Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  The original idea, which emerged late in the diplomacy that led to the cease-fire, was for a conference of Arabs and Israelis under American and Soviet auspices to discuss a comprehensive peace settlement. No doubt the Soviets sold the October cease-fire to their Arab clients with the argument that US–Soviet “auspices” would provide the means by which the Soviets could press the maximum Arab demands — in other words, that it meant implementation of the comprehensive scheme Brezhnev had tried to sell to Nixon in the study at San Clemente.

  However, our step-by-step strategy prevailed because in the end all sides — even radical Syria and the Soviet Union — each for its own reasons agreed that the tangled military dispositions inherited from the war were precarious, dangerous, and intolerable. But to get there we had to reconcile vastly different national aims. The Geneva Conference was a way to get all parties into harness for one symbolic act, thereby to enable each to pursue a separate course, at least for a while. It was as complicated to assemble the great meeting as it was to keep it quiescent afterward while diplomacy returned to bilateral channels.

  Sadat had the clearest grasp of his objectives. He was determined to reverse Egypt’s alliance with the Soviet Union and establish a close association with the United States. This was a delicate and risky maneuver; at any given intermediate point he ran the risk of being too far from the Soviet Union to enjoy its diplomatic support yet not sufficiently close to the United States for us to act as Egypt’s advocate. He faced a similar dilemma in his relations with his Arab brethren. Sadat could never reach his objective if he permitted Syria a veto over his policy; yet until his own peace process was well in train, Sadat needed the threat of renewed military action as a bargaining chip, a threat that had no credibility without his alliance with Syria. Suspended between the superpowers, wary of Syria yet dependent on it in a showdown, Sadat saw the Geneva Conference as a safety net, a forum to which he could appeal if all else failed.

  Syria’s ambivalence was exactly the opposite of Sadat’s. The governing political party in Damascus — the radical Baath — had based its program on rejection of the State of Israel. But participating in a peace conference with Israel inevitably implied a degree of acceptance of the Jewish state — for with what other entity was one negotiating? — and therefore incurred domestic political cost without obvious compensating gain. Still, Syria could not function normally while Israeli forces were at the gates of Damascus. Thus Syria’s President Hafez al-Asad was driven reluctantly toward a disengagement negotiation.

  To Sadat, disengagement was the first step in what he suspected, given Syrian ambivalence, would have to be a separate Egyptian peace; Asad probably rationalized that it was the last phase prior to a renewed confrontation with Israel — at least on the diplomatic level.

  Jordan’s position was perhaps the most complex. Each Arab state proclaimed its devotion to the Palestinian cause, partly out of conviction, partly to curry favor with the radical trend in the area. Avowal of Palestinian goals was helpful even to states falling in with the step-by-step approach; the inevitable compromises could be presented as stages toward a solution of the Palestinian problem. Every Arab leader was in a position to play this game except our friend King Hussein. A Palestinian state could be formed only at the expense of Jordan’s previous position in Palestine (Jordan had governed the West Bank from 1948 to 1967) and indeed its genesis would mark the opening of a struggle over the very existence of the Hashemite state east of the Jordan River. Leaders of the PLO had avowed frequently enough that the blood feud with Hussein was even deeper than that with Israel. And Hussein could count on little support from his fellow Arabs.

  Jordan, moreover, was in no position to threaten resumption of military operations. But while Hussein had little direct stake in the disengagement schemes being discussed, he favored the Geneva Conference because his participation in it would aid his claim to speak for the Palestinians. And any disengagement accords that emerged could serve to establish a precedent for bringing Jordan back onto the West Bank. We wanted Hussein to attend the Geneva Conference for the same reasons.

  Israel, too, had an interest in a Geneva Conference leading to step-by-step diplomacy. While it was willing enough to stay where it was for a while, it would need several divisions to hold the territory across the Suez Canal, preventing demobilization. And Israel would never recover its prisoners of war in Syria unless it evacuated the environs of Damascus.

  As for the two superpowers, their perspectives differed according to their objectives. The Soviet Union was stymied by its basic dilemma as it had been throughout my period in office. So long as it would not separate itself from the comprehensive Arab program, it could not contribute to the diplomacy; the program was unrealizable even by American pressure. Moscow could not bring about Arab terms by supplying arms to its clients, as had been shown in the just-concluded war. Nor was it ready for a direct military confrontation, as had been demonstrated during the alert. Doomed to impotence by the ponderousness and clumsiness of its diplomacy, the Kremlin sought the Geneva Conference as a means to reduce our freedom of action, to receive joint credit for any progress by riding on our coattails, and, in the more likely eventuality of a deadlock, to shift the onus for it onto our shoulders.

  Our position was as promising as it was complicated. We alone had a program that could be implemented. Egypt and ultimately Syria insisted on our participation. They valued (and probably exaggerated) our influence over Israel; it was also easier for them to accept American negotiating proposals than to meet Israeli demands. If by our step-by-step approach we achieved some significant breakthrough, radical rhetoric would perforce be muted; moderate Arab states would be encouraged to persevere; Soviet influence would wane. To bring about a negotiated withdrawal via a disengagement would not be irrelevant, as some of our allies claimed; it was the psychological prerequisite for more far-reaching steps. After all, it would represent the first time Israel had been induced by a negotiation to retire from territory it had occupied for any length of time.

  The United States’s policy therefore proceeded on several levels simultaneously. We helped to organize the Geneva Conference as a symbol of our commitment to overall peace, as a means of keeping in touch with the Soviet Union during the delicate phase while the cease-fire hung in the balance, and as a fallback position if alternative routes failed. Our task was eased because the Soviet Union after the October alert and the November six-point plan found itself powerless to effect the disengagement of forces demanded by both Cairo and Damascus. Moscow knew that Egypt, especially, could not permit its Third Army to remain cut off in the Sinai through the months and perhaps years of a conference on a comprehensive peace. To sabotage disengagement in the Sinai therefore would have had the practical consequence of producing either a war as the Third Army sought to break out or, more likely, an explicitly separate arrangement without even the cover of Geneva. Thus Moscow fell in with making disengagement the first phase of the Geneva Conference — and thus with a strategy designed to reduce its own influence.

  The industrial democracies of Western Europe and Japan were reluctant spectators. They sought diplomatic progress in order to end the oil embargo and production cutbacks that threatened to wreck their economies. But they were decidedly unenthusiastic about the US–Soviet “auspices” for negotiations from which they were excluded, even though their own policies had contributed to this situation. They opposed the kind of agreement that was in prospect because they had consistently pressed for a comprehensive approach. Our allies were thus cool to the forum we had chosen and hostile to what we foresaw as the only realistic outcome — not a brilliant state of affairs.

  By now we had left no doubt that, Watergate or not, we would resist Soviet, radical, and European pressures in the Middle East. I explained the strategy at an informal luncheon meeting with Jim Schlesinger, Bill Colby, Tom Moorer, and Ken Rush on November 29:

  Our strategy had to be that when the Soviet Union, the British and French p
ress, we stall — so all of them know only we can deliver. That will help Sadat and the moderate Arabs. All the Arabs are coming to us. We will commence on the 16th. That is closer to the Israeli elections.I Then we have to move for a disengagement.

  Diplomacy depends above all on available assets. We had the stronger hand; we played it.

  The Kilometer 101 Talks and the Beginning of Disengagement

  WHILE our design was unfolding, we had somehow to cope with real life: An Egyptian army was cut off in the desert, its agony bound to increase with every passing week. Even if Sadat was content to wait for our strategy, some of his subordinates, anxious to loosen the Israeli noose around the Third Army, would be tempted to speed up the process without waiting for the complicated minuet leading to Geneva to be completed. Their vehicle was the Egyptian-Israeli military talks at Kilometer 101 on the Cairo-Suez road, where guidelines to implement the November six-point program were being worked out by General Aharon Yariv of Israel and General Abdel Ghany el-Gamasy of Egypt. At first, the meetings dealt primarily with such issues as exchange of prisoners, supplies to Suez and the Third Army, and the establishment of checkpoints — in other words, the last four of the six points.II (The first exchange of Egyptian and Israeli prisoners took place on November 15.) The first two points — maintenance of the cease-fire, and especially the “question of the return to the October 22 positions in the framework of agreement on the disengagement and separation of forces under the auspices of the UN” — were still to be discussed. My understanding with Sadat had been that we would turn to disengagement only after the Geneva Conference was assembled.

  But Sadat’s subordinates were less patient. They wanted progress made toward disengagement prior to the Geneva Conference, either by negotiating a complete scheme or by forcing an immediate Israeli withdrawal to the October 22 line — wherever that might be. The adamant refusal to consider this was, of course, the stuff of the crisis of the previous months, including the alert.III In any event, Gamasy injected a certain dynamism into the Kilometer 101 talks by pushing along the discussion with Yariv faster than I had expected on the basis of my talks with Sadat.

  There were also elements in Israel tempted by the idea of a rapid disengagement even before Geneva assembled. The Kilometer 101 talks were a means for Israel to free itself from American tutelage. They provided an opportunity to test whether Israel’s favorite scheme of a mutual withdrawal from the Suez Canal was as much of a nonstarter as I had alleged. Nor was Golda reluctant to show her electorate as she was campaigning for reelection that something was going on at Kilometer 101. The problem was, however, that the Israeli government was not fully agreed as to exactly what should take place at Kilometer 101, nor as to what kind of disengagement to seek with Egypt. General Yariv, a former chief of intelligence and a brilliant strategist, proved most ingenious at developing alternative schemes for resettling Israeli, Egyptian, and UN troops at various lines in the Sinai. His creativity led to a flood of Israeli proposals tested on Gamasy and spelling out in increasing detail an Israeli military conception of disengagement. Gamasy compounded the confusion by matching Yariv’s proposals with his counterproposals. Unfortunately, neither negotiator spoke fully for his government. Yariv’s plans did not always have cabinet blessing and Sadat wanted to involve, not exclude, us. The talks moved to stalemate.

  The whole process tested our patience. For one thing, we never knew exactly what was happening at Kilometer 101. We got different reports from the Israelis, the Egyptians, and the UN as to what was going on in the tent where these extraordinary meetings were taking place. Their only common feature was being at least forty-eight hours behind events. Frequently we had three versions of a deadlock to choose from — often four. And deadlock over disengagement was the last thing we wanted, since the separation of forces in the Sinai was the centerpiece of our strategy. On the other hand, we were not, to be frank, too eager for a breakthrough at Kilometer 101 before the Geneva Conference. As I cautioned Ambassador Dinitz on December 3: “Suppose Yariv comes out a great hero on disengagement, what do you discuss on December 18 [at Geneva]?” Our strategy required first that we assemble the conference to defuse the situation and symbolize progress but then that we use its auspices to establish our central role. If disengagement disappeared from the agenda, we would be forced into endless skirmishing over broader issues on which I knew we would not be able to deliver quickly, if at all.

  The real problem at Kilometer 101 was not likely to be breakthrough, however, but deadlock. For one thing, I was given strong reason to believe that Golda preferred to have matters not actually come to a head before the Israeli election (and therefore not before the Geneva Conference) and that her cabinet shared her view. For another, Egypt was not really ready either. To be sure, Yariv put forward several principles that were later incorporated in the disengagement scheme — zones of limited armaments on both sides with a UN presence in between. But his ideas as to what armaments these zones could contain were too restrictive to be accepted by even the most moderate Egyptian leader. In any event, it soon was evident that Sadat could not accept any limitation on his own forces on Egyptian soil if it was put forward by Israel. American mediation became essential. On November 29, Egypt solved the problem: It broke off the Kilometer 101 talks, allegedly because Yariv had suddenly begun backtracking, refusing to spell out in detail what force levels or depth of zones he had in mind. Disengagement would now have to be dealt with after Geneva was assembled — much as we had planned.

  Throughout, Soviet conduct belied the theory that Moscow always operated on a master plan devised by strategists of diabolical insight. It was so obsessed with getting a piece of the action that it, too, preferred delaying disengagement to the Geneva Conference. On November 26, I told Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin to calm down his colleague in Cairo, Sergei Vinogradov, who was pushing Fahmy’s line that some disengagement must precede the Geneva Conference. The next day Dobrynin replied that Vinogradov had only been repeating Egyptian complaints; he was not associating himself with them. On November 30 I discussed the collapse of the Kilometer 101 talks with Dobrynin as if our objectives were parallel instead of the prelude to encouraging Egypt to move away from Moscow. “I really think we are on a good course now,” I said, with the road to our preferred strategy now open — though why I thought Dobrynin might share this judgment the record does not reveal and my recollection does not indicate. Dobrynin replied equably: “We may not like the situation, not withdrawing, but realistically we agree with you.” I told Dobrynin that while I could not guarantee a specific date for the separation of forces, I could give early January as the starting date for a major American effort to bring it about: “It will be a matter of weeks after that.”

  Unable to avoid the temptation of scoring a petty point (even at the risk of undermining confidence), the egregious Vinogradov reported this schedule to Fahmy as if it had been exacted by Soviet diplomacy (and as if we were so amateurish as to give a schedule to Moscow that had not been discussed with Sadat). Vinogradov’s ploy earned him only cynical comments from Fahmy.

  The practical result of the exchanges with Dobrynin was to discourage the Soviets from joining Egyptian pressures for rapid progress on disengagement prior to the Geneva Conference, and thus to keep the pace of disengagement negotiations under our control. While many factors entered into Moscow’s decision — including a miscalculation of its ability to increase its influence in the Middle East at Geneva — its restraint was seriously influenced by a desire to preserve the relationship with the United States. On November 10 Brezhnev had written to Nixon that “we want to be sure . . . we shall not only overcome the present Middle East crisis but we shall also move even further ahead in strengthening relations between our countries.”

  Soviet diplomacy — for all its tendency to grab for loose change — continued in that spirit throughout November, working with us on assembling the Geneva Conference and sidestepping Egyptian pressure for a prepayment. The Soviets may not
have had brilliant options, but they pursued those that gave us the least trouble. Détente did not prevent us from seeking to reduce the Soviet role in the Middle East nor the Soviets from scoring points with the Arabs now and then. But fairness compels the recognition that Moscow never launched an all-out campaign against us. And we took pains not to humiliate the Soviet Union overtly even while weakening its influence. Détente is the mitigation of conflict among adversaries, not the cultivation of friendship.

  Right after the breakup of the Kilometer 101 talks, Egyptian impatience seemed to mount. (I say “seemed to” because I am not sure it was not largely Fahmy’s device to keep our feet to the fire.) Fahmy complained bitterly to Hermann Eilts, our new Ambassador to Egypt, about the lack of progress. According to Fahmy, even Sadat now insisted on some movement toward disengagement as a prerequisite to Egyptian participation at Geneva. And there were hints that Egypt might ask the United States and the Soviet Union to break the impasse, or alternatively that Egypt might appeal to the UN Security Council. Eilts’s reminder that Sadat and I had earlier agreed that disengagement should be the first agenda item of a peace conference brought a sharp retort from Fahmy that the peace conference could always take up a second phase of disengagement. But he must have understood the impossibility of this idea. Israel would never make two major withdrawals in the space of one month. And an Egyptian appeal to the Soviet and American governments to break the stalemate would have repeated the crisis of the previous month with the same inconclusive outcome.

  What started as a Fahmy pressure play threatened, as so often in the Middle East, to turn into the real thing as the parties listened to their own rhetoric and liked what they heard. We began to receive reports that Egypt was considering resuming military action. Clearly, it was essential to restore some perspective. On December 1, we sent a firm letter from Nixon to Sadat in tandem with one from me to Fahmy warning against any Egyptian appeal to the superpowers: