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MEET THE PRESS

MR. WALLACE (on tape): "President Reagan addresses the nation tomorrow night, following a week of big developments in U.S. foreign policy. At the Venice summit, the allies gave Mr. Reagan only vague diplomatic support for his new policy in the Persian Gulf. But in Iceland, NATO endorsed elimination of hundreds of missiles in Europe, boosting chances for a Reagan-Gorbachev summit this year. Perhaps most important, new questions were raised about whether the president is still up to the job.

"We'll discuss this today with Sam Nunn, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee; and with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger—all on 'Meet the Press', Sunday, June 14, 1987."

MR. WALLACE: And hello, again. I'm Chris Wallace. The president's men hoped his 10 days in Europe would re-establish his image as a world leader, getting him out from under the Iran/contra scandal. But Mr. Reagan's problems followed him across the Atlantic, as he found the allies no easier to deal with than Congress or the media.

Joining me today, Elizabeth Drew of The New Yorker magazine, and Robert Kaiser of The Washington Post. And let's begin with former Secretary of State Kissinger, who is at NBC affiliate, WVIT in Hartford, Connecticut.

Dr. Kissinger, thanks for joining us today. We are delighted to see you.

DR. KISSINGER: Good to be here.

MR. WALLACE: Some of the other delegations said that the president seemed less energetic than he has seemed at previous summits and that the U.S. team under Chief of Staff Howard Baker made a lot of mistakes. How do you account for the disarray in the U.S. performance in Venice?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, for me, sitting where I am, I didn't notice so much disarray in the American performance in Venice. I think it was an objectively complicated situation in the sense that Mrs. Thatcher had an election; Nakasone, from Japan, is going to retire in October; Italy didn't have a government; the two French representatives are going to square off against each other in an election next spring.

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So I don't see how anything much could have been accomplished beyond
what was accomplished with any level of performance on the American
side. To me it didn't look any different than it has in the past.

MR. WALLACE: But wasn't there a difference in the sense that the president was far less able than he has been in the past to control the agenda? The U.S. team raised expectations that he was going to push the allies on the Persian Gulf, on agricultural subsidies. He did neither.

DR. KISSINGER: Well, I think it was a mistake to create the impression that one could get allied support for the Persian Gulf for two reasons: One, for the domestic reasons in these countries; and secondly, I'm not clear what it is that we wanted support for in the Persian Gulf. There are two issues. One is the freedom of navigation in general; the other is the Kuwaiti tankers. On freedom of navigation in general, we got support; on the Kuwaiti tankers, there are a lot of people who have doubts, frankly, including myself.

MS. DREW: I'd like to follow up on that. What you have said thus far is that we should evaluate our situation in the Gulf; we should be extremely careful. Decisions are being made now. Do you think the administration's proposal to flag the Kuwaiti ships is a good idea or a bad idea?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, the first question that I would like to raise in this, I understand that the president is going to submit some sort of a statement to the Congress on Tuesday which could change my mind. But it isn't obvious to me that there is a new threat to shipping in the Gulf. The level of attacks on shipping in the Gulf this year seems to be about the same as it was last year. Secondly, most of the attacks come from Iraq, not from Iran. About two thirds of the attacks come from Iraq. So by our getting involved on, in effect, the Iraq side, we are taking on a belligerent commitment in a war in which it isn't clear to me how it is going to end. And those are some of the questions that it seems to me have to be answered before we get ourselves involved in a belligerent situation when there is no new challenge, and when it isn't clear how it is going to end. And I can see how some of the Europeans might have similar concerns. If there's a real threat to freedom, I'm strongly in favor of opening up the Gulf, and I support the strengthening of the fleet there.

MS. DREW: Along those lines, I'd like to ask you about a contingency, and since you are a private analyst, not in the government, I think this is something the American people need to understand. If we go ahead with this proposal, what dangers do we run if America ends up having to attack Iran?

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**DR. KISSINGER:** If we get into a military conflict with Iran, into any military conflict, if the last decade has shown us anything, it's that we should not engage in military conflicts unless we are prepared to prevail. So if an American ship is attacked, we will have to retaliate, and we will have to retali ate massively. And then we have to know what the next phase is going to be. The Iranians have a record of being extremely stubborn. Now, if the American national interest is involved, of course we should be prepared to fight Iran. But it's not something that one likes to slide into one tanker at a time, when one cannot define what the war aim is and what the terms are on which we want to settle.

**MR. KAISER:** Mr. Kissinger, it sounds to me as though you're saying, as far as you know, this is a bad idea. Is that fair?

**DR. KISSINGER:** I am open-minded until I see what is going to be submitted by the administration to the Congress on Tuesday. I'm strongly in favor of maintaining freedom of navigation in the Gulf, and when it is really threatened, I would support the administration in an attempt to overcome threats to freedom of navigation. I'm not persuaded that we are now facing a threat to freedom of navigation.

**MR. KAISER:** Why can't you say it, straight out? If you're not persuaded, that means on the basis of what you know so far, you think it's a bad idea. Is that what you're saying?

**DR. KISSINGER:** From what I now know, I am—yes, I think it's a bad idea to get ourselves militarily involved.

**MR. KAISER:** Thank you. Now, let me ask you this: Is there a role, as Howard Baker suggested in Venice, and then took it back, might there be a role for the Soviet Union and the United States to actually cooperate in maintaining open seas in the Persian Gulf?

**DR. KISSINGER:** I think that would be a disaster, because the Soviet aim and the Russian aim for a century and a half has been to establish a foothold in the warm water area in the Persian Gulf. We have an interest in keeping Iran from winning the war, but we do not have an interest in establishing the Soviet Union in the Persian Gulf in the process of stopping Iran to win the war. Of all the areas in the world in which I don't think our interests are parallel, the Persian Gulf is one of the most pre-eminent. We may have a very short term common interest, but I would not consider that an area for superpower cooperation.

**MR. WALLACE:** Dr. Kissinger, let me switch, if I can, to arms control. With NATO endorsement on Friday, the U.S. seems all but certain now to make precisely the kind of deal that you have opposed, elimination of all short and medium range missiles in Europe

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with no link at all to a conventional arms reduction. How dangerous
would that kind of deal be?

**DR. KISSINGER:** Well, my concern was the linkage to the conventional arms reduction, not a deal in itself. It is not the sort of deal that I would have recommended. At the same time, now that the deal is all but made, I think it would be worse to fail to ratify it, and I believe that what the United States foreign policy now has to do is to try to compensate for some of the military problems and psychological problems that this deal will produce by trying to—by developing a new NATO strategy, by substituting political relationships for the technical relationships that will be to some extent weakened as a result of this agreement. There's no sense engaging in an endless debate again about ratification. I think when the agreement is made we should go through with it, but we should realize that it is, it does create major problems in the alliance which we have to compensate for by a new approach to the alliance.

**MR. WALLACE:** A number of conservatives say that this president is suddenly in a big rush and too much of a rush for a Reagan—
—Gorbachev summit. Do you see any of that?

**DR. KISSINGER:** Well, I think a summit is not an end in itself. And I think we have to be very careful not to create the impression that the problem of Soviet foreign policy is going to be solved by the conversion of a Soviet leader to American values. Gorbachev is conducting his reforms to make the Soviet Union strong, not to make the Soviet Union democratic. And the issues have to be solved on a foreign policy level, and not on the psychoanalysis of one Soviet leader who may not be there all that long.

**MR. WALLACE:** Dr. Kissinger, we only have about 30 seconds left. Let me ask you one quick question on another subject. Do you think that Elliott Abrams should stay on as assistant secretary of state?

**DR. KISSINGER:** I think that this is a decision that the secretary of state has to make, and I think that the secretary of state's judgment should prevail in matters like this.

**MR. WALLACE:** Dr. Kissinger, thank you, thanks very much for coming in today. We appreciate it. And when we return, the view on Capitol Hill from Georgia Senator Sam Nunn.

(Announcements)

**MR. WALLACE:** We're back now on "Meet the Press" with Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia, and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Senator, good to have you here. We very much

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appreciate you coming in. Under some questioning, Secretary Kissinger said that he thinks that this reflagging of the Kuwaiti vessels, the escorting of them, is a bad idea. Can you be as direct?

SENATOR NUNN: Well, I'm very skeptical of it. It seems to me the fundamental problem is that we've got a debate going on that's not directed to the central issues. I think it starts with the administration saying that their principal reason for going in and flagging those Kuwaiti vessels is to protect the free flow of oil. Most of the oil that comes out of the Gulf comes from Iranian ships as opposed to Kuwaiti ships, as between those two at least, and the Iraqis are still going to have a free hand to hit the Iranian ships. The other dilemma is that the Iraqis started the tanker war in the Persian Gulf by attacking a Greek vessel. And the third dilemma I have is the testimony of the administration on Thursday afternoon before our committee indicated that we're not going to protect any other ships other than Kuwaiti and American. That means that anybody can go after the ships of the Greeks, the NATO allies, Japan, any of these, and we're not going to take any steps at all. So it seems to me that what we've done here, Chris, is we have basically taken a strong tilt towards Iraq. That ought to be debated on its own merits, and not under the illusions that we're really protecting the free flow of oil.

MR. WALLACE: Well, there has been talk about legislation that would block the reflagging, and the escorting of those Kuwaiti tankers. Would you support that legislation?

SENATOR NUNN: I'll have to study that. I think we need to debate our policy there, though. The central issue is how do we end the ground war. That's where the United States and the Soviet Union may have a convergence of interests. I agree with Dr. Kissinger that we don't have a convergence of interests in the Persian Gulf itself. But the Soviets and the United States, I don't believe either of us want the Iranians to become the dominant empire in that whole region. Well, we've got to get help from both the Soviets and our European allies in that respect, because we've lost a lot of credibility in trying to cut off arms to Iran.

MS. DREW: You've said you're skeptical of the plan and we have to study it. You know a lot about it, and time's running out, and yours is a very powerful voice. Should the administration go ahead with this plan or not? Is it a good idea or a bad idea?

SENATOR NUNN: I think with the lack of consensus we have right now, it would be, the administration would be best advised to delay it. After you make an announcement, it seems to me the United States credibility is further at stake here, and so I hate to say that Congress

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should take an adamant position and say, no, you can't do it. But unless the Kuwaiti flagging is fit into an overall policy, which is not apparent, it seems to me it is a mistake.

**MS. DREW:** But isn't delaying also just prolonging it, and they would go ahead and do it anyway? The decision is whether it's a good thing to do or a bad thing to do.

**SENATOR NUNN:** Well, I don't see this as being critical one way or the other, the Kuwaiti flagging. The problem is the absence of policy. We have no policy to end the ground war. We have no coordinated effort in the Persian Gulf. The question of protecting the oil is not one that's serious now, because even insurance rates haven't gone up. And if there's anything that reflects reality, it's insurance rates, as most of the public knows.

**MS. DREW:** You say it's not critical. But again, the question of if we get into this, and we do end up having to take some sort of strike against Iran, because they've done something, or we want to make a pre-emptive strike, again without discussing contingencies, I think the American public needs to know what we might be getting into. What would be the effects of getting into a real fight with Iran over this?

**SENATOR NUNN:** Well, it would be very serious. When I say it's not critical, I'm not saying the Kuwaiti vessels is not important. It is important. I'm saying that is not the critical issue. You're not going to protect the Persian Gulf until you end the ground war, and you're not going to protect it simply by flagging—

**MR. KAISER:** Senator, it is the issue that's on the table though. The general policy is not up for debate. The specific proposal of reflagging Kuwaiti vessels is on the table today, and you've got to make a decision about it.

**SENATOR NUNN:** Well, I'd say that I don't agree with that, Bob. I think the general policy is up for debate, and when we get off on a tangent like this, flagging Kuwaiti vessels, and we permit all the emphasis to be on that, in the absence of a debate on the general policy, it seems to me we're making a fundamental error. So I'm saying that this Kuwaiti flagging is a symbol of an absence of policy, and we've got to force the administration to have an overall policy before we decide this issue. So I see nothing wrong with changing the direction of the debate.

Another thing that's got to be examined carefully, what do we want our allies to do? Everybody says we want our allies to help. We don't need their help in direct military support in the Persian Gulf, not the

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European allies. We may need some of the Persian Gulf states to help us there, but what we really need our allies to do—we need the Japanese to help with Third World debt. We need the Europeans to do a lot more in NATO. That's where they need to be helpful.

**MR. KAISER:** Do you sense, as some of your colleagues do, that there's a general malaise in this administration, that there's a drift at work? I read an extraordinary quotation from Senator Moynihan yesterday. He said the possibility of awful mistakes looms on every horizon. There's great anxiety here. A little Moynihan rhetoric. But is this a bad time for the United States in general?

**SENATOR NUNN:** Well, I think our credibility is down. I think the Iranian arms sale has hurt our credibility in foreign policy very severely. I also think the fact that we're a debtor nation and we're behaving as if we aren't, and that we're not doing much about our deficit, and the president goes off as the head of the largest debtor nation in the world and we don't even talk about in serious terms before he leaves how we're going to get the deficit under control. So those two things have damaged our credibility, but we're still the strongest nation in the world, and people still have to deal with us, and we still can repair that loss of credibility.

**MR. KAISER:** Chris raised the question at the top of the show, if the president again—need we fear that the president is not up to his job for this last year and a half. Are you worried about that?

**SENATOR NUNN:** Well, I don't think that public discussions of that in this country help restore that credibility. The president's going to be there for another 18 months, and I think we're all going to have to work with him. We've got to develop a foreign policy that's credible and that has continuity. It's going to take the cooperation of everyone to do that, and decrying the president's capability now, I don't think, is very helpful.

**MR. WALLACE:** But Senator Nunn, I mean, what you're basically saying here is that you don't trust the way that this administration is handling this policy in the Persian Gulf. You are raising reservations just generally. I mean, isn't that an extraordinary situation where you're in effect saying we don't trust the way they're thinking through this policy. We ought to sit down and delay it, and Congress ought to make this policy.

**SENATOR NUNN:** Well, I don't think Congress ought to be the lead partner in foreign policy, but I think Congress has a crucial role to play, and one of the roles we have to play we're playing right now in the Persian Gulf. We're asking the hard questions, and they haven't thought through the questions. They haven't thought through the answers.

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That's apparent. So we do have to put our show together, so to speak, and it has to be developed jointly with the administration and with Congress.

**MR. WALLACE:** Let's talk also now about arms control. It seems clear that there is going to be a U.S.-Soviet arms deal to eliminate all medium and short range missiles from Europe. Dr. Kissinger seems to indicate it's a bad deal, but the deal has been made. We can't welch on it now. Do you agree with that?

**SENATOR NUNN:** I don't really agree with it being a bad deal. I do agree that the conventional arms control has been neglected, and that's where we've really got problems. We ought to be talking about zero tanks in Europe and not simply zero nuclear weapons. The truth of it is, whether we like it or not, the United States and our allies have for years depended not just on nuclear weapons to prevent nuclear war, but nuclear weapons as a response to a conventional attack, and the early use of nuclear weapons. The slippery slope does not start with this agreement. The slippery slope of NATO starts with a lack of conventional capability.

**MR. WALLACE:** Let me ask you about Elliott Abrams, the assistant secretary of state in charge of Central America, and who, it has been charged, misled Congress. Do you think he should go?

**SENATOR NUNN:** Well, I don't think it's up to me to fire him here on the air. I do think his credibility—

**MR. WALLACE:** It's not up to you to fire him at all. But our question is, do you think he should go?

**SENATOR NUNN:** I think that's a decision the administration is going to have to make. But the Abrams testimony has given a real problem to Congress. I favor the general policy that Elliott Abrams has been articulating. He is a very capable individual. But his credibility has been severely damaged and when we debate the overall aid to contras in the fall of this year, his presence will not be helpful.

**MS. DREW:** You're on the select Iran/contra committee, the Senate part of it. Six weeks are over, phase one is over—what's the most disturbing thing about the presidency that has come out, as far as you're concerned?

**SENATOR NUNN:** About the presidency itself?

**MS. DREW:** In this context.

**SENATOR NUNN:** The overall policy, I would say, that we have basically turned over critical foreign policy decision-making to business people who had profit as a motive. We also have had the Congress

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misled, which precludes the development of bipartisan foreign policy. Third, and probably most serious, the administration has been misleading each other. They have not been frank with each other. They have misled each other time and time again, and you cannot conduct any foreign policy overt or covert in this manner.

**MR. WALLACE:** Senator Nunn, thank you. Thank you very much. We appreciate very much your coming in today.

**SENATOR NUNN:** Thank you, Chris.

**MR. WALLACE:** And, when "Meet the Press" continues, my colleagues and I will discuss where the Reagan presidency is now, after the trip to Venice.

*(Announcements)*

**MR. WALLACE:** Back now on "Meet the Press". The subject is Ronald Reagan's standing after his 10 days in Europe. The president is going to address the nation tomorrow night and talk about all that he accomplished in Venice. And I wonder, is this another case of what Don Regan once called the "shovel brigade", trying to make a triumph out of something that was distinctly less than a triumph?

**MS. DREW:** Well, I think that the idea of a presidential address is now a coin that has worn thin. The idea has been that Reagan is such a great communicator that all you have to do is put him on television and it will change everybody's perception and turn things around. As I say, I think that is less and less valuable for him.

**MR. KAISER:** We've seen something interesting on this program this morning, I think, where you've got leading Republican, Henry Kissinger, and the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, raising the most profound questions about this very dramatic initiative in the Persian Gulf. I think they've got a very basic and concrete policy problem now, not being able to get their way, not going to be overcome, as Elizabeth suggests, by a speech to the nation.

**MR. WALLACE:** That's right. And the president now, we are told, is going to go out tomorrow and say, tomorrow night, and say, you know, the allies were so desperately concerned about the budget deficit and trying to use that in some sense to put pressure on Congress to reform the budget process and do the budget the way he wants it, with big domestic cuts, and no tax increase. Do you really think that he will have any clout, he can somehow bring up the spirit of Venice to, in some way, put pressure on Congress?

**MS. DREW:** I think the president began to lose his clout, lost a very important amount of it in the election last November. He went out and campaigned for a Republican Senate and he lost. On top of that, we've

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had the Iran/contra affair, the hearings, the various pieces of evidence
that the president had not been telling us the truth. I just don't think
the speech is going to be very important. I think it will be a blip.

**MR. KAISER:** We have a thing now in Washington where we keep
waiting to see if Reagan's going to bounce back and so on. But you
know, I send reporters out in the country, and they all come back and
say the country has gone beyond Ronald Reagan. They're looking into
the future now. I sense that's probably largely true, that Ronald Reagan
is a man of the past for a large part of the American public.

**MR. WALLACE:** You know, there was one other interesting
development in Venice, and that was, it seemed to me, the honeymoon
of Howard Baker, the new chief of staff, ended. There's still a great
deal of respect for him in the press corps, but Baker had a bad trip.
He made a number of mistakes on policy issues, on facts. Do you think
the bloom is off that rose?

**MS. DREW:** I think there are two very interesting things about it.
Howard Baker doesn't seem to know the difference between being in
the White House and being on Capitol Hill, where he was very chatty
and accessible, and he made a number of mistakes. But also it was
supposed to be the combination of Baker and Frank Carlucci, the new
national security adviser, that were going to really pull this administra-
tion together. We see in the Gulf, the Persian Gulf policy that Carlucci
hasn't really done very well either, that there's a very big problem with
how this policy was or was not made and thought through. So I would
think the honeymoon's off for both.

**MR. KAISER:** There is an enormous difference, isn't there, between
being a senator and a majority leader and being the senior staff man
in an administration responsible for detail, follow through, consistency
and so on. It's not something Howard Baker is used to, and I'm not
surprised to see it.

**MR. WALLACE:** Well, that's right, and we'll be out in the driveway
after some kind of presidential briefing, and the senator comes out and
he makes a mistake and you ignore it, because you're basically looking
for their views of things, not for facts. Now, Baker is in that position
where it's not just enough to turn an artful phrase. You've got to be
right, and you've got to have things thought through, and I think he's
learning it's a tougher ballgame.

**MS. DREW:** But I think the basic thing, Chris, is it all gets back
to Reagan. The question was how much difference can better staff
make, and I think it has to be said that these two are certainly better
than their predecessors. There are just problems, and I think it gets
back to how Reagan conducts the presidency.

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**MR. WALLACE:** Thank you. Thank you both very much for coming in today.

We close, as usual, with our quotation of the week, which comes from one of the few high points on the president's bumpy trip through Europe. It came in Berlin, when Mr. Reagan looked down from the balcony onto the Berlin wall. With East German border guards just 50 yards way, the president was asked whether he will ever be able to get Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the wall. "Well," Mr. Reagan said, "Jericho didn't last forever."

And that's "Meet the Press" for this Sunday. I'm Chris Wallace. For all of us working the Sunday shift here at NBC News, have a good week.

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