MEET THE PRESS

MR. MONROE: Our guest today on MEET THE PRESS is former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.

Dr. Kissinger, Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Dayan—Israeli Foreign Minister, I should say—said the other day the U.S. is tilting toward the Arabs and away from Israel because of oil. Do you perceive such a tilt in the Carter administration policies?

DR. KISSINGER: Right now, I find it very difficult to tell exactly what the dispute is about, because it is based on press leaks, and many things that occur beneath the surface.

I would say that the administration obviously is looking at the oil question. I could not say from what I see that there is a tilt against Israel.

MR. MONROE: You don't perceive any tilt?

DR. KISSINGER: You cannot say this until you have seen a formal statement of the American position, which doesn't exist. What we have are rumors and vague allegations.

MR. MONROE: Four years ago, you initiated the pledge to Israel that the United States would not talk to the Palestine Liberation Organization unless it accepted U.N. Resolution 242 and recognized Israel's right to exist.

The Carter administration now seems to feel it would be a good idea to work out some kind of arrangement under which the PLO would accept Resolution 242 and would recognize Israel's right to exist, following which the U.S. would be in a position to make direct contact with the PLO. Do you think that that would move the whole peace situation forward?

DR. KISSINGER: Our understanding with Israel was that we would not consider talking to the PLO until they had recognized Israel's right to exist in Resolution 242. With respect to the immediate situation, I have never believed that the West Bank issue can be solved primarily between the PLO and Israel. Leaving aside now the question of recognition, I do not believe that the strategy of getting the PLO into direct negotiations with Israel, or for that matter into direct negotiations with us, is the best way of solving the West Bank issue.

MR. MONROE: So you don't think it would help things at all to get the PLO to accept the existence of Israel and then for the United States to get into direct contact, itself, with the PLO?

1

**DR. KISSINGER:** No, I always believed that the best approach to the solution of the West Bank problem is a negotiation between Jordan and Israel, after which the relationship with the Palestinians to that settlement should be worked out between the Arab states, including the PLO, and Jordan. I believe that any attempt to bring about a direct negotiation between the PLO and Israel is going to stalemate the negotiations.

**MR. MONROE:** How about direct communication between the U.S. and the PLO—no benefits in that?

**DR. KISSINGER:** If the PLO accepts the principle of Israel's right to exist and Resolution 242, then there might be some benefits in it, but I must say I have never in my own thinking put the PLO in the position of pre-eminence in the solution of these problems.

(Announcements)

**MRS. HOUSE:** Dr. Kissinger, when you negotiated that agreement with Israel not to talk to the PLO in 1975, did you mean at that time that we wouldn't have any contact whatsoever with the PLO, or did you mean that in a more diplomatic sense of, there would be no formal recognition and no formal negotiation?

**DR. KISSINGER:** The intention was, there would be no negotiation with the PLO and no contact on the Middle East issues, affecting Israel until the PLO had recognized Israel's right to exist and Resolution 242. We did subsequently, with the knowledge of Israel, have some contact with the PLO on purely Lebanese questions involving the evacuation of Americans.

**MRS. HOUSE:** How can a super power restrict itself so in whom it can talk to if the PLO could in any way perhaps enhance peace in a part of the world that is of such importance to us?

**DR. KISSINGER:** Our judgment was that the PLO could not enhance these. Our judgment was that to bring the PLO into negotiations would almost guarantee their stalemate, and the negotiation we wanted to bring about was between Jordan and Israel and not between the PLO and Israel, so it reflected our own strategic judgment. It was not a favor we did to Israel.

**MRS. HOUSE:** When you were Secretary of State, you explored efforts by the Congress to conduct foreign policy rather than supervise it, and when you were testifying on the Hill the other day about this SALT treaty, you seemed to be suggesting that Congress should do just that now in reviewing U.S.-Soviet relations and voting every two years whether the administration could continue arms negotiations with the Russians. How do you square those two?

2

DR. KISSINGER: We have long since now passed the point where Congress does not supervise the conduct of foreign policy, and since there is a whole range of issues—human rights, for example, Greek-Turkish negotiations, in which the Congress requires a periodic report—it seems to me that Soviet conduct, which affects the security of the United States and the prospect of future negotiations might well be a subject of one of those reports.

MRS. HOUSE: Would you like to be the one that issues those good-conduct certificates or bad-conduct certificates to the Russians if you were Secretary of State still?

DR. KISSINGER: Whether I would like it—to be or not—our big problem is how to put the United States on record that the recent Soviet geopolitical conduct cannot be continued, and we must find some national expression to do this. This was my attempt to suggest a way of doing it, and if the Congress can find a better solution, I am certainly open-minded on that.

MR. UNGAR: Dr. Kissinger, in your Senate testimony on the SALT II treaty, you suggested that substantial increases in the defense budget are necessary. I wonder if you would care to be more specific now about just how large those increases ought to be and what the money should be spent on?

DR. KISSINGER: I think it is a mistake for an outsider to get into either percentages or specific figures. I would rather like to describe the situation.

The situation is, that except for naval forces, we are going to be behind, and increasingly behind, in every significant strategic category of military power, and even in naval power the balance is beginning to shift.

Given the world of instability in which we live, this means that in the 1980s we are bound to be confronting crises in which our forces will be inadequate, so what is needed is a national decision to try to close these gaps. I believe that we need them in practically every category of power, of strategic forces, theatre nuclear forces, conventional forces, and some additions to our naval power.

I believe the best way to proceed would be for the administration to put forward a supplementary budget and a new five-year program expressed in forces rather than in dollars, and on that basis I will be able to make a judgment, but I think specifically we need the MX and Trident II and strategic forces. We need cruise missiles and some theatre ballistic missiles. We need greater mobility and an increase in conventional forces. How much money that involves, I am in no position to say.

MR. UNGAR: If you were a member of the United States Senate—and some people think you might like to become one—

3

what would your recommendations be about how to raise the additional money for some of these programs? Would you increase taxes, or would you cut back on specific other programs?

**DR. KISSINGER:** First, I haven't addressed this question, but I would reject the implications of the question, that we have a choice between national defense and other programs.

Either what I have suggested, and others like Senator Nunn have and Jackson have suggested, and Senator Tower—either it is in our national interest or it isn't. If it is essential for our national security, we must find a way of raising the money for it. If it isn't essential for our national security, we shouldn't do it.

**MR. UNGAR:** But how would you go about raising the money if you were confronted with that choice?

**DR. KISSINGER:** I would attempt to do it in a manner which would not add to the inflationary pressures, and I have not examined the question of whether this is best done by the taxation route or by cutting some other programs or what savings could be made in the operation of the government. I have simply not addressed this issue.

**MR. EVANS:** Dr. Kissinger, your comments on SALT II have had a certain notoriety in the last few weeks. I would like to ask you about SALT I, which was your own baby; you negotiated that treaty. You said in 1974, sir, and I think I quote accurately, "Good faith is involved in not pressing against the legal limits."

Do you think the Soviets have pressed against the legal limits on your SALT I treaty? I am particularly thinking of the SS-19 as a replacement for the SS-11.

**DR. KISSINGER:** I think the Soviets have pressed against the legal limits.

**MR. EVANS:** When you told a very worried U.S. Senate after SALT I—you said there are a number of safeguards against a missile as big as the SS-19, replacing the SS-11. Then you said, "The heaviest light missile that now exists limits the substitution for that missile. We believe that we have assurances," you said.

Two and a half years later, you said in a State Department press conference, "We obviously did not know in 1972 what missiles the Soviet Union would be testing in 1974," alluding to the SS-19.

How do you explain that to the American people today, sir?

**DR. KISSINGER:** In 1972, the Soviet Union had two missiles that we were aware of, the SS-11 and the SS-9. The SS-9 was a heavy missile. At that time, the biggest worry that we had—in fact, the only worry we had about substitution was the emplace-

4

ment of the SS-9 into the SS-11 silos, and we thought that we had sufficient assurance that the SS-9—that is to say, the heavy missile—would not be emplaced into the SS-11 silo. What we did not understand at that time and on which we had no evidence whatever at the time, because it didn't exist, was that the Soviet Union would construct a missile which was sort of half-way between the SS-11 and SS-9; that is, half-way between the light missile and the heavy missile, and which technically did not violate the limitations of a 15 percent increase, but which, using all the fine points of the print, was technically within the agreement. It was simply our lack of knowledge that such a missile existed or could be built.

**MR. EVANS:** Would you call that bad faith, Dr. Kissinger?

**DR. KISSINGER:** I would call it sharp practice.

**MR. EVANS:** What makes you think—and you have not criticized SALT II on this respect—that the Russians won't do exactly the same thing in replacing the SS-19, because they have refused to go along with the American definition of just how large a missile the SS-19 is.

**DR. KISSINGER:** I would say now we have to count on the fact that the Soviet Union is likely to push to the very limits of the agreement and to do things that we cannot now foresee that would be technically legal but are now unforeseeable. I do not question that.

**MR. EVANS:** Can I follow that up? Why, then, Dr. Kissinger, did you not make this point in your testimony either to the Senate Foreign Relations or Armed Services Committee? You restricted your testimony to what Mr. Ungar pointed out, the need for new weapons and on the protocol, but you did not criticize the failure of the American negotiating team to force the Russians to agree to a definition of the SS-19. Is that not an oversight in your testimony, sir?

**DR. KISSINGER:** I would again say it is quite—I would expect that the Soviet Union cannot increase—that the Soviet Union did press against the limits of the previous agreement.

With respect to SS-19, there is the constraint that its throw-weight and launch-weight should not be able to be increased.

**MR. EVANS:** They haven't agreed on what that is.

**DR. KISSINGER:** That I would consider a weakness in the drafting.

**MR. MONROE:** Dr. Kissinger, when you were on this program last March, the Nicaraguan revolution was then going on, and the U.S. government was in the position of trying to disengage

5

(LC)

itself from the dictator, Somoza. You said at that time, "I think it is a dangerous business in which we are engaged."

How do you view the situation in Nicaragua five months later?

**DR. KISSINGER:** I think it was a very dangerous business in which we were engaged, because it is one thing to turn against another government; it is another to do so without knowing what is going to take its place. I believe that the practical consequence of the overthrow of Somoza is to replace an admittedly unattractive regime with another government whose domestic practices may not turn out to be much more attractive, but whose foreign policy implications against the United States are bound to be very serious. All of the propaganda one hears out of Nicaragua is extremely anti-American; it is likely to have an impact on surrounding countries like Salvador, Guatemala and, in time, even on countries like Mexico. So I think that the trends in Nicaragua, the relationship developing between Nicaragua and Cuba, is a matter of foreign policy concern to the United States, without having any—implying the slightest approbation for the regime that has been displaced, which was despicable.

**MR. MONROE:** In most situations where revolutions break out against authoritarian governments, where these governments may be friendly to us—Iran is an example; Nicaragua is an example—you appear to have a tendency to advocate sticking to the dictator rather than risk the chances of supporting the revolutionaries.

If we profess democracy, but, in fact, have a tendency to support dictators against revolutionaries, doesn't this open the field for Communists or others perhaps hostile to us to come in and make gains?

**DR. KISSINGER:** First of all, I wouldn't consider the Shah a dictator. I think authoritarianism is a more accurate description. Secondly, I think any observer of the Iranian scene would say today that Iran is less free, less prosperous, than it was under the previous regime, so I do not see the gains in democracy that have been made there. Press censorship is more severe; voting is an absurdity, and therefore, I do not believe that we have replaced an authoritarian pro-American regime with a democratic anti-American one. We have seen the replacement of an authoritarian pro-American regime by a more oppressive anti-American regime, and I cannot consider that an asset. Certainly the ideal solution would be a pro-American democratic regime, but this is usually the result of a long evolution.

**MR. MONROE:** Are you saying we should have done more for the Shah and more for Somoza?

**DR. KISSINGER:** I think the case of Somoza and the Shah

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are quite different. I think in the case of the Shah a great deal depends on what period you are talking about. I believe, in retrospect, that we should have done more to urge the Shah into broadening the base of his government several years before the outbreak. I think, however, once the revolution began, we should have shown more support for the Shah.

In the case of Somoza, it wasn't a case of showing support for Somoza. It was a case of the United States actively working to overthrow Somoza without having any idea with what to replace him, and I think if we were prepared to move against Somoza, I think we should have also been prepared simultaneously to put in his place a moderate alternative.

**MRS. HOUSE:** You spoke of the need to put the Soviets on notice about their misbehavior around the world. Should we sell arms to the Chinese as a message?

**DR. KISSINGER:** I would answer the question in a different way. I believe that a Soviet attack on the People's Republic of China would be a matter of the gravest geopolitical consequences, and it is in our national interests that the People's Republic of China maintain its capacity for independent existence, and that the Soviet Union not be tempted to attack them. Whether that is best accomplished by assisting the economic development of China and permitting them to—in this manner putting them in position to take care of the needs of their defense or by some other methods is something that I have not recently had a chance to study.

**MRS. HOUSE:** You are very knowledgeable about the Chinese and about the Russians as well. Which way is better? Simply developing economically or selling them weapons?

**DR. KISSINGER:** I think, if it is possible for China to develop its economy and take care of its own weapons production, that would be better. If that is not possible, I would at least look at the other possibility.

**MRS. HOUSE:** Should we have supported them in their move against the Vietnamese?

**DR. KISSINGER:** The question isn't whether we should have supported them in their move against the Vietnamese; the question is whether we should have made an exact equivalence between the Vietnamese and the Chinese.

**MR. MONROE:** We have three minutes.

**MR. UNGAR:** Dr. Kissinger, you speak of the nation being in grave danger vis-a-vis the Soviet Union now. If one accepts that premise, is it arguable that some of the policies you pursued as

7

National Security Adviser and Secretary of State in the Republican administrations helped put us in that grave danger?

DR. KISSINGER: It is arguable, but I wouldn't agree with it.

MR. UNGAR: The policy of detente: For example, some people argue that you opposed development of the B-1 and cruise missile originally because it would endanger detente.

DR. KISSINGER: But that is total nonsense. I strongly supported the B-1, and twice the cruise missile had been struck from the defense budget and I put it back in. So it is simply not true.

MR. UNGAR: But didn't the Nixon and Ford administrations decrease the amount of spending on strategic matters from the last Johnson administration?

DR. KISSINGER: The Nixon administration came in in a period of tremendous turmoil in the Congress. President Nixon cut the defense budget somewhat in order to avert worse cuts. On top of his cuts, the Congress cut $34 billion out of the defense budget, and every new weapons program from ABM to multiple warheads got under vicious Congressional attack.

MR. EVANS: Dr. Kissinger, I want to ask you a question that a man of your eminence and your background as a diplomat probably won't want to answer. Be hypothetical for one moment. You said our weakness, today, is bound to create opportunities for political blackmail against us by the Russians in the 1980s. Hypothetically, give me three examples of such blackmail.

DR. KISSINGER: Middle East.

MR. EVANS: What kind of blackmail in the Middle East?

DR. KISSINGER: Crises that could arise unsought by any of the countries in which similar to the 1973 alert the Soviets threaten intervention. I cannot exclude pressure against China, and I cannot, if the situation deteriorates beyond a certain point, even exclude pressures against Europe.

MR. EVANS: Is a Berlin crisis possible?

DR. KISSINGER: I think it cannot be excluded if the balance of power shifts importantly against us.

MR. EVANS: And yet you claim that to guard against this the U.S. has to be tougher in dealing with Soviet adventures. Yet that means getting tougher as we get weaker for the next five years. Is that difficult?

DR. KISSINGER: No, but I am recommending that we get stronger.

8

2

MR. MONROE: Our guest today on MEET THE PRESS is former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. Dr. Kissinger, Israeli Prime Minister Moyshe Dayan -- Israeli Foreign Minister, I should say -- said the other day the U.S. is tilting toward the Arabs and away from Israel because of oil. Do you perceive such a tilt in the Carter Administration policies?

DR. KISSINGER: Right now, I find it very difficult to tell exactly what the dispute is about, because it is based on press leaks and many things that occur beneath the surface.

The Carter Administration now seems to feel it would be a good idea to work out some kind of arrangement under which the PLO would accept Resolution 242 and would recognize Israel's right to exist, following which the U.S. would be in a position to make direct contact with the PLO. Do you think

3

DR. KISSINGER: No, I always believed the best approach to the solution of the West Bank problem is a negotiation between Jordan and Israel, after which the relationship with the Palestinians to that settlement should be worked out between the Arab states, including the PLO, and Jordan. I believe that any attempt to bring about a direct negotiation between the PLO and Israel is going to stalemate the negotiations.

MR. MONROE: How about direct communication between the U.S. and the PLO -- no benefits in that?

(10)

DR. KISSINGER: If the PLO accepts the principle of Israel's right to exist and Resolution 242, then there might be some benefits in it, but I must say I have never in my own thinking put the PLO in the position of pre-eminence in the solution of these problems.

(Announcements)

MS. HOUSE: Dr. Kissinger, when you negotiated that agreement with Israel not to talk to the PLO in 1975, did you mean at that time that we wouldn't have any contact whatsoever with the PLO, or did you mean that in a more diplomatic sense of there would be no formal recognition and no formal negotiation?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, the intention was there would be no negotiation with the PLO and no contact on the Middle East until issues, affecting Israel, the PLO had recognized Israel's right to exist and Resolution 242. We did subsequently, with the knowledge of Israel, have some contact with the PLO on purely Lebanese questions involving the evacuation of Americans.

MS. HOUSE: How can a super power restrict itself so in who it can talk to if the PLO could in any way perhaps enhance peace in a part of the world that is of such importance to us?

DR. KISSINGER: Our judgment was that the PLO could not enhance these. Our judgment was to bring the PLO into negotiations would almost guarantee their stalemate and that the

5

MS. HOUSE: When you were Secretary of State, you deplored
efforts by the Congress to conduct foreign policy rather than
supervise it, and when you were testifying on the Hill the
other day about this SALT treaty, you seemed to be suggesting
that Congress should do just that now in reviewing U.S.-Soviet
relations and voting every two years whether the administra-
tion could continue arms negotiations with the Russians. How
do you square those two?

DR. KISSINGER: We have long since now passed the point
where Congress does not supervise the conduct of foreign policy,
and since there are a whole range of issues -- human rights,
for example; Greek-Turkish negotiations, in which the Congress
requires a periodic report -- it seems to me that Soviet con-
duct, which affects the security of the United States and the
prospect of future negotiations might well be a subject of one
of those reports.

MS. HOUSE: Would you like to be the one that issues those
good-conduct certificates or bad-conduct certificates to the
Russians if you were Secretary of State still?

DR. KISSINGER: Whether I would like it to be or not,
our big problem is how to put the United States on record
that the reason Soviet geopolitical conduct cannot be continued,

6

DR. KISSINGER: I think it is a mistake for an outsider
to get into either percentages or specific figures. I would
rather like to describe the situation. The situation is, that
except for naval forces, we are going to be behind, and increas-
ingly behind, in every significant strategic category of mili-
tary power and even in naval power the balance is beginning to
shift.

Given the world of instability in which we live, this
means in the 1980s we are bound to be confronting crises in
which our forces will be inadequate, so what is needed is a
national decision to try to close these gaps, and I believe that
we need them in practically every category of power, of strategic
forces, theatre nuclear forces, conventional forces, and some
additions to our naval power.

and on that basis I will be able to make a judgment, but I think
specifically we need the MX, TRIDENT II, and strategic forces;
we need cruise missiles and some theatre ballistic
missiles. We need greater mobility and an increase in conven-
tional forces. How much money that involves, I am in no posi-
tion to say.

MR. UNGAR: If you were a member of the United States
Senate -- and some people think you might like to become one --
what would your recommendations be about how to raise the addi-
tional money for some of these programs? Would you increase
taxes, or would you cut back on specific other programs?

DR. KISSINGER: First, I would not address this question;
but I would reject the implication of the question that we
have a choice between national defense and other programs.

Either what I have suggested and others like Senator Numm
have, and Jackson have suggested, and Senator Tower. Either
it is in our national interest or it isn't. If it is essential
for our national security, we must find a way of raising the
money for it. If it isn't essential for our national security,
we shouldn't do it.

MR. UNGAR: But how would you go about raising the money
if you were confronted with that choice?

DR. KISSINGER: I would attempt to do it in a manner which
would not add to the inflationary pressures, and I have not
examined the question of whether this is best done by the

8

taxation route or by cutting some other programs, or what
savings could be made in the operation of the government. I
have simply not addressed this issue.

MR. EVANS: Dr. Kissinger, your comments on SALT II have
had a certain notoriety in the last few weeks. I would like to
ask you about SALT I, which was your own baby; you negotiated
that treaty. You said in 1974, sir, and I think I quote
accurately, "good faith is involved in not pressing against the
legal limits."

DR. KISSINGER: I think the Soviets have pressed against
the legal limits.

MR. EVANS: When you told a very worried U.S. Senate
after SALT I, you said there are a number of safeguards against
a missile as big as the SS-19, replacing the SS-11, and you
said, "The heaviest light missile that now exists limits the
substitution for that missile. We believe that we have
assurances," you said.

9

DR. KISSINGER: In 1972, the Soviet Union had two missiles that we were aware of. The SS-11 and the SS-9. The SS-9 was a heavy missile. At that time, the biggest worry that we had -- in fact, the only worry we had about substitution -- was the emplacement of the SS-9 into the SS-11 silos, and we thought that we had sufficient assurance that the SS-9 -- that is to say, the heavy missile -- would not be emplaced into the SS-11 silo. What we did not understand at that time and on which we had no evidence whatever at the time, because it didn't exist, was that the Soviet Union would construct a missile which was sort of half-way between the SS-11 and SS-9; that is, half-way between the light missile and the heavy missile, and which technically did not violate the limitations of a fifteen percent increase, but which, using all the fine points of the print, was technically within the agreement. It was simply our lack of knowledge that such a missile existed or could be built.

MR. EVANS: Would you call that bad faith, Dr. Kissinger?

DR. KISSINGER: I would call it sharp practice.

MR. EVANS: You have now criticized SALT II on this respect that the Russians won't do exactly the same thing in replacing the SS-19, because they have refused to go along with the American definition of just how large a missile the SS-19 is.

DR. KISSINGER: I would say now we have to count on

(lc)

10

the fact that the Soviet Union is likely to push to the very
limits of the agreement and to do things that we cannot now
foresee that would be technically legal but are now unforesee-
able.

I do not question that.

MR. EVANS: Can I follow that up? Why, then, Dr. Kissinger,
did you not make this point in your testimony, either to the
Senate Foreign Relations or Armed Services Committee? You
restricted your testimony to what Mr. Ungar pointed out, the
need for new weapons, and on the protocol, but you did not
criticize the failure of the American negotiating team to
force the Russians to agree to a definition of the SS-19. Is
that not an oversight in your testimony, sir.

DR. KISSINGER: I would again say it is quite... I
would expect the Soviet
Union cannot increase -- that the Soviet Union did press
against the limits of the previous agreement.

With respect to SS-19, there is the constraint that its
throw-weight and launch-weight should not be able to be in-
creased.

MR. EVANS: They haven't agreed on what that is.

DR. KISSINGER: That I would consider a weakness in the
drafting.

MR. MONROE: Dr. Kissinger, when you were on this program
last March, the Nicaraguan revolution was then going on, and
the U.S. Government was in the position of trying to disengage

itself from the dictator, Samoza. You said at that time, "I think it is a dangerous business in which we are engaged."

DR. KISSINGER: I think it was a very dangerous business
in which we were engaged because it is one thing to turn
against another government; it is another to do so without
knowing what is going to take its place, and I believe that the
practical consequence of the overthrow of Samoza is to replace an
admittedly unattractive regime with another government whose
domestic practices may not turn out to be much more attractive,
but whose foreign policy implications against the United States
are bound to be very serious. All of the propaganda one hears
out of Nicaragua is extremely anti-American; it is likely to
have an impact on surrounding countries like Salvador,
Guatemala, and in time even on countries like Mexico. So
I think that the trends in Nicaragua, the relationship develop-
ing between Nicaragua and Cuba, is a matter of foreign policy
concern to the United States, without having any -- implying
the slightest approbation for the regime that has been displaced,
which was despicable.

MR. MONROE: In most situations where revolutions break
out against authoritarian governments, where these governments
may be friendly to us -- Iran is an example; Nicaragua
is an example -- you appear to have a tendency to advocate

12

Now, if we profess democracy, but, in fact, have a tendency
to support dictators against revolutionaries, doesn't this
open the field for Communists or others perhaps hostile to us to
come in and make gains?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, first of all, I wouldn't consider
the Shah a dictator. I think authoritarianism is a more accurate
description. Secondly, I think any observer of the Iranian
scene would say today that Iran is less free, less prosperous,
than it was under the previous regime, so I do not see the
gains in democracy that have been made there. Press censor-
ship is more severe; voting is an absurdity, and therefore, I
do not believe that we have replaced an authoritarian pro-American
regime with a democratic anti-American one. We have seen the
replacement of an authoritarian pro-American regime by a more
oppressive anti-American regime, and I cannot consider that
an asset. Certainly the ideal solution would be a pro-
American democratic regime, but this is usually the result
of a long evolution.

MR. MONROE: Are you saying we should have done more for
the Shah and more for Samoza?

DR. KISSINGER: I think the case of Samoza and the Shah are
quite different. I think in the case of the Shah a great deal
depends on what period you are talking about. I believe, in

13

In the case of Samoza, it wasn't a case of showing support
for Samoza. It was a case of the United States actively work-
ing to overthrow Samoza without having any idea with what to
replace him, and I think if we were prepared to move against
Samoza, I think we should have also been prepared/to put in
his place a moderate alternative.

simultaneously

MS. HOUSE: You spoke of the need to put the Soviets on
notice about their misbehavior around the world. Should we
sell arms to the Chinese as a message?

DR. KISSINGER: I would answer the question in a different
way. I believe that a Soviet attack on the People's Republic
of China would be a matter of the gravest geopolitical con-
sequences, and it is in our national interests that the People's
Republic of China maintain its capacity for independent
existence, and that the Soviet Union not be tempted to
attack them. Now, whether that is best accomplished by assist-
ing the economic development of China and permitting them to --
in this manner putting them in position to take care/of their
defense or by some other method, is something I have not
recently had a chance to study.

MS. HOUSE: You are very knowledgeable about the Chinese

14

and about the Russians as well. Which way is better? Simply
developing economically, or selling them weapons?

DR. KISSINGER: I think, if it is possible for China to
develop its economy and take care of its own weapons produc-
tion, that would be better. If that is not possible, I would at
least look at the other possibility.

MS. HOUSE: Should we have supported them in their move
against the Vietnamese?

DR. KISSINGER: The question isn't whether we should have
supported them in their move against the Vietnamese; the ques-
tion is whether we should have made an exact equivalence between
the Vietnamese and the Chinese.

MR. MONROE: We have three minutes.

MR. UNGAR: Dr. Kissinger, you speak of the nation being
in grave danger vis-a-vis the Soviet Union now. If one accepts
that premise, is it arguable that some of the policies you pur-
sued as National Security Adviser and Secretary of State in
the Republican administrations helped put us in that grave
danger?

MR. UNGAR: The policy of detente. For example, some
people argue you opposed development of the B-1 and cruise
originally
missile/because it would endanger detente.

DR. KISSINGER: That is total nonsense. I strongly

15

been
supported the B-1, and twice the cruise missile had/struck from
the defense budget and I put it back in. So it is simply not
true.

MR. UNGAR: But didn't the Nixon and Ford Administrations
decrease the amount of spending on strategic matters from the
last Johnson Administration?

DR. KISSINGER: The Nixon Administration came in in a
period of tremendous turmoil in the Congress. President Nixon
cut the defense budget somewhat in order to avert worse cuts.
On top of his cuts, the Congress cut $34 billion out of the
defense budget and every new weapons program from ABM to
multiple warheads; we got under vicious Congressional attack.

DR. KISSINGER: Middle East.

DR. KISSINGER: Crises that could arise unsaught
by any of the countries similar to the 1973 alert, the Soviets
threaten intervention. I cannot exclude pressure against China
and I cannot, if the situation deteriorates beyond a certain

16

MR. UNGAR: Is a Berlin crisis possible?

MR. UNGAR: And yet you claim, to guard against this, the
U.S. has to be tougher in dealing with Soviet adventures. And yet
that means getting tougher as we get weaker for the next five
years. Is that difficult?

MR. UNGAR: But not in the next five years.

DR. KISSINGER: I think we have to get stronger. We have
to bring our power into relationship with our policy. As we
get stronger, we have to get tougher.

MR. MONROE: Thank you, Dr. Kissinger, for being with us today on MEET THE PRESS.

Next week, our guest on MEET THE PRESS will be Benjamin
R. Civiletti.

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