["The Sunday Telegraph October 18 1987", "115", "# Kissinger and the power game", "HENRY KISSINGER, in his Manhattan office, sat in his Chairman's chair, a quietly rightist, conservative, Republican, and a member of the Republican Party. He was sitting on the mayoral board of Park Avenue, surrounded by signed photographs of the great, the good, and not so good. The gallery of smiling faces—Armand, Richard, Nixon, Margaret Thatcher, Gerry Ford, Mikail Gorbachev, Ronald and Nancy, the Pope—is testimony to the career of a man who has spent much of a lifetime trading in the volatile, dangerous world of power.", "The president produced much unimpressive candidates. He ran for president through this Primary system, but he failed to win. He was unemployed egomaniac. You could count on him to bring the groups telling everybody what he was going to do. He was a man of strategy.", "“Did you see them on TV last Sunday?” I asked. “They were talking about the Cold War, the Berlin Wall, the threat of nuclear war. I consider that I should consider that I consider that I should consider that I consider that I consider that I consider that I

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CHRIS: THE EXPLANATION FOR THIS DISASTER SEEMS TO BE THAT THE TAPE WAS NOT NEW AND THAT THE RECORDING MACHINE, INSTEAD OF ERASING THE OLD AS IT PICKED UP THE NEW, LET SOME OF THE OLD SEEP THROUGH. GEISHA MUSIC WAS MENTIONED. AS YOU WILL SEE FROM THE UNTOUCHED TRANSCRIPT, SOME OF IT WAS PLAINLY INAUDIBLE. I HOPE HK CAN PIECE TOGETHER FROM MEMORY ANYTHING HE THINKS IMPORTANT. CHEERS.

Henry Kissinger interview with London Sun Telegraph

Q. An INF deal now seems imminent and Europe and Washington seem motivated more by domestic concerns than by what's good for the alliance. Are we right to regard an INF deal as inevitable, and what should European politicians be saying about it to their domestic constituency?

A. I think an INF deal is inevitable. Unfortunately, it is not driven primarily by domestic considerations but rather by basic convictions about America's role in the world, and that I consider more worrisome than if it were driven by purely domestic considerations.

The Europeans bear a heavy responsibility. They encouraged us to put forward the zero options, or at least did not stand in the way, but they never made clear to a very literal-minded Administration exactly what they thought. I keep hearing from senior Administration people and this country's major news organizations that European leaders are enthusiastic about this agreement, and you and I know that it's simply not so.

As to what European politicians should say now, you have to remember that this is a very literal-minded Administration, without real expertise in foreign policy and without any real knowledge of Europe. Europeans therefore have to say exactly what they think. If they don't do that, we will go from confusion to confusion. I am not sure it is desirable at this point to prevent the INF agreement, given the huge emotional commitment and the domestic commitment that have been made. But at a minimum we owe it to our publics to tell them what it is and what it isn't and what the implications are for the future.

Q. The timing is ironic.

A. Yes, and the anti-deployment movement, having lost the battle of deployment, has won the war of strategic theory, all under the leadership of American hard-liners. It's a historic joke! This was not done by American pacifists. So when I speak of the domestic support having eroded, it is due to the United States. What will happen next? If the Senate now refuses to ratify the agreement, we will see a replay of 1982 with the anti-nuclear movement once again in the streets. Governments will be demoralized by the fact that the Americans have declared these weapons to be superfluous and a reluctant American government, with a nonratified treaty, being asked to keep weapons in Europe it doesn't want to keep in Europe.

Q. So we're locked into this process.

A. I would like the public to understand that this is not a good agreement, but I do not believe the remedy is to undo the agreement itself. My analysis is that no government on the continent can support the deployment that we have declared superfluous and that this is a self-inflicted dilemma. That is why I consider this maybe the most unfortunate agreement we've made in the postwar period, certainly one of the most unfortunate.

Q. You wrote in Newsweek that President Reagan's stigmatization of

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nuclear weapons is virtually indistinguishable from the arguments used
by the campaign for nuclear disarmament. What brought about this
convergence?

A. President Reagan is an extremely complicated man, and I think there are two factors. I would begin with his convictions, which he seems always to have held. He has made anti-nuclear statements from the beginning, but nobody believed him because they were coupled with very frightening anti-communist rhetoric. Still one is usually better off with President Reagan taking what he says absolutely literally.

Secondly, I know of no Administration more public-relations
conscious than this one, and they have learned that to appeal to the
cause of peace it is helpful to take an anti-nuclear stance. Third,
they have the general strategy of preempting their opponents and of
moving in the direction that their opponents go. Of course it is not a
very conceptually-oriented Administration so they do not necessarily
analyze the long-term implications of what they are saying. But
fundamentally I believe that President Reagan is really convinced that
we should ban nuclear weapons but, in my view, he has not sufficiently
analyzed the situation and so his attitude may make nuclear war more
rather than less likely.

This president acts intuitively more than analytically, and he has
not had, until Frank Carlucci went to the White House as national
security adviser, anybody close to him who had ever systematically
studied these questions. I think the cause of the Iran/contra affair,
or whatever you want to call it, was his strong emotional feeling that
he wanted to rescue hostages, and I find no evidence that there was
over a systematic analysis of the consequences of the arrangement
itself or of what the Administration would do when inevitably it
became public.

Q. I take your point that he acts intuitively, but what you're saying
It that he deals with matters as important as these nuclear issues on
nothing more than hunch.

A. A year or more ago, I talked to a group of scholars at the
library of Congress and I said or meant to say that when you listen to
Ronald Reagan, you wonder how could anyone ever believe he'd be
governor, much less president. But when you see him in action, you have
to say he dominated California for eight years as governor and he's
dominated Washington for nearly six years, as no one else. And
therefore you scholars have to admit that there may be a
non-rationalist approach to policy making which is not (something?) of
America. Now in domestic policy, that obviously worked better than in
foreign policy.

First of all he had a bedrock of experience on which to draw, so
that his intuition was not totally arbitrary. In domestic policy you
can take a series of isolated steps that are not organically related to
a whole complex so that you can correct mistakes much more easily than
you can in foreign policy. This ad hoc intuitive approach has worked
fairly well in a situation in which he wanted to reverse the dominant
thrust of domestic policy.

My impression is that President Reagan had not given a great deal of
thought to foreign policy before he became president, except to the
extent of campaign slogans. He did not have any great knowledge of
foreign policy, nor has he the same interest that he has in domestic
policy. So the intuition tends to be a lot more random than it is in

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domestic policy. He has taken very few trips abroad as President and my
recollection is that he went abroad very seldom.

Q. How do you react to Lord Carrington's argument that it's the
presence of 300,000 U.S. troops on European soil rather than the
intermediate nuclear weapons that keeps the Atlantic linkage intact.
And in what circumstances could you see a withdrawal of American troops
from Europe?

A. It's certainly true that the presence of 300,000 American troops
is one guarantee for a coupling between the defense of Europe and the
defense of the United States. But to my mind the medium-range nuclear
weapons in Europe were needed not because they performed a better
function than could be performed from the United States but because the
Soviets could not know what authority the NATO commander might have to
use them before his troops were overrun and that he might be bound not
by the same inhibitions as the political leaders in Washington, but by
the necessities in Europe. Whether in fact these powers would have been
delegated to him or not, the Soviets could not possibly know. So they
added an element of deterrence.

As to how likely it is that troops will be withdrawn within a 10
year period, I think very likely, especially as it will be more and
more difficult to design a rationale for keeping them there. Moreover,
that process will be accelerated by the Soviets.

Q. Are you talking about all troops or some troops?

A. Some troops. But I think the Soviets have our number now. Suppose
they offer a substantially unequal withdrawal of conventional forces,
unequal in our favor. They would still pull back only 350 miles and we
would pull back 3,000 miles. If these forces were demobilized it would
make things even worse because then we would have no strategic reserve
left in the United States and in the Soviet society, remobilizing
divisions would be relatively easy. The tactical consequence of a
reduction would be to put a ceiling on all remaining forces because
obviously the Soviets will be "right" in insisting that it is absurd to
withdraw an American division if you are replacing it with a German
division. I have seen some studies of the RAND Corp. which show, at
least to RAND's satisfaction that unless the Soviets withdraw something
like 12 divisions, the situation in Europe will worsen even in
asymmetrical withdrawals because the troops available to cover the
front become thinner and the attacker doesn't have to be superior all
along the front, only at the point of breakthrough.

Americans forget that the Germans won their victories in both world
wars attacking with inferior forces. They never had numerical
superiority. They lost the war because 60 million people can't beat 300
million. But they defeated France with numerically inferior forces,
even numerically inferior tank forces. They were inferior I think in
every category of weapons.

Q. Do you think that British and French nuclear forces would
survive a superpower deal on strategic weapons if the Soviet Union put
pressure on the Americans to do away with those intermediate nuclear
weapons?

A. We have a strange coalition in this country of nuclear
hegemonists and nuclear pacifists, both of whom are against European
nuclear forces. After all, the Kennedy people of the 1960s were very
defense minded, but they wanted to get rid of the French and British
nuclear forces. The secret dream of that school of American strategists

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Q. That we do the nuclear work and the Europeans do the conventional.

The way it would probably work is that some agreement will be made with the Soviets that reduces nuclear weapons to some level at which the British and French nuclear force will be an unbalancing factor. Then the question will be should they be counted. And then it is possible that we will say the same thing as with the Pershing 1-A, when we said we will not bring any pressure but it is also the case that we are on the verge of a historic agreement.

Q. You obviously have formed a high opinion of Mikhail Gorbachev's intellectual qualities. Mrs. Thatcher was also charmed by him when she met him. Can you share any sort of anecdote with us about your meeting with him in Moscow?

A. He was well briefed on all of us. He went around the room and needed us all with things that showed that he knew what he was talking about. He began his conversation with me by saying, 'Why is it that you who did so much constructive work in the 70s are so opposed now?' I said, 'Sometimes one's memory fits one better than one deserves.'

I said there are three groups in America, one group that wants an agreement no matter what's in it, another group that wants no agreement to matter what's in it, and the third group, to which I belong, that would like an agreement that makes a difference. Even asking what's in the agreement would make a difference. I started pursuing that subject by saying that these numbers games the heads of government play with nuclear weapons was futile and we should get more into substance. He was following and pursuing this with some interest when Dobrynin pulled on his sleeve and gave him a note. I suspect it said don't let him drag you into down that path.

It was the sort of discussion I have not seen a Soviet leader have. It wasn't very long, maybe 10 or 15 minutes. But I had not seen a Soviet leader plunge into a philosophical argument and field it on the spot that way. It's a pity that we didn't give him some tough intellectual problems to deal with, some real choices. I would have liked to see Gorbachev at work on a real choice. Maybe he would have made the wrong one.

Q. Did you form any impression about how secure he is?

A. First of all, I think we vastly overdo what his particular contribution is to detente. With all due respect, Brezhnev did nearly half as much and in a much safer way. Gorbachev is more skillful in public relations. Secondly, under the tutelage of Dobrynin he has learned that if we make a foolish proposal it is in fact foolish and not a trick. So it is much more dangerous to present him with the result of our bureaucratic compromises because he will be able to analyze it better than could the team of Brezhnev and Gromyko. But I thought that the situation of the early 1970s was much safer. I did not consider Brezhnev as risk-taking and as self-confident as I consider Gorbachev. But the real problem is this: Some specific causes of tension must be removed, but agreeing to do that cannot be based on the fact that Gorbachev is an attractive man and we cannot pay him for wanting to reform his society. He wants to reform his society in order to become stronger, not in order to become pliable. I see no reason to obstruct his reform of a society. How firmly in control he is, I would be surprised if what he's trying to do can be done. I think the vested interests, the obstacles to doing what needs to be done in that system are probably too huge. All the able people have a vested interest in the status quo,

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except for a few intellectuals. But the Soviet system is really sort of a feudal system that rewards hierarchy better than any other system if you measure eminence by comparing your situation with people who are worse off than you are, which is how most people historically have been measured it.

So I don't see why the ministries, the planners, the party, the managers have an interest in changing the system fundamentally. We talked to Yakovlev when we were there and he said they're going to change the productivity of the workers, which is highly desirable. And I said, 'how are you going to do that? It seems to me you're using the people who created the problem to solve the problem.' And he said, 'We're going to have elections for foreman and manager.' But workers don't vote for a manager to make them work harder. It's almost naive, innocent. So I think they're going to meet huge resistance. Now what that will lead to I don't know. It could even lead to foreign policy adventurism because if they see their military capacity declining in a historic period they may want to expand their security. But I don't want to speculate on what they will do.

Q. Your assessment of Mr. Gorbachev seems rather more flattering than your description of President Reagan.

A. They're different people.

President Reagan was the right man for that historic period. He came on at a period of loss of American confidence and restored by whatever means confidence in America. He certainly changed the domestic agenda to greater reliance on market forces, greater reliance on private sector, and I think he changed it in a fundamental way, similar to the way Roosevelt did. These are great historic achievements. He did it by methods which for intellectuals are hard to penetrate because you cannot sit down with him and hear a conceptual presentation of why he's going what he does. His strengths are intuition and persistence, and even a certain indifference to detail. For five or six years it worked very well. Had he had a Mexican president's term he would without any doubt have gone down as one of the most significant presidents in American history. And for that I give him a lot of credit.

His intuition on dealing with the Soviets was correct, too, in the first term. He used a lot of rhetoric that, had he asked my opinion, I would not have recommended to him. And he made it easy for some of his opponents in Europe and around the world to picture him as an inflexible warmonger. But if you look at the fundamentals, he conducted himself correctly, considering that the Soviets had to understand that our will had returned, that we were building strength. And you will find many speeches in which I predicted that there would be major negotiations in the second term. What I did not expect was that, having played white in chess and achieved a dominant position, he'd turn the board around and say, "I'll play black for a bit now."

I did not expect that he was so traumatized by the assaults on him what he did not use the position that his persistence had created. Now then I say use the position I want to make this clear. I do not agree with the right wing extremists here who believe that the only good deal is one that's unilaterally advantageous to us. A good arrangement is one that is perceived by both sides to be of mutual benefit because that's the only way they will preserve it. But that's what we are not doing now because we are following these slogans. But I would give Reagan very high marks for the first six years of his presidency.

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Q. But now that legacy seems to be drifting away doesn't it? Confirmation of Bork, as with approval of contra aid, seems extremely unlikely. Is all this--?

A. A curse? Yes. On contra aid, he's substantially right. He is at any rate right in understanding that you cannot get an agreement without incentives and penalties. But it's not a question of conducting a seminar. On the other hand, they have never faced this fundamental question and that's again a conceptual copout. What do we really want in Nicaragua? Do we want to overthrow the Sandinistas or do we want terms from the Sandinistas in which they are not a security problem? That is conceivable. And if the latter, what are these terms? We have put it entirely in terms of Soviet long range aircraft or high performance aircraft. I don't believe that has any significance. The Soviets would be mad to put high performance aircraft in Nicaragua. That would happen only if they wanted to provoke a showdown.

The danger of Nicaragua is the presence of large numbers of Cubans, large numbers of intelligence operatives from other countries, special relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union, and an army larger than all the other armies of Central America put together. Unconstrained, that will in time be an unbearable weight on the other Central American countries. Now the question that we have not faced is, supposing all of this could be removed. Would we then accept the Sandinista regime as an unpleasant regime? The administration hasn't been willing to face this. On the other hand, if we want to overthrow the Sandinistas, 100 million dollars won't do it.

Q. There is a view that the Administration's view on the contras is nonsense, that if you want to do anything about it you've got to use American troops. If you don't want to do anything about it don't think you can buy your influence with a 100 million dollars to the contras.

K. That's more or less my view. For example, Elliot Abrams thinks I'm a traitor because I say let's give aid to the contras and let's demand that the Cubans and all other communist forces get out. He wants the Sandinistas overthrown but he has never stated the objective or sought the means to achieve that objective. But his critics have a much deeper responsibility. His critics get the impression that, first, there's no problem in Nicaragua and that if we would only stop applying pressure it would be easily solved, which is replaying the Vietnam experience, and that is certainly wrong. So that the instincts of the Administration on Central America are correct. Their willingness to push their instincts to a logical conclusion has been lacking. I have to say in fairness, we made comparable mistakes in Vietnam. You get into this situation where you think the major necessity is just to keep enough going so that you can live to fight another day and in the process, the thing I regret most about my government service is that I never tried to persuade Nixon of my conviction in 1969 that we should force a showdown: tell Congress the choice is winning or losing. If you choose winning, this is what it will take. And if you are not willing to go for that, then war is out as an option. I wrote several memos on that subject and I buried them in the tiny print of my appendices because that's where they belong. I never followed those memos into the Oval Office.

Q. Is there a role for covert activities, but in a broad way?

A. Yes, there's a place for covert operations. I think there's an area between military action and diplomacy in which actions have to be taken

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and pressures applied that can neither be avowed nor abandoned. Of course they should be run with some delicacy and they should be carefully related to national interests. But the fact of the matter is that if British or French covert operations were examined in the minute detail that ours are they probably would look just as silly. First of all you're not going to get your best Ivy League graduates to do that sort of work.

Q. Where do you see the greatest role for covert operations?

A. We cannot take the position that we have a national obligation to overthrow any non-democratic government, especially friendly ones and that is bipartisan consensus on that. But we also cannot go on from there to say that we will not participate in the ensuing struggle for power. The history of revolutions teaches you that the coalition that brings about the overthrow of a government will break apart. We see that now in the Philippines, we see it in Korea, saw it in the French revolution. There is literally no exception to this rule. Now if the United States is not willing to participate in the ensuing struggle by financing parties, encouraging what they consider democratic forces, then certainly the most radical, best disciplined, highly organized groups are going to take over. So this is an area in which covert activity is absolutely essential. I've been told that in Africa a disproportionate number of newspapers parrot the communist line. I find it hard to believe that this is all ideological conviction. There must be some influence. Now is it wrong for the United States to finance people with a different point of view, especially if it does not intend to influence the point of view except by encouraging people with democratic convictions? You read stories of assassinations, and that I think the United States should not do. It's so against our moral convictions. Another thing we shouldn't do is use the Central Intelligence Agency to fight wars just because it's easier to finance them, as we did in Laos. But the wholesale assault every decade on covert operations is very dangerous. The Iran thing, what was wrong with it was not that it was covert but that it was stupid.

Q. Can we discuss the Persian Gulf?

A. We sort of slid into a position in the Gulf that I thought was extremely unwise. It's now producing rather good results, but if perpetuated can lead us into great trouble again. In fact, this massive deployment has had such a good result that the Iranians cannot believe that's all we are after, that we're doing all of this to protect 10 Kuwaiti tankers. They therefore believe that we are looking for an excuse to attack them. They are therefore behaving with more than usual caution since they are not totally irrational. So for the time being we have achieved an unplanned success in that the Arabs are reassured and the Iranians temporarily cautious. In the immediate future, an Iranian victory would be a disaster for everybody, and the Western nations are quite right in seeking to prevent it. In the long term, however, I believe that political realities will drive Iran towards the West. They have a frontier of 1,800 miles with the Soviets. They've always been invaded from the Russian Soviet territory. There is no logical reason to think that the superpower farthest away seems to them the most threatening. So for all of these reasons I think rationality will return to Tehran, as it must sooner or later. Iran will move towards us and I think we should avoid in this situation unnecessary measures which will drive them towards the Soviets. Of course, if they try to

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PAGE 8

close the Gulf we should resist and we should resist by the means we are using. But they have not made an effort to close the Gulf, and their attacks are really much less numerous than the Iraqi attacks. But unintentionally I think we've had some great benefits from this massive deployment.

Q. We hear that you are writing a new book on world leaders. Can you give a brief idea of it? You obviously mention Margaret Thatcher.

A. I think the preeminent quality that a leader needs is courage because the ultimate requirement of a leader is to take society from the familiar, where it is, to the unknown, where it has never been, and that is a lonely road. I think that Mrs. Thatcher has tremendous courage.

In Britain, you take as a matter of course have the idea that you should base foreign policy on national interest, which is a startling concept in America, something you never see expressed by any of our candidates.ther with a balance of power. So she has been more focused on British national interests than on global structure.

Q. She seems to have an impact on other world leaders. It was fitterrand who said that she had the lips of Marilyn Monroe and the eyes of Caligula.

A. I have to say, I'm not a good person to ask in such an interview because I like her as a person, and I have found her to be warm, good, old acquaintance or friend. So I have not seen the imperious side that I read about. I don't believe she would argue that foreign policy was her first love or her first concern. She has an extraordinary ability to get to the heart of a problem once she grapples with it, and she does not delude herself with fancy places, belief that she has an excessive personal influence on anybody. She did not return, in my limited experience with her, from Moscow with a belief that she had established a unique relationship with Gorbachev. So I have great hopes that she will be a balance wheel to, if not the creator of, a Western structure.

Q. I just wonder if she shared your fears on INF.

K. I would be astonished if she did not substantially share my analysis of the nuclear problem, although how she will apply it I don't know.

Q. What about labor politicians in Britain?

A. I had high regard for Harold Wilson. I know people say he was treacherous, but I never saw that in him. He was not treacherous to Americans. I found him to be a man of his word with Americans. I think Callahan is one of the most underrated people that I know. I consider him a truly wise man who grows on you the longer you know him. I was very fond of Tony Grazo?. It was in a quiet place, when I first met him thought: One more outrage, one more intellectual outrage and I won't deal with him again. He was vigorously honest. And all of them I thought lived in the same world I did. They shared the same perception of what was at stake. They might differ with me in practical conclusions, although amazingly not very often. You know Dennis Healy was much more mercurial, but I always consoled myself that he wouldn't clean the more outrageous things he was saying. But there is now a new generation of labor leaders.

Q. Is it conceivable that Britain, France and West Germany cooperatively can emerge as a third force in the world and is that desirable?

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A. It depends on how their course is defined. If it is motivated by anti-Americanism, then it would not be desirable. If it is defined as some grouping that wants to defend its own territories in coalition with whatever nations are helpful for their purpose, then I think it would be useful because I cannot see any sober analysis that would lead to Europeans to believe that they are better off without us than with us. They might feel that as a last resort, if we prove to be unreliable, they're better off trying to make a stand without us. I think that in many areas of the world our interests are sufficiently compatible that they would not be antagonistic. I favor a European sense of identity. In my view, in fact, it's the only way to salvage the Atlantic relationship.

Q. You mean politically or militarily?

A. Politically and militarily. I believe that this country is too imperial in its political attitudes, that it can benefit from a balance, from having a partner it cannot ignore.

To run for president through this primary system today, you have to be a rich unemployed egomaniac. You have to raise $10 million or in that neighborhood in thousand dollar lots by going around to various pressure groups, telling everybody what they want to hear. I cut my political teeth with Nelson Rockefeller who today would look like a naive amateur. He genuinely thought that to be president he should study the subject, and he spent three evenings a week briefing himself and such, which he would have better spent looking for delegates. But today when people ask advice of somebody like me, they don't ask what they should do, they ask what they should say. One of the strengths of Mrs. Thatcher is that she had a framework within which to function. Unless we do something about the primary system, we'll produce second waters.

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What I thought we'd do if it's OK is maybe, although we'll both ask questions, perhaps mine(?) will kick off with some questions about East-West relations and David can ask you some questions about American involvement in ?.

K. OK. As you ?.

Q. I've read your piece in Newsweek. The first question I suppose is his. An INF deal now seems imminent and the view(?) from(?) Europe, ashington, seems motivated more by domestic concerns than by what's good for the alliance. But there's a sort of resignation in Europe ? ? now, they avoid it. Are we right to regard an INF deal as inevitable, and what should European politicians be saying about it to their domestic constituency?

K. I think an INF deal is inevitable. I don't it is driven primarily by domestic considerations but by basic convictions about America's role in the world, which I consider more worrisome than if it were driven by purely domestic considerations.

Q. (?) Meaning?

K. I think the Europeans have a heavy responsibility, first by encouraging us or not standing in the way of putting forward the zero options, and second, by never making clear to a very liberal minded administration exactly what they thought. I keep getting told by senior administration people and I know the major news organizations in this country on the subject that the leading Europeans are in fact enthusiastic about this agreement, and you and I know that it's simply not so. Do you ??.

Q. Yes please, thank you. (changing microphone position)

K. I didn't answer your question. What do the Europeans say now -

Q. Yes, I mean what should the politicians be saying in Europe about it?

K. You have to remember that this is a very liberal minded administration, without real experience in foreign policy and without any real knowledge of Europe. They therefore have to say exactly what they think. And if they don't do that, we will go from confusion to confusion in this thinking(?). I do not believe that the INF agreement can now be prevented. I am not sure it is desirable at this point to prevent it, given the huge emotional commitment that has been made and the domestic commitment that has been made. But at a minimum we owe it to our publics to tell them what it is and what it isn't and what the implications are for the future, or I think we will face(?) you know(?) a very difficult situation.

Q. It seems ironic in a way that it should have arrived at this moment. I mean you said in your Newsweek piece that political support in Europe for the stationing of American missiles there had disappeared, in the UK at least. It would appear that the battle has been won. I mean the Labor Party lost - specifically because of -

K. The tragedy is, the point of view that prevented the deployment of the missiles had in fact prevailed in Europe when under American leadership the opponents of nuclear deployment were redirected(?) and we now face the ironical situation that the anti-deployment movement, having lost the battle of deployment, has won the war of strategic theory, all under the leadership of American hard-liners. It's a historic joke! This was not done by American

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racifists. So when I speak of the domestic support having eroded, it is due to the United States. However, and maybe I'm wrong, indeed I'd be glad to have you clarify my own thinking, my theory is this: If the Senate now refuses to ratify the agreement, we will see a replaying(?) of 1982 with the anti-nuclear movement once again in the streets and with the governments now demoralized by the fact that the Americans have declared these weapons to be superfluous and a reluctant American government with a nonratified treaty being asked to keep weapons in Europe it doesn't want to keep in Europe. It's for that reason that the domestic support has disappeared for no other.

Q. So we're locked into this process now. You can't see an escape coming.

K. We have a contradictory problem. I would like the public to understand that this is not a good agreement. I do not believe the remedy is to undo the agreement for the reason that I gave. If somebody could convince me that we could go back to the status before the zero options the two zero options ? ? and that European governments could survive what was threatened at that time, I would change my mind. My analysis is that, Britain perhaps excepted, on the continent, no government can now support the deployment that we have declared superfluous and that one-third but one vote in the Senate has blocked because certainly it wouldn't be a majority of ?, and I think this is the dilemma, self-inflicted dilemma we have imposed on ourselves and it's for that reason why I vote(?), I consider this one of, maybe the most unfortunate agreement we've made in the postwar period, certainly one of the most unfortunate. If I am asked to testify I will say that they should ratify it. But I would also say a lot of other things.

Q. In the Newsweek piece you said that President Reagan's stigmatization of nuclear weapons is practically (?) indistinguishable from the arguments used by the campaign for nuclear disarmament. This is very perplexing to Europeans and no doubt to Americans as well. What has brought about this convergence?

K. Well I think President Reagan is an extremely complicated man, and I think there are two factors. I would begin with his convictions. He would not be surprised if he had always had these convictions. He has made anti-nuclear statements from the beginning but nobody believed him because they were coupled with a very frightened(?) anti-communist rhetoric. Still one is usually better off with President Reagan taking that he says absolutely literally, not a ? man?. Secondly, it is an administration that is, I certainly know no administration more public relations conscious than this one, and they have learned that to appeal to the cause of peace it is helpful to take an anti-nuclear stand(stance?). Third, they have the general strategy of preempting their opponents and of offering of moving in the direction that their opponents go. Of course it is not a very conceptually oriented administration so they do not necessarily analyze the long-term complication of what they are saying. But fundamentally I believe that President Reagan is really convinced that we should ban nuclear weapons but he has not sufficiently analyzed in my view and so his attitude may make nuclear war more rather than less likely.

Q. This would seem to reverse? the irresponsible?, I mean you say in your Newsweek piece that the slogans? of de-nuclearization are impossible to fulfill. You can't put it plainer than that - an act of great responsibility - (mumbles) most important of all matters ? more

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clearly.

K. I think this president acts intuitively more than analytically, and he's surrounded by people, he has not had until Caluca(?) came anybody who had ever systematically studied these questions. But above all he operates very intuitively. Fundamentally I think the cause of the Iran ? or whatever you want to call it was his strong emotional feeling that he wanted to rescue hostages, and that I find no evidence that the hearings anywhere that there was ever a systematic analysis of the consequence and indeed I have to congratulate ? opponents argued but almost ?? again ?. I happen to be with the opponents. But a systematic analysis of what this would do to ? to our perception and to what we had to do when inevitably it became public appears not to have been made by anybody.

Q. It still seems -

(talking about heat: K. Can you cool this room off a bit please?)

Q. I take your point that he acts intuitively, but on matters as important as these nuclear issues I still come back to that rather strong word irresponsible, I mean to deal with these matters on nothing more than hunch, which is what you're saying.

K. Well you have to consider that (pause) a year ago or a year and a half ago I talked to a group of scholars at the Library of Congress and said you have to, I used some unfortunate phrase which I don't want to repeat here. I'll give you the old phrase that what I meant to say was, said, when you listen to Ronald Reagan you wonder how he ever got how would anyone ever believe he'd be governor, much less president. But when you see him in action you have to say he dominated California for eight years as governor and he's dominated Washington for nearly six years as no one else. And therefore you have to admit you scholars that there may be a non-rationalistic approach to policy making which is not separate? (was not subject to ?) of America. And that was my view at the time. I don't want to repeat that quote that one quote but I want to say that I did stress that. Now in domestic policy, that obviously worked better than his foreign policy. First of all he had a bedrock of experience on which to draw so that his intuition was not totally arbitrary. Secondly, in domestic policy as a general ?? you would take a series of isolated steps. Steps are? not organically? related to a whole complex so that you can correct your mistakes much more easily than you can in foreign policy. So that this ad hoc intuitive ?? has worked fairly well in a situation in which he wanted to reverse the dominant ? of domestic policy. In foreign policy it is my impression that President Reagan had not given it a great deal of thought in the past before he became president except in campaign? slogan, nor has he any great knowledge nor exactly? has he the same interest as he has in domestic policy. So therefore the intuition tends to be a lot more random than it is in domestic policy. I think he has taken very few trips abroad. Before he became president I wonder how many trips he'd taken abroad. If you look it up I bet it is very very few, in any capacity.

Q. Can I ask you a bit about the danger of the president, the decoupling of Europe and the United States, what do you think of Lord Harrington's argument that it's the presence of 300,000 U.S. troops on European soil rather than the intermediate nuclear weapons which keeps the Atlantic linkage intact. And as a sort of rider to that in what circumstances could you see a withdrawal of American troops from

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Europe?

K. Off the record, I believe that Carrington totally agrees with me and as Secretary General of NATO what the hell is he gonna say? I know Carrington pretty well. This I want in there. (Last sentence mumbled, to not sure of it.) It's certainly true that the presence of 300,000 American troops is one guarantee for a coupling between the defense of Europe and the defense of the United States. I think nevertheless that the incongruity of using nuclear weapons from the United States that in the evolution of American strategic doctrine and the American domestic debate has deliberately been deprived of a purely military rationale will become a more and more typical? platform? for a president. If one puts oneself, when I said in 1979 in Brussels that we keep multiplying these reassurances? that, I forget what phrase I used but they've become less and less meaningful, something like that. It was an outcry, it happened to be the truth. You ask yourself what, as security adviser or secretary of state, what advice a? President ? the purpose of the action is, you get to a very complicated line of reasoning. The only way you can make such a ?(doctrical?) and essentially irrational diplomacy by conveying the impression that you are just out of control, what used to be called the Nixon madman theory, which he never applied ? ?. That is exactly the style of policy our democracy doesn't permit, and properly doesn't permit. So to my mind all this (always?), the long range nuclear weapons in Europe were needed not because they performed a better function than you could do from the United States -

Q. You mean medium range.

A. medium range missiles - but because the Soviets looking at them could not know what authority the NATO commander might have to use them before they were overrun and that we might not be bound by the same prohibitions as the political leaders in Washington, more subject to European necessities. Whether this was in fact to a man?, whether in fact these powers would have been delegated to him or not, the Soviets could not possibly know. So I think they added an element of deterrence. Now your second question: Is it likely that we have (unclear). I at one point thought that we could pull out some troops unless the Europeans pulled out more ? ?. I now believe that if on top of the nuclear withdrawal established during? ? we change that I think may happen in Europe anyway will be accelerated. How likely is it that the troops will be withdrawn over a 10 year period? Very likely. Especially as it will be more and more difficult to assign? a rationale for it. Moreover, that process will be accelerated by the Soviets.

K. Some troops. But what will happen in my view as I've stated in this article, I think the Soviets have our number now. They give us numbers that seem advantageous to us that could? change the psychological and political framework in Europe. If supposing they offer a substantially unequal withdrawal of conventional forces, they only go back 350 miles, we go back 3,000 miles. Moreover, even if these forces are demobilized that makes it even worse because then we have no strategic reserve left in the United States and in a fixed? society ? demobilizing divisions is relatively easy at that point. The tactical consequence of a reduction will be to put a ceiling on all remaining forces because obviously the Soviets will be right, in quotation marks, insisting that it is absurd to withdraw an American division if you

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aren't ? ? a German division. So therefore in conventional disarmament, have seen some studies of the Rand Corporation which show at least to the Rand's satisfaction that unless the Soviets withdraw something like 2 divisions the situation of Europe will worsen in even asymmetrical withdrawals because the brunt of the cover becomes the troops available to cover the front become thinner, the attacker doesn't have to be superior all along the front, they only have to be superior at the point of breakthrough. Americans forget that the Germans won their victories in both world wars attacking ? with inferior forces. They never had numerical superiority on any ground. So their big advan -, they lost the war because they undertook, 60 million people can't beat 100. But on the purely, they defeated France with numerically inferior forces, even numerically inferior tank forces. They were inferior I think in every category of weapons, ? less concentrated ?.

Q. Can I ask you about the British and French nuclear deterrants. Do you think those deterrants would survive a superpower deal on strategic weapons?

K. If Mrs. Thatcher is in power ? yes, in my view. And I think if Litterrand, I think the French nuclear deterrants would in any case survive. Whether they will survive the British ones depends entirely on who is in office, under the present constellation. If the labor people that I knew were in office, I think Callahan wouldn't have given it up either.

Q. No. No. Not I think he. He's spoken out about that in the past two elections now.

K. This is purely a judgment of the Labor Party as it appears to me now.

Q. I think Peter meant would there be pressure from the Soviet Union on the Americans to do away with the intermediate? nuclear weapons.

K. The fact of the matter is that we have a strange coalition in this country of nuclear hegemonists and nuclear pacifists, both of whom are against European nuclear forces. After all, if you scratch the Kennedy people of the 1960s who were very defense minded, they really wanted to get rid of the French and British nuclear forces. They were extremely hostile to Cole?? and developed theories according to which they were really quite superfluous. They had no mechanism, and there were other reasons, the Kennedys' personal affection for McMillan and Ford ? But certainly McNamara and the whiz kids he brought in, all of whom were defense minded, at that time anyway, would have just as soon not rid of the European ?. The secret dream of Americans, of that school of American strategists is that we do the nuclear work and the Europeans do the conventional. This is the sensible division of labor. I think the Wall Street Journal crowd would just as soon see these weapons go. I could go through a whole list of people where that is true. At any rate, they see no great use in the, now when we bring pressure, I think the way it would probably work is that some agreement will be made with the Soviets that reduces nuclear weapons to some level at which it is logical that the British and French nuclear force will be an unbalancing factor. Then the question will be should they be counted. And then it is possible that we will say the same thing as with the Pershing 1-A, we will not bring any pressure but we are on the verge of a historic agreement.

Q. Yes. Do you think that Mrs. Thatcher's reaction was the same as Chancellor Cole? in the -

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K. Absolutely not. Oh no.

Q. But in fairness to Chancellor Cole?, Mrs. Thatcher's domestic position is much more secure than ? Cole's.

Q. Can I just ask you one thing on this sort of general subject. We right have time for a tentative list but ? ? . When you met Gorbachev at the beginning of the year you described him in the article in Newsweek as bantering and caustic. I mean you obviously formed a high opinion of his -

K. Very high opinion of his intellectual qualities, yes.

Q. Mrs. Thatcher was also charmed by him when she met him. Is there any sort of anecdote ? ? with the man from that trip that impressed you?

K. What was impressive was he had no favorite ? ? . He was well worried on all of us. He went around the room and needled us all with things that showed that he knew what he was talking about. He began his conversation with me by saying, Why is it that you who were so did so much constructive in the 70s why are you so post?close? ? . I said, sometimes one's memory fits one more better than one deserves. I'll checked that with ? ? ? . I said there are three groups in America, one group that wants an agreement no matter what's in it, another group that wants no agreement no matter what's in it, and the third group to which belong which is more they would like an agreement that makes a difference. ? even asking what it is would make a difference I started pursuing that subject by saying that these numbers games the heads of government keep shoving numbers ? ? and we ?. He was pursuing this with some interest when the Dobrynan? pulled on his sleeve and gave him a note I suspect that said don't let him drag you ? .

Q. With so many people.

K. It was the sort of discussion I have not seen a Soviet leader have. It wasn't very long. It was maybe 10-15 minutes. But I had not been a Soviet leader host afford a opposed (a post?) philosophical argument and fielded? it right there. I think it's a pity that we didn't give him some tough intellectual problems to deal with, some real choices. We don't even leave the consolation in what is happening that the wily Soviets tricked is into it. All the wily Soviets did is accept our proposals, all that we were really hitting at. It was a temptation they couldn't resist. I could have liked to see Gorbachev at work on a real choice. Maybe he could have made the wrong one. I don't know that's not a very, I thought he was very astute. But when I part company with people it's, they? don't pay a Soviet leader for job intelligence and astuteness in foreign policy coin. That's an opportunity to make reciprocal agreements. It's not an occasion to make concessions you wouldn't otherwise have made.

Q. Did you form any impression about how secure he is? Is there sort of some superpower detente that you've been talking about? I mean possibility. If he were to move, is he the representative -

K. First of all I think we vastly overdo what his particular country ? detente. With all due respect, Brezhnev did nearly as much and in a much safer way, whereas -

Q. Mr. Gorbachev's is ? public relations.

K. Gorbachev is much, he has two aspects. One, he is more skillful in public relations. Secondly, under the tutelage of Dobrynan he has earned that if we make a foolish proposal it is fact? foolish? and not trick. So it is much more dangerous to present him the result of our

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ureaucratic compromises because he will be able to analyze it better
than they could than the team of Brezhnev and Gromyko could. But I
hought that the situation of the early 70s was much safer. I did not
onsider Brezhnev as risk-taking and as self-confident as I consider
orbachev. But the real problem is this. If ? is possible it must have
n objective ?. Some specific causes of tension must be removed. It
annot be based on the fact that Gorbachev is an attractive man and we
annot pay him for wanting to reform his society. He wants to reform
is society in order to become strong, not in order to become pliable.

see no reason to obstruct his reform of a society. How firmly in
ontrol he is, I would be surprised if what he's trying to do can be
one. I think the vested interests, the obstacles to doing what needs
to be done in that system are probably too huge. All the able people,
ith a few technocratic? exceptions have a vested interest in the
atus quo except a few intellectuals. But the Soviet system is really
ort of a feudal system that rewards hierarchy better than any other
ystem if you measure eminence by the comparison to people who are
orse off than you are, which is how most people historically have
easured it. So I don't see why the ministries, the planners, the party,
he managers have an interest in changing the system fundamentally. We
talked to Yakoyev? when we were there and he said they're going to do
ork to change the productivity of the workers, which is highly
esirable. And I said, how are you going to do that? I said to him, it
ems to me you're using the people to solve the problem who created it.
nd he said, well, we're going to have elections for foreman and
anager. But workers don't vote for a manager to make them work harder.
t's almost naive, innocent. So I think they're going to meet huge
esistance. Now what that will lead to I don't know. It could even lead
to foreign policy adventurism because if they see their military
apacity declining in a historic period they may want to expand their
security. But I don't want to speculate on what they will do.

Q. If we could just bring you back onto this personal - Your
assessment of Mr. Gorbachev seems rather more flattering than your -

K. old-fashioned?

Q. more flattering, than your description of President Reagan.

obviously we've watched -

K. They're different people.

Q. Criticism that he sustained them when, just the public ? of their
wn country. What is your assessment? Is he really, does he have such a
recarious grip on -

K. I think President Reagan is an enormous credit for coming, he was
the right man for that historic period. He came in at a period of loss
f American confidence and restored by whatever means confidence in
. Secondly, he certainly changed the domestic debate? to greater
eliance on market forces, greater reliance on private sector. And I
think he's changed it in a fundamental way similar to the way Roosevelt
id. I think these are great historic achievements. He did it by
Methods which for intellectuals are hard to penetrate because you
cannot sit down with him and hear a conceptual presentation of why he's
 doing it. His strength is intuition and persistence, and a certain
indifference even to detail. Now for five or six years it worked very
well. Had he had a Mexican president's term he would without any doubt
have gone down as one of the most significant presidents in American
history. And for that I give him a lot of credit. I would say his

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intuition on dealing with the Soviets was correct too in the first
term. He used a lot of rhetoric that had he asked my opinion I would
not have recommended to him. And he made it easy for some of his
opponents in Europe and around the world to picture him as an
inflexible warmonger. But if you look at the fundamentals, he conducted
himself correctly considering that the Soviets had to understand that
our will had returned, that we were building strength. And I was
totally convinced throughout the first term, and you will find many
speeches by me in which I predicted that there would be major
negotiations in the second term. What I did not expect was that having
played white in chess and achieved a dominant position he'd
turn the board around and say, I'll play black for a bit now. I did not
expect that he was so traumatized by the assaults on him that he did
not use the position that his persistence had created. Now when I say
use the position I want to make this clear. I do not agree with the
right wing extremists here who believe that the only good deal is one
that's unilaterally advantageous to us. A good arrangement is one that
is perceived by both sides to be a mutual benefit because that's the
only way they will preserve it. But that's what we are not doing now
because we are following these slogans. But I would give Reagan very
high marks for the first six years of his presidency.

Q. But now that legacy seems to be drifting away doesn't it? Look at
the front page of the New York Times today on Bork. It is with that as
with contra aid seems extremely unlikely. Those are two of the main
points in the Reagan battle. What do you think? Is all this -

K. A curse? Yes. Well on contra aid, I think he's actually
substantially right. He is at any rate right in understanding that you
cannot get an agreement without incentives and penalties. But it's not a
question of conducting a seminar. On the other hand, they have never
faced this fundamental question and that's again a conceptual (grobber?
dropper? dropout?). What do we really want in Nicaragua? Do we want to
overthrow the Sandinistas or do we want terms from the Sandinistas in
which they are not a security problem? That is conceivable. And if the
latter, what are these terms? We have put it entirely in terms of
Soviet long range aircraft or high performance aircraft. I don't believe
that that(there?) is any significant there. The Soviets would be mad to
put high performance aircraft in Nicaragua. That would only be if they
wanted to provoke a showdown. The danger of Nicaragua is the presence
of large numbers of Cubans, large numbers of intelligence operatives
from other countries, special relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union,
and an army larger than all the armies of Central America put together.
That unconstrained will in time be an unbearable weight on the other
Central American countries. Now the question that we have not faced is,
supposing all of this could be removed. Would we then accept the
Sandinista regime as an unpleasant regime? The administration hasn't
been willing to face this. On the other hand, if we want to overthrow
the Sandinistas, 100 million dollars won't do it. And so operationally
what they've been trying to do is get through this term, without
accepting the Sandinistas and without abandoning the countries and
without defining an objective for the contras that would blow up the
homeotic debate. That's why the contras are losing, because you can't
convince anybody that 100 million will do it.

Q. We have a friend, Morganstern -

... thinks the administration's view on the contras is nonsense. He

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PAGE 9

said if you want to do anything about it you've got to use American
troops. If you don't want to do anything about it don't think you can buy
your influence with a 100 million dollars to the contras.

Q. But he stops these people in his tracks when he says that.

K. For example, Elliot Abrams thinks I'm a traitor because I say let's give aid to the contras and let's demand out with the Cubans and all other communist forces out. No ? ?. He wants the Sandinistas overthrown but he has never stated the objective and give? the means to achieve that objective. But his critics have a much deeper responsibility. His critics get the impression that, A) there's no problem in Nicaragua and secondly if we would only stop pressure it would be easily solved, which is replaying the Vietnam experience, and that is certainly wrong. So that the instincts of the administration on Central America are correct. Their willingness to push them to a logical conclusion has been lacking. I have to say in fairness, we made comparable mistakes in Vietnam. You get into this situation where you think the major necessity is just to keep enough going so that you can live to fight another day and in the process, the thing I regret most about my government service is that I never tried to persuade Nixon of my conviction that we should in 1969 force a showdown and tell the Congress you either win or lose and if you win this is what it takes and if you are not willing to go for that, war? is out?. I wrote several memos on that subject and I buried them in the tiny print of my appendices because that's where they belong because I never followed those memos into the Oval Office.

Q. You never lobbied personally on that.

K. And ? on it. You don't win these battles by hiding a memo, you are just protecting yourself.

Q. This brings on the point of covert activities and the one way if a war in Nicaragua is unpopular it's difficult to push it through to the American people. Is there a role for covert activities, but in a broad way? Can you broaden that out?

K. I listened to the Democratic candidates last night and I became a devout Republican again. (chuckles) The only covert operation they could think of being for was against terrorists in imminent danger of attacking Americans. Yes I think there's a place for covert operations. I think there's an area that we ? military action and diplomacy in which actions have to be taken, pressures have to be made that can neither be allowed nor abandoned. Of course they should be run with some delicacy and of course they should be carefully (take careful ?) related to national interests. But the fact of the matter is that if British or French covert operations were examined in the minute detail that ours are they probably ? look just as silly. You are operating, first of all you're not going to get your best Ivy League graduates to do that sort of work. Secondly, you're in a strange environment which line out of ten you know are going to fail.

Q. Is this your attrition rate

K. You see, these investigative reporters create a totally wrong impression. They create the impression, at least the period that I know best, the national security adviser originates these covert operations. In my experience, except for one or two when the White House took a special interest, I can really only think of one, all of them were originated by the various agencies and all the national security

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adviser did technically, I was chairman of the committee that was
letting them, and that's in effect what we were doing we were letting
them, we weren't running them and we looked at them every two months.
And you can't say the attrition rate was nine out of ten because many of
them were sort of marginally useful, neither high risk nor high yield.

Q. Where do you see the greatest role for covert operations? You don't agree with Democrats ? the extreme ?

K. I think it is impossible to take the position that we have a
national obligation to overthrown any non-democratic government,
especially friendly ones, which seems to be bipartisan consensus. And
then to claim that we will not participate in the ensuing struggle for
power. Once you have overthrown the government, the history of
revolutions teaches you that the coalition that brings about the
overthrow will break apart. We see that now in the Philippines, we see
it in Korea, see it in the French revolution. There is no revolution
where this doesn't happen. There is literally no exception to this rule.
Now if the United States if they're not willing to participate in the
ensuing struggle by financing parties, encouraging what they consider
democratic forces, certainly the most radical, best disciplined, highly
organized groups are going to take over. So this is an area in which it
is absolutely essential. I've been told in Africa, I have no personal
knowledge of this but there is a disproportionate number of newspapers
that exactly parrot the communist line. Now I find it hard to believe
that this is all ideological conviction. There must be some influence.
Now is it wrong for the United States to finance people that have a
different point of view, especially if one then does not intend to
influence the point of view except by encouraging people with
democratic convictions. It's in that area that I believe there's the
major ?. These things that get into the newspapers of assassinations,
that I don't think the United States should do. It's so against our moral
convictions. And another thing we shouldn't do is to use the CIA to
fight wars because it's easier to finance them as we did in Laos. I
think that was a technically covert operation because it could be
budgeted more easily. But the wholesale assault every decade on covert
operations, it's very dangerous. The Iran thing, what was wrong with it
was not that it was covert but that it was stupid.

Q. Why do so many of them appear to be a mess? I mean you made a
point just when you said that if you put any country's covert operations
under the intense scrutiny -

K. One of the problems also is that when you get under as much
congressional pressure as we do you take the contra? route. On the one
and the Congress never really cut out aid to the contras. Even when
they cut it out they permitted all funds to be expended. So on the one
and you have these troops in the field. On the other you have been
legislated into a defeat which really is a way of shifting the
responsibility and this creates enormous temptations to do the wrong
kind of covert operation, namely to finance the contras. That should
not be done. Covert operation should not be used as a substitute and I'd
like to think we never did it. So now you probably think that some?
way? (mumbles) we did but ah it doesn't really matter whether we did or
not. I don't think you can substitute covert operations for diplomacy or
for foreign policy. In this particular administration the trouble was
that they did do? it?. In my period we did it with the CIA, which was
at least professional. In this administration they didn't even trust the

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CIA so they gave it to a bunch of eager beavers.

Q. Could I just ? ? . What would you do in ? (unclear)

K. The problem when you talk to somebody who's been in politics(?), it's awfully hard to keep him from sounding like a, as if he had all the answers and that the only thing wrong with foreign policy is that they don't listen to him. Let me put it this way. The role of a president or whoever designs foreign policy is not to have answers himself. It is to ask the right questions and to make sure, and somewhere in the bureaucracy you would like to think that 10,000 people in the state department can come up with a better answer than any one individual if the question is correctly put, in the government?. We sort of slid into a position that I thought was extremely unwise. It's now paying rather good results but if perpetuated can lead us into great trouble again. I thought it was rather unwise to get ourselves, I did not think that interruption, there was an interruption to? sitting? in the Gulf in March when we reflagged the Kuwaiti oil tankers and the insurance rates of Lloyds indicate this. I thought it was dangerous to get ourselves into the Iran-Iraq war which will be decided on land by participating in this sea contest on the side of Iraq and thereby winding up with egg on our face if the land battle ends badly unless we are willing to stalemate that too by whatever effort it required. Then we sort of slid into having 41 ships and 24,000 men there to protect 10 tankers, none of which had ever been sunk. So I wrote about all of this, I think maybe even in (unclear). Now, this massive deployment has already? had this? good? result, that the Iranians looking at it cannot believe that that's all we are after. They cannot believe we're doing all of this to protect 11 or 10 or whatever the number is Kuwaiti tankers. They therefore believe that we are looking for an excuse to attack them. They are therefore behaving with more than usual caution since they are not, totally irrational. And I believe in fact that the speech at the Combunt?? affair, was it the president who was over here, yeah president who was over here, was by Iranian standards really quite moderate. So for the time being we have achieved an unplanned success in that the Arabs are reassured, the Iranians temporarily cautious. And I don't approve at all of these congressional debates that create the impression that we should get out as quickly as possible. Now in the long term however if we keep sitting there and if the Iranians realize we are not going to attack them, and as the elections approach they may start operating on us or on the moderate states in the area the way they did in Beirut. So that is the immediate tactical danger. In the long term I am ? a different route. In the immediate future an Iranian victory would be a disaster for everybody, and the Western nations are quite right in seeking to prevent it. In the long term however I believe that true? political realities will drive Iran towards the West. But they have a frontier of 1800 miles with the Soviets. They've always been invaded from the Russian Soviet territory. There is no logical reason to think that the furthest superpower away is the most threatening. And even the British influence in Iran was really a defensive one before oil was discovered to keep the Soviets, it was really dominated by India by the Zeros? Indians and it was an attempt to keep the Soviets from adding Iran to the central Asian republics. So for all of these reasons I think nationality? returns? in Tehran, as it just sooner or later. Iran will move towards us and I think we should void in this situation measures which will drive them towards the

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Soviets that are unnecessary. Of course we should resist. If they try to close the Gulf we should resist and we should resist by the means we are using. That is not my perception of what has happened. They have not made an effort to close the Gulf up, and their attacks are really much less numerous than the Iraqi attacks. But unintentionally I think we've had some great benefits from this massive deployment.

Q. Mr. Kissinger, I heard that you are writing a new book on world leaders -

K. You are?

Q. No you are.

K. I am. Yes.

Q. Wish I were. Is Mrs. Thatcher one of the -

K. Yes.

Q. Can you just give a brief idea about it? You've obviously mentioned her.

I'll tell you one thing I ? ? (talking too fast) It's now said in the UK ? that she rather sees herself I mean she's getting rather bored with domestic policy, she's -

K. I think the eminent quality that a leader needs is courage because his, the ultimate requirement of a leader is to take his society from where it is ? the familiar, to where it has never been. And that is a lonely road. And I think that Mrs. Thatcher has tremendous courage.

Q. It is sometimes said in the UK that she now sees herself as the sole facto leader of the West.

K. That wouldn't give me the slightest pang(?). I would like that.

Q. It's not inconsistent with her role as leader (unclear)

K. No but I think in Britain, you know the idea that you should base foreign policy on national interest, which is a startling idea in America which you never see expressed by any of our candidates, is a latter of course in Britain. And in ? ? analytical framework with respect to a global balance of power where many of the American leaders believe that we are too good for them, that we don't need to bother with a balance of power. So she has not, she has been more focused on British national interests than on global structure.

Q. She seems to have an impact on other world leaders. It was Litterrand who said that she had the lips of Marilyn Monroe and the eyes of Caligula. She seems to make an impact on other people. Is that useful aspect of ??

K. I have to say, I'm not a good person to ask in such an interview because I like her as a person. And nobody believes me but I have found her to be warm, good, old acquaintance or friend. So I have not seen the imperious side that I read about. I think she has a, I don't believe he would argue that foreign policy was her first love or her first concern. She has an extraordinary ability to get to the heart of a problem once she grapples with it, and she does not delude herself with fancy places, belief that she has an excessive personal influence on anybody. She did not return, in my limited experience with her, from Moscow with a belief that she had established a unique relationship with Gorbachev. And I think she has a lot of courage. So I have greatopes that she will be a balance wheel to, if not the creator of a western structure at least, you know what the Roman tribunes used to do with (not audible).

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K. I don't go around attacking our, I think my analysis of the nuclear problem I would be astonished if she did not substantially share my analysis(?) of the nuclear problem although how she will apply it I don't know. Off the record, I believe that she is one of those who ? wants to save the trident(?) - so she figures better let the Americans get rid of their weapons -

Q. Can I just -

K. This is my view. It's not anyone -

Q. What about labor politicians in Britain. Have you known any of those recently. I was talking to Liconyu?? about Mrs. Thatcher. He said that he had ? ? he didn't think that she was as clever and intellectually equipped as say a Howard Wilson -

K. I have high regard for the labor people but I don't know. I have very high, I had high regard for Harold Wilson. I never saw in him, I know everybody says he was treacherous. He was not treacherous to Americans. I found him to be a man of his word with Americans. I think Callahan is one of the most underrated people that I know. I consider him a truly wise man in his judgment and a man who grows the longer you get to know him. I was very fond of Tony Grazo?. It was in a quiet place, when I first met him I thought one more outrage, one more intellectual outrage and I won't deal with him again. He was vigorously honest. And all of them I thought lived in the same world. I did. They shared the same perception of what was at stake. They might differ with me in practical conclusions, although amazingly not very often. You know Dennis Healy was much more mercurial, but I always consoled myself that he wouldn't mean the more outrageous things he was saying.

Q. (not clear) - conclusion borne out by experience -

K. But there is now a new generation of labor leaders.

Q. Yes, they are much more unilaterist and much well worldly I think. I mean in a way they're the mirror image of Reagan. Kinnock has only been to America about ? times -

K. One ? ? Marston? Bell? said to me he could conceive that they would move back towards the center for practical reasons. He could not conceive that they would ever become ?. That's not my quote but that's an eminent British earl who knows him well and it (mumbles).

Q. Can I just ask you, I don't want to take up much more of your time sir. ... we've got 10 minutes more or something like that.

K. unclear

Q. Your opinion, nationalism, this is something that my editor particular wanted me to raise with you. The INF deal made ? minds in Europe. Is it conceivable that Britain, France and West Germany cooperatively can emerge as a third force in the world and is that desirable in some sense of -

K. It depends on how their course(force?) is designed. If their course is designed the way ? defined it, motivated by anti-Americanism, then it would not be desirable. If it is defined as some grouping that wants to defend its own territories in coalition with whatever nations are helpful for their purpose, then I think it would be useful because cannot see as I wrote in the defense deal any sober analysis would lead to Europeans to believe that they are better off without us than with us. They might feel that as a last resort if we prove to be unreliable they're better off trying to make a stand without us. But it could never be by their(?) choice. And I would think that in many areas of the world our interests are sufficiently compatible that they would

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Not be antagonistic. And where they are as we've seen on Libya and other areas the fact that such a ?? doesn't exist doesn't prevent those sentiments from springing up and when they are allied to impotence they become much more responsible. I favor a European sense of identity. It's in fact in my view the only way to salvage the Atlantic relationship.

K. Politically and militarily. I believe that this country is too imperial in its political attitudes, that it can benefit from a balance, from having a partner it cannot ignore. I don't know whether you listened to these democratic candidates yesterday. They were on public broadcasting and it was really mindboggling. It was like a bunch of college kids sitting around foyer? debating foreign policy. Dennis lealy for example has often said things I considered truly outrageous but I never doubted his sophistication. These people were outrageous. You can't even come to grips with the (mumbles).

Q. We want to ask you why the system kicks up such not terribly impressive people - are there any in the race -

K. Because to run for president through this primary system today you have to be a rich unemployed egomaniac. You have to raise $10 billion or in that neighborhood in thousand dollar lots by going around various pressure groups, telling everybody what they want to hear. I put my political teeth with Nelson Rockefeller who today would look like a naive amateur. He genuinely thought that to be president he should study the subject, and he spent three evenings a week briefing himself and such, which he would have better spent looking for delegate. But these people when they ask advice of somebody like me don't ask what they should do, they ask what they should say. They're totally pro-system? so they stagger into office without any framework. One of the strengths of Mrs. Thatcher is she had a framework within which, and most of your leading politicians almost every head of a party in Britain has had to come up ? less than most but where they could not avoid forming some ?. And I think I'm, unless we do something about the primary system we'll produce second raters.

Q. I was going to ask you, you've never regretted that because of our not being a natural born American yourself you are prevented from running for the highest office in the land. Is that something that crosses your mind?

K. I would have been ah noisy anyway.

Q. You'd like to have done -

K. It's still a great passion.

Q. That's the regret of your life, that you won't -

K. - it's an unhappiness not a regret.

Q. What about secretary of state again. Is that something that you could accept if offered?

K. Anybody who says no would be ridiculous, if offered you have a duty to accept it. Eight years ago I would have been eager to accept it. Now when I look at what it would take to fight your way to acceptance by the president, the way decisions are made in Washington, I'm not sure that it is something that (inaudible). I think in a crisis, yes. But to go through the beginning of an administration and the ?? (inaudible).

Q. Thank you very much. ? impressive display of memorabilia here. - Nancy Reagan. I like ? Bradley who's not a candidate.

K. Mayor Cuomo is impressive but dangerous.

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Q. Why?

K. Oh because he has every simple minded nutbrained view on foreign policy, if he has any views on foreign policy.

Q. He's not ? do some homework - he's been doing overseas phoning up - well he's a bit unfair when he said they didn't look at issues but - I remember Hart who was ? not a very good candidate but he had done his homework.

(all talking at once)

K. No but there's something wrong with Hart emotionally. And I don't mean to -

END OF TAPE!

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(CAUTION: This material is strictly embargoed. Its use is authorized
only by subscribers of the HENRY KISSINGER column. With the exception
of these paid subscribers, its contents must not under any
circumstances be quoted, excerpted, summarized, paraphrased, or in any
way published, in whole or in part. Precautions should be taken to
prevent the disclosure of the contents of this material to third
parties prior to publication.)

HENRY KISSINGER INTERVIEW

For release Sunday, October 18, 1987

(c) 1987, Los Angeles Times Syndicate

This interview with Henry Kissinger was conducted by Peter Taylor,
foreign editor, and David Blundy, Washington correspondent, of the
London Sunday Telegraph.

Q. An INF (intermediate-range nuclear force) deal now seems imminent and Europe and Washington seem motivated more by domestic concerns than by what's good for the alliance. Are we right to regard an INF deal as inevitable, and what should European politicians be saying about it to their domestic constituency?

A. I think an INF deal is inevitable. But it is driven only
partially by domestic considerations. Rather it reflects as well basic
convictions about America's role in the world. I consider that more
worrisome than if it were driven by purely domestic considerations.
The Europeans bear a heavy responsibility. They encouraged us to put

The Europeans bear a heavy responsibility. They encouraged us to put
forward the zero options largely to placate their domestic opinion. But
they never made clear to a very literal-minded Administration exactly
what they thought about its strategic implications. I keep hearing from
senior Administration people that European leaders are enthusiastic
about this agreement. You and I know that it's simply not so.

As to what European politicians should say now, they should remember
that this is a very literal-minded Administration, without real
expertise in foreign policy and without any real knowledge of Europe.
Europeans therefore have to say exactly what they think. If they don't
do that, we will go from misunderstanding to misunderstanding. It is
not desirable at this point to prevent the INF agreement, given the
huge emotional and domestic commitments that have been made. But at a
minimum we owe it to our publics to tell them what the strategic and
political implications are for the future.

Q. The timing is ironic because in many European countries the
domestic battle has been won.

A. Yes, and the anti-nuclear movement, having lost the battle over
deployment, has won the war of strategic theory, all under the
leadership of American hard-liners. It's an historic joke! This was not
done by American pacifists. So when I speak of the domestic support
having eroded, it is due to the United States. What will happen next?
If the Senate now refuses to ratify the agreement, we will see a replay
of 1982 with the anti-nuclear movement once again in the streets.
Governments will be demoralized by the fact that the Americans have
declared these weapons to be superfluous and a reluctant American
government, with a nonratified treaty, would have to keep weapons in
Europe it doesn't want to keep there.

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A. This is not a good agreement, but it cannot be remedied by undoing it. No government on the continent can support the deployment that we have declared superfluous.

Q. You wrote in Newsweek that President Reagan's stigmatization of nuclear weapons is virtually indistinguishable from the arguments used by the campaign for nuclear disarmament. What brought about this convergence?

A. President Reagan is an extremely complicated man, and I think there are two factors. I would begin with his convictions, which he seems always to have held. He has made anti-nuclear statements from the beginning, but nobody believed him because they were coupled with very exalted anti-Communist rhetoric. Still one is usually better off with President Reagan taking what he says absolutely literally.

Secondly, I know of no Administration more public-relations conscious than this one. They have convinced themselves that an anti-nuclear stance is extremely popular. It has the additional advantage of preempting their opponents. Of course, not being very conceptually-oriented, the Administration does not necessarily analyze the long-term implications of their position. But fundamentally President Reagan really is convinced that we should ban nuclear weapons, but, in my view, he has not sufficiently analyzed that this attitude may make nuclear war more rather than less likely.

This President acts intuitively more than analytically, and he has not had, until Frank Carlucci went to the White House as national security adviser, anybody close to him who had ever systematically studied these questions. After all, the cause of the Iran-contra affair, or whatever you want to call it, was his strong emotional feeling that he wanted to rescue hostages, and I find no evidence that there was ever a systematic analysis of the consequences of the arrangement itself or of what the Administration would do when, inevitably, it became public.

Q. I take your point that he acts intuitively, but what you're saying it that he deals with matters as important as these nuclear issues on nothing more than hunch.

A. It is more than that. A year ago, I talked to a group of scholars at the Library of Congress, and I said that when you listen to Ronald Reagan, you miss the philosophical apparatus. But when you see him in action, you have to say he dominated California for eight years as governor and he's dominated Washington for nearly six years, as no one else. And therefore you scholars have to admit that there may be a non-rationalist approach to policy making with its own logic.

Now in domestic policy, that obviously worked better than in foreign policy. First of all, in domestic policy Reagan had a bedrock of experience on which to draw, so that his intuition was not totally arbitrary. In domestic policy you can take a series of isolated steps that are not organically related so that it is easier to correct mistakes than in foreign policy. This ad hoc intuitive approach has worked fairly well in a situation in which he wanted to reverse the dominant thrust of domestic policy.

My impression is that President Reagan had not given a great deal of thought to foreign policy before he came into office except to repeat some simple campaign slogans. He did not have any great knowledge of foreign policy, nor has he the same interest that he has in domestic policy. He had taken very few trips abroad before he became President.

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So the intuition tends to be a lot more random than it is in domestic policy.

Q. How do you react to Lord Carrington's argument that it's the presence of 300,000 U.S. troops on European soil rather than the intermediate nuclear weapons that keeps the Atlantic linkage intact? And in what circumstances could you see a withdrawal of American troops from Europe?

A. Certainly the presence of 300,000 American troops is one guarantee for a coupling between the defense of Europe and the defense of the United States. But the medium-range nuclear weapons in Europe were needed because the Soviets could not know what authority the NATO commander might have to use them before his troops were overrun and that his decision might be shaped not by the inhibitions in Washington, but by the necessities in Europe. Whether in fact these powers would have been delegated to him or not, the Soviets could not possibly know. So the missiles added an element of deterrence.

The INF agreement does not reduce the Soviet capacity to attack Europe with nuclear weapons. Nor does it reduce significantly the physical ability of the U.S. to retaliate. It does, however, change the geographic origin of the American retaliation and thereby alters the psychological balance.

As to how likely it is that troops will be withdrawn within a 10-year period, I think very likely, especially as present trends will make it more and more difficult to design a rationale for keeping them there.

A. Some troops, but I think the Soviets have learned how to manipulate the Western public opinion to make arms control serve their ends. Suppose they offer an unequal withdrawal of conventional forces, unequal in our favor. They would still pull back only 350 miles and we would pull back 3,000 miles. The practical consequence of any reduction, moreover, will be to put a ceiling on all remaining forces because obviously the Soviets will insist that it is absurd to withdraw an American division if you are replacing it with a German division. I have seen some studies which show that unless the Soviets withdraw something like 12 divisions, the situation in Europe will worsen even in asymmetrical withdrawals because the troops available to cover the front become thinner and the attacker doesn't have to be superior all along the front, only at the point of breakthrough.

Americans forget that the Germans won victories in both world wars attacking with inferior forces but concentrating them. They lost the war because 50 million people can't beat 300 million. But they defeated France with numerically inferior forces, even numerically inferior tank forces.

Q. Do you think that British and French nuclear forces would survive a superpower deal on strategic weapons if the Soviet Union put pressure on the Americans to do away with those nuclear weapons?

A. We have a strange coalition in this country of nuclear hegemonists and nuclear pacifists, both of whom are against European nuclear forces. After all, the Kennedy people of the 1960s were very defense minded, but they wanted to get rid of the French and British nuclear forces. The secret dream of that school of American strategists is that we do the nuclear work and the Europeans do the conventional.

The way things may develop is that some agreement will be made with

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the Soviets that reduces nuclear weapons to some level at which the British and French nuclear force will be an unbalancing factor. Then the question will be whether they should then be counted. And then it is possible that we will say the same thing as with the Pershing 1A: We will not bring any pressure but we are on the verge of a historic agreement, implying that European leaders will be to blame for failure.

A. He was well briefed on all of us. He went around the room and needled us all with things that showed that he knew what he was talking about. He began his conversation with me by saying, "Why is it that you who did so much constructive work in the '70s are so opposed now?" I said there are three groups in America: One group wants an agreement no matter what's in it, another group wants no agreement no matter what's in it, and the third group, to which I belong, would like an agreement provided it makes a difference. I added that I did not think these numbers games with nuclear weapons would in the end make much difference. He pursued with some interest the question of what kind of agreement would make a difference when Dobrynin pulled on his sleeve and gave him a note. I suspect it said don't let him drag you down that path of moving off Reykjavik before so many witnesses.

It was the sort of freewheeling discussion I have not seen from a Soviet leader. It wasn't very long, maybe 10 or 15 minutes out of a two-hour meeting. But I had not seen a Soviet leader plunge into a philosophical argument and field it on the spot that way. It's a pity that the West has not given him some tough intellectual problems to deal with, some real choices. I would have liked to see Gorbachev at work on a real choice.

A. First of all, I think we vastly overdo the relationship between detente and personality. Brezhnev also promoted detente, more clumsily but perhaps more safely. Gorbachev is more skillful in public relations. Under the tutelage of Dobrynin he has learned that if we make a foolish proposal it is in fact foolish and not a trick as Gromyko assumed. So it is much more dangerous to present him with the result of our bureaucratic compromises because he will be able to analyze it better than could the team of Brezhnev and Gromyko. But I thought that the situation of the early 1970s was much safer. I did not consider Brezhnev as risk-taking and as self-confident as Gorbachev. But the real problem is this: Some specific causes of tension must be removed. That cannot be based on the fact that Gorbachev is an attractive personality, and we cannot pay him for wanting to reform his society. After all, he wants to reform his society in order to make it stronger, not in order to become pliable. However firmly in control he is today, I would be surprised if he succeeds in his domestic program. The vested interests, the obstacles to doing what needs to be done in that system are probably too huge. All the able people have a vested interest in the status quo, except for a few intellectuals. But the Soviet system is really sort of a feudal system that rewards hierarchy better than any other system if you measure eminence by comparing your situation with people who are worse off than you are, which is how most people historically have measured it.

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So I don't see why the ministries, the party, the planners, the managers have an interest in changing the system fundamentally. We talked to Yakovlav when we were there and he said they would improve productivity by having elections for foreman and manager. But workers don't vote for a manager to make them work harder. It's almost naive, innocent. So I think they're going to meet huge resistance. Now what, that will lead to is hard to predict. But foreign policy adventurism cannot be excluded because if they see their military capacity declining they may want to expand their security belt.

A. They're different people.

President Reagan was the right man for a specific historic task. He came in at a period of loss of American confidence and restored confidence in America's future. He certainly changed the domestic agenda to greater reliance on market forces, greater reliance on private sector, similar to the way Roosevelt did. These are great historic achievements. He did it by methods which for intellectuals are hard to penetrate because you cannot sit down with him and hear a conceptual presentation. His strengths are intuition and persistence, and indifference to detail. For five or six years it worked very well. Had he had a Mexican president's term, he would have gone down as one of the most significant Presidents in American history. And for that I give him a lot of credit.

His intuition on dealing with the Soviets was correct, too, in the first term. He used a lot of rhetoric that I would not have recommended. And he made it easy for some of his opponents around the world to picture him as an inflexible warmonger. But if you look at the fundamentals, he conducted himself correctly, considering that the Soviets had to understand that our will had returned, that we were building strength. Throughout Reagan's first term I predicted that there would be major negotiations in the second term. What I did not expect was that, having played white in chess and achieved a dominant position, he'd turn the board around and say, "I'll play black for a bit now."

I did not expect that he was so traumatized by the assaults on him that he did not use the position that his persistence had created. I do not agree with the right-wing extremists here who believe that the only good deal is one that's unilaterally advantageous to us. A good arrangement is one that is perceived by both sides to be of mutual benefit because that's the only way they will preserve it. But that is precisely what we are not doing now. But I would give Reagan very high marks for the first six years of his presidency.

Q. But now that legacy seems to be drifting away, doesn't it? Confirmation of Bork, as with approval of contra aid, seems extremely unlikely. Is all this--?

A. The fact remains that on many issues, on contra aid, for example, Reagan is substantially right. He is at any rate right in understanding that you cannot get an agreement in Central America without incentives and penalties. On the other hand, the Administration has never faced the fundamental question of what it really wanted in Nicaragua. Do we want to overthrow the Sandinistas, or do we want terms which remove the security problem -- such as the Cubans -- but maintain the regime. And if the latter, what are these terms? We have put the security problem

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largely in terms of Soviet high performance aircraft. I don't believe
the Soviets would be so mad as to put high performance aircraft in
Nicaragua. That would happen only if they wanted to provoke a showdown.

The security problem of Nicaragua is the presence of large numbers
of Cubans, as well as intelligence operatives from other Communist
countries, and an army larger than all the other armies of Central
America put together. Unconstrained, that will in time be an unbearable
weight on the other Central American countries. Now the question that
we have not faced is, supposing all of this could be removed. Would we
then accept the Sandinista regime as an unpleasant regime? On the other
hand, if we want to overthrow the Sandinistas, $100 million will not be
enough.

Q. There is a view that the Administration's view on the contras is nonsense, that if you want to do anything about it you've got to use American troops. If you don't want to do anything about it, don't think you can buy your influence with $100 million to the contras.

A. It is nonsense but it has shrunk from facing the implications of
its position. For example, Elliot Abrams wants the Sandinistas
overthrown but he has never stated the objective or sought the means to
achieve that objective. But his critics have a much deeper
responsibility. His critics create the impression that, first, there's
no problem in Nicaragua and that if we would only stop applying
pressure tensions would be easily solved. They are forever replaying
the Vietnam experience. So the instincts of the Administration on
Central America are more correct than their critics. Their willingness
to push their instincts to a logical conclusion has been lacking. I
have to say in fairness, the Administration in which I served made
comparable mistakes in Vietnam. You get into a situation where you
think overwhelming necessity is to keep enough going so that you can
live to fight another day and in the process you wind up combining the
disadvantage of every course of action.

A. Yes. There is a place for covert operations. There is an area
between military action and diplomacy in which actions have to be taken
that can neither be avowed nor abandoned. Of course they should be run
with some delicacy and they should be carefully related to national
interests. But the fact of the matter is that if British or French
covert operations were examined in the minute detail that ours are they
probably would look just as silly. First of all, you're not going to get
your best Ivy League graduates to do that sort of work.

A. We cannot in the end take the position that we have a national
obligation to overthrow any non-democratic government, especially
friendly ones -- as we seem to do -- but that we will not participate
in the ensuing struggle for power. The history of revolutions teaches
that the coalition that brings about the overthrow of a government will
break apart after it has succeeded. We see that now in the Philippines,
we see it in Korea; it was the same in the French revolution. Now if
the United States is not willing to participate in the ensuing struggle
by financing parties, encouraging democratic forces, then certainly the
most radical, best disciplined, highly organized groups are going to
take over. So this is an area in which covert activity is absolutely
essential.

I have been told that in Africa a disproportionate number of

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newspapers parrot the Communist line. I find it hard to believe that this is all ideological conviction. There must be some influence. I do not consider it wrong for the United States to finance people with a democratic point of view. Such acts as assassinations are incompatible with America's moral convictions. Nor should we use the Central Intelligence Agency to fight wars just because it's easier to finance them off the budget, as we did in Laos. But the wholesale assault every decade on covert operations is very dangerous. On Iran what was wrong was not that it was covert but that it was stupid.

Q. If you were secretary of state, what would your policy be in the Gulf?

A. In the Gulf we sort of slid into a position that I thought was extremely unwise. It is now paying rather good results, but, if perpetuated can lead us into great trouble again. I don't recall there being an interruption to shipping in the Gulf in March when we reflagged the Kuwaiti tankers. I thought it was dangerous to get ourselves into the Iran-Iraq war, which will be decided on land, by participating in the sea contest on the side of Iraq -- thereby ending up with egg on our face if the land battle ends badly.

Then we sort of slid into having 41 ships and 24,000 men there to protect 10 tankers, none of which had ever been sunk. But this massive deployment has had a very good result. The Iranians looking at it cannot believe that that is all we are after. They cannot believe that we are doing all this to protect 10 Kuwaiti tankers. They therefore believe that we are looking for an excuse to attack them. They are therefore behaving with more than usual caution. I believe that the speech of the Iranian president over here (President Khamenei at the U.N.) was by their standards really quite moderate. So for the time being we have achieved an unplanned success in that the Arabs are reassured, and the Iranians are temporarily cautious.

I don't approve at all of these congressional debates that created the impression that we should get out as quickly as possible. In the long term, however, if we keep sitting there, and as the elections approach, they may start operating on us or on the moderate states in the area the way they did in Beirut. So that is the immediate tactical danger.

In the long term, I'm concerned with a different problem. In the immediate future an Iranian victory would be a disaster for everybody, and the Western nations are quite right in seeking to prevent it. If they try to close the Gulf we should resist. But they have not made an effort to close the Gulf up to now, and their attacks are really much less numerous than the Iraqi attacks. In the long term, I believe that geopolitical realities will drive Iran towards the West. They have a frontier of 1,800 miles with the Soviets and they have traditionally been invaded from Russian soil. That's no reason for them to conclude that the most distant superpower is the most threatening. So as rationality returns to Iran, as it must sooner or later, Iran will move towards the West. And we should avoid unnecessary measures which will drive them towards the Soviets.

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Q. She seems to have an impact on other world leaders. It was Mitterrand who said that she had the lips of Marilyn Monroe and the eyes of Caligula.

A. I have to say, I'm not objective. I think Mrs. Thatcher is a great leader, and I like her enormously as a person. I have found her to be a warm, good friend. So I have not seen the imperious side that I read about. I don't believe she would argue that foreign policy was her first love or her first priority. But she has an extraordinary ability to get to the heart of a problem once she grapples with it, and she does not delude herself with fancy phrases in the belief that she has an excessive personal influence on anybody. She did not return, in my limited experience with her, from Moscow with a belief that she had established a unique relationship with Gorbachev. So I have great hopes that she will be a balance wheel to, if not the creator of, a Western structure.

Q. I just wonder if she shared your fears on ING.

A. I would be astonished if she did not substantially share my analysis of the nuclear problem, although how she would apply it I don't know.

Q. What about Labor politicians in Britain?

A. I had high regard for Harold Wilson. I know people say he was treacherous, but I never saw that of him if indeed it exists. He was not tricky with Americans. I think (James) Callaghan is one of the most underrated leaders that I know. I was very fond of Tony Crosland. He was rigorously honest. And all of them I thought lived in the same world I did. They shared the same perception of what was at stake. They might differ with me in practical conclusions, although amazingly not very often. Denis Healey was formidable though much more mercurial. But I always consoled myself that he did not mean the more outrageous things he was saying. But there is now a new generation of Labor leaders much less emotionally tied to Atlantic relations.

A. It depends on how third force is defined. If it is motivated by anti-Americanism, then it would not be desirable. If it is defined as some grouping that wants to defend its own territories in coalition with whatever nations are helpful for their purpose, then I think it would be useful. I cannot see any sober analysis that would lead Europeans to believe that they are better off without American assistance than with it. They might feel that as a last resort, if we prove to be unreliable, they are better off trying to make a stand without us. I think that in many areas of the world our interests are sufficiently compatible that we can cooperate. And in any event we can define how to handle our disagreements. In my view, in fact, it is the only way to salvage the Atlantic relationship. It may be ironical but nonetheless true that recent U.S.-Soviet negotiations have done more to promote European unity than abstract discussions of burden sharing.

A. Politically and militarily. This country is so mercurial in its political attitudes that it can only benefit from a balance, from having a partner it cannot ignore.

FROM 7914

'87.10.13 12:46

KISSINGER 10/18/87

To run for President through this primary system today, you have to be a rich unemployed egomaniac. You have to raise $10 million or in that neighborhood in thousand-dollar lots by going around to various pressure groups, telling everybody what they want to hear. I cut my political teeth with Nelson Rockefeller, who today would look like a naive amateur. He genuinely thought that to be President he should study the subject, and he spent three evenings a week briefing himself and such, which he would have better spent looking for delegates. But today when people ask advice of somebody like me, they don't ask what they should do, they ask what they should say. One of the strengths of Mrs. Thatcher is that she had a framework within which to function. Unless we do something about the primary system, we'll produce second raters.

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:19

KISSINGER 10-08-87

keep weapons in Europe it doesn't want to keep in Europe,

A. I would like the public to understand that this is not a good agreement, but I do not believe the remedy is to undo the agreement itself. My analysis is that no government on the continent can support the deployment that we have declared superfluous, and that this is a self-inflicted dilemma. That is why I consider this maybe the most unfortunate agreement we've made in the postwar period, certainly one of the most unfortunate.

A. President Reagan is an extremely complicated man, and I think there are two factors. I would begin with his convictions, which he seems always to have held. He has made anti-nuclear statements from the beginning, but nobody believed him because they were coupled with very brightening anti-communist rhetoric. Still one is usually better off with President Reagan taking what he says absolutely literally.

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:12:0

KISSINGER 10-08-87

Secondly, I know of no Administration more public-relations conscious than this one, and they have learned that to appeal to the cause of peace it is helpful to take an anti-nuclear position. 2% as the additional advantage of third, they have the general strategy of preempting their opponents, and of moving in the direction that their opponents go. Of course it is not every conceptually-oriented Administration to do so not necessarily analyze the long-term implications of what they are saying, But fundamentally I believe that President Reagan is convinced that we should ban nuclear weapons but, in my view, he has not sufficiently analyzed the situation and so his attitude may make nuclear war more rather than less likely.

This president acts intuitively more than analytically, and he has not had, until Frank Carlucci went to the White House as national security adviser, anybody close to him who had ever systematically studied these questions. I think the cause of the Iran/contra affair, or whatever you want to call it, was his strong emotional feeling that he wanted to rescue hostages, and I find no evidence that there was ever a systematic analysis of the consequences of the arrangement itself or of what the Administration would do when when

FROM 7914

'87.10.09 08:22

KISSINGER 10-08-87

My impression is that President Reagan had not given a
great deal of thought to foreign policy before he came to
~~speak~~ office, repeat some simple
~~President~~, except to the extent of campaign slogans. He did
not have any great knowledge of foreign policy, nor has he the
same interest that he has in domestic policy. So the intuition
tends to be a lot more random than it is in domestic policy.
~~He has~~ taken very few trips abroad as President, and my
recollection is that he went abroad very seldom.

A. I'm certainly not the presence of 300,000 American
troops is one guarantee for a coupling between the defense of
Europe and the defense of the United States. But to my mind,
the medium-range nuclear weapons in Europe, were needed
because they performed a better function than could be
performed by the United States, because the Soviets could

FROM 7914

'67.10.22 06:22

KISSINGER 10-06-87

not know what authority the NATO commander might have to use
them before his troops were overrun and that he might be bound
by the decisions of the military leaders in
Washington, but by the necessities in Europe. Whether in fact
these powers would have been delegated to him or not, the
Soviets could not possibly know. So they added an element of
deterrence.

As to how likely it is that troops will be withdrawn within
a 10 year period, I think very likely, especially as it will
make it more and more difficult to design a rationale for keeping
them there. Moreover, that process will be accelerated by the
Soviets.

A. Some troops. But I think the Soviets have our number
manipulate the Western public opinion & make them think
now suppose they offer a substantial unequal withdrawal of
conventional forces, unequal in our favor. They would still
pull back only 350 miles and we would pull back 3,000 miles.
If these forces were demobilized it would make things even
worse because then we would have no strategic reserve left in
the United States and in the Soviet society, remobilizing
divisions would be relatively easy. The actual consequence

FROM 7914

'67.12.88 06:23

KISSINGER 10-08-87

anyhow, we know, would be to put a ceiling on all remaining forces because obviously the Soviets will be right in insisting that it is absurd to withdraw an American division if you are replacing it with a German division. I have seen some studies of the RAND Corp. report, which show, at least to RAND, justification that unless the Soviets withdraw something like 12 divisions, the situation in Europe will worsen even in asymmetrical withdrawals because the troops available to cover the front become thinner and the attacker doesn't have to be superior all along the front, only at the point of breakthrough.

Americans forget that the Germans won their victories in both world wars attacking with inferior forces. They never had numerical superiority. They lost the war because 60 million people can't beat 300 million. But they defeated France with numerically inferior forces, even numerically inferior tank forces. They were inferior in every category of weapons.

FROM 7914

'87.10.06 06:24

KISSINGER 10-08-87

those intermediate-nuclear weapons?

The way we would probably work is that some agreement will be made with the Soviets that reduces nuclear weapons to some level at which the British and French nuclear force will be an unbalancing factor. Then the question will be whether it is necessary to counted. And then it is possible that we will say the same thing as with the Pershing 1-A, when we said we will not bring any pressure but it is also the case that we are on the verge of a historic agreement involving that European leaders will meet in Bonn for settlement.

Q. You obviously have formed a high opinion of Mikhail Gorbachev's intellectual qualities. Mrs. Thatcher was also charged by him when she met him. Can you share any sort of anecdote with us about your meeting with him in Moscow?

A. He was well briefed on all of us. He want around the

FROM 7914

'87.10.28 08:125

KISSINGER 10-08-87

A. First of all, I think we vastly overdo what his particular contribution is to detention with all due respect, also promoted detention, moreclusivity but perhaps Brezhnev did nearly as much and in a much safer way. Gorbachev

I did not consider Brezhnev as risk-taking and as self-confident as Gorbachev. But the real problem is this: specific causes of tension must be removed, but agreeing to do that cannot be based on the fact that Gorbachev is an attractive man and we cannot pay him for wanting to reform his society. He wants to reform his society in order to make it stiffer, not in order to become pliable. But we cannot allow him to obstruct his reform of a society. Now firmly in control he

FROM 7914

'87.10.09 06:125

KISSINGER 10-08-97

to-day he needs in his domestic
is I would be surprised if what he's saying to do can be done,
playground.
I think the vested interests

the vested interests, the obstacles to doing what
needs to be done in that system are probably too huge. All the
able people have a vested interest in the status quo, except
for a few intellectuals. But the Soviet system is really sort
of a feudal system that rewards hierarchy better than any
other system if you measure eminence by comparing your
situation with people who are worse off than you are, which is
how most people historically have measured it.

So I don't see why the ministries, the planners, the party,
the managers have an interest in changing the system
fundamentally. We talked to Yakovlev when we were there and he
would improve the productivity of the workers,
said they ~~going to change the productivity~~ of the workers,
which is highly desirable. And I said, 'how are you going to do
what? It seems to me you're using the people who created the
problem to solve the problem.' And he said, 'We're going to have
elections for foreman and manager.' But workers don't vote for a
manager to make them work harder. It's almost naive, innocent.

So I think they're going to meet huge resistance. Now what that
is hard to predict. But
will lead to a don't know. It could even lead to foreign policy
that can't be predicted!
adventurism because if they see their military capacity

FROM 7914

'87.10.28 06:26

KISSINGER 10-08-87

A. They're different people.

A. They're different people.

President Reagan was the right man for that historic task. He came in at a period of loss of American confidence and restored by whose confidence in America it is fundamentally certainly changed the domestic agenda to greater reliance on market forces, greater reliance on private sector, and I think he changed it in a fundamental way, similar to the way Roosevelt did. These are great historic achievements. He did it by methods which for intellectuals are hard to penetrate because you cannot sit down with him and hear a conceptual presentation of why he's doing what he does. His strengths are intuition and persistence, and even a certain indifference to detail. For five or six years it worked very well. Had he had a Mexican president's term he would without any doubt have gone down as one of the most significant presidents in American history. And for that I give him a lot of credit.

FROM 7914

'67.12.08 06:27

KISSINGER 10-09-87

in the first term. He used a lot of rhetoric that, ~~had~~ been asked my opinion, I would not have recommended to him. And he made it easy for some of his opponents ~~in Europe and~~ around the world to picture him as an inflexible warmonger. But if you look at the fundamentals, he conducted himself correctly, considering that the Soviets had to understand that our will ~~had~~ ~~Thangiam~~ had returned, that we were building strength. ~~And you will~~ find many speakers in ~~which I predicted that~~ there would be major negotiations in the second term. What I did not expect was that, having played white in chess and achieved a dominant position, he'd turn the board around and say, "I'll play black for a bit now."

I did not expect that he was so traumatized by the assaults on him that he did not use the position that his persistence had created. Now when I say ~~use the position I want to make~~ this clear, I do not agree with the right wing extremists here who believe that the only good deal is one that's unilaterally advantageous to us. A good arrangement is one that is perceived by both sides to be of mutual benefit because that is precisely the only way they will preserve it. But that is not what we are not doing now, because we are following these slogans. But I would

FROM 7914

'87.10.06 00:31

KISSINGER 10-08-87

Communist countries, special relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union, and an army larger than all the other armies of Central America put together. Unconstrained, that will in time be an unbearable weight on the other Central American countries. Now the question that we have not faced is, supposing all of this could be removed. Would we then accept the Sandinista regime as an unpleasant regime? The administration hasn't been willing to face this. On the other hand, if we want to overthrow the Sandinistas, 100 million dollars won't do it. Q. There is a view that the Administration's view on the contras is nonsense, that if you want to do anything about it you've got to use American troops. If you don't want to do anything about it don't think you can buy your influence with a 100 million dollars to the contras.

It is not nonsense but it is true from K. that's more or less correct. For example, Elliot Abrams thinks I'm a traitor because I say let's give aid to the contras and let's demand that the Cubans and all other communist forces get out. He wants the Sandinistas overthrown but he has never stated the objective or sought the means to achieve that objective. But his critics have a much deeper responsibility.

His critics are the impression that first there's no problem

FROM 7914

'87.10.06 06:32

KISSINGER 10-08-87

There is an area between military action and diplomacy in which actions have to be taken and pressures applied that can neither be avowed nor abandoned. Of course they should be run with some delicacy and they should be carefully related to national interests. But the fact of the matter is that if British or French covert operations were examined in the minute detail that ours are they probably would look just as silly. First of all you're not going to get your best Ivy League graduates to do that sort of work.

A. We cannot take the position that we have a national obligation to overthrow any non-democratic government, especially friendly ones and there is bipartisan consensus on that. But we also cannot go on from there to say that we will not participate in the ensuing struggle for power. The history of revolutions teaches us that the coalition that brings about the overthrow of a government will break apart. We see that now in the Philippines, we see it in Korea, we see it in the French revolution. There is literally no exception to this.

But now if the United States is not willing to participate...

FROM 7914

'67.10.89 08:33

KISSINGER 10-08-87

thought was extremely unwise. It is now producing rather good results, but it is possible that we may have to take some further action. We must be prepared to face great trouble again. In fact, this massive deployment has had such a good time so far, because the result is that the Iranians cannot believe that we are after that we are doing all of this to protect 10 Kuwaiti tankers. They therefore believe that we are looking for an excuse to attack them. They are therefore behaving with more than usual caution. Since they are not totally irrational, so for the time being we have achieved an unplanned success in that the Arabs are reassured and the Iranians temporarily relaxed. But we must note tactical moves to a long term strategy. In the immediate future, an Iranian victory would be a disaster for everybody, and the Western nations are quite right in seeking to prevent it. In the long term, however, I believe that political realities will drive Iran towards the West. They have a frontier of 1,800 miles with the Soviets. Historically they've always been invaded from the Russian Soviet territory. There is no logical reason to think that the superpower farthest away seems to them the most threatening. So for all of these reasons I think rationality will return to Tehran, as it must sooner or later. Iran will move towards us and I think we should avoid in this situation unnecessary measures which

FROM 7914

'67.10.08 06:34

KISSINGER 10-08-87

will drive them towards the Soviets. Of course, if they try to close the Gulf we should resist and we should resist by the means we are using. But they have not made an effort to close the Gulf, and their attacks are really much less numerous than the Iraqi attacks. But unintentionally I think we've had some great benefits from this massive deployment.

In Britain, you take as a matter of course that you should base foreign policy on national interest, which is a startling concept in America, something you never see expressed by any of our candidates either with a balance of power. So she has been more focused on British national interests than on global structure.

C. She seems to have a lot of money.

FROM 7914

'87.12.08 06:13:45

KISSINGER 10-08-87

A. I have to say, I'm not so good a person to talk to in such an is a great leader and leader because I like her as a person, and I have found her to be warm, good, and a good friend. So I have not seen the impertuous side that I read about. I don't believe she would argue that foreign policy was her first love or her first concern. She has an extraordinary ability to get to the heart of a problem once she grapples with it, and she does not delude herself with fancy; believes that she has an excessive personal influence on anybody. She did not return, in my limited experience with her, from Moscow with a belief that she had established a unique relationship with Gorbachev. So I have great hopes that she will be a balance wheel to, if not the creator of, a Western structure.

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:36

KISSINGER 10-08-87

genuinely thought that to be president he should study the
subject, and he spent three evenings a week briefing himself
and such, which he would have better spent looking for
delegates. But today when people ask advice of somebody like
me, they don't ask what they should do, they ask what they
should say. One of the strengths of Mrs. Thatcher is that she
had a framework within which to function. Unless we do
something about the primary system, we'll produce second
raters.

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:18

[LC]

# Henry Kissinger interview with London Sun Telegraph

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:18

KISSINGER 10-08-87

Q. The timing is ironic.

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:19

KISSINGER 10-08-87

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:20

KISSINGER 10-08-87

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:20

KISSINGER 10-08-87

inevitably it became public.

A. A year or more ago, I talked to a group of scholars at the Library of Congress and I said or meant to say that when you listen to Ronald Reagan, you wonder how could anyone ever believe he'd be governor, much less president. But when you see him in action, you have to say he dominated California for eight years as governor and he's dominated Washington for nearly six years, as no one else. And therefore you scholars have to admit that there may be a non-rationalist approach to policy making which is not (something?) of America. Now in domestic policy, that obviously worked better than in foreign policy.

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:22

KISSINGER 10-08-87

My impression is that President Reagan had not given a great deal of thought to foreign policy before he became president, except to the extent of campaign slogans. He did not have any great knowledge of foreign policy, nor has he the same interest that he has in domestic policy. So the intuition tends to be a lot more random than it is in domestic policy.

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:22

KISSINGER 10-08-87

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:23

KISSINGER 10-08-87

Americans forget that the Germans won their victories in both world wars attacking with inferior forces. They never had numerical superiority. They lost the war because 50 million people can't beat 300 million. But they defeated France with numerically inferior forces, even numerically inferior tank forces. They were inferior I think in every category of weapons.

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:24

KISSINGER 10-08-87

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:24

KISSINGER 10-08-87

room and needled us all with things that showed that he knew
what he was talking about. He began his conversation with me
by saying, 'Why is it that you who did so much constructive
work in the 70s are so opposed now?' I said, 'Sometimes one's
memory fits one better than one deserves.'

I said there are three groups in America, one group that
wants an agreement no matter what's in it, another group that
wants no agreement no matter what's in it, and the third group,
to which I belong, that would like an agreement that makes a
difference. Even asking what's in the agreement would make a
difference. I started pursuing that subject by saying that
these numbers games the heads of government play with nuclear
weapons was futile and we should get more into substance. He
was following and pursuing this with some interest when
Dobrynin pulled on his sleeve and gave him a note. I suspect
it said don't let him drag you into down that path.

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:25

KISSINGER 10-08-87

A. First of all, I think we vastly overdo what his
particular contribution is to detente. With all due respect,
Brezhnev did nearly as much and in a much safer way. Gorbachev
is more skillful in public relations. Secondly, under the
tutelage of Dobrynin he has learned that if we make a foolish
proposal it is in fact foolish and not a trick. So it is much
more dangerous to present him with the result of our
bureaucratic compromises because he will be able to analyze it
better than could the team of Brezhnev and Gromyko. But I
thought that the situation of the early 1970s was much safer.

I did not consider Brezhnev as risk-taking and as
self-confident as I consider Gorbachev. But the real problem
is this: Some specific causes of tension must be removed, but
agreeing to do that cannot be based on the fact that Gorbachev
is an attractive man and we cannot pay him for wanting to
reform his society. He wants to reform his society in order to
become strong, not in order to become pliable. I see no reason
to obstruct his reform of a society. How firmly in control he

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:25

KISSINGER 10-08-87

is, I would be surprised if what he's trying to do can be done.
I think the vested interests, the obstacles to doing what
needs to be done in that system are probably too huge. All the
able people have a vested interest in the status quo, except
for a few intellectuals. But the Soviet system is really sort
of a feudal system that rewards hierarchy better than any
other system if you measure eminence by comparing your
situation with people who are worse off than you are, which is
how most people historically have measured it.

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:26

KISSINGER 10-08-87

A. They're different people.

President Reagan was the right man for that historic
period. He came in at a period of loss of American confidence
and restored by whatever means confidence in America. He
certainly changed the domestic agenda to greater reliance on
market forces, greater reliance on private sector, and I think
he changed it in a fundamental way, similar to the way
Roosevelt did. These are great historic achievements. He did
it by methods which for intellectuals are hard to penetrate
because you cannot sit down with him and hear a conceptual
presentation of why he's doing what he does. His strengths are
intuition and persistence, and even a certain indifference to
detail. For five or six years it worked very well. Had he had
a Mexican president's term he would without any doubt have gone
down as one of the most significant presidents in American
history. And for that I give him a lot of credit.

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:27

KISSINGER 10-08-87

I did not expect that he was so traumatized by the assaults on him that he did not use the position that his persistence had created. Now when I say use the position I want to make this clear. I do not agree with the right wing extremists here who believe that the only good deal is one that's unilaterally advantageous to us. A good arrangement is one that is perceived by both sides to be of mutual benefit because that's the only way they will preserve it. But that's what we are not doing now because we are following these slogans. But I would

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:37

QISSINGER 10-08-87

Q. But now that legacy seems to be drifting away doesn't it?
Confirmation of Bork, as with approval of contra aid, seems
extremely unlikely. Is all this true?

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:31

KISSINGER 10-08-87

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:31

KISSINGER 10-08-87

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:32

KISSINGER 10-08-87

there's an area between military action and diplomacy in which
actions have to be taken and pressures applied that can
neither be avowed nor abandoned. Of course they should be run
with some delicacy and they should be carefully related to
national interests. But the fact of the matter is that if
British or French covert operations were examined in the
minute detail that ours are they probably would look just as
silly. First of all you're not going to get your best Ivy
League graduates to do that sort of work.

A. We cannot take the position that we have a national
obligation to overthrow any non-democratic government,
especially friendly ones and there is bipartisan consensus on
that. But we also cannot go on from there to say that we will
not participate in the ensuing struggle for power. The history
of revolutions teaches you that the coalition that brings
about the overthrow of a government will break apart. We see
that now in the Philippines, we see it in Korea, saw it in the
French revolution. There is literally no exception to this
rule. Now if the United States is not willing to participate

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:33

KISSINGER 10-08-87

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:33

KISSINGER 10-08-87

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:34

KISSINGER 10-08-87

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:34

KISSINGER 10-08-87

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:35

KISSINGER 10-08-87

he was treacherous, but I never saw that in him. He was not treacherous to Americans. I found him to be a man of his word with Americans. I think Callahan is one of the most underrated people that I know. I consider him a truly wise man who grows on you the longer you know him. I was very fond of Tony Grazo?. It was in a quiet place, when I first met him. I thought: One more outrage, one more intellectual outrage and I won't deal with him again. He was vigorously honest. And all of them I thought lived in the same world I did. They shared the same perception of what was at stake. They might differ with me in practical conclusions, although amazingly not very often. You know Dennis Healy was much more mercurial, but I always consoled myself that he wouldn't mean the more outrageous things he was saying. But there is now a new generation of labor leaders.

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:36

KISSINGER 10-08-87

A. Politically and militarily. I believe that this country is too mercurial in its political attitudes, that it can benefit from a balance, from having a partner it cannot ignores.

FROM 7914

'87.10.08 08:36

KISSINGER 10-08-87

HENRY KISSINGER INTERVIEW WITH LONDON SUN TELEGRAPH

as edited by H.A.K. 10/9/87

The Europeans bear a heavy responsibility. They encouraged us to put forward the zero options largely to placate their domestic opinion. But they never made clear to a very literal-minded Administration exactly what they thought about its strategic implications. I keep hearing from senior Administration people that European leaders are enthusiastic about this agreement. You and I know that this is simply not so.

17

To run for president through this primary system today, you have to be a rich unemployed egomaniac. You have to raise $10 million or in that neighborhood in thousand dollar lots by going around to various pressure groups, telling everybody what they want to hear. I cut my political teeth with Nelson Rockefeller, who today would look like a naive amateur. He genuinely thought that to be president he should study the subject, and he spent three evenings a week briefing himself and such, which he would have better spent looking for delegates. But today when people ask advice of somebody like me, they don't ask what they should do, they ask what they should say. One of the strengths of Mrs. Thatcher is that she had a framework within which to function. Unless we do something about the primary system, we'll produce second raters.

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as edited by H.A.K. 10/9/87

2

Q. The timing is ironic because in many European countries
the domestic battle had been won.

A. Yes. The anti-nuclear movement, having lost the battle
over deployment, has won the war of strategic theory, all under
the leadership of American hard-liners. It's a historic joke! This
was not done by American pacifists. What will happen next? If the
Senate now refuses to ratify the agreement, we will see a replay
of 1982 with the anti-nuclear movement once again in the streets.
Governments will be demoralized by the fact that the Americans
have declared these weapons to be superfluous and a reluctant
American government, with a nonratified treaty, would have to keep
weapons in Europe it doesn't want to keep there.

Q. You wrote in Newsweek that President Reagan's stigmatiza-
tion of nuclear weapons is virtually indistinguishable from the
arguments used by the campaign for nuclear disarmament. What brought
about this convergence?

A. President Reagan is an extremely complicated man, and I
think there are two factors. I would begin with his convictions,
which he seems always to have held. He has made anti-nuclear state-
ments from the beginning, but nobody believed him because they were

6

Americans forget that the Germans won victories in both world
wars attacking with inferior forces but concentrating them. They
never had numerical superiority. They lost the war because 50 million
people can't beat 300 million. But they defeated France with
numerically inferior forces, even numerically inferior tank forces.

The way things may develop is that some agreement will be
made with the Soviets that reduces nuclear weapons to some level at
which the British and French nuclear force will be an unbalancing
factor. Then the question will be whether they should be counted.
And then it is possible that we will say the same thing as with the
Pershing 1A: We will not bring any pressure but we are on the verge
of a historic agreement implying that European leaders will be to
blame for failure.

7

It was the sort of free-wheeling discussion I have not seen from a Soviet leader. It wasn't very long, maybe 10 or 15 minutes.

12

first there's no problem in Nicaragua and that if we would only
stop applying pressure tensions would be easily solved. They are
forever replaying the Vietnam experience. So the instincts of
the Administration on Central America are more correct than
their critics. Their willingness to push their instincts to a logical
conclusion has been lacking. I have to say in fairness, that the
Administration in which I served made comparable mistakes in Vietnam.
You get into a situation where you think the overwhelming necessity
is to keep enough going so that you can live to fight another day and
in the process you wind up combining the disadvantage of every
course of action.

13

I have been told that in Africa a disproportionate number
of newspapers parrot the Communist line. I find it hard to believe
that this is all ideological conviction. There must be some
influence. I do not consider it wrong for the United States to
finance people with a democratic point of view. Such acts as
assassinations are incompatible with America's moral convictions.
Nor should we use the Central Intelligence Agency to fight wars
just because it's easier to finance them off the budget, as happened
in Laos. But the wholesale assault every decade on covert operations
is very dangerous. On Iran what was wrong was not that it was covert
but that it was stupid.

A. We sort of slid into a position in the Gulf that I thought
was extremely unwise. It is now producing rather good results.
But we must take care not to push our luck beyond a certain point.
The good result has come about because the Iranians cannot believe
that all of this massive deployment is to protect 10 Kuwaiti tankers.

15

A. I would be astonished if she did not substantially share
my analysis of the nuclear problem, although how she would apply it
to INF I don't know.

A. I had high regard for Harold Wilson. I know people say he was
tricky, but I never saw that of him if indeed it exists. He was not
tricky with Americans. I think Callahan is one of the most underrated
leaders that I know. I consider him a truly wise man whose stature

16

grows on you the longer you know him. I was very fond of Tony
 Crosland.
Ausland. He was rigorously honest. And all of them I thought
lived in the same world I did. They shared the same perception of
what was at stake. They might differ with me in practical conclusions,
although amazingly not very often. Dennis Healy was formidable though
much more mercurial. But I always consoled myself that he did not
mean the more outrageous things he was saying. But there is now a
new generation of labor leaders much less emotionally tied to
Atlantic relations.
≡

A. It depends on how third force is defined. If it is motivated
by anti-Americanism, then it would not be desirable. If it is defined
as some grouping that wants to defend its own territories in coalition
with whatever nations are helpful for their purpose, then I think it
would be useful. I cannot see any sober analysis that would lead
Europeans to believe that they are better off without American
military assistance than with it. They might feel that as a last
resort, if we prove to be unreliable, they're better off trying to
make a stand without us. I think that in many areas of the world our
interests are sufficiently compatible that we can cooperate. And in
any event we can define how to handle our disagreements. I favor
a European identity. In my view, in fact, it is the only way to
salvage the Atlantic relationship. It may be ironical but
none the less true That recent US-Soviet negotiations have done
more to promote European unity Than abstract discussions of
burden sharing.

17

as edited by H.A.K. 10/9/87

2

3

coupled with very exalted anti-communist rhetoric. Still one is
usually better off with President Reagan taking what he says
absolutely literally.

Secondly, I know of no Administration more public-relations
that
conscious than this one. They have convinced themselves/an anti-
nuclear stance is extremely popular. It has the additional advantage
of preempting their opponents. Of course, not being very conceptually-
oriented, the Administration does not necessarily analyze the long-term
implications of their position. But fundamentally President Reagan
really is convinced that we should ban nuclear weapons, but, in my
view, he has not sufficiently analyzed that this attitude may make
nuclear war more rather than less likely.

This President acts intuitively more than analytically, and he
has not had, until Frank Carlucci went to the White House as
national security adviser, anybody close to him who had ever system-
atically studied these questions. After all, the cause of the
Iran/contra affair, or whatever you want to call it, was his strong
emotional feeling that he wanted to rescue hostages, and I find no
evidence that there was ever a systematic analysis of the consequences
of the arrangement itself or of what the Administration would do when
inevitably it became public.

Q. I take your point that he acts intuitively, but what you're
saying is that he deals with matters as important as these nuclear
issues on nothing more than a hunch.

4

see him in action, you have to admit that he dominated California
for eight years as governor and he's dominated Washington for
nearly six years, as no one else. And therefore you scholars
have to recognize that there may be a non-rationalist approach
to policy-making with its own logic.

My impression is that President Reagan had not given a great
deal of thought to foreign policy before he came into office except
to repeat some simple campaign slogans. He did not have any
great knowledge of foreign policy, nor has he the same interest
that he has in domestic policy. He had taken very few trips abroad
before he became President. So the intuition tends to be a lot
more random than in domestic policy.

5

As to how likely it is that troops will be withdrawn within
a ten-year period, I think very likely, especially as present trends
will make it more and more difficult to design a rationale for
keeping them there.

A. Some troops, but I think the Soviets have learned how to
manipulate the Western public opinion to make arms control serve their
ends. Suppose they offer an unequal withdrawal of conventional forces,
unequal in our favor. They would still pull back only 350 miles,
and we would pull back 3,000 miles. If these forces were demobilized,
it would make things even worse because then we would have no
strategic reserve left in the United States and in the Soviet
society, remobilizing divisions would be relatively easy. The
practical consequence of any reduction, moreover, will be to put
a ceiling on all remaining forces because obviously the Soviets will
insist that it is absurd to withdraw an American division if you are
replacing it with a German division. I have seen some studies which
show that unless the Soviets withdraw something like 12 divisions,
the situation in Europe will worsen even in asymmetrical withdrawals
because the troops available to cover the front become thinner and the

6

7

It was the sort of free-wheeling discussion I have not seen from a Soviet leader. It wasn't very long, maybe 10 or 15 minutes. But I had not seen a Soviet leader plunge into a philosophical argument and field it on the spot that way. It's a pity that the West has not given him some tough intellectual problems to deal with, some real choices. I would have liked to see Gorbachev at work on a real choice.

8

A. First of all, I think we vastly overdo the relationship between detente and personality. Brezhnev also promoted detente, more clumsily but perhaps more safely. Gorbachev is more skillful in public relations. Under the tutelage of Dobrynin he has learned that if we make a foolish proposal it is in fact foolish and not a trick as Gromyko assumed. So it is much more dangerous to present him with the result of our bureaucratic compromises because he will be able to analyze it better than could the team of Brezhnev and Gromyko. But I thought that the situation of the early 1970s was much safer. I did not consider Brezhnev as risk-taking and as self-confident as Gorbachev. But the real problem is this: To have a real relaxation of tensions specific causes of tension must be removed. That cannot be based on the fact that Gorbachev is an attractive personality, and we cannot pay him for wanting to reform his society. After all, he wants to reform his society in order to make it stronger, not in order to become pliable. However firmly in control he is today, I would be surprised if he succeeds in his domestic program. The vested interests, the obstacles to doing what needs to be done in that system are probably too huge. All the able people have a vested interest in the status quo, except for a few intellectuals. But the Soviet system is really sort of a feudal system that rewards hierarchy better than any other system if you measure eminence by comparing your situation with people who are worse off than you are, which is how must people historically have measured it.

9

So I don't see why the ministries, the party, or the planners,
the managers have an interest in changing the system fundamentally.
We talked to Yakovlav when we were there and he said they would
improve productivity by having elections for foreman and manager.
But workers don't vote for a manager to make them work harder.
It's almost naive, innocent. So I think they're going to meet
huge resistance. Now what that will lead to is hard to predict. But
foreign policy adventurism cannot be excluded because if they see
their military capacity declining they may want to expand their
security belt.

A. They're different people.

President Reagan was the right man for a specific historic
task. He came in at a period of loss of American confidence and
restored confidence in America's future. He certainly changed the
domestic agenda fundamentally to greater reliance on market forces,
greater reliance on private sector, similar to the way Roosevelt
did. These are great historic achievements. He did it by methods
which for intellectuals are hard to penetrate because you cannot
sit down with him and hear a conceptual presentation. His strengths
are intuition and persistence, and indifference to detail. For five
or six years it worked very well. Had he had a Mexican President's
term, he would without any doubt have gone down as one of the most
significant presidents in American history. And for that I give him
a lot of credit.

10

I did not expect that he was so traumatized by the assaults on him that he did not use the position that his persistence had created. I do not agree with the right wing extremists here who believe that the only good deal is one that's unilaterally advantageous to us. A good arrangement is one that is perceived by both sides to be of mutual benefit because that is the only way they will preserve it. But that is precisely what we are not doing now. We are following slogans, not a coherent strategy. But I would give Reagan very high marks for the first six years of his presidency.

A. The fact remains that on many issues, on contra aid for example, Reagan is substantially right. He is at any rate right in understanding that you cannot get an agreement in Central America without incentives and penalties. On the other hand, the Administration

11

has never faced the fundamental question of what it really wanted
in Nicaragua. Do we want to overthrow the Sandinistas, or do we
want terms which remove the security problem -- such as the Cubans --
but maintain the regime. And if the latter, what are these terms?
We have put the security problem largely in terms of Soviet high
performance aircraft. I don't believe the Soviets would be so mad
as to put high performance aircraft in Nicaragua. That would happen
only if they wanted to provoke a showdown.

The security problem of NICaragua is the presence of large numbers
of Cubans, as well as intelligence operatives from other Communist
countries, and an army larger than all the other armies of Central
America put together. Unconstrained, that will in time be an
unbearable weight on the other Central American countries. Now the
question that we have not faced is, supposing all of this could be
removed. Would we then accept the Sandinista regime as an unpleasant
regime? On the other hand, if we want to overthrow the Sandinistas,
100 million dollars for contra aid will not be enough.

Q. There is a view that the Administration's view on the contras
is nonsense, that if you want to do anything about it you've got to
use American troops. If you don't want to do anything about it,
don't think you can buy your influence with a 100 million dollars to
the contras.

A. It is not nonsense but it has shrunk from facing the implica-
tions of its position. For example, Elliot Abrams wants the
Sandinistas overthrown but he has never stated the objective or
sought the means to achieve that objective. But his critics have a
much deeper responsibility. His critics create the impression that

12

13

14

They believe that we are looking for an excuse to attack them. Since they are not totally irrational, they are therefore behaving with more than usual caution. So for the time being we have achieved an unplanned success in that the Arabs are reassured and the Iranians temporarily restrained.

But we must relate tactical success to a long term strategy. In the immediate future, an Iranian victory would be a disaster for everybody, and the Western nations are quite right in seeking to prevent it. In the long term, however, I believe that political realities will drive Iran towards the West. They have a frontier of 1,800 miles with the Soviets. Historically they've usually been invaded from Russian or Soviet territory. There is no logical reason to think that the superpower farthest away seems to them the most threatening. So for all of these reasons I think rationality will return to Tehran, as it must sooner or later. Iran, once confined to its present frontiers, will move towards us and I think we should avoid in the present situation unnecessary measures which will drive them towards the Soviets. Of course, if they try to close the Gulf we should resist by the means we are using. But they have not made an effort to close the Gulf, and their attacks are really much less numerous than the Iraqi attacks. But unintentionally I think we've had some great benefits from this massive deployments.

15

16

grows on you the longer you know him. I was very fond of Tony
Ausland. He was rigorously honest. And all of them I thought
lived in the same world I did. They shared the same perception of
what was at stake. They might differ with me in practical conclusions,
although amazingly not very often. Dennis Healy was formidable though
much more mercurial. But I always consoled myself that he did not
mean the more outrageous things he was saying. But there is now a
new generation of labor leaders much less emotionally tied to
Atlantic relations.

17