Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  No leader was better suited to prepare the ground in Damascus than President Houari Boumedienne of Algeria, fiercely independent and a radical with special ties to Syria. During the October war he had paid a flying visit to Moscow to request Soviet military support for the Arab cause. According to Cairo scuttlebutt, he had returned disillusioned. I did not expect Boumedienne publicly to support an American diplomacy; for that he had given too many hostages to ideology. But if he spoke favorably of it in private to Syria, or even if he refrained from opposing it, Asad would have a pretext for cooperation and radical pressures on Saudi Arabia would be eased.

  We landed in Algiers on Thursday, December 13, in a steady drizzle that accentuated the aloof welcome. The voluble Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who had been one of the delegation of Arab foreign ministers that had called on Nixon and me during the war (see Chapter XI), could not quite bring himself to match the austere bearing of his associates. Young, vital, fashionably dressed, usually wearing a grand flowing cape and puffing a huge cigar, Bouteflika had no intention of wasting a free opportunity to get on television. Greeting me, he spoke more warmly of my visit than the official line as yet indicated.

  As we sped off to Boumedienne’s residence in the hills overlooking the Mediterranean, I found myself reflecting on a meeting I had had twenty years earlier with the great French writer Albert Camus in his small office at the Gallimard publishing house in Paris. I was a graduate student and editor of a small journal called Confluence, which presented European and American writers on various topics in the hope of encouraging Atlantic understanding. We had reprinted an article by Camus, and I called on him to pay my respects. He showed no surprise at my youth (I was then thirty); nor did he indicate that my quarterly was probably the least significant publication in which his writings had appeared. Unexpectedly — almost as if he were talking to himself and I was simply a convenient pretext for his reflections — Camus started to speak about Algeria, his place of birth, then a French province. He spoke gently of Algeria’s embodiment of conciliation and understanding, a product of its Mediterranean sun, stern traditions, and benevolent commingling of different cultures. Here, if anywhere, mankind might aspire to an ideal of brotherhood. Yet Camus already feared for his homeland’s future. He hoped that nationalism would not destroy its civilizing mission. He could not bear the thought that the passions of our age might engulf Algeria and separate him from it; its quest for identity should never take the form of separation from France. Much of it was inexplicable to me then, for the rumblings of the Algerian revolution were only beginning. Now, as I traveled to meet the victorious leader of Algerian nationalism, the French had been gone for over a decade. Whatever else could be said for modern Algeria, conciliation, brotherhood, and understanding among different peoples did not seem likely to mark its contribution to history. The product of a bitter war, it had carried over into diplomacy the uncompromising philosophy that had achieved its cohesion and the Marxist rhetoric that enabled its leaders to maintain control without the inconvenience of periodic elections.

  When we arrived at Boumedienne’s residence, a wing of the palace of the former French Governor General, a colorful guard of honor was at attention in the courtyard. The meeting room was long and cavernous. At the far end, ramrod-straight, stood Boumedienne, wearing a heavy black cape and holding in his hand a cigar. It seemed to be the Algerian uniform. Later on, I learned that Boumedienne tended to time meetings by the number of cigars he consumed: There were one- or two-or, rarely, three-cigar meetings. Not knowing this detail, I did not count the number of cigars I was allotted; at any rate, Boumedienne seemed to have plenty of time.

  Almost at once, Boumedienne made a point of telling me his cigar was Cuban. He had the ascetic face and the piercing eyes of a fanatic, but his manner was elegant and his tone courteous. He acted like a man who would not be satisfied with having been the military leader of a cruel struggle for independence. Like many self-taught military men, Boumedienne did not prize the martial art as much as another field less familiar to him and therefore endowed with mystery: that of political philosophy. He was of the generation to which the pop liturgy of Third World rhetoric had become second nature. America was “imperialistic”; Marxism was “progressive”; the Third World was “exploited” and inherently “peace-loving.” Like Camus he would insist on the universal significance of Algeria’s actions. But unlike the gentle Frenchman he sought Algeria’s vindication not in values of conciliation but in puritanical revolutionary insistence; in strident confrontation, not in becoming part of a universal culture he despised. And so the conversation between the President of revolutionary Algeria and the Secretary of State of capitalist America concerned mostly our conflicting philosophies of international relations, as if two professors of political science were debating the nature of their discipline.

  Boumedienne began with a courtesy that was at once a reassurance: “It is good to have you in the Middle East.” If radical Algeria welcomed my efforts, our strategy was halfway toward its goal. Boumedienne may have sensed that he had gone a shade too far, so he added a warning: “It is a region of passion. Great problems and great passions.” Without giving me a chance to comment, Boumedienne went straight to his main point in what he called “the Algerian style of action”:

  In recent years, you made a great overture to China, and you made a great initiative on your trip to the Soviet Union. You made a settlement in Indochina. The question is posed, is this a reconversion of the policy of the United States? Is the world still divided into two or three camps?

  I am an Arab of the generation that has been subject to two kinds of humiliations: The humiliation of colonialism, British or French, and the colonialism that one calls Israel — a country of 3 million that because of a certain massive support is the gendarme of the region. . . .

  In this context, objectively, there are three possibilities: An Arab peace, even one negotiated with Israel. Me, I negotiated with France. But that cannot be done by force. That’s our great desire. Given that the world is as it is, and given that the United States and Russia exist, the other possibility is a Russian-American peace. It is they who arranged the cease-fire. It is the United States which plays the primary role in this negotiation.

  I cannot be convinced that if it is an American peace it can be just. On one side [of the ledger] is the Vietnam peace, but also there is Israel. On one side was Pakistan, but on the other side was Chile.IV

  The logic of this presentation was a quest for reassurance. Boumedienne indicated a willingness to negotiate “even” with Israel — a major change for an Arab leader priding himself on his radicalism. And he emphasized the central role of the United States. What he wanted was some intellectual solace that America, the Marxist bugbear of his political schooling, would not live up to his own estimate of it. He respected the America that had opened to China and negotiated with Hanoi and stood by its friends in Pakistan. But he was less enchanted by other steps we had taken in defense of our interests and values. He seemed to want to pick and choose; even more, to convert us to his brand of radical socialism. Failing that, he wanted to convince himself that it was possible to trust us — though why in the light of his own Marxist beliefs about materialism and capitalism my protestations should be persuasive, he left unexplained.

  Of the three possibilities he had presented, Boumedienne seemed least desirous of a US–Soviet arrangement over the Middle East; his distrust of the Soviet Union despite his own Marxist proclivities became evident in a brief exchange:

  BOUMEDIENNE: Do you think the Soviet Union would fight for the Arabs?

  KISSINGER: No.

  BOUMEDIENNE: I don’t think so.

  Boumedienne having set the tone, there was no point wasting time in briefing him on the arcane subtleties of our draft letter of invitation to the Geneva Conference. His confidence would not be won by our demonstrating skill in ambiguous formulation; whatever understanding was possible depended on Boumedienne’s comprehension, if not a
cceptance, of our purposes. The prerequisite for dealing with erstwhile or potential adversaries — as Algeria certainly had been and might well become again — is to establish philosophical premises that can sustain the inevitable wear and tear imposed by practical necessities. So I spent most of the meeting outlining the concepts underlying our policy, particularly seeking to counter Boumedienne’s obsession with the danger of superpower domination. I explained:

  [O]ur fundamental view of international affairs . . . is that an attempt at physical dominance is incompatible with the objective tendencies and conditions of this period. Therefore, what we have attempted to do is encourage tendencies towards true independence, and to disengage America from — I don’t like the word “imperialism” — but from the objective necessity of making decisions for every part of the world. Therefore, we welcome European unity and don’t resist it, and we don’t object if it occasionally attacks us. Because if it has a real spirit of independence, sooner or later it will defend itself against its real dangers. It needs the support of its people if it is to do this.

  We don’t do this out of charity but because any other course would exhaust us physically and psychologically.

  Therefore Algeria’s relations with America, I argued, should not be determined by fashionable slogans like imperialism or colonialism. Instead, the test should be our ability to harmonize clearly understood national interests:

  Our objective is to deal with the truly independent Arab states. If in your foreign policy you do things of which we violently disapprove, we will react. If we do things of which you violently disapprove, you will react, as we see often in the United Nations. But if this relationship isn’t frozen in permanent hostility, we can live with it. And I told your Foreign Minister in Washington during the war that as soon as the war was over we would make a major effort. And I told him in the presence of more conservative Foreign Ministers of our respect for the revolutionary aspects of Algeria.

  So what we seek in this is not an American solution but the possibility for Arab nations to free themselves of their obsession with Israel, and let the natural tendencies of the Arab world assert themselves.

  Boumedienne would not abandon his stereotype of superpower perfidy this easily. If there was to be no Soviet-American condominium, there had to be rivalry, and in that case he wanted to know where I proposed to draw the line between the two spheres and what we would do to win over the “gray areas” — simultaneously fearing great-power competition and testing the opportunities for maneuver that it afforded to smaller countries. This allowed me another sally at condominium: “We recognize no Soviet sphere and do not want an American sphere.” Our rivalry with the Soviet Union would not be at the Middle East’s expense. At the same time I did not want to encourage the idea that small countries could play us off against each other: “Mr. President, serious people cannot be won. We are not going to win you. . . . You will act on your interests. So there will never be permanent victories. The question for us is whether your views and our views can be parallel.”

  Like many leaders of nonaligned nations, Boumedienne was ambivalent about superpower competition. He professed to dislike being its object; he did not mind exploring whether it lent itself to being a bazaar. He clearly did not like the Soviets. He did not object when I said: “But there is an important question of principle for us, which you must understand. If the Soviet Union in Geneva makes a very dramatic gesture, we will resist. We cannot be pressured.”

  When we discussed Middle East diplomacy concretely, Boumedienne turned out to be eminently practical. Fresh from the Arab summit held in his own capital, Boumedienne accepted the proposition that in its first phase the Geneva Conference should concentrate on disengagement. This had to mean that Asad had endorsed it or had even asked him to raise it; Boumedienne would never have expressed himself on so sensitive an issue on his own — a conclusion immediately confirmed when he added that he wanted to be certain Syria was not excluded from our diplomacy. I reassured him on that score. I told him that the Arab world was too complicated for me to invent a different story for each stop; he was free to report to Damascus what I had said to him — not much of a concession, since a main reason for seeing him was to get advance word of my attitude to Syria (another was, of course, to learn as much as possible of Asad’s thinking before I got to Syria). In any event, Boumedienne was certain to communicate with Asad, whatever my preference. I told him that the same principles of disengagement would be applied on the Golan Heights as in the Sinai. But I rejected the suggestion that we complete the Sinai phase before the opening of the Geneva Conference, especially as this would (he said) ease our oil problem.

  I replied sharply to the last point. Oil was a question of principle for us. We could not accept being threatened by those who were at the same time asking for our help. We could not promise the unfulfillable; we would stick to the schedule I had outlined to Sadat at our first meeting: We would adjourn the Geneva Conference after the first session and resume it around January 10. After that we would make a major effort to complete a Sinai disengagement. We would next turn to a Syrian disengagement, probably in February — but only if the embargo was lifted in the meantime.

  In line with my strategy of emphasizing the attainable, I avoided a question on the 1967 borders. And with reference to the expected controversies over the letter of invitation, I warned that raising the Palestinian issue at this time would destroy all chances for progress. Boumedienne did not insist, perhaps salving his conscience with the knowledge of General Walters’s Rabat meeting with the PLO, on which he had been briefed.

  We ended the meeting on a cordial note. Boumedienne agreed in principle that Washington and Algiers would reestablish diplomatic relations, although he thought the present moment premature; the heads of our respective Interests Sections in Algiers and Washington would, however, be immediately raised in rank. It was much the same formula worked out with Egypt four weeks earlier. We decided to characterize the two hours of conversations with the phrases “frank” (meaning we had disagreements) but “very constructive” (meaning that a large area of common view emerged and a good atmosphere had been created).

  At the airport, Bouteflika proclaimed to the assembled journalists that my visit had marked a turning point in Algerian-American relations and that Algeria supported the American peacemaking efforts in the Middle East. It meant that Algeria would be helpful in Damascus and not obstructive about the Geneva Conference.

  The amity of Algiers was limited: it amounted to tactical cooperation for a brief period and thereafter a tacit understanding not to exacerbate the inevitable differences in our approaches to world affairs. However, during the most fragile beginning phase of our Mideast diplomacy we enjoyed a degree of Algerian support that, given Algeria’s revolutionary stature in the Third World, was a not insignificant factor in enabling us to move matters forward.

  Cairo Again

  IARRIVED at Cairo airport Thursday evening, December 13, from Algiers. It was still blacked out; the front line was after all only some fifty miles distant. Foreign Minister Fahmy was at the airport, grumpily affectionate as always, masking his skillful and constructive conduct over the previous two weeks in belligerent noises about the limits of Egyptian endurance. I had not yet learned of Golda’s rejection of the draft invitation to Geneva. I was pleased that Egypt had accepted our language on the Palestinians (that is, “the question of . . .”). Fahmy had also cleared our draft as a combined “Syrian-Egyptian” position at a joint meeting with the American and Soviet ambassadors. Transmitting our own proposal as an Egyptian demand reduced the temptation for Soviet second thoughts. Clearing it in advance with Syria prevented Soviet or radical attempts to keep raising the ante.

  But there were also signs that Egypt’s flexibility had its limits. The very day of my arrival the leading Cairo daily, Al-Ahram had warned that the lifting of the oil embargo depended on Israeli withdrawals from Arab territory. And it added: “The solution does not lie in cleve
r diplomatic formulas couched in double meanings which each party can interpret in its own way to suit its purposes.” As a reference to our efforts to assemble the Geneva Conference, that was only too true, but if it was aimed at the substance of our Mideast diplomacy it quite missed the point. “It would be stupid Machiavellianism to tell different stories to different parties,” I told the reporters on my plane.2 I hoped they would carry the message to their Egyptian colleagues.

  Fahmy and I drove in Nasser’s old Mercedes straight to the Barrages, another of Sadat’s residences. Once again, Sadat, if anyone, would determine whether the peace process would go forward at the conference — now only five days away — or whether we were going to waste our capital in an endless debate over draft invitations and clever formulas that should never have been raised in the first place. The debate over the letter of invitation could produce only deadlock, not progress. However the letter was phrased, it could not substitute for the actual negotiations. The deadlock had to be broken once and for all or our diplomacy would move from the stylized to the explosive.

  How the Geneva Conference was organized was no small matter. Just as in chess, the formal opening moves could determine the outcome. I was anxious to split the conference into subgroups — Egyptian-Israeli, Syrian-Israeli, and Jordanian-Israeli — which would make it impossible for the Soviet Union to use radical Arabs as pawns to block progress at the plenary sessions. The Soviets had swiftly agreed to the subgroups, however, probably because of the eagerness of Egypt and Syria for disengagement. But Moscow had postponed to Geneva itself acquiescence in my follow-up proposal that Soviet and American representatives not participate in the subgroups, where the real work would be done, except at the invitation of the parties. I wanted to promote direct negotiations and retain flexibility to move rapidly behind the scenes without a Soviet veto. If Sadat went along with our preference, there would be little the Soviet Union could do to block it.