April 1, 1992

LARRY KING LIVE SHOW [EC]

seem to be fading.

**KING:** Manila, The Philippines. hello.

**5th CALLER:** [Manila, The Philippines] Hello. Will you be running if you lose this year?

**KING:** Will you run again, Pat?

**Mr. BUCHANAN:** [Laughs] Larry, I'm only committed to go through August and to go through November helping the party and trying to help whoever the nominee is, and I'm not committed to do anything else.

**KING:** What do you fellows both think of the Ross Perot candidacy? Dick — the proposed candidacy, possible candidacy?

**Sen. LUGAR:** I think that Ross Perot ought to help the Republican Party. I think the Republican Party stands for the principles that Ross Perot stands for and that, if he detracts from the strength of the Republican candidate, that will be a disaster for our country.

**KING:** Pat?

**Mr. BUCHANAN:** I think that Dick Lugar is exactly right. If he runs in the general election and he hits some of these issues like foreign aid, he could drain off, siphon off, conservative Republican and conservative Democratic votes that usually go to us in the general election. He could conceivably cost George Bush the presidency.

**KING:** Fargo, North Dakota. hello.

**6th CALLER:** [Fargo, North Dakota] Yes, I'm wondering why we can't tie some of these guarantees to their oil reserves? Russia has a lot of oil reserves and we could tie those in there, and that's never been mentioned.

**KING:** Senator?

**Sen. LUGAR:** A very good point. It was mentioned to the President today in the White House. Collateral for these loans would be a very good idea and there's no reason why in the legislation we're about to fashion we can't mention that explicitly and make that a part of it. I think it's an excellent idea.

**KING:** Pat?

**Mr. BUCHANAN:** I think that would be a far better idea than what I think is truly — even though Dick agrees with me — is really foreign aid.

**KING:** Sebring, Florida. hello.

**7th CALLER:** [Sebring, Florida] Hi. I've got a comment for Mr. Buchanan, in that his statement that foreign aid seems to be a narcotic affecting other countries' budgets— I think we can see that our own welfare system in the United States has a narcotic effect—

**Mr. BUCHANAN:** Right.

**7th CALLER:** —in that we have generations of folks that are in that status and we can't seem to relieve them, either.

**Mr. BUCHANAN:** Well, you know, Larry, on this point it seems to me what we've got in Washington, to be honest, at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue is a new policy of, "Read my lips: No new thinking." Ronald Reagan phased out avenue sharing with our state capitals — all our American states — because we couldn't afford it; but what foreign aid is, is revenue sharing with foreign governments and foreign states that aren't even American.

**KING:** But Dick says it's not revenue. It's not giving

revenues.

**Mr. BUCHANAN:** Well, I mean, look, the point is, Larry they're going to get $24 billion. They are now $80 billion in debt. They can't make payments on those debts. They're bust and bankrupt. Piling $24 billion more in debt on a bankrupt country is not a way to see that money come rolling back.

**KING:** I'm running out of time. Quickly, Stockholm Sweden. hello.

**8th CALLER:** [Stockholm, Sweden] Yes, gentlemen, everybody knows that the Jews are very strong in America. Can you touch the foreign aid to Israel?

**KING:** Can you touch that? You would cut it. right, Pat?

**Mr. BUCHANAN:** I would phase it down and phase it out, that's right. I don't think it's good for Israel. They've increased the size of their state enormously.

**KING:** Dick?

**Sen. LUGAR:** I think that the aid ought to be phased out. I think many people in Israel, particularly on the economic side, have suggested that, if we have the guarantees of the loans now, that will occur over a five-year period.

**KING:** We're out of time. Thanks, guys.

**Mr. BUCHANAN:** Thank you, Larry.

**KING:** We shall be hearing lots more from both of you. Thanks, Pat. Thanks, Dick.

We'll break and come back with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. This is Larry King Live in Washington. Stay right there.

**ANNOUNCER:** Next: How to make sure aid for Russia isn't wasted. Henry Kissinger speaks out.

*[Commercial break]*

## An Interview With Henry Kissinger

**KING:** Welcome back to more of Larry King Live. After World War II, the United States spent billions rebuilding its vanquished enemies. It was the Marshall Plan. It worked like a charm. Some in Detroit, by the way, struggling against Japan and Germany, might say it worked too well. Anyway, another war is over — the cold war — and the United States is again poised to lavish billions on a former foe. But Henry Kissinger says, "Hold on. Times have changed."

The distinguished former Secretary of State joins us here in Washington — finally, Henry, finally — on Larry King Live.

**HENRY KISSINGER, Former Secretary of State:** It's true.

**KING:** What an honor to finally—

**Mr. KISSINGER:** We've always missed each other.

**KING:** OK. And we've agreed we won't discuss the 60 Minutes story tonight, but in the future we will. OK? So we could look at it— your chance to respond in depth. We're not going to do it tonight. OK? Fair?

**Mr. KISSINGER:** Because there isn't time to rebut all the lies that were on that.

**KING:** OK, and I want you to have the time to respond. or not respond. That's your call.

**Mr. KISSINGER:** OK.

KING: All right, the story today. Bush and Clinton—
They both made the same speech, literally. Do you agree?

Mr. KISSINGER: Substantially, yes — more or less the
ame.

KING: What do you mean, "more or less"?

Mr. KISSINGER: Well, I think there were nuances, but
basically Clinton is following the same line as Bush is.

KING: OK, that they agree. Do you agree with them?

Mr. KISSINGER: I agree that it is useful to give aid to
the former Soviet Union today. I do not like some of the
explanations, especially the explanations in the Clinton
speech which were more exalted than the ones in the Bush
speech.

KING: [Laughs] More exalted?

Mr. KISSINGER: More exalted — I mean, in the sense
that the thing that concerns me is to give the impression
that the only interest the United States has in the world is
to spread democracy in the former Soviet Union and that
the spread of democracy will automatically produce peace.

The situation in the Soviet Union is extremely compli-
cated. There were two big revolutions going on in the last
three years: the revolution against communism, and the
revolution against Russian imperialism. The first one goes
back 75 years. The second one goes back 400 years. So
when you look at that, not every anticommunist is a de-
mocrat. Not every democrat is against imperialism, be-
cause imperialism is sometimes quite popular. And so we
have to make sure that the anticommunists don't defeat
the anti-imperialists.

KING: I got you. There are factions going on over there,
as well.

Mr. KISSINGER: Exactly, and so we shouldn't get our-
selves totally enmeshed in the domestic politics of 12 suc-
cessor states.

KING: OK. Do you agree in essence—

Mr. KISSINGER: But I support the aid program that
President Bush put forward today.

KING: Which was pretty much what President Nixon
asked, correct?

Mr. KISSINGER: Yes.

KING: Although he may have asked for more.

Mr. KISSINGER: It really doesn't make— The amount
doesn't make so much difference because we have to keep
in mind we're now talking about $30 billion. Last year
they received $50 billion, which has been totally lost. Or to
look at it another way, East Germany, which has a popula-
tion of 16 million, receives $90 billion a year from West
Germany, plus a civil service, plus a managerial group. If
you wanted to do that in Russia or in the former Soviet
Union, you would need a trillion dollars. So any aid of the
scale that we're now talking about is relatively inadequate
and the difference, say, between President Bush and Presi-
dent Nixon could be only $5 billion. $10 billion — which is
a drop in the bucket.

KING: [Laughs] That's funny — five十 billion is a drop
in the bucket.

Mr. KISSINGER: That's right.

KING: How do you respond to the Pat Buchanan element
of the party, as Pat expressed earlier here tonight — the

far-right wing which might say. "Hey, we've got more prob-
lems than that. We've got our own problems. They're not
our problem. Let them solve their own problems"? I don't
want to quote from him but, in essence, what they're
saying.

Mr. KISSINGER: I don't think they can solve their own
problems in the present situation when you have to go
from central planning to market economics and dismantle
a machinery that has been set up for literally hundreds of
years. To do all of this simultaneously could lead to total
chaos and, in a situation of absolute chaos, you could get
dramatic developments which could spill over into the out-
side world, such as a civil war between the various groups.
So the present scale of effort I support but—

KING: Is in our best interest?

Mr. KISSINGER: It's in our best interest. What we have to watch — but I'm not talking about next year and the year after — is not to create a situation where aid becomes a device by which the old empire is reconstituted. For example, if you force them to use only one currency, that gives the country that has the currency the dominant influence there. And when I listened to some of the people on television explaining it, they present this entirely as if it were an economic technical program. It's a political and historical problem and we have to keep that in mind as it evolves. The first year, I'd support what the President has put forward.

KING: Would you say the President is on top of this situa-
tion?

Mr. KISSINGER: Yes, and I was very impressed that
today he called both Yeltsin and Kravchuk from the Uk-
raine, which indicates that he is aware of the fact that
there are now 12 republics where there was one unified
state before. He called the president of the second-largest
republic, together with President Yeltsin who is the presi-
dent of the largest one.

KING: What influence do you want over this money, or do
you want none?

Mr. KISSINGER: On the economic level, it absolutely
will not work unless they do a number of things — that
they establish a banking system; they have to establish
some legal system in all the republics that are eligible—

KING: And we have a right to say, "Do that"?

Mr. KISSINGER: Well, otherwise, the money will be ab-
solutely down the drain.

KING: OK, so that's one of the things we want for our
money — that they do this?

Mr. KISSINGER: That's right—

KING: OK. what else?

Mr. KISSINGER: —but that in itself doesn't solve the
political problem. What we should also want is that they
establish normal relationships between each other. For ex-
ample, there are not yet really diplomatic relations be-
tween the former components of the Soviet Union, which
suggests that some people may have in the back of their
mind that when they get an opportunity they'll forge them
together again.

We have an interest in preventing a recurrence on the
territory of the former Soviet Union of what happened in

[L.C.]

Yugoslavia because, on that scale and with that bitterness, it could then really spill over elsewhere.

**KING:** We'll come right back with the former Secretary of State, the distinguished Henry Kissinger, on Larry King Live. Don't go away.

*[Commercial break]*

**KING:** This is the first of what we hope will be many appearances on this program worldwide. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is our special guest. This is Larry King Live.

A story that broke late this afternoon, received widespread attention earlier tonight: Russia has long-term plans to forge a sharply-reduced independent armed force of 1.2 million to 1.3 million troops and adopt a defensive military doctrine, a senior Administration official said Wednesday. A force that size and type is far less threatening than the former Soviet Union militarily. Your response?

**Mr. KISSINGER:** I agree and I think that is one of the examples of what I was talking about before. As long as the Soviet Union— or as long as there was a Russian empire, they always had a larger army than anybody else. They were always by their existence a threat to all their neighbors, who then armed, and that set up a vicious spiral of armament on both sides and action and reaction.

If this is actually carried out — and I think it probably will be — this would be a very positive sign that Russia, for the first time in several hundred years, is going to concern

self with its own territory, not threaten its neighbors, and thereby actually probably gain more influence with its neighbors than it had before.

**KING:** What do you think of Boris Yeltsin?

**Mr. KISSINGER:** Well, he is a very Russian type — elemental, courageous, not as sophisticated as Gorbachev, more in tune with the necessities of his society. Gorbachev, in his heart of hearts, was a convinced — is a convinced communist who wanted to liberalize a system that can't be liberalized. Yeltsin — who also started out as a communist and was one for a long, long time — understood that communism itself wouldn't work any more.

**KING:** Henry, did you think, honestly, you'd ever see this in your lifetime?

**Mr. KISSINGER:** I never believed it was possible.

**KING:** What did it?

**Mr. KISSINGER:** Well, in retrospect you can say what did it was that the communist system was so much against the human spirit that a breaking point came. It set up an economy which was really a feudal economy because when every article moved by allocation, when there's nothing spontaneous, when there's no market, when there's no freedom, then a bunch of bureaucrats having total authority become absolutely corrupt, and the standard of living kept falling.

The second thing that did it, probably, is that Gorbachev, funnily enough, overestimated the resilience of the system and he didn't understand that if you start pulling a few threads out the whole thing would come apart. And so he started out very courageously undertaking the reform of the communist system and wound up destroying the com-

munist system, which he never intended.

**KING:** We know the place in history you've set with changing world events, the place that Mr. Nixon has set. What will be Gorbachev's? What will they say of him?

**Mr. KISSINGER:** I think Gorbachev will go down in history as a man who made a huge difference: who started a series of events whose full import he didn't understand and who was consumed by the revolution that he started, but who still made a huge difference.

**KING:** No Gorbachev — no Yeltsin?

**Mr. KISSINGER:** No Gorbachev — no Yeltsin.

**KING:** OK. You said that Clinton was a little off-base. Can you briefly tell us what he said today that you didn't like?

**Mr. KISSINGER:** Well, fundamentally, on all the major points he seems to me to be agreeing with President Bush. There are a number of things he said which I thought did not come with extraordinary grace from him, like when he said that the President ended the war in the Gulf too soon, since his position at the beginning of the war was extremely ambiguous when he said that actually he thought the people who were for sanctions and for deferral of the war had the better of the argument. And I believe that the President was extremely courageous in the way he managed the war, and it's very easy in retrospect to say one should have gone on a few more—

**KING:** But what did Governor Clinton say vis-à-vis the Russians?

**Mr. KISSINGER:** What he said vis-à-vis the Russians, he made one point which I can understand — and that's no criticism — but he spoke of sending tens of thousands of Americans over there to teach them democracy. Now the Russians are a very proud people that have a history of hundreds of years, and certainly we should be prepared to give technical assistance, and surely we should send a few advisers if they ask for it. But to give the impression that we have tens of thousands, or even ten thousand people that could teach them democracy, unless they ask for it in a very specific way, that seems to me to give— That's why I said “somewhat too exalted.”

**KING:** In other words, that's not the way it works, right?

**Mr. KISSINGER:** I think it is not the way it works, and we really have to explain to the American people that, while progress has been made, they are far from being a democracy; and secondly, that Russia is not the only problem there, that there are 11 other republics; and that if we get this out of kilter we may be resuming the tragedies of Russian history, which have been over-extension.

**KING:** Back with more of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on Larry King Live, right after this.

*[Commercial break]*

**KING:** With Henry Kissinger.

How do you make — in a time of political unrest in the United States which you have to be aware of as a candidate or a President — how do you make aid sellable? How do you say to the guy in Des Moines who says, “Throw them all out! They're kiting checks. The President was late on the recession. They're all terrible. Now you want to give my money away!”

-

[L]

Mr. KISSINGER: I think the best explanation is the truth and to explain we've had a big victory in the cold war but that does not mean we can go home. It means that we are now related to the world in a different way than we were before. And the reason I keep emphasizing the American national interest is because I believe the President has to explain why it is in our self-interest to have a world in which there's a minimum incentive for extreme actions and for military action and where there is a maximum incentive for economic growth. In the process, he has also to explain that the problems don't simply go away and that there's some idyllic terminal point.

Now it's a tough job, but I believe if one talks frankly to the American public and says, "Here's what I know. Here is what the history of this place is. Here is what we can do. Here is what we probably cannot do," it goes better than to say, "If we give this then everything will be well," and then there's a setback and huge disillusionment.

KING: In other words, what you're saying — and this is shocking — just be honest.

Mr. KISSINGER: I say the American people need to hear about the world they live in from the people who are supposed to know it best in an area where they have less experience than in their day-to-day affairs. Yet they understand—

KING: And you think that they will understand this and, if they don't and there are political repercussions, well, that's—

Mr. KISSINGER: I think, if it is explained well, the American people in the end have always come through. It's a very patriotic people.

KING: And this is certainly bipartisan.

Mr. KISSINGER: This is bipartisan now.

KING: What do you think about — we'll touch some other bases — the Ross Perot potential candidacy?

Mr. KISSINGER: Well, you know, Ross Perot is a very courageous man with a lot of ideas. He used to drive me crazy during the Vietnam War because he wanted to deliver food to the American prisoners in Vietnam, which was a marvelous objective—

KING: I didn't know that.

Mr. KISSINGER: Oh, yes. And of course it was not easy to convince him that there were technical obstacles to just flying planes— But he managed to get a lot done. Then I greatly admired when he managed to free some of his people from prison in Iran and he launched a rescue operation. Now whether you can go from that to actually running a country which has so many political and psychological aspects— But I think he's a refreshing personality and an interesting man.

KING: Going to be a force in the campaign, do you think, just by the sheer nature of—

Mr. KISSINGER: I think at any rate he will raise important issues. And since I believe that we should get away

from these machine-made politics — the public relations people try to feel out what the pulse is and then write out standard statements — I think it's helpful to have somebody in there who raises these issues.

KING: So you welcome his candidacy?

Mr. KISSINGER: But I'm a supporter, of course, of President Bush.

KING: I know, but you welcome new ideas?

Mr. KISSINGER: I think we live in a world where we absolutely must have new ideas.

KING: Will Perot hurt both candidates?

Mr. KISSINGER: I'm not a great political expert. I can't tell whom he will hurt.

KING: But you like him? I didn't know he—

Mr. KISSINGER: Well, I like him as a person.

KING: Yes, that's what I mean. I mean, you like him.

Mr. KISSINGER: You know, if I thought that he would hurt President Bush I think that would be a pity, because I want President Bush to win.

KING: Is he a great President, in your opinion?

Mr. KISSINGER: I think he has been an excellent President. And there are always cycles in events and after a period of great economic expansion you're bound to have some difficulties, but it's also important to keep your head in the middle of crisis, and he has done that.

KING: Henry, the other morning last week I emceed a breakfast at B'Nai B'Rith — 3,000 young people, B'Nai B'Rith people. It was a discussion. The name "Jim Baker" came up. It came up by one of the panelists. Three thousand people booed — had to stop the proceedings. Are they wrong?

Mr. KISSINGER: I think they're wrong to boo. I have stated that I do not like the apparent cold-heartedness with which Secretary Baker sometimes treats the Israeli negotiators. On the other hand, Secretary Baker deserves enormous credit for having assembled the first peace conference. I think peace is in the interest of Israel. He has made a unique contribution in that and I think, if he could show a little more compassion for the complexity of motivation that is involved there, he could avoid some of the hostility.

KING: We'll be back with just a moment or two with Secretary Kissinger after this.

[Commercial break]

KING: We're limited on time. Would you like to come in and help mediate the dispute in hockey? We've got a strike in the National Hockey League.

Mr. KISSINGER: Well, I'd like to see the Stanley Cup.

KING: So would you come in if they asked you? Would you do that?

Mr. KISSINGER: You know, the thought has never occurred to me—

KING: It occurred to me.

Mr. KISSINGER: Well, it might be sort of fun to try to do that, but I'm not asking for this and I don't know anything about the issues—

KING: I'm suggesting it.

Mr. KISSINGER: I don't know anything about the issues involved.

KING: You're a quick read, though.

Mr. KISSINGER: Well, I don't know.

KING: How's the World Cup going to do here? You're chairman. The soccer cup is coming. We only have less than a minute.

Mr. KISSINGER: Well, I'm a great soccer fan and I hope that it will be a big success. And we're going to have lots of fans watching the games and then I hope it will establish itself in the United States as a major sport.

KING: Do you miss the action of Government?

Mr. KISSINGER: No, I lead a full life now.

KING: Don't miss it?

Mr. KISSINGER: No. No, no, you mustn't be outside of Government and yearn for it.

KING: Thanks, Henry.

Mr. KISSINGER: Nice to be here.

KING: Henry Kissinger — What can we say? It'll be the first of many visits.

The news is next. We'll be back tomorrow night. Dolly Parton— If you like diversity, it happens on Larry King Live. Dolly Parton will be with us tomorrow night. Thanks for joining us. Good night.

Copyright © 1992 Cable News Network, Inc.