Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  The tension in Peking caused by the new and unexpected turn of events in Washington was revealed in an encounter that same day between the Chinese Premier and a visiting Congressional delegation headed by Senator Warren Magnuson. Zhou Enlai made the standard boilerplate criticism of our Cambodian policy, including the bombing. The agreed plan, indeed, depended on his ability to claim later that he had induced Washington to end the bombing as his contribution to the peace process. Suddenly Zhou Enlai found handed to him in front of many witnesses what his design required to appear to be extracted from us. Senator Magnuson informed Zhou grandiloquently that he need not worry about the bombing; Zhou should be patient; it would soon be over — specifically, on August 15; Zhou had Congress to thank for it. Zhou grew visibly irritated. Desperately seeking to preserve his bargaining chip, he said that it was hard to be patient while bombs were falling. Not to worry, intoned Magnuson, the Congress would take care of everything. “Zhou was visibly angered,” to the growing bafflement of the Congressional delegation, David Bruce reported to me. And Zhou’s annoyance seemed to mount uncontainably when Magnuson continued to mutter: “We stopped the bombing.”

  I understood. Zhou saw emerging before him his geopolitical nightmare: an Indochina dominated from Hanoi and allied with the Soviet Union, brought into being by an obtuse superpower that did not deign to give its own diplomacy a chance to succeed.

  And the prospect raised premonitions of a yet deeper sort for him. Watergate had heretofore appeared as an incomprehensible domestic squabble in America, its impact on our foreign policy obscure. But now it seemed possible, even likely, that China would have to deal with a President whose authority was so weakened that his commitments had become unreliable; that — to use a favorite Chinese phrase — his word no longer counted. If America proved so incapable as a superpower it had profound implications for China’s security; indeed, it undercut the premise on which the Chinese rapprochement with the United States had been based. If a decision could be imposed by Congress so contrary to American interests, could Peking continue to rely on America?

  Unsurprisingly, after the Zhou-Magnuson exchange, signs of hesitation from Peking multiplied. On July 11, David Bruce backchanneled an assessment of the Cambodia diplomacy in light of my projected visit to China. The Chinese seemed to be backing away from involvement in a Cambodia negotiation. Bruce did not think they had much leverage left:

  The Chinese will imply it will fall like a ripe apple into the eager hands of Sihanouk, but they may have private doubts about his ability to control the Khmer Rouge and other insurgents. . . . Meanwhile, they may calculate they have little to lose from delay.

  On the same day there was another straw in the ill wind. The Chinese had already agreed to receive me in Peking in the first week of August; they had invited us to pick the date. When at the end of June we proposed August 6, they had even allowed that date to leak to the press in Peking. We had then suggested an announcement for July 16. On July 11 we received the bland reply that Huang Zhen had been recalled to Peking — in itself an unexpected development — and that the announcement would have to await his consultations. This was a clear hint that there were second thoughts.

  We decided to play out the string. I asked General Scowcroft to call in the deputy chief of the Chinese Liaison Office, Ambassador Han Xu, and remind him that we had been told to pick any day in the first week of August. Scowcroft reiterated our preference for August 6 and proposed an announcement for July 19 or 23. I instructed him to add as a “semiofficial” comment that should I return from Peking empty-handed on Cambodia, my ability to maintain an unsentimental policy based on national interest would be jeopardized. Therefore, Scowcroft hoped the Chinese could let us know “what he may be able to bring back regarding the Cambodian situation.”

  Insolence is the defense of the weak. I was staking too much on a losing hand. To link Sino-American relations this explicitly to the outcome in Cambodia would compound the Chinese quandary without adding to China’s leverage. The simple fact was that Zhou had lost the ability to shape events — as a result of American actions. We had overturned the framework of the negotiations we had ourselves proposed and there was no way for even the best-intentioned Chinese leader to ask the Khmer Rouge to forgo the total victory we had handed to them.

  On July 16, Sihanouk made clear that he understood the new balance of forces. In a prepared statement more definitive and authoritative than his usual erratic off-the-cuff interviews, he revealed clearly what Khmer Rouge policy was. China’s Xinhua News Agency in Peking broadcast Sihanouk’s “Forty-third Message to the Khmer Nation.” It denounced all “meddling” attempts to promote a negotiation; the only terms for a solution were total Communist victory. And the next day Sihanouk’s defiance was tinged with despair that Communist domination of his country spelled the doom of all his hopes. He told a Reuters correspondent in Peking that he was “washing his hands of the state of affairs after Phnom Penh is liberated. Let the Khmer Rouge take over the running of the country!”24

  The guillotine finally fell on the evening of July 18. Han Xu delivered a note to General Scowcraft declaring that for a variety of rather contrived reasons, China was no longer willing even to communicate the American negotiating proposal to Sihanouk. The Chinese note simply repeated the most extreme demands of the Khmer Rouge, all of which had been known in the months in which the Chinese had engaged themselves in the search for a compromise. But now it insisted that we accept them — abandoning the previous position that a completely red Cambodia would complicate everybody’s problems:

  The origin of the Cambodian question is clear to the U.S. side. It is up to the doer to undo the knot. The key to the settlement of the question is held by the United States, and not by others. If the United States truly desires to settle the Cambodian question, the above reasonable demands raised by the Cambodian side should be acceptable to it. It is hoped that the U.S. side will give serious consideration to this and translate it into action.

  And since the Chinese could never be sure that the Western mind fathomed the intricacies of any situation, Zhou Enlai sent us another unmistakable signal: The very next day — July 19 — we were informed that my visit on August 6 was no longer “convenient.” The most appropriate date would be August 16. Even we could grasp that August 16 was the day after the bombing halt we had imposed on ourselves. If Cambodia were to be discussed in these circumstances, we would be supplicants. The implication was clear. We had become largely irrelevant to Chinese policy in Indochina — and so had Sihanouk. They might continue to pay lip service to Sihanouk but henceforth they had to place all their bets on the Khmer Rouge. Chinese mediation was over.

  And thus gradually the scheme so laboriously put together unraveled. It was clear that in order to obtain a “solution” as outlined in the Chinese note we did not need to “negotiate” — least of all with the Chinese. Nor could we leave the impression that we were being panicked. As de Gaulle once replied to Churchill when chastised for being too intransigent: “I am too weak to be conciliatory.” We let Peking wait for nearly a week for our reply. It was stiff:

  As to the substance of the Chinese note of July 18, the Chinese side will not be surprised that the US side rejects a “solution” so arbitrarily weighted against it. This is inconsistent with the requirements of reciprocity and equality. It is beyond the bounds of logic to be asked to negotiate on an issue when the other side, clearly and from the outset, leaves no room for negotiations. In such circumstances the US side will leave negotiations to the Cambodian parties.

  Simultaneously, Scowcroft read the following sharp “oral note” to Han Xu:

  My government notes, with regret, that this is the first time in the development of our new relationship that the Chinese word has not counted.

  The Chinese side has often expressed its devotion to principle. The US side is no less serious. One of its firm principles is not to betray those that have relied on it. The US side believes that the Chinese side
will welcome US adherence to this principle in other contexts.

  Following the Chinese sequence, we waited a day before commenting on the Chinese proposal of August 16 for my visit to Peking. We proposed instead a period four weeks later: September 13 through September 16. This the Chinese found a reason to avoid. In the end, my trip did not take place until November.

  It was, of course, pointless to rail against the Chinese for failing to deliver a negotiation that our own domestic processes had aborted. The fact was that it was not the Chinese who had changed their minds; it was we who had changed the situation, undercutting the premises of the previous understanding. At a meeting on July 19 of all my close associates — General Scowcroft, Larry Eagleburger, Winston Lord, Jonathan T. Howe, Richard H. Solomon, and Peter Rodman, the veterans of the reconciliation with Peking who had helped nurture the policy and were committed to it emotionally — I summed up my analysis:

  The bombing cut-off had fundamentally changed the situation in Cambodia. Formerly, Sihanouk’s utility to the Khmer Rouge had been that he gave them legitimacy they had not had. Now they didn’t need legitimacy; they saw they could win. Sihanouk’s utility to the Chinese had been that he gave them influence over the Khmer Rouge and could resist other outside influences. The utility of the Chinese to us was that they had some control over Sihanouk. Sihanouk’s utility to us was that, once he returned to Cambodia, he might be able to keep things balanced. Ironically the Chinese needed the Lon Nol group — this was a restraint on Sihanouk and on the Khmer Rouge. The Congressmen had totally misjudged the situation. Now this was all lost. Sihanouk couldn’t deliver the Khmer Rouge and the Chinese couldn’t deliver Sihanouk.

  On August 4 I made the point to my friend Lee Kuan Yew, the Prime Minister of Singapore:

  We have suffered a tragedy because of Watergate. When I saw you [in early April] we were going to bomb North Vietnam for a week, then go to Russia, then meet with Le Duc Tho. Congress has made it impossible. . . .

  The Chinese offered to act as an intermediary. Now the Chinese lose if the Khmer Rouge win, because Sihanouk loses. The ideal situation for the Chinese is if the Khmer Rouge need Sihanouk and they can maneuver between. But if the Khmer Rouge will win anyway . . .

  Sihanouk’s rhetoric escalated with his irrelevance and illuminated the grim prospects. He gave another interview to AFP on August 12, confirming that the Khmer Rouge remained “inflexible in the position they have already fixed once and for all.” Negotiations were impossible; the insurgents had “absolutely decided to continue armed resistance” until the Lon Nol government was “radically and irreversibly eliminated.” And on August 15, in Pyongyang, North Korea, Sihanouk repeated that any formula that asked the Khmer Rouge to share power with any other group would never be accepted.

  In these circumstances, there was nothing left for us to negotiate. In a news conference on August 23 I was fatalistic:

  The Cambodian negotiations now inevitably with the end of American bombing will depend more on the decision of the Cambodian parties than on American decisions, and if the Congressional intent means anything, it is that the United States should not play the principal role in these activities.

  And I spoke in this sense, too, when Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Qiao Guanhua came to the United Nations General Assembly for his annual visit and we met over dinner on October 3. Like a veteran of a battle in which we had been essentially on the same side and had been defeated by a totally unpredictable and senseless event, Qiao said wistfully that it was now clear that neither of us should have gotten involved — a rare admission of Chinese fallibility. He claimed that Cambodia was not that important; it was only a “side issue.”VI (Devotees of the thesis that Cambodia was a “sideshow” should note its origin here.)

  The best way to handle defeat is to minimize it. Qiao did his best to dissociate China from what was going on in Cambodia; clearly, he wanted to pay no further price in Sino-American relations on a matter we both had lost the capacity to affect. He said little about Sihanouk. He did not contradict me when I said that Peking’s interests and Hanoi’s were not identical on this issue. But he had no other solution than “to let the flames burning in Cambodia extinguish themselves, by themselves.”

  It did not, of course, happen like that. The Congressionally mandated bombing halt was succeeded by a series of disasters. The prospect of rounding out the Paris accords in Indochina vanished. Sihanouk returned to Cambodia but only to face humiliation, house arrest, and the murder of several of his children. He had no independent forces left to balance, no chance at a pivotal role as head of state. Sihanouk confirmed to other interlocutors what we had already deduced: that he indeed favored negotiation himself, but the Khmer Rouge leadership rejected it.

  Perhaps the most grievously wounded victim of the Congressional action was Zhou Enlai. The Chinese Premier had staked his prestige on a complicated scheme, the essential premise of which was that strong American military action had produced a Cambodian stalemate and required a compromise. He must have presented our plan as the best attainable, given our determination not to yield to force. The Khmer Rouge — judged by their publicly proclaimed program — could not have been happy with this approach, but the Chinese seemed to think that the moment was propitious in the month of June, and that the Khmer Rouge had been brought around, or could be brought around, to accept it as the only course possible.

  But Zhou’s effort also ran up against the pressures of the radical faction inside China, who saw China’s security best assured by militancy in defense of revolutionary rectitude. Those who later came to be known as the Gang of Four were at this time beginning to influence Mao strongly, if not control him, and he was prone to second thoughts about the moderate and pro-Western trends that had emerged since his opening to Washington. Possibly he would have turned on Zhou whatever the circumstances. Zhou, having risen to the undisputed second post, ran the inherent risk of sharing the fate of his predecessors in that position. But I have convincing reason to believe that a significant event in the ascendancy of the Gang of Four during the summer of 1973 was the collapse of the Cambodian negotiation. Our Congressionally imposed abdication humiliated Zhou. He had staked ideological capital and we had not been able to pay in geopolitical coin. He would never have recovered his domestic position after this even if illness had not put an end to the public career of my extraordinary friend.

  There is no guarantee that this negotiating effort would have succeeded. Indeed, in retrospect, as I read over the records of all our negotiating attempts from 1970 to 1975, the possibility is strong that the Khmer Rouge would have violated any agreement they did not block. The fact remains that even if the plan we were negotiating ultimately failed, it would have bought a transitional period to ease the fate of the Cambodian people and perhaps spare them the genocidal suffering that the abdication of their friends and the ferocity of their conquerors eventually inflicted on them. This was the most promising negotiating opportunity if not the only one — with the Chinese and us working actively in parallel — and it was torpedoed by the United States Congress and our domestic turmoil.

  In fairness the participants on both sides of our domestic debate shared one vast gap of understanding: They could not possibly imagine the incarnate evil represented by the Khmer Rouge. Those who sought to end the war by throttling Lon Nol — even the radical fringe — cannot be blamed for the holocaust they helped bring about. Incapable of imagining that a government would murder three million of its own people, they thought nothing could be worse than a continuation of the war and they were prepared to ensure its end even at the price of a Communist takeover.

  The fashionable critics who apply their ingenuity to blame those who sought to resist Cambodia’s doom thus have a right to ask to be spared opprobrium; they meant well. But they should have the decency not to reverse the truth by blaming those who sought to resist the Communist takeover all along. If they cannot bring themselves to admit fallibility, they should at least in the still
ness of their souls ask themselves whether self-righteousness cannot exact its own fearful penalties.

  The Administration was perhaps too abstractly analytical when it sought to sustain by executive action alone one more exertion to complete what had already cost so much. Our critics had passion without analysis; we had concept without consensus. Watergate destroyed the last vestiges of hope for a reasonable outcome. For the first time in the postwar period, America abandoned to eventual Communist rule a friendly people who had relied on us. The pattern once established did not end soon. We will have to pay for a long time for the precedent into which we stumbled that summer, now seemingly so distant. While the disputants will never agree on the merits of their controversy, if they cherish their country they should resolve never again to permit such a gulf to open in our nation, and never again to engage in such an orgy of assault on motives rather than analyzing substance. By our self-indulgence we damaged the fabric of freedom everywhere. And by our abdication we have already caused more suffering than we ever did by our commitment.

  Nobel Peace Prize

  AFTER the summer of 1973, I knew that Cambodia was doomed and that only a miracle could save South Vietnam. North Vietnamese communications to us grew progressively more insolent. There was no longer even the pretense of observing the Paris Agreement. And our legislated impotence added humiliation to irrelevance. We struggled to furnish what economic and military aid for South Vietnam and Cambodia was obtainable from Congress. But the reasoning that had led to the legislated bombing halt also produced a systematic drop in aid levels. By the spring of 1975, Congress was considering a derisory “terminal grant” — as if Saigon and Phnom Penh were the beneficiaries of some charity — when the accumulated strains led to their collapse and spared us that ultimate disgrace. In 1973 in my bones I knew that collapse was just a question of time.