Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  America and its democratic allies were drifting not only apart but into a competition. We were not alone in our uneasiness about these trends. Sir Alec Douglas-Home was sufficiently concerned about them to write me a personal letter on November 29, the day after his Prime Minister’s outburst. He insisted that NATO was the linchpin of Britain’s foreign and defense policy. At the same time, “I don’t think you would feel us to be of much value as a friend and ally if we support American policy blindly, even when we think it wrong.” He went on to explain that Britain for years had advocated a consistent course on the Middle East; it had not changed under the impact of recent events. He then summed up his views on how to transcend the crisis:

  We are firmly alongside the United States on East/West issues which could lead to serious confrontation. In any case of uncertainty the benefit of doubt would weigh decisively on the American side of the scales. But you must from your side do everything possible to reduce the area of uncertainty — that is to take us more systematically into your confidence and consult with us during the period of build-up towards crisis and confrontation. I think this applies to the Middle East also where, if I may say so, I think that over the years American Administrations have not given enough weight to such policies of ourselves and others, which have a lot and, perhaps more than a lot, to be said for them. . . . I am sure that our aim should be to restore the old intimacy and I can see no reason why this should not be possible.

  Home, as I have already emphasized, was one of the wisest and most decent men I have had the privilege to meet. We never questioned that for him, Atlantic partnership was a moral necessity; unlike his Prime Minister, he did not see Britain’s European vocation as requiring the loosening of transatlantic ties built up over three decades. There was little in Home’s letter with which I disagreed. He had a point in his criticism of previous American policies. We, in turn, were willing, nay eager, to improve the process of consultation. My concern was that the new procedures of the European Community were working against this objective. None of us had a pat answer for how to reconcile European identity and Atlantic partnership, especially when that “identity” was flatly contradictory to ours in the Middle East. But under Home’s prompting we decided to give it another try.

  The North Atlantic Council and the Pilgrims Speech

  ALL the foreign ministers of the Alliance convened in December in Brussels for the semiannual ministerial meeting of the North Atlantic Council. The atmosphere was far from ideal. We were conscious of our grievances, probably too insistently so. The allies who belonged to the Nine seemed as if mesmerized by the process of European unification. They acted as if it was a sufficient answer to our concerns on substance to point out how complex the task of achieving a European consensus was and how it was proceeding more rapidly than anyone could have expected.

  Yet the meeting was bound to have a soothing effect. The North Atlantic Council is the institutional expression of the Alliance. Its basic reason for existence is to strengthen common security — an objective not disputed by any ally even in the most intense controversies. Its procedures tend to stress consensus. And just as France used the consensus procedure to dominate the European Community, so we, as the country providing the nuclear umbrella, had a decisive voice in the Council. Allies that did not belong to the European Community did not wish the transatlantic squabble to undermine their security. Most members of the Nine, when freed from Community procedures, were eager to avoid having to choose between France (backed by Britain) and the United States. Joseph Luns, the vigorous Secretary General of NATO, could be avuncularly intimidating toward anyone straying from his conception of the requirements of allied unity.

  On the whole, the Brussels meeting did help heal the wounds. I made a conciliatory arrival statement reiterating that NATO was the cornerstone of our foreign policy — a cliché that appeared to calm tempers even while invoked to embrace obviously divergent policies. And I called for a new act of vision to enhance the Alliance’s vitality. The next day I devoted to individual meetings with other foreign ministers. The principal vestige of recent unpleasantness was that my first two conversations were with the ministers of allies that had stood by us through the Mideast crisis: the Netherlands and Portugal. As with many gestures in whose subtlety one takes pride, its significance apparently was lost on my colleagues. Or else they decided that no point would be served by noticing it.

  Each NATO meeting provides the occasion for a dinner of the foreign ministers of the United States, Britain, France, and the Federal Republic. NATO does not recognize a hierarchy based on size or influence, so the pretext for what amounts to a meeting of the Big Four is their special responsibility for the governance of Berlin. Since the Berlin agreement of 1971, there has not been much Berlin business; what there is can be disposed of in a few minutes. The remainder of the time is devoted to a review of the international situation. The December 9 dinner went off agreeably enough. Home did his valiant best to put a good face on recent disagreements, stressing the familiar legalism that NATO had never been thought to have Mideast responsibilities. There were polite European complaints about lack of consultation on the alert. I replied that our efforts had prevented a victory for Soviet arms and were in the process of reducing Soviet influence — an objective of benefit to all allies. Jobert restrained his mischievous side. He confined himself to asking penetrating factual questions and promised a calm speech for the plenary session the next day.

  Given our central contribution to Western defense, the plenary sessions inevitably revolve around the American Secretary of State, whose speech is an important feature. On December 10, I urged a three-part program: to complete as rapidly as possible the two joint declarations; to work out procedures for consulting about common problems outside the NATO area; and to deal jointly with the energy crisis. To reduce complaints about inadequate consultation, I offered regular meetings at the deputy foreign minister level to concert policies outside the NATO area. That idea had been halfheartedly accepted by the French at Reykjavik in May — or so at least we understood — but it had never been implemented.

  Whether Jobert, who had insisted on speaking last, had always intended to go on the attack or whether my remarks triggered him, I do not know. Whatever his motives, he sidestepped my proposal for improved consultation. Instead, he used the occasion for his by-now well-rehearsed assault on the condominium allegedly established by the two superpowers. He cited the consultation provision of the US–Soviet Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War as the most flagrant example (see Chapter VII). Europe, he implied, was better served elaborating its own policy. I used the rarely exercised right of reply for a sharp rebuttal. I explained the provisions of that agreement, whose meaning and history Jobert knew full well, and concluded: “I am repeating these facts for the public minutes. If a misinterpretation of them continues to be repeated, it cannot be inadvertent.”

  But the squall passed quickly. NATO was a poor forum for Jobert’s sallies. The memory of twenty-five years of cooperation was not to be erased by scoring debating points. The next morning Jobert and I met over breakfast. Without exception our private encounters passed pleasantly, even entertainingly, for my French colleague was a man of unusual charm, penetrating intelligence, and sharp wit. To show his goodwill he withdrew his previous objection to a meeting between me and the foreign ministers of the European Community.

  That a meeting with nine foreign ministers, eight of whom were also members of NATO (the sole exception was Ireland), should have become a problem in Atlantic relations showed the degree to which Atlantic cohesion was being suffocated by the elaborate procedures of the emerging Europe — or at least by the way Jobert was applying them. Having banned the words “partnership” and “interdependence” from the projected declaration between the United States and the European Community, Jobert had also vetoed any discussions between America and Europe at the ministerial level. The absurdity of this position must have been too much for Jobert’s colleag
ues. That was certainly the view of Danish Foreign Minister Andersen, who was performing the duties of President of the Community Council of Ministers with dignity and ability. Or perhaps Jobert sensed that he had overplayed his hand during the NATO meeting. Whatever the explanation, my encounter with the nine Community foreign ministers took place on the afternoon of December 11 following the adjournment of the North Atlantic Council.

  The situation was bizarre. I had just spent nearly three days with eight of them. I had seen them as a group and individually. There was quite literally nothing new to talk about. Moreover, to take care of French sensitivity that the European Community not be “dissolved” in NATO, my colleagues thought it unwise to meet in the NATO headquarters outside of Brussels where we all happened to be and which would have been most convenient. Jobert would not meet in any official building, such as an embassy, for reasons that now escape me if I ever knew them. The compromise was Andersen’s suite at the Brussels Hilton.

  The meeting will not be recorded in diplomatic history as having added to anybody’s store of knowledge except that of the puckish Irish Foreign Minister, Garret FitzGerald, who had never before witnessed transatlantic tribal rites. For his benefit I repeated the arguments on behalf of the Year of Europe with which by now my other colleagues were surely surfeited. There was some obligatory and perfunctory comment by two or three ministers who were no more creative than I had been in finding something original to say. FitzGerald, to whom all this persiflage was new, had a marvelous time. But even his wit and sharp mind could not extend the meeting beyond an hour — much to the relief of Jobert, who wanted to make sure there were few incentives to make the meeting a regular one.

  Afterward, a beaming Andersen, in his last month as chairman of the group, descended with me to the ground floor and told the waiting media of the “historic” meeting. The Dane had been an innocent victim of the tussle between the legal formalism of the Community and our abstract concepts of partnership. He seemed relieved that it was all over, which for him at least it was in his capacity as chairman. In my view the meeting underlined the malaise in US–European relations rather than easing it.

  Therefore, I made another conciliatory overture to end the squabble. Many months earlier I had agreed to address the Society of Pilgrims in London, a prestigious group dedicated, as its name implies, to the affirmation of the Anglo-American relationship. My visit had had to be canceled once because of the Middle East war. When it was rescheduled to follow the NATO meeting, Sir Alec had volunteered to introduce me. Throughout the difficult period he had spared no effort to improve European-American ties. He had generously praised my visit to Brussels as having “strengthened the alliance.” And he had taken part of the blame for Atlantic tensions on Europe’s shoulders when he said to the press that Europeans “did not recognize as quickly as the United States” the strategic significance of the Middle East war.

  Addressing the black-tie dinner on the evening of December 12, I summed up again the reasons that had led us to propose the Year of Europe: the growth of European strength, the emerging nuclear parity, the impact of a period of relaxing tensions, the growing interdependence of our economies. All this was occurring in a changed psychological environment that tended to weaken the moral basis of allied cohesion:

  The next generation of leaders in Europe, Canada, and America will have neither the personal memory nor the emotional commitment to the Atlantic alliance of its founders. Even today, a majority on both sides of the Atlantic did not experience the threat that produced the alliance’s creation or the sense of achievement associated with its growth. Even today, in the United States over 40 Senators consistently vote to make massive unilateral reductions of American forces in Europe. Even today, some Europeans have come to believe that their identity should be measured by its distance from the United States. On both sides of the Atlantic we are faced with the anomalous — and dangerous — situation in which the public mind identifies foreign policy success increasingly with relations with adversaries while relations with allies seem to be characterized by bickering and drift.

  I then listed four principles of American policy that would be the basis of our dialogue with our European allies: the imperative of East-West coexistence, leavened by the caution that “we must take care that the pursuit of détente not undermine the friendships which made détente possible”; the necessity of common defense; the reality of European unity; and the fact of growing economic interdependence. We were prepared to consult intensively on this agenda or any other agenda Europe might propose. At the same time, I cautioned against giving these consultations too formalistic a cast:

  But let us also remember that even the best consultative machinery cannot substitute for common vision and shared goals; it cannot replace the whole network of intangible connections that have been the real sinews of the transatlantic and especially the Anglo-American relationship. We must take care lest in defining European unity in too legalistic a manner we lose what has made our alliance unique: that in the deepest sense Europe and America do not think of each other as foreign entities conducting traditional diplomacy, but as members of a larger community engaged, sometimes painfully but ultimately always cooperatively, in a common enterprise.

  As we look into the future we can perceive challenges compared to which our recent disputes are trivial. A new international system is replacing the structure of the immediate postwar years. The external policies of China and the Soviet Union are in periods of transition. Western Europe is unifying. New nations seek identity and an appropriate role. Even now, economic relationships are changing more rapidly than the structures which nurtured them. We — Europe, Canada, and America — have only two choices: creativity together or irrelevance apart.

  As an example of this new creativity I invited the industrial democracies to form an Energy Action Group

  of senior and prestigious individuals with a mandate to develop within three months an initial action program for collaboration in all areas of the energy problem. We would leave it to the members of the Nine whether they prefer to participate as the European Community.

  And I concluded with another appeal for moral unity:

  We have every reason of duty and self-interest to preserve the most successful partnership in history. The United States is committed to making the Atlantic community a vital positive force for the future as it was for the past. What has recently been taken for granted must now be renewed. This is not an American challenge to Europe; it is history’s challenge to us all.

  I have quoted at such length from that speech because there was no goal that meant more to me than to maintain the vital partnership between the United States and Europe. In the Pilgrims speech I sought to meet previous European complaints. I offered a carte blanche for closer consultation. I specifically affirmed Europe’s global responsibilities, formally burying the canard that we sought to confine Europe to a regional role. I put forward a proposal to deal jointly with the energy problem that had caused near-panic among our allies (see Chapter XIX).

  Whatever grievances could be dealt with by words should have been removed by the Pilgrims speech. And since many of the complaints had addressed formulations in my original Year of Europe speech that I either withdrew or placed into context, there should have been a return to a spirit of cooperation.

  But subsequent events proved that the problem went far deeper. We wanted to give a new sense of purpose to Atlantic relations; our allies gave priority to constructing a united Europe. And they believed — in our view wrongly — that both causes could not be advanced simultaneously. In any event, both efforts were constantly interrupted by domestic upheavals, foreign crises, and the clashing time frame of two important enterprises. Soon the pattern that had developed over the past year reclaimed us.

  I left London to pursue the peace process in the Middle East — essentially unilaterally. Within days, the heads of government of the European Community convened in Copenhagen to define their identity equa
lly unilaterally. They did not respond to the Pilgrims speech, ignoring both the suggestions for new consultative devices as well as the proposal for an Energy Action Group. The subject on which they were prepared to be specific was the Middle East. They reiterated their call for a comprehensive solution — while I was seeking to assemble the Geneva Conference and start a disengagement process on a step-by-step basis with the support of even radical Arab states. This time it was in Riyadh that the news of the European statement reached me. I learned too that our allies would not be content with declarations: The French were urging a separate “European-Arab dialogue.” Given Europe’s stated objectives, this was bound to be at cross-purposes with our own efforts. And the European summit added another reminder of the growing divergence. A group of Arab foreign ministers had showed up in Copenhagen and they seemed to have no procedural difficulties in meeting with the heads of government of the Community — far fewer obstacles, in fact, than Nixon had encountered in pursuing the Year of Europe. There was no suggestion, as had been the case with the American President, that the foreign ministers meet only the President of the Community. To be sure, some allies claimed the Arab appearance was a surprise; the whole affair had been arranged on the spur of the moment. We knew better and they knew we did.

  In this atmosphere I called on Jobert at his Quai d’Orsay office on December 19 to brief him on my just-completed Middle East trip and the Geneva Conference coming up. There was the customary mixture of personal goodwill and wary fencing. Jobert asked how I felt among my real friends. I said I would settle for being among friends, real or not. He loved paradox and was playful. It pleased him to pretend that his personal views differed from the policy that the national interest or his President imposed on him; he told me that he really agreed with our step-by-step approach to the Middle East. Unfortunately, as Foreign Minister of France he had to take a different position. He would do so as slowly and as subtly as he could. I asked why it was in the interest of France that he should act against his personal convictions. France had to keep up appearances in the Mideast, he said. After all, we had dropped Europe out of the area. This I denied. What would France do if it were in the area? I asked. In principle it would be a great satisfaction, but in fact he really did not know what France would do, Jobert replied.