Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  On September 28, 1970, Nasser died. His successor, Anwar el-Sadat, was little known and vastly underestimated. Our experts generally believed that he was a transitional figure soon to be replaced by the better known Ali Sabri, Secretary General of the Arab Socialist Union, whom we knew to be close to Moscow. Nor did Sadat early on separate himself in any clear-cut manner from Nasser’s course. He began a complicated maneuver strengthening his position in the Arab world while inching Egypt toward a more realistic, nationalist posture. On the one hand, he spoke of the need for a settlement in more urgent and concrete terms than his predecessor; on the other, he used Nasser’s anti-Western rhetoric. In May 1971 he purged Ali Sabri and his associates; that same month he signed a twenty-year friendship treaty with the Soviet Union. We in Washington were baffled about his purposes; the gyrations that lulled Moscow about his real intentions also confused us.

  To overcome the stalemate, the State Department attempted a new initiative. In March 1971 it put forward a proposal for a limited disengagement of forces along the Suez Canal. This failed because Sadat insisted that disengagement be only the first stage of an agreed total withdrawal. The Israelis, not to be outdone, demanded an equivalent pullback of the Egyptian army from the Suez Canal, suggesting that in return for an Israeli pullback from incontestably Egyptian territory, Egypt’s armed forces had to withdraw even deeper into their own country. By 1972 there had been little diplomatic progress. The Soviets were pressing for an immediate overall settlement, the Israelis insisted on direct negotiations, the Egyptians demanded a phased comprehensive solution, the Syrians and PLO refused any negotiation — and the American State Department was pursuing an interim Suez Canal disengagement while the White House acted as if the State Department were a foreign sovereign power.

  This welter of confusion ironically suited the strategy that I considered the only realistic American option. There was no American interest in imposing a settlement on Israel under radical pressure, for that would only reinforce the conviction that America was best dealt with by extortion. Within the Arab world we needed to strengthen the moderates as against the radicals, the governments associated with the West as against the clients of the Soviet Union. I therefore opposed, as a matter of principle, any concessions to Egypt so long as Nasser (or Sadat for that matter) relied on anti-Western rhetoric buttressed by the presence of Soviet combat troops. And I saw no point in proceeding jointly with the Soviet Union so long as Moscow’s position was identical with the Arab program. Sooner or later, I was convinced, either Egypt or some other state would recognize that reliance on Soviet support and radical rhetoric guaranteed the frustration of its aspirations. At that point, it might be willing to eliminate the Soviet military presence — “expel” was the word I used in a much criticized briefing on June 26, 1970 — and to consider attainable rather than utopian goals. Then would come the moment for a major American initiative, if necessary urging new approaches on our Israeli friends.

  During his first term Nixon never formally chose between the two strategies: my recommendation of stonewalling radical pressures or State’s view of defusing them by offering compromise solutions. He leaned toward my analysis, but he implemented it not by making a decision but by simply letting State Department initiatives run their futile course. My relationship with Nixon, never easy, was in any event more complex with respect to the Middle East than with most other issues. Nixon was convinced that he owed nothing to Jewish votes and that he could not increase his Jewish support regardless of what he did. And what he deep down wanted to do was to impose a comprehensive settlement sometime during his term in office. Many of his comments, written and oral, testify to this visceral attitude. In October 1972, I forwarded to Nixon a memorandum from Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird urging secret contacts with Egypt to take advantage of Sadat’s expulsion of the Soviets and to move closer to the Arab position. (Secret contacts with Egypt were already in train, unknown to Laird.) Nixon sent me back the memorandum with a note: “K — I lean to Laird’s view. The conduct of the American Jewish community on the Soviet visa problem — clearly indicates they put Jewish interests above US concerns. This we cannot do.”

  Such comments by Nixon were as frequent as he was unlikely to act on them. I mention them here because to omit them would falsify the historical record but also because they illustrate the strange symbiotic relationship between the President and his adviser. Starting from opposite ends of the emotional spectrum with respect to Israel, we came together on policies and strategies because of a similar perception of the national interest. Nixon shared many of the prejudices of the uprooted, California lower-middle class from which he had come. He believed that Jews formed a powerful cohesive group in American society; that they were predominantly liberal; that they put the interests of Israel above everything else; that on the whole they were more sympathetic to the Soviet Union than other ethnic groups; that their control of the media made them dangerous adversaries; above all, that Israel had to be forced into a peace settlement and could not be permitted to jeopardize our Arab relations.

  None of this kept him from having cordial personal relations with many individual Jews and from elevating them in his Administration to several key positions. Indeed, personally he sometimes seemed especially at ease with representatives of a group that shared with him the experience of being outsiders.4 His prejudices would break forth in some of his commands reflecting the emotion of the moment, which his associates knew better than to implement; he never returned to them. I did not keep track of how often I was told to cut off all aid to Israel in retaliation for the actions of some wayward Jewish members of Congress; Senator Jacob Javits seemed to have a special ability to get under Nixon’s skin. As late as three days before his resignation he issued such an order. Haig and I decided to draft a directive but to hold it for the new President to sign — or reject. (Ford did the latter.) Equally frequent were instructions to convey some Communist moral transgression to the Jewish leaders, as if Jews needed special instruction in the evils of Communism.

  And yet when all was said and done, in every crisis Nixon stood by Israel more firmly than almost any other President save Harry Truman. He admired Israeli guts. He respected Israeli leaders’ tenacious defense of their national interest. He considered their military prowess an asset for the democracies. Though convinced that Israel’s occupation of Arab territories strengthened anti-Western radical forces, he was sophisticated enough to understand that the reverse was not true: Pressuring Israel in concert with radical forces was more likely to further Soviet than Western interests. And in crises — whatever his calculation of who was ultimately at fault — Nixon never lost sight of his priorities. He understood that we could not mediate effectively until it was clear that our actions had not been extorted by Soviet pressure. Thus at the end of the day — by a different route — Nixon came to the same conclusion as I: that the American national interest required a demonstration of Soviet and radical inability to achieve Arab objectives and that no progress could be made until at least moderate Arabs were willing to make a peace of genuine compromise.

  My own starting point was at the other end of the emotional spectrum. Though not practicing my religion, I could never forget that thirteen members of my family had died in Nazi concentration camps. I had no stomach for encouraging another holocaust by well-intentioned policies that might get out of control. Most Israeli leaders were personal friends. And yet, like Nixon, I had to subordinate my emotional preferences to my perception of the national interest. Indeed, given the historical suspicions toward my religion, I had a special obligation to do so. It was not always easy; occasionally it proved painful. But Israel’s security could be preserved in the long run only by anchoring it to a strategic interest of the United States, not to the sentiments of individuals. And on this basis that unlikely pair — the Communist-baiter from Southern California and the refugee from Nazi Germany — joined hands to break at last the deadlock of Middle East diplomacy.


  Three circumstances in late 1971 and 1972 began to create the partnership between President and security adviser in Middle East diplomacy that already existed in other areas of our national policy. The first, as I have already indicated, was Nixon’s desire to avoid a domestic blowup over the Middle East in an election year. Therefore in late 1971 he asked me to undertake secret exchanges with Israel and the Soviet Union on the Middle East to drag matters out through the Presidential election. That delay was inevitable in any event; we had our hands full with summits in Peking and Moscow and Hanoi’s spring offensive.

  The second event was the Moscow summit of May 1972. The Soviet Union has been justly criticized for its tendency to encourage conflicts, even at the height of détente. But in 1972 its influence in the Middle East was on the whole in the direction of restraint; at least, it was moderating its arms deliveries to Egypt and doing little more than going through the motions in diplomatic exchanges about Middle East peace. Sadat complained constantly of Soviet procrastination in the supply of arms.5 The culmination was Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko’s agreement at the Moscow summit to a paragraph in the final communiqué so anodyne that it permitted no other interpretation than that Moscow was putting the Middle East on ice. Showing the exhaustion of long hours of talks, Gromyko also agreed to a set of “general working principles” to guide Middle East negotiations, which represented perplexing concessions to our point of view (for example, a clause that seemed to agree to border changes in favor of Israel).6

  To be sure, Moscow in mid-1972 had good reasons of its own for not rocking the Middle East boat. It desperately needed to purchase American grain. It may have calculated that to add a Middle East crisis to the war in Vietnam might shred the gossamer fabric of East-West relations. It never could square the circle that its clients stood to lose any war resulting from pushing tensions beyond a certain point. But that is only another way of saying that the Soviets were willing to pay some price for détente.

  That, in any event, was the perception of Anwar Sadat, and it led to the third seminal event of the period: the expulsion of Soviet troops from Egypt. For Sadat, the Moscow summit communiqué was the last straw. This apparent Soviet collusion with the United States came as a “violent shock” to Egypt, he records in his memoirs. He would not accept, he said in a speech at the time, seeing the Middle East as only the fourth or fifth priority of Soviet policy.7 And so with one of the bold maneuvers that later became his trademark, he demanded on July 18, 1972, the withdrawal of Soviet military personnel from Egypt within a week. The move had a dual purpose: It removed an impediment to an Egyptian attack on Israel, for Sadat was convinced, probably rightly, that his Soviet advisers would not cooperate in initiating military operations. At the same time it made possible diplomatic overtures to the United States. Before the month was out he had reactivated the direct channel to the White House. The backchannel system had come to the Middle East.

  During the fall of 1972, Cairo and the White House attempted to arrange a secret meeting between me and Hafiz Ismail, Sadat’s national security adviser. A date was set for late October but postponed because the Vietnam negotiations took all our time and nervous energy.

  Despite these delays, by the end of Nixon’s first term we were approaching the fruition of our preferred strategy. The Soviet military presence was being eliminated from Egypt. Sadat was moving toward us, and though we could not yet discern his full design, it clearly would differ from the radical blackmail of his predecessor. The Soviet leaders were rattled, at a loss as to how to recapture their waning influence. For the time being, they confined themselves to ritualistic platitudes underlining their growing irrelevance. Time was working in our favor; nothing could happen without our cooperation; those who relied on Soviet support were bound to become progressively disillusioned. The way to an increased and more balanced American role was beginning to open.

  Preparing for Ismail: A Diplomatic Minuet

  APPEARANCE and reality rarely mesh in the Middle East. The situation on the ground in early 1973 showed no sign of the strategic shift that was in train. After Palestinian terrorists murdered Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in September 1972, Israel retaliated with a series of raids in Syria and Lebanon, and the cycle of violence escalated to a new high. The Arab nations moved to consolidate their common front against Israel. In late January 1973, eighteen Arab foreign and defense ministers convened in Cairo as the Arab Joint Defense Council and appointed Egyptian War Minister Marshal Ahmed Ismail Ali as commander-in-chief of the Jordanian, Syrian, and Egyptian fronts. The Arab ministers also agreed, with Jordanian consent, to “reactivate” the Jordanian front. (What that meant was far from clear because the Jordanians simultaneously announced that they stuck by their policy not to permit fedayeen to return to Jordan for operations against Israel. The practical result of these two decisions was that they canceled each other out — a not infrequent occurrence at Arab foreign ministers’ meetings.)8

  On February 11, 1973, Egyptian Premier Dr. Aziz Sidqi announced that Egypt was scrapping some domestic programs to free funds for the “battle with Israel.” A “war budget” would be formulated. In the light of previous Egyptian threats that had not been carried out, we did not take this too seriously, especially as our intelligence estimates agreed in being unable to define a realistic Egyptian military option. Indeed, in the Arab world Sadat came under continuing attack for alleged do-nothing policies — demonstrating that none of the parties involved understood his intricate design.

  For Sadat was moving toward war, using an extraordinary tactic that no one fathomed: If a leader announces his real intentions sufficiently frequently and grandiloquently, no one will believe him. Sadat had first declared 1971 as the “year of decision.” We had believed him. In fact, one reason we had reacted so neuralgically to the Indian attack on Pakistan was to discourage a comparable incitement of Egyptian ambitions. Whether for that reason or his own, Sadat made no military move that year or in 1972. Ominous threats continued to issue from Cairo, but as of December 20, 1972, our assessment was that Sadat had few, if any, military options. Israel’s military superiority appeared unchallengeable. Sadat could not escape his dilemmas by launching an all-out military offensive since it was bound to fail. Though the assessment granted that Sadat was capable of a limited attack, there seemed no rational military purpose for it. It too would be defeated; hence its sole function would be to heat up international concern and pressure for negotiation. Its failure would only deepen the diplomatic stalemate. Even should negotiations develop, it was expected that other complexities would follow: A cease-fire based on mere disengagement of forces along the Suez Canal would find no support in Egypt; yet full peace seemed precluded because Israel would not accept a comprehensive settlement based on the 1967 frontiers, and the other Arab states would block any separate Egyptian settlement. Thus it would follow that Egypt had no choice but to await the American diplomatic initiative.

  But Sadat was not bound by our estimates. While we were preparing a new diplomatic approach, he was seeking for military ways to break the deadlock.

  As the second term began, Nixon was pushing me deeper and deeper into Middle East negotiations but without revoking the authority he had given to the State Department. Whenever he met a Middle East leader, he avoided a clear-cut position by suggesting exploratory talks with me — a great way to get through an hour, though it risked chaos. Since Nixon did not withdraw the negotiating authority he had earlier assigned to Rogers, three parallel diplomatic tracks were developing: the formal State Department track aiming at an interim disengagement along the Suez Canal; my secret channel with Hafiz Ismail, in which I had agreed to take up as yet undefined Egyptian proposals when we finally arranged our secret meeting; and my special Channel with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin on the possibility of joint Soviet-American approaches to the Middle East. To provide a semblance of coherence, I sought to delay any new State Department initiatives in the second term and stall Soviet overture
s until I could determine in the meeting with Hafiz Ismail what the Egyptians had in mind. This was no easy matter since I was the only person aware of all three tracks, and the State Department was being stonewalled for no discernible reason. Such a method of government could not have been sustained through another full term, regardless of Watergate.

  The first off the mark, as usual in Middle East diplomacy, was the State Department. Between 1969 and 1971 its various schemes for a comprehensive solution had united both sides in opposition to American proposals. The Department now decided to throw itself anew into the quest for an interim disengagement along the Suez Canal with the method that had so spectacularly failed during the first term: launching an approach without having fully explored its feasibility with either of the parties.

  To prove that two could play at the multitrack system, the Department on January 22, 1973 — only two days after Inauguration — sent instructions to Joseph N. Greene, Jr., the head of our Interests SectionI in Cairo, without clearing them with the White House. (I cannot know, of course, whether Rogers had discussed them privately with Nixon.) Undeterred by Sadat’s public rejection of a similar interim Canal agreement in September 1972, State now told Greene to put forward essentially the same proposal as “the only proposition in sight that offers [the] prospect of real progress at [the] present time.”