Congress should vote contra aid for an 18-month period on the present scale to permit a new administration to set its own policies and to avoid having an issue of fundamental national consequence overwhelmed by the politics of an election year. It cannot keep postponing that decision on the pretext of supporting a peace plan because that will in effect destroy the Nicaraguan resistance.

D. If a verifiable cease-fire should be achieved, contra aid could be transformed into humanitarian assistance (even recognizing the element of hypocrisy in this distinction).

Such a course would reflect true biparti-
ship.

To be honored in this country and in this city has a
special meaning for me. I grew up in Germany in painful
circumstances. Yet, despite the trauma of those years, I
have always retained a deep attachment to the land of my
youth. As a very young man serving in the armed forces of
the country which had given my family refuge, I saw the
ultimate consequences of the hatreds of that period in the
ruins of this city. In that desolate physical and moral
landscape it would have seemed inconceivable that a thriving
new town could emerge from the rubble. Or that it would
find a respected place in a Europe which for the first time
in centuries has returned to its original vocation as the
repository of the common values and purposes of Western
civilization.

When I read the acceptance speeches of previous award
winners, I was struck by their evolution from an almost
defiant faith in a better future to the celebration of a
growing achievement. When the Karlspreis was founded,
overcoming Franco-German enmity seemed a distant goal;
European unity was a dream for visionaries. Today
Franco-German reconciliation is so taken for granted that it
no longer rates special mention; European unity has become,
in large measure, a reality which concentrates today's
debate on new areas, functional or geographic, into which
the community should extend its writ. And it is a source of
special pride that America, the daughter of Europe, in part
repaid its heritage by contributing idealism and resources
in Europe's darkest hour, thereby making possible European
initiatives to reassert its historic role. This achievement
is associated with the last American who received this
prize: General George C. Marshall.

All great achievements in our common history were
dreams before they became realities -- from the cathedrals
raised towards the heavens by peasant societies over
decades; to the voyages across uncharted oceans by men moved
by both faith and greed; to the development -- unique in
world history -- of a concept of natural law which
recognized the inherent worth and rights of all human
beings.

The conviction that there were transcendent values
beyond the power of the state to grant or to modify is the
most singular accomplishment of Western history. It was
often violated but it always recurred and in the end
triumphed. Four principles characterize this common
heritage.

-2-

1. The state is not the personal possession of the ruler but reflects a community of citizens -- cives, citoyen, Mitbürger. All citizens -- recognizing that in the classical period there was the blight of slavery -- possessed equal rights and were involved in shaping the destiny of their community. Even at the height of the Roman Empire, it saw itself as a city state governed by free citizens. These rights were in time extended to the entire Empire -- the first such gesture in history.

2. Even the most powerful rulers are subject to law -- written or customary. Ever since the majestic structure of Roman law, Western societies have insisted that their governments were based on law, not on personal will. This concept was amplified during the Christian era to include the idea that a divine law administered by a separate hierarchy was beyond the control of temporal authority. No other civilization has developed such absolute concepts of justice and such an insistence on the limits of temporal power.

3. In Western societies officials must justify themselves by service -- the very word minister derives from that concept.

4. To be a Roman citizen was to be free above all; citizenship indeed was called *Libertas Romana*. Indeed the history of the West can be interpreted as a never ending struggle for freedom in ever new forms; in the freedom for citizens inside the thousands of towns formed all over Europe in the Xth and XIth centuries; in the religious liberty expRESSED in Luther's idea of the "freedom of a Christian"; in the Dutch struggle for national freedom against Spain; in the limitations of royal power first by the aristocracy and then by the people culminating in the American and French Revolutions with their affirmation of the Rights of Men.

The battles for freedom may have had local origins but the underlying concept was in each case universal. This ancient city, built on the ruins of a Roman spa, participated in that epic theme of Western history since before Europe forgot that it was European.

-3-

The united Europe of Charlemagne disappeared in the centuries thereafter amidst the selfishness, the wars and the suffering that accompanied the fragmentation of Europe. But the ideal remained even when the rise of the nation state seemed to doom Europe to permanent fragmentation.

In the fullness of time these values spread across the Atlantic into my adopted country where, unconstrained by national rivalries and unencrusted by tradition, they acquired a drive, even an innocence that history's legacy did not allow on the old continent. In that philosophical sense the frontier of Europe rests on the Pacific coast of North America.

In terms of that tradition, European unity and Atlantic partnership are not antithetical, but complimentary; they are not simply practical necessities -- though that undoubtedly plays an important part. They are above all an expression of basic and ancient values which have been reborn in the anguish of the Western civil wars of the first half of the 20th century. They have taught us that no goal is worthy of unconditional commitment -- not even peace -- unless it is founded on justice and liberty.

We can take pride in what has been achieved in some forty years of common efforts. We need only compare the speeches of prize winners in the early Fifties with what has been said in the Eighties to measure how far Europe has come in forging its unity and gaining self confidence.

We need only compare the sense of imminent danger of that earlier period with the current debate over the modalities of arms control to realize to what extent security has come to be taken for granted on both sides of the Atlantic.

But history knows no resting places; what does not advance must sooner or later decline.

European unity was forged in the crucible of the suffering by two World Wars -- so unexpected a shock after the complacent faith of the 19th century in uninterrupted progress -- and the economic chaos that followed. Atlantic partnership was spawned by the fear of aggression by a totalitarian Soviet state. But what is Europe's role now that internecine conflicts have been largely put aside and prosperity has been achieved? What is the goal of the Atlantic enterprise in an era of negotiation?

-4-

In short, what do we now understand by peace? What do we understand by security? What do we understand by progress?

This is not the occasion to attempt detailed answers. But let me state a few general principles:

When the Atlantic Alliance was formed, it was assumed that the threat to peace was similar to recently familiar totalitarian phenomena: a large-scale invasion across sovereign borders with the avowed aim of domination of the world by military means. Since then, it has become clear that the Soviet challenge is both more complex and more subtle. It rests on what Marxist-Leninists consider the correlation of forces, but that correlation can be shifted gradually and patiently by pressure, by ambiguity and occasionally by exploiting the West's desire for peace and its diversity of views on how to achieve that end.

Western leaders have been responding to their publics' desire for peace by constantly expressing their readiness for negotiation; they have not always been equally clear about the program for these negotiations. Sensitivity to public pressures is so great that militant minorities have occasionally achieved a disproportionate influence. Gradually the belief has gained ground that internal Soviet transformations will solve the problem of peace and the West's own lack of clarity as to objectives.

That a more flexible leadership has come to power in the Kremlin is beyond doubt. In foreign policy it has so far at least been able to obscure the increasingly evident structural dilemmas of a centrally planned society by great skill in public relations. It has been more successful than it should be in promoting divisions in Europe and weakening the cohesion of the Atlantic Alliance. This is because the West has not answered for itself this fundamental question: Are concessions justified by Soviet internal developments, or should they be analyzed primarily in terms of Soviet foreign policy conduct?

Some argue that Gorbachev needs a success to sustain himself. The danger is that success so defined is likely to be inimical to the West. Perhaps Soviet domestic reform will lead automatically to a more conciliatory Soviet policy. It is equally possible that Gorbachev seeks to achieve maneuvering room for domestic reform by demonstrating to foreign policy hardliners that flexible

-5-

tactics are more effective than crude threats in tilting the
correlations of forces against the West.

I do not choose among these possibilities except to
point out that to gear foreign policy to a psychological
assessment of Soviet leaders leaves the West vulnerable to
sudden changes in Soviet leadership and the Soviets
unconstrained in the political competition, in time perhaps
even in the military field. Exclusive preoccupation with
arms control involves the risk that arms control becomes a
safety valve for political pressure rather than a means for
easing tensions. Paradoxically such attitudes may keep the
West from establishing whether Gorbachev, in the end, is
willing to be as imaginative in foreign as in domestic
policy.

Peace requires, above all, a vision of its content.
The West must, to be sure, take into account Soviet concerns
-- since no agreement that fails to take the mutual interest
into account can last -- but the ultimate justification is
the compatibility of any peace program with our values and
our security.

This is all the more true since in the decades since
this prize was founded the conditions of security have
changed fundamentally. On the one hand, we forget at our
peril that nuclear weapons have produced the longest period
of uninterrupted peace since the modern state system was
founded. On the other hand, nuclear weapons involve
apocalyptic consequences that no statesman has ever had to
face. The issue of security has therefore become
increasingly controversial. The very success of deterrence
contributes to its ambiguity. It is never possible to prove
why something has not happened. Has war been avoided
because the West has pursued the best possible policy or a
barely sustainable one? Or perhaps the Soviets never had
any intention to attack in the first place?

None of your first ten honorees mentioned the subject
of arms control -- except Paul Henri Spaak who thought it
offered no solution to the problem of peace. Today every
debate about security is conducted with arms control as its
centerpiece.

Arms control indeed is on the verge of becoming a major
domestic issue in most European countries and between Europe
and the United States. Many in Europe and some in the
United States define any attempt to design a strategic

-6-

rationale for modern weapons -- from strategic defense to discriminating targeting -- as provocative or futile. But the alternative -- a strategy relying on civilian and industrial destruction -- involves casualties so horrendous as to paralyze the will. For how long can the West continue to rely on a threat it must be increasingly reluctant to implement and which, if implemented, would guarantee the end of Western civilization?

From that perspective the current debate about missiles in Europe has already altered Atlantic relationships: American medium-range missiles in Europe -- and in all likelihood shorter range ones as well -- will disappear either because of an agreement or because the political basis for sustaining them will be overwhelmed by a flood of recriminations should negotiations fail. And inevitably once zero is accepted as a desirable goal in some categories of nuclear weapons, it will create pressures for the removal of other categories as well. Whatever else happens the Soviet Union has already achieved a veto over new nuclear deployment in Europe.

Yet for some time to come the Soviet conventional arsenal remains. All this is a particular concern for the Federal Republic of Germany which is the only country in Europe facing large Soviet armies and possessing no nuclear weapons of its own; hence it is unusually dependent on its allies.

One of the functions of the medium range (and other) American missiles in Europe was to link technically the strategic nuclear defense of Europe to that of the United States and that of the Federal Republic of Germany to the rest of Europe. To the extent that this organic military relationship weakens or vanishes, a political substitute must be found. The nations of Europe have no more urgent task than to make clear that the Federal Republic of Germany is so integral a part of a united Europe that any nuclear threat to it would be treated as a threat to the European nation as a whole; in short, that their national nuclear arsenals are held in trust for the defense of Europe. An important first step would be to begin coordinating the nuclear forces of Britain and France; the United States should modify its legislation to make this possible.

This is only the first step the United States should take to demonstrate by new and specific acts of political solidarity that its commitment to the defense of Europe is determined not by the geographic location of its weapons but by being anchored in America's heart. We cannot permit two

-7-

great achievements of the postwar period -- the anchoring of Germany in the councils of the West and the Atlantic partnership -- to be undone by absorption with tactics of the moment.

I would be less than honest if I did not emphasize that I have never been more worried about trends which, just as in the days after Charlemagne, appear at what should be the moment of our greatest success. If Europe permits itself to be tempted by disguised neutralism and America revels in disguised isolationism, all that has been celebrated in this hall for a generation will be in jeopardy.

Neither Europe nor America can evade any longer a fundamental review of their security policy and ultimately of their foreign policy. Recent events, precisely because they are irreversible, have accelerated what technology would have imposed in any event -- a reconsideration of the comfortable assumptions that destructiveness can be equated with security but also of the shallow counterargument that one can escape the nuclear age by returning to a technology that produced unceasing warfare for centuries years. Western leaders must stop pretending that nuclear weapons can be abolished; too many exist in too many countries; too much knowledge will remain in the minds of scientists for this to be feasible. But equally they should not rely on nuclear weapons to solve all their problems.

In walking this fine line America has had the principal responsibility of leadership. But in the period ahead the contribution of a united Europe is essential. A one-sided relationship will lead to the demoralization of both sides of the Atlantic. Europe must build a structure for the consideration of strategic issues either by building on the WEU or by some other mechanism, and America must support this. A useful symbolic step in this direction would be to make the next NATO commander a European.

And beyond strategy there is lacking an
an adequate mechanism within the Atlantic Alliance to
discuss conflicts outside NATO. This prevents either a
common position or even a procedure to define permissible
disagreement.

The West is now suffering from the consequences of past
successes. A generation of peace has produced on the
European side of the Atlantic the temptations of
emancipation from superpower relationships; on the American

-8-

side there are signs of the reemergence of historic
isolationism -- especially as the country's center of
gravity shifts westward. But America, the daughter of
Europe, can no more turn its back on its heritage than
Europe can seek salvation in an illusory equidistance from
the so-called superpowers, of which in fact Europe should be
one. The West, whose historic tragedy it has been to
sacrifice its spiritual unity on the altar of shortsighted
self-interest, must not repeat what this prize celebrates
having transcended.

Much has been built in the generation since this prize
was first given. The building must not stop especially as
the challenges ahead of us are far less daunting than the
road already traversed. No one any longer believes that our
adversaries represent the wave of the future. No generation
has had a better prospect for building a better and more
secure world.

But we risk wasting our opportunity by an obsession
with the tactical and the short-term, by domestic politics
and by confusing the plausible with the true.

The great German statesman Bismarck said:

"World history with its great transformations
does not come upon us with the even speed of
a railway train. No, it moves forward in
spurts but then with irresistible force. One
must take care whether one can discern the
Lord's march through history, seek to grasp
the hem of His cloak and let oneself be
be swept along the greatest distance possible."

Modern politics too often produces an orgy of
self-righteousness amidst a cacophony of sounds. Is it too
much to ask for a moment of silent reflection to permit us
to listen for God's footsteps so that we can grasp the hem
of His cloak?

No generation can do more.

But also it dare not do less.

Los Angeles Times

Sunday, May 24, 1987

# Brazil's Crisis: U.S. Must Lend a Hope, a Hand

By Henry A. Kissinger

NEW YORK

Almost unnoticed, the festering Latin American debt crisis has broken out again and its impact, in the long run, may be more significant than those matters receiving greater public attention. The latest manifestation is Brazil's decision to suspend the payment of interest on its commercial debts while the lending banks have suspended any additional credits and must consider increasing their reserves against losses. Most dramatically, Citicorp has already provided for writing off $3 billion of Latin American loans.

In any conflict between Brazil and the United States, there can only be losers. If Brazil's growth is stunted, its internal crisis will worsen and populist, anti-market, anti-U.S. forces will be dangerously strengthened just when a democratic constitution is being drafted. Conversely, the banks will face major difficulties if Brazil renounces its obligations, especially if other debtors followed Brazil's lead. And tension between Brazil and the United States would thwart any attempt to construct a creative and long-overdue new Western Hemisphere relationship.

For Brazil is the largest, richest and most powerful country of Latin America. It has a tradition of political moderation and effective government. Unlike many other debtors, it has used its foreign loans to build up a world-class industrial and economic infrastructure. Its relations with the United States have been traditionally friendly. Brazilian troops fought with the Allies in World War II; they helped American troops restore democracy to the Dominican Republic in 1965.

It will be argued that the current crisis with Brazil follows the fever chart of previous near-confrontations with key debtors such as Mexico and Argentina, when predictions of dire consequences were never fulfilled. But time has been gained at the cost of making the debt problem more intractable. Something is wrong with a system of crisis management

which each year produces a confrontation with a different major country over essentially the same set of problems. Meanwhile Latin American debt has increased from $280 billion in 1982 to close to 400 billion today. And the political framework for dealing with the debt has deteriorated.

Nor is Brazil an isolated case. Last year Mexico was near default and Brazil was lauded as the success story. This year Mexico is quiescent after an infusion of close to $12 billion, $8 billion as the result of forced loans from private banks. But that package will run out in 1988 coincident with the taking of office by a new Mexican president. It is reckless to gamble that no leader will ever press matters to a showdown or that Latin American nations would not unite were that to happen.

There is much mock heroic talk that in such a case the creditors would attach the assets of the offending country and reduce its trade to barter. But applied against a major Latin American country, such a course would be politically intolerable. The record demonstrates in any event that the supposed rules of the game are not really in force. Rule No. 1 said that good behavior would be rewarded by renewed access to private, voluntary capital flows. This has not happened and is nowhere in prospect. Rule No. 2 said that breaking with the system—refusing the International Monetary Fund conditionality or suspending interest payments—would elicit sanctions ranging from full-scale economic warfare to suspension of trade credits. But these sanctions have not been applied to Brazil, Peru or others that have challenged the debt system. Thus the precedent from the Brazil crisis could well be to legitimize suspension of interest payments as an acceptable bargaining tactic.

All of this should produce a new sense of urgency. If Mexico were to slide into economic chaos, the focus of American policy would almost inevitably shift from America's Atlantic and Pacific allies to damage control along the Rio Grande. If Brazilian politics were to be dominated by anti-U.S. populism, the basis for a long-term, constructive Western Hemisphere policy would disappear. With Argentina, the same is true to only a slightly lesser extent.

It is past time to build for the future in Latin America. A significant percentage of the United States trade deficit is the result of the drying up of exports to Latin American debtors that can no longer afford them. Since 1982, the U.S. trade balance with

Please see BRAZIL, Page 6

This is one of a series of articles for The Times by former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger.

(continued)

Brazil

Latin America has declined by $15 billion. Moreover, it is conceivable that within a generation contemporary free trade aspirations will be replaced by trading blocs united in part by political, in part by economic, ties. A prudent American policy would keep open the option—unsatisfactory as that might be—of creating such a structure in the Western Hemisphere.

Above all, in this hemisphere the United States deals with countries of a comparable cultural heritage which are generally among the most advanced in the developing world. If it proves impossible to achieve mutually beneficial relationships here, the prospects in other less-developed parts of the world are dim indeed.

Any realistic approach to the debt problem must begin with the recognition that underlying problems have not been solved; they have become congenital. Austerity has eroded the political framework that gave debt service priority over domestic growth. Democratic governments no longer find it politically possible to base domestic policies on prescriptions by banks or international financial institutions.

In terms of actual settlements, the annual interest payments of Latin American countries consume up to 50% percent of their exports and over 5% of gross national product. The practical consequence is that interest is paid not from economic growth but by new loans which, in turn, produce a larger interest burden in subsequent years. The circular nature of the problem is illustrated by mounting Latin American debt since the crisis began in 1982: Mexico's debt has increased from $77 billion to $102 billion; Argentina's from $36 billion to $53 billion, and Brazil's from $74 billion to $108 billion.

To make matters worse, growth rates in industrial democracies have declined—from the 3% thought necessary to stabilize the

economies of developing countries to around 2.5%. Debtors have been net capital exporters since 1983, a grotesque position for developing countries. Commodity prices are at 50-year lows while protectionist measures inevitably mount.

Moreover, while each agreement between banks and debtors is presented as a "special case," the concessions made to one debtor are inevitably demanded—and received—by the others. The short-term nature of agreements between debtors and banks produce perpetual crises and lead to a de facto debtors' cartel.

By and large the commercial banks have been generous, even farsighted. But their responsibility to share holders requires them to postpone the hour of reckoning as long as possible. The longer they delay the blow-up, the more able they will be to build reserves and the more likely the government will be obliged to intervene to mitigate their situation. The creditors have few incentives to seek a comprehensive solution.

But governments can and must. In a seminal speech 18 months ago, Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III committed the United States to a focus on global economic growth. But since he judged it politically unfeasible to put forward a concrete program, however conditional, he lacked the leverage to achieve his objectives.

At their June economic summit, leaders of the industrial democracies must recognize that the debt problem is a time bomb threatening the future of democracy in the Western Hemisphere.

Responsible Latin American leaders have asked for a political solution. This is often interpreted as a plea for a free ride. In reality what they require is an international political framework within which to undertake the reforms needed to encourage domestic savings and foreign investment. This cannot be done in the name of paying interest to foreigners. But the prospect of long-term growth could make it politically possible to sustain an inevitable period of adjustment. Europe would today be

radical if in 1948 it had been given the nostrum of the current debt crisis—to produce more than is consumed, to export more than is imported until in time the market produces new capital for growth. The Marshall Plan provided resources—above all, it gave hope.

Some international scheme providing equivalent hope adapted to contemporary conditions is urgently needed for the Western Hemisphere. It should have three components: A procedural reform that extends the present short-term approach by longer-term reciprocal commitments; the creation of a capital fund to generate an agreed growth target; the establishment of a ceiling on interest obligations to make them more predictable and sustainable.

The precise scheme is less important than the political commitment. In fact there is a surfeit of proposals but no political consensus. A particularly interesting idea would put a ceiling on interest for the debtors of, say, 6%, with the difference between that figure and market rates being paid out of a fund created by governments, international financial institutions and private banks (proportions to be set by negotiation). If the interest rates remain low—and this scheme provides one incentive to keep rates low—the fund can be used for new lending to speed economic growth. In this manner or some other way, the constructive Japanese-commitment of $20-$30 billion over five years should be matched by the West.

Of course the most radical and most market-oriented solution would face facts head on: Some debtors owe more than they can ever hope to pay or service. Such candor would encourage creditors to convert Latin American debt into securities. The market would inevitably value this debt at less than 100 cents on the dollar (the current price at which most Latin American loans are traded is around 60 cents), passing the greatest part of the difference to the debtor. This would reduce both debt and interest payment, making repayment more likely. The loss to banks could be mitigated if regulators allowed them to write it off over a long period of time or if the governments of the industrial democracies shared the burden.

Brazil is not an aberration. It is a symptom of a crisis that leads debtors toward political paralysis, creditors to financial disaster and North-South relations into permanent confrontation. Recognizing this reality should be the catalyst for joint action by industrial democracies to dedicate themselves to a policy of global growth. ☐

5/21/87

Excerpts from the remarks of Dr. Henry Kissinger at the Presidents
Conference memorial meeting honoring the late Yehuda Hellman:

I have very great worry. Unanimity has never been an attribute of Israel or Israelis, but in the past there has always been a consensus on fundamental issues of national survival. Thus, the American Jewish community could deal with a homogeneous point of view. Today, however, there is a clear cut public division of views in Israel. Whatever the merits of either position, there is inevitably an effort to enlist outsiders in these disputes. I regard this as extremely dangerous. I would urge that some solution be found so that there can be an expression of a common point of view. Israel is a tiny community of barely 3 million. It is very difficult for the United States to understand Israel's narrow margin of survival. I always thought it would be useful to draw Jordan across the river to give them Jericho as the price of their taking the PLO out of the situation. Once, in visiting Hadassah hospital the day was so clear that I could see the Jordan river, and the mountains to the East in Jordan seemed within the reach of my hand. I could understand that when the margin of survival is so narrow, one cannot risk the great experiment that is Israel. It is difficult enough to get this across to American policy makers. But when Israel speaks with a divided voice that task becomes almost impossible.

I am quite worried about the substance of this matter. We are in the last 18 months of the present American administration. With the best will in the world, the State Department cannot guarantee what its successor will do. I have no doubts about Secretary Shultz, but with an election coming up, the East-West negotiations proceeding, with other preoccupations on his mind, no Secretary of State can today give enough time to working out a Middle-East solution.

This then is a perplexity. I have grave doubts about a very large international conference composed mainly of countries whose stated position is not at all sympathetic to that of even the most dovish forces in Israel. Comparison has been made to the international conference of 1973, but very special conditions obtained then. May I remind you that Israeli troops were 15 miles from Damascus and on the other side of the Suez Canal and that Egypt had Anwar Sadat at its helm. That situation cannot be duplicated today. My experience with an international conference is that it is not easy to disband it once it has assembled, and that it is not easy to walk out of one. And so a series of questions crosses my mind:

* Do King Hussein and Assad of Syria understand and agree that the conference will play no role in the negotiation, that it will meet for a day or two and then disband?

* Is it understood that the conference will not be able to impose its views? I remind you that the mere expression of views by conference participants is a form of pressure.

* What are the substantive understandings among the participants? Why do the Arabs want it? Who will be deceived by a conference that meets for only a day or so?

On the substance: Is there a US-Israel agreement on the limits beyond
which Israel will not be pushed? Indeed, what does "pushed" mean? Again,
I remind you that the mere expression of an American position is a form
of "push". I did it myself.

Is there an agreement between Israel and the United States on the minimum
conditions of a settlement? Is there agreement that Syria will have to
get back at least some of the Golan and Jordan at least some of the West
Bank, in any negotiation? If we don't have the answers to these questions,
than I am very worried indeed.

I want to say that these are not my formal or final views on the subject,
and I am not advocating any particular position but merely expressing my
concerns. If I had to express an opinion I would probably say that on
the procedural issue, I am pro-Likud; and on the substance, pro-Labor.

At all events, to enter negotiations without knowing the outcome and to
assume that the process itself will provide new solutions is an extremely
dangerous course. A year ago I would have asked Yehuda to get the American
Jewish community to address some of these questions. Because if we don't
answer them others will -- and the pressures they exercise will create a
new reality. As was said before by a great world statesman, "Woe to the
national leader whose arguements at the end of a conference are not as
persuasive as at the beginning." (Bismark)

These are some of my worries at the moment. I do not mean to be critical
of anyone. My problem is I do not know what agreements have already
been made. But I do feel that we must not start a process in which
Israel and its friends cannot give their own answers. Again, let me
emphasize that I'm raising these matters as questions, I am not giving
answers.

Dr. Kissinger agreed to accept one or two questions from the audience.
In responding he said:

I would not be surprised if the Soviets participate in the international
conference. (I spent years trying to keep them out.) Inevitably, they
will defend the Arabs, the United States will be a mediator and Israel
will be alone. I believe they would act in a restrained manner in the
beginning, and that it would be in their interest to accept what other
countries, in the West, propose.

The Chinese do not seem so eager to join a Middle-East conference and the
Soviets might even accept the idea that the conference would not impose
a solution. But again, I remind you that it would be difficult to keep
any country from expressing a point of view. It would be one thing if
Jordan and Israel come to a rapid agreement and if that agreement wins
acceptance. But a prolonged deadlock is quite another matter.

On Glasnost -- I can see some increase in Jewish emigration from the
USSR but I would be surprised if it reached the earlier levels of the
period before and just after the Jackson-Vanik agreement. More likely,
I think the Russians might decide on how many Jews they are willing to

let out in total -- perhaps as many as 50,000 or 100,000, and establish
one particular set of criteria for such emigration -- for example, Jews
with families abroad. But I think that once this one-shot emigration is
completed, that would be all.

What price should the US pay for this? This can get very complicated.
Economic help, perhaps. Giving up political positions is another story.

Concerning the Palestinians -- my view is if the PLO is part of the inter-
national conference it would lead to a debacle. Inviting the PLO to the
conference means that sovereignty and territory will become inevitable.
Arab states might live in peace with Israel but I cannot believe the PLO
ever will, composed as it is of the msot radical elements. It is of
course desireable to have Palestinians in the negotiation, but to sneak
in a de facto PLO spokesman as part of a non-PLO delegation does not
solve the fundamental problem. If Israel is willing to make territorial
concessions the price the Arabs must pay is that such territory cannot go
to the PLO. It would be a debacle for Jordan and cause a profound crisis
for Israel if that is permitted.

# Missiles

Continued from Page 1

conventional balance is established. Otherwise, removing medium- and short-range nuclear weapons would simply make Europe safe for conventional war.

Our negotiators must hold their ground on these points. No deal is better than a bad deal. But that is not our choice. We can reach a good deal, for both sides, if we always keep in mind that Gorbachev needs a deal as much as we do. Indeed, if he is genuinely interested in peace he should want an agreement that increases the security of both sides. Unilateral concessions now may bring a temporary respite but only at the cost of grave risks later.

In addition to arms control, it is vital that a summit convened to sign a missile agreement also deal with the major political U.S.-Soviet issues. If summitry is to promote the chances of peace, the superpowers must address the potential causes of war. It is not weapons that cause war, but rather the political differences that lead to the use of those weapons. Therefore, when President Reagan and Secretary Gorbachev meet, there must be significant progress toward resolving key political issues, such as the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Soviet arms shipments to Nicaragua and Soviet-sponsored subversion in Central America. Gorbachev has taken the first steps toward reform at home but has not retreated one inch from Moscow's posture abroad. Indeed, his policy can be said to be a subtler implementation of historic Soviet patterns. He has criticized Leonid I. Brezhnev, but he still enforces the Brezhnev Doctrine.

Every President has an understandable desire to assure his place in history as a peacemaker. But he must always remember that however he may be hailed in today's headlines, the judgment of tomorrow's history would severely condemn a false peace. If President Reagan stands firm for the principles he has so steadfastly maintained, he will be able to sign the right agreement and make a significant step toward real peace in the world. ☐

INTERNATIONAL

Kissinger: How to
Deal With Gorbachev

Taking stock after a meeting with the Soviet leader

BY HENRY A. KISSINGER

It had been a decade since I last visited the Soviet Union. So it was a bittersweet experience to find that Moscow has not lost its capacity to inspire ambivalence. The seediness of the accommodations had not changed, nor the backwardness of what in the West are considered life's amenities. One remains amazed that a country subsisting at so marginal a standard of living should conduct so assertive a global policy.

Yet the surface impression of stagnation was misleading. There is clearly an unprecedented ferment underneath the gloomy surface of wintry Moscow. The new leadership is different. It displays a vigor, dynamism and flexibility inconceivable 10 years ago. Brezhnev was ebullient but slightly insecure in dealing with American visitors. Reflecting a combination of vulnerability and inward doubt, he insisted on proclaiming the equal status of the Soviet Union. He came to meetings with a prepared statement and plowed through it, come what may. He seemed heavily reliant on his associates.

Mikhail Gorbachev and his colleagues are far more urbane.

They take Soviet equal status with America for granted; reaffirming it would surely have evoked an indignant outburst. When I and a group of former senior officials from four administrations called on him on a private visit, Gorbachev had also brought a prepared statement. But he did not start reading from it until near the end of a three-hour conversation. In the event he did not finish the reading, and we only saw the full text in the newspapers the next day. Alternately bantering and caustic, threatening and conciliatory, Gorbachev addressed various members of our delegation individually, displaying an impressive knowledge of his subject and a subtle intuition for each interlocutor.

That the Soviet Union is now led by so forceful a personality is not an unalloyed blessing. The Brezhnev group seemed exhausted by its experiences in Stalin's purges

and in the war. It was—until tempted by American domestic divisions—extremely cautious. Gorbachev and his associates seem less constrained by the past and more assertive with respect to Soviet power. They have the intellectual equipment for a far more dynamic foreign policy than their

YURCHENKO—AP

Alternately bantering and caustic, threatening and conciliatory, Mikhail Gorbachev is the most urbane Soviet leader I have encountered

predecessors. These qualities also make them far more formidable adversaries.

I emerged from the sojourn in Moscow with six fundamental conclusions:

* "Reform" is in the air. I do not doubt the sincerity of the effort to overcome the stagnation, technological backwardness and corruption of traditional Soviet-style central planning.

* The purpose of that reform is not to spur democracy or freedom; it is to encourage efficiency and industrial progress, hence to make the Soviet Union more powerful.

* So far we are dealing with a program that has just been announced—with a theory and not yet a practice.

* Even if the program succeeds it does not automatically guarantee a more benign foreign policy. On the contrary, it may provide additional resources for expansionism and ideological challenges.

* The American scope to influence—or even to evaluate correctly—Soviet internal development is limited. American concessions should therefore be geared to Soviet foreign-policy conduct and not to its domestic economic program.

* All this imposes on the democracies the necessity of developing a purposeful, long-range and subtle strategy on East-West relations. This is all the more important to prevent the Soviet leaders from using their newfound skill in public relations to manipulate the desire in the democracies for peace.

Domestic Reform

The criticism of the inefficiency of central planning heard from high

Soviet officials in Moscow today could be mistaken for that of a conservative American think tank. One is told horror stories about the impact of subsidized prices. For example, one senior official told us that subsidized children's clothing is so cheap that eligible buyers use it to polish their cars because rags, being unsubsidized, are more expensive.

High Soviet officials are vigorous in their insistence that such evils will be overcome. They assert that soon enterprises will be able to deal with each other on the basis of consumer demand rather than deal only with ministries by means of quotas imposed from the top. They advance vague concepts of worker and peasant participation in economic decision making. They speak of elections with multiple candidacies, heretofore a heresy in Soviet thinking. They condemn aspects of the existing censorship, such as bureaucrats defending

their turf or taking care of personal friends.

What makes these propositions more impressive is that they are not put forward in the traditional Soviet manner as revealed truth. Rather they are advanced with a disarming admission of ignorance about the means to achieve them. Andrei Sakharov, whom we met in a moving encounter, stressed his belief in the seriousness of the reform program. He argued almost plausively that there was no choice; any alternative would be worse.

All this is music to the ears of Westerners who believe that the Soviet vocabulary mimics that of the West. It is easy to overlook the fact that reform so far consists essentially of a major speech by Gorbachev to the Central Committee—and that several of his recommendations, such as retirement at the age of 70, were not reflected in the Central Committee statement ending

NEWSWEEK: MARCH 2, 1987 39

INTERNATIONAL

the plenum. When I asked about the discrepancy, a member of the Central Committee explained that the best talent in the Central Committee staff had worked on the speech, not the resolution.

Gorbachev's program clearly faces major obstacles. Not the least significant is the historical Russian tendency to bend pronouncements from on high to the elemental rhythm of a long-suffering people. Then there are major contradictions—to use a Marxist phrase—in Gorbachev's program. It seeks to rely on markets while emphasizing central planning. Those two objectives are likely to prove as incompatible in the Soviet Union as elsewhere. So is the attempt to base production on real costs while subsidizing the prices of major items. The

theory of glasnost—or openness—may well be based on the misconception, which comes naturally to a Leninist, that there is only one truth.

But left to their own devices, men and women tend to reach contradictory conclusions from the same body of facts. Eventually that tendency toward pluralism is likely to oblige the new Soviet leadership to choose between Western-style democracy and repression. When confronting this choice in the past, Communist leaders have always opted for repression.

Similarly, economic decentralization is likely to spawn demands for political decentralization. This was a serious problem even in China, which is culturally homogeneous. The implications are much graver for an empire like the Soviet Union composed of many nationalities that may well see in decentralization a first step toward national autonomy.

In the euphoria engendered by the new style of Soviet leadership, there has been a deafness to explicit Soviet statements emphatically rejecting any intention of moving toward a market economy or any kind of Western democracy. True, our Soviet hosts expressed grave doubts about the efficacy of central planning, but they were equally emphatic on the need to retain its key features.

This reflects the realities of the Soviet system. What would be the function of the Communist Party if there were no central planning? And what leader who owes his eminence to the communist system—as is the case with Gorbachev and all his colleagues—can imagine a communist state without a dominant Communist Party? In short, the Soviet Union is a totalitarian state today and it will be a totalitarian state even after the reforms are completed, albeit a somewhat more benign one.

The new Soviet reform program has un-

leashed the perennial nostalgia of the democracies for seeking salvation in a conversion of the Soviet system to Western values. The West German foreign minister has already announced that we must not let this opportunity pass. In other words, some concessions not justified on foreign-policy grounds should be made to encourage a reform program which the Soviet Union needs for its own purposes.

But the sophisticated, tough-minded, able and urbane Soviet leaders we met are not reforming their society as a favor to us. They seek efficiency, productivity, technology—not democracy. They need a spite in the international field to accomplish these objectives; they have not been converted to Western pacifist notions. If

er it can be translated into specific conditions that make a difference for international security.

Foreign-Policy Issues

For visiting delegations in a communist capital, discussing foreign policy can be treacherous. While diplomatic solutions usually result from an accumulation of nuances, a brief visit tends to focus on general propositions. One must resist the temptation of cooperating in the myth that diplomacy is like a detective story in which one side throws out vague hints and the other must guess at the answers. Serious proposals should be made through established channels, not to visiting delegations.

To some extent, a visiting delegation is always used for the purposes of the host country. For example, at one reception a Soviet space scientist took me aside to tell me with great earnestness about a laser experiment he wished to conduct with one of the moons of Mars. It was extremely flattering to be the recipient of such information, especially as no Western space scientist ever thought me worthy of his confidence (on the correct premise that I would not understand it). In this case the purpose was clearly to convey a hint of Soviet flexibility with respect to testing in space—though people more knowledgeable than I soon enlightened me that it was not much of a concession.

Of the foreign-policy topics we discussed, the Soviets proved most interesting on the subject of Afghanistan. I had arrived in Moscow persuaded that the Soviet Union would never permit the overthrow of a regime established by Soviet power; that is certainly the essence of the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine. I am no longer so sure. Our Soviet hosts emphasized their desire for total withdrawal. They also affirmed the goal of a government of national reconciliation that would include representatives of the guerrilla groups. They hinted at a short period for withdrawal; they seemed prepared to discuss —though not to be specific about—the evolution of the Kabul government after a withdrawal. I asked a senior Communist whether it was possible for the Soviets to stand by while a communist government collapsed. He replied that the Kabul government was not communist and technically not even socialist.

It would be rash to draw dramatic conclusions from these statements. It is possible that this apparent flexibility was designed to soften us up for the major onslaught on

SHONE—SIPA PRESS

In a moving encounter, Sakharov stressed his belief in the seriousness of the reform program, arguing that there was no better alternative

they succeed in the objective of making their country stronger—without changing the foreign policy that produced current tensions—the democracies will in the long run be less secure.

I am not suggesting that the West has an interest in the failure of Gorbachev's experiment. Rather it cannot gear its foreign policy to a Soviet domestic program, however attractive. The only Soviet leader who did not die in office was also the principal reformer; Khrushchev was overthrown by the Central Committee. He also carried out the most adventurous foreign policy, witness the Berlin crisis and the Cuban missile crisis.

It cannot be in the interest of the democracies to gamble on an international structure dependent on Soviet self-restraint. The test of Gorbachev's statement that his top priority is domestic reform must be wheth-

NEWSWEEK: MARCH 2, 1987

INTERNATIONAL

arms control. Perhaps these hints are designed to tempt Pakistan to stop the supply of arms to the Afghan guerrillas. But it should be relatively easy to test Soviet intentions. If the Soviets are serious about an Afghan settlement, they will have to meet two conditions: (1) to set a short deadline for withdrawal—say six months or less; (2) to leave the future of the so-called government of reconciliation to Afghan domestic evolution without the threat of a new Soviet intervention.

In return, the United States can agree to end the supply of arms to the Afghan freedom fighters as Soviet forces withdraw and to respect Afghan neutrality. Such an agreement, were it attainable, would represent the most significant Soviet foreign

policy move since the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Austria 30 years ago.

But Afghanistan seemed a secondary problem for our hosts. Their overwhelming preoccupation was with ending President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).

Our hosts, including Gorbachev, seemed determined to enshrine the Reykjavik framework as sacrosanct—and to interpret it as eviscerating SDI. The Reykjavik framework has three components: (1) a reduction of U.S. and Soviet strategic forces by 50 percent, (2) the removal and destruction of Soviet and U.S. medium-range missiles from Europe, the so-called “zero option,” (3) limitations on the Strategic Defense Initiative not yet finally negotiated.

After agreement on the first two points, Reykjavik broke down over SDI. Reagan and Gorbachev had already agreed on a 10-year moratorium on deployment of SDI. But President Reagan refused to accept

Gorbachev's proposition that during the moratorium testing on strategic defense should be restricted to “laboratories”—that is to say, no field testing would be permitted.

Since then Soviet negotiators have thrown out tantalizing hints—like those of the space scientist I talked with—that “laboratory testing” could be defined liberally and that some SDI components might even be tested in space. The Soviets were very careful to avoid precision, probably because they want to elicit an American offer. For after an American proposal, Soviet negotiators could then whittle away at it until the combination of test limitations and deployment moratorium effectively kills SDI.

I consider the Reykjavik framework extremely disadvantageous. Moreover, it may be squandering the historic opportunity represented by a new and more dynamic

Soviet leadership. For one thing, the Reykjavik framework is not balanced. The 50 percent reduction of strategic forces should stand by itself. It is not Nirvana, since it still leaves each side with close to twice as many warheads as President Kennedy had at the time of the Cuban missile crisis (when he thought he was facing Armageddon). But it would be a significant symbolic achievement. Whatever its ultimate merits, the balance of benefits and risks in such an agreement would be the same for both sides. Thus, no additional price should be paid to obtain them.

But the two additional components of the Reykjavik framework—the zero option on medium-range missiles and the restrictions on SDI—are in effect unilateral concessions

on our part. The removal of American and Soviet medium-range missiles from Europe leaves unimpaired the Soviet ability to devastate Europe with short-range missiles and ICBM's. It eliminates the American ability to retaliate from Europe. It thus magnifies European fears that America might not respond to a nuclear attack confined to Europe, much less to a conventional one. With such an agreement, the Soviet strategy to decouple the defense of Europe from that of the United States will gain momentum.

The Reykjavik treatment of Asian-based missiles compounds the problem. It “balances” 100 Soviet warheads on medium-range missiles aimed at the Far East (and transportable to Europe) by 100 warheads located in the continental United States, where they can retaliate against Mexico or Canada but not against the Soviet Union.

The Soviets even object to basing these missiles in Alaska, though no realistic base for them would be within range of any significant Soviet target.

The Reykjavik framework culminates in the relentless Soviet pressure to do away with SDI. I consider SDI a major contribution to Western strategy. In its absence, the West must rely on the mutual assured destruction theory, which seeks deterrence through the devastation of civilian populations and industrial targets.

This strategy has two huge handicaps: it leaves the democracies with no choice between surrender and suicide. And it imposes an unbearable psychological burden. For how long can democratic leaders tell their public that their security is based on leaving

them naked to extermination? Faced with such prospects, pacifism and unilateral disarmament will sooner or later sap the will to defend the West.

In Moscow, responsible military figures told us that major conventional disarmament can take place only in a global context—in other words, only if China and other countries bordering the Soviet Union join in. This position has the practical consequence of neatly deferring the issue into an indefinite future. The West is therefore being asked to accept an arms-control regimen that leaves it facing a massive conventional imbalance from which it could extricate itself only by the early use of nuclear weapons. Yet the very arms-control agreements now being contemplated would render such a course suicidal.

The attitude of our European allies is hard to comprehend. It is confusing enough that they do not make explicit the grave reservations they have about the zero option. In addition, most of

them actively seek to dissuade the Reagan administration from pursuing SDI. It takes more than uncertainty about SDI technology to explain why democratic leaders should prefer to leave their public undefended even against small-scale attacks, third-country strikes and accidents. It is the triumph of a theory that exalts the fact of agreement over its substance. In the end it takes everything on the escapist gamble that Gorbachev's reform program will render the Soviets benign.

This is why the quest for “compromise” is so dangerous within the Reykjavik framework—and why the Soviet leaders are so eager to declare it sacrosanct. My visit to Moscow leaves me with little doubt that a “compromise” can be had for the asking. It would permit testing sensors even in space. It would prohibit the testing in space of antiballistic missile devices or of

ROGER RESSMEYER—STARLIGHT

Within the Reykjavik framework, no genuine compromise is possible: the Soviets want to destroy SDI, the Reagan administration to preserve it

42 NEWSWEEK: MARCH 2, 1987

INTERNATIONAL

systems linking sensors to killing devices.

Though such a solution would be present-
ed as a Soviet retreat, it would not be a
compromise but an American concession
which would render SDI nearly meaning-
less. In the democracies various peace
groups, scientific congresses, legislators
and the media would vigilantly police the
agreement. In the Soviet Union it would
prove impossible to verify—whatever the
formal arrangements. Indeed, with the pas-
sage of time the incentive for vigilance
would diminish. If the democracies cannot
agree that the radar near Krasnoyarsk—
the size of three football fields, hundreds of
miles from its permitted location under the
1972 ABM treaty—is a violation, how can
they possibly agree on disputed violations in
outer space?

The compromise that the So-
viets so subtly hinted at to our
delegation is likely to turn into a
one-way street. In effect, the So-
viets would be given an interval
to catch up with SDI or even to
surpass it while we immobilize
our program. Given that pros-
pect, I would prefer a complete
ban on space testing for both
sides to the qualitative re-
straints now being considered.

The visit to Moscow left me with little doubt that within the present framework no genuine compromise on SDI is possible. The Soviets clearly want to destroy SDI; the Reagan administration so far has sought to preserve it. The Soviets will not agree to a research program that explores practical feasibility; the United States, if it is true to itself, can do no less. Any formula that fudges the issue would lead to endless controversy and insecurity.

But a deeper issue is involved
than either negotiating tactics
or even military strategy. It goes

to the heart of East-West relations. If at a
moment of maximum Soviet preoccupation
with domestic change the West feels obliged
to strike such a disadvantageous bargain,
what conceivable incentive exists for fur-
ther Soviet concessions? What will be our
negotiating stance after the contemplated
agreement is consummated? When will it be
possible to achieve a truly balanced agree-
ment or a genuine improvement in global
security?

With some melancholy, I am driven
to wonder how the intelligent Soviet
leadership group might have reacted to a
philosophical approach, rather than the
numbers game of standard arms-control
talks, when the Reagan presidency was at
its height—say, at the Geneva summit.
What would have been their response to a
conceptual discussion on the relationship
between strategic offense and defense—or,

even better, to an attempt to define the
superpower relationship a decade hence?
Perhaps the outcome would have been the
same; but it is a pity not to have tried.

Instead the democracies are in danger of succumbing to self-induced emotional blackmail. Every Soviet proposal, however one-sided and however much a variation on the same theme, elicits pressures for some reciprocity. The practical consequence is to nudge the Western bargaining stance step by step toward the Soviet position.

What the U.S. Should Do

At this point, President Reagan finds his
choices limited. He is told that his place in
history depends on making an arms-control

agreement. Yet the agreement being urged
on him would in effect eviscerate SDI,
which may be his greatest contribution to
strategic theory.

The time has therefore come to return to
fundamentals. The greatest public service
President Reagan can perform at this stage
is to advance a coherent statement of Amer-
ica's philosophy regarding both security
and arms control. Specifically, this requires
some conceptual definition of SDI. It is too
late to pursue the mirage of eliminating
nuclear weapons. This is simply impossible,
either by agreement among statesmen or by
technological expedients such as a leak-
proof space shield. For the foreseeable fu-
ture, the best hope is to achieve such a
balance between offense and defense that
the attacker would be penalized under any
predictable circumstance. This is not an
easy matter. It will surely emphasize the

growing significance of the conventional
threat. But it is time for our allies to face the
fact that this is inherent in the evolution of
technology, not in American choices.

Specifically:

■ The Reykjavik framework should be abandoned.

■ The administration should propose a 50 percent cut in both strategic and medium-range forces. This would bring about a substantial reduction while avoiding the danger of decoupling the defense of Europe from that of the United States.

■ The administration should offer to negotiate a quantitative relationship between offensive and defensive forces. It should avoid the twin traps of qualitative limitations on testing and a prolonged moratorium on deployment. It could accept a quantitative limit on ABM tests to a fixed number each year without limiting their type or nature. This might provide time for realistic negotiations. But it would not change the direction or thrust of SDI.

■ To permit this process to proceed, the United States could offer to extend the present abrogation clause in the ABM treaty from six months to, say, two years.

In our conversation with Gorbachev, he asked rhetorically why I was turning against my accomplishments of a decade ago. Had there been an occasion to reply, I would have pointed out that the agreements of a decade and a half ago were an important achievement of which I am proud. But they were intended to be a starting point, not a final destination. Fifteen years later—in a decade of multiple warheads, of Angola and Afghanistan and Cambodia—they cannot possibly be enough.

The same willingness to tran-
scend established patterns that has charac-
terized Gorbachev's and Reagan's thinking
on some domestic matters is also needed on
both sides in foreign policy. The two super-
powers have nothing to gain by eternal
conflict. A war between them would leave
both so gravely weakened that other coun-
tries or regions would thereafter determine
the future. Attempts to achieve a unilateral
advantage cannot succeed in the long run.
Why not make a new attempt that starts
with a concept of what the political and
security relationship of the two superpow-
ers might look like a decade hence and work
back from there? This would at least be the
right question. And these next two years—
with a conservative American president
who has nothing to lose from a bold ap-
proach and a new Soviet leadership that has
everything to gain from tranquillity—may
be the right occasion.

EUGENE POMEROY—VISIONS

I had arrived in Moscow persuaded that the Soviet Union would never permit the overthrow of its regime in Afghanistan; I am no longer so sure

NEWSWEEK : MARCH 2, 1987

BUSINESS

# Wall Street's Top Cop

## Prosecutor Carberry hunts inside traders like Dennis Levine

MARIO RUIZ

Pin-striped convict: Levine mobbed by reporters after his sentencing last week

You've probably never heard of Charles M. Carberry and, truth be told, he wishes it could stay that way. He enjoys getting attention about as much as an investment banker enjoys getting a subpoena. Dennis Levine knows him. So does Ivan Boesky and Martin Siegel, as well as Michele Sindona, architect of the biggest banking swindle yet, and Michael Senft, the notorious tax-fraud champ. Almost everyone in the modern gallery of financial rogues knows Carberry all too well. As the assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Manhattan in charge of prosecuting securities fraud, he helped bring each of them down. "I don't know anyone with less of a public image having more of an impact," says a former colleague at the U.S. attorney's office. "He's leading a criminal investigation that is going to result in historic, profound changes in the way Wall Street does business."

Last week the silent star of the insider-trading investigation played true to form. In a White Plains, N.Y., courtroom, Judge Gerard Goettel sentenced Dennis Levine,

the former mergers-and-acquisitions specialist who fingered Ivan Boesky, to two years in prison and a fine of $362,000. In the government's written statement to the judge, Carberry outlined Levine's extensive cooperation as well as the crimes he committed. In court Carberry added briefly

that Levine's life had been threatened while he was cooperating and, as a precaution, he left New York during the investigation. Still, Carberry said, Levine never quit talking. That helped prompt Goettel to issue what some critics believe was too light a sentence. Asked about that, Carberry re-

## Charlie's Fallen Angels: A Gallery of Financial Rogues

Dennis Levine is the most prominent investment banker to be sentenced in the current insider-trading scandal. But a

number of Wall Street players involved in his illegal schemes have received lesser fines and jail terms in the past few weeks.

**Dennis Levine**, former M&A specialist for Drexel.

Charged with securities fraud, tax evasion and perjury.

Sentenced to serve four concurrent two-year prison terms; fined $362,000.

**David Brown**, former investment banker for Goldman, Sachs.

Charged with passing stolen information.

Sentenced to 30 days in jail, 3 years' probation, 300 hours of community service; fined $10,000.

**Ilan K. Reich**, formerly a lawyer with Wachtel, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, legal specialists in takeovers.

Charged with passing confidential information.

Sentenced to a year and a day in jail.

**Ira B. Sokolow**, former investment banker with Shearson Lehman Brothers.

Charged with selling inside information.

Sentenced to a year and a day in jail and three years of probation.

**Robert M. Wilkis**, formerly an investment banker with La-Z-Zard Freres.

Charged with securities fraud, mail fraud, tax evasion and unreported income.

PHOTO CREDITS (LEFT TO RIGHT): JACQUES M. CHENET, NEWSDAY, AMERICAN LAWYER, NEWSDAY, MIKE CARR

48 NEWSWEEK: MARCH 2, 1987

RON GALELLA

Silent star: Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Carberry leaving the Levine hearing

plied simply, "I can't comment on sentencing," and hustled to a waiting car.

In a strange sort of way, Charles Carberry and Wall Street's insider-trading crowd are made for each other. Create a stereo-type of the young investment banker on Wall Street: a guy making $5 million a year but deciding he needs to break the law and make more because, well, he just can't come up with enough cash at the end of the month to pay the maid. "Charlie," says former Judge William Hughes Mulligan, for whom Carberry served as a clerk earlier in his career, "is everything that guy isn't."

**Beau Brummel:** He is aggressively anonymous, living what he calls a "dull, enjoyable life" as a bachelor in Manhattan, where he grew up. He has been working in the U.S. attorney's office since 1979—two years longer than the average assistant U.S. attorney's stint. He claims to have given little thought to what he might do next, even though he could quadruple his

salary overnight by defending investment bankers instead of prosecuting them. He is in public service, he says, because "it's useful work, in a social sense, and because it's also interesting. You get to meet people from all walks of life." He works at a beat-en-up wood desk strewn with books, legal briefs and note pads. One day last week he wore a gray suit nattily offset by a pair of scuffed brown shoes. The joke around the office is that Carberry takes his suits to the cleaners to get them rumpled. "Charlie," Mulligan observes, "isn't exactly the Beau Brummel type."

Nor does he have to be. Just ask defendants in the insider-trading cases. "He's a genius," says a recently convicted defendant, "very methodical, but ethical." The defense attorneys know it, because several worked with him in the U.S. attorney's office. When Martin Flumenbaum left for a Manhattan law firm, Carberry, as he often does, wrote a scathingly funny "roast" read

at a going-away party. Flumenbaum is now one of Dennis Levine's attorneys. Peter Romatowski, Carberry's predecessor and close friend, is one of Boesky's attorneys, and another, Lawrence Pedowitz, is representing Goldman, Sachs. "It's no wonder," says a Carberry colleague, "that these guys are copping pleas and cooperating."

No wonder, indeed. They know better than anyone that a list of qualities necessary to be a brilliant prosecutor would result in a Carberry clone: extraordinary intellect, an obsessive doggedness during investigations and an ability, says William Schwartz, another assistant U.S. attorney, "to sift through a roomful of documents and come up with those five that are absolutely central to your case."

**Just thieves:** Carberry's boss, U.S. Attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, calls it "relevant intellect—the ability to describe and analyze a case in three minutes. Charlie moves through a complex case faster than anyone I've ever seen." When Carberry and Schwartz took on the massive tax-fraud case against Michael Senft in 1983, they confronted a defense hinged on the hope that the jury would never understand the extraordinarily complex transactions involved. Carberry recognized that the transactions were made complex to disguise the basic fraud. "You had to understand the transactions, but to win you just had to convince the jury that the case was one of simple fraud," says Schwartz. Carberry's summation in that case, recalls a colleague, "was a model of clarity, simplicity and elegance, focusing on the fraud. A work of art."

Compared to the Senft case, the insider-trading cases are simple—a fact that openly disappoints Carberry. What particularly attracts him to white-collar cases, he says, is the intellectual challenge, the "puzzle aspect, having to figure something out." He relished his involvement in the famous Sin-dona case, in which the Italian financier staged his own kidnapping and wounded himself with a gun to make it look realistic. Carberry concedes there is "nothing overly complicated" in the current scandal. Look, for example, at the relationship between Martin Siegel and Ivan Boesky: briefcases full of cash, secret passwords, meetings in alleys—it's less sophisticated than most Saturday-morning adventure series.

Carberry recently told The Wall Street Journal *how* simple he thinks insider cases are: "These guys are thieves. They steal information and then they fence it." If the cases yet to come *are* that straightforward, Carberry may never have to convince a jury. "Everyone will cut deals," predicts one Wall Street lawyer defending a client in the insider-trading investigation. "It's very unlikely that there will be a jury trial to come out of the Levine-Boesky case."

Carberry has lost only one insider-trading case in his career. He failed to convict

NEWSWEEK: MARCH 2, 1987 49

BUSINESS

former national-security aide Thomas Reed of buying AMAX options on the basis of a tip from his father—an AMAX director. The government alleged the tip came just before Chevron made a tender offer for minerals producer AMAX. Carberry argued his case from purely circumstantial evidence, something which is not going to happen in the current crop of criminal cases. Reed was also helped by the impressive testimony of a character witness

hamed Col. Oliver North, something which is *definitely* not going to happen in forthcoming cases.

Carberry now frequently works 20-hour days. So do his six assistants in securities fraud and the investigators from the Securities and Exchange Commission, who initiated the current insider-trading cases and who work closely with the U.S. attorney's office. The rugged pace will not slacken anytime soon, which is fine by Carberry.

"This is a very exciting time," he says. Sitting in his office, he looks out due west on the spires of Wall Street. One day, he concedes, he'll leave the U.S. attorney's office, "because no one stays here forever." He will probably go to work for a prestigious law firm, just like his former government colleagues. They will welcome him to private practice—and so will the next batch of swindlers on the Street.

BILL POWELL

Stock Tipsters: Where the Boys Are

VINCE MANNINO—UPI-BETTMANN NEWSPHOTOS

Will his misdeeds be forgotten? Thayer after his sentencing

Dennis Levine appeared
Dwell rehearsed when he
stood before U.S. District
Judge Gerard Goettel in
White Plains, N.Y., last
week—and he spoke some ob-
vious truths. "Last June,
when I pleaded guilty before
you, I was automatically sen-
tenced to a life of disgrace
and humiliation," he said. He
might also have said he was
sentenced to a future of rela-
tive poverty compared with
what he earned as a takeover
expert at Drexel Burnham
Lambert Inc. Levine will
have plenty of company in
his new life. Some found
guilty in recent insider-trad-
er cases are, as he is, head-
ed for jail. Still others are
working off lesser offenses
through community-service
projects. Few, if any, will be
able to fully erase the stigma
attached to their crimes.

Levine will report to prison
authorities in April. He prob-

ably will be sent to one of
the minimum-security "Club
Feds," where many white-col-
lar criminals serve their time.
One of his colleagues, Ira So-
kolow, is already doing time in
one of the country-club pris-
ons. Sokolow was sentenced to
the Federal Correctional In-
stitution in Loretto, Pa., in the
Appalachian Mountains. The
prison used to be a Franciscan
seminary; each cell that was
once the abode of a single friar
now houses two inmates, who
sleep on bunk beds. A typical
prison lunch includes frank-
furters and beans, a salad bar
and cherry cobbler. The in-
mates pull KP-style duty,
work on maintenance crews
or toil in the prison factory
making extension cords or
similar products. For their ef-
forts, they are paid 22 cents to
$1.10 an hour. (At Shearson
Lehman, Sokolow was earn-
ing $400,000 a year.) In their
leisure hours, the men work

out in a makeshift gym that
was once a library, watch TV
or slide down snowy hills in
inner tubes. There isn't a
fence in sight. "They're not
going anywhere," assistant
warden Dean Leech says of his
charges.

**Weekend time:** Some of the convicted traders serve their time on weekends. After leaving his job at the Archdiocese of New York each Friday night, former Goldman, Sachs vice president David Brown reports to a five-story brownstone in Manhattan. He is given a bed number in one of two 15-bed dormitories and is prohibited from leaving the premises for 48 hours. He and other "weekenders" put in six hours a day on janitorial chores. There are no guards, but a house manager takes a head count every hour.

The fates of other insider
traders are still being deter-
mined. Two of Levine's for-
mer cohorts, former Lazard
Frères investment banker
Robert Wilkis and ex-Wach-
tell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz
lawyer Ilan Reich, will report
to prison officials in late
March. No one has yet been
sentenced to prison in the
so-called "Yuppie five" case.
But the defendants' lifestyles
have already changed dra-
matically. Michael David, a
former lawyer with Paul,
Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton &
Garrison, is said to be working
as a chauffeur for a limousine
company while he awaits sen-
tencing. Two of his compatri-
ots are selling cars. Morton
Shapiro, former stockbroker

at Moseley, Hallgarten, Esta-
brook & Weeden, hawks Mer-
cedes in Boston; Daniel
Silverman, an investor at
Moseley, Hallgarten who got
caught in the mess, peddles
Subarus in Providence.

Former Marcus Schloss &
Co. analyst Andrew Solomon
now works in his father's
mattress factory. He was sen-
tenced to 250 hours of com-
munity service, which he
serves at the Legal Aid Soci-
ety, developing computer sys-
tems. Robert Salsbury says
he is working as a financial
consultant as he works off his
community-service sentence.
But his New York lawyer,
Stacy Moritz, says his par-
ents had to pay his legal
fees. Salsbury can go back to
work on Wall Street in three
years. "But with all the news
about insider trading, more
and more companies are re-
luctant to take on anyone
who had been tainted by it,"
says Moritz.

**Slight hope:** The bigger-name crooks connected with the Levine case may find it even harder to resume respectable careers. Some will have money to begin with: after paying his fines, Sokolow still has $60,000 in cash, a house and a car. There is even the slight hope their deeds will be forgotten. Last summer former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Thayer finished 13 months of a four-year prison sentence for his role in still another insider-trading case. He apparently believes his past misconduct won't hurt business. Texas officials say he has started a real-estate venture in Dallas. The name: Paul B. Thayer Properties.

CAROLYN FRIDAY in New York

NEWSWEEK : MARCH 2, 1987

SUPPLEMENTAL: THURSDAY, 19 MARCH 1987.

The
Economist

7 - 13 MARCH 1987

Pg. 50

And now the checking

By unhooking the talks on medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe from the star-wars question, Mr Mikhail Gorbachev has removed the biggest obstacle to a deal on Euromissiles. But a lot of hard negotiating remains to be done. The main potential difficulty is the one that has bedevilled all East-West arms-control talks: how to check that an agreement is actually carried out.

Until recently, the Russians have always resisted the idea of allowing inspectors on to their territory. The 1972 SALT-I agreement limiting long-range nuclear weapons was possible only because the Americans believed that their satellites, and their ability to eavesdrop on Russian communications, could detect any violations. Such devices alone will not do for an agreement on the Euromissiles. Checking up on small, highly mobile missiles is much harder than keeping track of big ones in concrete silos. The Russians have recently indicated that they will accept some kinds of on-site inspection. Will they go far enough?

The Soviet missile at the centre of the proposed deal is the SS-20, with a range of 5,000 kilometres. About 441 of these

three-warhead missiles have been deployed in the Soviet Union: roughly a third are in the Far East, the others within range of Western Europe. At the moment the United States uses satellites to count these missiles' distinctive launching sites, and then multiplies by nine, the number of missiles normally on each site.

This works well enough so long as the Russians have no reason to put SS-20s in unprepared sites, or hide them in the forest. That could be done: the missile and its launching controls are mounted on trucks, easy to move and to conceal. If the planned agreement provided that all SS-20s be destroyed, it would be fairly easy to supervise. If a few of them were allowed to remain in the Far East, on the other hand, it would be hard for the checkers to be sure that some missiles, supposedly in Asia or in storage, were not secretly brought within range of Western Europe.

Mr Gorbachev said on February 28th that, once an agreement on the SS-20s and its western equivalents had been signed and sealed, he would withdraw some of the rather shorter-range missiles Russia

has placed in Czechoslovakia and East Germany. The Americans will not rely on a mere promise for this: they will insist that there must be a verifiable agreement for the withdrawal of these missiles too.

Even the smaller SS-21 and SS-23 can reach well inside NATO territory from Eastern Europe (see map). The SS-12 and its more modern replacement the SS-22—first deployed outside the Soviet Union in 1984, when some were sent to Czechoslovakia and East Germany after the arrival of cruise and Pershing-2 missiles in Western Europe—can stretch much farther. The Americans insist that their removal should therefore be subject to inspection.

Because all these missiles are mobile and relatively small, keeping a check on their whereabouts without the right to quick on-site inspection would be immensely difficult. Even if Mr Gorbachev agreed to withdraw the SS-22s to Russia, it would be simple to drive them surreptitiously back. The transporters can average 35 miles an hour; one overnight run could put another 350 miles of Western Europe in their sights. They could be hidden in woods or garages and rolled out into a clear space when needed.

An extra difficulty is that the SS-21s and SS-23s can use conventional high-explosive warheads as an alternative to nuclear ones. They form part of the artillery of the Warsaw pact's armies. If only the nuclear warheads are banned, it will be necessary to allow the check-up teams to get close enough, at suitably short notice, to ensure that nuclear warheads are not slipped back on.

Whatever arrangements are made for abolishing or reducing the number of these missiles, some of both sides' "battlefield" nuclear weapons would, it seems, remain. The dividing line between "battlefield" and other nuclear weapons is not entirely clear.

One possibility would be to say that all missiles with a range of up to 100 kilometres are "battlefield" ones. This would allow some really short-range missiles, such as the American Lance and the Russian FROG, to remain unlimited, while limits were set on the number of those capable of hitting targets well behind the battlefront. A more likely arrangement would be to set limits on all ballistic missiles in Europe. This would leave untouched only the nuclear artillery on each side, fired by guns with a maximum range of under 30 kilometres.

3

INTERVIEWS

LOS ANGELES TIMES

Kissinger on
Gorbachev's
New Challenge

This interview with former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger was conducted in Los Angeles by Jack Burby, assistant editor of The Times' editorial pages, and Art Seidenbaum, Opinion editor.

**The Times:** Do we root for Mikhail S. Gorbachev to succeed? And if he is successful, especially domestically, does that pose a greater threat or a lesser threat?

**Kissinger:** In principle, an improvement in Soviet living standards and human rights reflects American aspirations. But for peace, the issue is whether domestic reform automatically leads to a conciliatory, foreign policy. Experience with Khrushchev suggests not.

It's characteristically American to believe that when your adversary becomes stronger the prospects for peace increase. I would say that if Gorbachev succeeds in his domestic program and does not change his foreign policy, he will be much more formidable. Indeed, it would be a paradox: The Soviet reform program, unaccompanied by foreign-policy adjustments, can be a greater threat to us whether it succeeds or fails. If it succeeds, the Soviet Union will be stronger and in a position to be much more insistent. If it fails, they may have to decide before they slip into a position of relative underdevelopment whether they should not use the capacities in which they are best, namely their military strength; not so much to attack us, but to create security belts around them—in China, the Middle East and elsewhere. So, the Gorbachev revolution

15 MARCH 1987

Pg. IV-2

is a major challenge to us, and the major challenge is to define what we mean by peaceful order and to try to negotiate it now and not slide along on the old and well-worn grooves.

Life is more complicated for us now, but it also has more opportunities. Gorbachev has a more interesting mind than his predecessors. So there is a bigger challenge, but if Gorbachev would put that interesting mind to work on foreign-policy programs, it might be possible to arrange a code of coexistence that would last a decade or two. I do not believe any of the issues now being negotiated will lead in that direction. That is my worry.

**Q:** Is your code of coexistence something that Secretary of State George P. Shultz should raise when he goes to Moscow next month?

**A:** Soviet leaders have to balance conflicting bureaucratic considerations, and you cannot automatically assume that domestic reform is equated with a peaceful foreign policy. Nor can you assume that they have a very long-range foreign policy. They run a bureaucracy that is even more complex than our own. They have to deal with that bureaucracy, not only to solve specific problems but as an issue of political survival.

So I have always felt that a dialogue with the Soviets should begin on the philosophical level. You tell the Soviets what it is you're trying to accomplish and why and that enables their leader to go to the Politburo and say, "This is what the Americans say they are trying to achieve. Why don't we at least examine it?" The other way, numbers on nuclear weapons are strained, first through our bureaucracy and then through theirs. By the time it reaches Gorbachev or whomever, he will find it difficult to determine what the purpose is. So to answer your question, yes, we could have a really confidential level of conversation, maybe during the time that Shultz is there. I think the most useful thing he could do is say, "Yes, I acknowledge that you are concerned with your domestic situation and that's your

problem. As to common problems, here is our analysis of the situation. This is where we think we ought to try to go in the next 10 to 15 years. Obviously, whatever is done has to be in the common interest."

The inherent dilemma of communism is that the Communist Party is a great instrument for seizing power, but not a good instrument for exercising power. It establishes a monopoly of power but has no governmental function. How do you avoid party leaders becoming like the Buddhist monks in Tibet, a sort of a supernumerary class that has prerogatives but no role?

Gorbachev is a considerable man who wants to become relatively even with us or Japan or Western Europe. But to do that, he's jeopardizing the existing system of control and he's launching himself onto uncharted seas. I would not be amazed if he didn't last, if somewhere along the line he was turned out of office.

**Q:** Turning to arms control, SALT II is gone, the ABM Treaty may be going and space defense research chugs along. How long can we go on that way?

**A:** SALT II is something of an absurdity. Where is the restraint in an unratified treaty that would have lapsed if it had been ratified? The irony is that the United States, by not ratifying the treaty, gave the Soviets 300 extra missiles because they were not required to scrap missiles as they would have if the treaty had been in effect. So they're selling us those 300 missiles a second time in their 50% cut proposal.

I think the most useful thing Reagan could do in his last two years would be to start a fundamental discussion with the Soviets. Instead of fraying the edges of every agreement and seeing what we can stretch, we would be better off if we would put a regimen in place that we really want to live with and that does some concrete good, and my objection to the current arms-control negotiations is that they're either disadvantageous to us or meaningless. ☐

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An Interview by the "WELT am SONNTAG" with the former American Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger - He fears the signing of an agreement by the super powers, already in 1987 on the withdrawal of American Pershing II missiles from ...(rest missing)

"GORBACHEV COMES TO THE UNITED STATES THIS YEAR...
REAGAN GOES TO (missing...) IN 1988

By MANFRED GEIST, New York

In his office in New York Henry Kissinger spoke with the WELT am SONNTAG. After the photo for the interview had been taken the former Harvard professor and American Secretary of State wondered: "Should I perhaps have worn a darker suit?" It was the only time during the one and a half hours that Henry Kissinger was not quite sure. Subject number one of the talk was the new policy of the Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev. What type of change in the Soviet Union is personalized by Michail Gorbachev?

**Kissinger:** It would be absurd to say that the Soviet Union had suspended history and that it was the only system in the world which was immune to the erosion by time. It appears to me that any communist state has a dilemma: it is not possible to administer modern economy by centralized planning, but one might possibly not be in a position to administer a communist state without central planning. If they decentralize the economy, the demand for political decentralization grows, as has been shown in China. However, to the same extent that there is a desire for political decentralization the predominance of the communist party is at least questioned. This is something which to-date no communist government has accepted because any communist regime believes itself to be the avant-garde of history. This is the dilemma. In the beginning they think that some liberalization will bring the intellectuals to their side. However, freedom produces pluralism.

Gorbachev stands at the beginning of this process. He is sure to encounter great resistance. Because it is one of the curious aspects of the communist system that it produces a new leadership layer which enjoys more privileges than is the case under the capitalist system. In part, Gorbachev's reforms are germaine. Not that he wants democracy but he apparently believes that it is possible to help the communist party to attain a higher degree of legitimacy and more support by liberating intellectual energies.

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His real dilemma will become apparent in three to four years when
he will find out that his calculation is not going to balance.

**WELT AM SONNTAG:** What is the meaning of this for foreign policy?

**Kissinger:** Since the West has agreed to negotiations with the USSR, it suffers from the illusion that the problems would be solved in the course of time by conversion that at some time a new Soviet leader who is prepared for peace would appear and that we would then no longer have any problems with each other. However, in none of the literature of containment is there a discussion on what might happen on that magical day. What is it exactly that we will want then?

I myself am for the oldfashioned European approach. I see the reality that even under the tsars it was no pleasure to live in Russia. The people keep on saying that Russia feels insecure because it had been subject to so many invasions. This is true. However, it is also true that, when comparing a world atlas from century to century one has to reach the conclusion that the Russian empire expanded from century to century, be it under tsars or commissars. That Russia crossed the borders to Afghanistan was not an accident. On its way there it had acquired a whole series of principalities, and in the same manner Russia will want to acquire Afghanistan. If Gorbachev is successful and makes Russia strong, the foreign policy of the West will have to become more watchful.

In reality there is no neighbor of Russia who at any time would have been immune to being harassed by the Soviets. That is the reason why there is a need for concrete steps to maintain peace instead of abstract declarations on the necessity of peace and the subsequent scanning of the Soviet agenda with a view to which of their suggestions would cause the least amount of damage

**WELT AM SONNTAG:** In the early 70's you were one of the founding fathers of detente. Can you predict a new phase of detente?

**Kissinger:** Yes except if there would be a total collapse of our executive branch which I do not expect.

**WELT AM SONNTAG:** Western Europe can consider itself lucky that during their meeting in Reykjavik Secretary General Gorbachev did not pin down President Reagan to the zero option, to the withdrawal of all medium range nuclear missiles from Europe. Would a withdrawal of the Pershing II from Germany make a Soviet aggression more likely or not?

*As a European I would not be particularly reassured*

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**Kissinger:** I have to tell you that if I were a European, the current state of matters would not reassure me particularly. I expect that the zero option will surface again. I believe that it will be accepted and I know that no European government has dared to sufficiently express Europe's consternation and fears. No European leader who has brought the missile to Europe wants for them to leave again. But no European government has clearly stated this.

**WELT AM SONNTAG:** Federal Chancellor Kohl told President Reagan in October in Washington that war in Europe would be possible again if the USA would withdraw its nuclear systems from Europe.

**Kissinger:** However, this has not entered the consciousness of those who set policy. I am sure that this is the evaluation by Federal Chancellor Kohl and I am also sure that President Mitterrand and Prime Minister Thatcher share his uneasiness. Where France and Great Britain are concerned they are so worried that we would eliminate all missiles as has been suggested by us in Reykjavik, that they are adjusting to the zero option for medium range missiles. Where the Federal Republic is concerned it would be extremely difficult for a German government to insist on leaving Pershing missiles on German soil, should the Americans themselves want to remove them.

**WELT AM SONNTAG:** What is your assessment of the zero option?

**Kissinger:** The zero option is an aggravating error. It will not significantly reduce the threat to Europe. The capability for retaliation against the Soviet Union from European soil is eliminated and, at the same time, Americas determination for a nuclear counter strike would be decoupled from the European countries. It would be audacity on our part if we would not expect the Soviet Union to return to a proposition of theirs which would be so advantageous to them. Now, that the elections in Europe have passed we shall experience a whole series of Soviet proposals which date back to Reykjavik.

**WELT AM SONNTAG:** Do you expect another meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev?

**Kissinger:** Yes

**WELT AM SONNTAG:** Do you think that an armament control agreement will be concluded during Reagan's term?

**Kissinger:** I believe that an armament control agreement will be concluded during the current year.

**WELT AM SONNTAG:** What makes you so convinced?

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**Kissinger:** The Soviets are going to redefine what they mean by laboratory tests of SDI and they will say that these tests will not have to be done inside of a building that they may take place anywhere even in outer space, as long as weapons are excluded. In a certain way, laboratory tests will be defined as scientific research and not as developmental research. Then, they will offer this year the zero option, together with an agreement on the 50 percent reduction of strategic systems and a limitation for SDI.

The course of events is going to be that Gorbachev will come to the USA this year in order to sign the zero solution and Reagan will go to Moscow the following year in order to sign the 50 percent reduction for strategic systems and the SDI treaty. I think this will be uniformly great in the West and only some eccentrics like me will be opposed.

**WELT AM SONNTAG:** For what reasons?

**Kissinger:** I think that a 50 percent reduction of the strategic systems is practically meaningless. It will not change anything in the currently existing danger neither with regard to retaliatory forces nor with regard to the civilian population. I may very well be a good symbolic move, worthwile to be executed for its own sake. It does not mean much, but will also not cause any harm. It satisfies the longing for disarmament.

The treaties on the zero solution and SDI would mean that those two problems which worry the Soviets would be given up for nothing, and that at a time of maximum Soviet weakness. My question is: If we are not even able now to bring about a change in Soviet policy, when else? I predict that the Soviets will attain a change of those matters which worry them without making any concessions to us for matters worrying us - thus in the areas of conventional forces threats to Europe and pressures on the Third World. And that would make me very unhappy.

## The zero option is an aggravating mistake

**WELT AM SONNTAG:** Why does President Reagan follow such a political line? Is this a signal for a new trend towards American isolationism?

**Kissinger:** Out of fairness towards President Reagan it has to be said that he did not invent those tendencies. For many years most of your European leaders have harassed him to be more conciliatory towards the Soviets, and many European foreign ministers were in Moscow and tried to mediate between us and the Soviet Union. Consequently, we cannot put the burden mainly on the Reagan administration.

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Secondly, if one believes that armament control negotiations are important, there is a great temptation to carry out the Soviet proposals pointing towards those which would cause the least amount of damage. Once one is involved in a negotiation process, progress of the process becomes its goal. Thus there is the danger that one might forget why the process was originally started.

My worry is the following: even during a period when the new Soviet leadership has to deal with massive internal problems, it could be that the Western democracies might be satisfied with a solution which would not reduce the political and military pressure. This, however, would only create a time bomb for the future. We would agree to a temporary success and instead charge the next decade with a mortgage.

**WELT AM SONNTAG:** General Secretary Gorbachev has the wind in his back, but the wind at home blows into the face of the American President. The more details on the Iran affair become known to the Reagan government, the greater is the wounding of America with it allies. How could something like this happen?

**Kissinger:** First of all, the National Security Council has not fulfilled its main task. Its main task is to make sure that all available alternative are presented to the President before his making a major decision. If I read the respective memorandum which Admiral Poindexter submitted to the President for the decision finding, and which has been published by the White House, I find it frightening that he supplies supporting information which is so unworthy of such an important decision. Thus, he stated that Iraq was about to win the war. He was the only man in the world who saw it that way and he had no proof to support this.

Secondly, Admiral Poindexter writes at the end of his memorandum without commentary and almost in the form of an after-thought, that the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense had a contrary opinion. The President would have been entitled to find out exactly what were the pros and cons of such an important decision. What are the consequences for other countries. But mainly: if two important members of the cabinet have a different opinion, the President has at all times the right to disregard it, but he has to know why they think thus, so that he can form an appropriate evaluation.

Why was the argument not at least presented that the relationships with a revolutionary government can only improve if that government comes to the realization that it needs a better cooperation with us. If however, we only bribe the Iranians, this removes exactly their reason to change their relationship to us. The bribing by us shows them exactly that they can have both at the same time: their radicalism and good relationships with us.

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Finally: it has often been said that it was our goal to end the war between Iran and Iraq. I assume that this meant the termination of the war on the basis of the territorial integrity of Iraq and not by a victory of Iran over Iraq. Has anybody ever brought up the question, why we should supply weapons to that side which was already about to win the war and whose victory would have to be opposed to our interests?

**WELT AM SONNTAG:** What lessons should be learned?

**Kissinger:** The lessons from this are that the staff should submit to the President the real alternatives before a decision of decisive importance is to be made. The new Security Advisor Frank Carlucci is now trying to do just that, and to this extent, the correct lessons have been learned.

**WELT AM SONNTAG:** As far as we know the first shipment of US missiles to Teheran took place three months before the Tokyo economic summit. During the economic summit in early May of 1986 the United States then proceeded to produce a joint summit declaration on international cooperation in the fight against terrorism. During a press conference on May 7, at the end of the summit, Iran was named by the United States as a sponsor or terrorism. During the same month, the former Security Advisor McFarlane made a trip to Teheran and brought missile spare parts along. If you were the foreign minister of an US ally, lets say Italy, what would you say to your American colleague the next time he asks you for cooperation in the fight against international terrorism?

**Kissinger:** This whole course of events is embarrassing. That has to be clearly admitted. To declare one policy and to secretly pursue an opposite policy simply cannot be justified. It was a bad mistake. I do not believe that the ramifications were ever fully explained to the President. The only way this can ever be explained to one's allies is with the admission that our system had a technical flaw, combined with the assurance that this would not happen again

*The Iran affair is painfully embarrassing*

**WELT AM SONNTAG:** How long will a US Secretary of State be able to maintain his international reputation if he admits that at the time of the Tokyo economic summit he did not know everything that was going on in his department for which he is responsible?

**Kissinger:** I am sure that he did not know everything. It is my impression that the Secretaries of State and Defense knew that something was going on, but that they did not want to know more because they did not want to be brought into an embarrassing position. As one who himself was a member of the government I have a

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hard time imagining how it would be possible to keep the Secretary
of State and Defense in a state of ignorance. I am assuming that
the same minute that Adnan Khashoggi learned about it, King Fahd
learned about it, that thus the Arab countries knew that we were
sending weapons to Iran while we bombed Libya. This is a painful
episode

Now, where Secretary Shultz is concerned, I wrote in my memoires
that if I would have to name a man who could fill any post in the
United States, this would be Mr. Shultz. I still consider him an
outstanding public servant. I believe it would be very bad for
the United States to change the Secretary of State for the last
two years of an administration. For this reason I hope very
much that he will not resign.

**WELT AM SONNTAG:** In his report on the State of the Nation, President Reagan said on the Iran affair that he had tried to establish relations with a country of strategic importance. He also said that the goals had justified the attempts. Do you believe that this contributed to reestablish the confidence of the allies in the reliability of the American foreign policy?

**Kissinger:** I agree with President Reagan that the United States should try to create better relations with Iran. I believe that political realities in Iran will propel the country sooner or later in the direction of better relations with the West. All invasions of Iran in history have always started from territories that are now Soviet or Arab. They never started from across the sea. Thus, we are historically as well as ......... (text ends)

7

Report on the Council Delegation Visit to the U.S.S.R.
February 2-6, 1987

Peter G. Peterson, Chairman of the Council on Foreign
Relations,

Henry A. Kissinger and Cyrus R. Vance, former Secretaries
of State

Remarks delivered to Members of the Council on Foreign
Relations at the Harold Pratt House on February 19, 1987.
Peter Peterson served both as chairman of the meeting and
later joined Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance as a
commentator. The transcript of their remarks has been
edited and in some cases elaborated by the participants.

PETERSON:

I believe you didn't come here to listen to long
introductions of people you know at least as well as I do,
so I'll make a brief announcement and then introduce Cy and
Henry to you.

As you know the Council's visit to the Soviet Union
took place under the auspices of the International Research
and Exchanges Board, IREX, which administers a series of
joint research activities and conferences under a standing
agreement with the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and we're
very grateful to them for making this trip possible with us.

Cy, consistent with the fact that you don't need an
introduction, I'd now like to introduce Cy Vance. Cy Vance.

VANCE:

I shall try and be brief, and confine myself to six
or seven minutes, so that we can have as much time as
possible for your comments and questions.

Let me start off by saying a few words about the
man in Moscow who is at the center of what is going on and
give you my impressions of him. I underscore that these are
my impressions; I do not purport to speak for the others in
our group, although I truly believe that there was a great
deal of commonality in our views with respect to the worth
of our visit and what we saw and heard in Moscow.

The word that is frequently used in talking about
the General Secretary is that he is impressive, and I would
certainly agree with that. The question then is *why* is he
impressive? For a number of reasons. First, he is a highly
intelligent and dynamic individual. He is articulate, and
much more sophisticated in dealing with the public and the
press than were his three immediate predecessors. He is
also strong, indeed tough. He is a committed communist.

- 2 -

Most importantly, he appears to have thought out carefully where he wants to go and where he wants to lead his country, and why at this time in Russian history the radical reforms he is proposing are necessary. In addition he is realistic, evaluating his own strengths and the obstacles he faces in the immediate future and the years ahead. I think what makes him different from his immediate predecessors is that he really does have a plan, that the plan is well thought out, and that he has surrounded himself, as best I could see with a staff of very competent people, including a number of younger people, who are in their late forties and early fifties.

A word about the support that he has and the obstacles that he faces. In terms of obstacles I believe the biggest obstacle he faces--and he's realistic in speaking about this--is the bureaucracy with its inherent inertia and resistance to change. We all know what happened when Krushchev tried to make major reforms and the struggle that engendered with the bureaucracy, and the fact that at the end he did not succeed. Similarly Kosygin ran up against the bureaucracy and was bested by it. Inside the government itself, it seems to me that the KGB as an institution clearly is unhappy with what is going on. Indeed you can see it by what is happening in the streets of Moscow over the last several days, and I would guess that the KGB will be one of the real footdraggers. There are also, I'm sure, some of the old timers, who are still in the upper reaches of the government, who feel either that the Gorbachev objectives are too bold or that the pace which is being set to achieve them is too rapid.

But where is his support at this point? I believe that he has a majority of the Central Committee with him at this time. I believe that a smaller majority in the Politiburo is with him. I think that very importantly at this point a substantial--a comfortable--majority of the people is with him. The reason I believe is that they look back over several years in the recent history of the Soviet Union, where there was ailing and weak leadership; they saw the Soviet Union slip; they saw its position in the world and the perception of the Soviet Union as a great power beginning to erode; and they therefore welcome an individual who has new ideas, even though they are very bold, and even though they may be painful to execute--a man who is determined to turn the situation around by radical reforms and to move the Soviets back into a leading position in the world.

In terms of priorities, Gorbachev has made it very clear that his highest priorities lie in the domestic

- 3 -

field--in modernizing the economy and in attacking such social problems as corruption, alcoholism, lack of productivity, laziness and general stagnation. And because of this, he is looking for a period of relative quiet in external affairs. This, I believe, presents an opportunity for us in the outside world to improve our relations with the Soviet Union and to realize through negotiations stabilizing major agreements that were very difficult if not impossible to achieve before.

In terms of Gorbachev's domestic objectives, I want to comment only briefly, and I hope that insofar as the economic problems and reforms are concerned Pete Peterson would comment on them. As you all know, Pete was one of the first American officials who negotiated important economic agreements with the Soviets and I am sure his thoughts on this cluster of issues would be very helpful and informative.

The reforms of the economic system that Gorbachev has put forward are indeed radical. They are in my judgment more radical than the Chinese reforms. When I went to Moscow this time, I did not expect to see reformsthat are as bold and radical as they actually are. The words that one hears a lot, and some of them are sort of buzz words, are openness, radical reform, new thinking, criticism, self-criticism, and democracy with a small "d." What I think it really is, and you see that in Gorbachev's recent speeches, is that he wants to draw the people into the process of reform, to help not only in the management of the new system but also as supporters of his objectives and the very bold programs that he has sketched out. He knows and recognizes very clearly that he is going to meet substantial obstacles and therefore needs broadly based support. I think this is another reason why he is calling for openness--that is, because he wants to try to draw in as supporters the intelligensia, many of whom have suffered deeply from the abysmal lack of human rights in the Soviet Union. I happen to think that he is sincere in wanting to make changes in the field of human rights, but knows that it is going to be difficult to execute these changes and that he's going to run into stiff opposition. Sakharov said to us, that he is prepared to accept for the time being that Gorbachev is sincere and Sakharov has urged his colleagues to support the General Secretary. He adds that we would be making a great mistake if we cast this aside and said "this is nothing but more propaganda." I certainly support that view.

A word about foreign policy. The two most recent speeches said virtually nothing about foreign policy, and the reason is that domestic issues are at the top of the priority list. The Soviet leaders do point to a number of initiatives, about eight or ten, which they say are new steps that have been taken in accordance with the "new

- 4 -

thinking"; they refer to the Reykjavik proposals, the stopping of nuclear testing, the proposal to reduce conventional weapons by 20% by the early '90s, and I could go on with a number of items on the list, but time does not permit. The leaders say if the time comes when they should speak further on foreign policy, they'll be prepared to speak; at this time, what they want to do is to talk about their domestic problems.

I will say a word or two about arms control, because that clearly is central to the objectives of the new leadership. We are now at a point where pieces of Reykjavik are still on the table, at least some of them; and, the job now is to see what can be done to put the pieces together. Let me express my own view. I think it is possible to negotiate and reach an agreement which could be initialed on the reduction of offensive weapons for the first five years--roughly a 50% cut in launchers and in warheads.

Secondly, I think it is possible to reach an agreement--although this may be a little bit harder--on reductions of the intermediate range nuclear forces, which, again, should provide an agreement which can be completed and initialed. The big problem obviously comes in SDI. And it is clear to me that SDI still is linked to the other two baskets; there is virtually no chance--I believe no chance--that you can de-link the three elements; and therefore there has to be a solution to SDI if we are going to get an arms control agreement. The problem is how are we going to be able to try to narrow the wide gap in the two positions. My view is that if one could reach agreement with respect to a ten-year extension of the ABM treaty, and couple with that the traditional interpretation of the ABM treaty, then one would have built the base which would permit the two sides to sit down together and say, "under that interpretation, what research and testing is permissible, and what is prohibited?" If we could get to that point, I believe it is possible that an agreement could be reached on permissible research and testing. However, I must be frank in saying I think that it's highly unlikely that we're going to be able to get there in the next year or so, which is realistically all the time we have before the election fever sets in.

I've already spoken briefly about human rights, and expressed my view that we ought to acknowledge positively the steps that have been taken but make clear that we look for concrete actions, and we're going to see what happens. If there are more positive steps, as for example in permitting people to emigrate from the country and in other concrete matters, then we ought to think seriously about repealing the Stevenson Amendment and waiving for a period of time Jackson-Vanik.

- 5 -

Finally, we must ask ourselves what should our
reaction be under these circumstances? There are basically
two views on this: One, to accept that we are faced with
an opportunity, and should for the moment watch and see
what happens but not reject what is happening; we should be
prepared to take steps in their direction if they're
prepared to continue to move in our direction. On the
other hand, there are others who feel that whatever we do
to lessen the tensions that separate us, as for example
helping them as they try to move forward with the
development of their domestic economy, and increasing their
international competitiveness, would be bad for the United
States. Basically the assumption of this group is that
whatever helps them, is bad for us. I reject this view. I
do not believe that it is a correct way to view the
problem. I believe we have a genuine opportunity that
should be treated seriously. We should not be starry-eyed;
we should remain strong, across the board, but we ought to
reach out and see if there aren't things that we can begin
to do together as we begin to move away from the crossroads
at which we stand.

Thank you.

PETERSON:

Thank you, Cy.

Consistent with the principle of equal time and
non-partisanship of the Council, I'd now like to present
Henry Kissinger.

KISSINGER:

Let me begin by saying that my own impressions of
both the quality of the leadership and the changes going on
were very similar to Cy's and I think were universally
shared by our delegation. I had not encountered before
Soviet leaders who would state an objective, and then say
they had not the foggiest idea how to reach it. Or who
would admit that they don't consider themselves the
repositories of all truths. Those were new experiences for
me. And I also found Gorbachev a most impressive person,
for many of the reasons that Cy mentioned. Still my basic
attitude may be more skeptical in general. For one, I have
always looked back with some nostalgia to Brezhnev and
Gromyko, who while they were not very elevated in their
ability to formulate phrases in language with which we're
familiar, had the advantage of being extremely predictable,
being extremely insecure, and being extremely focussed on
the United States. I remember when Bill Hyland and I were
in Zhavidov preparing Brezhnev's visit to the United
States. Every time I said to him "Mr. General Secretary, I
want it clearly understood that you will be treated as an
equal when you come to the United States," he would come

- 6 -

around the table and embrace me. If I said that to Gorbachev I would be thrown out of a window. So one has to assess what the likely consequences of this new attitude are going to be.

First, we have to remember that when we discuss reform we are speaking at this moment of a theory, and not yet of a practice. It has just been announced. And when you ask yourself practically how is all this going to work, in fact when you ask them how is this going to work that you get realistic prices and maintain central planning, they say "we don't know." How are you going to have candidates for office and maintain the supremacy of the Party? Also two objectives they strongly avowed. They didn't know the answer to that one, either. When you look at China, which is after all a cultural entity, and see the effects of decentralization there, and you ask yourself "what is decentralization going to do in an empire, of different nationalities that has never had decentralization, whose national identify was always bound up with a strong center?" You can see major problems ahead. And I'm sure Gorbachev sees these problems ahead though he may underestimate some of them. He may be enough of a communist, and he has to be enough of a communist to believe that if he has openness, then all right-thinking people will come to the same conclusions. Since there is only one truth, you can risk increasing freedom. What will be the reaction when it turns out that human nature is as fractious as it has proved to be in human history? We cannot be sure. And, indeed, I would say there are two dangers inherent in this program. Not that it's insincere; I believe it is sincere. The two dangers are first that it may fail; second, that it may succeed.

If it fails, it could be that the KGB and military apparatus will insist on using its strength before it becomes obsolescent. If it succeeds without foreign policy adjustments, then we will be dealing with a more formidable adversary. And therefore I would raise this fundamental question: in terms of American foreign policy, do we make concessions to Soviet internal developments, or do we make concessions to Soviet foreign policy positions? I would say except for the area of human rights, which Cy mentioned, fundamentally the American obligation is to focus on creating a safer international order. Throughout the postwar period, we have had the nostalgia for a salvation by conversion. The way the containment theory was interpreted, it was that a magic day would come when the Soviets, recognizing our situation of strength, would show up at the conference table and then--and then--you will look in vain through much of the literature on what exactly we were going to propose! Well, that heroic day has arrived and I would say this is our fundamental problem: What exactly is it we want of the Soviet Union? What do we consider the elements of a stable international order?

- 7 -

Too much of our domestic debate is between a group that asserts that change has already occurred and, therefore, we can let history do our work for us. And others who say that they are still the same evil group that we have always known, more skillful in propaganda, and therefore let's be extremely suspicious. I'm willing to grant that they are sincere. I'm willing to admit, to recognize--admit is not the right word--that this is a new approach. Still, the impact of that on our foreign policy can only be judged if we can translate it into negotiating positions in a variety of fields that we can say afterwards really have improved the situation.

Now in all this one finds, in part, what one arrived with. The area in which I was surprised was in their attitude on Afghanistan, in which they seemed to be more flexible and more prepared to entertain the abandonment of a system imposed by them than I would have thought possible. Now whether that can be translated into a short withdrawal schedule and into a non-intervention agreement after they have withdrawn so that the collapse of Kabul, if it should happen, will not be used as an excuse for re-intervention, that is impossible to judge on the basis of our conversation. But it was interesting enough that this issue was not *excluded* from some of the conversations.

In the field of arms control, my own attitude is influenced importantly by my basic attitude towards the way these negotiations have been conducted. I have always believed that the Reykjavik agreement is unfortunate. I therefore do not consider it very exciting that a possibility for a compromise on that Reykjavik agreement may be emerging. On the fundamental issue of what testing of SDI is possible, I agree that we cannot settle that issue by an exegesis of documents prepared in 1972. But I also do not believe that with the present attitudes a compromise is possible between the Soviet intention to kill SDI, and the American intention to preserve it. And we should not kid ourselves that there is a methodology of tests that could be approved that would satisfy both sides unless one or the other is willing to change its fundamental position. We that we are prepared to have SDI atrophy, or they that they are prepared to let it go forward, if at a somewhat slower pace. That is the fundamental issue on SDI. I favor the concept of SDI if not the justifications that have been put forward for it; I would hope that the negotiations go in that direction though we saw nothing there that makes this likely. So I would think that if there is an opportunity--and I think there may be--it resides in my view in seeing what this new leadership would make of an American position that says "let us look at the world ten years from now, and see where we want it to be, and work backwards from that, towards concrete negotiating positions."

- 8 -

I believe that the present negotiations are
hopeless from that point of view. Each side prepares
numbers that emerge out of their own presuppositions and
out of their own bureaucratic struggles, which are then
interpreted by the other side as if they were more rational
than they can possibly be. The leaders when they meet talk
about the things they are least qualified to discuss,
namely how to adjust numbers that they have only a tenuous
relationship to having developed, rather than the thing
they're best qualified to discuss, which is where we are
going to go.

Whether the Soviets would be prepared in foreign
policy if they were faced with the necessity to entertain
as radical a revision of some of their previous ideas as
they do in domestic policy, I do not know. But if there is
a missed opportunity, it is not in my view that we have
failed to come up with the right gimmick on SDI; it's
rather that we have not really defined for ourselves where
we want to go, and defined for them what our bottom line is
in a conceptual way, rather than in a negotiating way. So I
can't tell you what the opportunities are. Is Gorbachev
trying to strengthen the Soviet economy by the methods he's
doing, so he can conduct the contest with us more
effectively? Or is he doing it because he feels the whole
system has to be changed? Does he know? After all, the
rational thing for him is not to take on any more problems
domestically than he already has--must have. So this is
the impression with which I left. I don't even think
that's so different from that of some of the others, but I
would say our obligation is to define our perception of a
more secure and more equitable international order and to
put that forward in a consistent negotiating position, and
not to bemuse ourselves with domestic changes in the Soviet
society, impressive as these people may be.

PETERSON:

Thank you, Henry.

Let me say a few things about Gorbachev the man in
relation to the economic reforms he seems committed to
undertaking.

The image that comes to my mind is that of a new
chief executive officer: intense, dynamic, restless,
driven, tough, but, most emphatically, not just a
chairman. Also, most emphatically, by Soviet standards,
this is a young CEO. He doesn't have a mandatory
retirement age--at least in age terms. Therefore, he can
take a much longer view than his predecessors. Indeed, it
will take a long time if he is able to achieve even a
fraction of what he has set out to do.

I believe he is a chief executive who knows that
his country is fundamentally not competitive in the world

- 9 -

economy, and he foresees an economy that is both more
competitive and connected with that global economy. At the
same time, this intense, dynamic person, who probably has
an eye to some of his wolf-like comrades, is understandably
anxious for short-term results in order to consolidate his
power and to have time to present his full vision of the
future. So, his problem in the economic and commercial
spheres is to reconcile his long-term economic vision with
his short-term political necessities.

In the short term, he is trying to resolve this
problem by squeezing results out of the economy through
efforts aimed at the human level. It's a kind of
productivity jawboning. The prescription, as I understood
it, goes something like this: a heavy dose of unrelieved
criticism--perversely enough, the kind of criticism for
which refusniks may have been put in jail. I must say that
in my experience there is unprecedented self-criticism--as
well as exhortation, moral persuasion, and even abstinence
from alcohol. Incidentally, generally speaking, I find
Soviet officials far less defensive, ideological, rigid,
and dogmatic; now they appear much more pragmatic and
flexible.

In the first year at least, they say they have
increased their productivity to over four percent, perhaps
twice the rate during the previous five years. They aim to
increase productivity by a general program of
"intensification" or modernization including incentives for
workers and managers, a restructured bureaucracy, more
decentralized implementation of plans, conservation of
production inputs, and increased use of science and
technology in the economy. For the longer term, they know
they must invest more in capital equipment to improve
productivity. One statistic: They told us that about
two-thirds of capital investment in the past went into "new
productive capacity." That will go down to 50% as they
allocate more, presumably, to making their old facilities
more productive.

To illustrate this kind of jawboning, alcohol
consumption is down by a third. They severely punish
drinking on the job. The only example we could find of a
new disincentive, in a society that seems to be moving
toward incentives, is that salesmen now get no bonus points
for selling vodka.

I think the drive for quality is another example
of the use of exhortation. There is no question that, in
their honest moments, they acknowledge that the military is
about the only sector of their economy that can get
consistent quality; in fact they have recently admitted
that quality, generally, has declined. Yet, they also
realize that one key aspect of being globally competitive
is much improved quality. And they are trying to achieve

- 10 -

that goal through centralized quality control agencies,
posters, and all kinds of exhortations.

May I note that I find Gorbachev's goals daunting,
if not utterly breathtaking. (For example, he told us that
his objective was to make the Soviet Union a net exporter
on food.) The overwhelming question is their realism and
workability. But we should not make the mistake of
underestimating his commitment or intensity.

Let me give you three quick examples of the kind
of reform he is talking about. As a kind of "before and
after," I'd like to compare these with the post-summit 1972
period.

The three examples of the "new way of thinking,"
or "peristroika," as they call it, are an attempt to
rationalize their economy, by eliminating the most glaring
irrationalities that his predecessors tolerated. All
display a kind of incentive approach to decentralizing and
"democratization" of the economy. Incidentally, let's not
become confused about this democratizing business. In the
first place, it's of course a different kind of
democratizing than ours. Its main end is not freedom for
its own sake, but the kind of freedom that is required to
go along with the move toward market incentives and toward
the principal end of greater efficiency and
competitiveness. A deeper question, of course, is whether
this genie of economic freedom will get out of the
political bottle. Given the ethnic and racial diversity in
the Soviet Union, I would see special political risks
associated with the geographic decentralization that will
be needed for economic reasons.

First, let's consider some of the reforms in
agriculture. The year is August 1972, and we're
negotiating the trade and other agreements. We have the
opportunity to go to the southern part of Russia and drive
by vast farm areas. Driving mile after mile, one sees all
kinds of expensive farm equipment standing idle in the
fields. That night at dinner you ask a minister how he
possibly reconciles an acute shortage of capital,
agricultural productivity that's only 11% of ours, and
allowing this expensive equipment to lie idle. The honest
answer--perhaps lubricated by a few vodkas--is that "what
you've got to understand is how our system works. The
minister in charge of making farm equipment is not really
measured by who uses it but only by meeting his production
goals." In other words, "that's somebody else's
department."

What's happening now? We hear discussion about
team contracts on the farms in which the government rents
the land to the teams at a low price, rents the equipment,
provides the inputs at specified costs, and permits the

- 11 -

members of the team to keep the revenues from up to 25% of
the output of these farms. You ask them where can they
sell it, and they say anywhere they wish. You ask them at
what prices, and they say at whatever price they can get
for it.

A typical example is meat. The meat in the state
stores is frozen and of poorer quality and is seldom
available to consumers who stand in long queues for it.
They permit the sale of meat from the private sector (in
so-called farmers' markets) that is fresher, better
quality; interestingly, these private prices are up to five
times those in the state stores.

Gorbachev has created an intermediate alternative
between the state stores and farmers' markets that are
called cooperative stores--with quite good quality, much
shorter queues and prices somewhere between the other two
kinds of outlets. Incidentally, a bit of testimony on the
"integrity" of their government statistics, which is
another issue. If you note the Soviets' pride in their low
inflation rate and ask them which of these two meat prices
they are putting into government statistics on inflation,
they answer "state prices" and not the "private prices."

A second example of Gorbachev's economic reforms
deals with some 70 so-called "enterprise centers" within
the 20-30 ministries. These are supposed to be global
profit centers. Their managers will have worldwide profit
responsibility. They will sell abroad as well as at home.
Indeed, it is said that in the past managers fought
exporting. Now, presumably, they will fight to get
exporting responsibility. They will be expected to manage
product planning, technology, and most important,
marketing. As one minister put it, they will have to
"satisfy the customers, not the ministries."

Speaking of the democratization process as it
applies to Soviet commerce, one official told us of an
example of a plant in Riga, which advertised for new plant
managers. (According to some of this "new way of
thinking," plant managers will be elected by the workers.)
Amazingly, they had 2,000 applications. (The one chosen
was from Siberia--on the significance of which I won't
hazard a guess.) Having undertaken election of managers
not only furthers the democratization process, but may also
serve to diffuse the power of the party organization in the
affected regions.

Joint ventures constitute my third example. In
1972, when we tried to discuss them, we were told that the
concept of joint ventures was a capitalist one, and not
something they could really discuss. Now they speak freely
of forty-nine percent equity ownership by the foreign
partner. True to their dogma--to the extent that they

- 12 -

still have much in the economic realm--the government will
own the *means* of production, namely the land and the
buildings and will lease it to the venture at attractive
rates, but the foreign companies will be expected to
contributesome portion of the technology, know-how, and
other factors. They want these joint ventures to be
self-financed in terms of hard currency, "revenue-neutral,"
I believe the phrase is these days. To achieve this, they
want joint ventures that will sell both to domestic and
foreign markets. Naturally, this will present some
conflicts between their simultaneous goals of export
increases and import substitution.

When we asked how they would handle pricing in
these joint ventures when the global prices were different
from domestic prices--set for non-market reasons and
presumably lower than a market price, they responded that,
for *purposes of profit determination* of the joint ventures,
the transfer prices for global and domestic markets would
be the same. (Speaking of accounting, one should never
underestimate the basic differences in cost accounting
philosophies nor in their views on absurdly long
depreciation periods.)

They also have some preliminary ideas on taxes,
loans and repatriation of earnings, but they freely admit
that all these aspects (e.g., the length of tax holiday)
are in draft form and open to negotiation. Indeed, one of
the stunning aspects of the so-called "new way of thinking"
and "flexibility" (the new buzz word) is the new tolerance
for ambiguity. Examples of this include announcing goals
without any clearly defined way of achieving them and
distributing drafts for "democratic" discussions and
revisions. In the words of one senior minister: "Our aim
is to involve as many people as possible in the solution of
our social and economic problems" even if, as Gorbachev
admits, "glasnost" (openness) leads to different
conclusions. Under the old way of thinking, unanimity was
essential.

It is even possible to discuss how they will come
to define Chapter Eleven bankruptcies in their new dogma:
they admit that some bureaucrats are even thinking about
that unthinkable condition, and some new euphemisms are on
the way for "going bust."

In general, one can only conclude they may have
many more questions than answers about some of their
economic reforms, but regardless, they are clearly going
ahead.

Their goals are daunting--not simply to be far
more efficient and competitive in a worldwide context, but
to be far more *connected* to the world economy. For
example, they want to have 15% of their GNP in trade by the

- 13 -

year 2000. The real issue here, it seems to me, however,
is whether the systemic changes needed to reach these kinds
of goals can be implemented.

Obviously, the role and attitude of the massive
bureaucracy will be crucial to the success or failure of
Gorbachev's efforts to implement his reforms. To assess
the prospects for success, I can only quote to you what the
ministers themselves are saying. One minister referred to
the fact that bureaucracies have "non-aggression treaties"
with one another. They say you can get a lot of agreement
to the general proposition that there are too many
bureaucrats. Indeed, we heard of plans to cut the
bureaucracy by up to one-third. Yet, you get very little
agreement about which particular bureaucrats they are
targeting. One minister said to us "we have a new concept
called unearned income"; we wondered who they were talking
about. It turned out to be the middle-level apparatchiks,
who are not earning their income and who seem to be the
losers if these reforms go forward.

You then say, "I want to be sure we understand
this. The bureaucrats, you say, are part of the problem
but you're expecting them to eliminate themselves by being
part of the solution." "Good point," they all say. To
illustrate, they use the "black crow" image, which goes
like this: a bunch of black crows are sitting on a tree
branch. If you clap your hands, they all disappear, but in
five minutes more black crows than were there originally
have landed on the branch. Others speak openly about
Parkinson's Law, about how some men, meaning bureaucrats,
create work.

They're quite honest in saying that they don't
really know the answer to this bureaucracy question. In
fact, one minister said, "You have an advantage. Your
competitive system makes the problems go away, because the
survival of those directly involved is at stake. That's
not true in our system."

To prepare the ground for major economic reform,
and to fight bureaucratic obstinancy and inertia, Gorbachev
appears to have elected a political strategy of an alliance
between himself, his associates, and what one might call
the creative intelligensia, i.e., the press, the writers,
the media, the scientists.

Another overwhelming obstacle to implementation is
management development. If you stop and think about it,
the concept of a manager of a globally run "enterprise
profit center" is totally different from that of a factory
manager in which some central plan tells one how much of
what to make and when. Yet this new breed of managers are
expected to price, plan, anticipate technological change,
and so forth. The attitudes, the disciplines, and the

- 14 -

skills required for these new tasks are totally different
from what they have been doing. When I think of some of
our multinationals, and the years it's taken to develop
this kind of profit-oriented global manager, it is clear
what a formidable assignment the Soviets face in developing
an adequate pool of managers. (Insisting on Soviet
management at the very top of these joint ventures will
certainly not lubricate the process of importing much
needed Western management techniques.)

Fundamentally, the Soviets are trying to reconcile market forces with a planned economy. Reconciling central planning with market forces will involve real problems. There is no question that the market is going to start driving them one way in the allocation of resources, while their central planning and their concept of "social values," as they put it, will drive them another way. Put differently, Gorbachev knows that massive subsidies, amounting to hundreds of billions of rubles, drain the economy and must be substantially reduced. Yet, these subsidies represent the embodiment of their social contract between citizen and state, that is, to have basic necessities very cheap and not to be unemployed. Thus, the economic reforms come in conflict with this social contract and create a potentially explosive problem.

Soviet officials themselves use children's clothes as an example of this tension. Their subsidies to children are enormous, as they are to housing and food; and these subsidies obviously have nothing to do with the market. They simply want to encourage people to have children, and they want to make it inexpensive to do so. As any free market economist would tell you, this will generate problems. One of the ministers illustrated the problem to us: children's clothes have become so inexpensive that taxi drivers are now using girl's dresses to wipe their windshields.

They now wonder how to reconcile these market-driven enterprise centers and joint ventures that are moving in one direction, with their central planning and vast subsidies that move in another direction. They have some tentative answers--like setting aside up to about 7% of their budget for investments in a kind of contingency "kitty"--to reflect "unpredictable" market forces--but I think they're a long way from home on reconciling these basic conflicts.

Incidentally, when the issue of trade and commercial relations with the Soviets arises, some people think of the economic leverage the U.S. might gain from encouraging it. In my view, however, too many on our side tend to overestimate what we can do to them economically. I listen with interest to proposals that if we don't sell them one item or another, like oil pipelines, that somehow

- 15 -

we're going to drive their system to bankruptcy or bring them to their knees. As I felt after my trips there in the early 1970s, I come back again believing that this notion is rather simplistic. Theirs is an autocratic, diverse and very disciplined system; we may cause them some discomfort, but not enough to change anything fundamental.

To close my remarks, I'd like to try to assess the possible significance of those changes for the U.S. in general and for U.S. companies in particular. Given two factors--the vast scale of our economy and the enormous structural challenges the Soviets face in bringing off these profound economic reforms--I would guess that those who expect large economic payoffs to the U.S. economy as a whole in the reasonably near future are going to be disappointed. For 15 years, my view has been that any net economic payoffs are likely to flow to their side more than ours. Thus, to assess these effects from the standpoint of our overall national interest, we need to factor our political and military interests into the equation.

From the standpoint of an individual company, if the long term potential seemed to justify it, I would certainly invest the time to explore the possibility of a joint venture. I would pay special attention to whether there is a real need in the Soviet Union for that company's particular expertise and product lines. If there is, my sense is that Deputy Prime Minister Kametzev, Deputy Chairman Ivanov, Minister Aristov and their colleagues would show great interest and more flexibility than one might expect on terms, taxes, financing, as well as raw materials contracts, management, licensing and the like. Incidentally, Deputy Prime Minister Kametzev is an example of the kind of impressive person Gorbachev is promoting to the top ministerial levels. He seems to have the lead role in re-orienting the Soviet Union to the global economy, with the task of somehow coordinating the various and massive bureaucracies involved in foreign economic activities. I had a try at least at a far less bold version of that type of job in our own government; I don't envy him a bit.

In short, both for the U.S. as a whole and for particular companies, there are major changes to assess in the U.S.S.R. I think we should be intrigued, stay cautious, but be open. There may be some real opportunities.

MR. NEWMAN: Welcome to "The Fourth Annual Conference of Secretaries of State." Today we have four former Secretaries.

DEAN RUSK served the longest term, eight years, from 1961 to 1969 in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. His years of government service date back to 1946, when he joined the State Department during the Truman administration. Mr. Rusk has also served as president of the Rockefeller Foundation and is currently a professor of law at the University of Georgia.

HENRY KISSINGER served as Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations, from 1973 to 1977. Before that Dr. Kissinger was President Nixon's National Security Advisor. He continued to hold that post until 1975 during the Ford administration, while also serving as Secretary of State. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for the cease fire agreement in Viet Nam. Dr. Kissinger is currently chairman of Kissinger and Associates, an international consulting firm.

EDMUND MUSKIE succeeded Cyrus Vance as Secretary of State in May 1980 under President Carter. He served two terms as Governor of Maine before being elected to the United States Senate in 1958. He was in the Senate for twenty-two years. In 1968 he was the Democratic nominee for Vice President. Secretary Muskie currently practices law in Washington, D. C.

ALEXANDER HAIG was President Reagan's first Secretary of State and served until his resignation in June 1982. In 1969 he was named Military Advisor to Henry Kissinger and was then appointed Deputy Assistant of National Security Affairs. General Haig served as President Nixon's Chief of Staff in 1974 and then as NATO Supreme Commander in Europe from 1974 to 1978. Secretary Haig is now a consultant in Washington, D. C.

For more than twenty years, the Southern Center for International Studies (SCIS) has provided the Southeast with perspectives and information on international affairs. In 1983 the Southern Center presented its "First Annual Conference of Former Secretaries of State." That meeting marked the first time these men had gathered to discuss American foreign policy. Today, the Southern Center is convening its fourth annual conference. The purpose is to bring to the American public the collective experience and wisdom of these men, who represent an extraordinary national resource.

The last few weeks have seen a tremendous amount of discussion, gentlemen, of how United States foreign policy is made because of the dealings with Iran. Are there any lessons to be learned about the way that policy is made or should be made?

Secretary Rusk?

SECRETARY RUSK: Thank you, Ed Newman. I'm sure I speak for my colleagues in saying that we're delighted to be under your fine professional guidance for our discussion today.

Every administration has had to do things which in retrospect appear to have been a mistake, and every administration has to become accustomed to the fact that disappointment and frustration are built in to the very nature of our relations with the rest of the world. So, as far as I'm concerned, the present problem is one of what some people have called "damage control." I'll mention two points.

1

One is that the President must move firmly and directly to establish without any question the authority of the Secretary of State to speak for the United States. It's not just a matter of what happens to our present Secretary of State, but it's important to the nation as a whole. Otherwise, our diplomacy will be severely limited.

The other problem is relations between the President and the Congress. This could be of critical importance because we're at the beginning of a two-year period where we have a Republican President and a Democratic Congress. The necessity for these two branches to work together is overriding.

I would like to say to my colleagues in Congress something about what happened twenty-five years ago. President Kennedy was faced with the failure and the tragic mistake of the Bay of Pigs. It fell to me to go down to Congress to talk to some of the key committees on Capitol Hill; and I remember very well that the prevailing mood was regret, sadness, and a certain amount of compassion. The Republicans on those committees did not bare their fangs in order to rip the President to pieces. There was a general feeling that we should somehow put this behind us and get on with the public business of the nation.

Now, I hope that as we face these next two years, we shall not see foreign policy and defense policy become an object of partisan bickering as each party jousts for position for the election of 1988. The American people have the right to be better served than that.

MR. NEWMAN: Secretary Kissinger?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: It was not, in my view, a mistake to try to improve relations with Iran. Iran is a country of decisive geo-strategic importance in that region, and a prudent President and administration would want to improve relations. But where it got off the rails, it seems to me, was in the means. The sale of arms to a radical, revolutionary government is not the best way to prove American good faith; nor am I convinced that the obligation to show good faith lay primarily upon the United States.

Much of the public discussion has been on organizational questions. Which element of the government should have pre-eminence? In determining that, one really should know whether the State or Defense Department were excluded, or whether they excluded themselves; whether their complaint is that they were overruled, or whether their complaint is that they were kept in ignorance.

No cabinet member has the right to complain about being overruled. He has a right to resign when he is, but if he stays, he cannot then complain about being overruled. That's part of the game. He has a right to complain if something in his area is deliberately kept from him.

So, as a general proposition, I would think the lesson to be learned from this particular period is partly an organizational one if people were kept in ignorance, but largely a conceptual one. What did the various people think they were doing? Why did they think it? What was wrong about that thinking? And, where it was wrong and what was right because the major elements of that policy were also right and that must not be forgotten. That seems to me to be the key question rather than the prerogatives of individual members of the administration.

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MR. NEWMAN: Secretary Haig, you were part of President Reagan's administration. Perhaps you could shed a different kind of light on this.

SECRETARY HAIG: Clearly, this is a politicized issue, and while I fervently share the observations of Secretary Rusk, I'm afraid it will become that and we're going to witness many, many months of precisely that.

Now, that's unfortunate because the historic struggle between the Congress and the Executive Branch on who is responsible, I think, is clearly outlined in the Constitution with the obligation of the Executive Branch to keep the Congress informed, but at the same time the right of the Executive Branch to take these initiatives.

If one looks back on our history during the period that Dr. Kissinger and I were working together, it was the ability of the President to take initiatives in secret that opened the doors to China and that led to the peace treaty in Viet Nam. It is unfortunate that it was Congressional mischief that, I think, lost that peace treaty and its effectiveness.

So I would be very concerned in the weeks and months ahead that we not cripple the institution of the Presidency, which is after all a floating crap game in cycles of four years. There is a great tendency in the American Congress to legislate permanent solutions to temporary problems. One might even debate whether the War Powers Act was such a piece of legislative action. So I share the views of both. I also share Henry's comment that I wish our Cabinet would support our President in a time of crisis; and like one Secretary of State that I know if they cannot, to leave.

MR. NEWMAN: Would you care to tell us what you meant by that?

SECRETARY HAIG: Not a thing. I am not encouraging any action on the part of anyone. I am suggesting that if you disagree with a policy, and your conscience tells you that you cannot live with it, then you must make a decision before the act is committed.

SECRETARY MUSKIE: You know your question was: What lessons are there to be learned out of this incident? Unfortunately, most of the lessons that we need to learn whenever our country goes through a crisis of this nature are lessons that have been taught before but forgotten. Forgotten by the President, forgotten by the Congress, and forgotten by others.

The responsibility of the Senate, for example, in the foreign policy field is described best by three Constitutional words, "advise and consent." Presidents are very conscious of the consent part of it, and in the name of consent they preach their definition of bipartisan foreign policy. They tend to overlook the "advise" part of that Constitutional mandate, which has led them into a great deal of difficulty. Among other things, it has led the Congress to do the sort of thing that Secretary Haig just decried a moment ago. When Presidents do not consult or do not advise effectively, the Congress is likely to take the initiative into its own hands, and that happens.

In a democratic system such as ours, based on the idea of freedom and a free society and a free people, policy makers must always be sensitive to the fact that at some point they are going to be accountable for the consequences of their policies and their initiatives.

Now, I agree with Secretary Rusk that our concerns should be how do we repair the damage.

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But in order to repair it, no one of those involved in this incident can be excluded from the
responsibility of repairing the damage, including the President, including the President's
White House staff, where perhaps the responsibility lies heaviest; but also in the Congress.

SECRETARY HAIG: This administration on occasion has looked like a revolving crap game. One day Mr. Weinberger is talking foreign policy. One day Mr. Baker or Mr. Regan is talking foreign policy, and the next day the Secretary of State. This has all of the symptoms of anything but a disciplined system, and I think it's unfortunate.

SECRETARY RUSK: Perhaps we ought to step back a moment and recognize that we in this country have the most complicated constitutional and political system that one can find, perhaps anywhere in the world, deliberately made complicated by our founding fathers in the interest of imposing restraints upon the exercise of the raw power of the state.

Now, the separation of powers at the Federal level is a very important concept, but there are some limits. The late Chief Justice Earl Warren visited out law school here at Georgia shortly before his death and, on that occasion, reminded us that if each branch of the Federal government were to pursue its own Constitutional powers to the end of the trail, our system simply could not function. It would freeze up like an engine without oil. Impasse is the overhanging threat to our Constitutional system.

Now, the other side of the coin of the separation of powers is a Constitutional necessity for comity among the branches of government, and that, in turn, requires the most effective communication between the two that we can devise. Now, perhaps I'm tilted on the side of the Executive Branch, having lived with that, but it is not easy to consult with five hundred and thirty-five members of Congress. In the first place, they don't have the time to spend to get deeply into most of the major questions of foreign policy. I have long thought it would be desirable if the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the House Foreign Affairs Committee would have the privilege of calling before themselves any matter pending before any other committee of Congress in order to comment on it from an overall foreign policy point of view, but relations among the committees of Congress would probably make that impossible.

SECRETARY MUSKIE: I think there are other forces at work in the Congress. There has been a fractionating of the authority and areas of responsibility of Congressional committees. When Dean Acheson was Secretary of State and George Marshall, they could go to key members of the key committees in the Senate and in the House and achieve consensus. The authority of chairmen at that time in the Congress was not challenged, and they were able to agree to a great deal and command a following in the Senate and in the House behind the policies. It was a much simpler day. That has changed. That kind of authority is no longer concentrated in committee chairmen. Committee chairmen are lucky if they can hold on to their jobs now from one Congress to the next. So that factionating of authority in the Congress, I think, is partly responsible for the difference and the difficulty today of achieving a Congressional consensus.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: The essence of foreign policy, of good foreign policy, is the accumulation of nuance. It is very rare that you can do something that makes a decisive difference. It is a gradual transformation of the situation, and that gets lost when you get too much obsessed with tactical issues, and there, I think, self restraint by the Congress is important.

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Another element that I think is new in the last decade or so under the impact of Watergate, television and other things is the growth of the Congressional staffs. In my observation, many frustrated foreign service officers who were not made Secretaries of State rapidly enough for their tastes, would migrate to the Hill and try to implement from the platform of a Congressional committee brilliant policies that they had failed to get adopted by the man who had been imposed on them, as the Secretary of State or the President. And then liaisons form between the Congressional staffers and the lower levels in the State and Defense Departments, and that makes the management both by the Senators or the Congressmen and by the Executive Branch much more difficult than it was even at the time that I first came to Washington.

MR. NEWMAN: Is there a solution to this problem that you've been setting out?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, I actually think that it is better for the Senators to rely less on their staffs and more on their judgment, their own judgment. That's what they were elected for. One solution is to make sure that consultation focuses on the fundamental national issues. Where are we trying to go? What is the broad strategy. Rather than what should we say next week to Gorbachev.

MR. NEWMAN: Now, does a Secretary of State need a killer instinct? Does he have to be able to say, "No, there will be no National Security Advisor," or if there is, "He will take orders from me?" Does he have to be able to say, "The White House Chief of Staff does not get into foreign policy affairs?" How has all of this, in other words, affected what the country has just learned about in connection with Iran?

SECRETARY MUSKIE: Well, if the NSC hadn't been created, I suppose it might still exist in the White House in some informal, uncreated way. Part of the answer, part of the reason for that, is the geography. I have a theory -- I'd be interested in whether my colleagues agree with this -- that when the State Department was moved from what is now the Executive Office Building, next door to the White House, to its present house, quite a ways distant, that the geography which separated the Secretary of State from the President tended to enhance the inclination of the President to look around the White House for advice and to find that advice there. The President, for whatever reason in the morning, may be interested in a particular foreign policy issue. He knows that the Secretary of State is busy, in any case on the other side of town, and so it's easy to turn to somebody in the White House.

SECRETARY HAIG: Let me suggest that the killer instinct of a Secretary could very rapidly become a suicidal instinct if he was working for a strong President, because the President decides how he wants to formulate the policy. We've talked about the impact of television -- it's pervasive; the collapse of discipline within the legislature -- and that's true; the proliferation of staffs; and the separation of State from the White House. But I think one of the most important contributors to the new challenges of policy making in America is the globalization of America's responsibilities -- and this is, perhaps, one of the most significant factors in modern America -- and the increasing complexity associated with that globalization. Economic affairs, political affairs, security affairs and commercial affairs are all now part of a cloth, the mosaic of which is the threads of the various departments and in which if there were not a National Security Council, by God, we'd have to invent one to bring these various departments together.

Now, the role of that council can be one of high profile, public spokesman, the driving force, or something a little more faceless, more staff like, heard of less often. But the need to

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coordinate the various agencies and departments in the conduct of coherent foreign policy, which is political, economic, as well as security related, cannot be talked away.

The problem comes in establishing a disciplined system for doing it, which the bureaucracy knows and understands and adheres to and which the Congress feels comfortable with because it has those lines that it certainly must have.

**SECRETARY RUSK:** Along side of Dean Acheson's remark about the killer instinct, he also said that in the relations between the President and the Secretary of State it was of the greatest importance that both of them understand at all times which one is President. Now, of course, I'm biased on this, but I think we ought to note just a thing or two about the office of Secretary of State, of which Thomas Jefferson was number one.

The Secretary of State has a five-foot shelf of statutory law organizing his Department and setting many of the main policies that we are expected to follow. A good many of those laws delegate specific responsibilities to the Secretary of State, even though it is generally understood that he exercises those delegated responsibilities under the general direction of the President.

It is the Secretary who goes down and meets regularly with committees and subcommittees of the Congress, taking their questions. It is he who holds press conferences from time to time. It is he who goes out across the country, making foreign policy speeches and getting the pulse of those to whom he is speaking in terms of question periods and things of that sort.

None of that is true of the White House staff. They tend to want to tinker with foreign policy far beyond their competence, experience or responsibility. So I would hope that we could streamline these organizations, ranging from Congressional staffs right over to the White House.

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** Well, both Dean Rusk and Al Haig have said much of what I can contribute to this subject. I would like to make two points.

One is that one does not achieve influence in the policy making process by insisting on prerogatives. The President will consult whoever makes, in his mind, the most significant contributions. So there is no substitute for a close relationship between the President and the Secretary of State. And in fact if the relationship is well established, it's inconceivable that the Secretary of State isn't heard.

Secondly, there is an important role for a National Security Council for a Presidential staff. The President needs a group that makes sure that the fundamental issues are being addressed. That's the fundamental job of the National Security Council. When it goes off into operations or when it gets off into its own tactics, that's when one gets into a questionable area. Sometimes the questionable area arises when the President feels very strongly about a policy. A Department feels dubious about it, which is its prerogative, but then, having been heard is reluctant to implement it. Then the President, having the authority that Dean Rusk spoke about, must find somebody to do it. I agree that the staff should be trimmed of those responsibilities that are self serving and unnecessary. At the same time, the Department must be kept focused on fundamental national issues and not on issues of prerogative. The purpose of the exercise is not to establish the prerogative of the Department but to achieve good national policy.

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MR. NEWMAN: Secretary Haig, what is the proper function -- in connection with what has been discussed here -- what is the proper function of a White House Chief of Staff? How public a position, if indeed public at all, should that be?

SECRETARY HAIG: It should be totally unpublic, and only in a dire emergency should a White House Chief of Staff be forced into a public position. He should be a faceless servant of communications between the various bureaus and departments of government and the President and a coordinator of that gaggle which has become this White House staff and a protector of the President -- his time, his energy -- and a setter of priorities for those energies.

MR. NEWMAN: Can we go back to the question of the power of Congress in foreign affairs? Recently, Congress voted to impose sanctions against South Africa. The House voted to extend a moratorium on the testing of anti-satellite weapons. The House cut the SDI budget which the President had sent up. It proposed that he resolve the fact that he should abide by the limits set in SALT II, which has never been ratified. Does this go too far? Does this go too far in impinging on the President's power?

SECRETARY MUSKIE: There are a number of reasons for this, which I think we've already discussed, and I won't belabor them. The fact is that if we have a strong President whose policies have the support of the country -- his policies will prevail over these kinds of Congressional initiatives that you've described.

For example, with respect to the limitations on appropriations for SDI before the Reykjavik Summit, the Congress enacted that and backed off under pressure from the President when the President indicated, and apparently got public support for, the notion that his hands would be tied at the Summit on this issue. Congress backed off. At the same time, I'm sure that Congress feels it made a point, and that was the way for it to make the point. Because what the Congress was interested in was not influencing the Summit on this issue but influencing our policy long term on this question.

And surely the lessons of the last six years indicate that the Congress tends to back off a strong President and a popular President, as it has in my judgment in the last six years, and at times in ways that I did not approve as an individual citizen. So you have this clash between the Congress and the President. It's a healthy thing. The founders intended it.

SECRETARY RUSK: Congress clearly has enormous power in foreign relations under the Constitution. The President does not have a man or a dollar not provided by the Congress. Many of the things which a President or Secretary of State wish to do in our relations with other nations will require legislation or appropriations or both. So that in a real sense the Presidency is a license to persuade, and some Presidents are better persuaders than others. But that element of persuasion is always there. The question is whether there is an inclination at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue to be persuaded.

SECRETARY HAIG: Let me suggest something else beyond what has been discussed here that I certainly am in accord with. It seems to me that in carrying out this usage of the Bully Pulpit which Presidents must do -- they must convince and they must sell their program -- that every administration is well served by a very detailed articulation of an overall framework of a foreign policy and the objectives and goals of that administration.

MR. NEWMAN: I want to change our subject now slightly and talk about the power of the

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press as it affects foreign policy. And here again I'm quoting Dean Rusk. He and some others said this: "Americans should always respect the need for a period of confidential and careful deliberation when dealing with a major international crisis." If this is desirable, Mr. Rusk, how can it be obtained?

SECRETARY RUSK: I think that are certain myths that our friends in the press indulge in.

MR. NEWMAN: Surely not.

SECRETARY RUSK: I think the American people are better served by their news media than are the people of any other country I know. But, nevertheless, there are some things that we ought to watch. For example, I'm rather astonished to hear people in the news media talk about the people's right to know. They're stuck with the notion that whatever our right to know, we have a right to know only what they choose to tell us; otherwise, the First Amendment is dead. And surely the American people have a right to have their public business conducted in a responsible fashion. Where do you draw the line between that and the so called people's right to know? Well, drawing the line is one of the Constitutional arts that we've had a lot of experience with.

One aspect of the press that bothers me is that it is the principal channel of communication between officials of government and the people. But it's a rather limited and uncertain channel. There are only a limited number of column inches and only limited moments of breathless radio and television news, and you're always snatching at sixty seconds worth of a problem. Otherwise, they'll start shuffling their feet and accuse you of filibustering to avoid more questions.

Most of their questions are about the future. They do such a good job of keeping us up to date that when you have a press conference, I found that eighty percent of my questions were about the future. Well, providence has not given us the capacity to pierce the fog of the future with accuracy; but I couldn't sit there before six hundred reporters and a battery of television cameras and answer eighty percent of my questions by saying, "Damned if I know."

SECRETARY RUSK: So there are some problems. I think the increasing competition within the media is presenting some problem of context and balance and understanding.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: I think the fundamental problem that exists is not so much that there should be more restraint by the media. It has to do partly with the values of the media and the values of the administrations or departments.

American media, following the tradition of such plays as "The Front Page," focus on getting some piece of news that nobody else has, getting some terrific news break. So some top secret document that they can elicit from somebody has a tremendous effect for them, even though there are ten thousand of those floating around at any given moment, and the author probably classified it top secret to attract attention.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: At any rate, you cannot judge the significance of events by one document. The importance of documents is their relation to each other. Administrations are sorely tempted to try to put a spin on stories and to try to do what Al Haig mentioned -- to influence short term popularity -- and that's unavoidable. All of us have done it at one time or another.

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Fundamentally, it would be helpful if the media in the field of foreign policy understood that real news is to understand the trend of events. I think the best service a Secretary of State can render in presenting foreign policy is to keep briefing the press when there is no crisis on what he is thinking and to be honest about it so that when he does something, they can interpret it themselves.

SECRETARY HAIG: What Henry is talking about is the essence of leadership. When a leader communicates regularly and consistently, both with the Congress and with the American people through the media, they know what he's doing, and what he's about. On those occasions when that luxury is not provided, he has built a well of confidence and credibility, and they tolerate a great deal during times when those homilies can't be shared because of the character of the crisis itself. But if he doesn't, then you have this uncertainty and lack of credibility.

SECRETARY MUSKIE: There is a classic, recent example of the interplay between the White House and the media, and that is the aftereffects of the Reykjavik Summit. There is no question that the initial impression that I think the public got immediately following the adjournment of that Summit was that it had been a failure. The White House obviously did not want it to be perceived in that way, so almost immediately they undertook to put a spin on it. For the next several days the administration was able to put it's spokesmen on the morning shows and on the evening shows.

I have no fault to find with that, but we're examining the process. Of course, Presidents use the media in this way, and they have succeeded at least so far as the public perception is concerned and so far as the polls and the reaction on the public. They turned that one around.

MR. NEWMAN: Did the administration representatives at Reykjavik themselves fully understand what had been done at Reykjavik? Was the confusion in telling the American people what had happened a reflection of their own?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: No. I think that goes to the heart of the problem. I believe Reykjavik exposed the absence of a consensus in the administration and the absence of a concept that is applicable to the existing situation in East-West relations and in technology. And, therefore, I think we have to go back to the drawing board.

SECRETARY HAIG: I think the point Henry made about Reykjavik is a very, very important one. To me this is the most significant event which has occurred in this administration. And it's not positive, but negative. It dwarfs any significance of the Iranian brouhaha in every respect.

SECRETARY RUSK: With respect to my friend Al Haig, it's my impression that Reykjavik has been exaggerated in importance by both sides. We should not have expected very much to come out of it, partly as a matter of time. They met for ten hours. Divide that in half for interpretation, that's five hours. Divide that in half for equal time, and that's two-and-a-half hours. The most that could have come out of that would have been an agreement in principle, so called.

You just can't do business within that span unless the agreements have been negotiated carefully in advance or unless at the Summit they can give any kind of fresh instructions to negotiators to get on with the job somewhere else.

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MR. NEWMAN: Is it fair to assume that some covert activities that have taken place over the years have never been revealed to the public?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: I don't think one should comment on that. I really don't.

MR. NEWMAN: What I'm asking is, does the fact that we sometimes engage in clandestine or covert operations in any way damage our moral position?

SECRETARY HAIG: Let me comment on this, Ed, because it's a very, very touchy issue. I think it's very naive for the United States to set standards in its conduct abroad which are exclusively ideological and moral, as important as that aspect of our foreign policy must be.

The conduct of foreign affairs historically must be a balance between ideals and democratic values and full cognizance of the world in which we must conduct our affairs. So long as other states are entitled to conduct covert action, we must be. Heaven help the President who is deprived this fundamental asset of our security matters.

The problem is maintaining this balance. If you are exclusively dominated by Realpolitik and the intrigues of power politics, you will lose the support of the American people because they'll consider your policies not representative of our democratic values. On the other hand, if you pursue policies exclusively in a moralistic framework, you'll also lose the support of the American people because your policies simply will not work. And so it's a constant balance of subjective judgment in which you have to give due weight to both.

SECRETARY MUSKIE: I think it's very human for people holding power to tend to try to expand it, and for people holding power to be corrupted. That surely applies not only to actions which are visible publicly, but especially to covert actions.

I would agree with the premise that there are occasions when covert actions are justifiable in the national security interest, but one has to watch carefully the expansion of that idea; and that, of course, is why the two intelligence committees of the Congress, the Intelligence Committee of the Senate and of the House, were created.

MR. NEWMAN: That leads us more or less logically into the question of human rights and how far human rights should play a part in American policy. For example, President Reagan has made human rights a very considerable issue in the arms control talks with the Soviet Union. He has said that human rights is at the core of our foreign policy. Is it a good idea for human rights to be given that much prominence?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Human rights are obviously an important element of American foreign policy, reflecting as they do our fundamental values. I do not believe they have anything to do with arms control policy. In other words, if the Soviet Union lets out more immigrants, this is no reason for us to ease our arms control conditions. Arms control has to be related to national security and national strategy, and those conditions should neither be tightened nor eased on the basis of the Soviet human rights record.

An argument could conceivably be made that if the Soviets behave outrageously in oppression, that no agreements of any kind should be made with them. That is something that I can understand. I cannot understand saying that the terms that might be set for arms control will be influenced by Soviet behavior on human rights.

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SECRETARY RUSK: I yield to no one in my interest in human rights, but I'm concerned about how we go about it. There are only about thirty constitutional democracies in the world in which human rights are in good condition. More than a hundred and thirty nations have varying degrees of dictatorship. Now, if we make human rights a condition for our participation with others in other major problems, such as arms control, this could be a self-selected road to isolation on our part as we withdraw into this community of constitutional democracies.

I think we ought to work at it continuously, sympathetically, even compassionately, behind the scenes, and be a little careful about public confrontations with countries all over the world, and also without any element of sanctimony.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: It seems to me that there are a number of questions one has to ask. One, what is the national interest of the United States in a particular area of the world? Second, what is the objective we are trying to achieve in that part of the world? Third, what price are we willing to pay to achieve that objective?

To take the case of South Africa or any one of these situations, it isn't enough to say "let's talk about South Africa -- the end of apartheid" unless you can define what you mean by apartheid, because there is the aspect that here in this region would have been called segregation, and there is the aspect of political participation in government.

The first has a conceptually relatively easy solution. The second is extremely complicated when you have a white community, a black community itself divided into at least eight major linguistic groups, an Indian community, and a colored community; so if one is attempting to change the system, one owes it to oneself to define what a democratic solution is in such a context. One has no right just to throw a match into a powder keg and then say, "Okay. You deserved this."

One ought to remember that revolutions are started by bringing together all those who oppose the existing system, but the test of a revolution is what you build afterwards. If we're not willing to pay the price of stabilizing the upheaval we have ourselves created, then a human rights policy can contribute to chaos rather than to progress. It seems to me those are the criteria, or at least some of the criteria that ought to be applied to these questions.

EDWIN NEWMAN: Is it possible to weigh our human rights policy against our strategic interests in a country? Let's say South Africa, Chile, South Korea, Guatemala. You've said more than once today -- it's been said around the table more than once in certain connections -- that there are no hard and fast rules. Is this another situation in which there are none?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Foreign policy has to begin with insuring the survival of the United States because if we don't survive, our values will go down as well. The art of foreign policy, however, in the vast majority of cases is to prevent such stark choices from having to be made. If one gets down to such a stark choice, it is often a failure of one's foreign policy.

So as a general principle, I would say if it gets down to it, I would have to choose the fundamental strategic interests. I would also hope that one can avoid getting down to that question.

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SECRETARY MUSKIE: That's a particularly difficult situation, South Korea, because it's
own domestic tranquility affects its ability to protect its survival and security as well as
affect our national security interests. It's very difficult to find the ways to apply pressure
or influence, whatever benign word you want to use, upon the government of South Korea to
move toward the democratization of their political processes, which they have promised, but
they have been very slow to move in that way. They have argued that the protection of
their security interests governs the pace of their movement.

MR. NEWMAN: Somebody has to have the last word, and I have now decided that it has
been had. But there is one subject we ought to get to, and I ask you to be brief on it if
there's something you want to say. That is Nicaragua. Is the Sandinista regime in
Nicaragua a threat to the vital interests of the United States?

SECRETARY HAIG: I don't think we would really care whether, by free choice, the people of Nicaragua selected a communist regime, and frankly we shouldn't put ourselves in the position of saying, "We have the right to determine."

What gives Nicaragua its strategic dimension is the Cuban presence in Nicaragua, and the
Soviet manipulation of that presence. I would also make the outrageous statement that if it
were not for those two elements, the Nicaraguan people would take care of Marxism
overnight. They'd throw them out on their ear. And that's why we simply haven't been
going about the problem right in that region.

SECRETARY RUSK: My views on that are not typical of many Democrats. I think the administration has a problem in that it has not presented to the public or to other governments a clear, convincing, factual case as to just what it is that the Sandinistas are doing in countries like El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras; because from such facts would flow many consequences.

Secondly, I think that they suffer from the fact that there is so little solidarity in the
hemisphere with respect to these issues. But I must say that if the facts are as alleged, then I
myself would be very serious about Nicaragua.

SECRETARY MUSKIE: What troubles me about Nicaragua is that here we are. We have
normal diplomatic relations with Nicaragua. We recognize their government. They
recognize ours. And yet we are there investing another hundred million dollars supporting
a rebel faction undertaking to overthrow that government or at least to change its policies in
ways which give them a role in that government. I find that an inconsistent position for us
to be in.

Now, I think Al Haig has put his fingers on what we need to attack, to get at, and that is the
Cuban and Russian involvement there, whatever the dimensions of that. I really don't know
because I don't have access to the intelligence, as Dean Rusk has said. I think that's what we
ought to focus on. But I am concerned about the over emphasis, or the almost total emphasis,
on a military solution to the problem.

SECRETARY HAIG: Let me just add one observation. What's happened to derail our
Central American policies is this: on the one hand concern about Soviet expansionism and on
the other an expression that somehow we proclaim the right to determine the kinds of
regimes that will exist in Central America and that we'll take direct action in those countries
to overthrow Marxism.

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To me, the United States should be an advocate of rule of law. As an advocate of a rule of law, we have every right to insist that Castro's Cuba and the Soviet Union butt out of the internal affairs of Central American republics. When we start the same, we create these ambiguities and confusions which are the overtones of your answer. I may say.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: I would think that a Nicaraguan government that had Latin American advisors rather than Cuban advisors, whose army was on the same level as that of other Central American countries rather than the size of ninety thousand and that took its economic help from democratic nations rather than six hundred million dollars from the Soviet Union -- if conditions such as these could be achieved -- then what form of government exists in Nicaragua is not a vital interest of the United States, although we would have a preference.

However, as long as there are ten thousand Cuban so called advisors there, plus thousands of others from Bulgaria, Libya whose only common feature is hostility to the United States and who surely wouldn't be in Nicaragua on any other basis, East Germany and so forth -- as long as they have an army nearly as large as Mexico's -- they are a major threat, and we have to face it.

MR. NEWMAN: Gentlemen, Secretary Haig, Secretary Kissinger, Secretary Rusk, Secretary Muskie, thank you all for your participation today.

(Applause)

MR. NEWMAN: And thanks also to the audience here in the Civic Center in Atlanta.

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MR. NEWMAN: Welcome to "The Fourth Annual Conference of Secretaries of State.
Today we have with us four former Secretaries.

DEAN RUSK, who served the longest term, (eight years), from 1961 to 1969 in the Kennedy
and Johnson administrations. His years of government service date back to 1946, when he
joined the State Department during the Truman administration. Mr. Rusk has also served as
President of the Rockefeller Foundation, and is currently a professor of law at the
University of Georgia.

ALEXANDER HAIG was President Reagan's first Secretary of State and served until his
resignation in June 1982. In 1969 he was named Military Advisor to Henry Kissinger and
was then appointed Deputy Assistant of National Security Affairs to the President. General
Haig served as President Nixon's Chief of Staff in 1974 and then as NATO Supreme
Commander in Europe from 1974 to 1978. Secretary Haig is now a consultant in
Washington, D. C.

WILLIAM ROGERS, Secretary of State under President Nixon from 1969 to 1973, Attorney
General under President Eisenhower, Chairman of the commission that investigated the loss
of the space shuttle Challenger, was to have been with us today. Illness, unfortunately, kept
Secretary Rogers away.

For more than twenty years, the Southern Center for International Studies, (SCIS), has
provided the Southeast with perspectives and information on international affairs. In 1983
the Southern Center presented its first Annual Conference of Former Secretaries of State.
That meeting marked the first time these men had gathered to discuss American foreign
policy. Today, the Southern Center is convening its fourth annual conference. The
purpose is to bring to the American public the collective experience and wisdom of these
men, who represent an extraordinary national resource.

The last few weeks have seen a tremendous amount of discussion, gentlemen, of how United
States foreign policy is made, because of the dealings with Iran. Are there any lessons to be
learned about the way that policy is made or should be made?

Secretary Rusk?

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today.

I have not joined the hue and cry on this so called "Iranian caper." I have told reporters that I consider myself silenced by one of the greatest sentences ever spoken - "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."

We live in a very complex and turbulent world situation with more than a hundred and sixty nations out there, no one of which simply snaps its heels and salutes when we speak. Every administration has had to do things which in retrospect appear to have been a mistake. And every administration has become accustomed to the fact that disappointment and frustration are built in to the very nature of our relations with the rest of the world. After all, these "funny foreigners" just don't always act as we would like to see them act.

As far as I'm concerned, the present problem is one of what some people have called damage control. I'll mention two points: One is that the President must move firmly and directly to establish without any question the authority of the Secretary of State to speak for the United States. It's not just a matter of what happens to our present Secretary of State, but it's important to the nation as a whole: Otherwise, our diplomacy will be severely limited. The other problem is relations between the President and the Congress. This could be of critical importance because we're at the beginning of a two year period where we have a Republican President and a Democratic Congress. The necessity for these two branches to work together is overriding.

I would like to say to my colleagues in Congress something about what happened twenty-five years ago. President Kennedy was faced with the failure and the tragic mistake of the Bay of Pigs. It fell to me to go down to Congress to talk to some of the key committees on Capitol Hill. I remember very well that the prevailing mood was regret, sadness, and a certain amount of compassion. The Republicans on those committees did not bare their fangs in order to rip the President to pieces. There was a general feeling that we should somehow put this behind us and get on with the public business of the nation.

Now, I hope, as we face these next two years, that we shall not see foreign policy and defense policy become an object of partisan bickering as each party jousts for position for the election of 1988. The American people have the right to be better served than that. I would hope that the President and the leaders of Congress would spend a great deal of time with each other - not only talking to but listening to each other - in order that we might fashion that kind of national policy towards world affairs that our safety and our well being demands.

I hope that we can put this behind us and get on with the great tasks that lie ahead.

It was not, in my view, a mistake to try to improve relations with Iran. Iran is a country of decisive geo-strategic importance in that region, and a prudent President and administration would want to improve relations. But where it got off the rails, it seems to me, was in the means. The sale of arms to a radical, revolutionary government is not the best way to prove American good faith. Nor am I convinced that the obligation to show good faith lay primarily upon the United States.

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government should have preeminence? In determining that, one really should know
whether, let us say, the State or Defense Departments were excluded, or whether they
excluded themselves; whether their complaint is that they were overruled, or whether their
complaint is that they were kept in ignorance.

So, as a general proposition, I would think the lesson to be learned from this particular period
is partly an organizational one if people were kept in ignorance, but largely a conceptual one.
What did the various people think they were doing? Why did they think it? What was
wrong about that thinking? And, where it was wrong, what was right, (because the major
elements of that policy were also right, and that must not be forgotten). That seems to me to
be the key question, rather than the prerogatives of individual members of the
administration.

SECRETARY HAIG: Well, do I have a chance to tout my book again?

MR. NEWMAN: Tout your book again? Is it still in print?

(Laughter)

SECRETARY HAIG: Because I wrote it -- the new publication is.

I would share the observations made by both Secretary Rusk and Secretary Kissinger. I
would, however, suggest that their admonitions with respect to responsibility and
bipartisanship is a direct reflection of their concern that that in fact will not happen.

One need only flip on the tube in any hour of the day. Mr. Reagan must have gotten up
thinking he put on Mr. Boesky's uniform. Clearly, this is a politicized issue and
unfortunately while I fervently share the observations of Secretary Rusk, I'm afraid it will
become that and we're going to witness many, many months of precisely that.

Now, that's unfortunate, because the historic struggle between the Congress and the
Executive Branch on who is responsible, I think, is clearly outlined in the Constitution; with
the obligation of the Executive Branch to keep the Congress informed, but at the same time
the right of the Executive Branch to take these initiatives.

If one looks back on our history, during the period that Dr. Kissinger and I were working
together, it was the ability of the President to take initiatives in secret that opened the doors
to China, that led to the peace treaty in Viet Nam. It's unfortunate that it was
Congressional mischief that, I think, lost that peace treaty and its effectiveness.

So I would be very concerned in the weeks and months ahead that we not cripple the
institution of the Presidency, which is after all a floating crap game in cycles of four years.
There's a great tendency in the American Congress to legislate permanent solutions to

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temporary problems. One might even debate that the War Powers Act was such a piece of legislative action. So I share the views of both. I also share Henry's comment that I wish our Cabinet would support our President; and like one Secretary of State that I know, if they cannot, to leave.

(Laughter)

SECRETARY HAIG: Not a thing. I'm not encouraging any action on the part of anyone. I am suggesting that if you disagree with a policy, and your conscience tells you that you cannot live with it, then you must make a decision before the act is committed.

SECRETARY RUSK: Perhaps it should be said that there are six former secretaries, and we're not trying to recruit George Shultz as number seven any time soon.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

SECRETARY HAIG: Dean, I'm sick and tired of being the last man to enter this stage.

(Laughter)

MR. NEWMAN: Secretary Muskie, you were in the Senate. Perhaps, again, you have a unique point of view to offer us here.

SECRETARY MUSKIE: Yes. I've been involved in both ends of this process.

You know, your question was: What lessons are there to be learned out of this incident? Unfortunately, most of the lessons that we need to learn whenever out country goes through a crisis of this nature are lessons that have been taught before but forgotten. Forgotten by the President forgotten by the Congress, and forgotten by others. Because operating this democratic system of ours and the system of checks and balances means taking the risk of disagreement, taking the risk of fouling up, but also achieving great things.

The responsibility of the Senate, for example, in the foreign policy field, is described best by three Constitutional words, "advise and consent." Presidents are very conscious of the consent part of it and in the name of consent preach their definition of bipartisan foreign policy. They tend to overlook the "advise" part of that Constitutional mandate, which has led them into a great deal of difficulty. Among other things, it has led the Congress to do the sort of thing that Secretary Haig just decried a moment ago. When Presidents do not consult or do not advise effectively, the Congress is likely to take the initiative into its own hands. It has happened before. I have not always agreed with those Congressional initiatives, but on the other hand, as a member of the Senate for twenty-two years, I've understood it. When I was Secretary of State. (I was Secretary for such a short time - I remember precisely, eight months and twenty days - very busy eight months and twenty days). I was never plagued with that, probably because I came out of the Senate. If I had served as Secretary for four more years, I have no doubt that I would have had to face similar situations.

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But the other word that I would emphasize here regarding these most recent events is the word "accountability." In a democratic system such as ours, based on the idea of freedom and a free society and a free people, policy makers must always be sensitive to the fact that, at some point, they are going to be accountable for the consequences of their policies and their initiatives. There's a tendency to think, when you're at the highest level, that somehow it should be possible for you to do something worthwhile, provided you don't have to bring the public in on it. You may get away with not bringing the public in on it, either directly or through their institutions, for a while. But, eventually, the consequences become evident, and accountability sets in. In this most recent affair, I have the sense that that was not sufficiently on the minds of those who were involved.

Now, I agree with Secretary Rusk that our concerns should be how do we repair the damage. But in order to repair it, no one of those involved in this incident can be excluded from the responsibility of repairing the damage, including the President and the President's White House staff, where perhaps the responsibility lies heaviest as well as the Congress.

I'm sure that we'll get into other implications of these questions, Mr. Newman, but I think maybe that's a sufficient start.

MR. NEWMAN: Let me pick up, if I may, something that Secretary Kissinger said, and ask Secretary Kissinger about something that he did, in fact, when he was National Security Advisor.

You went to China, as a result of which diplomatic relations were opened between the United States and government of Mainland China. Now, in the discussions of the last few weeks there has been a great deal of talk about how that was somewhat similar to what President Reagan was trying to do with Iran. Therefore, he deserved the same sort of, shall we say, confidence and the same sort of secrecy that existed at the time you went to China. Do these two things seem to you to be comparable?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Of course, in any administration the President must have the scope to do some things that are very sensitive on a secret basis. I think, there is a big difference between a diplomatic initiative, whose practical consequence will become public as soon as it is consummated, and the shipment of several thousand tons of arms. That seems to me to be a matter that inherently, one should know, cannot be kept secret. Too many people are involved, and third countries are involved. That is one aspect of the recent events. The second is: if you take publicly one position and encourage other governments to pursue the same or a certain policy, while privately you do exactly the opposite, you are no longer in the area of secret diplomacy. I believe, in the opening of China, which was at first attempted to be handled in regular channels, and then we received staff memos that recommended that we begin negotiating immunities, transportation, consultation, and we thought we'd be spending three years on the internal issues, then the President moved it into different channels. But as soon as that act -- as the opening had been made, it had to become public in the nature of things. Also we had not induced other governments to do the opposite of what we were doing.

So, in this case, I don't think it was exactly comparable. Secrecy shouldn't be abused, and the objection to the arms part of the present policy in my mind is not only the secrecy, or primarily the secrecy, but the fact that something was trying to be kept secret that really put us into the hands of people who did not wish us well, where the secrecy couldn't be controlled and where the publication did not give them impetus, as it did in the China, to a new

5

development, but would get us into deep trouble. So, I don't think it's exactly comparable.

MR. NEWMAN: Did the machinery for making United States foreign policy break down in this Iran matter?

SECRETARY HAIG: Well, it would depend a great deal on what facts emerge in the post-mortems before one could answer that definitively. It is clear, and I suppose I wrote at length about it in my book --

(Laughter)

SECRETARY HAIG: -- that there is -- Henry, I'm going to outsell you yet.

(Laughter)

SECRETARY HAIG: It is essential that there be a disciplined structure for conducting foreign policy and national security policy. It frequently matters less as to how it is structured. Like Dean Rusk, I think I'd much prefer the primary role for the Secretary of State, but I have on my left here Dr. Kissinger a very, very splendid example of the fact that it will work the other way, too, and work well.

This administration on occasion has looked like a revolving crap game. One day Mr. Weinberger is talking foreign policy, one day Mr. Baker or Mr. Regan is talking foreign policy, and the next day the Secretary of State. This Iranian affair had all of symptoms of anything but a disciplined system, and I think it's unfortunate. Probably this brouhaha, which I do think is somewhat over dramatized, is a product of it.

Now, the separation of powers at the federal level is a very important concept, but there are some limits. The late Chief Justice Earl Warren visited our Law School here at Georgia shortly before his death, and on that occasion reminded us that if each branch of the Federal government were to pursue its own Constitutional powers to the end of the trail, our system simply could not function; it would freeze up like an engine without oil. Impasse is the overhanging threat to our Constitutional system.

The other side of the coin of the separation of powers is a Constitutional necessity for comity among the branches of government that in turn requires the most effective communication between the two that we can devise. Perhaps I'm tilted on the side of the Executive Branch, having lived with that, but it is not easy to consult with five hundred and thirty-five members of Congress. In the first place, they don't have the time to spend to get deeply into the most of the major questions of foreign policy. The public has little understanding, I think, of the pressures of time upon a Senator or a member of the House of Representatives. Also, the Congress itself is not too organized for purposes of consultation. Almost literally, every committee of Congress becomes involved in our foreign relations, ranging from the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to the House Committee on the District of Columbia. I have long thought it would be desirable if the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the House Foreign Affairs Committee would have the privilege of calling before themselves

6

any matter pending before any other committee of Congress in order to comment on it from an overall foreign policy point of view. But relations among the committees of Congress would probably make that impossible.

I do think it is especially important where the White House has one party and the Congress has a majority of the other that they spend a great deal of time with each other trying to eliminate unnecessary misunderstandings and try to build as solid a common basis for our international policies as they can possibly find. This can be done. Look back to the days of President Truman and the Eightieth Republican Congress under the leadership of Senator Arthur Vandenberg - a great creative period in our foreign policy with the Marshall Plan and NATO and the launching of the United Nations and Point Four Technical Assistance. A great creative period because they were willing to put in the time and effort required to come together on it.

So, I hope, my dear friend Ed Muskie, that somehow we can find better ways to facilitate serious consultation between the Executive Branch and the Congress. Some of that responsibility should arise on Capitol Hill.

MR. NEWMAN: May I put in a question here to Secretary Rusk, Secretary Muskie, before you speak?

The period you were speaking about, Secretary Rusk, after the Second World War, was a period in which the Soviet threat was seen as extremely serious, extremely powerful; and some of what was done between the Congress and the administration in the late 'Forties came about for that reason. Is it fair to say that there is not now thought to be a similar threat, and that this may be one reason that there isn't the same degree of cooperation?

SECRETARY RUSK: Well, we have to look carefully at the nature of that threat. We've had a number of crises with the Soviet Union since 1945, many difficult and some of them dangerous. But we have put behind us now forty-one years since a nuclear weapon has been fired in anger - perhaps the most important single thing that can be said about this postwar period - because there is, in this relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, a bottom line.

First, we and the Soviets share a basic common interest in preventing nuclear war. No one in his right mind in Washington and Moscow could deny that. Second, the two of us share a primordial responsibility to the entire human race, because we and they are perhaps the only two nations who, if engaged in mortal conflict, could raise a serious question about the survival of the human race. And third, whatever we think of the Russians or they think of us, somehow at the end of the day we and they must find a way to inhabit this spec of dust in the universe at the same time. Though there are flat out differences, it has been possible to manage these problems within certain limitations.

Now, a lot flows from that. We have to watch the level of rhetoric on both sides, otherwise one side or the other will begin to believe its own rhetoric, and we could have some problems. We have to watch not to play games of chicken with each other to see how far one can go in a particular venture without crossing that lethal line. So, there are many things to be drawn from it. But my impression has been that where these things are discussed fully and candidly, usually in executive sessions, I must say, with the key committees of Congress, there develops a pretty broad common understanding of the nature of the problem and where we should be going.

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SECRETARY MUSKIE: I think there are other forces at work that distinguish the present period from the creative period to which Dean Rusk has referred - the late 'Forties and early 'Fifties. Among other things, in the Congress there has been a fractionating of the authority and areas of responsibility of Congressional committees. When Dean Acheson was Secretary of State as well as George Marshall, they could go to key members of the key committees in the Senate and in the House and achieve consensus. The authority of chairmen at that time in the Congress was not challenged. They were able to agree to a great deal and command a following in the Senate and in the House behind the policies. It was a much simpler day. That has changed. That kind of authority is no longer concentrated in committee chairmen. Committee chairmen are lucky if they can hold on to their jobs now from one Congress to the next.

What is responsible for that? I suspect that television as much as anything, because any member of the Senate or the House today can get a nationwide audience the day after he's elected to the House or to the Senate. The media take advantage of that instinct of politicians to get visibility and to get headlines, and, of course, the politicians take advantage of it as well. Every member of both houses considers himself a foreign policy expert. At least he does once he gets a headline or gets on the highlights of the evening television news. So, fractionating of authority in the Congress, I think, is partly responsible for the difference and the difficulty today of achieving a Congressional consensus.

But this also happens in the Executive Branch for a different reason. People with different points of view in the Executive Branch undertake to develop Congressional constituencies. They will see individual members of Congress to whose ears they can tell their point of view, and give each member of Congress whom they contact a basis for getting a story, for getting on the news, for getting visibility.

I hope I am not suggesting that this is too cynical a process, and I don't think really that it is the driving mode of this cynicism. I think, it's the natural inclination of people to seek visibility for their point of view and to pursue it. That's more possible today in our political system than ever before.

I like Dean Rusk's use of the word "comity." I agree with him that comity is the glue which holds the Constitution together and which holds our system of checks and balances together. But there are these other centrifugal forces which work counter to that. It is going to require, I think, a greater exertion of restraint, will and cooperativeness to make the system work than ever before.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: First, I'd like to illustrate the point that Ed Muskie made about the impact of television. There's a big difference if one testifies before a committee when television cameras are present or when they're not. There was one Senator on the Foreign Relations Committee who was actually a good friend of mine and who would often ask helpful questions. When television cameras were in the room he would ask those questions with a red face, a vein was throbbing on his forehead, pointing a finger at me, and it sounded as if he had extorted the most reluctant confession from me when I was saying something that I was really most eager to say, and he knew I was eager to say it -- but that would get him on television. While if he had asked a philosophical question and I had given a philosophical answer, you know as well as I do that it would not have received any television coverage.

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One result of the fractionation of which Ed Muskie spoke, is that the nature of the consultation has changed somewhat on the fundamental philosophical issues, the nature of the consensus on the broad strategy on how to deal with it. There must be consensus -- comity is the better word -- between the Congress and the Executive Branch. The system would not work badly in achieving that if both sides keep Earl Warren's injunction in mind of not pushing their prerogatives to the ultimate conclusion.

But fractionation has the tendency of leading to endless involvement in tactical decisions, and that puts the United States often into the position of playing a game of chess with an opponent who can make his moves with one coherent approach. While on the American side somebody precipitously starts moving a piece for you every once in a while; and no matter how brilliant that individual move is, it loses the coherence. The essence of foreign policy - of good foreign policy - is the accumulation of nuance. It is very rare that you can do something that makes a decisive difference. It is the gradual transformation of the situation, that gets lost when you get too much obsessed with tactical issues. I think there self restraint by the Congress is important.

Another element that I think is new in the last decade or so under the impact of Watergate, television and other things is the growth of the Congressional staffs. In my observation, many frustrated foreign service officers who were not made Secretaries of State rapidly enough for their tastes would migrate to the Hill and try to implement from the platform of a Congressional committee the brilliant policies that they had failed to get adopted by the man who had been imposed on them as the Secretary of State or the President. And then liaisons form between the Congressional staffers and the lower levels in the State and Defense Departments that makes the management, both by the Senators or the Congressmen and by the Executive Branch, much more difficult than it was even at the time that I first came to Washington.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, I actually think that it is better for the Senators to rely less on their staff and more on their own judgment. That's what they were elected for. One solution is to make sure that the consultation focuses on the fundamental national issues - Where are we trying to go; What is the broad strategy; rather than, what should we say next week to Gorbachev? That is something that is difficult to handle. Of course, there should be information about that as well. That is the broad outline of the solution. How to do it? That's another matter.

MR. NEWMAN: Secretary Muskie was suggesting, if I understood him correctly, that in the White House, for example, you would have a number of White House staff people who would be funneling ideas to particular friends on the Hill, particular groups on the Hill, so as to get those ideas out in the open.

I was reminded as you said that, Secretary Muskie, of something that Secretary Rusk said about yet another Secretary, Dean Acheson, who was asked, "What is the first quality that a Secretary of State needs?" And his reply, according to Mr. Rusk, was, "the killer instinct." Now, does a Secretary of State need a killer instinct? Does he have to be able to say, "No, there will be no National Security Advisor," or "If there is, he will take orders from me?" Does he have to be able to say, "The White House Chief of Staff does not get into foreign policy affairs?" How has all of this, in other words, affected what the country has just learned about in connection with Iran?

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**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** If the NSC hadn't been created, I suppose it might still exist in the White House in some informal, uncreated way. Part of the answer, part of the reason for that, is the geography. I have a theory -- I'd be interested in whether my colleagues agree with this -- that when the State Department was moved from what is now the Executive Office Building, next door to the White House, to its present house, quite a ways distant, that the geography which separated the Secretary of State from the President tended to enhance the inclination of the President to look around the White House and to find that advice there. The President, for whatever reason in the morning, may be interested in a particular foreign policy issue. He knows that the Secretary of State is busy, in any case on the other side of town, and so it's easy to turn to somebody in the White House.

I remember that when I first went to the Senate, I was assigned to a subcommittee of the Government Operations Committee, which was chaired by Senator Henry Jackson, and his interest that year was conducting hearings on the newly created National Security Council. It had been created in President Truman's administration, and the question that was before us was the fact that nobody could seem to find any use for the National Security Council. President Eisenhower hadn't used it very much, and the testimony that came before us as to the efforts to make it a useful instrument would make very interesting reading today, after the fact.

But with time and imaginative occupants in the seat of the National Security Advisor -- and we have a very imaginative one present here today in Henry, who was a good National Security Advisor on institutional grounds, there was a vacuum. You know what the old law of physics says; if there's a vacuum, something steps into it. I think that the National Security Council issue has emerged as a result of that over the years. Perhaps the fact that the National Security Advisor is not confirmed by the Senate or anybody else makes him a tempting repository of Presidential advice and initiative.

Some Advisors have resisted that or tried to control it or channel it or emphasize the National Security Advisor's cooperative functions, and it has worked out all right. Other times it hasn't. It depends a great deal on the personality and inclinations of the occupier of that office, and has geography working for him.

**SECRETARY HAIG:** Let me suggest that the killer instinct of a Secretary could very rapidly become a suicidal instinct if he was working for a strong President, because the President decides how he wants to formulate the policy. We've talked about the impact of television, it's pervasive; the collapse of discipline within the legislature -- and that's true; the proliferation of staff; and the separation of State from the White House. But I think one of the most important contributors to the new challenges of policy making in America is the globalization of America's responsibilities, and this is perhaps one of the most significant factors in modern America, and the increasing complexity associated with that globalization, in which economic affairs, political affairs, security affairs, commercial affairs are all now part of a cloth -- the mosaic of which is the threads of the various departments and in which if there were not a National Security Council, by God, we'd have to invent one to bring these various departments together.

Now, the role of that council can be one of high profile, public spokesman, the driving force, or something a little more faceless, more staff like, heard of less often. But the need to coordinate the various agencies and departments in the conduct of coherent foreign policy, which is political, economic, as well as security related, cannot be talked away. The

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SECRETARY RUSK: I think, it might be well to remind ourselves of two elementary points here. The first sentence of Article II of the Constitution reads, "The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." It is the President, and only the President, who is elected by all of the people to give direction to the Executive Branch of the government within the laws and the Constitution. There's only one President in the White House. I would hope that Constitutional sentence would be framed and put on the walls of the White House mess so there will be no confusion over there in that building about who is President.

Now, by the way --

(Laughter)

(Applause)

SECRETARY HAIG: I left that for you to say, Dean.

SECRETARY RUSK: Now, along side of Dean Acheson's remark about the killer instinct, he also said that in the relations between the President and the Secretary of State it is of the greatest importance that both of them understand at all times which one is President. Of course, I'm biased on this, but I think we ought to note just a thing or two about the office of Secretary of State, of which Thomas Jefferson was number one: The Secretary of State has a five foot shelf of statutory law organizing his Department and setting many of the main policies that we are expected to follow. A good many of those laws delegate specific responsibilities to the Secretary of State, even though it is generally understood that he exercises those delegated responsibilities under the general direction of the President. But that doesn't mean that every Tom, Dick and Harry who has an office over in the White House or the Executive Office Building. It is the Secretary who goes down and meets regularly with committees and subcommittees of the Congress, taking their questions. It is he who holds press conferences from time to time. It is he who goes out across the country, making foreign policy speeches and getting the pulse of those to whom he is speaking in terms of question periods and things of that sort. None of that is true of these White House staff.

I think, when you proliferate staff in the White House and in the Congress, there's a bureaucratic syndrome that begins to operate. These staff members have to find some way to earn their "brownie points" for the year in order to justify their jobs, and one of the ways they do that is to tinker with something. Since it's fun for a lot of these people to tinker with foreign policy, because it's exciting and all the rest of it, they tend to want to tinker with foreign policy far beyond their competence, experience or responsibility. So, I would hope that we could streamline these organizations, ranging from Congressional staffs right over to the White House.

(Applause)

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, both Dean Rusk and Al Haig have said much of what I can contribute to this subject. I would like to make two points: One is that one does not achieve influence in the policy making process by insisting on prerogatives. The President

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will consult whoever makes, in his mind, the most significant contributions. So there is no substitute for a close relationship between the President and the Secretary of State. The minute somebody has to walk into the President's office and say, "I'm entitled to be heard," he has already lost; because if he wanted to hear him, he would have called him in to begin with. And if the relationship were well established, it's inconceivable that the Secretary of State isn't heard.

Secondly, there is an important role for a National Security Council for a Presidential staff. As the Department has grown in size, the head of the Department must be conscious of the morale of his subordinates, and the subordinates in turn will judge his effectiveness by the degree to which he gets their policies implemented.

I've been National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, so I have seen it from both ends. I used to say when I was Secretary of State that the various bureaus in the Department, at the end of the day when they send up the eighty to a hundred cables which they want you to approve, always give you three choices: nuclear war, unconditional surrender, or their preference.

(Laughter)

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** Nobody really can get on top of that machinery totally; because if you send that cable back, the odds are that you'll get back a variation of it the next day with the same basic thrust and just a slight modification, so it's a hard struggle even within the Department.

But the President needs a group that makes sure that the fundamental issues are being addressed. That's the fundamental job of the National Security Council. When it goes off into operations, or when it gets off into its own tactics, that's when one gets into a questionable area. Sometimes the questionable area arises when the President feels very strongly about a policy and a Department feels dubious about it - which is its prerogative - but, then having been heard, is reluctant to implement it. Then the President, having the authority that Dean Rusk spoke about, must find somebody to do it. So it is important. I agree that the staff should not be given - should be trimmed of-those responsibilities that are self-serving and unnecessary. At the same time, the Department must be kept focused on fundamental national issues and not on issues of prerogative. The purpose of the exercise is not to establish the prerogative of the Department, but to achieve good national policy.

**MR. NEWMAN:** Should the National Security Advisor be a public figure? Should he be perhaps - or she, when that time comes - forbidden to appear in public, forbidden to make speeches, forbidden to give interviews?

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** As a general proposition, I agree with Dean Rusk that the public explanation of foreign policy should overwhelmingly be left either to the President or to the Secretary of State, however, I must tell you that in my day when I used to brief on Viet Nam issues, I did not have to beat off competitors for the platform.

(Laughter)

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** And I don't remember ever a complaint about White House prerogatives as long as I stuck to unpopular issues.

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(Laughter)

SECRETARY KISSINGER: So, this has to be kept in mind: If the Department wants greater responsibilities, they must also be prepared to take greater heat. That is surely the ideal arrangement. Certainly, the Secretary of State must be the public spokesman, and he must also be prepared to speak on things --

SECRETARY RUSK: Now, there are variations on this. When Pierre Salinger was the press spokesman for President Kennedy, he told us over in the State Department that if there was any good news to report, he wanted to report that from the White House; but if there was bad news, he expected us to do that in the State Department.

(Laughter)

SECRETARY HAIG: That's a confirmation of the wisdom of a President who doesn't want to be perceived to be responsible, day to day, for everything, and to have a strong Secretary of State who, when things do go awry, can be expendable. Presidents are not expendable. Presidents must maintain their credibility. Sometimes an overly centralized, overly powerful White House policy making machine can risk that.

MR. NEWMAN: On that point, Secretary Haig, in connection with what has been discussed here, what is the proper function of a White House Chief of Staff? How public a position, if indeed public at all, should that be?

SECRETARY HAIG: It should be totally unpublic. Only in a dire emergency should a White House Chief of Staff be forced into a public position. He should be a faceless servant of communications between the various bureaus and departments of government and the President, and a coordinator of that gaggle which has become this White House staff, and a protector of the President -- his time, his energy -- and a setter of priorities for those energies.

SECRETARY RUSK: By the way, there's one very useful function for a National Security Advisor, and that is, the President could receive conflicting recommendations from, say, the State Department, the Defense Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff or whatever it might be, not simply a habit of bureaucracy to resist any kind of deference on a horizontal basis. One can defer vertically. There have been times in the past when the White House staff can help bring these departments together in a way which the departments could not, perhaps, just achieve just working alone. So, there's some very important roles for that person to play.

MR. NEWMAN: Can we go back to the question of the power of Congress in foreign affairs? Recently Congress voted to impose sanctions against South Africa. The House voted to extend a moratorium on the testing of anti-sattelite weapons. The House cut the SDI budget which the President had sent up. It proposed, resolved, in fact - that he should abide by the limits set in SALT II, which has never been ratified. Does this go too far? Does this go too far in impinging on the President's power?

SECRETARY MUSKIE: Well, to quote a President, "That's not illegal." Certainly within the constraints which you've described, it's within the prerogative that the Congress has assumed increasingly in recent years. Not just recent years, but over the period since I was first elected in 1958.

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There are a number of reasons for this which we've already discussed, and I won't belabor them. The fact is that if we have a strong President whose policies, whose initiatives have the support of the country, his policies will prevail over these kinds of Congressional initiatives that you've described. For example, with respect to the limitations on appropriations for SDI, before the Reykjavik Summit, the Congress enacted that and backed off under pressure from the President when the President indicated, and apparently got public support for, the notion that his hands would be tied at the Summit on this issue. Congress backed off. At the same time, I'm sure that Congress feels that it made a point, and that was the way for it to make the point. What the Congress was interested in was not influencing the Summit on this issue, but influencing our long term policy on this question. That is a responsibility of the Congress if the Congress has a specific view about it.

Now, it's not an easy sort of thing to deal with from the President's point of view, but it -- the Constitution doesn't intend that the Presidency should be an easy job. The President is supposed to be a leader. He's supposed to lead the country and he's supposed to be so effective that he can impress the correctness of his policies and his initiative on his following, who are the entire people of the United States. The lessons of the last six years indicate that the Congress tends to back off a strong President and a popular President, as it has in my judgment in the last six years, at times, in ways that I did not approve as an individual citizen. So, you have this clash between the Congress and the President. It's a healthy thing. The founders intended it.

As a matter of fact, Norman Orenstein, who is a noted and well known expert on our Federal system and our Constitutional system, has taken the position that the relationship between the Congress and the President on foreign policy has probably been practiced more consistently with the ideas of the founders than at any time in recent years. I think that's a persuasive point of view.

**SECRETARY RUSK:** Congress clearly has enormous power in foreign relations under the Constitution. The President does not have a man or a dollar not provided by the Congress. Many of the things which a President or Secretary of State wish to do in our relations with other nations will require legislation or appropriations or both. So in a real sense, the Presidency is a license to persuade. Some Presidents are better persuaders than others but that element of persuasion is always there. The question is whether there is an inclination at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue to be persuaded, or whether they will sit there pouting saying, "Persuade me." They too have a responsibility in foreign affairs and they too have a share in the search for a kind of foreign policy that would be good for the nation.

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** It's not easy to make hard and fast rules, but among that list that you read, I would think, whether I agree with it or not, that cutting the budget for SDI, for example, is a way that Congress would indicate the priority it attaches to a program. Prohibiting space testing -- that seems to me to get into the area of making the tactical moves. Sanctions seem to me in the area of general direction of policy in which the Congress and the Executive must achieve some comity. The continuing SALT II limitations, that seems to me, again, a tactical move -- especially, since it is continuing the limitations of an unratified treaty. I agree, it isn't easy to make clear cut distinctions. I'm simply trying to make the illustration of what subjects seem to me in a policy of self-restraint on both sides, what approach might be taken.

**SECRETARY HAIG:** Let me suggest something else, beyond what has been discussed here that I certainly am in accord with. It seems to me that in carrying out this usage of the

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"Bully Pulpit," which Presidents must do -- they must convince; they must sell their program - that every administration is well served by a very detailed articulation of an overall framework of a foreign policy and the objectives and goals of that administration. It doesn't mean that it does that job for you, but it provides a benchmark for assessment along the way in which there's a tendency in the Congress, as the major issues are understood and accepted, not to get into the tactical manipulation which some of these issues clearly amount to.

MR. NEWMAN: I want to change our subject now slightly and talk about the power of the press as it affects foreign policy. And here again I'm quoting Dean Rusk. He and some others said this. "Americans should always respect the need for a period of confidential and careful deliberation when dealing with a major international crisis." If this is desirable, Mr. Rusk, how can it be obtained?

MR. NEWMAN: Surely not.

(Laughter)

SECRETARY RUSK: I think the American people are better served by their news media than are the people of any other country I know. But nevertheless, there are some things that we ought to watch.

For example, I'm rather astonished to hear people in the news media talk about the people's right to know, because the news media can't live with that. They're stuck with the notion that whatever our right to know, we have a right to know only what they choose to tell us; otherwise, the First Amendment is dead. Surely, the American people have a right to have their public business conducted in a responsible fashion. Where do you draw the line between that and the so called people's right to know?

Well, drawing the line is one of the Constitutional arts that we've had a lot of experience with. One aspect of the press that bothers me is that it is the principal channel of communication between officials of government and the people. But it's a rather and uncertain channel. There are only a limited number of column inches, only limited moments of breathless radio and television news. You're always snatching at sixty seconds worth of a problem; otherwise, they'll start shuffling their feet and accuse you of filibustering to avoid more questions.

Most of their questions are about the future. They do such a good job of keeping us up to date that when you have a press conference, I found that eighty percent of my questions were about the future. Well, providence has not given us the capacity, it appears, to tell the future with accuracy. But I couldn't sit there before six hundred reporters and a battery of television cameras and answer eighty percent of my questions by saying, "Damned if I know."

(Laughter)

(Applause)

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Despite that, let me say that I think our media serves us better than do the media of any other country. But I sometimes use my First Amendment right of free speech to comment on some of these things involving the exercise of the right of free press.

SECRETARY MUSKIE: And you're always willing to use the press to send your own message.

SECRETARY RUSK: Well, there's a limit to that. I never used the press to float "trial balloons." I never used the press. You can search my press conferences and Congressional testimony, you'll find it very hard to find any instance in which I would think one thing and say another. I think that's poison. But you do, of course, try to get your position out. It is a position of advocacy. After all, the Secretary of State has a client - the United States, represented primarily by the President in his particular job. We should not expect public officials not to be advocates of the positions which they support.

Now, there is such a thing as advocacy with integrity, and we ought to expect that. But everybody else in the country is an advocate; used car salesmen, preachers of the Gospel, insurance salesmen, politicians, we're all advocates. So we ought not to expect out public officials to be men from Mars, taking a balanced approach toward everything that's going on in our public life.

MR. NEWMAN: What about this period of confidential and careful deliberation when dealing with a major international crisis? Is that still a possibility? Can you get it?

SECRETARY MUSKIE: I can tell you this. It isn't possible if you're a candidate for President in the Presidential primaries. People expect instant wisdom.

MR. NEWMAN: Do administrations believe that they have to have a position ready for the evening news every night? Let me put the question differently. When I got to Washington a good many years ago, it was not at all uncommon for Presidents or Secretaries of State or whoever it might be to say, "No comment." It seems to me that for at least twenty-five years it has not been possible for anybody in public life to say, "No comment." Am I correct about this?

SECRETARY MUSKIE: I think you are. I don't know that Presidents target the evening news every day for use to advance their own programs or their own policies, although sometimes it seems that way.

But it is true that the Executive Branch and the Congress are very conscious always, whether they're conducting a hearing on the Hill or whether they are in the White House preparing an announcement or trying to make an announcement, at such a time that it will get as little notice as possible. I mean, people do play to the media in terms of timing, in terms of advantage, and using it. I think that's permissible, given the existence of the media.

SECRETARY HAIG: If anyone doesn't think that an astute White House doesn't address every day a series of issues which they seek to exploit in the media to keep the momentum of their popularity, their programs, to divert heat from issues that they don't want discussed - let me tell you, they do. They'd be rather fumbling today, in the era of modern television, were they not to do so. When it gets out of hand and this end of the business begins to crowd out substantive attention, you've got a problem.

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American media, following the traditions of such a place as "The Front Page," focus on getting some piece of news that nobody else has - getting some terrific news break. So, some top secret document that they can elicit from somebody has a tremendous effect for them, even though there are ten thousand of those floating around at any given moment - and the author probably classified it "top secret" to attract attention.

(Laughter)

SECRETARY KISSINGER: At any rate, you cannot judge the significance of events by documents. The importance of documents is in their relation to each other. Administrations are sorely tempted to try to put a spin on stories. They try to do what Al Haig mentioned - influence short-term popularity. That's unavoidable. All of us have done it at one time or another.

Fundamentally, it would be helpful if the media in the field of foreign policy understood that real news is to understand the trend of events. The great statesmen were not those who were smarter than anyone else, but they like Churchill or DeGaulle had a sense of history. I think the best service a Secretary of State can render in presenting foreign policy is to keep briefing the press, when there is no crisis, on what he's thinking and to be honest about it, so that when he does something, they can interpret it themselves. That is easier to do with the State Department press corps than with people that write on it from the outside. Still, it seems to me that there should be more emphasis on the conceptual basis of foreign policy on the part of both the media and on the part of those who explain foreign policy on behalf of the government.

SECRETARY HAIG: What Henry is talking about is the essence of leadership. When a leader communicates regularly, consistently, both with the Congress and with the American people through the media, they know what he's doing and what he's about. On those occasions when that luxury is not provided, he has built a well of confidence and credibility. They tolerate a great deal during times when those homilies can't be shared because of the character of the crisis themselves. But if he doesn't, then you have this uncertainty and loss of or lack of credibility.

SECRETARY MUSKIE: There is a classic recent example of the interplay between the White House and the media. That is the after-effects of the Reykjavik Summit. There is no question that the initial impression that, I think, the public thought immediately following the adjournment of that Summit was that it had been a failure. The White House obviously didn't want it to be perceived in that way. So, almost immediately, they undertook to put a spin on it. For the next several days, the administration was able to put it's spokesmen on the morning shows, and on the evening shows. They're able to do that - Presidents do that. They did it when I was in office as Secretary of State during the Iran hostage crisis. I have no fault to find with that, but we're examining the process. I think, of course, the Presidents use the media in this way. They have succeeded at least so far as the public perception is concerned and so far as the polls and the reaction of the public. They've turned that one around.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Yes, but I think a price will be paid for that success. Because,

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I think that Reykjavik presents as serious problems as Iran in the long term. Incidentally, that was not a case where the National Security Council broke down.

As these negotiations resume, both the excessive pessimism of the immediate aftermath and the excessive optimism that was then produced by that spin will be unhelpful. We need a discussion of what we are trying to achieve in East-West relations and what we are trying to achieve in arms control. If that is not clarified, the public will be confronted with endless numbers games that even the experts don't understand. So, that is an example of where the "tactical" has undermined the "long-term" basis of foreign policy.

MR. NEWMAN: Let me ask you a point arising out of this - and I don't mean this to be a wisecrack or anything of that sort: Did the administration representatives at Reykjavik themselves fully understand what had been done at Reykjavik? Was the confusion in telling the American people what had happened a reflection of their own.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: No. I don't think that's a wisecrack. I think that goes to the heart of the problem. I believe Reykjavik exposed the absence of a consensus in the administration and the absence of a concept that is applicable to the existing situation in East-West relations and in technology. Therefore, I think, we have to go back to the drawing board and come up with such a concept. Then, explain it and achieve agreement within the government, if these negotiations are not going to be shipwrecked or disastrous.

MR. NEWMAN: On that point, I'd like to ask all of you this. In conducting foreign affairs, is it easier to do are you better able to do it - if the American people know a great deal about what you're doing or know only a little about what you're doing, and tend to stay out of things?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: I think, about the aims of foreign policy they should know a great deal. Every once in a while a tactical move comes along, like the opening of China, where a too early revelation would defeat the objective. But as a general proposition, the greatest candor is the best support of foreign policy in a democracy.

(Applause)

SECRETARY HAIG: Let me just add, that that's the point I made a moment or two ago about the need to have an articulated foreign policy with goals and objectives to which the people can relate, understand, and agree with or disagree with. But, I think the point Henry made about Reykjavik is a very, very important one. To me, this is the most significant event which has occurred in this administration, and it's not positive, but negative. It dwarfs any significance of the Iranian brouhaha in every respect.

MR. NEWMAN: Why do you think it was so negative, specifically?

SECRETARY HAIG: Because the profound was trivialized. A non Summit Summit emerged from a non deal deal. The agenda was not fixed beforehand, and the unspeakable was spoken. The glue that has held the Western Alliance together since the dawn of the nuclear age has been rather seriously damaged. The post-mortems distorted the reality, focusing exclusively on our manhood and preserving SDI, rather than the fundamental implications of a world without nuclear weapons in which the alternatives have not been properly considered.

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(Applause)

SECRETARY HAIG: One can understand that some of the hoopla associated with the Iranian crisis as an unnerving factor in our lives. I think that's terribly overplayed. I don't think Mrs. Thatcher even raised the issue. What she wanted to talk about was Reykjavik. Now we have reversed our position.

SECRETARY RUSK: With respect to my friend Al Haig - it's my impression that Reykjavik has been exaggerated in importance by both sides. We should not have expected very much to come out of it, partly, as a matter of time. They met for ten hours. Divide that in half for interpretation, that's five hours. Divide that in half for equal time, and that's two-and-a-half hours. The most that could have come out of that would have been an "agreement in principle," so called.

Secretary of State George Marshall used to tell us, "Never agree in principle because all that means is that you've not agreed yet. Wait until you get the fine print spelled out before you know whether or not you have an agreement." Henry Kissinger has had some experience with this in the detailed negotiations that had to follow the agreement in principle at Vladivostok. You just can't do business within that span, unless the agreements have been negotiated carefully in advance or unless at the Summit, they can give any kind of fresh instructions to negotiators to get on with the job somewhere else.

But let me add another thought, and that is that the role of secrecy in these matters has been, I think, greatly exaggerated. Yes, at any given time-there are a few secrets in the nuclear field perhaps, a few secrets in the electronic field - there may be some temporary secrets about your negotiating position or upcoming negotiations. But, by and large, the idea that there are a lot of secrets back there that would affect your judgment is wrong. I personally do not know of any secret which would get in the way of any member of this audience making a responsible judgment about an important foreign policy matter if he or she would take a little time to get the information that is readily available on the subject. These are not the decisive things.

It's the duty of the reporter to bore in to try to get the story. At times, it is the duty of the officer in government to keep his mouth shut. This creates a tension. That tension should never be relieved because - unless the reporters were trying to get the story the abuse of secrecy in the bureaucracy would be very substantial.

But there are some issues here to which there is no answer. For example, if a man goes into the Department of State and wrangles out a top secret and takes it down the street and gives it or sells it to the Soviet Embassy, he goes to prison. But if a man goes in there and wrangles out a top secret and gives it to the press and the rest of the world at the same time, he gets a Pulitzer Prize.

(Laughter)

SECRETARY RUSK: There's a problem there, but there's no answer. Leave it alone. Leave it alone. Let's just work it out - work with it.

MR. NEWMAN: Gentlemen, this is not a confessional, but I have a question to put to all of you. Has any of you ever engaged in what is now grandly called "disinformation?"

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An answer is not compulsory, not required.

SECRETARY HAIG: It's like one of Henry's press briefings during the Viet Nam war. I don't think there are any volunteers.

Let me see if we can first define what disinformation is. I take the definition of disinformation to be that you make a statement that you know to be false in order to bring about a certain effect in foreign governments. If you use disinformation as a tool of foreign policy. I think, that is a grave mistake. I cannot remember any instance where that was done in the period in which I served. I'm not saying we always told everything, but we never said something we knew to be false for the purpose of producing an effect in a foreign government.

SECRETARY RUSK: I take it, Henry, that you're talking about the State Department.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Yes.

SECRETARY RUSK: Because there may be a little disinformation that crops up here or there in other places.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Of course.

SECRETARY HAIG: A bodyguard of lies, so to speak. 3:48:37

MR. NEWMAN: Secretary Haig, you said that there has to be something in the nature of "a well of information" that the American people have about foreign policy. Is so called disinformation deception, consistent with that?

SECRETARY HAIG: No. Of course, not. But I do know that historically the United States and our allies in times of conflict and other occasions - has intentionally fed disinformation. There are many recorded instances of it after World War II. But I share very fundamentally what Henry said a few moments ago. That is, that any public official that knowingly takes a fact known not to be true, unless in combat or in the conditions of war - and promulgates it, I think, is not only wrong in moral terms, but risking - great disaster in practical terms.

MR. NEWMAN: You were saying it was done after the Second World War?

SECRETARY HAIG: It was done during the Second World War.

MR. NEWMAN: During the Second World War?

SECRETARY HAIG: Yes. There have been books written about the phony invasions and things that were put out to divert the enemy with respect to where we might land or what we might do. These things are justified in the overall interest of the nation and of the moral standards of the nation.

But at a time of peace or what passes for peace, no?

SECRETARY HAIG: No. I don't think so. I think it's wrong, and you come a cropper in any event in this world today.

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MR. NEWMAN: No volunteers on this subject?

SECRETARY MUSKIE: Well, I think you'll find no challenge on this side.

SECRETARY RUSK: As a practical matter, it just doesn't work.

MR. NEWMAN: You mean it's bound to come out sooner or later?

SECRETARY RUSK: Yes.

MR. NEWMAN: There was an assistant Secretary of Defense, a former newspaper man named Arthur Sylvester a friend of mine - who said that any government has a right to lie for its own survival.

SECRETARY MUSKIE: I remember that. I disagreed with it at the time, and it hasn't improved with age.

(Laughter)

SECRETARY RUSK: Of course, John Locke and Thomas Jefferson both remarked that there may be times when a government must act beyond the law in order to maintain the very structure of the constitutional system. It's a little hard to be completely categorical about something of this sort, but I agree with what Al Haig has said as a matter of general principle and approach.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Technically, the disinformation issue that is now being discussed is when the government is alleged to have considered pretending that there was a military tension arising with Libya, when, in fact, it knew that wasn't the case. The strange thing about it is that we could have produced it simply by moving the Sixth Fleet. There was no need for disinformation. So, any government official confronted with a usury of facts is capable of saying something that is factually incorrect. That, I don't consider disinformation; it can be "confusion." Obviously, with respect to secret things like covert operations, he may not tell everything he knows. But to state a factual matter, in order to produce an effect in foreign policy known to be false, that is what we all are talking about here.

(Laughter)

(Laughter)

SECRETARY KISSINGER: I really don't.

MR. NEWMAN: Well, I must say that I assume it to be the case.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: On the other hand, there were Congressional hearings which

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were pretty thorough. I just don't think one should state as a factual matter something like that.

SECRETARY RUSK: If I'm asked a follow up question, I would have to say, yes. There have been certain things which have not become public, but I'm not going to identify which ones those were.

MR. NEWMAN: Suppose you were asked a follow up question. Will you then identify them?

SECRETARY RUSK: No. Not at all.

(Laughter)

SECRETARY RUSK: You see, now that I'm a private citizen I have a First Amendment right of silence.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

MR. NEWMAN: I'm trying to reach a larger point, which is that the United States takes a certain position - call it a moral position - in world affairs. We state our aims, and at the same time we are conducting or have conducted certain clandestine, covert operations that may have involved not very savory activities. In fact, Congress at one point thought it was necessary to pass a law saying that assassination should not be used, might not be used, as a United States practice.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: But it also found that no assassination had ever been carried out.

MR. NEWMAN: But what I'm asking is. "Does the fact that we sometimes engage in clandestine or covert operations in any way damage our moral position?"

The conduct of foreign affairs historically must be a balance between ideals and democratic values in full cognizance of the world in which we must conduct our affairs. So long as other states are entitled to conduct covert action, we must be. Heaven help the President who is deprived this fundamental asset of our security matters. The problem is maintaining this balance, if you are exclusively dominated by Realpolitik and the intrigues of the power politics, you will lose the support of the American people, because they'll consider your policies not representative of our democratic values. On the other hand, if you pursue policies exclusively in a moralistic framework, you'll also lose the support of the American people because your policies simply will not work.

So, there's a constant balance of subjective judgment in which you have to give the weight to both.

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