Public
Opinion

Volume 1 Number 2 May/June 1978

CONTENTS

2 FROM THE PUBLISHER

by William J. Baroody, Jr.

3 IS THERE A CRISIS OF SPIRIT IN THE WEST?

A conversation with Dr. Henry A. Kissinger and Senator Daniel P. Moynihan
Two leaders find the American people still strong but the establishment
suffering a "loss of nerve."

9 THE ENERGY BATTLE: Why the White House Misfired

by Kevin P. Phillips

An administration that relies heavily upon polls was apparently reading
the wrong ones when it adopted an energy strategy.

15 REPORTS ON THE MIDDLE EAST

Six months after Sadat's "sacred journey," American attitudes are
shifting, but Israeli attitudes have congealed again around old views.

I. American Opinion on Shifting Sands

by Andrew Kohut

II. Further Commentary on American Attitudes

by Seymour Martin Lipset

III. In Israel, Back to Square One

by Louis Guttman

21 OPINION ROUNDUP

41 FROM HERE TO NEW HAMPSHIRE

The New Hampshire primary is closer than you think; here's an
early look at the terrain that lies ahead.

I. TV's Newest Program:

The "Presidential Nominations Game"

by Michael J. Robinson

II. Four GOP Strategists Look at Their Party's Hopes

by John Deardourff, David Keene, John Sears and Robert Teeter

III. The White House or Plains in 1980?

by Burns W. Roper

52 MAKING ENDS MEET:

How Families Cope with Inflation and Recession

by David Caplovitz

Many Americans have escaped the ravages of inflation and unemployment,
but others have not—and they may be losing confidence in capitalism,
in government, and in the American dream.

55 POLLS AND POLITICS:

The French Elections

by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick

What did the elections mean for French politicians and pollsters?

Dr. Kirkpatrick explores the answers to both questions.

60 COLLECTOR'S ITEMS

by David Gergen

Publisher

William J. Baroody, Jr.

Associate Publisher

Gary L. Jones

Co-Editors

Seymour Martin Lipset

Ben J. Wattenberg

Managing Editor

David R. Gergen

Associate Editor

Andrea M. Haines

Assistant Editor

William A. Schambra

Editorial Assistant

John F. W. Rogers

Research Assistants

Jana Hruska Fagan

Teresa Law

Editorial Board

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick

Irving Kristol

Everett Carll Ladd, Jr.

Howard Penniman

Austin Ranney

Richard M. Scammon

Laurence J. Silberman

Herbert Stein

Richard J. Whalen

Consulting Editor for
Opinion Roundup

Everett Carll Ladd, Jr.

Assistants

Marilyn Potter

Ann Marie Mercure

Art & Design Director

Pat Taylor

Production Manager

Elizabeth D. Ashooh

PUBLIC OPINION, May/June 1978, Vol. I, No. 2. Published bimonthly by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Copyright 1978 American Enterprise Institute. Charter subscription rates (until June 30): $10.00 for one year, $20.00 for two years. Regular rates (after June 30): $12.00 for one year, $22.00 for two years. Individual copy: $2.50. Information on bulk orders or multiple subscriptions available on request. Editorial and business offices: c/o AEI, 1150 17th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. Send changes of address and all subscription correspondence to Circulation Department, c/o AEI, same address.

ISSN 0149-9157

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Public
Opinion

# Is There A Crisis of Spirit in the West?

## A Conversation with Dr. Henry A. Kissinger & Senator Daniel P. Moynihan

Photographs by Marianne Pernold

Discussion between Dr. Henry A. Kissinger and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan on April 12, 1978, at AEI. Ben J. Wattenberg moderates.

Ben J. Wattenberg: Gentlemen, in order to begin this discussion, we have prepared a short preliminary statement for your consideration:

Our central question is whether there is a "crisis of spirit" in the West, and if so, what could, or should, be done about it.

It has seemed to many observers in recent years that the core of the Western dilemma is indeed in the realm of spirit—that we face a profound problem of public opinion, or perhaps more specifically, of elite opinion.

Consider the situation: a collection of nations—successful beyond belief, industrially dominant, technologically potent, responding demonstrably to time-honored human desires—is found to be under both physical and ideological threat.

Militarily, our primary challenger has mounted a massive build-up of arms, and even though a plurality of Americans now say for the first time that the Soviet Union—not the United States—is the most powerful military force in the world, our leadership seems to shirk from redressing the military balance, as we have seen most recently in decisions concerning new weapons systems. In various trouble spots around the world—Africa the most noticeable right now—the public seems unwilling to support strong Western initiatives and the Communist side has advanced. Intellectually, our values are under siege from what has been called "the totalitarian temptation." Communism in Western Europe has gained ground—if not in the popular vote, surely by many political tests. Our nations are assailed in international forums for colonial guilt, economic rape and underwater plunder.

Challenged militarily, ideologically and economically, the nations of the West seem to respond reluctantly and with a noticeable lack of passion. Ironically, most observers are convinced that if the Western nations would choose to muster their forces, most of these threats would diminish, in degree if not in kind. The flesh is willing, the spirit is weak.

Dr. Kissinger, you have said that the Western world suffers from an

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"Most elites that lose wars lose their heads in the process. That has happened in this country in a way, and it has meant great internal change."

"inner uncertainty" and that "the aspect of contemporary life that worries me most is the lack of purpose and direction in so much of the Western world."

Senator Moynihan, you have talked of a "failure of nerve" on the part of the West.

In the past, you gentlemen have agreed on many questions pertaining to these issues and you have disagreed on others. Today we would like to explore your current feelings in the context of a free-flowing conversation.

Senator Moynihan, perhaps you could begin. You have spoken of a failure of nerve in the past. Do you still see a failure of nerve and is it currently affecting our foreign policy?

**Daniel P. Moynihan:** Very much. More so now than a few years ago when I originally sensed it.

First, we had the enormous failure of Vietnam, which was an enterprise begun by an extraordinarily confident and powerful foreign policy establishment—a bipartisan establishment—which had run affairs for a quarter century. That establishment may have been performing with diminishing degrees of success, but overall it had done a brilliant job and it had never had a failure.

Then came Vietnam, and when it failed, something more important than that happened. The social base on which that elite rested turned against its own policies. The great symbolic moment, at least in my mind, occurred at the Kennedy Institute of Politics one evening in the fall of 1966 when Robert McNamara came and suddenly found himself and his car surrounded by protesting students. I was in Cambridge at the time, and we were dazed, uncertain of what was happening. After all, McNamara had been President Kennedy's secretary of defense, and his visit symbolized many things. He was coming to the Kennedy Institute of Politics, to Kennedy's university, to his own graduate school, to talk about the war—and suddenly he found that the very base of his establishment had turned. That had to be an unnerving experience, and it was.

Most elites that lose wars lose their heads in the process. That has happened in this country in a way, and it has made for great internal change. I have this joke—which Henry may or may not appreciate—about the people who started the war and ran it and are still working here in Washington. Their excuse today is that "I was only giving orders." [Laughter.]

**Mr. Wattenberg:** Dr. Kissinger, do you agree that this failure of spirit, this crisis of spirit—if that is the correct phrase—is a phenomenon of elites, or is it of the public or both?

**Henry A. Kissinger:** I think there are three phenomena.

The first is the one that Pat described, the loss of nerve of the establishment that ran foreign policy in the postwar period and then conspicuously failed in Vietnam. Failure is always painful, and therefore, there is lacking now that supporting group which gives leaders in complicated situations self-confidence by conferring on them the approbation of people of prestige.

The second phenomenon is that partly among that group and partly among the intellectuals who grew up in that period—people of the ages, say, between thirty-five and forty and fifty—there developed not just a disappointment with a lost war but almost a desire to lose.

When we left Vietnam, it wasn't enough for the protesters that we got out. Vietnam had to be cut off from supplies. Our country was not permitted to have one vestige of possible success, lest we do it again. An attitude developed that we must not conduct any policy—other than rhetoric—anywhere in the world that might possibly succeed. This feeling goes beyond disillusionment with the war. It turns into a self-hatred in which, as Michael Ledeen said the other day in the *New Republic* (April 8, 1978), the myth is that "The

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enemy is us.”

Then a third problem going *beyond* Vietnam is that during the entire postwar period, there have been groups in the political establishment who have maintained that the whole cold war and the whole international enterprise were unnecessary, that the Soviets were misunderstood, and that there is a hardline group in the Kremlin opposing a softline group. In their perspective, the softline group always turns out to be the incumbent. The incumbent becomes a hardliner only in retrospect. As they saw it, Stalin was a softliner when he was in office, and Harry Hopkins was writing that, "Of course, we can trust Stalin, but we do not know what sinister forces are lurking in the dark recesses of the Kremlin." Similar claims were made about Khrushchev and are now being made about Brezhnev. But what you have now—through the demoralization of the establishment—is that this third group, which had always believed that there was no geopolitical problem and that there was no ideological problem, is much more unopposed today than it was in the past.

To summarize, I do not believe—in this country, at least—that there is a *public* problem. In this country we have a *leadership* problem. The public has a rather healthy perception, elemental perhaps, but fundamentally sound.

**Senator Moynihan:** I would like very much to confirm my sense of the reality of that third group, that third phenomenon you describe. It's a phenomenon that is not normally absent from Western countries but that frequently appears under auspices that deprive it of some legitimacy, having said that as indirectly as I can. In recent years, that group appears to have been legitimized here by seeming to have been right about the foreign policy in the last decade.

Henry, you mentioned Ledeen's passage about the view that the enemy is us, Walt Kelley's phrase. I'll not forget an incident from the Vietnam period. We're sitting here today not very far from the Peace Corps headquarters. We developed the poverty program, OEO, in that building in 1963. I remember in Washington in 1969 there was an antiwar demonstration of some kind, and a group of returned Peace Corps volunteers took over that building and flew the Vietcong flag from the flagpole of the Peace Corps building. At that moment, it suddenly came to me that these young people had adopted an identification with the aggressor.

I'll tell a story. Fifteen years ago I was in Washington. Our children were young, and there was a movie shown called "The Swiss Family Robinson" which was an old sort of bowdlerized Robinson Crusoe. The Swiss Family is shipwrecked and has wonderful adventures. They do very clever things, and they get rescued finally. You had to take all the children to see this movie. One Saturday afternoon, we did, and everything was going nicely in this little movie house chirping with young children.

Suddenly the snake scene began. A little boy is playing around in the stream, probably doing something useful, gathering mussels or something, when the music begins to change, and the camera moves up above him to a tree.

And suddenly there it is—the snake! And the snake starts moving down slowly. The music gets very somber, and the theater falls absolutely silent. In the middle of that silence, my five-year-old daughter is heard to say, "That snake *likes* me." [Laughter.]

Now, that's normal in a five-year-old, but abnormal in a thirty-five-year-old. For, in fact, the snake wants to eat you. And I think we have some of that phenomenon in our country just now.

But I much agree with the secretary that it's a phenomenon, in a curious way, of leadership cadres and elites. The public is still very silent about it.

**Dr. Kissinger:** To take this point of Pat's, I think, for example, I can understand that people can come to the conclusion that a war is lost and that it has to be liquidated on the best terms available. This is a sad event because no one can want this country to lose a war. What I have difficulty understanding

"When I see ... the head of ACTION going to a meeting where the North Vietnamese Ambassador upon joining the U.N. castigates the U.S., and this American official says, 'This is the proudest day of my life ...,' that raises to me really profound questions about the fundamental motivation from the beginning."

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"... at the second and third levels of this administration, many people came in who are 'graduates' of the Vietnam period.... They have some convictions that if America is not to be punished for its presumption, then at least we must be sure that the country is never presumptuous enough to undertake any more distant enterprises."

is the *relish* in that event.

When I see, for example, the head of ACTION going to a meeting where the North Vietnamese ambassador upon joining the U.N. castigates the United States, and this American official says, "This is the proudest day of my life. This is what we've been working for all these years," that raises to me really profound questions about the fundamental motivation from the beginning.

**Senator Moynihan:** That scene where the Vietcong flag was flown from the Peace Corps headquarters took place during a demonstration which that particular man organized.

**Dr. Kissinger:** Exactly.

**Senator Moynihan:** But I suggest to you that fear may be much more of an explanation of the problems we have been discussing than any perversity of mind, and that our difficulties would be even larger if, in fact, we had all become fearful.

**Dr. Kissinger:** We also have to remember that we are talking about decent people. We are not talking about a conspiracy.

**Mr. Wattenberg:** I understand. But you are describing a mentality that you have seen developing in our country. Let me ask if that mentality is at work today in the State Department, in the White House, in the National Security Council, the Department of Defense?

**Senator Moynihan:** I'll tell you where it is at work—and this will neither surprise nor please the former secretary—but that sort of mentality is at work now in our debates over Africa. We are continually told today that we have to do this or that, accept this or that unattractive option because if we do not, the Russians will send in the Cubans. And this settles an argument! That is the end of an argument. Well, you can see where that kind of assumption will get you eventually.

**Dr. Kissinger:** I think there are two problems with respect to your question, Ben. One, I believe that on the foreign policy side, at the second and third levels of this administration, many people came in who are "graduates" of this Vietnam period. Some of them, in fact supported the war at the beginning and are now working their way back by sometimes rewriting their own history. They have some convictions that if America is not to be punished for its presumption, then at least we must be sure that the country is never presumptuous enough to undertake any more distant enterprises.

Now, with respect to the point that Pat made, yes, we hear that if we don't do this or that, the Cubans will come in. I would say there will be no constructive policy in Africa until we make it clear that, however issues are settled, it will not be by the threat of Cuban intervention. After that point is established, we can have some sensible discussions. But if we are forever blackmailed by the Cubans—a country of nine million off our shores—no constructive policy is possible. What has become of our country when we explain foreign policy by the myth of the invincible Cubans?

**Mr. Wattenberg:** As we have talked of this crisis of the spirit, you have both alluded to Vietnam, which was largely an American phenomenon. Yet this so-called malaise is apparently found throughout the Western world. Western Europe did not have that particular Vietnam problem, and yet this malaise seems to extend to there. Is that correct? Is that sort of spiritual disillusionment present on the continent as well as in the United States?

**Dr. Kissinger:** I think there are a number of forces at work. One is the tendency to escape current dilemmas by making the most favorable assumption about the future. This temptation is overwhelming in societies on the whole satisfied with their lot, and it is one reason why the Communist challenge has been interpreted in the most benign fashion in every decade in the existence of Communism.

Second, there is the phenomenon that the modern bureaucratic state does not give the idealists among the younger generation an outlet for actions that they think might be relevant.

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> "And in the middle of that silence, my five-year-old daughter is heard to say, 'That snake likes me.' Now, that's normal in a five-year-old, but abnormal in a thirty-five-year-old, when, in fact, the snake wants to eat you."

Third, there is the problem that as the pressures of their electoral process have increased, governments have become more and more tactically oriented. The more tactically oriented they are, the more short-term their policies. The more short-term their policies, the less successful they are. So we have the paradox that governments following public opinion polls begin to look more and more incompetent. And as they look incompetent, confidence in government begins to disintegrate, so that the rebels, or the radicals, or those who challenge the society, can get at least enough support for conspicuous terrorism or for the growth of the Communist parties in Western Europe.

I don't know what Pat thinks about that.

**Senator Moynihan:** That's a marvelous idea. The more inphase a government tries to get with opinion, the more confidence declines and the government feels that it must get even more inphase.

**Dr. Kissinger:** You see, I think what the public wants from its government is a solution to its problems. The public's perception of the solution may be very nebulous, and the public judges its leaders by the results, not by whether its policies follow every fad.

**Senator Moynihan:** But could I suggest that behind some of the psychological and political difficulties of today, there is an "objective reality"—the extraordinary success of Soviet policy.

Our former colleague, Adam Ulam, in an article in the *New Republic* in the spring of 1975, wrote that the Soviet Union under Brezhnev had achieved—and he said it would be both dangerous and ungenerous for us to deny it—the leading, if not yet the dominant position in world politics.

That dominance is clearly perceived in Western Europe, and it is beginning to be perceived here. I don't think anybody knows very much about how external politics affect mood and so forth; some people do, I don't anyway. But I said in a speech last weekend that it seemed to me that much of the difficulty we have understanding our Middle East situation is that for the first time, American policy is beginning to accommodate to the assumption that the Soviets are now, or soon will be, the superior military power.

Remarkably, we now have senior officials of this administration coming around to us in the Senate saying we must have a SALT treaty soon because if we do not, by the mid-1980s the Soviets will have surpassed us in strategic power.

I can imagine what you, Henry, would think about a negotiating position in which the other side had only to wait 2,000 days to get where they want to be. Surely we must be able to say to them, "Look, you had better deal with us now, or we will go back and raise such hell, we will double the defense budget, we will quadruple the budget; we can spend indefinitely such that when you are bankrupt we will not be, and so you had better negotiate with us." But if you have psychologically discarded that bargaining technique, then, in fact, you are disarmed.

I think this assumption about Soviet power is becoming an objective reality. If it does, it will begin to show up in ways that will baffle us because we have never, as a people, had the experience of being militarily inferior to anybody since about 1830. I should think Henry Clay would be the last secretary of state who would even give any thought to the idea.

**Mr. Wattenberg:** We are running in this issue of Public Opinion magazine one of the first polls that I have ever seen that shows a plurality of the American people believing that the Soviet Union is stronger than the United States militarily.

**Senator Moynihan:** You mentioned that in your opening statement, and I was going to ask where you got that.

**Mr. Wattenberg:** It's a new poll. (See Opinion Roundup in this issue for the results.)

**Dr. Kissinger:** I think one ought to get this question of Soviet strength into proper perspective. The Soviets have a stagnant system; they have not solved

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"... for the first time, American policy is beginning to accommodate to the assumption that the Soviets are now, or soon will be, the superior military power."

"What has become of our country when we explain foreign policy by the myth of the invincible Cubans?"

the problem of the modern economy and they cannot possibly solve it. We have problems with the economy, but we know ways of dealing with it, and our problems would be their successes if they could ever get to our situation. Furthermore, they have not solved the problem of succession. In no Communist country has there ever been a legitimate succession. Their foreign policy is basically unimaginative. The outstanding quality of the Soviet foreign policy is enormous persistence in whatever course they are pursuing, and this tends to play into our impatience. In a negotiation, if we haven't made a new proposal for three months, we start getting restless. And potentially, we are militarily stronger.

Therefore, I think, in terms of assets, as you said in the beginning, Ben, it is an absolute absurdity to say that the Soviets are stronger than we.

The Soviets have a bureaucratic, unimaginative society, in which all the leaders get old simultaneously, and it ought to be possible to manage whatever challenge they pose.

In every confrontation, we could have had the upper hand. We had them defeated in Angola, and then we defeated ourselves. I don't know what the possibilities were in Ethiopia. I *cannot* believe that a country of nine million can conduct a global policy and the greatest industrial state in the world cannot find a means of stopping it; I just can't believe that. So all I'm saying is that while the phenomenon is described correctly by Pat, there is no reason why this sense of inferiority or retreat has to happen here.

**Mr. Wattenberg:** *But our dilemma is that it is happening. Now both of you seem to be pointing to a lack of passion, of conviction in the essential idea of freedom and human liberty, which at one time was the greatest of rallying cries.*

**Dr. Kissinger,** in a recent paper of yours, you quoted Archibald MacLeish who said that "Freedom is still the last great revolutionary cause." Is the problem that the elites are unable to communicate to the voters in Western societies that freedom is still a cause of passion and ardor?

**Dr. Kissinger:** One other thing is missing. In addition to a belief in freedom, you must have a geopolitical theory or view. You have to know how to go from your values to your security, your world structure, or whatever it is you are aiming for. You cannot simply do it in a fit of moral enthusiasm.

Without the enthusiasm you will not have the fortitude to do what is necessary. But without some conception of what security is, of what it is that you cannot permit and what it is you are to try for, you really will be constantly confronted with a series of confusing situations through which you cannot find your way.

**Senator Moynihan:** I could point to a specific here of the Panama Canal treaties. Let me start by saying that President Carter has taken the issue of human rights and made it a central element in his foreign policy—for which all praise. However, it too often comes out as a doctrine directed against Nicaragua or...

**Dr. Kissinger:** (nodding) Against weak allies.

**Senator Moynihan:** Yes. Against weak allies.

But now if ever there was a situation where you would hope for a confident elite able to come down to the United States Senate and say, "Look, let's sign these Panama Canal treaties. This is a small country; it's been a good friend. The canal is perhaps a wasting asset, but it's the right thing to do. And we, people who spend most of our time thinking about these matters, say to you, let's do this, so we can get on with our real business in the world, which is maintaining the perimeters of freedom and expanding them as we can, and being a self-confident and vibrant alternative to totalitarianism around the world." Now that's what we need, but instead we have a spectacle; I'm afraid it is a spectacle of a *fearful* Senate—fearful of giving up the Panama Canal. Well, if you're fearful of that, think how much else you really are fearful about, in terms of what the world is really like. (Continued on page 58.)

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