Remarks by Henry A. Kissinger

CSIS - Not. leadership forum

May 16, 1985

DRAFT

....and at the stalemate in some events, on some issues, between the executive and the legislative branch, one asks oneself whether we will be able to realize these opportunities.

I start from the premise that the Soviet Union does not make concessions to people, but to conditions. If the Soviet Union is ready to negotiate, it will be based on a cold-blooded assessment of what the Soviet leaders consider objective practice. I do not believe that any Soviet leader can afford to come back from a conference and report to his colleagues that he has just met the most charming American president. And that therefore concessions are to be made that had not previously been considered.

So in any analysis of the status of East-West relations one has to ask oneself what might drive the Soviets to negotiations. I would say that there are several immediate factors and several long-range factors. The immediate factors are the need to reconstitute the Soviet government into something approaching the constitutional force. I don't mean democratic, but I mean predictable. They cannot continue forever running a huge enterprise on the basis of personal relationships and on a series of adjustments between essentially feudal baronies. It is significant that no Soviet leader except one has ever left office, except by his death. And that changes in the Politburo are always associated, either

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with the death of the incumbent or with his disgrace. I can think of nobody who has ever retired with honor in the Soviet system. Now that is a heavy burden to bear, and this will require adjustment over a period of time, if not in this group, then in another group. And it creates enormous insecurities.

Secondly, it is commonplace to observe that the Soviet economy is a mess. And it is a mess for organic reasons. You cannot run an economy by central planning, but it is not yet clear whether you can run a Communist system without central planning. And that paradox has afflicted every Communist society. And the only society that ever has attempted to solve it head-on is China.

The third problem has been expressed in the observation that the Soviet Union is the only state in the world entirely surrounded by hostile Communist powers. Its satellite orbit has seen the only genuine revolutions in industrialized societies in the post-war period. The relations with China are uneasy at best. Those are the immediate problems.

If one looks fifteen years down the road, the Soviet situation becomes more complicated still. Under its present management, falling it is difficult to see how they can avoid/further and further behind in the technological race. Even if they should catch up, which is doubtful, in computer technology, it will be impossible for them to make information available to all their populations in the way modern technology requires. To run a system in which access to

[Y]

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information is not controlled is a contradiction of
the Communist society. But to run a system in which
access to information is controlled is contradictory
to modern industrial society. And since it is highly
improbable that a society in which xerox machines are
locked can solve this, it is foreseeable that they
will fall behind.

Then by the late 90's, if China succeeds, as I think
on balance is more likely than not, they will have both
an ideological and a geopolitical challenge, no matter
what agreements they make in the meantime. And if
Europe remains united and reasonably strong, the Soviet
Union will face a situation on two fronts.

Now obviously they have two choices. They can
attempt to negotiate a solution and to remove tensions
or they can try to break out of this looming situation.
And I don't believe they have at this point made a choice.
Partly because the very factors that induce a temptation
to negotiate also inhibit a conceptual resolution of the
problem.

One of the incentives the Soviet Union has to
negotiate at this point is to gain time to solve its
domestic problems. But this means that they probably will
not want to add foreign policy issues to the domestic
issues that they will already have to confront. So
the probable Soviet strategy is to attempt to purchase
detente relaxation of tensions by essentially psychological

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means--by a change of tone, by cosmetic agreements, by
a diplomacy that leaves the essential factors of international
relations unchanged. Not necessarily even because of
aggressive intention, but simply because bureaucratically
and internally that is the most convenient thing to do.
And the American temptation to treat foreign policy as
if it were a psychiatric problem--as if it were a psychiatric
problem--will play into these hands.

We have seen already all over the West comments
about the personality of the new Soviet leader and his wife,
as if a Soviet leader could march into a Politburo office
and start giving orders the first day like an American president
can.

We have extraordinary attention paid to whether or
not there should be a Summit meeting between the President
and the new Soviet leader, but I have seen much less attention
to what they should talk about once they get together.
And if you observe the American behavior in the post-war
period, you will find a regularity of expectations, that
peace is a self-evident condition. And that it will emerge
almost automatically from the process of getting together.

The so-called containment policy was based on the premise
that we would build situations of strength, and these would
improve our negotiating position, and then I think you will
look in vain through any articulation of the containment policy
that tells you what happens when the negotiating position has

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changed, the Soviets come to the conference table, and
we are supposed to start talking to them.

I believe in retrospect, that the Geneva summit of
1955 was an element that avoided all the difficult issues
and therefore contributed to a later intensification of
tensions.

It seems to me there were three periods in which
one could say objective conditions favored negotiations.
The first was after the death of Stalin, when a new Soviet
leadership must have been totally confused about how to run
their heritage and was moreover divided among itself.
When people say that we got the Vienna State Treaty because
of our skill and patience and endurance in negotiations,
I think they are ascribing factor explanations
to something that had a much more fundamental cause. It
was the death of Stalin and the Soviets searching for some-
thing that would cost them least that might relax tensions
that was a factor.

When Beria was executed, it was alleged that he
had recommended the neutralization of East Germany as a
price to be paid for a relaxation of tensions. Whether
this is true or not as far Beria is concerned
there may have been others who believed it. But in Geneva
the Soviets learned that all Western leaders were so
enthused by the change of tone that nothing else was
required. And if you read the newspapers at the time,

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including the conservative newspapers, you will find
that there was unanimity that President Eisenhower's
personality had transformed international relations.

The second opportunity came in 1972, when the
Soviet Union was either concerned that China and the
United States had come to an arrangement at their expense,
or tried to lure us into acquiescence into an attack on
China. Whichever of these theories was correct, there
was a window in which the Soviet Union seemed extremely
eager for negotiations. That one was destroyed by the
collapse of executive authority and by an extraordinary
coalition between liberal and conservatives in this country --
liberals who thought that if Nixon was for detente,
confrontation couldn't be all that bad --and conservatives
who never trusted the Russians and therefore thought any
agreement could only be harmful.

The third opportunity, in my view, exists today.
But it exists only if we take a few principles to heart.
The first is that international relations has no terminal
point. For this reason, peace in the abstract cannot be
an objective of foreign policy. By this I mean that it
is not probable that there will ever be a conference,
either regionally or globally, after which it can be said
that peace has now broken out and the need for further

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effort has disappeared. Peace is composed of a series
of concrete conditions. It must include an equilibrium
of power at the beginning. It must contain some self-
restrain in international conduct. And it must contain,
of course, as an expression of these, some arrangements
with respect to armaments.

Unfortunately, I have the impression that the
only issue that we tend to focus on is the so-called arms
control arrangements. I agree with Jim Schlesinger that
we should stop the debate about whether or not there should
be arms control negotiations. We have an obligation to
conduct them or we will loose any public support. But
we also have an obligation to try to present to our publics
a rational analysis of what these negotiations will in fact
contribute to international stability. And we have a second
obligation to admit to ourselves that reality links them
to the political relationships of the major nations. Now
whether we have a formal linkage in the negotiations, or
not, is beginning to be a boring issue. In every administra-
tion, an argument begins whether there should be linkage.
And then linkage is renounced in one form or another, on
the theory that arms control is by itself so important that
we should negotiate it in its own right. It is totally
contrary to reality.

The invasion of Afghanistan destroyed SALT II. And
the invasion of some other territory, or a huge international

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crisis will destroy current arms control negotiations.

There has to be a tacit or agreed restraint on international
political conduct, that cannot be avoided by formal
renunciation of the facts of international life.

With respect to arms control, I believe there are
a number of factors to keep in mind. One, there is almost
no subject--indeed I know no subject--less suitable for
negotiations between heads of governments than the subject
of arms control. In the 19th century, there was the so-called
Schleswig-Holstine question, about which Lord Parmerston said
only three people had ever understood it. One was dead,
the second was in a lunatic asylum, and he was the third
and he had forgotten it.

The esoteric nuclear calculus by which arms control
negotiations are today are carried on have many of the
same attributes. There is no subject in which heads of
governments on both sides are so dependent on experts
that have studied for years what they have, at best, hours
to consider. And in which expert opinion is so divided,
and in our country, so divided along philosophical lines.

I think, it is fair to say, that those scientists
who are dedicated to arms control in the abstract have
proposed almost every new weapon that could be developed
in the last thirty years, arguing either that existing
weapons are good enough, or that some super-duper weapon
was coming along 10 years later. But that at any rate

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the current one should not be built. And, of course,
on the other side, there are many who argue that any
weapon that can be built, should be built, whatever its
rationale. So, arms control negotiations do not lend
themselves to spectacular political breakthroughs.

Secondly, there is a great danger that we freeze
ourselves into the technological assumptions of previous
decades. I believe that the current debate about strategic
defense is a good example. When current arms control theory
was developed, missiles had single warheads and were
highly inaccurate. And it was therefore plausible that a
rough equivalence of numbers would bring about a kind of
strategic standoff, even though we have never been prepared
to face the consequence of a strategic standoff which
means the necessity to rebuild conventional and limited
war forces. But, since the advent of highly accurate
weapons with multiple warheads, that situation is no longer
true. And today we face two problems -- that in those
circumstances, unless multiple warheads are eliminated,
the mere reduction of launchers does not significantly
change the danger of surprise attack; it may even increase
it by making it more calculable. And secondly, we must
face the fact that if we commit ourselves to live for all
eternity in a world without defenses, and commit ourselves

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to telling our publics for all eternity that their security
depends on the possibility of their extermination, then
we may have set ourselves an insoluable psychological and
moral problem. I believe that the debate about strategic
defense and its relationship to arms control must be
considered, not just from the technical point of view,
but from their psychological and political point of view.
And that therefore it involves some fateful decisions.
Decisions, incidentally, which cannot be avoided. By
repeating , the slogan that we are committed
to research and that we are leaving open the question of
deployment. It is precisely the issue of deployment
that is at the heart of the problems. Research has always
been permitted, and has always been carried out, and they
may simply turn into an evasion.

So let me repeat. Of course I favor arms control
negotiations. But we owe it to our publics over the long
run to explain how they enhance our security. And not
simply add up numbers that establish a formal numerical
equivalence. And I believe that if the Soviets are serious,
they too should be brought to this point. And I think
too, that sooner or later, and sooner rather than later,
we will have to discuss the political issues that divide us.

To return to the issue of arms control, I do not under-
stand why it is not possible to say that we advocate the

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abrogation of MIRVs and that we want to make the
deployment of defensive weapons related to the deployment
of offensive weapons. So that the lower the offensive
level, the lower can be the defensive weapon. Rather
than pretending that the outcome of research is uncertain
and that we will go through a dual set of negotiations,
first with our allies and than with the Soviets, something
which would repeat all the dilemmas of the INF.

Let me make a few observations about our domestic
debate. When I was a young professor, there was an extraordinary
concensus on the major objectives of American foreign policy.
And at that time the academic community not yet having
access to power, could only fulfill itself by thinking
about the future five or ten years ahead.

Today the academic community is divided between job
applicants and new administrations, or existing administrations,
whose work more or less duplicates what the government is
already doing. And critics of the system, or what they
call the system, who reject everything that is put forward...
I think the fact that there are very few places that are
able to take a middle range look into the future, as indeed I
believe the Center does do, is a major obstacle to debate.

Within each Administration there are endless arguments
on unstated premises that then lead to compromises make it
very difficult to define a clear sense of direction. And

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then this debate tends to be repeated again between the
Administration and the Congress. I can understand, though
I would oppose, the argument that we should have no MX's.
And I can understand and I would support the argument that
we should have several hundred MX's. I cannot for the life
of me understand the purpose for the MX's, which is where
we are now heading. I can understand and I would tend to
agree with the argument that there are vital interests at
stake in Central America. I have difficulty understanding
how a vital interest can be fulfilled by an appropriation
of $14 million.

I have even more difficulty understanding the Con-
gressional solution that those $14 million should be
spent in a guerrilla war for humanitarian and compassionate
purposes. We owe it to ourselves to define a) what our vital
interest is, second) what the appropriate means are for
achieving it and third) whether we can achieve not a compro-
mise but a degree of unity in pursuing it.

It is always fashionable to talk about a return to
bi-partisanship and after all that has happened in the last
20 years it isn't all that easy to see how we can achieve it.
But it is predictable that if we do not achieve it, we run
the risk of combining the disadvantages of every course of
action and also of missing what I repeat I consider a
considerable strategic opportunity at this moment.

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I know the question has been put whether the current phase is a tactical phase or a strategic phase. I do not know the answer to that question. And I do not believe anybody knows the answer to that question until we test it. But we cannot test it unless we put the right questions and define the right issues.

It is very probable that we will have a relaxation of tensions for the next two or three years. I would argue it is up to us whether it is an interlude or a turning point. Now that we have got to this point I consider it a considerable achievement of this Administration. Whether it will use the opportunity depends on its decisions in the next weeks and months. I am reasonably hopeful but it will have to overcome many philosophical preconceptions and many internal hurdles in the way our government and our society now operates. But then it has always been true that every great achievement had to be somebody's vision before it became a reality. And when all is said and done, you should not conclude from this catalog of difficulties that I have just described anything other than that I have tried to describe a challenge, an opportunity, and one which I believe is within our capability to master.

Now, I'll be glad to answer some questions.