several phases with President Reagan. When he first came in,
they dealt with him the way they generally deal with potential
orponents: They tried to hinder the possible negotiations.
That did not happen for a variety of reasons right away
because the Administration felt it had to reverse the
conceptions that had been created in Soviet-American
relations. By the time the negotiations started on INF and
START, there were two obstacles. One was the divisions in our
bureaucracy: second was the imminence of Brezhnev's death, so
that there was nobody really in <A2> <A1>: the Soviet Union to make a
fundamental decision, and one would have to assume that the
bureaucratic conflicts in the Soviet Union are even more
intense than in the United States because the ignorance of
each part of the government of the activities of the other is
greater in the Soviet Union than with us. Then came the
interresnum of Andropov, and then another leadership change
with Chernenko. So there has never been a situation in the
Soviet Union where anybody was in charge enough to conduct a
coherent policy of give and take in a negotiation. I also
think that the Soviets had not only a succession problem but a
chance of emphasis within the system. First from Brezhnev to
Andropov within one party, elements of the power structure
saining somewhat an influence, and then they had to turn
somewhat more to party predominance when Chernenko came in
without sining Chernenko anything like the control that
Brezhnev and his predecessors had had. (ep)

While we are in this position, Gromyko is clearly the
dominant figure in the conduct of Soviet foreign policy. But
Gromyko has survived this long and become so dominant because
he has been a great technician. Others always took the
responsibility for the major direction, and he was the
implementer. Certainly in my experience with Gromyko or the
Soviets, Brezhnev always took responsibility for the
breakthroughs, and Gromyko was always the one who seemed more
cautious and more aware of problems. Even if you allow the
fact that one was the sood cop and the other was the bad cop,
it seemed to me to reflect their personalities. Now this man
who has spent his adult life being the implementer is himself
responsible for the direction, and it is conceivable to me
that he has decided that there have to be negotiations but
that in carrying out the negotiations, he applies all the
cautious hesitations that have marked him in the past, all the
more so as he may also simultaneously have to position himself
in the continuing leadership struggle in the Kremlin. It's for
all these reasons that I do not think the Soviets have as yet
made a decision as to where they are going to go. Indeed, what
I think they are going to do in the next three to six months
is to take us over a number of hurdles on the face of the
statement that they want deeds from us and not words. Could be
considered as schutzpah, a lot of gall. We have made our
mistakes, but they were the ones that walked out of the
negotiations, that shot down the airplane, in Poland and in
Afghanistan not so far in the past. What they are trying to do
is get a unilateral proposition as an entrance into
negotiations. Then we will probably have to hassle over the
asenda. And I think until we get through these phases, we will
not know what they're really after. What we should do is use
this time to clarify our own position. (ep)

TOTH: Well, if they don't know—accepting what you say, they
don't know precisely where they're going—why have they decided
to move now?(ep)

KISSINGER: Because I think they realize they're in a
stalemate for a variety of reasons. If they counted on the
European peace movement to stop our deployment and calculation
of deployment of intermediate-range missiles, that calculation
did not turn out to be correct. They clearly made a major

decision last year to stonewall the United States, which was
presided by Andropov's allesed statement that those who
believe one can make arrangements with the United States--you
can get the correct quote--at the time of the airplane
shooting. And this was preceded a year earlier by the tough
speech of Brezhnev's just about a month before he died in
which he also said a similar thing. One would have thought
that the implementation of that policy would lead to a
differential treatment of the United States and Western Europe
and that they would try to split Western Europe from the
United States. In fact for reasons not so easy to explain,
they brought pressure both on Western Europe and the United
States simultaneously, and therefore they have not split
Western Europe from the United States. They are not making
progress in their relations with China. They have a huge
economic problem of a structural kind. They will be
preoccupied with succession issues, not just of Chernenko but
towards--to all the ased members of the Politburo over the next
few years. So logically, they should want a respite. At the
same time, I think it is very possible that they don't know
how to set a respite.(ep)

I would add among the factors that lead to negotiation the
fact that they could not be oblivious to the repeated
statements of President Reagan that he wanted to open
negotiations even if they did not want to help him in his
reëlection, even if they are highly suspicious, it would be
only prudent for them to try to find out what there might be
to them. So I think these are the main factors that brought
them to a negotiation.(ep)

TOTH: But it says something about the Politburo as it
exists, however old and however inactive Chernenko may be at
the time, that they can make a decision to embark on a new
direction in their policy to the United States despite other
problems, doesn't it?(ep)

KISSINGER: Absolutely.(ep)

TOTH: Well, so from there then to the decision to rather
brutally dismiss Gen. Osarkov. How do you think that plays
into the situation, if at all? There has been speculation that
he was sort of a scaredcoat, an offering to the United States
in advance of the Gromyko visit. Do you have any views on
that?(ep)

CAB> KISSINGER: I must say I misjudged the Osarkov situation, as
most other people did. I thought that when he was so visible
in first defending the shootdown and then in attacking our
arms control position that this indicated that the military
was becoming assertive.(ep)

TOTH: You used the word ""Bonapartism," I think.(ep)

CAB> KISSINGER: CAB>Yes. I thought that what was happening in the
Soviet Union was the emerence of a kind of Bonapartism, or as
a more learned friend has since pointed out to me that
Bonapartism wasn't really the right comparison. CAB>The right
comparison is when the Roman legions reserved the right to
appoint the emperor. CAB>Bonapartism means one person takes over,
and I think there is something in that.CAB>(ep)

CAB> TOTH: You mean the Roman analogy?(ep)

KISSINGER: In the Roman analogy, Bonapartism means that one
s great military figure takes over. I think the Roman analogy is
better that the military apparatus achieves a veto over the
succession. Now my gut feeling is that analysis is still
correct as to the tendencies of Communist systems in their
revolution. In this specific case, it is one of two things
that are now conceivable. One is that they put Osarkov out
ahead as a signal to the political leadership that with the
shootdown, they did not take full responsibility or blame for
it, or else, which is just as likely, that Osarkov--that it
shows us something about the change between the Andropov and

the Chernenko view. I would have interpreted the Andropov
succession as a rather interesting phenomenon in the Soviet
evolution in this sense. It is the first time in Soviet
history that somebody became General Secretary of the
Communist Party who had never run any major branch of the
Communist Party inside the Soviet Union in his formative
career. Almost all of Andropov's experience was abroad or in
intellisence. From that point of view, Andropov could be seen
as a coalition between the secret police, the military and the
foreign affairs or the national security apparatus of the
Soviet Union against the party bureaucrats inside the Soviet
Union and his early assault on corruption, advocacy of
efficiency could also be seen in that light. It is then
possible that the people who put in Andropov became disquieted
by the turmoil that a major effort at reform caused inside the
Soviet Union, the insecurities it evoked in the Party
machinery. When Andropov died, therefore, they went back to a
sweater role for the party, but not so much that it was in the
predominant position it had enjoyed under all previous General
Secretaries. I look at Chernenko as chairman of the board but
not as chief executive officer, to use an American corporate
analogy. This puts him in a position to veto attacks on the
party hierarchy but not in a position to impose their total
dominance over every aspect. If that analysis is correct, one
could perhaps consider Osarkov a price or a victim of a
post-Andropov purge and not really related to U.S.-Soviet
relations. I cannot believe that they would set rid of the
chief of staff of their armed forces as a sign of good will to
the United States. Indeed, one could find articles Osarkov has
written from which one could adduce almost the opposite. I
mean, articles that nuclear war is senseless, that the economy
has to be improved, that conventional weapons have to be
stressed.(ep)

TOTH: Well, what does your analysis say about who might succeed Chernenko? If the party is sort of reexerting control—(ep)

KISSINGER: What does it say about the succession? What it says to me about the succession is that it is structurally unsettled and that the struggle that was initiated by Andropov's succession is soins to reemerge after Chernenko's.(ep)

TOTH: When you say structurally you mean institutional as
well as personality-wise?(ep)

KISSINGER: Institutionally as well as personality-wise,
yes. But they have at least these problems after Chernenko
disappears: One is will there be a shift to a younger
generation. That's a crucial decision because it is highly
probable that if there is a shift to the younger generation,
all of the contemporaries of Chernenko will disappear from the
Politburo more or less at the same time with each other. That
in the Soviet Union is a very painful experience since your
status depends almost entirely on what official position you
have, and I can't think of many people who had an honorable
retirement in the Soviet Union. That's the first problem.(ep)

The second problem is, regardless of which age group comes
in, where is the emphasis soins to be put? Will it put on the
continuity of the existing structure with whatever marginal
reforms are possible without rocking the boat, or will there
be an effort at structural reform?(ep)

TOTH: Is this in the Politburo or in the Defense Council or
in the larger—(ep)

KISSINGER: Within the Soviet system. With the Soviets, as
with every Communist state, there is in my view this dilemma:
You cannot run a modern economy by central planning, but you
may not be able to run a Communist state without central
planning. Or let's put it another way. Every Communist state
forces the CHOICE of what do you do with the Communist Party

after power has been achieved? How do you keep the Communist
Party from becoming a mandarin class that has no real function
except to supervise central plans which are themselves an
incubus on the society? The Chinese are trying to solve this
problem by incentives, by redesigning the function of the
Communist Party and by going through their party lists and
having a three-year program of party rectification. No other
Communist state has really tackled it head-on. Hungary has de
facto handled it, but I don't know what they do with the party
under the planning bureaucracy. I haven't studied it. Anyway,
for the Soviet Union this would be a monumental event if they
give greater scope to incentives, if they reduce the influence
of the planning mechanism and if they instituted an element of
constitutionalism in the governmental system.(EP)

Let me explain what I mean by constitutionalism. I don't
mean elections. I mean an end to a system of government in
which the only predictable exit from office is death or some
sort of a coup. There is no legitimate way of replacing
anybody in the highest offices. Such a system of government is
very fragile and leads to enormous isolations, or at least
enormous tension. These are all problems they have before them
which they cannot avoid.(EP)

TOTH: Well, would you think that the successor, though,
would come from the political ranks rather than as you
described the national security ranks, a la Andropov?(EP)

KISSINGER: My gut feeling is that they were so shaken by
Andropov that the successor will come from the political rank.
But that does not mean that he may not so back to the Andropov
line, however he got in.(EP)

TOTH: So then at this point the new overture, on the one
hand—the new direction that Soviet policy might be taking as
witnessed by Gromyko's visit—and these events in Moscow on the
other hand are only indirectly related. There's no direct
correlation between Gromyko's visit and, say, Osarkov being
fired?(EP)

C>A>I KISSINGER: C>A>DWell, certainly C>A>I do not think Osarkov was
fired as an offering to us. I think there is the relationship
that the Osarkov firings shows enough of the instability of the
top leadership group that they want a respite from constant
tension if they can purchase it at what they consider a
tolerable price. What it tells me about us is that it is very
important that when we set into negotiations that we confront
them with very complete propositions and not with
seneralities, so that they have specific decisions to make and
not attitudinal decisions. I think they have decided to
negotiate, but they have not yet decided what to negotiate
about and in what framework.(EP)

TOTH: Is this the way you approached negotiations when you
were conducting them with the Soviets? Or is it different?(EP)

KISSINGER: Of course, when I was conducting negotiations
with the Soviets, there was a clearer leadership structure,
although even then it was not as clear as it looks in
retrospect. When I first encountered the Soviets, Brezhnev,
Kosygin and Podgorny pretended to be of equal standings, even
though it was evident from their conduct that Brezhnev was the
strongest. When President Nixon invited Brezhnev to come to
the United States, the Soviets told us that it would be
inappropriate to invite Brezhnev, that we had to invite all
three of them, and then they told us privately only Brezhnev
would accept. But as late as 1972, they went through the
appearance of a collective leadership, and in the first two
years of President Nixon our communications were with Kosygin,
not with Brezhnev, when they were at the highest level. So
even then the leadership was not as monolithic as it appeared.(EP)

Forgetting now how I conducted the negotiations, there are
two problems in dealing with the Soviets, at least on issues

as technically complicated as arms control.(EP)

One is to make a proposal that improves the situation, that objectively improves the situation. That is technically very complicated. Secondly, to have the process contribute to a political rapprochement within the limits of what ideology and conflicting interests permit.(EP)

It seemed to me then that this presents a very real problem, especially in the arms field. The issues are technically extremely complex. Positions emerge within our government from a very complicated process of bargaining between various elements in which the adjudicating role of the President is more complicated than in most other issues because he usually has not studied the subject for anything like the length of time his experts have. A position then emerges, it is handed over in Geneva or wherever the negotiations take place, then it goes up through the Soviet hierarchy. You have to assume that there are at least some major elements in the Soviet hierarchy determined to show their allegiance to their leadership, and in general in a bureaucracy you never set into trouble for predicting a disaster that doesn't happen or for missing an opportunity because nobody can prove the opportunity existed. So by the time it reaches the Politburo, they have to adjudicate their own bureaucracy's interpretation of our bureaucracy's compromise. So it is not a process that tends to lead to easy understandings on either the technical or the political level. What we tried to do is to give the Soviets advance warnings of our thinking and to try to do it through a channel that did not go through their whole bureaucracy so that we could speak more plainly in that channel. We did not give our position in advance, not in detail, but what we did try to do is to explain the thinking behind the position that was likely to emerge so that it would not hit the Politburo cold, and we got it directly into the presidential channel to Brezhnev or whatever else was involved on the Soviet side.(EP)

I think it is the lack of such a channel at this moment that is an important obstacle, or contributing obstacle, to progress, and I think it is really more important at this moment to set a conceptual breakthrough than to come up with some technical ""solution"" to the problem.(EP)

TOTH: What would be a conceptual breakthrough?(EP)

KISSINGER: <A3>Well, since you ask me what would be a conceptual breakthrough, I will have to say a second thing which seems to contradict my earlier assertion. <A1>I think we have reached a dead end in arms control theory. Most of the negotiations that went on in the '60s and '70s drew on the intellectual capital of the arms control theory that was developed in the late '50s. At that time, one dealt with single-warhead missiles, with fixed installations, and the concept of stability was identified with the inability of either side to calculate a decisive advantage in a first strike.(EP)

I think we are coming to the end of that period for two reasons. One, technology due to mobility and large numbers of warheads is in any case tending to produce the kind of stability that people were talking about in the 1950s. When you had 20,000-plus warheads on each side, to calculate a decisive breakthrough is not self-evident. On the other hand, the reliance on mass extermination as the principal element of security brings about in the democracies a demoralization of society to a point where pacifism and unilateral disarmament become either the conscious or the subconscious motivation of so many people that it is very difficult to hold a position in the technical negotiation.(EP)

If one looks at the schools of thought that now exist, I must say they are both nearly irrelevant to the problem of

reducing either the danger of war or its impact if it occurs.
The two schools are freeze and reduction. The freeze
perpetuates the very situation that generates the uncertainty.
In addition, it sounds much simpler than it would be in
practice. After all, SALT I was a freeze of ICBMs, and it
took us three and a half years to negotiate it, and even then
we are still debating the difference between modernization of
existing weapons, which is permitted, and new weapons, which
are supposed to be proscribed.(ep)

On the other hand, the various reduction schemes that
exist, in my view, either do not change the situation or make
it marginally more dangerous. After all, President Kennedy in
1962 thought that we were at the verse of Armageddon. At that
time the Soviets had less than 100 warheads that could reach
the United States, and we had some 3,000. I know no scheme
that exists, even in the theoretical literature, that would
reduce warheads to 3,000. So there's a paucity of theory. If
we're soins to reduce--I think that would be highly desirable-
it has to be to numbers that are really so low as to remove
the holocaust aspect of modern deterrent theory.(ep)

So I think it would be extremely helpful if right after the
election, some crash program were started on a bipartisan
basis on which direction we should go. We can then still work
out the technical parameters. Secondly, I think we have to
find some form of dialogue to discuss the political tensions
that exist in the world. Right now, everybody's copout almost
is arms control, and arms control is being asked to do too
much. I was part of the study groups in the '50s. I've been
involved in many of the arms control negotiations, and I don't
back off anything I've been associated with and I support it
today. But I do not think that by itself arms control can
solve or ameliorate the problem of East-West relations.(ep)
 ep)

CABO TOTH: But just so I understand you correctly, you asked for
a bipartisan approach to searching for a new conception that
would replace either--(ep)

KISSINGER: It could be a partisan one if necessary. I'd
just like a position.(ep)

TOTH: Just some theoretical position to substitute for
these--(ep)

CABD KISSINGER: I would like to get some consensus at least
within the government of what exactly it is we are trying to
accomplish that can then be conveyed to the Soviets as a
concept before you embody it in a numbers proposal. It is
conceivable to me that at some point we could get an agreement
on a concept and the Soviet numbers would look different from
ours. But if you don't know what concept they're operating
from and they don't know what concept we're operating from and
you're each throwing numbers around, it would be accidental if
something emerged and make a real contribution to security.(ep)

TOTH: How long would it take you--on the other aspect of
your susdestion, how long would it take you to set up a back
channel that was effective?(ep)

KISSINGER: Oh, the back channel I think could be set up
immediately, very quickly.(ep)

TOTH: I see. You don't see any ideological or personality
problems with Soviet-American leaders on that score?(ep)

KISSINGER: I think you would have bureaucratic problems
within our government of wounded egos and insistence on
precaratives, and for all I know they have the same problem on
their side. But I think each government should settle that for
themselves. I don't think we should designate anybody on the
Soviet side as our chosen instrument, or as one sometimes
reads, pick another way to bypass Gromyko. There's no way to
bypass Gromyko, and if they want to bypass Gromyko, that's
their problem, not our problem.(ep)

I would think that what we should set across to the Soviets
is that there must be some means of communication in which our
top leadership—the President, the Secretary of State—can
explain their thinking in a confidential manner so that when
they have to make a complete decision about something, it can
take clarity—they at least have the benefits of those views.(EP)

I think this is particularly important in crisis
management. During the 1973 war, the Middle East war, when we
were arming the Israelis and they were arming the Syrians,
there was practically not a day that went by where we didn't
communicate with the Soviets three or four times to give them
some idea of what we were up to or to complain to them about
what they were doing. Even that did not at the very end
prevent a blowup. But I do think it made it more manaseable.
If we had suddenly gone on alert in that period of months of
noncommunication, it could have been a much more dangerous
business. CA3>So I think for both reasons it is important to have
some means of communicating, not the details of our positions.
For that we have nesotiators. But the framework within which
these decisions are being made and what they're trying to seek
to accomplish. CA1>(EP)

McMANUS: CA3> In that regard, CA1>You've said a couple of times over
the last few days that you've seen the Reasan Administration
move toward something one would not wish to characterize as
detente but rather an acceptance... CA3> of just--CA1>(EP)

KISSINGER: Oh, I see no substantial difference between what
the Administration is now saying and what we used to
characterize as detente. In fact, I would feel that there's a
danser that they put too much emphasis on personal reassurance
and not enough emphasis on substantive nesotiation. (EP)

McMANUS: The question that was being asked last week was
how permanent is this shifting in emphasis on the
Administration's part and how strong is the consensus within
those different bureaucratic poles in Washington?(EP)

KISSINGER: I believe that the President's commitment is
permanent, and so is the secretary of state's. Those are the
two people I know best. Undoubtedly there are elements in the
bureaucracy who have consistently doubted the utility of any
nesotiation, and especially of arms control nesotiation. This
in itself is not bad. It produces a healthy debate within the
government. But at some point there must be a focus for
decision, and the decision must be more than just one position
that is then tabled. But it must permit a fluid nesotiation.
This will require some organizational changes after the
election. (EP)

McMANUS: Do you believe the President has undersone a kind
of conversion over the last few years, or did we simply pay
too much attention to some of his rhetoric?(EP)

KISSINGER: I think that any President will sooner or later
be driven by the nature of these contemporary weapons into a
desire to reduce the danser of war, and I think a second-term
President especially really is running for history and not for
any other office. So I believe that President Reasan has
probably modified--has probably learned a dimension as
President that as a campaignsner he did not have to address. I
believe he is absolutely sincere. I repeat: The bigger danser
I see is not the lack of his sincerity but the danser that
some people may believe one can achieve results simply by an
abstract psychological exercise of reassuring the Soviets and
convincing the public that we are sincere. That is not enough.
It has to be translated into a complete program, not in the
sense of Gromyko--who says deeds, by which he means agreement
to Soviet positions, and not words--but in the sense of
developing an idea of where everyone to be three or four years
from now. And if we do this, I think we can make a huge
progress in East-West relations in the next two or three

years.(ep)

TOH: Do you think that it will take at least until after
the election before we see some tangible movement? <A3>That is,
there are now talks about talks about discussions between us
and Dobrynin and Hartman and the Foreign Ministry there. But
from a public perception, do you think it's going to become
visible before the election?<A1>(ep)

KISINGER: I would be surprised, and I'm not very easier for
it to be very visible before the election because if you had a
dramatic meeting, say between Gromyko and Shultz or between a
presidential emissary and somebody in the Soviet Union,
immediately the media would set up criteria of what it
promised. They would repeat the experience of last week and
what was achieved, and I think the necessity is now to keep it
non-dramatic, to work at it seriously. Last week it was
important as a watershed. I would prefer that nothing much
happen now until the election. <A3>Neither side has asked me what
I prefer, thankfully, whether the make progress or not.<A1>(ep)

<A3> TOH: Now we have.(ep)

McMANUS: The conceptual breakthrough in arms control--(ep)
<A1> <A3>KISSINGER: And, in general, in East-West relations. We have
this problem with the Soviets as a nation. We are ideological
opponents who are condemned to coexistence. We have
conflicting interests in many parts of the world which we
cannot drive to extreme. There is little in the American
tradition of conducting foreign policy that makes us
comfortable with such an ambiguous situation. <A1>For as far ahead
as we can see, we will be rivals and competitors with the
Soviet Union and yet have to work on certain cooperative
matters. Most of the American diplomatic and foreign policy
experience is to treat countries as either friend or enemy
and to think of problems as having a terminal day, and so for
us this is a difficult concept to set a hold of. For example,
the critics of agreements with the Soviet Union always point
out that the Soviets got some advantages in the agreement. I
start from that premise. They will not sign an agreement that
does not give them some advantages. The question for us is
whether our advantages balance the Soviet advantages, and
without a balance of advantages, there'll never be an
agreement that will either be made or, if it is made by some
error, will be maintained. All of this in the nature of our
domestic debate creates great difficulties because on the one
side you have some people who are saying that almost any
agreement is desired and who deal with East-West relations
almost as a psychological problem. On the other side, you have
people who really think any agreement is a derossation of our
moral position and weakens us in the ultimate struggle, and
not to fall into the excesses of either side, the
psychological approach tempts the Soviets into making peace
offenses really as a form of unilateral disarmament. <A3>The other
approach leads to a buildup of hostility, of verbal hostility
that then the public opinion and the democracies will not
sustain and then contributes to this constant observation. <A1>So
the challenge before the Administration will be to set a
steady course that does not pretend that the Soviets have
suddenly become friends, but on the other hand is prepared to
make agreements that are to our mutual benefit.(ep)

<A3>McMANUS: Would one of the functions of the study or the
bipartisan study you are suggesting be to build a domestic
consensus?(ep)

KISSINGER: Yes. I wouldn't die on the barricades for a
bipartisan consensus. I'd rather get a clear position. I'd be
satisfied really if there was a clear position within the
Administration. But it would be best to have a bipartisan
consensus.(ep)

McMANUS: If you'll forgive me, I was wondering whether you

were sufficiently satisfied with the last bipartisan
commission.(ep)

KISSINGER: Which one?(ep)

MCMANUS: On Central America. <A1>.(ep)

<A3> KISSINGER: As a matter of fact, yes. If you look at the
composition of that group, I frankly thought--since I was not
involved in the composition of that group--I thought it was a
suicide mission when I took it, and I accepted it because I
didn't think as a former secretary of state I had a right to
refuse the President and because I thought the subject was
important, and it's rather interesting that one could get
unanimity in an election year, and secondly, I believe that
the results of that commission will stand up intellectually. I
was very satisfied with it.(ep)

<A1> <A3>TOTH: I have one other question and it's peripheral, but there's a big audience in Europe, especially in Germany. <A1>How do you read the Honecker incident, the back and forth, would he come, would he not come, why did he not eventually come?(ep)

KISSINGER: I believe that one of the factors that drove
Gromyko, or that induced or convinced Gromyko to talk in
Washington, was this fear that if he didn't talk, some of
their client states might talk to the Europeans. I read the
Honecker incident as if the Soviets were absolutely sure of
the East Germans, they should have let Honecker go to the
Federal Republic and propagase their line, which at least put
an appeal to the peace movement or would have married the
peace movement to some German nationalist impulses coming from
the East. They obviously were not sure enough of the impulses
that might develop on both sides, and I think that the fact
that they felt oblised to stop the visit is a sign of their
difficulties in holding their client states together and
particularly of their beginning fear of German nationalism.(ep)

<CA3> TOTH: So that you would rate the problems they have with
the East European empire as very high among their concerns and
a factor in--(ep)

KISSINGER: The problem in a negative sense they can hold it
together. But in a positive sense of achieving a unity of
purpose. I think they have increasing difficulty. <A1>It must be
an eerie feelings in Moscow to see a Communist Party that had
a monopoly of education, information and police powers totally
collapse in a country like Poland and to have the only
spontaneous revolutions in an industrialized country in the
20th Century or at any rate--I don't want to be that precise,
but certainly the post-war period--to happen in Communist
countries, and they must recognize that the fundamental
tendencies that occurred in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland
also existed in the Democratic Republic of Germany.(ep)

<A3> TOTH: But did you see much significance in the fact that it
was postponed or just canceled, or do you think it's going to
come back?(ep)

KISSINGER: Yes, I thought Honecker or somebody in East
Germany made a statement only last week in which he said that
Eastern Europe or the world depends on a continuation of the
processes of rapprochement between the two Germanies.(ep)

TOTH: And specifically the Honecker visit, do you think it
may be again scheduled for, say, the spring or something like
that?(ep)

<A1> <A3>KISSINGER: <A1>I think there's a good chance that the Honecker
visit will be scheduled again. <A3>That's a very good question.

<A1>How often do the Soviets want to pay the price of stopping it?

<A3>What is most damaging to them, having it so on? <A1>.(ep)

TOTH: But now that Gromyko has come here, under that
umbrella, it might be easier for Honecker to go there.(ep)

KISSINGER: Yes, and therefore, I think it will happen
again.(ep)

<A3> McMANUS: Can I go back to one last question. In the main

theme, so to speak. In your picture of the Soviet Union beset
by uncertainty in Eastern Europe in a kind of a long-range
succession struggle, doesn't that imply that while they are
looking for a respite, they may be very receptive to a
conceptual breakthrough along the broad range of realizations--(ep)

CA1) KISSINGER: The first things they will try to do is to set it
for nothins. And I think there have been two summits that were
a near disaster. The first was the Eisenhower summit with
Khrushchev in 1955, and the second was the Kennedy summit with
Khrushchev in 1962. In 1955 the summit was a disaster because
the Soviet leaders at that time shortly after the death of
Stalin must have been reflecting upon what they needed to do
to set a respite. They found they didn't have to do anything
except to meet with Western leaders and have the impression
created that great progress toward peace had been made. The
result of that was that within a year they recognized East
Germany, which they had never done as an independent state.
Within a year and a half they sold arms to the Middle East,
which was guaranteed to start a crisis. Within three years
there was the Berlin crisis.(ep)

The '62 summit was of a different kind. That convinced the
Soviets Kennedy was not on top of his job and therefore was an
opponent not to be taken seriously. I don't think that's our
problem now, but our problem now is analogous to 1955. We must
translate the general desire for a respite into some specific
programs. I would urge us to be generous and farsighted in
these programs, but I would also urge that we not let this
thing dissolve in some amorphous protestations of good will.
And therefore, yes, they will eventually be receptive to a
conceptual approach, but it will be tough going.(ep)

MCMANUS: Are there more severe limits in arms control than
in other areas?(ep)

KISSINGER: In my view, yes. But I think we should go ahead
with arms control. But I really—I tell you frankly I have no
clear idea of what—I wrote an article a few weeks ago on a
combination of limited defense with very sharp reductions of
offensive weapons, but I haven't worked it out technically,
and for all I know it may not be possible.(ep)

TOTH: Thank you.(ep)
(STYL)ss(q1)
CA2)-30-(ac)
CA1) <A3>(insert after xxx the problem of East-West relations)(ep)
CA1) (ep)

KISSINGER: I would like to set some consensus at least
within the government of what exactly it is we are trying to
accomplish that can then be conveyed to the Soviets as a
concept before you embody it in a numbers proposal. It is
conceivable to me that at some point we could set an agreement
on a concept and the Soviet numbers would look different from
ours. But if you don't know what concept they're operating
from and they don't know what concept we're operating from and
you're each throwing numbers around, it would be accidental if
something emerged and make a real contribution to security.(ep)

TOTH: How long would it take you—on the other aspect of
your suggestion, how long would it take you to set up a back
channel that was effective?(ep)

TOTH: I see. You don't see any idiosyncratic or personality

KISSINGER: I think you would have bureaucratic problems within our government of wounded egos and insistence on prerogatives, and for all I know they have the same problem on their side. But I think each government should settle that for themself. I don't think we should designate anybody on the Soviet side as our chosen instrument, or as one sometimes reads, pick another way to bypass Gromyko. There's no way to bypass Gromyko, and if they want to bypass Gromyko, that's their problem, not our problem.(ep)

I would think that what we should set across to the Soviets is that there must be some means of communication in which our top leadership—the President, the Secretary of State—can explain their thinking in a confidential manner so that when they have to make a complete decision about something, it can take clarity—they at least have the benefits of those views.(ep)

I think this is particularly important in crisis management. During the 1973 war, the Middle East war, when we were arming the Israelis and they were arming the Syrians, there was practically not a day that went by where we didn't communicate with the Soviets three or four times to give them some idea of what we were up to or to complain to them about what they were doing. Even that did not at the very end prevent a blowup. But I do think it made it more manageable. If we had suddenly gone on alert in that period of months of noncommunication, it could have been a much more dangerous business. So I think for both reasons it is important to have some means of communications, not the details of our positions. For that we have negotiators. But the framework within which these decisions are being made and what they're trying to seek to accomplish.(ep)

MCMANUS: In that regard, you've said a couple of times over the last few days that you've seen the Reagan Administration move toward something one would not wish to characterize as detente but rather an acceptance of just--(ep)

KISSINGER: Oh, I see no substantial difference between what the Administration is now saying and what we used to characterize as detente. In fact, I would feel that there's a danger that they put too much emphasis on personal reassurance and not enough emphasis on substantive negotiation.(ep)

MCMANUS: The question that was being asked last week was how permanent is this shifting in emphasis on the Administration's part and how strong is the consensus within those different bureaucratic poles in Washington?(ep)

KISSINGER: I believe that the President's commitment is permanent, and so is the secretary of state's. Those are the two people I know best. Undoubtedly there are elements in the bureaucracy who have consistently doubted the utility of any negotiation, and especially of arms control negotiation. This in itself is not bad. It produces a healthy debate within the government. But at some point there must be a focus for decision, and the decision must be more than just one position that is then tabled. But it must permit a fluid negotiation. This will require some organizational changes after the election.(ep)

MCMANUS: Do you believe the President has undergone a kind of conversion over the last few years, or did we simply pay too much attention to some of his rhetoric?(ep)

KISSINGER: I think that any President will sooner or later be driven by the nature of these contemporary weapons into a desire to reduce the danger of war, and I think a second-term President especially really is running for history and not for any other office. So I believe that President Reagan has probably modified--has probably learned a dimension as President that as a campaigner he did not have to address. I believe he is absolutely sincere. I recentl The bigger danger

I see is not the lack of his sincerity but the danger that some people may believe one can achieve results simply by an abstract psychological exercise of reassurings the Soviets and convincing the public that we are sincere. That is not enough. It has to be translated into a complete program, not in the sense of Gromyko—who says deeds, by which he means agreement to Soviet positions, and not words—but in the sense of developing an idea of where everyone to be three or four years from now. And if we do this, I think we can make a huge progress in East-West relations in the next two or three years.(ep)

TOTH: Do you think that it will take at least until after the election before we see some tangible movement? That is, there are now talks about talks about discussions between us and Dobrynin and Hartman and the Foreign Ministry there. But from a public perception, do you think it's going to become visible before the election?(ep)

KISINGER: I would be surprised, and I'm not very easier for it to be very visible before the election because if you had a dramatic meeting, say between Gromyko and Shultz or between a presidential emissary and somebody in the Soviet Union, immediately the media would set up criteria of what it promised. They would repeat the experience of last week and what was achieved, and I think the necessity is now to keep it non-dramatic, to work at it seriously. Last week it was important as a watershed. I would prefer that nothing much happen now until the election. Neither side has asked me what I prefer, thankfully, whether the make progress or not.(ep)

TOTH: Now we have.(ep)

MCMANUS: The conceptual breakthrough in arms control—(ep)

KISSINGER: And, in general, in East-West relations. We have this problem with the Soviets as a nation. We are ideological opponents who are condemned to coexistence. We have conflicting interests in many parts of the world which we cannot drive to extreme. There is little in the American tradition of conducting foreign policy that makes us comfortable with such an ambiguous situation. For as far ahead as we can see, we will be rivals and competitors with the Soviet Union and yet have to work on certain cooperative matters. Most of the American diplomatic and foreign policy experience is to treat countries as either friend or enemy and to think of problems as having a terminal day, and so for us this is a difficult concept to get a hold of. For example, the critics of agreements with the Soviet Union always point out that the Soviets got some advantages in the agreement. I start from that premise. They will not sign an agreement that does not give them some advantages. The question for us is whether our advantages balance the Soviet advantages, and without a balance of advantages, there'll never be an agreement that will either be made or, if it is made by some error, will be maintained. All of this in the nature of our domestic debate creates great difficulties because on the one side you have some people who are saying that almost any agreement is desired and who deal with East-West relations almost as a psychological problem. On the other side, you have people who really think any agreement is a derogation of our moral position and weakens us in the ultimate struggle, and not to fall into the excesses of either side, the psychological approach tempts the Soviets into making peace offenses really as a form of unilateral disarmament. The other approach leads to a buildup of hostility, of verbal hostility that then the public opinion and the democracies will not sustain and then contributes to this constant observation. So the challenge before the Administration will be to set a steady course that does not pretend that the Soviets have suddenly become friends, but on the other hand is prepared to

make agreements that are to our mutual benefit. (ep)

McMANUS: Would one of the functions of the study or the bipartisan study you are suggesting be to build a domestic consensus? (ep)

KISSINGER: Yes. I wouldn't die on the barricades for a bipartisan consensus. I'd rather set a clear position. I'd be satisfied really if there was a clear position within the Administration. But it would be best to have a bipartisan consensus. (ep)

McMANUS: If you'll forgive me, I was wondering whether you were sufficiently satisfied with the last bipartisan commission. (ep)

KISSINGER: Which one? (ep)

McMANUS: On Central America. (ep)

KISSINGER: As a matter of fact, yes. If you look at the composition of that group, I frankly thought--since I was not involved in the composition of that group--I thought it was a suicide mission when I took it, and I accepted it because I didn't think as a former secretary of state I had a right to refuse the President and because I thought the subject was important, and it's rather interesting that one could get unanimity in an election year, and secondly, I believe that the results of that commission will stand up intellectually. I was very satisfied with it. (ep)

TOTH: I have one other question and it's peripheral, but there's a bid audience in Europe, especially in Germany. How do you read the Honecker incident, the back and forth, would he come, would he not come, why did he not eventually come? (ep)

KISSINGER: I believe that one of the factors that drove Gromyko, or that induced or convinced Gromyko to talk in Washington, was this fear that if he didn't talk, some of their client states might talk to the Europeans. I read the Honecker incident as if the Soviets were absolutely sure of the East Germans, they should have let Honecker go to the Federal Republic and propagate their line, which at least put an appeal to the peace movement or would have married the peace movement to some German nationalist impulses coming from the East. They obviously were not sure enough of the impulses that might develop on both sides, and I think that the fact that they felt oblised to stop the visit is a sign of their difficulties in holding their client states together and particularly of their beginning fear of German nationalism. (ep)

KISSINGER: The problem in a negative sense they can hold it together. But in a positive sense of achieving a unity of purpose. I think they have increasing difficulty. It must be an eerie feeling in Moscow to see a Communist Party that had a monopoly of education, information and police powers totally collapse in a country like Poland and to have the only spontaneous revolutions in an industrialized country in the 20th Century or at any rate--I don't want to be that precise, but certainly the post-war period-to happen in Communist countries, and they must recognize that the fundamental tendencies that occurred in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland also existed in the Democratic Republic of Germany. (ep)

TOTH: But did you see much significance in the fact that it was postponed or just canceled, or do you think it's going to come back? (ep)

KISSINGER: Yes, I thought Honecker or somebody in East Germany made a statement only last week in which he said that Eastern Europe or the world depends on a continuation of the processes of rapprochement between the two Germanies. (ep)

that?(ep)

KISSINGER: I think there's a good chance that the Honecker visit will be scheduled again. That's a very good question. How often do the Soviets want to pay the price of stopping it? What is most damaging to them, having it so on?(ep)

McMANUS: Can I go back to one last question? To the main theme, so to speak. In your picture of the Soviet Union beset by uncertainty in Eastern Europe in a kind of a long-range succession struggle, doesn't that imply that while they are looking for a respite, they may be very receptive to a conceptual breakthrough? (A3)alons the broad range of realizations--(A1)(ep)

KISSINGER: The first thing they will try to do is to get it for nothing. And I think there have been two summits that were a near disaster. The first was the Eisenhower summit with Khrushchev in 1955, and the second was the Kennedy summit with Khrushchev in 1962. In 1955 the summit was a disaster because the Soviet leaders at that time shortly after the death of Stalin must have been reflecting upon what they needed to do to get a respite. They found they didn't have to do anything except to meet with Western leaders and have the impression created that great progress toward peace had been made. The result of that was that within a year they recognized East Germany, which they had never done as an independent state. Within a year and a half they sold arms to the Middle East, which was guaranteed to start a crisis. Within three years there was the Berlin crisis.(ep)

A3: McMANUS: Are there more severe limits in arms control than in other areas?(ep)

KISSINGER: In my view, yes. But I think we should go ahead with arms control. But I really--I tell you frankly I have no clear idea of what--I wrote an article a few weeks ago on a combination of limited defense with very sharp reductions of offensive weapons, but I haven't worked it out technically, and for all I know it may not be possible.(ep)

TOTH: Thank you.(ep)

(A1)(STYL)ss(q1)

(A2)-30-(ac)

g #4023

G #4023; GOLDMAN /TRANSCPT/CMB//

Transcript of Oct. 1 interview between former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and Los Angeles Times staff writers Robert C. Toth and Doyle McManus.

TOTH: Taking off from the visit by Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko, Dr. Kissinger, I wonder if you could tell us how well that visit went and what new direction, if any, Soviet policy is taking toward the United States, where it might go in the future.

KISSINGER: It seems to me one has to analyze how such a visit could possibly go. I have read a lot of comments on was there a breakthrough, was there not a breakthrough. I don't think in the 30 years or more that Gromyko has negotiated with the Americans you could ever say there was one initial meeting in which there was a substantive breakthrough. That is not Gromyko's style; that is not the Soviets' style. The significance of the Gromyko visit is most importantly that it took place. The Soviets would not have initiated a contact with President Reagan at this time if they had not made a prior decision that they would have to enter a negotiating phase. That phase is certain to be prolonged and grudging, as most Soviet negotiations are, but within those limits it achieved substantially what could be achieved, which was limited. It was the first part of the overture in what might be a three-act opera.

TOTH: How would you characterize the thrust of it? I mean

KISSINGER: In fact, if I could add one other point. Much of the discussion that I have read turns on the question of whether the Soviets are distrustful of President Reagan and did this visit dispel the distrust. I would argue that at least as big a danger if not a bigger danger is that the Soviets may get the idea that we are so eager for negotiation that they can get for nothing what they are to be negotiating about. The question of trust or distrust of personalities is of marginal importance. What is of importance is the substance

to which one addresses oneself.

TCH: Developing on that, their new direction, their desire to negotiate has to have some point. You've characterized it as a peace offensive. Can you explain what it might entail in terms of arms control and regional cooperation? Where would it be going?

KISSINGER: I am not sure that the Soviets themselves know where it might be going at this moment. They've gone through several phases with President Reagan. When he first came in, they dealt with him the way they generally deal with potential opponents: They tried to hinder the possible negotiations. That did not happen for a variety of reasons right away because the Administration felt it had to reverse the conceptions that had been created in Soviet-American

relations. By the time the negotiations started on INF and START, there were two obstacles. One was the divisions in our bureaucracy; second was the imminence of Brezhnev's death, so that there was nobody really in the Soviet Union to make a fundamental decision, and one would have to assume that the bureaucratic conflicts in the Soviet Union are even more intense than in the United States because the ignorance of each part of the government of the activities of the other is greater in the Soviet Union than with us. Then came the interregnum of Andropov, and then another leadership change with Chernenko. So there has never been a situation in the Soviet Union where anybody was in charge enough to conduct a coherent policy of give and take in a negotiation. I also think that the Soviets had not only a succession problem but a change of emphasis within the system. First from Brezhnev to Andropov within one party, elements of the power structure gaining somewhat an influence, and then they had to turn somewhat more to party predominance when Chernenko came in without giving Chernenko anything like the control that Brezhnev and his predecessors had had.

responsibility for the breakthroughs, and Cromyko was always the one who seemed more cautious, and more aware of problems. Even if you allow the fact that one was the good cop and the other was the bad cop, it seemed to me to reflect their personalities. Now this man who has spent his adult life being the implementer is himself responsible for the direction, and it is conceivable to me that he has decided that there have to be negotiations but that in carrying out the negotiations, he applies all the cautious hesitations that have marked him in the past, all the more so as he may also simultaneously have to position himself in the continuing leadership struggle in the Kremlin. It's for all these reasons that I do not think the Soviets have as yet made a decision as to where they are going. Indeed, what I think they are going to do in the next three to six months is to take us over a number of hurdles.

As the face of the statement that they want deeds from us and not words, it could be considered as chutzpah, a lot of gall. We have made our mistakes, but they were the ones that walked out of the negotiations, that shot down the airplane, in Poland and in Afghanistan not so far in the past. What they are trying to do is get a unilateral proposition as an entrance into negotiations. Then we will probably have to haggle over the agenda. And I think until we get through these phases, we will not know what they're really after. What we should do is use this time to clarify our own position.

**TOTH:** Well, if they don't know accepting what you say, they don't know precisely where they're going why have they decided to move now?

**KISSINGER:** Because I think they realize they're in a stalemate for a variety of reasons. If they counted on the European peace movement to stop our deployment and calculation of deployment of intermediate-range missiles, that calculation did not turn out to be correct. They clearly made a major decision ascribed last year to stonewall the United States, which was presaged by Andropov's alleged statements that those who believe one can make arrangements with the United States you can get the correct quote at the time of the airplane shooting. And this was preceded a year earlier by the tough speech of Brezhnev's just about a month before he died in which he also said a similar

One would have thought that the implementation of that policy would lead to a differential treatment of the United States and Western Europe and that they would try to split Western Europe from the United States. In fact for reasons not so easy to explain, they brought pressure both on Western Europe and the United States simultaneously, and therefore they have not split Western Europe from the United States. They are not making progress in their relations with China. They have a huge economic problem of a structural kind. They will be preoccupied with succession issues, not just of Chernenko but towards all the aged members of the Politburo over the next few years. So logically, they should want a respite. At the same time, I think it is very possible that they don't know how to get a respite.

I would add among the factors that lead to negotiation the fact that they could not be oblivious to the repeated statements of President Reagan that he wanted to open negotiations even if they did not want to help him in his reelection, even if they are highly suspicious. It would be only prudent for them to try to find out what there might be to them. So I think these are the main factors that brought them to a negotiation.

TCH: But it says something about the Politburo as it exists, however old and however inactive Chernenko may be at the time, that they can make a decision to embark on a new direction in their policy to the United States despite other problems, doesn't it?

KISSINGER: Absolutely.

TCH: Well, go from there then to the decision to rather brutally dismiss Gen. Ogarkov. How do you think that plays into the situation, if at all? There has been speculation that he was sort of a scapegoat, an offering to the United States in advance of the Gromyko visit. Do you have any views on that?

KISSINGER: I must say I misjudged the Ogarkov situation, as most other people did. I thought that when he was so visible in first defending the shootdown and then in attacking our arms control position that this indicated that the military was becoming assertive.

TCH: You used the word ``Bonapartism,'' I think.

KISSINGER: Yes. I thought that what was happening in the Soviet Union was

the emergence of a kind of Bonapartism, or as a more learned friend has since pointed out to me that Bonapartism wasn't really the right comparison. The right comparison is when the Roman legions reserved the right to appoint the emperor. Bonapartism means one person takes over, and I think there is something in that.

KISSINGER: In the Roman analogy. Bonapartism means that one great military figure takes over. I think the Roman analogy is better than the military apparatus achieves a veto over the succession. Now my gut feeling is that the evolution of analysis is still correct as to the tendencies of Communist systems in their revolution. In this specific case, it is one of two things that are now conceivable. One is that they put Ogarkov out ahead as a signal to the political leadership that with the shootdown, they did not take full responsibility or blame for it, or else, which is just as likely, that Ogarkov, who it shows us something about the change between the Andropov and the Chernenko view, I would have interpreted the Andropov succession, as a rather interesting phenomenon in the Soviet evolution in this sense. It is the first time in Soviet history that somebody became General Secretary of the Communist Party who had never run any major branch of the Communist Party inside the Soviet Union, in his formative career. Almost all of Andropov's experience was abroad or in intelligence.

From that point of view, Andropov could be seen as a coalition between the secret police, the military and the foreign affairs or the national security apparatus of the Soviet Union against the party bureaucrats inside the Soviet Union, and his early assault on corruption, advocacy of efficiency could also be seen in that light. It is then possible that the people who put in Andropov became disquieted by the turmoil that a major effort at reform caused inside the Soviet Union, the insecurities it evoked in the Party machinery. When Andropov died, therefore, they went back to a greater role for the party, but not so much that it was in the predominant position it had enjoyed under all previous General Secretaries. I look at Chernenko as chairman of the board but not as chief executive officer, to use an American corporate analogy. This puts him in a position to veto attacks on the party hierarchy but not in a position

to impose their total dominance over every aspect. If that analysis is correct, one could perhaps consider Ogarkov a price or a victim of a post-Andropov purge and not really related to U.S.-Soviet relations. I cannot believe that they would get rid of the chief of staff of their armed forces as a sign of good will to the United States. Indeed, one could find articles Ogarkov has written from which one could adduce almost the opposite. I mean, articles that nuclear war is senseless, that the economy has to be improved, that conventional weapons have to be stressed.

KISSINGER: What does it say about the succession? What it says to me about the succession is that it is structurally unsettled and that the struggle that was initiated by Andropov's succession is going to reemerge after Chernenko's.

KISSINGER: Institutionally as well as personality-wise, yes. But they have at least these problems after Chernenko disappears: One is will there be a shift to a younger generation? That's a crucial decision because it is highly probable that if there is a shift to the younger generation, all of the contemporaries of Chernenko will disappear from the Politburo more or less at the same time with each other. That in the Soviet Union is a very painful experience since your status depends almost entirely on what official position you have, and I can't think of many people who had an honorable retirement in the Soviet Union. That's the first problem.

The second problem is, regardless of which age group comes in, where is the emphasis going to be put? Will it put on the continuity of the existing structure with whatever marginal reforms are possible without rocking the boat, or will there be an effort at structural reform?

economy by central planning, but you may not be able to run a Communist state
without central planning. Or let's put it another way. Every Communist state
faces the paradox of what do you do with the Communist Party after power has
been achieved? How do you keep the Communist Party from becoming a mandarin
class that has no real function except to supervise central plans which are
themselves an incubus on the society? The Chinese are trying to solve this
problem by incentives, by redesigning the function of the Communist Party and
by going through their party lists and having a three-year program of party
rectification. No other Communist state has really tackled it head-on. Hungary
has de facto handled it, but I don't know what they do with the party under
the planning bureaucracy. I haven't studied it. Anyway, for the Soviet Union
this would be a monumental event if they give greater scope to incentives, if
they reduce the influence of the planning mechanism and if they instituted an
element of constitutionalism in the governmental system.

KISSINGER: My gut feeling is that they were so shaken by Andropov that the
successor will come from the political rank. But that does not mean that he may
not go back to the Andropov line, however he got in.

TOTH: So then at this point the new overture, on the one hand, the new
direction that Soviet policy might be taking as witnessed by Gromyko's
visit and these events in Moscow on the other hand are only indirectly
related. There's no direct correlation between Gromyko's visit and, say,
Ogarkov being fired?

KISSINGER: Well, certainly I do not think Ogarkov was fired as an offering
to us. I think there is some relationship that the Ogarkov firing shows enough

of the instability of the top leadership group that they want a respite from
constant tension if they can purchase it at what they consider a tolerable
price. What it tells me about us is that it is very important that we get
into negotiations that we confront them with very complete propositions and
not with generalities, so that they have specific decisions to make and not
attitudinal decisions. I think they have decided to negotiate, but they have not yet
decided what to negotiate about and in what framework.

TCH: Is this the way you approached negotiations when you were conducting
them with the Soviets? Or is it different?

KISSINGER: Of course, when I was conducting negotiations with the Soviets,
there was a clearer leadership structure, although even then it was not as
clear as it looks in retrospect. When I first encountered the Soviets,
Brezhnev, Kosygin and Podgorny pretended to be of equal standing, even though
it was evident from their conduct that Brezhnev was the strongest. When
President Nixon invited Brezhnev to come to the United States, the Soviets
told us that it would be inappropriate to invite Brezhnev, that we had to
invite all three of them, and then they told us privately only Brezhnev would
accept. But as late as 1972, they went through the appearance of a collective
leadership, and in the first two years of President Nixon our communications
were with Kosygin, not with Brezhnev, when they were at the highest level. So
even then the leadership was not as monolithic as it appeared.

Forgetting how I conducted the negotiations, there are two problems in
dealing with the Soviets, at least on issues as technically complicated as
arms control.

complicated than in most other issues because he usually has not studied the subject for anything like the length of time his experts have. A position then emerges, it is handed over in Geneva or wherever the negotiations take place, then it goes up through the Soviet hierarchy. You have to assume that there are at least some major elements in the Soviet hierarchy determined to show their *mility* to their leadership, and in general in a bureaucracy you never get into trouble for predicting a disaster that doesn't happen or for missing an opportunity because nobody can prove the opportunity existed. So by the time it reaches the Politburo, they have to adjudicate their own bureaucracy's interpretation of our bureaucracy's compromise. So it is not a process that tends to lead to easy understanding on either the technical or the political level. What we tried to do is to give the Soviets advance warning of our thinking and to try to do it through a channel that did not go through their whole bureaucracy so that we could speak more plainly, in that channel, we did not give our position in advance, not in detail, but what we did try to do is to explain the thinking behind the position that was likely to emerge so that it would not hit the Politburo cold, and we got it directly into the presidential channel to Brezhnev or whoever else was involed on the Soviet side.

I think it is the lack of such a channel at this moment that is an important obstacle, or contributing obstacle, to progress, and I think it is really more important at this moment to get a conceptual breakthrough than to come up with some technical ``solution'' to the problem.

TCH: What would be a conceptual breakthrough?

KISSINGER: Well, since you ask me what would be a conceptual breakthrough, I will have to say a second thing which seems to contradict my earlier assertion. I think we have reached a dead end in arms control theory. Most of the negotiations that went on in the '60s and '70s drew on the intellectual capital of the arms control theory that was developed in the late '50s. At that time, one dealt with single-warhead missiles, with fixed installations, and the concept of stability was identified with the inability of either side to calculate a decisive advantage in a first strike.

I think we are coming to the end of that period for two reasons. One, technology due to mobility and large numbers of warheads is in any case tending to produce ~~the kind of stability that people were talking about in the 1950s~~. When you have 20,000-plus warheads on each side, ~~a calculated decision~~ is not self-evident. On the other hand, the reliance on mass extermination as the principal element of security brings about, in the democracies a demoralization of society to a point where pacifism and unilateral disarmament become either the conscious or the subconscious motivation of so many people that it is very difficult to hold a position in the technical negotiation. And it is something that are tempted to stonewall.

If one looks at the schools of thought that now exist, I must say they are both nearly irrelevant to the problem of reducing either the danger of war or its impact if it occurs. The two schools are freeze and reduction. The freeze perpetuates the very situation that generates the uncertainty. In addition, it sounds much simpler than it would be in practice. After all, SALT I was a freeze of ICEMs, and it took us three and a half years to negotiate it, and even then we are still debating the difference between modernization of existing weapons, which is permitted, and new weapons, which are supposed to be proscribed. On the other hand, the various reduction schemes that exist, in my view, either do not change the situation or make it marginally more dangerous. After all, President Kennedy in 1962 thought that we were at the verge of Armageddon. At that time the Soviets had less than 100 warheads that could reach the United States, and we had some 3,000. I know no scheme that exists, even in the theoretical literature, that would reduce warheads to 3,000. So there's a paucity of theory. If we're going to reduce I think that would be highly desirable, it has to be to numbers that are really so low as to remove the holocaust aspect of modern deterrent theory.

arms control is being asked to do too much. I was part of the study groups in
the '50s, I've been involved in many of the arms control negotiations, and I
don't back off anything I've been associated with and I support it today. But
I do not think that by itself arms control can solve or ameliorate the problem
of East-West relations.

MORE TO COME

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TOTH: But just so I understand you correctly, you asked for a bipartisan
approach to searching for a new conception that would replace either_

TOTH: Just some theoretical position to substitute for these_

KISSINGER: I would like to get some consensus at least within the
government of what exactly it is we are trying to accomplish that can then be
conveyed to the Soviets as a concept before you embody it in ~~numbers.~~

~~proposal.~~ It is conceivable to me that at some point we could get an agreement
on a concept and the Soviet numbers would look different from ours. But if you
don't know what concept they're operating from and they don't know what concept
we're operating from and you're each throwing numbers around, it would be
accidental

if something emerged ~~and~~ make a real contribution to security.

TOTH: How long would it take you on the other aspect of your suggestion, how
long would it take you to set up a back channel that was effective?

government of wounded egos and insistence on prerogatives, and for all I know
they have the same problem on their side. But I think each government should
settle that for themself. I don't think we should designate anybody on the
Soviet side as our chosen instrument, or as one sometimes reads, pick another
way to bypass Cromyko. There's no way to bypass Cromyko, and if they want to
bypass

Cromyko, that's their problem, not our problem.

I would think that what we should get across to the Soviets is that there
must be some means of communication in which our top leadership the President and
the Secretary of State can explain their thinking in a confidential manner so
that when they have to make a complete decision about something, it can take
clarity they at least have the benefits of those views.

I think this is particularly important in crisis management. During the 1973
war, the Middle East war, when we were arming the Israelis and they were arming
the Arabs, there was practically not a day that went by where we didn't
communicate with the Soviets three or four times to give them some idea of what
we were up to or to complain to them about what they were doing. Even that did
not at the very end prevent a blowup. But I do think it made it more
manageable. If we had suddenly gone on alert in that period after 9
noncommunication, it

could have been a much more dangerous business. So I think for both reasons it
is important to have some means of communicating, not the details of our
positions. For that we have negotiators. But the framework within which these
decisions are being made and what they're trying to seek to accomplish.

MCMANUS: In that regard, you've said a couple of times over the last few
days that you've seen the Reagan Administration move toward something one would
not wish to characterize as detente but rather an acceptance of just_

KISSINGER: I think that any President will sooner or later be driven by the nature of these contemporary weapons into a desire to reduce the danger of war, and I think a second-term President especially really is running for history and not for any other office. So I believe that President Reagan has probably modified his probably learned a dimension as President that as a campaigner he did not have to address. I believe he is absolutely sincere. I repeat: The bigger danger I see is not the lack of his sincerity but the danger that some people may

believe one can achieve results simply by an abstract psychological exercise of reassuring the Soviets and convincing the public that we are sincere. That is not enough. It has to be translated into a complete program, not in the sense of Cromyko's words, by which he means agreement to Soviet positions, and not words but in the sense of developing an idea of where everyone to be three or four years from now. And if we do this, I think we can make a huge progress in East-West relations in the next two or three years.

KISINGER: I would be surprised, and I'm not very eager for it to be very
visible before the election because if you had a dramatic meeting, say between
Cromyko and Shultz or between a presidential emissary and somebody in the
Soviet Union, immediately the media would set up criteria of what it promised.
They would repeat the experience of last week and what was achieved, and I
think the necessity is now to keep it non-dramatic, to work at it seriously.
Last week it was important as a watershed. I would prefer that nothing much
happen now until the election. Neither side has asked me what I prefer,
thankfully, whether the make progress or not.

TOTH: Now we have.

MCMANUS: The conceptual breakthrough in arms control.

there'll never be an agreement that will either be made or, if it is made by
some error, will be maintained. All of this in the nature of our domestic
debate creates great difficulties because on the one side you have some people
who are saying that almost any agreement is desirable and who deal with East-
West relations almost as a psychological problem. On the other side, you have
people who really think any agreement is a derogation of our moral position and
we weakens us in the ultimate struggle, and not to fall into the excesses of

either side, the psychological approach tempts the Soviets into making peace offenses really as a form of unilateral disarmament. The other approach leads to a buildup of hostility, of verbal hostility that then the public opinion of the democracies will not sustain and then contributes to this constant oscillation. So the challenge before the Administration will be to get a steady course that does not pretend that the Soviets have suddenly become friends, but on the other hand is prepared to make agreements that are to our mutual benefit.

MCANUS: Would one of the functions of the study or the bipartisan study you are suggesting be to build a domestic consensus?

KISSINGER: Yes. I wouldn't die on the barricades for a bipartisan consensus. I'd rather get a clear position. I'd be satisfied if there was a clear position within the Administration. But it would be best to have a bipartisan consensus.

MCANUS: If you'll forgive me, I was wondering whether you were sufficiently satisfied with the last bipartisan commission.

KISSINGER: Which one?

MCANUS: On Central America.

KISSINGER: As a matter of fact, yes. If you look at the composition of that group, I thought it was a suicide mission when I took it, and I accepted it because I didn't think as a former secretary of state I had a right to refuse the President and because I thought the subject was important, and it's rather interesting that one could get unanimity in an election year, and secondly, I believe that the results of that commission will stand up intellectually. I was very satisfied with it.

TOTH: I have one other question and it's peripheral, but there's a big audience in Europe, especially in Germany. How do you read the Honecker incident, the back and forth, would he come, would he not come, why did he not eventually come?

KISSINGER: I believe that one of the factors that drove Cromyko, or that induced or convinced Cromyko to talk in Washington, was this fear that if he was a European

didn't talk, some of their client states might talk to the Europeans. I read the Honecker incident as if the Soviets were absolutely sure of the East Germans, they should have let Honecker go to the Federal Republic and propagate their line, which at least put an appeal to the peace movement or would have married the peace movement to some German nationalist impulses coming from the East. They obviously were not sure enough of the impulses that might develop on both sides, and I think that the fact that they felt obliged to stop the visit is a sign of their difficulties in holding their client states together and particularly of their beginning fear of German nationalism.

TOTH: So that you would rate the problems they have with the East European empire as very high among their concerns and a factor in_

KISSINGER: The problem in a negative sense they can hold it together. But in a positive sense of achieving a unity of purpose, I think they have increasing difficulty. It must be an eerie feeling in Moscow to see a Communist Party that had a monopoly of education, information and police powers totally collapse in a country like Poland and to have the only spontaneous revolutions in an industrialized country in the 20th Century or at any rate I don't want to be that precise, but certainly the post-war period to happen in Communist countries, and they must recognize that the fundamental tendencies that occurred in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland also existed in the Democratic Republic of Germany.

KISSINGER: I think there's a good chance that the Honecker visit will be scheduled again. That's a very good question. How often do the Soviets want to pay the price of stopping it? What is most damaging to them, having it go on?

TCHE: But now that Cromyko has come here, under that umbrella, it might be
easier for onecker to go there.

MCMANUS: Can I go back to one last question? To the main theme, so to speak. In your picture of the Soviet Union beset by uncertainty in Eastern Europe in a kind of a long-range succession struggle, doesn't that imply that while they are looking for a respite, they may be very receptive to a conceptual breakthrough along the broad range of realizing_

KISSINGER: In my view, yes. But I think we should go ahead with arms control. But I really I tell you frankly I have no clear idea of what I wrote an article a few weeks ago on a combination of limited defense with very sharp