From left: Henry Kissinger with the actress Jill St John, 1972; with Elizabeth Taylor in 1980; Heinz Alfred Kissinger, as he was aged 11; with Raquel Welch in 1985; with Margaret Thatcher, 1983; with Jim Ca

> 'Of all the Europeans, it is easiest for the Americans to deal with the British – you are pragmatic and do not have the chip on your shoulders of the French, or their excessive rationalism'

paranoia, Cambodia, balance of power, power the great aphrodisiac. Power. Power. Five more minutes pass before Dr Kissinger bustles in, undoes his blue suit jacket and sits down. 'Is that damn thing on?' he says in an android monotone, pointing to a tape recorder which one of his staff has set up next to mine on the glass coffee table. 'I tell you. I have no technical skills whatsoever.' He almost allows himself a smile at this. It makes him seem, for a moment, grandfatherly.

We start with the news about the bombing of Iraq. No, he doesn't suppose the media will ever let him retire from commenting on such events. 'But, in fairness to the press, I'm not compelled to answer – so there must be some interaction.' He's been advocating bombing for a year now and says the coincidence of timing with Clinton's impeachment trial could have

been avoided if the President hadn't kept putting the problem off. 'It's an unfortunate moment for it to happen in terms of the domestic debate in the United States. Now the test is whether it is done primarily for symbolic reasons and, as we are talking, I can't tell this. What the President said in his speech was that he was trying to destroy the location of the weapons of mass destruction. That seems to me a very difficult assignment, especially with biological and chemical weapons which are so easy to make. So I have argued that the purpose of an attack should be to undermine the control system of Saddam, to go after the Republican Guard division and the institutions which sustain his rule. And to do that, any military vehicle that moves we should feel free to attack.'

As hawkish as ever, it seems, and just as diplomatic to his allies – he doesn't think the British involvement is mere tokenism. 'No, I give Britain huge credit for having redemonstrated the special relationship and for having re-established itself in the American mind for a new generation as the most reliable ally we have. I think this is important for Britain, no matter what happens over Europe, because it gives her a special standing in Washington. Of all the Europeans, it is easiest for the Americans to deal with the British – you are pragmatic and you do not have the chip on your shoulders of the French, or their excessive rationalism.'

While Kissinger can see that Blair identifies with Clinton, he thinks this is to do with the Prime Minister's style – that he would be just as friendly with a Republican president. Surprisingly, the British government with which Kissinger found it easiest to work was that of Wilson and Callaghan.

The Wilson-Callaghan years fall into the period covered by *Years of Renewal*, the third volume of Kissinger's memoirs, (to be published in the US by Simon & Schuster on 29 March). The book begins with Nixon's

resignation in 1974 and concentrates on the two and a half years during which Ford was president. For Kissinger, this was the time of détente and SALT negotiations with the Soviets; of the disengagement treaty between Israel and Syria-Egypt; of majority rule in southern Africa; of civil unrest in Cyprus; of the oil crisis.

Kissinger's memoirs are a vast project. He began the first volume when he joined Georgetown University, shortly after leaving office in 1977. *The White House Years*, covering 1969-72, was published two years later and became a number-one bestseller. The second volume, *Years of Upheaval*, covered the year and a half of Nixon's truncated second term. Published in 1982, it sold just as well as the first. So why the 17-year gap between the second and third?

‘Largely because I wanted to get more perspective on the debates. My first two volumes were analysed more in terms of the debate of the Seventies. Actually, when I look at the present debates, I must say things haven’t changed that much – so that objective will never be achieved.’ Kissinger thinks that history is a constantly evolving subject, on which there can be no definitive take. ‘In the late Seventies and Eighties, for example, the Vietnam protest generation was still very active. A few months ago I was giving a talk at Yale University and, in the students’ minds, I’m not sure if they knew whether the Vietnam War came before or after the Spanish American War. That’s exaggerated, but the Vietnam War was not their concern.’

Kissinger's own formative experiences do not really feature in his memoirs. He doesn't like talking about himself. He minimises, for instance, the significance of his traumatic childhood and his Jewish heritage – he's not a practising Jew – and describes his upbringing as typical middle-class German. Even though he was banned as a child from playing soccer with non-Jewish boys (a game he loved then and is still fanatical about), he has said that he wasn't consciously unhappy – and not acutely aware of what was going on in Germany during his childhood. Yet when he arrived in New York in 1938 – and went to

work in a shaving brush factory during the day while continuing his studies at night school – his discovery that he did not have to cross the street to avoid being beaten up by non-Jewish boys made him long to become an American citizen.

He did not come to think of himself as a true American, though, until he joined the US Army as a private in 1943. He proved a valiant soldier at the Battle of the Bulge, volunteering for a small detachment that fought a delaying action when the Germans launched their counter-attack after D-day. (Later, as a sergeant in counter-intelligence, he won a Bronze Star.)

When, on a visit to Germany, the Bonn government announced that Kissinger might visit some of his relatives, he intoned darkly, 'My relatives are soap.' (At least 13 of them were sent to the gas chambers.) Walter Isaacson, one of his biographers, believes that nearly all Kissinger's personality traits – his philosophical pessimism, his confidence coexisting with his insecurities, his vanity with his vulnerability and his arrogance with his craving for approval – can be traced to the Holocaust.

Yet there are other sides to Kissinger's character which can't be squared with this. *His deadpan sense of humour* for one: 'The illegal we do immediately,' he once joked. 'The unconstitutional takes a bit longer.' When he had his heart attack, he quipped, 'Well, at least it proves I do have a heart.'

According to students of Kissinger, he cultivated a self-deprecating sense of humour when he entered politics. It was intended to defuse jealousy and counter his natural gravitas and arrogance. 'I have never met a man with greater powers of seduction,' recalled Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when Kissinger first took office. 'He was not only charming and witty but he made me feel I was a person whose advice and assistance he uniquely sought.'

Kissinger's charm and powers of flattery weren't deployed on political colleagues only. 'Power is the great aphrodisiac,' he said just before a 1972 poll of Playboy Bunnies voted him 'the man I would most like

14 THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH MAGAZINE
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...We start with the news about the bombing of Iraq. No, he doesn't suppose the media will ever let him retire from commenting on such events. 'But in fairness to the press, I'm not compelled to answer - so there must be some interaction.' He's been advocating bombing for a year now and says the coincidence of timing with Clinton's impeachment trial could have been avoided if the American President hadn't kept putting the problem off. 'It's an unfortunate moment for it to happen in terms of the domestic debate in the United States. Now the test is whether it is done primarily for symbolic reasons and, as we are talking, I can't tell this. What the President said in his speech was that he was trying to destroy the location of the weapons of mass destruction. That seems to me a very difficult assignment, especially with biological and chemical weapons which are so easy to make. So I have argued that the purpose of an attack should be to undermine the control system of Saddam, to go after the Republican Guard division and the institutions which sustain his rule. And to do that, any military vehicle that moves we should feel free to attack.'

...He doesn't think the British involvement is mere tokenism. 'No, I give Britain huge credit for having redemonstrated the special relationship and for having re-established itself in the American mind for a new generation as the most reliable ally we have. I think this is important for Britain, no matter what happens over Europe, because it gives [her] a special standing in Washington. Of all the Europeans, it is easiest for the Americans to deal with the British - you are pragmatic and you do not have the chip on [your] shoulders of the French, or their excessive rationalism.'

...So why the huge gap between the second and third volumes?

'Largely because I wanted to get more perspective on the debates. My first two volumes were analysed more in terms of the debate of the Seventies. Actually, when I look at the present debates I must say things haven't changed that much - so that objective will never be achieved.' Kissinger thinks that history is a constantly evolving subject, on which there can be no definitive take. 'In the late Seventies and Eighties, for example, the Vietnam protest generation was still very active. A few months ago I was

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giving a talk at Yale University and, as far as the students were concerned, I'm not sure if they knew whether the Vietnam War came before or after the Spanish American War. That's exaggerated, but the Vietnam War was not part of their concern.

...When Nixon resigned, Kissinger consoled him with the comment that history would judge him more kindly than did his contemporaries. Nixon countered that it depended who wrote the history. 'I don't know whether people questioned Nixon's leadership at the time so much as his character and some of his actions,' Kissinger tells me. 'But I think there has been a much more positive assessment of him.'

...As a scholar, then, Kissinger was engaged in the meaning of history. As a politician, he was involved in the making of it. Now, in recording a version of events for future historians, has he concluded that the only thing that really counts is context? 'In the previous volumes I described in great detail what we actually did. What I am doing differently with this volume is concentrating more on what we discussed internally – how we viewed the situation – so that the reader can get an impression of how people with our particular approach to defence of the national interest actually perceived the issues. I did something which will never again be done. I had note-takers present at practically every meeting, because unless an historically-minded participant explains the context, the best historian in the world will not be able to find his way through the mass of documentation.'

Reading through these notes has been an enjoyable exercise for Kissinger. 'I tell you, some of it was astonishing to me. I had totally forgotten. Though I hadn't forgotten what I was trying to do, which was understand the essence of the problem. I was amazed when reviewing my papers how conceptual they were.'

...I ask Kissinger if he has ever felt that people were plotting against him. 'No, I don't feel there were plots against me. I feel there were points of view which were very hostile to my point of view. But I don't consider that a plot. More continual harassment. ☞
the Government, always wood'

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treated the protesters as enemies, I considered them former colleagues. So I thought, foolishly, for some time, that there was some misunderstanding and we could find some common ground. And I was frustrated by that."

When I ask if he would still have sanctioned the secret bombing of Cambodia if he had his time again, he sits forward in his seat, clasps his hands together and pauses. "You know, some day, someone will write an accurate account of the so-called secret bombing of Cambodia."

What is the accurate account? "There were four Vietnamese divisions on the border in territory from which they had expelled the Cambodian population. They would come into Vietnam, kill Americans and then withdraw into those sanctuaries. Within a week of Nixon coming into office, the North Vietnamese started an offensive - so they couldn't have been provoked by anything we did... President Nixon decided he was going to bomb the sanctuaries and that was the so-called secret bombings. What we thought we would do is bomb them, receive a protest about it [from the Cambodians], then ask for a UN investigation which would discover these supply dumps. They never protested. In May, three months after the bombing started, the Cambodian leader Prince Sihanouk said: "I read all these press reports about the bombing of my country by B52s, I don't know anything about it because I only know about what happens in regions where Cambodians are living. There are no Cambodians living in the areas that are being bombed." He invited Nixon to visit him in Phnom Penh. These are incontrovertible facts. And we briefed key congressional leaders. Now, would I still do it? Yes, though I probably wouldn't keep it secret. Although that, primarily, wasn't my decision."

... I ask Kissinger if he thinks that it is possible to make a connection between the rise to power of Pol Pot in 1975 and the US bombing of Cambodia in 1969 and 73?

"Total nonsense. It's the same as saying the German extermination of the Jews was caused by the British bombing of Germany. It makes about as much sense. There were no Cambodians in the bombed area, the only alternative to Pol Pot doing what he did was to let the North Vietnamese take over the country first. But that was an option we didn't have because that would have led to the collapse of South Vietnam. AND Pol POT'S GENOCIDE WAS BEYOND OUR IMAGINATION,

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... I ask him now how he feels about accusations that he himself is a war criminal because of the bombing of Cambodia?

'Why is it a war crime to bomb people who are killing your military units? In what way is that a war crime, even theoretically? There are many interpretations of the Vietnam War with which I violently disagree. At this point I am beyond anger. But what I felt 20 years ago...' He trails off again. 'But I concur that some agreed definition of what a war crime is is desperately needed. Before the law becomes an instrument of political warfare.'

So what does he think the agreed definition of a war crime should be?

'Certainly what Pol Pot, Hitler and Stalin did in their camps: go after innocent civilians. That would be a war crime. Where you execute prisoners. I think the major categories are definable, where you get into trouble is at the margins.'

So someone like Slobodan Milosevic would come under that definition? 'Yes. To the extent that he engaged in mass extermination of civilians. But it is very easy to sit in London or New York and proclaim about war crimes when you don't know the whole context in which they occurred. There are many crimes which should be judged by the people of the country in which they occurred. When you internationalise them you create a new concept.'

... When I ask him what the transition was like from working with Nixon to working with Ford, Kissinger gives a deep chuckle. 'They were totally different personalities. Nixon was secretive and complicated. Ford was open, simple and direct. So the whole psychological atmosphere was different.'

Through his shuttle diplomacy in the early 70s, Kissinger seemed to come close to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. In retrospect, however, he says he didn't really believe a permanent solution to the problem had been found. "No, I thought we had achieved a breakthrough in getting dialogue started. We began three agreements which estab-

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lished the process of trading land for peace. I thought it would take a long time. But I thought also the process itself would contribute to the solution - because at the end of it there would be a better understanding of co-existence. And until Yitzhak Rabin's assassination [the Israeli prime minister was killed in 1995] I really thought it was moving in that direction. In addition to being a close colleague, he was a dear personal friend of mine. I thought I understood him quite well. I knew his thinking well. I don't think I've ever shown emotion on television - but I did on that occasion.'

Kissinger is not one to give into his emotions normally, then? 'No, I'm fairly disciplined.'

... The deaths of your parents change your life, from a purely technical point of view. When those who knew you as a baby are gone, you know you are on your own and you are next in line.' Did their deaths make him contemplate his own mortality? 'Well, my father's coincided with my open-heart surgery. These two things together concentrated my mind.'

And when he reflected upon his life, did he conclude he had been a good man?

'Now look, I tell you, I live in a Freudian age but I don't go through the Freudian absorption with my inner being. I have tried to do in each situation the best I thought I could do. And I tried to be very analytical. But I do not go around in self flagellation later saying, for God's sake, if I could only live my life again I would do this differently. It may be a weakness. And there may be things I should have done differently - but not at the chief junctures of my life.'

Some of Kissinger's diplomatic success was attributed to his skills as a flatterer. 'No, no,' he says now when I ask if this was true. 'Look, they say I was engaged in flattery and telling everyone what they wanted to hear - but I had extraordinarily close relations with Sadat, Mao, Brezhnev, all the European leaders, many Latin American leaders, can one do that with flattery alone? If it were that simple, everyone would do it. I would like to

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think it's because I really tried to understand as deeply as I could how each side perceived its problem. And I usually began the negotiation by telling each side exactly what I was after, so that they could interpret what I was going to do.'

Does the world seem a safer place to him now than when he was in Government?

'From the point of view of nuclear danger, infinitely safer than in that period; from the point of view of structure, more chaotic. In those days you had a Cold War; you had basic criteria of what would benefit one side or the other. Today you have a very amorous situation. What exactly is NATO supposed to do? What do we want in Bosnia, or Asia, or the Middle East, in the long term? Moreover, you have the economic organisation and the political organisation of the world at variance to each other. The economic is global, the political regional. So all these forces are moving simultaneously at a time when the quality of the political leaders is declining - because they are too absorbed with getting re-elected.'...

endg

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giving a talk at Yale University and, as far as the students were concerned, I'm not sure if they knew whether the Vietnam War came before or after the Spanish American War. That's exaggerated, but the Vietnam War was not part of their concern.'

...I ask Kissinger if he has ever felt that people were plotting against him. 'No. I don't feel there were plots against me. I feel there were points of view which were very hostile to my point of view. But I don't consider that a plot. More continual harassment. In the Government, I always won.'

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CV

...With the benefit of hindsight, would he have acted differently over Vietnam? 'You have to separate it into components. I served in an administration which had inherited the war - so when we came in we found 550,000 troops engaged. Our predecessors had just agreed to stop the bombing, which is a very American approach to negotiations: improve the atmosphere for negotiations by removing some of the pressures that ought to make the other side more willing to negotiate. I think, in retrospect, our predecessors undertook more than the country would ever have been prepared to support. And they had not understood how big an effort it would have been to establish a democratic, independent government in Indochina, by military force.'

You thought it was going to be easy? 'Well, at the time I was not involved in the decision to go in. But I might have supported it. Secondly, if we did go in, we needed to go in with a strategy that would win. But to go in with a strategy of attrition - which is the American style of fighting a war, and which was totally unsuitable for a guerrilla war - was a big mistake. Then came the period where I did share a major responsibility for policy making and the question became: how do we extricate ourselves from Vietnam? I thought that a compromise solution in which we showed that we had heard our domestic critics, but that we would not sacrifice people who had worked with us, would permit us to separate the military and political issues. If we could negotiate a ceasefire, the political evolution would take care of itself. But how to achieve this? I did not appreciate that for the North Vietnamese side a compromise was tantamount to a defeat. They couldn't accept that the war was about anything other than who controlled the power. So the negotiations became much more entrapped than I thought they would. Secondly - those who were actively involved in the American protest movement didn't really want a compromise, they wanted to see an American defeat... For good reasons, from their point of view. They thought that the war was really an exercise in American self-aggrandisement and overreaching, and that unless we were taught a terrible lesson we would go on doing it again and again.'

Kissinger says he didn't really feel anger towards the protesters.

"At that time I felt really more disappointed because, in contrast to Nixon, who

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"Total nonsense. It's the same as saying the German extermination of the Jews was caused by the British bombing of Germany. It makes about as much sense. There were no Cambodians in the bombed area, the only alternative to Pol Pot doing what he did was to let the North Vietnamese take over the country first. But that was an option we didn't have because that would have led to the collapse of South Vietnam."

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lished the process of trading land for peace. I thought it would take a long time. But I thought also the process itself would contribute to the solution – because at the end of it there would be a better understanding of co-existence. And until Yitzhak Rabin's assassination [the Israeli prime minister was killed in 1995] I really thought it was moving in that direction. In addition to being a close colleague, he was a dear personal friend of mine. I thought I understood him quite well. I knew his thinking well. I don't think I've ever shown emotion on television – but I did on that occasion.'

'Now look, I tell you, I live in a Freudian age but I don't go through the Freudian absorption with my inner being. I have tried to do in each situation the best I thought I could do. And I tried to be very analytical. But I do not go around in self flagellation later saying, for God's sake, if I could only live my life again I would do this differently. It may be a weakness. And there may be things I should have done differently – but not at the chief junctures of my life.'

Some of Kissinger's diplomatic success was attributed to his skills as a flatterer. 'No, no,' he says now when I ask if this was true. 'Look, they say I was engaged in flattery and telling everyone what they wanted to hear – but I had extraordinarily close relations with Sadat, Mao, Brezhnev, all the European leaders, many Latin American leaders, can one do that with flattery alone? If it were that simple, everyone would do it. I would like to

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# Dr Kissinger interview with Nigel Farndale for Sunday Telegraph Magazine on December 17, 1998. (Emargoed until February/March.)

Farndale: "Let's start with the business of the day. CNN is leading its coverage of the bombing of Iraq with a quote from you. Do you think the world's press will ever let you retire from commenting on such events?

Kissinger: "No, but in fairness to the press I'm not compelled to answer — so there must be some interaction.

Was the bombing inevitable?

- I've been advocating this for a year. But it's an unfortunate moment for it to happen in terms of the domestic debate in the United States. Now the test is whether it is done primarily for symbolic reasons and, as we are talking, I can't tell this. What the President said in his speech was that he was trying to destroy the location of the weapons of mass destruction. That seems to me a very difficult assignment, especially with biological and chemical weapons which are so easy to make. So I have advocated for a year that the purpose of an attack should be to undermine the control system of Saddam and for that reason I believe it would be more efficient to go after the Republican Guard division and the institutions which sustain his rule.

And Saddam himself?

- Yes. But above all I would go after command and communications, and the Republican Guard on which he bases his rule. And to do that, any military vehicle that moves we should feel free to attack.

What about the timing, given that it was supposed to be the impeachment proceedings today?

- Of course. I am not questioning the President's perception that this was the moment it had to be. But if he hadn't pushed the problem ahead of him for a year that coincidence would not have occurred.

And the British involvement, is it just tokenism?

- First of all, you have a very good military assignment — small but very good, so I think it is more than a token thing. Secondly I give the British huge credit for having re-demonstrated the special relationship and for having re-established itself in the American mind for a new generation the most reliable ally we have. I think this is important for Britain, no matter what Britain does about Europe. Because it gives Britain a special standing in Washington.

Do you think we will be America's link with a United States of Europe?

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- Well you don't have to be, but I think what you are doing now gives you a special claim. Plus the fact that, of all the Europeans, it is easiest for the Americans to deal with the British — and historically, for Britain, transatlantic relations have been more important that European relations. So the British do not have the chip on their shoulders of the French, or the excessive rationalism of the French, which usually begins by demonstrating how inadequate you are intellectually. The British political style is much more pragmatic.

There seems to be a great affinity between Blair and Clinton.

- There is some of that. But Blair understands the psychology of the man he is working with and I have no doubt that, if a Republican became president, Blair would manage to establish a friendly relation with him as well.

But isn't it usually the case that Conservatives identify with Republicans and Labour with Democrats?

- That is partly true. Actually in the period I was in Government we found it easier to work with Callaghan and Wilson. *Then with Deaton*

This is the area covered by the third volume of your memoirs. Why the big gap between this volume and the other two?

- Largely because I wanted to get more perspective on the debates. My first two volumes appeared within five years of my leaving office so they were analysed more in terms of the debate of the seventies. I thought by waiting ten years it might be possible to get more perspective. Actually when I look at present debates I must say they never stop — so that objective will never be achieved.

So history is a constantly evolving thing, there can never be a definitive take on it?

- There is certainly never a definitive take on it. In the late 70s and 80s for example the Vietnam protest generation was still very active. A few months ago I was at Yale University and, as far as the students were concerned, I'm not sure if they knew whether the Vietnam War came before or after the Spanish American War. That's exaggerated, but the Vietnam War was not part of their make up. There were some faculty members who asked questions about it — but that just invoked impatience on the part of students, because they wanted to get on and cover the areas that interested them.

In answer to your comment that history would judge Nixon more kindly that his contemporaries did, Nixon made the good point that it depends who writes the history. Do you agree?

JAN-13-1999 15:21

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3

- I don't know whether people questioned his leadership at the time so much as his character and some of his actions. But I think there has been a much more positive assessment of Nixon.

Writing your own memoirs must have been a very interesting exercise for you, given that, as a scholar, you were philosophically engaged in what history means. Did it suggest to you that perceptions of history are relative?

- Yes. In the previous volumes I described in great detail what we did. What I am doing differently with this volume is that I am discussing more of what we discussed internally — how we viewed the situation — so that the reader can get an impression of how people with our particular approach to defence of the national interest actually, in internal discussions, perceived the issues.

Did you keep diaries?

- I did something which will never again be done. I kept no diaries. I had note-takers present at practically every meeting and those are on file today in the Library of Congress — with copies of the originals in the agency files. And so I have a pretty good record of our internal discussions, including many I have already forgotten. I had the notetakers because I thought an accurate record would be interesting for historians. I also believed that, when I was a historian, diplomats were weeks away from their capitol, therefore when, say, the British cabinet gave instructions they had to give conceptual instructions. They couldn't say this or that, they had to say this is what we are trying to achieve and why.

Today there are no conceptual instructions. Ambassadors are told exactly what to say. Reading this a decade later you cannot possibly tell why these instructions were given. Were they reflecting a philosophy? Were they given because it was the easy thing to do at the moment? Were they given to impress a domestic constituency? So unless an historically-minded participant explains the context, the best historian in the world will not be able to find his way through this mass of documentation.

There have been many books I have read by investigative journalists which had documents which they thought very important. But the question is which documents actually reached the President and the Secretary of State. I've read whole books based on documents which the President didn't see. They always find an intelligence document which predicted what was about to happen, because, like all people, the intelligence agencies protect themselves by predicting such a wide range of things. The question is: how seriously was it taken and with what energy was it pursued?

And I think it was a pretty contradictory, did the intelligence agency say? Is the instinctive cast of mind of the investigative journalist to look for a conspiracy?

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- Absolutely. There is someone now writing a book on one aspect of our foreign policy — I don't want to identify it further — and he's got various documents from which he has constructed a theory of really breathtaking complexity, of what our purposes were. And it's not even to our discredit, it just isn't true! And I wrote to this man and said: this is ingenious, this is intelligent, there's only one thing wrong with it, it's absolutely not true. Now he's interviewed everyone who worked with me and they have said it wasn't like that. But he's got some document which you can twist.

But isn't historical truth relative?

- Certainly. But when an ambassador two weeks away from his capital wants to explain to his superiors what he is trying to do now he uses a phone. Why should he write a long memo? Today when he writes a memo and you sit in the place where I used to sit you immediately worry about whether that was his intention or not. You immediately worry whether he was intending it to be leaked.

But you've felt in the past that there have been plots against you. You've admitted to feeling paranoid.

- No. I don't feel there were plots against me. I feel there were points of view which were very hostile to my point of view. But I don't consider that a plot. More continual harassment. In the Government, I always won. I tried to understand the essence of the problem and if I made a contribution to the thinking in the State Department then people can check that by reading my papers. I was astonished when reviewing my papers at what a substantial level our discussions took place and how conceptual they were.

Did you enjoy writing your memoirs as an exercise in nostalgia?

- I tell you, some of it was astonishing to me. I had totally forgotten. Though I hadn't forgotten what I was trying to do.

Such as?

Well take the Cyprus crisis or the Lebanon crisis. These are problems of unbelievable complexity. Ethnic groups at each others throats, who don't care about the overall balance of power. And we care about this, as well as with the constantly fluctuating public opinion in the United States, especially on the Cyprus issue. At first there was a Greek military junta, so everyone was against that, and they harassed us for not beating up on them quickly enough. Then the junta was overthrown so, within days, everything went over to the anti-Turkish side.

I knew what I was trying to do and so I didn't learn anything new about my intentions when I re-read my notes, but I was surprised that... I had half believed the public image that I had just ordered these things. But

JAN-13-1999 15:22

there were serious discussions and dialogue on what to do, what the options were. And that was surprising to me.

So it is almost as if mythology intervenes in the years, between the time something happened and the time historians reflect back on it? That must be especially true in the case of Archbishop Makarios?

Well, I have my perceptions from the time in writing — taken from the meetings. The public perception was that I was anti Makarios. That wasn't true. In fact I consider Makarios too talented for his job. In other words, he had a capacity to create international complications which went beyond the intrinsic importance of Cyprus in our over-all perceptions. First of all he was a big man in a world of much less big men. I understood what he was trying to do. One thing that concerned me about Makarios, though, was that in order to play his complex games he needed to get a lot of people involved and needed to create a lot of confusion about who was doing what to whom. But we were never against his continued rule. Almost everything got worse from his overthrow, nothing was improved by getting rid of him.

As an equally complex figure, did you have a sneaking admiration for his tactics?

Well I'm saying in the book that when he died I was sorry. And if he knew that I was going to write that one day he would have probably had a gleam in his eye. I thought he was, funnily enough, the best possibility for a solution, even though he was the cause of many of the problems. If he had not died it might have been possible to negotiate an outcome in the 1970s.

What else does the new volume cover? SALT negotiations presumably?

The whole range of East West relations. I have four chapters on majority rule in southern Africa in which we brought about the break through. I have several chapters on the energy crisis of the 70s and the relation of that crisis to European American relations. And I have three chapters on the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. So it's a long book.

With the benefit of hindsight, what would you have done differently regarding Vietnam?

You have to separate it into components. I served in an administration which had inherited the war — so when we came in we found 550,000 troops engaged and our predecessors had just agreed to stop the bombing, which is a very American approach to negotiations: improve the atmosphere for negotiations by removing some of the pressures that ought to make the other side more willing to negotiate. You're giving them it for nothing. I think, in retrospect, we undertook more than the county would ever have been prepared to support. And we had not understood how big

JAN-13-1999 15:22

P.08/15

an effort it would have been to establish a democratic independent
government in Indo-China, by military force.

You thought it was going to be easier?

- Well at the time I was not involved in the decision to go in and, in those days, I was concentrating on European affairs first so I cannot be sure what I would have said if that decision had been brought to me. But I might have supported it and I would never have come up against it. Secondly, if we did go in, we needed to go in with a strategy that would win.

But to go in with a strategy of attrition, which is the American style of fighting a war, which was totally unsuitable for a gorilla war, was a big mistake. Then came the period where I did share a major responsibility for policy making — which was Nixon coming in with 550,000 troops engaged in combat, but with a unilateral agreement to a bombing halt in return for nothing but conversations. The fact of negotiations should not be something you've to pay for.

So then the question was: how do we extricate ourselves from Vietnam? And when I came in to Government I thought, coming from the academic world, I had a lot of sympathy for their concerns. And I thought that a compromised solution in which we showed that we had heard our domestic critics, but would not sacrifice people who had worked with us, would permit us to separate the military and political issues. If we could negotiate a cease-fire, the political evolution would take care of itself.

But how to achieve this? I did not appreciate that for the North Vietnamese side a compromise was almost tantamount to a defeat because they couldn't understand — being French educated — that the war was about anything other than who controlled the power; rather than about who controlled the procedure. So the negotiations became much more entrapped than I thought they would. Secondly, those who were actively involved in the American protest movement didn't really want a compromise, they wanted to see an American defeat.

They wanted to see America humiliated?

- For good reasons, from their point of view. They thought that the war was really an exercise in American self aggrandisement and overreaching, and that unless we were taught a terrible lesson we would go on doing it again and again.

Do you have some sympathy with that?

- I understand the point of view. But it is not a point of view which as Security Advisor I could possible share.

Did you feel angry about the protesters at the time?

JAN-13-1999 15:23

P.09/15

- At that time I felt really more disappointed because, in contrast to Nixon, who considered the protesters enemies, I considered them former colleagues. So I thought foolishly for some time that there was some misunderstanding and we could find some common ground. And so I was frustrated by that. Because I spent a lot of time seeing protesters and faculty members and students.

Did you worry that some of the protesters had Communist sympathies?

- Not the people I actually met. I thought it was quite possible that Communist money supported some of the publications. But, on the whole, no, I just thought they were misguided. I don't think that, to this day, the direct Communist influence was that decisive.

If you had your time again would you still have sanctioned the bombing of Cambodia?

- You know, some day, someone will write an accurate account of the so-called bombing of Cambodia.

Tell me what it is and I'll print it.

- The accurate account is that there were four Vietnamese divisions on the border in territory from which they had expelled the Cambodian population. They would come into Vietnam, kill Americans and then withdraw into those sanctions. Within a week of Nixon coming into office, the North Vietnamese started an offensive — so they couldn't have been provoked by anything we did. Because we hadn't had time to do anything for good or ill. They killed about four or five hundred Americans, at a time when our causalities were beginning to approach 2000 dead in a four week period.

President Nixon decided he was going to bomb the sanctuaries and that was the so-called secret bombings. What we thought we would do is bomb them, receive a protest about the bombing, then ask for a UN investigation which would discover these supply dumps. They never protested. In May, three months after the bombing started, the Cambodian leader said: 'I read all these press reports about the bombing of my country by B52s, I don't know anything about it because I only know about what happens in regions where Cambodians are living. There are no Cambodians living in the areas that are being bombed.' He invited Nixon to visit him in Phnom Penh, and these are incontrovertible facts. Now, would I still do it? Yes, though I probably wouldn't keep it secret. Although that, primarily, wasn't my decision.

- Though with the benefit of hindsight is it possible to say that, because all effects have a cause, without those bombings, Pol Pot might not have come to power?

JAN-13-1999 15:23

P. 10/15

- Total nonsense. It's the same as saying the German extermination of the Jews was caused by the British bombing of Hamburg. It makes about as much sense. The Pol Pot thing, to be sure happened afterwards, but there were no Cambodians in the bombed area, the only alternative to Pol Pot doing what he did was to let the North Vietnamese take over the country first. But that was an option we didn't have because that would have lead to the collapse of South Vietnam.

How do you feel about accusations that the bombing of Cambodia was a war crime?

- I don't admit it. Why is it a war crime to bomb people who are killing your military personnel? In what way is that a war crime, even theoretically? That are many interpretations of the Vietnam War with which I violently disagree. At this point I am beyond anger but what I felt 20 years ago... You know, the protesters were totally one sided. They never talked about the killings by the North Vietnamese. They never talked about the American casualties. But I agree that some agreed definition of what a war crime is is desperately needed. Before the law becomes an instrument of political warfare.

I know you don't want to talk about it, but that's what is happening with General Pinochet isn't it?

- Absolutely.

You must feel annoyed about that.

- I feel it was a big mistake for Britain to make.

As a philosopher and historian what do you think that definition of war crime should be?

- Certainly what Pol Pot, Hitler and Stalin did in their camps: go after innocent civilians. That would be a war crime. Where you execute prisoners. I think the major categories are definable, where you get into trouble is at the margins.

- Yes. To the extent that he engaged in mass extermination of civilians. But it is very easy to sit in London or New York and proclaim about war crimes, when you don't know the whole context in which they occurred. There are many crimes which should be judged by the people of the country in which they occurred. When you internationalise them you create a new concept.

Your memoirs begin with the Ford administration, what was the transition like from working with Nixon to working with Ford?

JAN-13-1999 15:23

P.11/15

- They were totally different personalities. Nixon was secretive and complicated. Ford was open, simple and direct. So the whole psychological atmosphere was different.

Do you think Ford's stature as President was undermined by the perception that you were running foreign policy?

- I think there is a proper understanding now that we turned out to be a very good team, even though we had little social contact. I had a conceptual base. Nixon had a great understanding — he had a saying, you pay the same price for doing something half way as for doing it completely — so you might as well do it completely. It was a great asset to think that way, as a professor I was more... Anyway, it isn't true. I didn't run foreign policy. I had a major influence on it. It would certainly have been different had I not been there, but it would certainly have been impossible for me to do what I did without Nixon's perception and understanding.

They were tumultuous year for geopolitics. Did you find it exhilarating to live through one crisis after another?

- One also has to give President Ford huge credit for taking over in very very difficult circumstances — and to regain national confidence in the way that he did. The aspect of high office is that you know you couldn't be doing anything more important. For all the pressures and the beatings, you know you could, for good or ill, be making a significant contribution — so that is exhilarating. But from another point of view it is draining because it never ends. I noticed that after many successes for which we were celebrated in the media I was absolutely drained — because the public perception is that now the problem is over. But if you are a professional you know it is only the admittance ticket to another problem. So it never ends.

At the time, did you assume the Middle Eastern problems could be solved permanently?

- No, I thought we had achieved a breakthrough in getting dialogue started. We began three agreements which established the process of trading land for peace. I thought it would take a long time. But I thought also the process itself would contribute to the solution —because at the end of it there would be a better understanding of co-existence. And until Rabin's assassination I really thought it was moving in that direction.

How did you feel when you heard of his assassination?

- Well, Rabin in addition to being a close colleague was a dear personal friend of mine. I thought I understood him quite well. I knew his thinking well. I don't think I've ever shown emotion on television — but I did on that occasion.

JAN-13-1999 15:24

P.12/15

Are you an emotional man away from the cameras? Is the public and private persona different?

- I'm fairly disciplined.

You don't give into your emotions?

- Usually I don't.

Do you have sentimental side?

- You'd have to ask others.

What most influenced your personality? Your parents?

- My father was a very gentle, reflective man. My mother very decisive. A hands-on person. A woman of action. They seemed to be very happily married. So the two elements of real life I got from my parents gave me some perception of the future — so that you know where you are going; so that you can overcome your immediate obstacles.

When your father died, did you feel as many people do, that it was a right of passage, symbolically speaking, from childhood into manhood?

- When my father died I had already been Secretary of Defence, it would be a horrible admission to say I felt like a child!

But you are familiar with the analogy?

- Well it changes your life, from a purely technical point of view. When those who know you as a baby are gone, you know you are on your own and you are next in line.

Did it make you contemplate your own mortality?

- Well it coincided with my open heart surgery, those two things together concentrated my mind.

And when you reflected upon your life, did you feel you had been a good man?

- Now look, I tell you, I live in a Freudian age but I don't go through the Freudian absorption with my inner being. I have tried to do in each situation the best I thought I could do. And I tried to be very analytical. But I do not go around in self flagellation later saying, for God's sake, if I could only live my life again I would do this differently. It may be a weakness. And there may be things I should have done differently — but not at the chief junctures of my life.

JAN-13-1999 15:24

When did you become aware that your intellect was more powerful than
that of other people?

- This may sound strange to you but I didn't become aware of that until I was far down the road. And I still don't think of it exactly in that way.

Did you ever feel superior academically to your political colleagues,
knowing you could use your intellect to defeat them in arguments?

- At some point I developed the idea that I had a better understanding of the trend of international events than many of my contemporaries. But I didn't ascribe that to brain power alone, it was to do with having a feel for history, through a lot of reading and a lot of thinking about it. I was in the position that foreign affairs was my business, but it was also my hobby.

It must have been amazing, being a scholar of history to find yourself
making it.

- Exactly.

Did you ever wonder what you might have achieved if you continued as
an academic. Could you have been another Kant?

- No. I would have been a B-plus historian. I'm not primarily a scholar. I can do scholarship in pursuit of an idea. But to spend all my days in a library in the pursuit of abstract knowledge for no purpose other than the knowledge; that would not be what I was best at. I would have done it and, I hope, written interesting books. My thinking has always been at the intersection of policy and scholarship — so I do not believe I would have been another Kant.

What has been your legacy to the world of diplomacy?

- I've tried to bring an approach to diplomacy that has not being traditional in America, but which is not unfamiliar in Britain. The British style is very pragmatic, because British society is very cohesive and Britain does not claim for itself superior morality. I have tried to combine the American idealism with European practicalities and national interest. But the European style was confined to Europe and we have to apply it to a world scene and no one has had to do that before. So at least I tried to ask the right questions even when there were bitter disputes about my answers.

Didn't you develop a personal style which established a rapport between
people who were hostile to one another and which engaged in flattery and
concession?

JAN-13-1999 15:24

P.14/15

- No, no, look, they say I was engaged in flattery and telling everyone what they wanted to hear — but, after all, I had extraordinarily close relations with Sadat, Mao, Brezhnev, all the European leaders, many Latin Americans leaders, can one do that with flattering alone? If it were that simple everyone would do it. I would like to think it's because I really tried to understand them. And I would like to think that they thought there was someone who had compassion for their understanding. ~~problems~~

Second, when I conducted a negotiation I tried to understand as deeply as I could how each side perceived its problem and I usually began the negotiation — I think the record will show this — by telling each side exactly what I was after, so that they could interpret what I was going to do. Otherwise, this argument that you tell everyone a different story, those people are going to meet again and you have to bring them to a consensus and they are going to find out if you've told them the opposite.

Are you surprised the Middle Eastern conflict still rumbles on? Will it ever end?

- Not totally because conflicts between Arab countries never get totally solved — but I think ameliorated.

Does the world seem like a safer place to you now than when you were in Government?

- From the point of view of nuclear danger, infinitely safer than in that period; from the point of view of structure, more chaotic. In those days you had a Cold War; you had basic criteria of what would benefit one side or the other and you had fundamental incentives as to what would drive one country in one direction and another in another. Today you have a very amorphous situation. What exactly is the basis of the Atlantic relationship? What exactly is NATO supposed to do? What do we want in Bosnia in the long term? Then you have all of Asia and the Middle East; all of which is seized by huge philosophical type upheavals. Then you have the economic organisation and the political organisation of the world at variance to each other. The economic is global, the political national or regional. And the economists act as if aggrandisement of their economic self interest automatically produces perfect harmony — which, incidentally, is exactly what they said in the 19th century. But if the suffering this produces becomes excessive the political process won't tolerate it, no matter how correct it is. So all these forces are moving simultaneously at a time when the quality of the political leaders is declining — because they are too absorbed with getting re-elected.

Is the solution to have longer terms of power, say, ten years instead of five?

- If you have the right person. But I've known leaders for whom four years was too long.

JAN-13-1999 15:25

P.15/15

Isn't conflict the natural condition of man? Can there ever be world peace?

- It may be the natural condition of man to be in conflict, but the consequences of war are now so much more grave than they have ever been before. Historically you could have made the case that you were better off risking a war than just yielding. Today in most situations the war itself is almost the worse that can happen. So the incentive to go on imperial crusades of the traditional type is diminished, the ideological crusade still remains.

The world you say was a less safe place in the 70s when the Cold War was at its height but, paradoxically, didn't Mutually Assured Distraction make it safer?

- That's true. But if you people want a picture I have to go now.

TOTAL P.15

07-01-1999 15:04

Was the bombing inevitable?

And Saddam himself?

First of all, you have a very good military assignment — small but very good, so I think it is more than a token thing. Secondly I give the British huge credit for having re-demonstrated the special relationship and for having re-established itself in the American mind for a new generation — the most reliable ally we have. I think this is important for Britain, no matter what Britain does about Europe. Because it gives Britain a special standing in Washington.

07-01-1999 15:05

Largely because I wanted to get more perspective on the debates. My first
two volumes appeared within five years of me leaving office so they were
analysed more in terms of the debate of the seventies. I thought by waiting
ten years it might be possible to get more perspective. Actually when I look
at present debates I must say they never stop — so that objective will never
be achieved.

07-01-1999 15:05

Did you keep diaries?

I did something which will never again be done. I kept no diaries. I had note-takers present at practically every meeting and those are on file today in the Library of Congress — with copies of the originals in the agency files. And so I have a pretty good record of our internal discussions, including many I have already forgotten. I had the notetakers because I thought an accurate record would be interesting for historians. I also believed that, when I was a historian, diplomats were weeks away from their capitol, therefore when, say, the British cabinet gave instructions they had to give conceptual instructions. They couldn't say this or that, they had to say this is what we are trying to achieve and why.

07-01-1999 15:06

Absolutely. There is someone now writing a book on one aspect of our
foreign policy — I don't want to identify it further — and he's got various
documents from which he has constructed a theory of really breathtaking
complexity, of what our purposes were. And its not even to our discredit,
it just isn't true! And I wrote to this man and said: this is ingenious, this is
intelligent, there's only one thing wrong with it, it's absolutely not true.
Now he's interviewed everyone who worked with me and they have said
it wasn't like that. But he's got some document which you can twist.

No. I don't feel there were plots against me. I feel there were points of
view which were very hostile to my point of view. But I don't consider
that a plot. More continual harassment. In the Government, I always won.
I tried to understand the essence of the problem and if I made a
contribution to the thinking in the State Department then people can
check that by reading my papers. I was astonished when reviewing my
papers at what a substantial level our discussions took place, and how
conceptual they were.

Such as?

I knew what I was trying to do and so I didn't learn anything new
about my intentions when I re-read my notes, but I was surprise that... I
had half believed the public image that I had just ordered these things. But

07-01-1999 15:06

07-01-1999 15:07

P.07

C/D

07-01-1999 15:07

07-01-1999 15:08

Absolutely.

07-01-1999 15:09

I think there is a proper understanding now that we turned out to be a very good team, even though we had little social contact. I had a conceptual base. Nixon had a great understanding — he had a saying, you pay the same price for doing something half way as for doing it completely — so you might as well do it completely. It was a great asset to think that way, as a professor I was more... Anyway, it isn't true. I didn't run foreign policy, I had a major influence on it. It would certainly have been different had I not been there, but it would certainly have been impossible for me to do what I did without Nixon's perception and understanding.

07-01-1999 15:09

I'm fairly disciplined.

Usually I don't.

Do you have sentimental side?

You'd have to ask others.

When your father died, did you feel, as many people do, that it was a right of passage, symbolically speaking, from childhood into manhood?

07-01-1999 15:10

Exactly.

07-01-1999 15:10

07-01-1999 15:11

TOTAL P. 14