Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  In the meantime, two events had further inflamed affairs. Around 4:30 P.M. we were alerted that yet another Soviet message was on the way. In the past, the time lag after notification had rarely exceeded fifteen minutes. Two hours later the message had not yet arrived. I queried Dobrynin. He professed ignorance. Was it psychological warfare to wear us down for a replay of the crisis of forty-eight hours earlier? Was Moscow having second thoughts about whatever it was proposing to send? We could only wait, though I thought it highly unlikely that we would so soon be faced with another threat as stark as the one we had just surmounted.

  While waiting for the Soviet message, Nixon began his press conference at 7:00 P.M. in the East Room of the White House and it all but wrecked the delicate balance we had been seeking to maintain between firmness and absence of provocation. From my study of history I was convinced that the period just after any diplomatic victory is frequently the most precarious. The victor is tempted to turn the screw one time too many; the loser, rubbed raw by the humiliation of his defeat, may be so eager to recoup that he suddenly abandons rational calculation.

  Nixon, however, had other imperatives. He was determined to show that despite a week’s hue and cry over the “Saturday night massacre” and despite the threat of impeachment, he was in control — indeed, indispensable. He needed to convince the public that there had been a real crisis, which was not Watergate-imposed. Nixon, therefore, had an incentive to paint the crisis to the media in the darkest possible terms.

  “We obtained information,” he said, “which led us to believe that the Soviet Union was planning to send a very substantial force into the Mideast, a military force.” He had ordered a military alert the purpose of which was “to indicate to the Soviet Union that we would not accept any unilateral move on their part.”

  This explicit challenge was moreover drawn to Brezhnev personally by a somewhat melodramatic rendition of the messages that had been exchanged: “Rather than saying that his note to me was rough and brutal, I would say that it was very firm, and it left very little to the imagination as to what he intended. And my response was also very firm and left little to the imagination of how we would react.” Nixon went on to ruminate about how Brezhnev understood American power and Nixon in particular. This was so, Nixon mused, since he had been the President who had bombed North Vietnam in defiance of all public pressures: “That is what made Mr. Brezhnev act as he did.” And Nixon capped his presentation of Brezhnev’s backdown by claiming that it was “the most difficult crisis we have had since the Cuban confrontation of 1962” — a comparison that I in my news conference had deliberately downplayed.

  Most of this was true enough. But it was not the most propitious moment to summon Brezhnev to a test of manhood. Somewhat overwrought by several nights with little sleep, I protested vehemently to Haig as if he could undo what was already on the public record. Haig had his own problems, for the hungry media had not been deterred by a tense international situation from pursuing their Watergate quarry through persistent, tough, and occasionally insolent questions on that subject. Coupled with Nixon’s defensive answers, these had tended to defeat one of the purposes of the press conference: to convey the image of calm, purposeful, determined leadership. No wonder that Haig told me: “If you talk to him tonight take it easy. He is right on the verge.” And Haig’s next phone call a few minutes later showed how strong was the need for reassurance: “I am with the President. We noticed you are the only one who hasn’t called.” I knew only too well the nearly frantic insecurity felt by Nixon after every public performance, compounded now by the agony of Watergate. It was pointless and would have been cruel to engage in a debate on the nuances of crisis management. So I told Haig, not without ambiguity: “It was quite a tour de force.”

  The mood among journalists at the two press conferences raised the likelihood that if there were another early test, the psychological balance might not be so favorable. And it was true not only at home. Scali reported to me from the UN later that evening: “I think unless we get the Israelis to back up we are not going to have a friend in the house.”

  At 8:45 P.M. I called Dinitz “not as Secretary but as a friend.” I told him a Soviet message was on the way. I had the impression, I said, that Israel preferred to be raped than to make a decision of its own accord. I wanted to avoid the appearance of Israel’s yielding under pressure, if at all possible; it would set a bad precedent for the future. I urged Dinitz once again to come up with some forthcoming proposal that could blunt the UN debate. But Dinitz was as impervious to personal appeals as he had been impenetrable in the face of official approaches. He recited Israeli losses during the war; he argued that the Third Army would start an offensive if resupplied. (This was hardly the issue. No one proposed military resupply; the only issue was bare nonmilitary necessities to keep the troops alive.) Israel seemed determined to starve out the Third Army. I said impatiently: “You will be forced if it reaches that point.” The best I could promise was to see to it that “you won’t be pressured one second before it becomes inevitable.”

  The message from Brezhnev started arriving shortly after 9:00 P.M. The Soviet leader was threatening but much more ambiguously than he had been two days earlier. He confined himself to the charge that actions by Israel jeopardized the interests of universal peace. Brezhnev recapitulated what we knew: Sadat had asked the United States to take action to stop Israeli aggression and to provide relief for the Third Army. We had promised to be helpful in several hours but the time had passed and Sadat’s request had not been met:

  [I]f the next few hours do not bring news that necessary measures have been taken to resolve the question raised by President Sadat, then we will have the most serious doubts regarding the intentions of the American side. . . .

  Brezhnev requested a positive US response in a matter of hours. He also, for the first time, discussed our alert, stating that though he had not reacted, our action was unprovoked and not conducive to the relaxation of international tensions.

  It was a strange message. It spoke of threats to universal peace but not about what the Soviet Union would do about them. It asked for an American response within a few hours but threatened no consequences other than serious doubts about our intentions. It was plaintive about the alert, but the cautious phrasing indicated that some important lessons had been learned. Still, there would be a limit to the demonstrations of their impotence that the Soviet leaders would tolerate.

  I had resisted the bureaucracy’s pressures to undertake an American resupply of the Third Army. I understood that Israel’s intransigence reflected a combination of insecurity and despair — molded of a fear of isolation, a premonition of a catastrophe burnt deep into the soul of a people that had lived with disaster through the millennia of its history, and the worry that if it once yielded to pressure it would invite an unending process of exactions. It also reflected the deadlock of a divided cabinet, none of whose members dared to appear “softer” than his colleagues. I had maneuvered all day to avoid a public American dissociation from Israel, to preserve Israel’s psychological substance even while persuading it not to press its advantage to an extreme. But it was becoming clear that Israel was in no position to make a decision. It seemed to prefer being coerced to release its prey rather than relinquishing it voluntarily. My ultimate responsibility was as Secretary of State of the United States, not as psychiatrist to the government of Israel. With the utmost reluctance I decided that my duty was to force a showdown. The only act of friendship I could show to Israel was to keep it private, if Israel would let me.

  Thus at 10:58 P.M. Friday evening, I called Dinitz on behalf of Nixon. I do not remember checking in advance with the President; whether I did or not, there was no doubt the President would back me. In all probability, he would have forced the issue earlier or accepted the option of American resupply of the Third Army had he not been preoccupied with his press conference and Watergate. I said to Dinitz:

  Let me give you the Presi
dent’s reaction in separate parts. First he wanted me to make it absolutely clear that we cannot permit the destruction of the Egyptian army under conditions achieved after a cease-fire was reached in part by negotiations in which we participated. Therefore it is an option that does not exist. . . . Secondly, he would like from you no later than 8:00 A.M. tomorrow an answer to the questions of non-military supplies permitted to reach the army. If you cannot agree to that, we will have to support in the UN a resolution that will deal with the enforcement of [Resolutions] 338 and 339. We have been driven to this reluctantly by your inability to reach a decision. Whatever the reasons, this is what the President wanted me to tell you is our position. An answer that permits some sort of negotiation and some sort of positive response on the non-military supplies, or then we will join the other members of the Security Council in making it an international matter. I have to say again your course is suicidal. You will not be permitted to destroy this army. You are destroying the possibility for negotiations. . . .

  I told Dinitz that we would not inform Cairo of the démarche; that we would transmit any Israeli proposal to Egypt; that we would support Israel’s refusal to permit military resupply of the Third Army. Dinitz, who was one of the sharpest minds among the ambassadors in Washington, could not have missed — and was probably relieved — that we had not demanded an Israeli withdrawal to the October 22 cease-fire line. I did not inform any other government of the pressure on Israel.

  About 2:30 A.M. Saturday morning, October 27, we sent a Presidential reply to Brezhnev. It was polite but vague. It expressed our commitment to the cease-fire. Nixon promised to press the Israeli government to permit nonmilitary supplies to get through to the Third Army. The message did not indicate that we had already done so nor the deadline we had established. We did not want to tempt Soviet ultimatums riding piggyback on our deadlines. It promised Moscow a reply by late Saturday afternoon Washington time, well after the time limit we had given the Israeli cabinet, to leave room for any clarification that might be needed. Nixon’s message concluded with a reference to the alert:

  As to the actions which the United States took as a result of your letter of October 24, I would recall your sentences in that letter: “It is necessary to adhere without delay. I will say it straight that if you find it impossible to act promptly with us in this matter, we should be faced with the necessity urgently to consider the question of taking appropriate steps unilaterally.” Mr. General Secretary, these are serious words and were taken seriously here in Washington.

  Barely had we sent the message to Moscow when we heard from Israel in the form of a message from Golda to me. Even though I had transmitted our demand in the name of Nixon, Golda was too surefooted to tackle the President head-on. She made sure that her quarrels were always with subordinates. Placing the President on a pedestal gave him one more opportunity to change course by disavowing those who were undermining the harmony Golda postulated. And, if this failed, an ultimate concession to the President, with some skill and luck, could at least be turned into a claim for a future favor.

  The letter itself was vintage Golda, passionate, self-centered, shrewd. It was written as much for its impact on the Israeli cabinet as for the United States government. She chose to put the matter into the context of superpower imposition, implying that we were yielding to the Soviets — an argument which, if it surfaced, was certain to mobilize maximum domestic pressures against us: “I have no illusions but that everything will be imposed on us by the two big powers.” This, about a request she had refused to answer for eighteen hours, that Israel make some proposal we could defend before the Security Council against Soviet pressures. All she asked, the letter said, was that we tell Israel precisely what it was to do “in order that Egypt may announce a victory of her aggression.” This, about the proposal to let food and water through to an army trapped forty-eight hours after a US–negotiated ceasefire and that would remain trapped even after having received these minimal supplies. But if she had to make some concession, nothing could force the lioness to be graceful about it: “There is only one thing that nobody can prevent us from doing and that is to proclaim the truth of the situation; that Israel is being punished not for its deeds, but because of its size and because it is on its own.”

  It was a great letter for the Israeli cabinet: David defying Goliath and maneuvering so that he had conceded nothing.

  Her profession of outrage did not hide from me that her reply once again evaded the essential point: She was still refusing to put forward a proposal. She was insisting that we impose it — exactly what I had been trying to avoid. It was a reflection partly of conviction, partly of the complicated Israeli cabinet politics, partly of the upcoming elections that made it easier for Golda to yield than to initiate.

  Torn between admiration and exasperation (“they are mad heroes,” I exclaimed to Scowcroft), I was drafting a reply when Sadat solved the problem for us — though at the cost of another sleepless night. At 3:07 A.M. that Saturday, I received word from Hafiz Ismail that Egypt accepted direct talks between Egyptian and Israeli officers of the rank of major general “to discuss the military aspects of the implementation of Security Council Resolutions 338 and 339 of October 22 and 23, 1973.” Talks should take place under UN supervision at the route marker denoting Kilometer 101 on the Cairo-Suez road. The only conditions would be a “complete” cease-fire, to go into effect two hours before the meeting proposed for 3:00 P.M. Cairo time that day (Saturday), and the passage of one convoy carrying nonmilitary supplies to the Third Army under UN and Red Cross supervision.

  Golda’s rage had been premature. Through our mediation, Israel was about to enter the first direct talks between Israeli and Arab representatives since the independence of Israel. It retained control over the access route to the Third Army even while the UN almost unanimously was pressing for Israeli withdrawal back from that to the October 22 line. All this in return for permitting one convoy of nonmilitary supplies to pass.

  At 4:31 A.M. I told Hafiz Ismail that his message, with our strong endorsement, had been passed to Israel “on a most urgent basis.” By 6:20 A.M. Israel accepted the Egyptian proposal in total; I immediately informed Sadat. Three hours later — we wanted to reduce the time available for Soviet mischief — a letter was sent in Nixon’s name to Brezhnev informing him of the imminent Egyptian-Israeli talks and of Israeli agreement to the convoy.

  But the Middle East is not hospitable to clean-cut solutions. Every step forward requires testing the ground ahead for shifting sands. At 11:00 A.M. Washington time (or 5:00 P.M. in Cairo), we were informed by Israel that the Egyptians had not showed up at the appointed time or place. A flurry of exchanges followed. It transpired that the Egyptian military representatives en route to the meeting at Kilometer 101 had been stopped at the Kilometer 85 marker by Israeli sentries who had not yet received instructions to let them through. They seemed strangely lax in communicating with their headquarters on the unprecedented phenomenon of an Egyptian major general who insisted on speaking directly to his Israeli counterpart! The mix-up was soon straightened out. I talked personally to Golda. Apparently, Israel had neglected to notify UN General Ensio Siilasvuo to make the necessary arrangements as I had told Ismail it would.IX I urged that a new time be set and all notifications be decided ahead of time. After considerable back-and-forth — produced by the need for messages between parties a few hundred miles apart to travel via Washington, or a total distance of 12,000 miles — it was decided that the two generals would meet at midnight.

  Ultimately, at 1:30 A.M. local time on Sunday, October 28, an hour and a half behind the new schedule, Israeli and Egyptian military representatives met for direct talks for the first time in twenty-five years, under the auspices of UN observers. But throughout that day the Israelis managed to delay the passage of the convoy. They had told me late on the twenty-sixth that the Third Army had food and water for forty-eight hours; they were determined to keep it on short rations; if the army collapsed
while a convoy was on the way, no tears would be shed in Jerusalem. Finally, on Monday morning, October 29, I was able to report to Hafiz Ismail that the convoy had arrived at its destination. Egypt agreed to further meetings. While these remained inconclusive, the turn toward negotiations had begun. It soon became irreversible.

  Prospects for Peace

  WE were nearly at the goal of our strategy. The war was ended and with it the most urgent perils to the American position in the Middie East. We had emerged as the pivotal factor in the diplomacy. Egypt was beginning to move in our direction, thereby creating an incentive even for radical regimes to reexamine the premises of their policy. Sadat had clearly signaled his intention to change course — no other explanation was compatible with his disciplined, restrained, and farsighted conduct. And all this had been achieved while we stood by our friends in Israel in wartime and prevented their isolation in the chaotic diplomacy over the cease-fire.

  Our growing preeminence was reflected in the tone of Soviet communications. On October 29, Brezhnev sent another letter to Nixon alternately plaintive, accusatory, and threatening about the delay in getting the Egyptian-Israeli talks under way and in permitting the relief convoy to get through. Brezhnev spoke of a crisis of confidence produced by actions that objectively amounted to support for the Israeli “military clique” (a view obviously not shared by some American critics who saw us in collusion with Moscow). Brezhnev urged cooperation against “aggression” and “deceit” designed to worsen Soviet-American relations.