Science and Culture

J. Robert Oppenheimer

Dr. Takagi, members of the Japan Committee for Intellectual Interchange, members of the International House and ladies and gentlemen, I start with a word of quite profound and deeply felt thanks for the invitation to come here and, even more, for the wonderful warmth and kindness and gentleness with which we have been received and with which we have been allowed to see the first glimpses of this sweet country. It has been a great pleasure and a great honor.

Dr. Takagi has started me where my lecture starts: with the fact that we live in an unusual world marked by great changes occurring within a man's life. Even in the few days that we have been here, more than one man of moderate years has said to me, "Oh, yes, I have lived in Japan a long time. I have lived in three Japans." In the press I see reported that the Prime Minister and the present government of Japan discuss the possibility of a 9 per cent annual economic growth, which means that in eight years the gross national product of the country will be twice what it is today. We are not used to such pronouncements from the Mogul emperors, or from Pericles.

Indeed it has always, in traditional societies, been the great function of culture to keep things rather stable and quiet and unchanging. It has been the function of tradition to assimilate one epoch to another, one episode to another, even one year to another. It has been the function of culture to bring out meaning, by pointing out to the constant traits of human life, which in easier days one talked about as the eternal verities, and to let the meaning shine from the fact that some things could be counted on to be there, to be steady, in spite of the flux with which nature surrounds us.

In the most primitive societies—if one believes the anthropologists—the principal function of ritual,

religion, of culture as it is practiced is, in fact, almost to stop change. It is to provide for the social organism what life provides in such a magic way for living organisms, a kind of homeostasis, an ability to remain intact, to respond only very little to the obvious convulsions and alterations in the world around.

Today, culture and tradition have assumed a very different intellectual and social purpose; as I will say a little more clearly later, the principal function of the most vital and living traditions today is precisely to provide the instruments of rapid change. There are many things which go together to bring about this alteration in man's life; but probably the decisive one is science itself. I will use that word as broadly as I know, meaning the natural sciences, meaning the historical sciences, meaning, as I will come to say a little more sharply later, all those matters on which men can converse objectively with each other. I shall not continually repeat the distinction between science as an effort to understand the world and to find out about it, on the one hand, and science, in its applications in technology, as an effort to do something useful with the knowledge so acquired. But certain care is called for, because, if we call this the scientific age, we make more than one kind of oversimplification. On the one hand, a good deal goes along with its being a scientific age, culturally, practically, technologically, economically, spiritually, which are concomitants historically, perhaps not inevitably. And, for another, when we talk about science today, we are likely to think of the biologist with his microscope or the physicist with his cyclotron; but almost certainly a great deal that is not now the subject of successful study, scientific study, will later come to be. I think we probably today have under cultivation only a small part of the terrain

I. H. J. BULLETIN

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What India receives is only representative of what various other countries in South and Southeast Asia and the Middle East are receiving in one way or another, but it has been calculated that the total is perhaps no more than five billion, taking all kinds of aid together. It may be about U.S. $5 billion. Whereas if one calculates how much is spent on armaments, maybe one would find that about $100 billion a year is spent in armaments.

Here is the main problem for the world. If some way could be found by which, apart from some policing forces kept for internal security or through the United Nations Organization, money now spent on armaments could be spent on economic development, perhaps the bulk of the $100 billion could be diverted to the extent that it could be absorbed. It is not in every country or on every occasion that such massive aid can be absorbed, but gradually the channels can be widened, and appropriate arrangements can be set in motion. Only then would a fillip be given to real economic development in the backward nations of the world. So in that sense I suppose that economic development could be called the reverse side to the cold or hot war, that is to say as soon as the cold and hot wars come to an end then economic development on a satisfactory scale will begin.

I mentioned just now possible difficulties in regard to absorption of aid. These are principally connected with education on the one hand and political organization on the other. Education is necessary not only from the point of view of science and technology, that is to say furnishing the number of trained personnel that are needed for the various jobs, but also for teaching the franchise holder to exercise his franchise in an informed and responsible manner. In India today independence has come to us 12 years in advance of literacy, a situation which is quite different from what it is in many western countries. For instance, in the Scandinavian countries

independence came about 100 years after full literacy had been achieved. Many other examples can be given. Again, it is not necessary to argue the point that education makes a whole lot of difference from the broader point of view of the capacity of people to run their own government as well as from the narrow technological point of view. What is involved is the danger that where the population is largely illiterate or still not fully literate, the wrong sort of leadership can emerge. Because of the lack of information or lack of capacity for discrimination, on the part of the illiterate, somebody has to put thoughts in their minds and if one gets the wrong kind of political leadership at whatever level, whether local representative, or state and central government, then the implementation of any plans for economic development becomes more difficult. I think it is a fallacy to suppose that one can have an indifferent quality of political leadership arising out of a semi-literate population and yet have a competent and industrious and capable bureaucracy. That is to say, the guidance and the direction that is given today at the political level is all important from the point of view of the achievement pattern and the performance of the bureaucracy. Some of these difficulties are illustrated in all the countries of South and Southeast Asia. In many cases, it is well known that western parliamentary democracy has already had to make way for something else, whether it is guided democracy, a form of enlightened dictatorship or something else, that is not for us to go into here. It is sufficient to say that it can be ascribed to independence preceeding the spread of education. I emphasize this point because my main interest is in education and not politics, but they are somehow connected in this manner. That is why one feels that H. G. Wells was right when he described history as a race between education and chaos.

The articles appearing in this issue of the *Bulletin* are reproduced with the kind permission of the authors. The International House of Japan does not express opinions on economic and political matters, and publication of the material here presented should not be construed as an endorsement by the House. Any editorial errors or omissions are the responsibility of the House.

No part of any of the articles appearing in the pages of this *Bulletin* may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles.

(Continued from page 10)

to preserve our mastery. This is, in fact, our only anchor in honesty. We need also to be open to other and complementary activities, not intimidated by them and not contemptuous of them as so many are today of the natural and mathematical sciences. Surely it is one of the purposes of the Japan Committee for Intellectual Interchange to foster unity and understanding in this intellectual community. As a start, we must learn again, without contempt and with patience, to talk to one another; and we must hear.

# Problems of American Policy

## Henry A. Kissinger

On September 10, 1960, Dr. Henry A. Kissinger spoke at an occasional meeting to an informal group on the subject of "Problems of American Policy". His remarks and the question period are printed below, altered slightly in that a number of questions had to be taken out for reasons of space. It proved impossible to have Professor Kissinger's edited text in time for this Bulletin, and it should be emphasized that these are, as reproduced, unedited and ex-temporaneous remarks. In view of the timely nature of Dr. Kissinger's talk, however, the House is grateful for his permission to reproduce his comments with the above qualifications.

Before I make my remarks, I would like to take this opportunity to tell you all how very touched I have been by the warm and friendly reception I have had in Japan and how grateful my associates and I who are here for the International Seminar are to Mr. Komatsu, who is sitting in this room, for the efficiency and devotion with which he has arranged our affairs. We will all leave Tokyo and Japan with a better understanding of Japan and with very warm personal feelings. I have had also the pleasure of talking to some members in this room before, and to them I would like to apologize if I repeat some things that I may have said on the occasions that we have exchanged views.

I thought it might be best if I made a few general comments about American foreign policy first and then had a discussion on any aspect that you consider most interesting. I will not speak about military strategy primarily, although this is what people generally expect from me, because I am not interested in military strategy except in so far as it relates to problems of foreign policy and other problems that all nations of the world face today. It is not possible to think of any problem as a purely military problem any more than it is possible

to think of it as a purely economic or a purely political or, for that matter, a purely ideological problem.

Also—and with this I will have all my qualifications out of the way—I would like all of you to understand that I am not here to defend American foreign policy, that I have nothing to do with the State Department, that whatever governmental connections I have had are always on a consulting basis for specific projects. You will have to understand my remarks as the opinions of an individual American and not as the opinion of the American Government. I say this out of courtesy to the State Department even more than as protection for myself because they sometimes become a little desperate when they become identified with me.

We are going in America right now through a period—or I hope we are—of rather intense debate about foreign policy, and even if our debate in America is somewhat lacking in adequacy, for anyone who travels as much as I do, there is no shortage of criticism of American foreign policy to be heard in the countries around the world.

It is said that America pays insufficient attention to economic factors. It is said that America pays too much attention to military factors. It is said that America divides the whole world into blocs and that people are forced to be either one thing or the other in our eyes, either for us or against us. It is said that we do not negotiate sufficiently with the Soviet Union. It is also sometimes said that we negotiate too much with the Soviet Union.

Now the proposition that I would like to advance to this group is that every criticism of American policy has some measure of validity in it. It is true that there have been periods when America has been reluctant to negotiate. It is also true that there have been periods in which we have acted as

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Dr. Henry A. Kissinger

if the act of a conference was more important than its content and as if the mere fact that people were getting together around the conference table in itself proved that there was a substantive change in foreign policy. It is true that there have been times when we have over-emphasized the military factor and have identified foreign policy really with making of military alliances, but it is also true that through long periods of the Eisenhower administration we have, in some respects, neglected the military factor and concentrated on types of military preparedness which contribute to tension and which make defense extremely difficult.

Now, I would like to explain why it is that every criticism of American policy is both true and false, and what I take some of our major problems to be—and I hope that before I have to give any answers my time will be up and then we can have some discussion. One of the impressions that I have when I travel abroad and talk to our friends from abroad is that they have an image of American foreign policy which is very startling to those of us who know how Washington actually operates. Their idea is of a very carefully, masterfully planned foreign policy in which every move has a purpose and in which there is some kind of a design adding up to some kind of an overall strategy. There is also an expectation, which seems to me very strange in view of American history, that America should be able to behave wisely in every part of the world on every conceivable subject and understand the peculiar local subtleties of every area in which we have assumed some responsibility.

Now I would like to suggest to this group that this is asking a very great deal of America and that you have to understand the American performance in terms of American history. If anyone had

told Americans in the year 1944, 16 years ago, or in the year 1945 when the war ended that 15 years after the end of the war they would be responsible for the defense of what would then be called the "free world", that they would be engaged in economic assistance programs on a scale unprecedented in the history of any nation, that they would be engaged in the domestic affairs of other countries directly or indirectly all over the world, I am sure that 95 per cent of Americans would have told you that this was insanity, that this could not happen.

America emerged into the postwar period with only one desire—to go back to America and to have nothing to do any more with the rest of the world. The purpose of the war was not to establish American domination over other countries. The purpose of the war was precisely to give us an opportunity to live in what we consider to be a peaceful world, a world in which we did not have to concern ourselves with foreign policy and foreign affairs. This has to be understood in order to grasp both the difficulties America has had and also to understand that American policy, for all its shortcomings, has had a major achievement, namely to commit itself to the world to the extent that it has. Also for many Americans this postwar period has a great frustration about it, and the frustration is that we hear today from our friends abroad exactly the kinds of criticism that we would like to make ourselves and that we used to make until 1939. I remember—and I am perhaps particularly sensitive to this because of my background, having had part of my education in Europe and part of my high school education in America—I remember very well how it used to be taught in many of our high schools that wars were caused by the shortsighted balance of power politics of the Europeans, that America would not be part of the politics of a balance of power, that alliances breed counteralliances, that a concern with security by itself only produces insecurity. All these things which we are being told today we used to tell to other countries.

As late as 1945 it used to be considered by many Americans, and indeed by the American Government, that America should play the role that India has attempted to play, that is, America should attempt to mediate between imperialist Great Britain and the Soviet Union. Churchill reports in his memoirs how as late as June 1945 President Truman sent Ambassador Davies to London appealing to Britain not to be too intransigent vis-à-vis Soviet Union.

I mention this to you gentlemen only to indicate that there is a sort of irony in the position that we find ourselves today and that the things for which

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I. H. J. BULLETIN

we are often criticized in foreign countries are really the things we would love to say ourselves. That is perhaps why it is hard for Americans to show as much compassion and understanding as they should sometimes when they receive these criticisms.

The second point to understand is that for a nation which really is basically not interested in foreign policy, which basically wants nothing from the rest of the world except to be left alone, it is very hard to develop a subtle understanding of all the complex factors that go into the making of a problem.

You here in Japan, having experienced a war and living close to the Asian mainland, understand that there is more to the contemporary issues than a simple conflict between communism and democracy, that there are historical factors and cultural factors related to individual nations. For Americans it is already a major achievement that they understand that there is a problem involving them in Asia at all. And it is, therefore, not surprising that for America the reason for engaging in foreign policy has tended to be seen in black and white terms.

There has been a perhaps excessive emphasis on security and perhaps an excessive emphasis on communism because these were the things that were easiest to understand and these were the reasons that got us involved in foreign policy in the first place. And I might add incidentally that just as our history explains why our view may be somewhat one-sided occasionally, the view of some of our foreign friends may be equally one-sided or equally understandable for historical and cultural reasons.

Until 1939 America could afford the luxury of a very abstract and seemingly highly moral position in large part because the problem of security was taken off our shoulders by the commitment of Great Britain and the other West European nations. Long before America was threatened these nations did enter the political or military context.

I sometimes have the impression that one reason, perhaps subconsciously, why it is possible to apply such very strict standards to the United States in many foreign countries is precisely the fact that these foreign countries are protected by the United States and know that they are protected by the United States and know that they do not have to draw the full consequences of everything that they say. And again since we have been the beneficiaries of such a situation for 150 years this is surely not said in any criticism. It is said in explanation.

One other factor. Because of the peculiarity of American history there is still the idea in America that relations among nations are either those of peace or of war. The normal pattern of relations

is peace. Reasonable men should always be able to settle their disputes in an atmosphere of goodwill, compromise and negotiation. On the other hand, this proves that if they do not settle it, if there is war, there is only one possible outcome, namely to attempt to destroy the disturber of the peace or those whom the Americans consider to be the disturber of the peace, and to make destruction almost an end in itself, on the assumption that once the enemy is destroyed he is the only obstacle to peace that exists and that a normal order will re-assert itself without any effort on our part and without any need for coming to grips with our concrete problems.

Now one frustration over the postwar period for America has been that events have conformed neither to our expectation of peace nor to our ex-pectation of war. There has been no period since the end of the war in which one could say goodwill has been the dominant feature. There have been, however, no periods in which it was possible or thought desirable to destroy the enemy. Therefore, America has oscillated between periods when we have attempted to apply our remedy for peaceful periods and other periods when we have attempted to apply our remedy for a conflict.

I fully agree with those critics of American policy who say that there have been occasions when we have, in fact, acted as if all of foreign policy was summed up in the creation of military alliances. This is perfectly true and there have been periods in which we have said there is no point in negotiat-ing with the communists because everybody knows they are wicked. This criticism is correct, but it is also true that there have been other periods when we have acted as if transforming the atmosphere, creating goodwill, was an exercise in abstract psychology.

In 1955 President Eisenhower, before he went to Geneva, said the difficulty with the world is that we have been trying to solve too many problems. What we should do is to create goodwill and by creating goodwill we would then—well, he did not quite make clear what would happen when goodwill had been established.

The point I am making is that it is not thought at all ludicrous to say, "You work on goodwill in the abstract". Both political parties in 1956, and I dare say now—I have not had the dubious pleasure of listening to campaign oratory lately—but I am sure that the phrase "we are working toward peace" is one of the standard phrases of oratory, though very few of them, and I would say probably none of them, will ever bother to describe just what they mean by peace.

The content of peace is considered self-evident. The impression is that one is working toward the

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magic day when perhaps you can say that peace
has broken out and tension disappeared. This has
created as many difficulties as the opposite. Last
year for a period of 18 months the Western nations
engaged in what I consider an absolutely frivolous
diplomacy, rushing around from capital to capital,
exchanging visits. After each visit with the Soviet
Prime Minister the Western head of state visited
all his colleagues to prove to them that he had not
betrayed them. Yet in all this high-level diplomacy
I do not recall reading any discussion of what it was
precisely that they were attempting to achieve.
The mere fact of high-level meetings was considered
to be desirable in itself.

Now it is this psychological climate that you have
to understand; it accounts for the seeming oscilla-
tions of American policy from periods of obsessions
with Soviet smiles to periods of obsessions with
Soviet frowns, of periods of mechanical conciliatori-
ness to periods of mechanical intransigence. I am
not justifying this. I am saying this primarily to
explain to you that it is too simple to make the
comments that are generally made about America's
obsessions with military pacts or America's reluctance to negotiate, and so on.

Now, I would like to say also a very few words
in this connection about our relations, but first
about the military problems and, secondly, about
our relations to the uncommitted. I will not go
into any detail about this question of national se-
curity because to do so would require a fairly
technical presentation, and I am glad to go into
whatever detail you desire in the question period.

One of the difficulties in judging policy problems
is that many commentators and analysts have
difficulty separating the point of view of an analyst
from the point of view of a policy maker. A pro-
fessor can afford to erect a beautifltl theory because
the test of validity for him may be internal con-
sistency or acceptance by his colleagues or perhaps
simply some kind of plausibility. A professor can
always wait to complete his conclusion until all
facts are in. To him the problem of time is not
of such crucial importance. To the analyst every-
thing can be sacrificed to precision. The policy-
maker's problem is somewhat different. The policy-
maker's problem is that he must come to a con-
clusion in a finite time. He must give an answer
while the answer is still relevant. He cannot wait
until all facts are in. He must work with the facts
that are available.

There is a tragic element in all of policy in that
you must always act on the basis of conjecture.
You can never be sure what the trends are in a
policy or in a historical period until it is too late
to do something about them. There is an inherent

uncertainty even for the wisest of men in policy
making. Suppose Hitler had been crushed in 1935
or 1936; today we know this would have been the
right thing to do. But if he had been crushed in
1936, we would never know today whether Hitler
was a misunderstood nationalist, a madman, or a
maniac, and whether there would have been a re-
volution within Germany that would have over-
thrown him. In short, we would never have
been sure that what we did was right. There are
many people that I admire greatly in great Britain
among the Labor Party who can certainly not be
accused of ideological affinity to fascism. But when
Hitler occupied the Rhineland in 1934 and the
French wanted to move, Attlee was one of those who
wanted to negotiate with Hitler. Clement Attlee
said in the House of Commons: "The offer to ne-
gotiate is the most important event of the postwar
period. Hitler has sinned with one hand but he
has offered the olive branch with the other. The
issue is peace and not defense."

It is easy for us today to say that Clement Attlee
was wrong. We do not act much differently and
for many of the same reasons. On the other hand
—and this is the other side of the tragedy—if you
act early you will never be sure, but if you want
to be sure you must pay a very heavy price. You
cannot be both sure and have low risk. Those two
things cannot be combined and the price we pay for
certainty, for the desire for certainty, is much
greater exertion later on.

The second point is that for an analyst, the chief
test of his theory is a kind of plausibility, a kind
of internal consistency. The policy-maker has to
consider not only what happens when policy suc-
ceeds. He also has to consider what happens if his
assessments should turn out to be wrong. The
price in our age is catastrophe and the survival of
civilization. The policy-maker is permmitted only
one guess, and this in the age in which we live
accounts for the combination of timidity and hys-
teria that characterizes so much of policy.

Now, the relevance of what I have said to the
problem of national security is as follows. It is
always possible to escape difficult choices by mak-
ing the most favorable assessment about historical
trends and about the intentions of the other side.
No one will ever be able to prove whether the
Soviet Union intends to attack until she has done
it; we cannot then say "we are terribly sorry, this
was a wrong assessment and we will now go back
to the laboratory and make another theory."

Those of us who have some interest in the ques-
tion of national security cannot give an absolute
guarantee. I am not saying that I know that Mr.
Khrushchev intends to attack on some Friday in

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I. H. J. BULLETIN

June 1963. I would not even go so far as to say whether Mr. Khrushchev intends to attack or not. Even he does not know because it depends on many factors outside of his direct control. Also I think the problem of attack or non-attack is posed much too abstractly in those terms. There are many intermediary shades between peace and war. All we are saying is that no responsible statesman can entrust the fate of his country to the assumption that countries which, after all, have annexed hundreds of millions of people in 15 years, which have brutally suppressed freedom in whatever areas they could, that those countries will be more benevolent outside their present areas than they have been within it. Maybe they are correct. Maybe they will be. All I am saying is that as a policy-maker no one can entrust his fate to such a theory.

And having decided that we do not want to entrust our survival to this, some of us have taken another step and have said that the question of war will arise only if we or our allies are attacked. There is no debate in America about America starting a war. When I sometimes read descriptions of bloodthirsty generals barely restrained from launching themselves against an opponent, I do not recognize the bureaucrats in uniform that I see in the Pentagon. Moreover, whether there are some bloodthirsty generals or not is not the real point. The real point is that if there is a Soviet or Chinese communist aggression, our choices then will be to surrender or to resist and then, in fact, we will not have any other choice. Those of us who do not wish to surrender have tried to give some thought to the question of how one can resist without immediately blowing up the world. It is very easy to ridicule the various theories of local defense or limited war that have been developed, very easy indeed, but it is easy because in the nuclear age there is always more power available than people might use. It is, therefore, always possible to say, "How do you know that the opponent will accept your restraints?" This is very easy to do; no one can given an ironclad guarantee, but neither is any one arguing that the war should be started by America. I submit that it can arise only if there is an attack by the communists and, secondly, that by being prepared it is more likely that there will not be an attack by the communists.

Now this has had a curious result. There has been violent criticism from two sides, violent criticism from purely military technicians who consider any consideration of more limited applications of power an offence against the principles of military science, as well as a violent attack from people who hold the moral point of view that war is inherently evil, who consider consideration of the applications of

power the prelude to war. In the resulting civil war between these pacifists and the extremists of military science, between the technicians of military power and the technicians of morality, there has been created a vacuum in the free world about which I am very worried indeed.

I think we all have to get used to the thought that we are living in a very paradoxical age. I am persuaded that many of the pacifist groups are bringing on exactly what they are trying to avoid. If the Soviets become convinced that the West and the free countries are absolutely terrified by the thought of war, they will threaten. The more terrified we seem the more they will threaten. I would suggest also, and this may be another paradox, is that one reason we have had so much difficulty in disarmament negotiations is because there has not been a sufficient understanding of the purpose of armaments. We have rarely been in a position to know whether a given proposal adds to security or detracts from security, or whether it is relevant to security. Those who say that any disarmament is inherently desirable without having studied a highly complex and technical problem carefully are making the situation worse rather than better.

Now I have talked much too long, and I think I would rather get to the discussion and skip the remarks I wanted to make about the uncommitted areas and simply thank you all for giving me this opportunity to talk to you.

*Question:* How real a conflict of interest do you think there can exist within the free world on issues of security? Is it possible that the interests of Japan and the U. S. differ as greatly as Japanese intellectuals and American intellectuals see them? Can they both be right?

*Kissinger:* Let me say first, before answering that question, that I am not saying that the security problem is the only problem or even the chief problem. In fact, all that security will do for us is to give the opportunity to deal with constructive measures. To the extent that we have security we can negotiate meaningfully about arms control. To the extent that we have security it will be seen whether we can create a constructive set of relationships within the free world. This is the part about which I did not speak but which I feel very strongly about. Security cannot become an end in itself. Security is only the condition of policy. It is not its goal. Is it possible for there to be real disagreement, sincere disagreement? It is certainly possible for there to be sincere disagreement. It is also possible that there is real disagreement. In fact,

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any of us who know how the Pentagon operates know that we do not have to come to Tokyo to find disagreement about the nature of security. We can get a very good fight started any day we want in Washington D.C. among the army, navy and air force about how the U.S. should be defended, much less about how other parts of the world should be defended. Now could there be a difference? There is certainly a difference in perspective. The U.S., through a series of historical actions finds itself conducting a global policy. I would say that Japan is primarily concerned with its own security and with its own development. There is a historical difference. America has never been devastated by war. Japan is the only country on which nuclear weapons have been exploded and the psychological wrench this must be for a country in this period is fully understandable. This alone will create a difference in attitude in which the psychological factors are very real and very important.

Now on the objective analysis one of the great difficulties of the contemporary period is that the lessons are very hard to learn, in the first place, in the security field. They are very hard to understand. And once you have learned them you immediately have to forget them again and learn new lessons. No sooner has one set of theories been accepted that they become superceded.

Let me give you an example. When the problem of security first became dominant in American thinking, we had a vast superiority in strategic striking power and at that time it was perfectly natural for Americans to believe that the defense of the free world depended essentially on our ability to devastate the Soviet Union. That was only five or six years ago, 1954, a very short time in the life of a people. Then within the space of three to four years the Soviet Union developed intercontinental ballistic missiles, sputniks and similar matters and now, for the first time in our history, we are completely vulnerable. So this requires an adjustment of our policy. As far as our allies are concerned, they are about five years behind us in thinking. They still think that the period of 1954 when in fact our bases abroad were primarily designed for a war directed into the heart of the Soviet Union, but in 1960 the problem is different. In 1960 if we wanted to attack the Soviet Union or even if we wanted to drop bombs on the Soviet Union, we do not need bases abroad any more. We can do it from America or from aircraft carriers or from submarines.

Now if there is significance in foreign bases, it is to defend the countries where the bases are located. That is the significance now because now the problem is that one can no longer and should no longer

devastate the attacker. One now has to defend the area which is being attacked at the place where the attack occurs, and when some of my Japanese friends say to me, "We do not want to have our country devastated for America" they should consider whether America will want to have its country devastated for Japan, and this is a very real problem. Therefore, there are many differences in perspective and differences in history and time lag. I am not saying this as a criticism of our foreign friends because, after all, we have not gotten our own thinking straightened out so how can we expect everybody else to have theirs straightened out?

**Question:** I understand that your theory is really based on the idea that there is no danger of war initiated from the U.S. and I think that is true. Do you see any reason, or do you see any means to relax the present tension between the two worlds?

**Kissinger:** My theory, you see, is slightly more complicated, and I must say I have had the pleasure here of talking to some Japanese Marxists who have refreshed my education in Marxism so that I am rather well informed at the moment of Leninist theory. My view is this, that I do not think that the communists are like the Nazis. I do not think they are going to start marching across Europe and Asia one morning to see how far they can go. I do not think this is how the communist mind works and in this respect I agree with George Kennan who says that this is not how the communist mind works. I think it is different. The communists believe that they must go to the limit of whatever the objective situation permits them. They are convinced that the objective forces are more important than the subjective forces. Therefore, when they have a military advantage what they will do is to seek to transform the political situation step by step. After all, what are they saying in Berlin essentially? They are saying that the objective factors have changed. Therefore, we are entitled to get something. They are not making any moral claims in Berlin. This is what I think they are going to do. They have become much more aggressive after sputnik not because their moral position has improved but because they believe their military position has improved. Why is it that before every conference, why is it that before Khrushchev went to India, and before Khrushchev went to America they fired something into the stratosphere? It has almost become a natural event. Khrushchev travels and the Russians launch something. This is not a moral feat. It is a technical feat.

Now turn it around. People say "relax tension and create goodwill." Last year people were saying this in America, "We have to prove to Mr. Khru-shchev that we have 60 million automobiles" and

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on the first day that Khrushchev was in America they took him around in a helicopter to show him the traffic in the evening, of people going home to their supper. I always ask people, "Now, is he mad at us because he thinks we have only 10 million automobiles?" Then they were showing him strikers to prove to him that people had the right to strike. Now anyone who knows even the slightest thing about Marxist theory knows that if Khrushchev sees a striker he thinks the capitalists are in trouble. Therefore, that is more of a reason for him to bring pressure rather than to be nice.

Now imagine Khrushchev's position coming home to Moscow and saying to his colleagues in the Politburo—those of you who have studied Marxist theory will, I am sure agree with me—assume that Khrushchev came home and said, "Look, the Americans are wonderful. They have 60 million automobile. The people want peace. The workers are permitted to strike. We must have goodwill. We must be nice to them." They would throw him out within a week. They would think he had lost his mind. If, however, he came back and said, "The objective conditions in America are as follows: I have come to the conclusion that the capitalists there are determined to hold firm. I have come to the conclusion that the society is not in a state of decay. Therefore, we must make an arrangement."

Those of you who have studied Marxist theory, which do you think would impress the Politburo more—the argument that we must have goodwill—I am saying Khrushchev's argument—or the argument of objective conditions?

Secondly, how do you go about proving goodwill to people who do not believe a word you are saying?

The one thing that I have been constantly told by Japanese Marxists (and I think Japanese Marxists, if I may say so, are, in some respects, the purest Marxists that now exist in the world. I am not speaking of all Socialists, but of some groups to which I have talked) they always say: It does not matter. When I said I do not know any American capitalists who want war, they laughed very disdainfully and thought that I was just an ignorant little boy because everybody knows that what the capitalists want objectively is really of no consequence because the system which they represent must produce war. It does not matter what the capitalists say. The essence of capitalism to Marxism is the stupidity of the capitalists, that the capitalists do not understand their own interests. Now, how do you go about proving goodwill to people who do not believe a word you say?

When President Eisenhower professed his goodwill to Mr. Khrushchev, I would think that Khrushchev thinks he is either stupid or hypocritical, that either

Eisenhower understands the objective needs of the American system and is trying to fool Khrushchev, or he does not understand the objective requirements of the American system which says it is really a waste of time to talk to him.

Now from this I do not draw the conclusion that we should not negotiate with the Soviets and I am not saying that we should not try to relax tension. I am saying, however, that the easy remedies do not work and that to say let us have a little cultural exchange and let us have Khrushchev to America and Eisenhower to Moscow and let us prove to them that we are regular fellows, this does not relax tension. This just gains a little time and makes the ultimate crisis worse. If we want to negotiate with the communists and if we want to relax tension, we have to know precisely what kind of international system we consider compatible with peace, honor and security. If we understand this, we should always go to a conference table and negotiative very precisely on specifics and not on generalities. I am eager for negotiations on specifics but I do not believe that phrases like "let us create goodwill", "let us relax tension", "let us have a little peaceful coexistence", those I consider propaganda slogans or sentimentality and they often contribute to our weakness and encourage the communists rather than the opposite.

**Question:** You mentioned disarmament; in so far as I understand your speech the reduction of armaments will not decrease but rather increase the dangers of war.

**Kissinger:** I think I understand the question. Because of my desire to come to the discussion part as quickly as possible, I made only an enigmatic remark and I should have explained it more fully. I would like also to say I recently published an article about my views on disarmament in the July issue of "Foreign Affairs" and that goes into it more fully than I can now. Let me say this about disarmament. I think that on the issue of disarmament the same position that I described before between pacifists and extreme exponents of military views has inhibited thinking. Many pacifists have advanced the proposition that any reduction in arms is inherently good regardless of what it is just as long as it is a reduction in armaments. Many of the military establishments all over the world, on the other hand, have considered that any reduction in military forces is inherently dangerous and the result has been a rather sterile debate.

There has been another problem. Within the American scientific community I would say that the understanding of political factors is not as fully developed as the understanding of the scientific factors and there is a great imbalance between the

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technical conference in devising methods of detection as compared to the political problems of the international environment in which these methods operate. If the armaments race continues like this with every technological invention opening up the possibility of many others, the end result would be catastrophe.

Now my own view is as follows: I think it is clear that there are certain dangers in the armament race and it is a moot question to debate whether arms are the case of tensions or whether tensions produce arms. I think you can make a strong case for both propositions and probably they are closely related. While it is true that some wars have been produced by armament races, there have also been wars that have been produced by unilateral disarmament. In a sense if France and Great Britain had not disarmed unilaterally in the 1930's the Germans would not have become so predominantly strong that they would have dared to attack.

Now my view on disarmament would be that we should stop talking in slogans of "universal disarmament", "unilateral disarmament" but let us talk about something that can be understood. The first goal of arms control ought to be to reduce those tensions which are caused by arms themselves. This requires a study of arms which many of the advocates of disarmament are reluctant to make because they prefer to make general declarations, but unless you understand what part of the tensions which we have are caused by arms you cannot devise good arms control measures. One cause of the tension is caused by the fact that with modern weapons the offensive has a very great advantage, which is another way of saying that each side has to be afraid that the other side may attack, and you can take this a step further. Each side has to be afraid that the other side is afraid that it is afraid, you see, because if the other side is afraid it may attack, and if the other side is afraid that you are afraid, it may attack because it is afraid you will attack, so then the problem becomes out of question. Is it possible to remove the advantage that comes with surprise? If you can remove the advantage that comes from surprise you have not eliminated arms but you have created an environment in which one aspect of tension is removed. Now if you grant that this is a legitimate goal (and there are many pacifists who consider it a kind of immorality even to talk this way,) then I would say two conclusions follow. Conclusion one is that there are some arms control measures which can be taken unilaterally without any agreement, which means that each nation in devising its military forces should develop those types of forces which least lend themselves to the interpretation by the

other side that they are designed for attack. Whenever you have a choice in building a military force the defensive intention of which is clear to the other side, in so far as it can be done—it cannot always be done—but let me give you one technical example. Suppose you want to protect missiles; you can protect missiles by buying many missiles—the more missiles you have the harder they are to destroy. That is one way of protecting missiles. Another way of protecting missiles is to buy fewer missiles but to make them very mobile so that the opponent cannot find them. Now I would say if you had the choice you should buy fewer missiles and make them mobile. The mobility of the missile should not worry the communists because if you are going to attack, you cannot hurt them any more because your missile is mobile than if it is stationary. All the mobility does is to prevent the opponent from attacking you. This is what I mean. There are 50 other things you can do with this.

Secondly, one should try to develop negotiated agreements between us and the communists which attempt to reduce the advantage of surprise. Now on this point I do believe that there is a certain safety in numbers. Supposing you said both sides reduce their missiles to 50, only 50 missiles or, let us say, both sides destroy all their missiles. First of all, it is technically impossible because it is so easy to hide them, but assuming there are no missiles, then what will you have? The first side that can create 25 missiles will have a decided advantage. At very low levels of armaments the first side that cheats can destroy the opponent. Since the other side knows that if you cheat just a little you may win, it may be tempted to cheat, so in attempting to bring about security you brought about insecurity because you make it a vicious circle. My view, therefore, is that if you stabilize numbers you should stabilize them at a level in which a violation cannot immediately upset the balance. That is again a complicated idea. I admit it is a complicated idea and this is why I am so unhappy when we announce general goals of general universal disarmament which no one can describe in detail. This is also why I think it is so fraudulent for Khrushchev to say "let us go to the U.N. and let the heads of states settle it". Even if there were goodwill, supposing Mr. Khrushchev were a perfectly reasonable man and supposing our people were perfectly reasonable, and supposing we really want to settle it, it could not be settled by them in a week or two weeks. I have sat on committees which have studied this problem for months and it is very difficult. If we want to have real arms control we have to be willing to face complexities. We should not come with simple remedies, and when the Russians are

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willing to sit down and say, "This is a tough problem. We do not quite understand it. You do not quite understand it, but we both want to remove these parts of international tensions which are caused by arms and we want to study technically", then I believe in disarmament. Until now I think disarmament has been a tool of the cold war.

*Question:* I have read your recent article in "Foreign Affairs". I seriously question whether it is humanly possible to devise a perfect system of disarmament in this field where many complications arise and specifically with regard to the new weapons which might be produced as a result of technological advancement. I would like to hear your comments.

*Kissinger:* It is very difficult, it is hopeless, to attempt to devise a perfect system of disarmament, and if you approach the problem from that point of view you are already defeated. And it is also hopeless to attempt to deal with the unknown, namely new weapons. Thirdly, the problem of disarmament is so little understood that it can more surely be defeated by setting too ambitious goals than to set no goals at all. I, therefore, believe we have to concentrate first on problems which we know and problems which we know are existing weapons. Even then there is no perfect system. Therefore you have to try to devise a system whose imperfections do not make the situation worse. After all if you have a system which is so tenuous that the first violation puts you at the mercy of the opponent, you are better off if you do not have a system because then you are really in a worse situation than a surprise attack. What one has to address one's mind to is a system whose imperfections are bearable, with known weapons that will not stop unknown weapons. In fact, we have to be realistic and many of the advocates of arms control should consider this. To the extent that you control existing weapons you may give an incentive to create new weapons. Even if it were possible—which it is not—even if it were possible to bury all nuclear weapons in the ocean, what you may then do is to have people concentrate on gas warfare and bacteriological warfare or things that people have not even thought of yet—solar energy for warlike purposes—so we have to make up our mind. A price has to be paid for every measure of arms control and, therefore, I would like to start with some small ones to see what happens and to make sure that you are not creating something that increases the insecurity rather than decreases it. To do that again you will have to have some serious technical discussions, first within our country and then with the Russians. But it is discouraging when the Russian scientists come to these conferences and repeat the political instructions of their government

just like Molotov and absolutely deny scientific facts. It took us six months to get them to admit that you could hide underground explosions despite all the scientific facts which we produced for them. This is one of the serious problems.

*Question:* I have two questions: First, do you not assume too much rationality on the part of decision makers, both American and Russian? Second, are you prepared to plan the reshaping of society that such a prolonged period of uncertainty will require?

*Kissinger:* To answer the first question first. It is quite possible that I am assuming too much rationality. On the other hand, while I admit this criticism I do not know what conclusion follows from it because you can make proposals only to people you assume to be rational. If people are irrational the world is lost or the danger will increase. It is a very real problem. The comment is often made one has to assume too much rationality. The only other solution then is surrender. But even that may not prevent nuclear wars because I have the suspicion that if the Chinese and Russians ever go at each other and fight a little religious war over the interpretation of communism that it will be bloodier than anything that we have ever seen. It is sometimes said that if the Russians are so irrational we had better surrender to them—one occasionally hears that in America. Well, to this I have two objections. The people who usually say this add "Moreover the Russians are becoming democratic." I think if one wants to surrender, all right, let us surrender, but let us not develop theories of historic inevitability that tell us history is going to hand us our deepest desire on a silver platter and that we can have all the benefits of surrender plus all the benefits of democracy. That is a little bit too easy. If anyone wants to surrender and tell me that living under a system of oppression is preferable for him to nuclear war then I can understand, but I do not like evolutionary theories to be coupled with it.

Secondly, I am not at all sure that this will prevent nuclear wars because while as long as we exist the community of interest between the Russians and Chinese may be pretty big, once we have disappeared as a force, they will really have something to argue about. The history of religious movements, would indicate that the bitterness of the struggle between them may be much greater than anything that happens now. At least this is a possibility that should not be denied.

Now, about the reshaping of society. I do not believe that it should be dispersed. I think this is not what is required in the present circumstances. I do not believe we should organize all of our society

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in preparation for an all-out nuclear war. This would be absolutely self-defeating. I do believe there has to be some preparation for civil defense because I think it is immoral to have a military policy that constantly threatens nuclear war and not even to tell the people how they can protect themselves against a simple accident. You know yourself that if a nuclear reactor blows up, if a civilian reactor blows up, which after all could happen, that the average person does not know what he should do. I think it is a disgrace in all civilized countries that no one has told his people how to take elementary protection, and I find it incomprehensible that the very people who constantly say that nuclear war is so immoral, that every human life is sacred, will not protect human life. It could happen that way. So I believe in elementary civil defense measures, but not dispersal and things like that.

Now there is a problem of a different kind of society, not in preparation for nuclear war but in preparation for the world in which we live. I think the difficulty of bOURgeois society is that it has put commerce above politics and that the ablest people are drawn into some kind of commercial activity. And to be quite rude, I think that most business people have absolutely no understanding of politics. The people who greeted Mr. Khrushchev and Mr. Mikoyan most enthusiastically in America were the capitalists in Wall Street and the big businessmen. This is one thing.

The second thing is that it is very hard for our eminent people who have spent all their lives in business to conduct foreign policy intelligently when they sometimes do not even know where, for instance, Laos is located and when they have never spent any time throughout their lives thinking about the psychological, historical and cultural problems of other nations. If I look at the communist leadership group, first of all, you do not get to the top that way. You do not enter the Communist Party unless you want power very badly. Secondly, you do not get to the top unless you have political skill because the penalty is not simply transfer to another department as in the bureaucratic society but disgrace and death, and so they produce a very tough and ruthless political type. Now I do not say we have to produce a tough and ruthless type but we have to produce a political type so that we can understand the world in which we live, and if the military problems disappear tomorrow morning, if there is no danger of war, we will still have to do it. One reason it is so hard to get people to act while in Africa and Asia for Americans is because we do not have enough people who address themselves to these problems throughout their lives.

We have a few scholars and that is all; this is a problem of the reorganization of our society which is terribly important, and which has nothing to do primarily with nuclear war.

**Question:** The press reported you as saying that American bases in Japan were not essential. Would you explain for us ?

**Kissinger:** From the point of view of American all-out strategy, if we wanted to make a showdown with Russia we do not need overseas bases. From the point of view of a showdown with the Soviet Union we can deliver all the weapons we need to deliver on the Soviet Union from the continental U. S., from ships, from submarines or from islands which belong to us. We do not need bases in Japan to launch an attack on Russia. In fact they add very little to us. It takes perhaps 15 minutes for a missile to reach Russia from Japan and half an hour from the U. S. Those 15 minutes are not worth it. In fact, it we wanted to attack the Soviet Union we would surely not use Japanese bases because the security problem is much too great, that is too many people are likely to learn about it, so for the question of all-out war we do not need Japanese bases.

Now it is different for the defense of Japan. For defense there are certain objective requirements. These requirements can either be met by a combination of U. S. and Japanese forces or by purely Japanese forces. The Japanese forces, if Japan wants to defend itself entirely by itself, have to be larger than the combined U. S. and Japanese forces, for this reason: If the communists attack Japan when the U. S. is present they have to be careful! because it gets risky. It is much riskier if we are involved since there is always the possibility that there could be an all-out war resulting. If we are not involved they can push the scale of violence further up. Now, what conclusion do I draw from this? The conclusion I draw is that the American bases in Japan have significance for the defense of Japan, and if they do not have significance for the defense of Japan they have no significance at all. Now from this I draw the following conclusion:

If the majority of Japanese became convinced that the American bases in Japan serve primarily American interests, I would be in favor of withdrawing the bases because, while the defense of Japan is of interest to America, it is primarily of interest to Japan. It would be a great disaster for America if Japan were overrun by communism. It would be an even greater disaster for Japan. This is what I mean. The defense forces of Japan and the American commitment in Japan should be considered almost exclusively from the point of view of the defense of Japan and of the surrounding area

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of Japan, and this is the only long-range importance it possesses.

*Chairman:* We will all want to thank Dr. Kissinger for his willingness to take time from a busy schedule to meet with us this afternoon.

*Kissinger:* I appreciate very much this opportunity to talk to you all, and I always feel like apoligizing because of the bluntness of my speaking as compared with the delicacy with which my Japanese hosts phrase their questions and their thoughts. But since I cannot compete in delicacy I thought the best thing to do was to be myself.

## Contributors to This Issue

J. Robert Oppenheimer, Director, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N. J., visited Japan as a special guest of the Japan Committee for Intellectual Interchange, from September 5 to September 25, 1960.

Paul Tillich, University Professor, Harvard Divinity School, visited Japan as a special guest of the Japan Committee for Intellectual Interchange, from May 3 to July 10, 1960.

Chintaman Dwarkanath Deshmukh, Former Finance Minister, Government of India, Chairman, the University Grants Commission, and President, India International Centre, visited Japan as a special guest of the International House, from April 3 to April 20, 1960.

Henry A. Kissinger, Professor of Political Science, Harvard University, visited Japan at the invitation of the America-Japan Society to lecture at the Japan Harvard Seminar, from August 26 to September 18, 1960.

(Continued from page 15)

last 10 years. We do not know if it is only through ecclesiastical reaction, or through emotional exciting which then goes away shortly, or whether it is an indication for more. I believe it is an indication for more, for the longing of a new theonomy, but that is all I can say. And here in this country it seems to me that, in spite of the great old tradition and the Christian Churches and the other religions, there is ultimately an indifference to the religious question. The theonomous aim is strongly felt by many of those whom I have met in this short time and books I have read, but of course this is the question, and up to now it is only a question and what I can do in this moment is only to close with this question.

## The Japanese-Language Bulletin

Kokusai Bunka Kaikan Kaiho, the Japanese-language Bulletin of the House, is issued twice a year, in January and in July. Foreign members who desire a copy of Kaiho may apply to the membership office. The contents of the Japanese-Language Bulletin No. 5 are as follows: *Spiritual Foundations of Democracy*, a translation of a series of public lectures given on May 18 and 19, 1960 by Prof. Paul Tillich of Harvard Divinity School during his visit as a special guest of the Japan Committee for Intellectual Interchange; *Some Impres-sions of My Trip through India, the Middle East and the Far East*, a report by Dr. Shinobu Iwamura, Professor of Oriental History, Kyoto University and Councillor of the International House upon his return from travels in those areas; and *Japan's Future and the World's Future*, notes from a report given upon his return from a trip devoted to a survey of economic conditions of twenty-three countries by Mr. Hisaakira Kano, Former Governor, Housing Corporation of Japan and Director of the International House, on June 13, 1960, to a Meeting on International Economic Affairs for the supporting members of the International House.

## Publications

(April—September 1960)

1. Bulletin of the International House of Japan No. 5: April 30, 1960

2. Kokusai Bunka Kaikan Kaiho No. 5: July 31, 1960

3. Kokusai Bunka Kaikan no Ayumi (Progress of the International House of Japan) No. 5: August 6, 1960

4. Annual Report, April 1959—March 1960: August 31, 1960

Single copies of the current Membership List, the Japanese-language Bulletin (distributed only to Japanese members and to foreign members upon request) and the English-language Bulletin published by the House are regularly sent to members. Additional copies of these publications are available either to members or nonmembers, as follows:

<table><tr><td>List of Members, 1959</td><td>¥350</td></tr><tr><td>The Japanese-language Bulletin</td><td>¥100</td></tr><tr><td>The English-language Bulletin</td><td>¥100</td></tr></table>