Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  The elephantine procedure Jobert had imposed on us was now creating its own havoc. Draft documents were like pollen in the spring air. In addition to the German outline which we had seen, a thin Dutch draft had been submitted to NATO, Jobert had promised a French draft to us alone, and there were two American drafts shown only to Jobert.

  It was impossible to tell who had actually seen or approved what. I found it hard to believe that the German outline had been prepared without consultation with anyone. But it was sensless to have Jobert studying an American draft and permit Scheel to fill in his outline in ignorance of our position.

  I therefore decided to give Scheel the two American drafts. And having gone that far, we also transmitted them to London on July 8. I knew that this would give Jobert a point to score against me because I had told him that I would await his reaction. But Jobert had had our draft now for ten days and the very bilateral process to which we had agreed on France’s urging created its own necessities. It was impossible not to tell each of our principal partners what we were saying to the others.

  As it turned out, I was too late to preempt another of Jobert’s maneuvers. Jobert had visited London early in July and promptly asked the British leaders what they thought of the American drafts (before they had received them). When they honestly denied any knowledge, he accused them of colluding with us against France; it was unthinkable, he claimed, that we would not show such documents to our oldest ally. The wily Jobert thereby achieved two objectives. If we had given the documents to London, he had established equal status; if we had not, he would have soured Anglo-American relations just when decisions could no longer be avoided. He achieved the latter objective. Though I did not learn the details of Jobert’s visit until after Heath and I were both out of office, it was clear in July 1973 that during the climactic part of the negotiations, Whitehall, feeling itself discriminated against, treated us more aloofly than even in the previous period of the Heath government.

  The other shoe dropped on July 16. The French chargé d’affaires in Washington delivered a letter to me from Jobert rejecting both our drafts. The State Department document, which he thought “less generous” than mine, seemed to him to be also “more prudent.” Still, vapid as it was, it too did not pass muster. Jobert would offer no ideas of his own: He did not now want to begin what could be a polemic, he said, for he would find one irritating. But out of “friendship” he advised me to engage in the bilateral talks I desired with more realistic documents. He would not offer a text, however, to convey the “sense of realism” that was acceptable. To do this, he feared, might embarrass me; on reflection, he wrote, he felt it better to remain silent. In other words, we could submit documents but would be given no clue to what was desired. Nor would we be told why our proposals had been rejected. In the meantime, Jobert used our drafts to weaken our relations with the other European countries. It was a very skillful performance of pointless diplomacy, for Jobert’s victories brought him and his country no benefits and mortgaged its relations with the United States.

  It served, however, to stalemate our initiative. On July 23 the foreign ministers of the European Community met in Copenhagen. Three months to the day after the Year of Europe speech, after weeks of bilateral consultation, they had at last gathered to address its substance. Once again our allies took refuge in procedure; but more than delay was involved. The formal decision was that the Community’s political directors (senior civil servants in the foreign offices) would draft some principles for the ministers by mid-September. When the Community had concluded its deliberations, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers would transmit its results to us. There was no reference to Nixon’s visiting Europe.

  After a few more days, we began to understand that what had happened in Copenhagen was not only to put the Year of Europe on ice for two more months and to cold-shoulder a Presidential visit — two unprecedented events in Atlantic relations — but also to turn the European-American dialogue into an adversary proceeding. After insisting that we not consult the European Community, Jobert used our aloofness to convince the Community to adopt a procedure totally at variance with the practice of intimate consultations of more than two decades. It had become customary that the nations of the Atlantic — and especially the large countries — exchange ideas on outstanding issues in many informal contacts whose vitality was enhanced by their spontaneity. It now transpired that the European nations had decided that they would work on a paper (on Atlantic relations, no less) without any consultation with us. We would be shown no drafts; we would have no opportunity to express our views. After the Community foreign ministers had completed the document several months hence, it would be submitted to us by the Danish Foreign Minister, who would be in the chair for the remainder of the year. He would be empowered only to present the draft, register our comments, and report back to the other foreign ministers, who would consider our views at the next monthly meeting. After they had come to a consensus about the appropriate response, the same process would repeat itself. In the intervals between the appearances of the Danish Foreign Minister, none of the other ministers could talk to us, even informally, about what had started out as an American initiative.

  Heath made the new approach explicit in a cable to Nixon of July 25. He emphasized that henceforth the Nine would share among themselves all information “which they obtain in the framework of bilateral exchanges with the U.S.” In other words, confidential bilateral exchanges — first demanded by our allies as the sole acceptable procedure — were at an end. What had already taken place would be shared. All at once, we understood why Burke Trend, the Cabinet Secretary and my designated contact in the British government on the Year of Europe, had been so elusive. He had avoided consultations since April, stalling until after the meeting in Copenhagen. Afterward, he no longer had the authority to consult bilaterally. This was made clear by Heath:

  I think that we shall stand the best chance of achieving the success which you and I both want if we ourselves are now seen to adhere to this decision as regards the present exercise. To do so will improve the chances of an orderly response by the Nine in the autumn.

  For the entire postwar period, Britain had prided itself on a “special relationship” based on a preferential position in Washington. But if every communication to London would automatically be distributed to the Nine, the relationship was hardly “special” any longer. Europe had responded to the Year of Europe initiative with a procedure in which those who talked with us were not empowered to negotiate while those who could have negotiated with us no longer had the authority to talk.

  What made it all so painful was that we knew we had been outmaneuvered by Jobert, and that he had gotten away with it because we had not envisaged an adversary procedure. Jobert had ruthlessly used our effort to conciliate France as a device to isolate us. It was at Jobert’s request that we had resisted the importuning of the smaller countries for a formal proposal or a wider forum. In the name of avoiding the isolation of France we had, with grave misgivings, proceeded to bilateral talks with France, Britain, and Germany and not appealed directly to the machinery of the Common Market. In order not to exacerbate old sensitivities we had put off Joseph Luns’s proposal to use NATO as a forum for consultation.

  It was clear what had happened after three months of waiting for Europe. Jobert had exploited the smaller countries’ uneasiness about dictation from the Big Four, West Germany’s reluctance to inhibit Ostpolitik within a larger grouping, and Heath’s determination to demonstrate his European vocation, to weld together a coalition of negation. Jobert, backed by Heath, had had a free run at us because the possibility that the whole exercise might turn into a confrontation had simply never crossed our minds. No wonder that emotions were hardly at an even keel in an Administration already roiled by Watergate pressures.

  The result was a Presidential reply to Heath of unusual coolness:

  Although I accept your view that a certain amount of progress was made in the gen
eral direction of what we hope to achieve, I must tell you frankly that I am quite concerned about the situation in which we seem to find ourselves.

  I thought we had agreed when we discussed what later became known as the Year of Europe initiative in our January meeting that this was a major enterprise in the common interest at a critical time. In that meeting and in numerous subsequent exchanges in this channel and in conversations with your representatives, it was common ground that the revitalization of Atlantic relationships is at least as much in Europe’s interest as in our own and that extraordinary efforts with strong public impact were required. . . .

  [W]e have no objection whatsoever to the idea that the Europeans should concert among themselves how they wish to conduct the dialogue with us. Not wishing to get delayed by procedural issues, we employed bilateral channels because that was the European preference and indeed because no other channels seem to be available. Every attempt at multilateral talks including some proposed by your government when Dr. Kissinger visited London in May has been rebuffed. We finally accepted bilateral talks because we agreed with your judgment that the French should not be isolated. But our preference for multilateral channels was always clear. We consistently stated that the various bilateral talks as well as discussions in existing multilateral forums should be pulled together multilaterally as soon as this was feasible. If we have sought to preserve the privacy of our bilateral exchanges it was largely at European request and because we agreed that under the circumstances it was the best way to make progress. I find puzzling what you say about the exploitation of our private bilateral contacts by the country that had initially insisted on them.

  The same points were put even more sharply in a letter of July 30 from Nixon to Brandt, who had weighed in with the by-now standard European argument that the Copenhagen meeting represented a significant response to our initiative. Nixon used the opportunity to say he would not visit Europe in these circumstances and that he would sign no documents that were not signed by other heads of government — a slap at the idea that he meet with the foreign ministers, and not the heads of government, of the Community:

  I must in all candor express to you my surprise at the approach that has emerged from the European deliberations. Three months after our initiative, and after numerous discussions which at European request we conducted on a bilateral basis, we now find that the Europeans are unwilling to discuss substantive issues with us until mid-September. After a number of European governments, including yours, had assured us that they would present us with their substantive views in response to ours, the Europeans have now decided to withhold these views until they have first prepared a collective position among themselves through discussions from which we are excluded. The intention, as I understand it, is then to present this collective view to us and thereafter to conduct the exchanges by means whereby we are asked to deal with instructed European representatives. I must honestly tell you that I find it astonishing that an endeavor whose purpose was to create a new spirit of Atlantic solidarity and whose essence should have been that it was collaborative at all stages should now be turned almost into a European-American confrontation.

  In these circumstances, you should know that we will take no further initiative in either bilateral or multilateral forums but will await the product of the Nine in September and then decide whether and how to proceed. . . .

  Let me say now, however, that I have reached the following conclusions regarding my proposed trip to Europe: I will not come to Europe unless there is a result commensurate with the need for strengthening Atlantic relationships. I cannot consider meetings in multilateral forums in which my European colleagues do not find it possible to participate. I do not believe that it will serve the purpose envisaged in our initiative and, I thought, agreed between us when you were here in May, for me to sign communiqués in Europe not signed also by other heads of government.

  One cannot know what the impact of these letters would have been had they been sent by an unimpaired President. But our allies knew that Watergate had reached a new climax with the discovery of the White House taping system. There is little doubt that without Watergate, the need for the letters would never have arisen. As it was, our allies knew not only that I was the principal drafter — which had always been the case — but also that the President, for domestic reasons, could not give the matter his continuing attention. But in any event, it was too late for recrimination, as soon became clear in the next consultation with Great Britain.

  Sir Burke Trend arrived in Washington for Anglo-American bilateral talks the day the letter to Brandt was dispatched (July 30). In light of the Copenhagen decision he had nothing to talk about. There was a painful session with my wise and gentle friend. We both realized that if these tendencies continued, we were at a turning point in Atlantic relations. For the sake of an abstract doctrine of European unity and to score purely theoretical points, something that had been nurtured for a generation was being given up. Atlantic — and especially Anglo-American — relations had thrived on intangibles of trust and consultation. They were now being put into a straitjacket of legalistic formalisms. Trend had lived too long in the old framework, based on mutual confidence, to be anything but uncomfortable with his brief. He came as close to showing his distress as the code of discipline of the British Civil Service and his high sense of honor permitted. But matters had gone beyond his level in the hierarchy.

  That the British government was determined to change the existing pattern became even clearer when, again without any prior consultation or warning, it introduced a draft text of an Atlantic Declaration at NATO in early August. What made the gesture more astonishing was that London had never responded to the texts we had transmitted on July 8. (We received a negative reply to those only on August 17.) The British draft was notable for its blandness. Moreover, it was to be kept separate from the Community effort — preventing a comprehensive document. And it was to be dealt with by the “natural timetable” of the Alliance. This meant that the earliest time for a summit would be at the next NATO Council meeting in December, a time when Nixon had specifically declared he could not visit Europe because of the need to prepare for the Congressional session. When, still caught up in old patterns, we complained about lack of consultation, Her Majesty’s Government replied:

  We are, however, in trouble already with some of the smaller members of the Nine for the delay with which they have learned of some of our discussion with the White House . . . We think wherever possible we should go for multilateral discussion from the outset . . . [T]he nature of the Atlantic relationship is not something that can be agreed through purely bilateral discussion. Action, as opposed to explanations, will have to be multilateral.

  Simultaneously, we learned that the Community had submitted the text of a draft declaration to Japan, with the comment that a document negotiated between Europe and Japan would be concrete, while if we participated it would of necessity be vague. We had never been told of the existence of such a project, still less consulted about its contents. The snub was plainly intended because the tactic was unnecessary. Japan’s primary concern was to stay out of the line of fire. Japanese diplomats from time to time inquired politely but with studied indifference about that anomalous Year of Europe in which they had been invited to participate. But they made it plain that while exclusion from a serious effort would be resented, they had little interest in participating in a Western family squabble. It was in this manner that what started as an effort to foster Atlantic unity turned into a device to organize all the democracies against the United States.

  Though bureaucratic inertia and Watergate despair impelled us to continue to go through the motions, the Year of Europe had lost its meaning.

  The Year That Never Was

  THE formal part of our proposal, a new Declaration of Atlantic Relations, was finally accomplished a year later when Nixon was the sole surviving head of government of the Big Four — and he resigned six weeks afterward. But by
then it had been drained of its moral and psychological significance by a year of bickering.

  History, it became obvious, cannot be repeated on command. The idea of a dramatic speech by an American to inspire Europe was copied too self-consciously from Secretary George C. Marshall’s unveiling of the Marshall Plan; the phrase “Atlantic Charter” was an echo of the famous Roosevelt-Churchill understanding of the Forties. Encouraged by European exhortations to shift our attention back to the West and away from Southeast Asia, and seduced by our own nostalgia for historic initiatives, we ran afoul of conditions that had changed drastically since 1947. Then Secretary Marshall had offered to nations that had no alternative what was in effect a free gift: massive American aid in the reconstruction of Europe. Europe’s problem was to organize itself to make sure of the bounty — a pleasant assignment not unhelpful to politicians. The Atlantic Declaration of 1973–1974 conferred no immediate benefits; it forced every government to grapple with tough problems on a broad agenda — an assignment elected political leaders generally prefer to pass on to their successors.