Vortrag von Herrn Dr. Henry Kissinger

Mr. Chairman und meine Damen und Herren,

ich werde einige Sätze, ich will nicht sagen auf deutsch, auf "fränkisch" sagen. Ich bin
hier überhaupt sehr erschüttert, weil Herr Dr. Baur mir erklärte, daß wo er wohnt,
jeder, der von nördlich der Donau herkommt, nicht als bayrisch angesehen wird, so
daß ich ein Mann ohne jede Heimat bin. Mein Vater - wie ich ein Kind war - erlaubte
mir nie, nördlich des Rheins zu gehen, jetzt fühle ich mich hier zwischen dem Donau
und dem Main etwas eingeengt. Ich bin natürlich in Deutschland geboren und
verstehe Deutsch sehr gut und kann mich in einer Unterhaltung ausdrücken, aber ich
wage es nicht, eine Rede auf Deutsch zu halten; ich kann Ihnen nur sagen, vor einigen
Monaten ließ ich mich von dem auswärtigem Amt überzeugen, auf dem Fernsehen auf
Deutsch zu erscheinen und ein Diplomat begleitete mich zu der Veranstaltung und ich
fragte danach, wie es gegangen war und er sagte sehr diplomatisch: "Ich war sehr von
der Einfachheit Ihrer Ausdrucksweise beeindruckt!"

Damit will ich Sie nicht belästigen und deshalb werde ich mir erlauben, auf englisch weiterzumachen. Sie können Ihre Fragen natürlich auf deutsch an mich stellen, wenn Sie wollen, und ich werde wahrscheinlich auf Englisch darauf antworten.

So let me talk to you about the current state of international affairs, especially about East-West relations.

I am, as some of you who read my occasional articles may know, I am not in total
agreement with what is being done in East-West relations at this particular moment.
That is in fact an understatement. So I cannot be considered and should not be
considered necessarily or in any sense a spokesman of American foreign policy. On the
other hand, since I believe that the atlantic area is really culturally, morally, and
politically one unit, I don't have one speech for Germany and another speech for the
United States, and so I will speak to you as I would speak to an American audience.

We live in some respects in a curious period. If you look at the last forty years, they
have been times of very great achievement. It is the longest period without war in the

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history of the modern European state system, the longest period since the 17th
century that there has been no war in Europe at all.

Secondly, there has been a astounding economic development. I was with the army of
occupation in Germany in 1945 and those of you who lived here, who remember that
period, know that it was almost inconceivable that these cities could be rebuilt in any
measurable time and if anyone had predicted that the Federal Republic would have
the current standard of living, say in the winter of 46 or 47, within less than a
generation, it would have been considered absurd! But the same is true in areas which
have had no industrial tradition like Germany, say Northern Italy, and all of Europe,
all of Western Europe as well as the United States have done remarkably well.

Third, it is the first time that there are democratic institutions in all Western countries
and fourth the atlantic partnership with all its ups and downs has on the whole
worked well. And European unity has been established.

I mention these facts only because all democracies at this moment suffer from the
disease that its political leaders feel they must constantly invent new solutions. They
sometimes have more answers than there are problems! And so one reads that one
must banish the danger of war from an area where there hasn't been any war. All the
wars have been in areas where there are no American troops, where there were no
American troops, no nuclear weapons, and no aligned systems. So, we hear that a
problem must be solved that I quite frankly am not sure is an overwhelming problem.
And another strange situation has arisen: we are confronted by a system that has
been a colossal failure. Not one communist country has produced one industrial
product that can compete in world markets with the product of any market economy.
If you consider that we are dealing with a superpower that has managed to produce
intercontinental rockets and many other advanced technologies for military purposes,
yet they have not met the most rudimentary standards of living. The Soviet Union in
its civilian economy is an underdeveloped country and it is a strange empire. All
previous empires have exported manufactured goods and imported cheap raw
materials. The Soviet empire operates by favorable terms of trade in exporting its raw
materials and importing second rate manufactured goods from its own - I don't want
to use insulting words, but in effect - satellite countries. So, and at this moment they
have a new leader who states the obvious that the political system isn't working very
well, and that the economic system isn't working very well. I give him great credit for

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saying it, but that does not make him necessarily a great hero. So in the West, there is an obsession with the figure of Gorbatchev. I have met him twice at considerable length and there is no doubt, he is intelligent, flexible, better dressed, many qualities that are attractive and also he has the courage to try to reform the Soviet economic and to some extent the Soviet political system. My concern is, why should that make him a hero in the West? In 20 years the Soviet Union may be where we were 15 years ago, at best! That's an achievement, but fundamentally, that is his problem. It is not necessarily our problem. And it is not being done to be kind to us, it is being done because there is a limit to human endurance even in communist countries. Now, I am not sure even that it can succeed and it will face huge obstacles in its whole history.

The Soviet Union has been a highly centralized state. Not just the Soviet Union, Russia under Czars and commissars has been a highly centralized state. One can even argue that the principle expression of its state was its extreme centralization. When they decentralize as they must, contrary to China, which is a culturally homogeneous country, they will inevitably run into the nationality question. And what we have seen in Armenia and Azerbaijan is only the beginning. A month ago, I met a member of the nomenclatura, a very very high official, and I said to him - I spoke to him jokingly - about the fact that when I met Gromyko, he had told me - I asked him what the job of the president of the Soviet Union was, what does the president do - and he said: "He settles disputes between the Republics" and I said: "Give me an example, what is a dispute between a Republic?" And he couldn't give me an example and so I said as a joke: "You have an unemployed president. You have no disputes between republics". This was a month before this man - he knew Armenia - said: "The Armenians think that the Azerbaijanis have stolen their territory," and he spoke with enormous passion. And this was a member who didn't live in Armenia, he was a high official from Moscow. Now, this is a problem that is hard to study and is going to become more and more serious.

Second problem is: In a centrally planned economy, the managers are totally different from Western managers. A manager in a centrally planned economy is a politician, who must negotiate with the central planning mechanism and with the ministry that buys his products a quota that everybody can be happy with. And everybody has exactly the opposite incentive from an Western manager because they would like to keep the quota relatively low because everybody is in trouble if they don't meet it. They have no incentive for innovation, certainly not in the civilian sector, because

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innovation throws the whole planning mechanism off. Now, now they want to go to some sort of market economy, without a credit system, without advertising; how are they gone to sell something that is build in the Ukraine in Vladivostok. Without a tradition of salesman, where are they gone get the managers from to run these enterprises. When I asked leading soviet figures that question, they tell me they are going to elect them from the workers.

Now, there are two problems. Soviet workers, as workers in general, are not necessarily the best judges of managerial talent. And than the Soviet social contract up to now has been that the managers don't manage and the workers don't work. And so the first thing one would have to do is to increase the productivity of the workers, and it is unlikely that they will elect somebody who makes additionally demands.

And than, that's the problem of what to do with the communist party, and with all these bureaucracies that live off this.

I was in China last year, where they are really serious about carrying these programs through, and where I think they may do it. And they decided that the only way it would work would be to abolish the old communist party apparatus between the top and the bottom and to remove all these supervisory communist bodies from factories, government offices and so forth. And they expected to have 25 million unemployed as a result. Now, I don't think the soviets have even begun to reflect on this, because the whole power mechanism is geared to the situation.

Now, this is there problem. It is a huge problem, and I don't know whether they can succeed. And that is not my concern.

My concern is something quit different. Gorbatchev is reforming the Soviet Union with great courage - I give him this - because he is intelligent enough to understand that if they keep going as they are they will become a second rate power. He needs a period of tranquility. One would have thought that a that moment the West could act with self-confidence and conviction and state a reasonable program for peace. I believe we have to accept the Soviet Union as a national state. We should not undermine the Soviet Union as a national entity. And it is not too claustrophobic a territory when you think that there are eleven time-zones inside Russia.

I debated yesterday with the former Soviet ambassador Falin in Bad Godesberg. And he developed a concept of Europe from the Urals to the Atlantic, and a European

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House, and I said: "You are gone have an Asian House too from the Urals to the Pacific from both of which you exclude the United States?". And when you do that, it sounds awfully similar to hegemony in Eurasia. So, at this moment, I think we might have a serious negotiation and should have a serious negotiation. I have been very uneasy, and I am in a minority - so it is theoretically possible that I am wrong, but don't take that too seriously - in believing that this has not been the case.

Let me express some of my concerns. What is the Soviet strategy? Soviet strategy is to say:

1) Gorbatchev is a new personality and therefore we have to do something for Gorbatchev that we wouldn't to - for say - Brezhnev. That he is entitled to a bonus for behaving like a normal leader.

2) There are no real political problems in the world. All the problems are military. And in the military field all the problems are in the nuclear field. And so we have to solve - in quotation marks - the nuclear issues. And we must do away with nuclear weapons. And then we are going to have, perhaps, some conventional discussions.

Now, unfortunately, they have also been in a position where they could take advantage of the peculiarities of almost all Western democracies. All Western democracies - almost all of them - are divided domestically, between those who believe in defense and those who reject any realistic notion of defense, who are very noisy.

When I was a young professor, we developed a theory at Harvard, and MIT, and Stanford, called "Arms Control", in which we said - like good professors, quite correctly in the abstract and not looking into the future - that if we spent only a small fraction of the money we spent for arms on studying arms control, we could make a great contribution. Now this turned out to be wrong on a number of grounds.

First, it turned out to be wrong because ethnomethodologist knew, but we apparently didn't, there is only a very limited number of talented people in any generation that can do creative research. And if you put too much money into research you just make the same people do the same thing over and over again. I'm at least taking about the social sciences, it may not be truth in the natural sciences. In the social sciences the

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practical consequence of all the research institutes is that all the professor write the
same paper - sell the same paper - twenty different times and do not have an
opportunity to think about it, to think about new ideas. And so you find in the field of
arms control that almost every idea that is now being implemented is thirty years old
while the technology has changed enormously.

Secondly, it has created a state of mind in the West in which any time you develop a
new weapon you have to justify it not on the ground of security but on the ground of
arms control. So you create a weapon so that you can give it away. This is the
problem, in my view, with the INF negotiations. It was put forward first, in fact, by the
German chancellor, the so-called INF, by Schmidt, an old friend of mine. Deep down,
in my belief, because his confidence in the Carter administration was extremely
limited, and he wanted to have a nuclear presence on the continent in Europe under
the control of the NATO commander that gave him an additional guaranty. The
justification however was, it was to balance the SS 20 of the Soviet Union and than, it
was offered that we wouldn't deploy it if there were a negotiation and that if we did
employ it we give it up if the Soviets gave up there SS 20. Now, in my view, and I have
said this always, this is not a reason they mentioned, the justification for the
American Pershings in Germany above all was this:

The Soviet union is one country. The location of its missiles is not a decisive
importance. Wherever they put them they can still reach Europe. However, the
location of American missiles is of some importance, because, if there in the United
States and at sea, at least it may be believed that they are less likely to be used. I'm
not saying this is true, I am at least saying it is conceivable.

So, when the Soviets remove some missiles from Central Europe, it's a purely
technical issue of whether they have enough left to threaten Europe. When we do it, a
link between Europe and the United States is being weakened. So it is an unequal
negotiation in its essence. And it was proposed, largely for domestic reasons, because
nobody believed the Soviets would ever accept it. And one of the great contributions of
Gorbachev and of one of his principal advisors Dobrynin is this: That Russian leaders
I dealt with were morbidly suspicious of the West, of the United States. And, therefore,
any proposal we made it would take them years to study to make sure there was not a
trick in it. Dobrynin, who spent 23 years in Washington, came home and said: Listen,
if they make a proposal disadvantages to them, accept it. It's disadvantages to them.
They have not understood the situation properly. So now we find them accepting a

whole lot of proposals that the West made for internal reasons. This, however, creates
a situation of considerable uncertainty. They can continue to threaten Europe with
nuclear weapons, almost undiminished, as a result of these agreements. They retain a
huge conventional superiority. They are creating the impression that nuclear weapons
are illegitimate and must never be used. And they get us to say it all the time. For
better or worse, the defensive of the West has been based on nuclear weapons and it
cannot be turned around, all that quickly. And this is why I am very worried, at a
time, when all the governments in the West are more or less conservative, so that one
would expect that they are the most pro-defense governments one can imagine.

That has been the reason why I have felt I must warn against some of these tendencies
and point out two things:

1. That nuclear disarmament must be tied to conventional disarmament. If the Soviet conventional preponderance is not removed, what is happening now will create conditions for blackmail further down the road.

2. I do not believe we are doing Gorbatchev, if he is a really peacefully inclined person, a favor by playing along with the current line. If my analysis at the beginning is correct, he must have major problems with existing bureaucracies. It is normal for any chief executive not to look for problems with additional bureaucracies. I, therefore, do not expect Gorbatchev to go to the KGB or to the military command and say: "I have just have a brilliant idea. We must make a new concession". I can believe that he might go to them and say: "Look, we need ten years of quiet and the Americans insist that the following problems must be dealt with." That is an argument that can be understood; or not just the Americans, but the Americans and the Europeans insist that some additional problems need be dealt with. In the disarmament field, also conventional weapons.

And I think, we also have a political problem. All the crisis in Europe have been
caused in the post-war period by the instability of the Soviet empire in Eastern
Europe. All of them, in Berlin in 1953, in Hungary in 1956, in Czechoslovakia in 1968,
in Poland in the 1970's. It is almost certain that *perestroika* will create new
instabilities in Eastern Europe, and it is important that we understand who will do
what to whom, before some huge crisis develops. It is a special problem in Germany.

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I noticed when Shevardnadze came to Bonn, he absolutely refused to discuss a status of Berlin, which seems to me the most obvious, which is to make Berlin a Land of the Federal Republic and then station some American, French and British people there the same way they are now. By insisting on an special status for Berlin, the possibility of a new crisis is always kept open. I am not saying there is any intention of doing it this year or next year or maybe ever. But the option is meticulously being retained and, I repeat, it is not in the Soviet interest anymore than in our interest that this continues.

A few weeks ago, GorbatCHEV made a speech in which he said that in relation among socialist countries, there is a common cause of socialism. The international socialist principle must be maintained and the common interest of the socialist countries in the international arena can never be weakened. This is an elegant version of the Brezhnev doctrine.

Now, we than face a problem where the Soviets maintain a major military position in Central Europe and a dominant political position in Eastern Europe. And where the West is diluting itself with three positions:

1. The nuclear weapon can be abolished.

2. That some areas can be denuclearized and

3. That you may be able to agree on the No-First-Use of nuclear weapons.

The first proposition is technically impossible and we have an obligation to say this honestly to our people. In a territory the size of the Soviet Union and the United States, there is no inspection system that is conceivable; that could possibly account for all the nuclear weapons that have been produced and that might be produced clandestinely. And if you add to the fact that it would be ridiculous to destroy our nuclear weapons and leave the Chinese, Indian, Israeli, French and British. If you add all of those territories, you know we are dealing with a technically insoluble problem. Therefore, we must be honest with our people and tell them it can't be done! They can be reduced, they can be limited, they can be balanced, there are any number of things you can do, but they cannot be eliminated. And that is the world in which we are going to live. And any other pretense demoralizes us.

Second, it is possible to denuclearize certain countries. That is technically possible, for example the Federal Republic. It would in my view be the end of American-German

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alliance. One cannot go to the American public and say: "They must run the risk of
nuclear war on their territory", for an ally that, when it is attacked, will not run the
risk of nuclear war on its own territory. Now, one reason I was not happy with the INF
was that it created the impression that maybe we were putting the entire risk on
Germany. That is wrong and, if I were a German chancellor, I would certainly try to
limit the risk to Germany. And if I were an American president, I would also try to
limit it for America. We live in a strange world in which the pacifist professors say: "It
doesn't make any difference, because with 10 nuclear weapons you can kill 50 million
people. What more do you want?". Well, I want a strategy that doesn't kill 50 million
people. We have a moral obligation and a practical obligation for that. So much for
these military and political problems.

Now you may ask me: "What are we then going to negotiate with the Soviets about?"
In my view, the Soviets are carrying out instinctively a peculiar Russian version of
foreign policy. If you look at Russian history under Czars and Commissars you will
come to the conclusion, at any rate, I come to the conclusion, that the scale in which
they think is out of proportion to that of all of their neighbors with the possible
exception of China. If you look at Russian history, they have often been invaded and
therefore, they have every reason to have a sense of insecurity. But at the end of every
war, country do what use to happen in Europe: They would annex whole countries.
They didn't just take Alsace-Lorraine which went back and forth or a strip here and a
strip there. They took a whole country! And if you look at a map, in every century,
they have expanded by thousands of square miles in this manner. That is a different
way of thinking. Maybe even defensive, but it is no crime to discuss it with them as a
problem.

Second, if we look at the year 2000, I think the following seems to me to be true:
Japan will be a huge economic and financial power and also a military power. China
will be a military power, India will be a military power, Europe should be a military
power, if it unites as a gang. It is absurd for 320 million people with a larger growth
national product than the Soviet Union to be mesmerized by a country inferior in
population, technology and occupied on several fronts. So, the relative role of Europe
in the United States will decline. And for those two countries to fight a hoard, will
leave them in the position of Europe after its two civil wars. Now, that is an argument
a rational Soviet leader should understand! And we should have a discussion about
how to avoid sources of conflict. Who in the world understands these disarmament

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debates? It used to be said about the Schleswig-Holstein question that only three people, Lord Parmeston said, only three people have ever understood it. One was dead, the second was in a lunatic asylum, and he was the third, and he had forgotten it. I don't believe that there are a thousand people in any country that understand all the intricacies of these arms controls things. And when these heads of government meet, they have had about as many hours to study it as there advisors have had years! And I am safe in saying that the ones that I have known haven't understood the intricacies either.

So it becomes an esoteric, theological exercise about weapons that have never been used and whose relative impact, either in armament or disarmament, is very difficult to calculate. And I think that the leaders should start talking about the issues that produce the tension. Of course we need peace! And there are many reasons why tensions should be eased and I even believe, having seen Gorbatchev, annoying some of his advisors, that intellectually they would understand such a proposition. I don't know what conclusions they would draw and where the negotiations would take us. But I feel that there is always a danger of extraordinary convention of relying too much on conventional wisdom. There is a poem of Goethe which points, which I like very much and I am not going to read the whole poem to you, but it is called "Der Adler und die Taube", and it deals with an eagle who has been shot in the wing and had fallen to the ground and sits at a river's edge looking sadly at the sky and the pigeon comes by. I will read that part of the pigeon. I will read it in German.

Der (...) schwingt neugier geselligt sich zum nahen Busch
und blickt mit Selbstgefalligkeit ihn freundlich an
Du trauerst liebelt er, sei guten Mutes, mein Freund
Hast du zur ruhigen Glücksseeligkeit nicht alles hier
Kannst du dich nicht des goldenes Zweiges freuen
Der vor des Tagesglut dich schützt
Kannst du der Abendsonne scheinen auf weichem Moos am Bach
Nicht die Brust entgegen heben Du wandelst durch frischen Tau
Pflückst aus dem Überfluß des Waldgebüsches
Dir gelegene Speise
Oh Freund, das wahre Glück ist die Genügsamkeit
Und die Genügsamkeit hat überall genug
Oh Weise, sprach der Adler

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Und trüb versinkt er tiefer in sich selbst
Oh Weisheit, du redest wie eine Taube.

I think this is the problem we face in many of our foreign policy discussions. One can always escape dilemmas by making the most favorable assumptions about the future and deter foreign policy into a kind of psychiatry. Some of you may have heard, may I mention, a Chinese proverb, or an alleged Chinese proverb that a Chinese acquaintance mentioned to me, which goes something like this:

"When there is turmoil under the heavens, little problems are dealt with as if they were big problems. And big problems are not dealt with at all. When there is order under the heavens, big problems are reduced to little problems and little problems need not obsess us."

My basic concern ist that, at this moment, when there is a new Soviet leader and there are major problems, we make sure to reduce big problems to little problems and not just talk in self-satisfied generalities. That's a problem for the whole West; it is not a problem for America alone, or for the Federal Republic or for Europe alone and, after all, that is said when you analyze my observations. The fact is everything I have discussed here can be solved by political decision and by political will. Everything that the Soviets face requires a structural change. So that the solution of what I have described to you is largely in our own hands. Why I don't stop here and take some of your questions. Thank you very much.

### Chairman:

Herr Dr. Kissinger, recht herzlichen Dank für Ihre Ausführungen, den, glaube ich, nichts im Augenblick hinzuzufügen ist. Und ich möchte die Zeit nutzen, daß die Möglichkeit jedoch besteht, die eine oder die andere Frage an Sie zu richten.

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1st question:

Dr. Kissinger, I have two questions:

First listening to your very interesting thoughts, the let's say support doctrine of containment developed just forty years ago by George F. Kennedy came to my mind. And maybe you could comment whether there is any relationship between your thinking and that which is, after all, forty years old and I am not talking in the military sense, I am talking in the political sense, containment in the political sense.

Second question and more military question: Don't you think that the emphasis of the Reagan government on SDI really made many European rethink the nuclear policy. Don't you think that many Europeans became or made a question mark behind the doctrine of massive retaliation and do you think that this doctrine still stands?

Dr. Kissinger:

First, on containment.

I think the basic analysis of containment was in a funny way more applicable to this period than it was to the Canon-period for the following reasons:

When Canon developed the policy of containment, the Soviet Union was very weak. It was right after the war; they had just lost 25 million people. And at that time Churchill made a very important speech which received next to no attention, in which he said: "If the Russians do what they are doing now" - this is late 1946 - "in the green wood, what are they gone do when the trees are fully grown?" And he said: "Therefore let us in the West put forward our proposals now of how we want to organize and see what we can negotiate".

I think Churchill was right. Canon was a time-wasting policy for the forties, because we didn't have to build strength in the forties. The Soviets were much weaker than we were. We had an atomic monopoly. And it took them 20 years before they were in a position really to threaten us. Now we are in a different position. Now there is a real substantial Soviet military strength. But I also believe containment will come about now, not because the United States has troops all over the world, but because the evolution of economies and societies around the world brings, objectively, a situation

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with Japan, China, India, Europe. At all the borders of the Soviet Union, except in the Middle East, there are strong nations or potentially strong nations which to blackmail is not a simple matter. So, I believe that now is another time for political negotiations. And in the late 1940s, we had them contained. We didn't have to wait for building up our strength. Because we were so much stronger than they are. I'm not even saying we have to wait now! So, in this sense, it is theoretical; there is a connection between my views and the containment view. But there was one other aspect about containment which was peculiarly American. If you look at American diplomatic history which I have studied, you will rarely find a concrete expression of structure of peace in it. Americans tend to think or American thinkers tend to believe that peace is a self-evidence circumstance. That it may a legal basis or a collective security basis, but people are either peaceful or warlike. So we either think there is evil or they're good and so we oscillate between thinking they are really nice people or thinking they are monsters. If you read what was said about Stalin during World War II, you will see that he was described in the most optimistic terms in the American press and in American literature. And many Soviet leaders have been described optimistically for one period and excessively negatively in another. So, if you read the containment literature, you will see that they say: "There is a situation of strength" or "We have to build a situation of strength" and then a negotiating position when they arise, but they never tell you what we want to negotiate about. And what the content of this negotiation is going to be. My argument is we have to know what our political goals are. We have to make clear to the Soviets that we are not threatening them as a national state. But that we will resist expansion. But we have to do both! And work out some concrete terms.

Now SDI and massive retaliation.

I have been preaching for thirty years - to the extreme displeasure of some Europeans - that massive retaliation is psychologically insupportable as a policy of any country. If you in Germany say, if your former chancellor can say that if five nuclear weapons explode on Germany, he'll surrender - as he said publicly - what do you think in the name of what do you fight a war that kills a hundred million people? On both sides in a matter of days. Massive retaliation is a slogan. And I wrote my first book on this subject in the fifties. It was twenty years premature. So to say: Is massive retaliation valid? I have never believed it was valid and we shouldn't be asked to make it valid. What we should make valid is a defense that protects our allies but not kills everybody in the process of defending it.

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Now SDI.

It is, I must tell you, I do not understand the idea behind your question. I think that Reagan put it forward in an apocalyptic manner that was impractical. But assuming he could do it, that you could protect America with SDI totally, why would Europe be worse off? It would be like being in a position of atomic monopoly. Why does an atomic monopoly in America is worse for Europe than total vulnerability of the United States. One would have thought that, if we had an SDI that worked like Reagan said it would work, that we would be much more ready to apply massive retaliation, because then we would be relatively invulnerable. So, I have never understood the European objection. Now my view of SDI is that we have a duty to develop some defense for a number of reasons.

One, you cannot say you base your security on nuclear weapons but you will do nothing either to protect your weapons or to protect your people. On what ground can you justify that to your public?

Secondly, defense - no matter what the professors say who are against any new weapon - if the Soviets were not worried about it, they wouldn't carry on like this. And they are worried about it, because it introduces an element of uncertainty. They cannot know how effective it is. Today any major can figure out what it takes to drop a certain number of weapons either on Europe or on the United States. All you have to know is the number of targets plus the reliability factor. After that, it is a purely technical issue. With defense you don't know this.

I went to a briefing by a group of scientists who were against SDI. And who said, if the Soviets launch their entire arsenal of twelve thousand (...) against the United States, any foreseeable SDI will be overwhelmed. So - to educate myself - I said: "Let me understand how that works". "What happens if they launch a thousand?". They said: "Oh, then we can get 98%." "Two thousand?" "Still 98%." At four thousand it was about 80%. Only at five thousand they did start dropping and then it started dropping pretty sharply.

But, I would tell you it is a huge difference if, in order to hit any target in the United States, they have to launch four thousand war heads. As against today, when they can launch three, two, one. I wouldn't rely on that as our only a strategy. But I believe it is necessary. And moreover, they are working on it like crazy! They cannot miniaturize as well as we can. So most of their defense is on the ground. But the principle is the

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same. They do not have as yet this capability for space-based systems. Now, in time, we can limit SDI together with offensive weapons. But to begin the negotiations by prohibiting weapons aimed at weapons and maintaining weapons aimed at people is an absurdity. And in the present negotiations, our submarines are reduced from 37 to 17. But the Soviet anti-submarines forces are not reduced. Our airplanes are reduced, but the Soviet air-defense is not reduced. The only thing that we are asked to reduce is the anti-missile defense. Why? What is the difference between air-defense and the submarine warfare and the anti-missile defense?

I'll give shorter answers from now on... but give a good question.

**Chairman:**

Ja, vielen Dank für die ausführliche Antwort, Herr Dr. Kissinger, und Herr Dr. Arns, das war ja schon fast ein zweiter Vortrag, den Sie hier initiiert haben, aber es ist, glaube ich, für uns interessant, doch einige Themen ausführlicher zu hören. Wer hat eine weitere Frage, bitte?

**2nd question:**

Herr Professor, können Sie sich vorstellen, daß die amerikanischen Streitkräfte kurzfristig Europa verlassen, und was muß da voraus passieren? Welche Voraussetzungen müssen geschaffen werden?

**Dr. Kissinger:**

I cannot imagine that they will be withdrawn quickly which is our interpret kurzfristig.
I believe that, if you look twenty years ahead, I believe two things:

One, the defense of Europe and the defense of America cannot be separated and that has, it's strangely enough, always been understood! I found the other day a quotation from Thomas Jefferson in which he was talking about Napoleon's invasion of Russia and he said: "Surely none of us wish to see Bonaparte conquer Russia and thus lay at

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his feet the whole continent of Europe. This done, England would be by the breakfast.
Put all of Europe into his hand and he might spare such a force as I would at least not
have to encounter. No, it cannot be to our interest that all of Europe should be
reduced to a single monarchy." And this was Jefferson, and this is still true today!
But, it is not natural that five American divisions remain forever in Europe. We have to
have enough of a presence in Europe to make it clear that an attack on Europe is an
attack on the United States. And, at this moment and for the next presidential term
for example, I would violently oppose any withdrawal of any additional American
forces from Europe, because we have already created so much uncertainty with our
nuclear withdrawals that to withdraw conventional forces on top of it would have an
unacceptable political risk. But if you ask me ten-fifteen years from now I think we
could do with fewer troops in Europe, provided the Europeans build up some of theirs,
but we always have to stay here with a nuclear presence and air forces and naval
forces. And we have to have reserve forces which we can send over here in case of
conflict. That is how I would visualize it.

**3rd question:**

Dr. Kissinger, I am quite sure that you express your present concerns also to Mr. Genscher. How did he react to that?

**Dr. Kissinger:**

Now, you know quite frankly, I express my concerns to our government. I don't think
it's my duty to alter the view of..., I'm not trying to influence foreign governments. I
worked with Genscher when I was in government and (...) to him. He is - I'm sure he
wasn't heartbroken, but - these were our proposals, so I don't know how he would
have reacted if we had made other proposals. At any rate, I have not debated it with
Genscher, I have had an occasion to discuss it with other... I have had breakfast with
Genscher today, so I'm not - I am on perfectly friendly terms - but it is not my duty to
try to change German foreign policy. I have discussed it at great length and with no
success whatsoever with our own leaders.

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4th question (Herr Schmidt):

When you are saying that the conservative government was by loosening the tension
with the Soviet Union, because they are suddenly (...) thus getting weaker and weaker
in seeing the (...) of problems and also the feasibility of perestroika.

Dr. Kissinger:

No, I think that what happens when you have a conservative government is - let me speak about the United States which I know better. You get a conservative government then all the left wing groups plus the communists beat up on it and call it warlike contributing to international tension. And then, since so many of the modern politicians - at least in America, and I want to make clear, I speak of the United States - live of television, they than would like to get something favorable. The way to get a favorable coverage is to be identified with a peace initiative. And so, why were we so obsessed with the double zero option? I would have had no objection to reducing it by 50% if the Soviets reduced it by 50%, and then say we take the other 50% out when you take ten divisions out. Because it is beautiful to say I have reduced two categories to zero. That everybody understands and so Western leaders get driven by their domestic necessities, and almost all these current leaders are personal friends of mine.

And you have to understand another thing: In America, I will campaign enthusiastically for the Republicans this year, and whatever problems I have told you about the Republicans, you will look back to them with nostalgia, if the Democrats come in, so, this should not be considered as an attack on our administration, but there is this psychological problem, and the Soviets have used it very skillfully and I noticed in Germany, they invite a lot more conservative politicians to Moscow then social-democratic ones which they think may agree with them anyway.

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5th question:

In Ihrer politischen Analyse hat die mögliche kommende Instabilität der Doppel-Union ein politisches Prinzip (...) eine zentrale Rolle eingenommen. Auf der anderen Seite haben Sie auch dargelegt, daß eine weitere (...) wichtige Entwicklung von einer von den alten (...) auf militärischen Aspekten begründeten Stärke des westlichen Bündnisses abhängig ist. Aus diesen Qualitäten ergibt sich eine Verwechslung. Einerseits haben Sie dargetan, die Schwäche einer möglichen (...) Instabilität der Soviet Union zu fürchten als ein Faktor der Instabilität (...) überhaupt etwa nach dem Prinzip nach dem in der neuen Zeit viele Staaten verfahren sind, innenpolitische Schwierigkeiten durch außerpolitische Abenteuer zu überdecken. Auf der anderen Seite ist die mögliche Stärke des Westens kein Heilmittel, um diese Schwäche zu konterkarrieren, es erfordert eine ganz eigene Politik zwischen diesen beiden Ebenen, zu den auch noch wohl hinzugehören würden, daß außer dem Expansionszwang (...) der Soviet Union, die Sicherheit seiner Grenzen, hat eine große Rolle gespielt. (...) Wie wirkt sich auf diese Situation und diese drei Faktoren eine künftige Politik dem Anlaß den wir hier ...

Dr. Kissinger:

It is a very good question, but let me make one thing clear which all of you are executives of various kinds. And I believe that it is the task of executives not to have all the answers, but to know how to get the answers. So, if you don't agree, I'll gladly give you the answers - as I see them. But I would think that, if a president or a secretary of state or a foreign ministry, or your Chancellor would say: "Here is the problem, and I want a concept of how to deal with it". It is possible that the ten brightest people in the government might come up with something better, working on it full-time than I can, just standing here answering of the top of my head, again a theoretical possibility.

Now let me state my general view about priorities in the conduct of foreign policy. Too many leaders become infatuated with playing in the domestic politics about the country. Since most of them have so much trouble in the domestic politics of their own country, I think they ought to leave the domestic politics of foreign countries alone, or at least treat it with great care. It is very difficult to predict what happens in the Soviet Union. I don't think GorbatCHEV can predict it with any precision. In the

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past, in periods of domestic turmoils, Russian states become more conservative at
home and more bellicose abroad, but I don't know whether this will be the case this
time. It's at least a possibility.

On Russian security.

I would be perfectly prepared, and I think we should say to the Soviets: Any rational discussion you want about the security of your frontiers we are more than ready to discuss and I am not at all in favor of bringing military, or para-military, or intelligence pressures on areas they consider absolutely vital to them. On the other hand, if those areas explode by themselves, as in Eastern Europe, we cannot cooperate with them in keeping Hungary a part of the Soviet empire, I mean, to take one example. So that is a problem, but if they talk about their frontiers which are after all a huge territory, that I think we should discuss.

Secondly, I have no problem with the concept that we should give them some
economic cooperation, provided they change some of their foreign policy priorities. But
as long as they give 600 million dollars a year in military aid to Nicaragua - 600
million dollars! - and our countries wouldn't even vote 30 million for the Contras, and
4 billion for Cuba, and 4 billion for Vietnam, and nearly 2 billion to Angola, why
should we finance foreign adventures that far from their borders? So it might be a
painful discussion, but I have no problem, I would favor economic cooperation with a
Soviet Union that acts as a national state and keeps a rational military establishment
and that, I think, would be a very important subject of discussion. But, I'm afraid that
our industrialists all over the West are going to fall all over each other to try to help a
Soviet Union that is not discussing political issues, and that way we are financing the
potential of an aggressive policy. Lenin once said: "The capitalists will sell us the rope
with which to hang them." He didn't know the half of it: We'll give them the credit to
by the rope with which to hang us.

Chairman:

Ich glaube, wir müssen jetzt zum Schluß kommen, die Zeit ist fortgeschritten,
vielleicht noch eine Frage.

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**6th question:**

Ich habe noch eine wirtschaft-politische Frage. Wie beurteilen Sie den Kurs des Dollars auf Deutschland (...).

**Dr. Kissinger:**

Nobody should take my views on economic questions seriously. My view and the view of some of my associates is: Obviously, it is in the interest of our government in this election year to keep the course stable. We actually don't think it will be possible - but nobody goes to us for economic forecasting - but my guess would be that it could drop another ... you see, the trade deficit is continual and budget deficit is continuing. And, if we say it goes from 175 million to 135 million for three months, people feel good that it's gone from 175 to 135. In some point, people will say 135 isn't great either. And they'll focus on the deficit that exists not on the reduction, so our guess is that it may drop another 10% in the second half of this year, but I do not go around the world giving speeches on that subject.

**Chairman:**

Meine sehr geehrte Damen und Herren, im Namen von uns allen ...

Herr Dr. Kissinger, recht herzlichen Dank, daß Sie zu uns gekommen sind, und, Sie haben gehört, Ihre Rede ist hier angekommen, das Thema ist sehr breit. Sicherlich könnten wir noch lange drüber sprechen. Recht herzlichen Dank.