Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  It was no accident. The concept of representative democracy requires a social cohesiveness unattainable in many developing societies. Where government provides the principal social bond, the distinction is not always made (or even possible) between opposition to government and undermining of authority and indeed of the state. Clearly, in Iran the leader of the revolution was not a democrat of reformist tendencies but an embittered reactionary who, as soon as he attained office, garnered to himself dictatorial powers far exceeding those of the Shah.

  The fact is that we lack a coherent idea of how to channel the elemental forces let loose by the process of development. Liberal democracy developed over centuries in essentially aristocratic and bourgeois societies; universal suffrage did not become general in the West until after the First World War. (Even in the United States, the Senate was elected by indirect vote as late as 1913.) In this cultural environment, the minority has a chance to become a majority and the political contest does not destroy the loser. It is different in countries with deep tribal or religious or racial divisions, or where a state has been created to govern populations whose principal common experience is colonial rule. Force-fed mass participation is more likely to lead to totalitarianism than to democracy. The contemporary irony is that Leninism has proved attractive to many developing countries not because of its economic theories, which have clearly failed, but because it offers legitimacy for staying in office — which is after all why most leaders of independence movements entered politics in the first place. Our dilemma is that we cannot abandon our own values, yet we have not yet learned how to build institutions capable of sustaining the political strains of development — at least in its initial phase.

  In the Persian Gulf today, many traditional friends of the United States face this perplexity with us. We know that their domestic base is precarious, but we have no conclusive insight into how to strengthen it; indeed, to buttress the current rulers is as surely incompatible with democratic theory as it may be vital for our national interest. In the Persian Gulf the alternative to friendly authoritarianism is almost inevitably hostile totalitarianism. And the political concepts we try to transplant must appear to them as essentially destructive of their social cohesion; if that is the only way out, they may well prefer to make their own accommodation with radical currents sweeping the area. The dilemma remains one of the foremost intellectual challenges to American and Western political thought.

  On November 9, 1973, reflections such as these would have seemed least relevant to Iran of all the countries in the Middle East. I was stopping in Tehran for both symbolic and substantive reasons: symbolic, to underline the importance we attached to our relationship with Iran, thereby to discourage adventurist policies by covetous neighbors; and substantive, to learn the Shah’s analysis of world affairs and especially of the Middle East. Above all, I wanted to express our appreciation for the Shah’s staunch support during the past month’s crises.

  We owed the Shah a great deal for his unflagging loyalty during the October war. NATO allies had permitted overflights of their territory by the Soviet airlift to the Middle East; the Shah had adamantly refused. While basically sympathetic to Sadat, he brought no diplomatic pressure on us. He kept us informed of what he understood to be Arab purposes. He was available as an intermediary — though Sadat’s direct contact with us made that role only marginally necessary. Above all, he refused to join the pressures organized by the other oil producers in the Persian Gulf. Iran did not participate in the Arab oil embargo, nor did it curtail its oil production. Those were the measures that produced first panic and then a shortage of oil and finally made possible the massive increase in oil prices. (This did not stop revisionist historians from blaming the Shah for the oil price rise for which others shared equal if not greater responsibility.)II He continued to supply oil to Israel. When we moved a carrier task force into the Indian Ocean, it was fueled from Iran without argument about compensation. A hostile Iran could have blocked the diplomacy that had seen us through the crisis; an indifferent one would have greatly complicated our task. I always thought I had a duty to remember those services of the Shah to our country and to free peoples, especially in the vicissitudes that later befell him.

  If the world is indeed destined to become one global village, airports will serve as their marketplace; their terminals have banished cultural as well as national characteristics. The gleaming royal pavilion at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport could have been the VIP reception area anywhere in the world — except for the exquisite Persian carpets that covered its floors. We lingered there for only a few minutes of greeting by the distinguished elderly Foreign Minister, Abas Ali Khalatbari. He accompanied me and Ambassador Richard Helms to the Imperial Palace at the outskirts of the town. As always, the Foreign Minister left us at the door of the imperial study. He did not participate in that or any other conversation with the Shah. In truth, his position was closer to that of chief of protocol than head of Iranian diplomacy; he greeted visitors of less than head of state rank; he represented Iran at conferences not worthy of imperial attention. But the overall conduct of foreign policy the Shah reserved for himself. I go into this much detail because after the revolution this inoffensive courtier of impeccable manners was executed senselessly after an absurd trial lasting less than an hour.

  Mohammed Reza Pahlavi as always was gracious and aloof — an attitude composed in equal parts of shyness, consciousness of the difference in our protocol rank, and his conception of the attitude required of emperors. This posture had been drilled into him by his primitive Cossack father, who had usurped the throne in the 1920s; but one never had the sense that the Shah felt comfortable with it. Loneliness had been imposed upon him by his upbringing until his exile consummated it in a cruel abandonment by nearly all who had sought his favor for four decades.

  The Shah was acute in his analysis of grand strategy. Radical Iraq, he thought, would be used as a battering ram against all moderate pro-Western regimes in the area. Though not strictly speaking a Soviet satellite, once fully armed with Soviet weapons Iraq would serve Soviet purposes by intimidating pro-Western governments, such as Saudi Arabia; simultaneously, it would exert pressure on Jordan and even Syria, which while leaning to the radical side was far from being a Soviet puppet. The Soviet Union would try to squeeze Iran between Afghanistan and its Iraqi client. The recent revolution in Kabul, which had replaced the Afghan King with a new President, Mohammed Daoud, was especially worrisome to the Shah. Led by officers with distinctly pro-Soviet tendencies, it sowed the seeds of future trouble. Daoud’s revolution might well be the preview of even more radical upheavals — a prescient forecast, as matters turned out. Though Daoud was a nationalist, even his goals could easily serve Soviet purposes by destabilizing the area. Afghan irredentism, aimed at stirring up disaffected ethnic groups in border regions of both Pakistan and Iran (the Pushtoons and Baluchis), could produce a pincer movement whose practical consequence would be to project Soviet power closer to the Indian Ocean. The Shah would support Pakistan to the extent that our legislation regarding his use of American arms permitted. We must try to prevent the Fertile Crescent — Iraq, Syria, and Jordan — from being ruled from Baghdad. He would keep Iraq occupied by supporting the Kurdish rebellion within Iraq, and maintaining a large army near the frontier.

  With all his sympathy for Sadat, the Shah considered Israel a strategic linchpin in the area. Indirectly, it contributed to the independence of Jordan by deterring Syrian or Iraqi military action against it. For the same reason it was a guarantee of Lebanon’s independence. Unfortunately, in the Shah’s view, Israel’s foreign policy was not as wise as its contribution to overall security was strategically significant; its diplomatic intransigence complicated the position of the moderate Arab governments on which its own survival ultimately rested and threatened to weaken American influence. The Shah applauded our conduct during the Middle East war — especially the alert. He welcomed our rapprochement with Egypt. I briefed him on th
e six-point plan. He considered Sadat the best hope for a moderate and peaceful evolution. The United States should do its utmost to encourage him.

  I stressed that the Arab oil embargo and production cutbacks put us into an impossible position. We were prepared to respond to legitimate Arab concerns; we were bound to resist any impression that the so-called oil weapon could be used to force us into decisions we would not make otherwise. All our friends in the Arab world had an interest in demonstrating that radical pressures were futile and that America held the key to the settlement. If we abandoned this posture, any diplomatic achievement would backfire and would simply encourage further blackmail. The Shah agreed. He promised to intercede with Egypt and Saudi Arabia to urge an end to the embargo. Within days he sent an emissary to Saudi Arabia and a message to Sadat, as he had promised.

  My conversation with the Shah illustrated the basis of the Iranian-American relationship during his reign. Some of his analysis was, of course, self-serving in the sense of providing a rationale for existing policy. But self-interest is no inhibition against accuracy. It is precisely the collapse of a pro-Western Iran that led to an upheaval in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean that has not subsided at this writing.

  The Shah’s fate and that of his country are a permanent warning that there are no simple answers. Those who seek a more peaceful world must have a conception of its nature. Those who strive for justice must understand that it consists of more than the venting of resentments. And we have to become more thoughtful about the political evolution of friendly countries whose stability is important to our security. In that case we may still learn a lesson from that costly tragedy.

  We stopped overnight in Islamabad in friendly Pakistan. Its volatile leader, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, also later came to a tragic end. It does not alter my evaluation of him as a man of extraordinary abilities whose ruthlessness was matched by his brilliance. Whereas his neighbor the Shah fell because he maintained personal autocratic rule for too long, Bhutto destroyed himself by seeking a popular mandate too rapidly and then manipulating the electoral result. This self-indulgence was probably an attempt to score a debating point on his hated adversary, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, who had just established “emergency” rule by decree in India. But it must also be said that Bhutto’s arrogance reflected a fair assessment of his talents. There was no blinking his skillful — some might say opportunistic — ideological gyrations throughout his public life. But I had also been present in 1971, when he extricated his country from a shattering defeat in the war with India that left Pakistan dismembered, with its eastern half seceding to become the new independent state of Bangladesh. Bhutto had acted with panache and wisdom in that tragic period and had been a steady friend of the United States afterward.

  Bhutto had been variously accused of “softness,” now toward the Soviet Union, now toward China. And I never doubted that he was capable of drawing close to any country that served his perception of Pakistan’s national interests. The fact was that after 1970, Pakistan’s interests were best served by cultivating the two great powers it helped to bring together — the United States and the People’s Republic of China. Pakistan was unique in being allied to both. But if this fact provided considerable diplomatic support, it also increased the precariousness of Pakistan’s position. For the Soviet thrust toward the Indian Ocean, combined with Indian resentment over the partition of 1947, tempted pressures from both directions. Nor was the gratitude of its powerful friends easily translated into concrete measures. The United States Congress would not approve military assistance to Pakistan or the transfer of American-supplied military equipment from Iran. China did not have the industrial base to provide substantial military supply. Throughout my term in office, the dilemma of how to preserve the independence of Pakistan was an excellent example of the conflict between our national interest and our domestic inhibitions. We were as conscious of Pakistan’s importance as our inability to match our analysis with assistance was being brought home to us by each session of Congress. We managed one extremely modest military package, fulfilling a promise made by President Johnson over five years earlier; yet we arranged many ostentatious meetings to make good a pledge by President Kennedy a decade earlier: to demonstrate that America was not indifferent to threats to the independence of Pakistan. In the Watergate era, we had to stitch together a grand strategy from a tangle of expedients.

  Bhutto’s analysis of Soviet strategy was not much different from the Shah’s. He, too, feared that the new Afghan leader Daoud might be encouraged by the Soviets to press into Pakistan and toward the Indian Ocean under the banner of Pushtoon and Baluchi autonomy. As it turned out, Daoud started on this course but gradually recoiled from it as he became aware that it made no sense to claim additional territories when Afghanistan’s independence was itself threatened from the rear by the Soviet Union. From then on, Daoud ceased his mischief-making against Iran and Pakistan and began to move cautiously toward genuine non-alignment. Five years later, he paid for his presumption with his life in a Communist coup, and the Soviet design then unfolded precisely as the Shah and Bhutto had predicted.

  The southern rim of Asia — Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan — is a region of the world that may seem remote and strange to Americans, and yet it is a pivot of the world’s security. Within a few years of my 1973 journey, it became an area of upheaval. From the Iranian revolution to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to the Iran-Iraq war, events dramatized the vulnerability of the Persian Gulf — the lifeline of the West’s oil supply. The vital importance of that region had long been one of the themes of the shrewd strategic analysts I was to visit next: Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. We had much to talk about.

  * * *

  I. SAVAK continues to exercise its powers, albeit under a new name and new auspices, in the revolutionary regime.

  II. See Chapter XIX.

  XV

  The Eclipse of Zhou Enlai and Another Talk with Mao

  Zhou under Fire

  I WRITE with sadness about the last exchanges I had with the Chinese Premier, Zhou Enlai. They took place about three months later than we had planned, and when they did, Zhou was on the way out of office, though we did not know it then.

  As I have described in Chapter VIII, Zhou had agreed in late May and June to lend China’s weight to an American compromise proposal to end the war in Cambodia; the formula envisioned a cease-fire, an end of American bombing, and immediate negotiations with Prince Norodom Sihanouk to set up a coalition government under the Prince’s neutralist rule. Zhou would not have committed himself this far unless he had reason to believe that the Khmer Rouge could be brought to go along with the plan; and they could not have come to this uncharacteristic posture other than because our bombing had prevented the unconditional victory they sought. The scenario was to unfold once Sihanouk returned to Peking from a lengthy trip during the first week of July. I was to visit Peking in August 1973 for regular consultations and for a meeting with Sihanouk to begin a political dialogue.

  A few days before Sihanouk’s return, Congress voted to prohibit all American military action in Indochina; we had to agree to cut off the Cambodian bombing by August 15. Our principal bargaining leverage was lost. The Khmer Rouge saw no reason to negotiate a cease-fire we had already legislated. Zhou Enlai, politically wounded at home by our failure, dropped the initiative with Sihanouk and pointedly postponed my trip to August 16, the day after the bombing halt. It was a slap in the face and Zhou could have no doubt I would refuse. I did so on July 25.

  After that misfortune, little passed between Peking and Washington. Both sides were frustrated; each sulked about the other’s reaction. And Zhou’s difficulties at home were mounting. There were long delays in our exchanges attempting to set up another visit. The Chinese, preoccupied with a National Party Congress, let us wait until August 17 before accepting September 6. But on August 22, my nomination as Secretary of State was announced. Since I could not travel while my confirmation was pending, I postponed my visit to
the end of October. On the day after my nomination, I sent a personal message to Zhou saying that I considered Chinese-American relations “a cornerstone of US foreign policy.” I informed him that I was calling Ambassador David Bruce home from Peking to help with the transition to my new assignment. Bruce had been instructed to request an appointment with the Premier and with Vice Foreign Minister Qiao Guanhua, then acting head of the Foreign Ministry, to obtain their assessment of the state of Chinese-American relations.

  On August 29, Qiao received Bruce at the Foreign Ministry. He made no reference to Zhou except to convey the Premier’s congratulations on my appointment. The Chinese “welcomed” my forthcoming visit. But pending it they had in effect nothing to communicate. Qiao considered the development of our relations to be “normal.” The Liaison Offices set up in each other’s capitals were creating an objective reality. In other words, there was no reason to be concerned; our relations now had their own dynamics. To be sure, on many aspects of these relations I had my own views and “the Chinese had theirs” — an oblique reference, no doubt, to my bitter response when Zhou broke off the talks on Cambodia. (“This is the first time in the development of our new relationship that the Chinese word has not counted.”) But Qiao referred to the differences primarily to emphasize the underlying community of interests. The new style introduced into diplomacy by the Sino-American relationship and the Shanghai Communiqué, he said, was “not to attempt to hide our differences but to admit them frankly.” In Bruce’s laconic words: “Although Ch’iao [Qiao] was as usual polite and amiable it was clear that he had no desire to prolong a conversation that was degenerating into pleasantries.”