Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  I was desperate. A bombing cutoff would destroy our only bargaining chip — and the sole stimulus for Chinese involvement. Zhou Enlai needed to be able to argue to the Khmer Rouge that he had brought them the end of our bombing, in exchange for a compromise involving Sihanouk and parts of the existing structure. The negotiations now in tenuous train were our last throw of the dice. If they failed, Cambodia, and soon thereafter South Vietnam and Laos, would be doomed. On June 18 I appealed to Mel Laird, after Watergate temporarily brought him back to government as Counsellor to the President for Domestic Affairs. I told Laird that the Chinese had promised to intercede: “I can’t imagine that they would commit themselves to saying that they would do something unless they felt they had a chance of bringing it off.” I offered to make a gentleman’s agreement with the Speaker of the House, Carl Albert, and the venerable Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, George Mahon, that, succeed or fail in the negotiations, we would stop bombing on September 1. But they had to give us their word not to reveal the deadline; once it was known, our capacity to use the end of bombing diplomatically was gone; the Khmer Rouge would simply wait until the deadline passed. Laird agreed to put forward my proposal but he was not optimistic. That master manipulator of Congressional committees was convinced we had reached the end of the line: “Mahon says it’s never been as tough as it is right now.”

  Every day counted. We learned that Sihanouk would return to Peking from his travels on July 5 and that our plan could then unfold. But Congress would brook no further delay. On June 25 — the day Brezhnev left the United States and John Dean started testifying before the Senate — came a crucial vote in the House on the so-called Eagleton amendment, a Senate-passed rider to cut off funds for Cambodian bombing. Attached to a supplemental appropriations bill to fund the activities of the US government after the end of the current fiscal year (June 30), it was hard for the President to veto. For if the bill did not pass, all government agencies would be out of funds. From San Clemente I appealed by telephone to a number of Congressmen: We would end the bombing by September 1 come what may, but this pledge had to be kept secret if prospects for a cease-fire in Cambodia were not to be derailed. I could not be explicit about the Chinese initiative, but I gave enough hint about negotiations.

  But the secrecy of the September 1 deadline could not be preserved. Only by a public “compromise” in which September 1 was named as a cutoff date could Administration supporters hope to stave off the pressure for an immediate end to bombing. Yet once the deadline was public our strategy was dead; the Khmer Rouge would simply wait it out. Then on June 25, we failed on a tie vote, 204 to 204, to obtain even this scant relief. The House by voice vote approved the Eagleton amendment, which cut off funds immediately.

  The next day, June 26, antiwar amendments were attached to a Continuing Resolution, the means by which existing budgets are extended pending Congressional consideration of new appropriations. The same amendments were tied to the bill raising the national debt ceiling. Our opponents, in short, were prepared to stop the operation of the entire government so as to emasculate military operations in Indochina and our sole means to preserve the freedom of our allies.

  The Congress was determined to impose the withdrawal that had been thwarted by the executive for half a decade; it was no longer prepared to listen to arguments about the complexities of diplomacy. Legislators would not risk the bitter media opposition to prevent a Communist takeover of what seemed to them an obscure corner of Indochina. Our political system can work only through a set of delicate understandings sustained by the confidence in each other of coequal branches of government. But that confidence had been destroyed by the bitter struggles over Vietnam policy, capped by Watergate. The debate was dominated by the desire to settle scores rather than by consideration of a common objective. There was little understanding of the Administration’s basic anguish. We knew that the public was tired and the Congress hostile. But we also thought that if the American executive abandoned its friends of years’ standing to Communist domination, confidence in us worldwide would be undermined in a manner that would exact an even heavier toll later on.

  So we went on seeking an honorable cease-fire even as Mel Laird in Washington called me in San Clemente on June 26, pointing out the grim prospects (and implicitly discouraging me from insisting on fighting the looming amendments). John Dean had begun his televised appearance the day before; Laird attributed the two days of unfavorable votes to Dean’s damaging testimony. I was firm: “Everything is just going to come apart in Cambodia if we stop bombing. I think we can get it done in two months. Can you help us?” But there was no help on substance and no surcease from publicity. Another “compromise” attempt to postpone the cutoff to September 1 failed, this time by 24 votes. It was a Catch-22: We might have won the September 1 postponement if the Administration had supported it openly. But we could do so only at the price of destroying our negotiations. The only hope now for a delay — even for sustaining a veto — said Laird, was for the Administration to agree to a forty-five-day deadline, putting us right back on the horns of our dilemma: An announced deadline was marginally better than an immediate cutoff but equally certain to destroy prospects for a cease-fire. Laird was not too upset about this prospect: “Politically, you’d be better off — I don’t think Cambodia will ever work out very well anyway and I’d like to be able to blame these guys for doing it, myself.” I was less interested in an alibi than an outcome. I was sickened to see the chances of bringing even a fragile peace to Cambodia being destroyed by a senseless orgy of partisanship and the venting of the accumulated resentments of a decade.

  On June 27, the President vetoed the second Supplemental Appropriations Act with the “Cambodia rider.” A bombing cutoff, he announced correctly, would jeopardize not only Cambodia but the “fragile balance of negotiated agreements, political alignments and military capabilities upon which the overall peace in Southeast Asia depends and on which my assessment of the acceptability of the Vietnam agreements was based.” The House sustained the President’s veto on June 27. It mustered its largest antiwar margin yet — 241 to 173 — but fell 35 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to override the President. However, its failure was technical and parliamentary; the steamroller could not be arrested for long. The House and Senate then passed a similar antibombing amendment as part of the Continuing Resolution that was needed to enable all federal agencies to continue functioning after June 30 — and also as an amendment on raising the debt ceiling. It was only a question of time.

  Not only our allies in Congress were losing heart, but also our own Administration. Only Haig really supported our policy. Understandably, perhaps, no one had the stomach to refight the Vietnam debate in the midst of Watergate. White House Congressional experts were convinced that we would face one cutoff bill after another until a veto was overridden. Mel Laird kept urging a “compromise”: Presidential acceptance of an August 15 cutoff date. I told Laird that it was senseless and self-defeating: “They are going to throw everything down the drain for nothing.” Laird insisted that we had no choice if we wanted the government to continue to function. I was bitter:

  This is one of the most vindictive, cheap actions that I’ve seen the Congress take. And it’s not just in Cambodia, it’s going to hurt us murderously with the Chinese because if they think that the Congress can do these things to us in Cambodia, what are they going to do to us elsewhere?

  On June 29, the August 15 “compromise” won support from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was passed by the Congress. But to grant this meaningless extension of Cambodian bombing, opponents exacted the price of banning all military activity in all of Indochina after that date. Mel Laird apparently gave the go-ahead to Republican Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford to accept the compromise. In any event Ford called Nixon and confirmed the decision personally. When I protested to Nixon, he said it was too late; he had yielded to force majeure — a surrender that would have been inconc
eivable had not the John Dean testimony drained all his inner resources.

  On June 30, leading newspapers were jubilant that Nixon had agreed to stop bombing in Cambodia by August 15. The New York Times claimed that this compromise would permit “delicate negotiations” to continue. It was an illusion; the negotiations had been killed. Nixon had second thoughts — too late. On August 3, shortly before the bombing halt went into effect, Nixon wrote House Speaker Carl Albert and Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield:

  This abandonment of a friend will have a profound impact in other countries, such as Thailand, which have relied on the constancy and determination of the United States, and I want the Congress to be fully aware of the consequences of its action. . . . In particular, I want the brave and beleaguered Cambodian people to know that the end to the bombing in Cambodia does not signal an abdication of America’s determination to work for a lasting peace in Indochina. . . .

  I can only hope that the North Vietnamese will not draw the erroneous conclusion from this congressional action that they are free to launch a military offensive in other areas in Indochina.

  But the threat had become empty bluster. To widespread applause, the end of military operations in Indochina had been legislated. In Vietnam, we had no counter left to a North Vietnamese offensive. As for Cambodia, the media’s themes were familiar: Lon Nol was corrupt; there was little to choose as between him and the Communists. The bombing was “murderous”; therefore ending our military activity was a humanitarian gesture to the people of Cambodia. The consequences for the rest of Indochina, or for Presidential authority in future generations, or for America’s reputation as a reliable ally, were not admitted as valid. The bombing, it was held, did not spur negotiations; it gave Lon Nol an excuse to avoid them and antagonized the Khmer Rouge. All these themes appeared in a Washington Post editorial, which was essentially representative of a broad range of public comment:

  The President professes to fear installation of a “Hanoi-controlled government in Phnom Penh” — while ignoring whatever Hanoi may feel about a Washington-controlled government. But it is indisputable that no matter what government sits in Phnom Penh, Hanoi will be able to keep using Cambodia for purposes of supply and sanctuary in South Vietnam. Mr. Nixon and everybody else knew this perfectly well in January. He signed the cease-fire agreement anyway — for the good reason that he counted on South Vietnam’s coping for itself despite the problem of the Cambodian flank. For him now to claim that a bombing halt would shake the Southeast Asian “balance” which he negotiated in January is the kind of reckless overstatement which, if even partially true, calls into question the durability of the whole January deal.

  As for Mr. Nixon’s contention that a bombing halt would deal “a serious blow to America’s international credibility,” it is nonsense — a relic of a way of thinking about international affairs which has been rendered obsolete by, among other things, Mr. Nixon’s own considerable achievement in improving relations with Russia and China. It cannot possibly be the President’s purpose, or to his advantage, to suggest that his new “structure of peace” will tremble to its foundations if he is not allowed to continue dropping bombs on hapless Cambodians. This is tantamount to conceding that his entire foreign policy is a fraud — a judgment, we might add, which we do not share.22

  In fact, it was held that a Communist victory might be a good thing, somehow leading to a neutralist government and the return of Sihanouk — oblivious to the reality that Sihanouk now had no bargaining power and the non-Communist elements needed for such a coalition had been doomed to military destruction. The New York Times on August 14 repeated the theme that American military actions having blocked the peace, Congress by prohibiting them had in fact opened the road to negotiations:

  . . . there are indications that both sides to the Cambodian conflict are interested in a peaceful solution, now that the prop of direct American military support is about to be removed from the Lon Nol regime by Congressional order. From Phnom Penh come reports — disputed in Washington — that high-ranking government officials there have asked the United States to arrange the removal of President Lon Nol and the return of Prince Sihanouk. From North Korea, where he travelled to avoid a possible meeting with Henry Kissinger in Peking, the Prince has cabled his old friend, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, offering the United States “peace with honor” if it will withdraw all support from Lon Nol.

  Although there would be little honor for Washington in any effort at this late date to reinstall a leader whom it has sought to ostracize from his country for the last three years, the Prince’s offer is the best proposition in sight, especially if there is support for it within the existing Cambodian regime. Sihanouk has frankly cast his lot “100 percent” with the Cambodian Communists in his struggle to return to power, but his credentials as a dedicated nationalist who would resist subservience to any foreign power are beyond dispute.

  A similar theme was struck by the Washington Post on August 28.

  We agreed with the desirability of a neutral Cambodia ruled by Sihanouk. Our diplomacy had for six months painstakingly put the pieces into place for just such an outcome. But our military pressure was one such piece, and the legislated end of military activity destroyed all possibility of a neutral free Cambodia. With a total Communist victory now guaranteed, Sihanouk became nearly as irrelevant as Lon Nol — barely tolerated by the Khmer Rouge for international consumption, rapidly discarded when total power was achieved. The Congress thus doomed Sihanouk as surely as it did the Phnom Penh government.

  The Negotiations Unravel

  FOR a few weeks the existing plan kept going by momentum, perhaps in part because our Communist interlocutors suspected a trick. They needed time to adjust to the spectacle of a superpower voluntarily abandoning all commitments. On July 6, coinciding with Sihanouk’s return to Peking, the Phnom Penh government officially offered to negotiate with the “other side.” This step had been planned to provide a diplomatic framework for the Chinese initiative, which we now expected to unfold. Murrey Marder of the Washington Post, one of the most judicious and objective foreign correspondents, on July 11 complained that the offer was belated:

  If such a move had been made back in February, when Sihanouk was publicly signaling his readiness to bargain with Kissinger in Hanoi or Peking, the opposing sides by now might have been at, or near agreement.

  Marder’s comment illustrated the perils and price of secret diplomacy. First of all, the Khmer Rouge would have vetoed a Sihanouk negotiation with me in Peking in February. Secondly, such a compromise proposal had not been made once but several times since the beginning of the year; it had been consistently rejected. It seemed to be feasible in early July only because we had brought about a military stalemate on the ground. This had now been wrecked.

  The clearest proof was Sihanouk’s own conduct. For months he had been denouncing me for failure to negotiate, while at the same time blaming his side’s totally intransigent position not on his preference but on the Khmer Rouge’s quest for total victory. Returned to Peking, he must have been aware that we had offered a bombing halt, negotiations, and a meeting between him and me early in August. Clearly, too, Zhou Enlai favored such a course. Yet after the Congressional action, Sihanouk reversed himself. Obviously the Khmer Rouge had studied the military situation, as they had planned to do in the early summer (according to the report mentioned earlier), and had concluded that with the bombing ended there was no need for compromise after all. On July 5, Sihanouk’s public line eschewed all hints of a willingness to negotiate: It was now “useless” to talk, he said. It was now “too late.” The Khmer insurgency, he announced candidly, had decided “to struggle to the end.”

  Around the same time (the first week of July), the Soviet Union also shifted its position. Throughout, it had recognized Lon Nol and maintained an embassy in Phnom Penh — probably because it calculated that this was one country in Indochina where a Communist victory was not foreordained. Now
Pravda and hyestia both began to refer to Sihanouk as chief of state, for the first time since his ouster on March 18, 1970. Communist diplomats briefed newsmen in Moscow that Moscow was shifting its bets — an augury that these cold-blooded practitioners of power politics, who pride themselves on their assessment of objective factors, had grasped the significance of the Congressional action.23 Two weeks later, Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin informed me that the Soviets, Chinese, and North Vietnamese had all come to the conclusion after July 1 that negotiations were dead and the Khmer Rouge were going to win.

  Hoping against hope, we nonetheless tried to pursue the negotiation through the Chinese. On July 6, 1973, Ambassador Huang Zhen was my guest in San Clemente. He brought with him a message hinting that Zhou Enlai was getting nervous and looking for an exit. The Chinese complained about “rumors” and “speculation” in the American press about a negotiation between the Lon Nol “clique” and Sihanouk. The message tactfully attributed the leaks in part to the Lon Nol government, although “US officials” had recently “made some disclosures” on this question. Interestingly, the Chinese did not claim the speculation was wrong; on the contrary, they expressed concern that such speculation “is extremely disadvantageous to seeking a settlement of the Cambodian question and will even cause trouble.” (The “disclosures” of a negotiation, of course, had been provoked by the Administration’s desperate attempt to head off the Congressional bombing halt.)

  I replied by reiterating our plan. Huang Zhen confirmed that Peking would, as promised, inform Sihanouk of our “tentative thinking” now that Sihanouk had returned from abroad. If Zhou was still willing to transmit an offer whose central element — the cease-fire — had been made irrelevant by legislation, the Chinese must have been nearly as desperate for a political settlement as we were. Huang Zhen confirmed that a visit by me in Peking in early August would be welcome. Zhou Enlai clearly would not give up our joint plan easily. At the very least, it reflected the extreme reluctance with which the Chinese break their word once given.