Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  Bourguiba lived in a palace he had built overlooking the ruins of Carthage — another reminder, if any was needed, that history is written by the victors. Bourguiba’s palace was the fantasy that might sustain a man in prison. It seemed almost a plaything. Its corridors were covered with paintings, busts, and photographs of Bourguiba; I recall no other subject. Its rooms were of gargantuan dimensions. And through it all moved the slight, elderly figure, a French intellectual in bearing, with the fidgety restlessness of the man who has known confinement.

  I had been warned that he was beginning to show signs of arteriosclerosis. It did not affect his lucidity, though his comments were not always directed to the subject one had raised. He expressed grave suspicion of Soviet intentions; he thought Soviet power was growing ominously and that the West lacked the discipline for effective resistance. He hoped for a major American role in the Middle East. I explained our strategy: “Others can give weapons, but only the United States can give territory.” But we must not be blackmailed by oil; we acted on our convictions, not as the result of pressure. Bourguiba agreed sadly — and wisely — that the “attitude of hostility is a major error committed by the Arabs.”

  And so we left at last for Cairo, the stop that would make or break our journey.

  The Six-Point Agreement

  THE airport at Cairo was blacked out when I arrived late Tuesday, November 6, the cease-fire being only two weeks old. Foreign Minister Fahmy was barely discernible at the bottom of the stairs. The darkness did not inhibit his jocular grumbling, which he had developed into an art form. But he had hardly begun his catalogue of unfulfilled promises — American and Israeli — before a stampede of footsteps came rushing toward us across the darkened tarmac. It was the Cairo press corps, eager to observe the arrival of the first senior American since the war. Suddenly, television floodlights came on. My security personnel deployed. It was a losing effort. Like so many foreigners before them, they were engulfed by a sea of Egyptian humanity advancing inexorably like the nearby desert until the visitors stood there immobilized, finally surrendering to a fate made bearable by the obvious goodwill of those who had so flagrantly breached security. It was just as well that no terrorist decided to masquerade as a journalist, as Fahmy and I were jostled by this enthusiastic group that seemed more interested in some tactile contact with the visitors than with any particular set of questions. At last, a phalanx of soldiers rescued us and rushed us to a waiting Mercedes limousine that had in better days served as Nasser’s personal vehicle.

  At my domicile, the Nile Hilton, Fahmy told me what the program would be: an early morning tour of the Egyptian Museum; a meeting with Sadat; a visit to the Pyramids; and a dinner at Fahmy’s house. My meeting with Sadat was thus sandwiched between the contemplations of antiquity, perhaps to warn me that Egypt had prevailed over all outsiders — if not by defeating, then by outlasting them.

  My first view of Cairo, the next morning, was from the balcony of my hotel. It showed a flat landscape divided by a muddy river. No building of any distinction was visible except the Tower of Cairo, built by Nasser in the early Sixties, allegedly with CIA money that he wanted to spend on “something unidentifiable, but very large, very conspicuous, very enduring and very expensive.”4 He got his wish, and the purposeless edifice is visible from every vantage. Like so many of Egypt’s monuments, its main attribute is permanence, not function. And for all we know it may endure, for in that eternal country the dry air and brilliant sunshine preserve man’s follies together with his triumphs.

  The Egyptian Museum was still prepared for war. Artifacts were stored in boxes on the lower floors; strips of tape covered the glass cabinets, making viewing difficult. Sandbags were everywhere. What struck me most was the impact of Egypt on the art of its temporary conquerors. In one great hall one could observe the progressive “Egyptification” of the Hellenistic statuary after Alexander the Great. When the Greeks first arrived, their statues were realistic, on a human scale with a stern look and practical countenance. As the generations passed, they raised their sights quite literally; their gaze was no longer into the eye of another man but toward distant horizons. It transcended the limitations of Europe’s fields and valleys and focused on the infinity of Egypt’s sea of sand. The sternness left the faces, which became more abstract, almost beatific and detached as if the time allotted to mortals was irrelevant to their concerns.

  A notable memory of my stroll across Tahrir Square to and from the museum was the friendliness of the passersby. I could hardly have been a household name in Egypt. Yet the bodyguard of security officers must have made it clear that I was the American visitor described in the newspapers. The mood was exuberant and, I judged, full of expectation. As in Israel a little over two weeks earlier, one sensed a people yearning for peace and for a signal of hope.

  Mine was a fateful responsibility, not eased by a conversation I had had early in the morning with Arnaud de Borchgrave of Newsweek, who told me that Sadat had all but decided to resume hostilities; all his senior officers considered the encirclement of the Third Army an intolerable affront to Egyptian honor. Though de Borchgrave had been correct in his prediction of an imminent Arab-Israeli war six months earlier, I did not think he would be proved right this time. I could not believe that Sadat would have been so insistent on my coming or so flexible in his diplomacy if he intended to force a showdown. Still, this warning, at the least, increased my sense of the gravity of the occasion.

  The multitudes in the streets of Cairo made vivid as no words could why Israel had such premonitions about its security. The city of Cairo, as noted, has almost twice the population of Israel. Every three years Egypt’s population grows by the size of all of Israel’s. It was a nearly insoluble dilemma: Israel had the power but not the faith for peace. The Arabs were still at a military disadvantage but they had the numbers and the time. They could wait for the Israeli mistake that would prove fatal. And the consciousness of this danger was what made Israeli diplomacy tense and rigid.

  I was also aware that neither the domestic nor the international environment gave me much room for maneuver. Nixon was growing restless; he knew that his critics would blame Watergate for any failure of my mission, accelerating both his demise and the decline of credibility that must in time erode our world position. On November 5, Edward Brooke of Massachusetts had become the first Senator of the President’s own party to call for his resignation; so had Time magazine, the New York Times, and the Detroit News. As always when in a tight corner, Nixon decided on attack, and attack seemed to mean a spectacular breakthrough in the Middle East. At a Cabinet meeting on energy on November 6, while I was in Cairo, Nixon unexpectedly raised the Middle East problem. Brent Scowcroft cabled me:

  At the end of the Cabinet meeting the President surprised everyone with a short speech on the Middle East. . . . The President said he wanted no notes taken and no discussion whatever but wanted the Cabinet to know in connection with energy that it might be necessary to apply pressure on Israel to avert a serious oil shortage. He said that Golda had first indicated some flexibility but then had become completely intransigent, apparently believing that the Israelis could just stay in possession of all they now held. He said it may be necessary for the US to go to the UN and perhaps to apply other kinds of pressure on Israel. He hoped it would not be necessary but if it was he expected the Cabinet to understand and to support whatever happened. . . .

  The whole thing was a bolt out of the blue and we can only hope it does not leak. . . . I feel confident that there will be no impact within the bureaucracy.

  Turning on Israel over oil would have been a self-defeating act of desperation. Having committed ourselves to squeezing Israel to end the embargo, we would have set a precedent for use of the oil weapon over and over again as demands were being raised. We might wind up losing on all sides: neither achieving the Arabs’ program nor — if we helped destroy Israel’s reputation for intractability — gaining credit for compromise solutions. Miraculousl
y, Haig and Scowcroft kept Nixon’s comments from leaking. But there was little doubt that Nixon would order this strategy if my mission failed.

  As we were approaching Cairo I had learned, too, that the European Community on November 6 had adopted a declaration on the Middle East strongly urging Israel’s immediate withdrawal to the October 22 cease-fire line, and had thrown in a wholesale endorsement of the Arab interpretation of Security Council Resolution 242 for good measure. This abdication not only betokened Europe’s abject weakness but did harm: It reduced Sadat’s maneuvering room. Could he settle for less than the Europeans were proposing? The answer would determine what could be achieved, for the European program guaranteed a prolonged stalemate. To push Israel back to the October 22 line was too little a goal for the effort required. But if linked with an implied commitment to force Israel to accept the 1967 borders, it was too ambitious to be achievable. Caught between accomplishing too little and failing if we aimed for too much, we would expend capital better husbanded for the attainable disengagement of forces that was our objective.

  Thus, Sadat and I both had our backs to the wall. Sadat had the Third Army at risk together with all hopes for a negotiated solution and the continuation of his switch from the Soviet Union to the United States. I was hazarding America’s position in the Middle East in a talk with a leader I had never met and had only recently learned to respect. Sadat’s asset was that he could produce a deadlock; mine was that deadlock served none of Sadat’s long-term objectives and that I might help break it.

  Tahra Palace is located in Heliopolis, a once-fashionable Cairo suburb now fighting to maintain appearances, squeezed between the urban slums spreading outward and the military housing associated with the Cairo airport creeping toward the city. Once occupied by one of King Farouk’s wives, the palace reflects the Egyptian notion that royal pomp is the merger of the facade of Fontainebleau with the appointments of British country homes. It is situated in a spacious garden that seemed unusually empty for a Presidential headquarters.

  When I arrived on the morning of November 7, two old acquaintances greeted me at the foot of the steps leading to the entrance. One was Hafiz Ismail, still security adviser to Sadat, ramrod-straight and urbane — the Cairo end of the “channel” to Washington. The other was Ashraf Ghorbal. I had enormous affection for this distinguished Harvard-educated diplomat who performed skillfully as head of Egypt’s Interests Section in Washington in the absence of full diplomatic relations. He passionately believed that Egypt’s destiny was on the side of the West. (In the tense days of Nasser’s flirtations with Moscow, Ghorbal had once sent me a poem subtly pleading for patience.) He now embraced me. I knew his heart was with the success of my mission. In such situations, little gestures can give confidence. Ismail’s and especially Ghorbal’s presence made me feel more relaxed and hopeful.

  I was hurried up a broad stairway toward a gallery overlooking the gardens. And at the top of the stairs the reason for the preternatural silence in the garden became evident. It seemed that every correspondent in the Middle East and half the President’s staff were assembled in the gallery in another packed mob scene. Once again there were no visible security procedures. I was being jostled from several directions, nearly blinded by television lights, when suddenly I heard behind me a deep baritone: “Welcome, welcome.”

  Sadat had emerged, dressed in a khaki military tunic, an overcoat slung carelessly over his shoulders (for in November the inside of Egyptian palaces is cold). He was taller, swarthier, and more imposing than I had expected. He exuded vitality and confidence. That son of peasants radiated a natural dignity and aristocratic bearing as out of keeping with his revolutionary history as it was commanding and strangely calming. He affected nonchalance. I too did my best to pretend that there was nothing unusual about a meeting two weeks after a war in which we had armed Egypt’s enemy and then — during the alert — had threatened to intervene militarily on Egyptian soil. Neither of us wanted to show that we had a great deal at stake, even while we knew that we would soon begin one of the few diplomatic exchanges that can be called seminal. We sat on a sofa, measuring each other through the banalities of the obligatory dialogue to make ourselves appear natural for the benefit of the photographers:

  “How was your trip?”

  “Excellent, Mr. President.”

  “You are welcome here.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President.”

  Sadat then ushered me into a large room that served as his office. On one side were French windows overlooking a lawn in which wicker chairs had been placed in a semicircle for the benefit of our aides. “I have been longing for this visit,” said Sadat and started filling a pipe. “I have a plan for you. It can be called the Kissinger plan.”

  With these words he walked over to some situation maps covering the wall opposite and showed me a disengagement scheme according to which Israel would withdraw two-thirds of the way across the Sinai to a line from El Arish to Ras Mohammed (see the map on page 452). Sadat must have known this was an impossible assignment. If it was proving difficult to convince Israel to withdraw the few kilometers to the October 22 line on the west bank of the Canal, it was beyond all reason to imagine inducing such a dramatic retreat eastward, abandoning the Canal, the strategic Giddi and Mitla passes, and most of the Sinai. And what would Israel get in return? Sadat’s vagueness on the subject showed that he was testing me. He puffed on his pipe and asked for my comments.

  I did not think it wise to begin by rejecting one of the President’s ideas, however unrealistic. And I had no wish to play the bull to Sadat’s picador. So I changed the subject. Before we talked about the business at hand, I said, would the President tell me how he had managed to achieve such stunning surprise on October 6? That had been the turning point; what we were doing now was in a way its inevitable consequence.

  Sadat narrowed his eyes, puffed again on his pipe, and smiled. He understood that I was paying him a compliment and establishing his status. He was not negotiating from weakness; he was not a supplicant; he had earned Egypt’s right at the conference table; he had, in short, restored Egypt’s honor and self-respect.

  Slowly at first, but with growing animation, Sadat told his tale of lonely decision-making, his conclusion after the failure of the 1969 Rogers Plan that there would never be a serious negotiation so long as Israel was able to equate security with military predominance. It was impossible for Egypt to bargain from a posture of humiliation. He told me how he had grown disenchanted with the Soviet Union. Moscow prized its relations with the United States above support of Egypt; the bland treatment of the Middle East question in the communiqué of Nixon’s 1972 summit in Moscow had removed any lingering doubts on that score.5 Sadat had demanded the removal of Soviet troops in July 1972 because of the disrespect shown by Soviet leaders toward Egyptians and above all because they would surely seek to impede his planned military move or else exploit it for Soviet ends.

  Sadat had wanted to launch an attack in November 1972 but his military had not been ready, indeed had been dubious about the entire enterprise. He had replaced his Chief of Staff with a commander who had confidence in his plans and in whom he had confidence. He had used the interval to line up Syria. His repeated mobilizations caused his threats of a showdown to dull Israel’s vigilance. In May 1973 Israel mobilized in response to the Egyptian mobilization designed to culminate in the crossing of the Canal; Sadat had responded by postponing the attack once again to October, gambling that the false alarm would help his design. When his armies mobilized yet again, Israel was more likely to remain quiescent. And this is exactly what happened.

  Why had he been so persistent, I asked? Why not wait for the diplomatic initiative we had promised? To teach Israel that it could not find security in domination, replied Sadat, and to restore Egypt’s self-respect — a task no foreigner could do for it. Now that he had vindicated Egyptian honor, Sadat told me, he had two objectives: to regain “my territory,” that is to say, to restore the 1967 bo
undary in the Sinai, and to make peace. And he would be as determined and patient in the pursuit of these objectives as he had been in preparing for war.

  Sadat had spent his years in prison under the British improving his English by reading novels and short stories in that language; he and a fellow prisoner had taught themselves German by the same method. Perhaps for this reason, his language was somewhat stilted, rather precise and formal. But an extraordinary passion lay just beneath the discipline of his manner of speaking — as if that self-control represented a dam necessary to contain elemental forces that once unleashed would know no restraint. As he spoke, Sadat kept his eyes slightly narrowed, viewing not his interlocutor but some distant horizon, much like the Egyptian statues seen a little while ago in the museum.

  I listened to his tale of foresight and cunning, of honor and daring, of determination and suppleness, with the realization that I was in the presence of a remarkable man. Sadat seemed free of the obsession with detail by which mediocre leaders think they are mastering events, only to be engulfed by them. I could not tell yet whether it was possible to achieve both peace and the 1967 frontiers, nor whether Sadat had the endurance for the long journey inevitably required to find out. But I sensed that Sadat represented the best chance to transcend frozen attitudes that the Middle East had known since the creation of the State of Israel. The test would be if he was prepared to move by stages that reversed the momentum of conflict without offering a guarantee of final success — which required above all an act of faith. Therefore he had to understand our judgment of what was possible, and what he would have to do to make it possible.

  And so I turned for the next half-hour to a conceptual discussion. Cooperation would depend on understanding of our long-term purposes; the tactics would follow almost automatically. I explained the American strategy in much the same terms as I had to my colleagues in the WSAG. History had shown, I said, that progress toward peace depended on two factors: an Arab leader willing to relate rhetoric to reality and an America willing to engage itself in the process. We would not exercise our influence under pressure; our actions had to be seen to reflect our choice and not submission to threats. We had no incentive to be forthcoming to clients of the Soviet Union. Nasser’s policy of trying to extort concessions by mobilizing the Third World against us with Soviet support had not worked in the past and would not be permitted to work in the future. Peace in the Middle East could not come about by the defeat of American allies with Soviet arms — as we had just shown. But an Egypt pursuing its own national policy would find us ready to cooperate. We sought no preeminence in Egypt. I could discern no inevitable clash of interests between us.