(lc)

concessions leads to an inevitable collapse of any possibility of
living in what they consider, after all, is at least partly their
country.

Therefore, I think that a moderate Rhodesian solution with
majority rule is essential if we are not going to produce a
catastrophe in Southern Africa. And all of the fashionable, radi-
cal solutions that install radicals in Namibia and Rhodesia as a
way out of our immediate difficulties are going to buy us a horrible
impasse two or three years down the road which will then have the
most profound consequences in our country.

You ought to get somebody who has the opposite point of
view, of which there are many in the city. This is my point of
view.

QUESTION: Dr. Kissinger, Lieutenant Colonel Drew, Air Force. Sir, some people view the Palestinian issue as one of the most difficult problems to solve in the Middle East. Could you give us your view of the solution to that problem and the role the U.S. may play?

DR. KISSINGER: My attitude toward the Palestinian issue was not
very heroic. I thought it was insoluble in any period I was going
to be in office, and I wanted to pass it on to some successor
without its having blown up. But on a more serious level,
I think that the issue of the PLO especially is not soluble in
the present psychological frame of mind of either side. The
Israelis consider them as inalienably hostile. The Palestinians,

24

(LO)

of all the people, will find it most difficult to really accept
the existence of Israel because, after all, should they return to
Palestine, they are bound to look across whatever demarcation
lines exist and consider the rest of the country also theirs. This
is inherent in the definition of a Palestinian.

I would have thought the best way of dealing with the
Palestinian problem is to get as much of the rest of the settlement
done as possible in order for the Palestinians to realize that a
complete overthrow of the existing structure is not possible.

Second, I think there is an opportunity in the Camp David
agreement of fulfilling many, if not most, of the Palestinian de-
mands. One of the interesting phenomenon of this period is that
the Arabs usually get so carried away by the power of their
rhetoric that they act against their own interests. If the
Palestinians could produce a Sadat--basically the Camp David agree-
ment makes an independent structure on the West Bank inevitable.
I know Begin says this is not true, but this is just because he is
a legalist and not somebody who understands processes. [Laughter]

Once you have an election on the West Bank and once you
have what is called an administrative council that is freely
elected, and once you have a Palestinian authority on the West
Bank--and all of this is happening, after all, according to the
agreement, within the '67 borders minus, admittedly, Jerusalem
--once all of this exists, who is going to prevent that authority
from sending out cultural missions, economic missions, or to receive

25

cultural and economic missions from other parts of the world.

States have been created from infinitely less promising beginnings.

So if the Arabs should be wise enough to set up what the agreement,
after all, provides, I think the evolution toward autonomy and
dependence relationship (really it is very hard to predict now),
toward total self-government is inevitable because all foreign
nations will support that structure. The Europeans will certainly
support it. There is nothing in it incompatible with what the
American position has been in the past, so I think this may well
be the direction in which to go in the next few years.

QUESTION: Dr. Kissinger, you opened the door to China, and now there are factions who say that we ought to play the China card to the hilt as a buffer against the Soviet Union and the threat, as you pointed out, we face in the eighties, that this may be to our long-term disadvantage. It may force the Soviet Union into an untenable position. Could you comment, please?

DR. KISSINGER: We began to move toward China. When I came into
office, I had the conventional view about China--namely, that it
was the more aggressive of the two Communist countries. I even
tended to view Vietnam as everyone else did, as a sort of surrogate
Chinese maneuver against us, which was totally wrong. Both of
these things were totally wrong.

Then we began to understand, in the summer of 1969, that
there was a tremendous conflict going on between China and the

26

(10)

Soviet Union and began to move toward China with the results that are known.

I have never believed that what the Chinese wanted from us was normalization. What the Chinese want from us is equilibrium, maintaining the equilibrium against the Soviet Union. Now the question is: Can we play the China card, which is another way of asking, Can we substitute the Chinese for some of our effort?

I think it is naive to believe that a people that have survived for 3,000 years of unbroken self-government did so by doing favors for foreigners. [Laughter] The China card is not for us to play. The China card either plays itself or it doesn't play at all. We did not generate the Sino-Soviet split. We didn't even understand it for 10 years as a nation. [Laughter] We can exploit it to the extent that we do not make it too visible. To the extent that the Sino-Soviet split becomes part of our necessity, then they can both charge us for it, and, funnily enough, we may drive them together.

Secondly, to the extent that we are using China as part of our strategy, the Soviet temptations which will, in any case, be overwhelming to try to destroy them before it is no longer possible will grow. If the analysis I made to you is correct, then we will face a period in the early eighties as follows:

Sooner or later we will realize the strategic dilemma in which we find ourselves. This is not a country of losers, and

27

once we recognize our dilemma, we will try to do something about
it. At that point the Soviet Union will see their military lead.
When I say "lead," I am not saying they can wipe out our retaliatory
force, I don't agree with that; but I do believe, however, that they
will have a strategic lead in the sense that they will have mili-
tarily usable power--politically usable power--and we will not have
commensurate politically usable power. As they see that slipping
away under whatever efforts we are going to be making, starting in
the early eighties, which will be imposed on us (I guarantee you),
they may then develop the temptations that Hitler had around 1939
and '40, after the British rearmament program started, of trying to
move before the thing becomes unmanageable, because already one can
see what is happening.

The Japanese, under the impact of our withdrawals from
Korea, trade policy and so forth, are becoming more nationalistic
and giving themselves a Chinese option. They therefore see a
Japanese-Chinese bloc developing on one flank, if they cannot
break the European unity on the other flank. So, therefore, it
really depends entirely on our decision when we are going to face
the strategic realities, their problem will become unmanageable
because once they have lost their strategic superiority as I define
it, they have nothing. They have never managed to get an ally
where they didn't have military force. Their economic problems
are going to become more complicated. Therefore, the temptation
to break out will be overwhelming.

28

(Lc)

We should not provoke this by pushing China into confrontations beyond what they are already so ably doing by themselves. So I am not very easy about talk about the China card. I think our correct position between China and the Soviet Union, both of whom are ideologically hostile to us, is to be closer to each of them than they are to each other. They will both try to squeeze us away from that position. The Chinese are great at lecturing us about the evils of detente. Why not? For them the ideal position is for us to be locked in implacable hostility with the Soviets. That destroys our bargaining position with them.

I think our correct position, as I said, is to play the loose side of that triangle.

On the other side we cannot accept a Soviet attack on China because a Soviet attack on China would have the same geopolitical consequences almost as a Soviet attack on Europe. So for this interim period, we are _de facto_ allies of China, whether we like it or not, but we should not be provocative in that conduct.

On the other hand, if you want to think in my categories, I can foresee the time when the Chinese are developed, where the threat they represent could exceed that of the Soviet Union. Under those conditions the Soviets will indeed be driven toward real co-operation with the West, and we may face a totally new international alignment. This is something we ought to keep in mind as we go down the road.

29

QUESTION: Sir, Lieutenant Colonel Litzsinger of the Air Force.

Will you be kind enough to share with us your opinion of the reasons behind Warnke's resignation and the impact on SALT of the new U.S. team chief.

DR. KISSINGER: Of the what?

QUESTION (continuing): The reasons behind Warnke's resignation
and also the impact on SALT of the new U.S. team chief.

DR. KISSINGER: Has a new chief been picked? I have been in New York and [laughter].

As for Warnke's resignation, I really don't know what the reason is. He is an able man, but I don't think he would have helped the ratification process. I don't know whether that was in the back of people's minds.

As for the new team chief, I don't really believe that the--
SALT negotiations, ever since 1971, have been conducted on two
levels. They have been conducted on the technical level by a team
in Geneva which really had no major policy role. And the political
decisions and the major categories of weapons systems to be dis-
cussed were done at the security advisor and then at the Secretary
of State, then continued at the Secretary of State level. So I
don't believe that the head of the negotiating team has more than
a marginal impact on the direction of the negotiation. The
direction of our negotiation has been set really by the

30

philosophies that I described earlier, the philosophies of
stability in the strategic equation. They have shaped the arms
control pattern. And even though I myself contributed originally
to some of those, I now believe that it is wrong. I believe that
we must have a counterforce capability, and I will look very much
at the combination of a defense program and a SALT position that
will permit us to maintain a counterforce capability. I just can-
not accept the proposition that it is safer for us for them to
have it and for us not to have it than for us both to have it.

But to answer your immediate bureaucratic question, I do
not believe that the identity of the head of that team is of any
fundamental significance. The decisions are made at the NSC
level and on the basis of a little theory and a lot of high-level
politicking.

MODERATOR: Ladies and Gentlemen and Dr. Kissinger, it is now going on 10:25. We will now slip the rest of this morning's classes for 15 minutes, if that is agreeable with the Colleges.

On behalf of all of us here at the National Defense
University, Henry, thank you very, very much.