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The chair recognizes ...

I don't accept questions we are going into executive session.

Congressman Haya: Well Mw. Chairman, I don't want to ask a question.

I just want to congratulate the Secretary and say that it's kind of become a habit in this country never to say anything good about anybody as long as they are alive. I think perhaps President Truman is a good example of that.

And the media probably never gives much credit, but I had a long talk with Mr. Sadat, last January, and I talked to the Prime Minister of Israel on a couple of occasions since -- and I think that this would not have been possible if both sides didn't have a great deal of confidence in you and your word, and the word of the United States.

I think you deserve a great deal of credit and I hope the Congress will have the sophistication to do the things that are necessary to implement this, so that we can have a beginning of peace in that area of the world.

THE CHAIRMAN: The Committee will now go into Executive Session in this room. All those not authorized to stay in the room, please leave.

PRESS
DEPARTMENT OF STATE

[LC]

September 11, 1975

No. 479

corrected text

INTERVIEW OF SECRETARY OF STATE

HENRY A. KISSINGER

BY

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.

FOR

"FIRING LINE"

AT WETA-TV, ARLINGTON, VA.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1975

MR. BUCKLEY: When President Nixon and his party travelled to Peking in 1972, Art Buchwald wrote that he had come into possession of captured Chinese communist documents indicating that Chinese intelligence had unearthed a super-secret United States agency called the "State Department"; that indeed the head of that Department, called by insiders the "Secretary of State," was actually travelling with the President -- a white-haired gentleman who mingled discreetly with a crowd of reporters, cultivating inconspicuousness, while the business of state was handled ostensibly and ostentatiously by Presidential aide Henry Kissinger. Art Buchwald having blown the operation, President Nixon in due course surfaced the Department of State by naming Henry Kissinger as its head.

As I guess it is safe to say, the most conspicuous Secretary of State in American history. And although, as every schoolboy knows, the authority to write foreign policy is the prerogative of the President, the reliance of the incumbent President on the advice of Mr. Kissinger is widely advertised by the President himself.

The paradox is that Mr. Kissinger's huge personal successes are not reflected on the historical record. It is as if everyone at the Olympic Stadium joined in carrying an athlete on their shoulders in an endless triumphal procession without pausing to realize that in fact he had won no gold medals at all. Perhaps he struck the fancy of the crowd because they knew that he was fated to lose but admired the brilliance of his performance. Perhaps in the great seizure of auto-hypnosis, the crowd thought he was winning even as inconspicuous muscle-bound little athletes were busily scoring in one event after another. Moreover, the allure of the champion is strengthened -- not weakened -- by his own refusal to declare himself the winner. Sometimes he seems to be saying that there are no such things as diplomatic victories. Sometimes he seems to be saying even darker things, such as that the end of Western Civilization is in sight and our descent should be dignified and perhaps even good-natured.

I should like to begin by asking Secretary Kissinger why he thought to give President Nixon to read a one-volume edition of Spengler's *Decline of the West*.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, because I had discussed my early interest in Philosophy of history with President Nixon I pointed out to him that I thought that Spengler -- with many of whose conclusions I did not agree -- nevertheless, in his perception of the rise and fall of civilizations as

For further information contact:

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integrated units -- that is to say, in which politics, art, architecture, science were all part of the same perception -- was an interesting way of looking at the problem of civilization, not necessarily a prediction of our civilization.

**MR. BUCKLEY:** Well, did you expect that he would learn to see more acutely what was happening to our civilization simply by mastering Spengler's technique or by sharing in Spengler's *Weltschmerz*?

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** Well, first of all, I think it is incorrect to say that Spengler suffered from *Weltschmerz*. I think that what Spengler attempted to do was to show that civilizations follow a certain rhythm and a certain sequence of events, and it is therefore wrong to say it is optimistic or pessimistic. It is more important to understand whether his perception had some validity.

The reason, however, that I discussed this with President Nixon was to emphasize that the manifestation of events which had come up in the form of tactical decisions are very often quite misleading, and that a statesman has to understand what the trend of events is -- whether it is in a positive or in a negative direction -- and has to understand that there are many seemingly unrelated manifestations of a total culture that affect the scope of policy, and the direction that it can take.

**MR. BUCKLEY:** Well, but it's --

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** I was much less interested in the predictions of Spengler than in his perception.

**MR. BUCKLEY:** Than in his technique?

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** Besides he had read Toynbee, so I had to give him another approach.

**MR. BUCKLEY:** Well, there is a certain irreversibility, isn't there, in Spengler's view of things, which I take it you did not want to suggest to the President.

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** I do not believe that there is an irreversibility in events, but I do believe that to reverse a trend requires more than proclamations. It is important to understand what the trend is before one can reverse it.

**MR. BUCKLEY:** Well, I think most people would agree, although sometimes trends are accidentally reversed even by people who fail to understand them, just as they are unintentionally accelerated.

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** Yes, but if you make policy, you cannot do it in the expectation of a miracle or of an accidental reversal. The problem of policy-making is to get some conscious control over events. Now, if an accident helps you, you are lucky; but you cannot conduct affairs on the basis of the expectation of winning at roulette.

**MR. BUCKLEY:** No, but doesn't the making of policy sometimes call simply for the buying of safe time? I remember when Mr. Churchill, speaking in 1949 at MIT -- perhaps you were there -- said that perhaps the death -- he did not name Him, but his allusion was clearly to Stalin -- would give to the West the same advantages that the death of Genghis Kahn gave us. And there's a sense in which policy can be understood as hoping that things will change for the better, meanwhile simply playing it as safe as you can. Is that correct?

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**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** Sometimes you have to play for time in the expectation of some change, such as the one to which Churchill referred; but, to the extent possible, there has to be some rational explanation of what you are waiting for. You cannot simply conduct policy waiting for a favorable accident, when it was a perfectly rational expectation that the death of Stalin would bring about important domestic changes in the Soviet Union. Therefore, playing for that time was a reasonable course of action.

**MR. BUCKLEY:** Is it rational to expect that the collision of Marxist ideology with historical reality will affect, -- in such a way as to be advantageous to the West -- Soviet policy in the future?

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** Well, first of all, no system of government and no ideology has ever remained unaffected by time. And it would be an extraordinary event if Marxist ideology were to remain unchanged as the only ideology in history. So I believe the evolution of history will inevitably bring about a change in Marxist ideology.

Now, whether that change of Marxist ideology will be for the benefit of the West, whether it will lead to a possibility of a more conciliatory foreign policy, or whether instead it will lead to a gradual spread of Marxist perceptions around the world -- this depends not only on time, but it depends on the nature of the opposition. It depends on the vitality of competing values and on the ability to prevent major foreign policy successes by countries that profess the Marxist ideology.

**MR. BUCKLEY:** But isn't there a sense in which the vitality of the opposition to the growth of Marxist doctrines plays into the theoretical hands of the tablet-keepers of Marxism -- because this of course is what they predicted: that we would resist and resist, even at bayonet point, inasmuch as we were dominated by our fascination and greed for property and domination of the ruling class, of the working class?

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** So you think that the fact of resistance fuels Marxist ideology?

**MR. BUCKLEY:** Yes; I say it can, yes.

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** But, surely, the opposite could not be true -- that the absence of resistance would weaken Communist ideology. I cannot accept this proposition. It depends on the nature of the resistance, and it depends on the adaptation that Marxism itself has to make to contemporary realities.

**MR. BUCKLEY:** Well, are we prepared for either contingency? There is the possibility, as you say, that the evolution of the Communist idea will go in the direction -- in a beneficent direction, in a direction conducive to the interest of the West; and there is the alternative possibility. We seem to be preparing almost exclusively for the latter rather than for the former.

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** That they are going in a beneficent --

**MR. BUCKLEY:** In a beneficent direction.

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** Not at all. It is my view that whether it will go in a direction beneficial to the West or whether it will confirm existing stereotypes depends very importantly on the performance of the West on the performance of the non-Communist world and on the adaptations of Marxist ideology has to make to reality, and to a reality that we ourselves have to be instrumental in creating. I do not agree with you at

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all that our policy is based on the proposition that without effort on our part, history will do our work for us, and that Marxist ideology will change without effort on our side and without our resistance to foreign policy pressure.

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I believe you -- to begin with -- and it seems to me that your record makes this plain. But it also seems to me that here you are not in harmony with the American establishment. The American establishment seems to subsidize anti-Communist efforts up to a certain point -- at which point attrition takes over and they pull out. It seems to be plain that the disaster of Indochina, against which you struggled, was a disaster nevertheless. And it has certainly confirmed those Marxists who believe that the imperialist world, as they call us, is soft and lacking in purpose.

Now, to what extent is this a realistic historical judgment, or to what extent is it simply a capricious application of ideological theories?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, I have always considered Indochina a disaster -- perhaps partly because we did not think through the implications of what we were doing at the beginning.

MR. BUCKLEY: Does "we" mean you included?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well --

MR. BUCKLEY: Which was it?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: -- pre my being in office. Those decisions were made in the previous Administration -- and partly because the magnitude of the task we had set for ourselves was not clear when it was set. And then the American public was not prepared to stick with it.

So it failed for a variety of reasons, but none of them was that any of the policy-makers -- as it drew to a conclusion -- thought that history would do our job for us, or that failure in Indochina would help us in the general relationship with the Communist world.

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, do you consider that the American public is co-extensive with the American Congress when you use that term? Is it the public that let us down or is it the Congress that let us down?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, I think the Indochina problem is a very complex one because in a way you can say we let ourselves down by entering too lightly on an enterprise whose magnitude was not understood, by methods which were inappropriate to the scale of the --

MR. BUCKLEY: Of the problem.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: -- of the problem, and then were caught by what I would think was a minority, but nevertheless a very determined minority, in a situation in which the effective public support disintegrated.

I do not know whether I would make a distinction here between the Congress and the public. I think probably the Congress came to reflect public sentiment so that finally, in the ultimate collapse last spring, there was clearly no public support for any continuation of the American effort. All public opinion polls seemed to show this.

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MR. BUCKLEY: Now, is it possible that your own policies, and those of President Nixon and President Ford, contributed to the confusion that rendered the voice of the American public or the American Congress so indecisive?

I give you one example: A question was asked of President Ford in March of this year, the answer to which I will spare you the embarrassment of reading. But the question was: "Mr. President, the question is raised by many critics of our policy in Southeast Asia as to why we can conduct a policy of detente with the two Communist superpowers in the world and could not follow a policy of detente with Cambodia and South Vietnam. Could you explain that to us?"

The answer is he could not.

Now, I'm sure you can. But it takes us some high flying and dialectical reconciliations, doesn't it?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Not at all, in my view -- although I would not make Indochina policy the test case of our foreign policy in general.

Our policy has been firmly opposed to an expansion of the Communist sphere or to foreign policy adventures by Communist countries. Therefore, to the extent that North Vietnam was engaging in systematic aggression against all of its neighbors, it was absolutely consistent with our policy that we would resist that.

To us, the policy of relaxation of tensions with the two major Communist countries does not presuppose any degree of ideological approbation. It is a practical accommodation to new realities, and it does not go so far as to acquiesce in any foreign policy adventures. Therefore, at the time of the Jordan crisis of 1970, the building of a submarine base in Cuba, the Middle East crisis in 1973, the Administration always reacted with extreme firmness to what we perceive to be foreign policy challenges by any of the Communist countries. And I think the American public will have to understand that, on the one side, in the age of nuclear superpowers and the capability of destroying tens of millions of people in a very brief time in a war, the problem of peace is of great consequence -- but, at the same time not to disarm ourselves where we will not resist foreign pressures.

Now, this requires a more sophisticated, a more complicated perception of the international environment than was possible in the 40s and 50s. But I see no inconsistency between resisting foreign expansion and attempting to moderate the conduct of the Communist countries at the same time.

MR. BUCKLEY: But, Mr. Secretary, the aggression by the North Vietnamese depended for its success on Soviet and Red Chinese arms. It is an aggression that they would have had to have used slingshots to fuel if it had not been for the fact that they were clearly client states of the two great superpowers with whom we were carrying on this policy of detente. So isn't it some sort of a semantical illusion to suppose that you can prescind the North Vietnamese act of aggression as though it were not in fact sponsored by the Soviet Union?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, I do not think it was sponsored by the Soviet Union. I think it was supported by the Soviet Union. I think that there was a clear generic and indigenous impetus to the North Vietnamese military actions in Indochina.

Secondly, the policy of relaxation of tension began systematically only after the Indochina war was already started; and I think it was used in

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part, to some effect, to bring it to a conclusion on terms which, if we
had sustained our effort, would have been -- if we had sustained our
assistance -- a tolerable outcome.

But I do not believe that the case of Indochina, which goes back to the
early 60s, is a good test case of the general policy.

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, would you say that the activities of the Soviet Union in Portugal would be a better example?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: I would say that we have to recognize that the Soviet Union and the United States are ideological opponents, that the relaxation of tensions has never been conceived by any of us as ending competition and the possibility of conflict. It is a means by which a competition which is, inevitable -- in the nature of present circumstances -- regulated while reducing the danger of nuclear war.

With respect to Portugal, the basic cause of the disintegration of the
political situation in Portugal is due to factors indigenous to Portugal.
It is true that the Soviet Union has given some assistance to the Communist
party in Portugal. It is also true that, until recently, this could be
an important factor only because the West did not resist with the determina-
tion that it should have.

So it is not our view that the Soviet Union will not take advantage of
opportunities that may be presented. It is, however, our view that they
can be maintained if we act with wisdom and determination within manageable
bounds.

MR. BUCKLEY: But since we operate in a free society, you really do need
a thing called "public support", the lack of which made it impossible for
you to stick it out in Indochina. But isn't that public support gravely
threatened by shifting moral perceptions that flow out of the ideological
egalitarianism that goes into detente?

Let me give you one example: The Gallup Poll reported, one month after
your return in 1972 from Peking, as follows: "In the period leading up to
this historic event, we have seen a far more favorable image that the U. S.
public has of the Chinese Communists today than they did in the mid-60s.
Respondents to the Poll were asked to select from a list of 23 favorable
and unfavorable adjectives, those which they feel best describe the Chinese
Communists. The terms 'ignorant, warlike, sly and treacherous' were
named most often in 1966, but now the measurement taken shows them to be
'hard-working, intelligent, artistic, progressive, and practical.'"

Now, the transformation in the People's Republic of China between 1966 and
1972 was in fact a radical transformation. There is a sense in which
conservative elements were defeated during the Cultural Revolution, the old
Communist cadres. In any event --

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Not your kind of conservatism.

MR. BUCKLEY: No, no; not mine. And I'm glad to say not yours -- which is
a compliment. But it is plain that the American people -- as witness
those who have travelled in China -- people like Ken Galbraith, Scotty
Reston, Barbara Tuchman -- come back and, sure enough, we hear those old
voices from the 30s: "The trains are running on time."

Now, how can a free society husband the moral flywheel necessary to dis-
tinguish between desirable and undesirable societies, in the wake of such
relativism as is stimulated by the philosophy of detente?

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SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, first let me say that if one pushed your
argument to a conclusion, one would have to say that the United States
must maintain international tensions in order to make sure that its people
have the correct perception of the nature of the societies with which
they are dealing.

It is one of the tasks before us to enable the United States to conduct a
vital foreign policy without moral relativism, and also without the black and
white categories with which we tended to sustain ourselves in the past.

In the past, we used to think that relations between countries were either
peace or war, that wars were caused by evil people, and that if we
approached relations of peace with a country or eased relations with a
country that also indicated an improvement in the moral climate of this
country.

In the world in which we find ourselves now, in the world of nuclear super-
powers, in the world in which American power is no longer as predominant as
it was in the late 1940s, it is necessary for us to conduct a more compli-
cated foreign policy without these simple categories of a more fortunate
historical past.

So I think we have to come to an understanding that the Communist societies
are morally, in their internal structure, not acceptable to us; that their
ideology is one that is not compatible necessarily with our own, but that,
nevertheless, on the plane of day-to-day foreign policy, we may be prepared
to make those practical accommodations that preserve the peace, as long as
vital interests are not threatened.

The moral quality of life in China did not dramatically change between
1969 and 1972, and in no public statement have I ever claimed that the fact
that we are working out specific arrangements either with the People's
Republic of China or with the Soviet Union indicates that there has been
an evolution in their domestic structure towards a more pluralistic system.

We have to avoid creating the illusion that progress on some foreign
policy questions -- such as nuclear arms agreement -- means that there has
been a change in the domestic structure. So this Gallup Poll in part reflects
a kind of perception of the nature of the international environment that
inevitably will have to be changed. I believe that it is the task of our
national leaders to be able to maintain both the moral strength of the
country and to do the practical steps that need to be taken for whatever
national purposes we set ourselves.

MR. BUCKLEY: But they're not very good at it. Now, you and Mr. Nixon
didn't invent co-existence. The idea of co-existence, as a matter of fact,
was affirmed by Eisenhower; and he did, in fact, meet Khrushchev here in
one tense day in 1959. But he sought to make it plain by those fine
gestures that diplomats study that there was a continuing -- indeed, a
rather heated -- disapproval of the means by which Khruschev maintained
himself in power and his people subject.

I'm trying to say that in an enthusiasm for detente the American people
are listening to rapturous descriptions of life in China, in the course
of which --

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Not from us.

MR. BUCKLEY: Not from you, but from the people with whom you have associated
very closely.

As a matter of fact, this may amuse you. CREEP -- Mr. Nixon's organization --

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**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** -- I deplore this particular statement that CREEPent out, but they were not selected for that.

**MR. BUCKLEY:** It wasn't considered a dirty trick, you see.

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** No, no; I don't consider it a dirty trick, but they were not selected for their positions because of their competence in foreign policy.

**MR. BUCKLEY:** No, no. I gave it merely as an example because they were attempting to say something that the people would find internally plausible. You see, as --

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** In an election year -- under pressure of an electoral period -- many ill-considered things are being done. But I do not think you will find any official statement from the Department of State since I have become Secretary of State -- or from the White House, for that matter -- which would make these claims.

**MR. BUCKLEY:** No. You see, I am not saying that you personally endorse this view of life in China. I am saying that certain deductions are drawn from the intimacy of the highest diplomatic contacts with China, which results in Gallup finding that the majority of the American people think of the poor Chinese as intelligent, artistic, progressive, and practical.

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** Yes, but I think the solution to this problem is not to generate artificial crisis but to try to overcome the simple Manichaeanism --

**MR. BUCKLEY:** Yes.

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** -- in which one side has to assert absolute good and the other absolute evil before you can develop a practical policy, because it is precisely this attitude that leads to these wild swings that over a period of time will also demoralize our public.

**MR. BUCKLEY:** You are talking about somebody who can be ex-communicated if you lose Manichaeanism, so I'd be very careful not to engage in that heresy. But I do sharply understand what you are saying, what you are trying to achieve; but I am here to predict great, great troubles for you -- as witness this:

In the last few months, if you had elected to go to the help of Portugal -- I am not sure the American people would have, in fact, permitted you to do so -- I think there would have been a standard lachrymose editorial in *The New York Times* and in *The Washington Post* weeping over lost Portuguese liberties, but saying, after all, they were used to being without liberty. But they would be much more interested in whether the CIA had dropped an unfriendly balloon over south Portugal and would haul you up and ask you if you were up to your old Chilean tricks again.

Now, my point is that schematically your policy is easier to understand in a society in which you have total power to dominate foreign policy but the difficulties that you are likely to get into are precisely those that trace to America's attempt to fuse some sense of moral purpose into their foreign policy.

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** Yes, but first of all I believe that there is no inconsistency between infusing a moral purpose in our foreign policy and the policies we are pursuing. I believe that moral purpose must be related to a series of practical steps that can be taken. Practical steps without moral purpose become random. And without moral purpose, no leader

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will have the assurance and the confidence to act in situations in which the choices are always unclear at a moment when the scope for action is still relatively wide.

So I do not accept the antithesis between moral purpose and pragmatism. I think without strong moral purpose there cannot be an effective foreign policy.

At the same time, when one translates moral purpose into policy, one has to look at the realities of the situation or one runs the risk of empty posturing.

Now, in this translation, there is the danger of moral confusion that you have described; and this is particularly great if the opponents of the prevailing policy -- whatever the prevailing policy is -- state their case in very absolute terms because --

MR. BUCKLEY: It is surrealistic.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: That is right, because they will not be responsible for the consequences of their assertions, and they do not necessarily look at the alternatives that were in fact available. It is in those terms that I believe we have a problem of educating the public. We are living in a more complicated period than the one in which we formed our historical perceptions, and we have this problem of education at a time when respect for authority of whatever kind -- but especially Executive authority -- is declining, for reasons independent of the specifics that we have been discussing but due to the upheavals of the 60s and 70s, and where the --

MR. BUCKLEY: An atomized ethos.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: You have that, and you have Executive/Legislative difficulties. So we are in a very difficult period for the conduct of foreign policy. There is no question about this.

But if the American people develop the idea that its Government is artificially creating crisis or unnecessarily creating crisis, we would repeat the divisions of the Vietnam war -- which, even though I believe they were caused by a minority, contributed substantially to the demoralization of what you consider the American establishment.

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, if I understand you correctly, if an Allende were to come to power tomorrow, you would not feel that you could recommend such action as you thought appropriate in 1970 -- so that even in the last four years --

SECRETARY KISSINGER: No, I am not saying that. And I would also go back to what you said about Portugal. I think that the realities of our situation -- and not the realities of the relaxation of tensions policy, because that was a very minor factor -- but the realities of the domestic evolution that have occurred in this country required a rather deliberate approach to the problems of Portugal, particularly because Portugal is more a West European problem than a United States problem and we thought it was important to bring the West Europeans with us.

Our perception of the evolution in Portugal was always clear, was repeatedly stated, and was in fact frequently criticized for being too pessimistic. Once we had achieved an agreement with the West European countries about the nature of the danger, I do not think it would be correct to say that we were totally passive about the evolution there.