Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  No doubt the premise that the industrial democracies shared certain problems was at the base of both initiatives. But where the Year of Europe sought a moral rededication in order to face issues that had not yet arisen, the energy conference was designed to combat a clear and immediate danger. It was one thing to argue about methods of consultation when the subject was an abstract declaration; there was some justification for anxiety that Europe’s identity might be swallowed in the institutionalization of Atlantic unity — although even then Jobert was carrying a valid theoretical point to extraordinary lengths. But the energy crisis did not lend itself to regional subdivisions. To deal with it through consumer solidarity was not a theoretical preference; it was the only feasible strategy for restoring the balance of the world energy market, and was probably more vital to Europe’s (and France’s) real interests than even to ours.

  I reiterated our objective in remarks on February 6 before the Harvard, Yale, and Princeton clubs of Washington:

  [W]e thought it essential that those nations that consume and import 85 percent of the world’s energy meet first, because they have a common problem of a very large size, that is manageable by cooperative effort only; and that will surely lead to the ruin of everybody if it is attempted to be settled on a unilateral basis. . . .

  [I]f every nation adopts a policy of beggaring its neighbors a collapse of the world economy will be inevitable and the whole structure of cooperative world relationships that has developed since the war will be in jeopardy.

  That was the theme of our talks with the various foreign ministers who began to arrive for the energy conference over the weekend of February 9. I had spent the nearly three weeks since the end of the Egyptian shuttle in continual preparations with a core group of colleagues consisting of Treasury Secretary George P. Shultz, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Arthur Burns, Federal Energy Administrator William Simon, and Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance William Donaldson.III We had drawn up a program for energy cooperation listing seven tasks: conservation; alternative energy sources; research and development; emergency sharing; international financial cooperation; help for the poorer developing countries; and consumer-producer relations. We intended to offer the consumers the outline of an integrated, well-considered strategy, to give them confidence that they could take charge of their future if they all worked together. At a planning session in January I had said:

  What we need to do is to take the mystery out of the energy situation. This means we must give the Europeans and Japanese the facts. If we can show them the situation is manageable and not all bad, that they need not rush after bilateral deals, that our course of cooperation is in their best interest, we will succeed in this endeavor.

  This outline had been discussed in the various capitals prior to the conference by a mission headed by Donaldson; we put a fleshed-out version before the key ministers on Sunday, February 10, in a series of bilateral meetings.

  I started the day with breakfast with Walter Scheel, attending in his dual capacity as West German Foreign Minister and President of the European Community Council of Ministers. I told him that for us the conference was a test of the possibility of a cooperative world order. Here we would not be a party to a confusing outcome in which rhetoric obscured failure. We would rather announce disagreement and draw the political consequences — a thinly veiled threat that this time intransigence would not be free. Scheel made no attempt to defend the substance of the foreign ministers’ decisions at Brussels. He placed the responsibility exclusively on the shoulders of Jobert; France had to be given “something” to stay in the Community:

  We look at the situation in Europe and we find ourselves in a difficult situation. The French always seem to proceed in their own worst interests. You have examples of it in their isolated floating and now in their attempts to seek economic benefits on their own. We know that in the end this sort of thing is going to lead to chaos and that’s what we are trying to prevent. There are politicians in all of our governments who are anxious to try to keep the French from moving out of the Community.

  Scheel wondered whether we could leave open the outcome of the conference until the European foreign ministers met again a few days later. They could then adopt an agreed position and make it appear that Europe had taken the initiative; this would save French prestige. I said this was acceptable provided there was an ironclad assurance that the Community would indeed adopt the consensus of the conference. Scheel sadly confessed his inability to give such an assurance. In these circumstances I could not agree to postponing a decision.

  The next problem was whether a permanent consumer energy organization should be created. Scheel warned that any such attempt would meet the bitter opposition of France. I replied that I did not care about the label under which consumer cooperation took place; we would not argue about whether any committees emerging from the conference were called ad hoc or permanent; some of the seven tasks we had outlined could be assigned to existing institutions. This was certainly the case with, for example, international financial cooperation and the plight of the poorer developing countries. Other issues — being new — would require special working groups and some coordinating mechanism; if it would help salve French pride, we could put these groups under the aegis of the OECD, of which France was already a member, though he and I knew this would not change the substance. Scheel gave the impression that he would not leave Washington heartbroken if I forgot about the entire project. At the same time there was little doubt that he saw, if not the force of our arguments, then the realities of the situation. Europe was in no position to refuse consumer solidarity, for in the process it would leave itself totally naked if there should be another emergency. In the end Germany could not afford the precedent of isolated action in a crisis; hence it would side with us. The conversation was significant above all because it revealed that the mandate agreed to a few days earlier at Brussels, under French influence, did not have the enthusiastic support of the other Europeans at the conference. The head of the Council of Ministers of the European Community revealed that his colleagues were seeking an interpretation of their instructions at variance with their literal meaning; later on they would seek to backpedal and compensate France for doing what was right.

  Following Scheel, I saw Mitchell Sharp, Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs; had lunch with Japanese Foreign Minister Masayoshi Ohira; met with European Commission President Ortoli; and breakfasted with Alec Home the next morning. They confirmed my judgment that we were on firm ground; in a showdown it would not be we who would be isolated. The cooperative spirit did, to be sure, stop considerably short of what we thought was needed. Every minister I consulted was still terrified of possible confrontation with the producers. From the tone of their remarks, one would never have known that the producers had just quadrupled oil prices, slashed production, and imposed a selective embargo as a political weapon. If that was not a confrontation forced on us, we would need a new vocabulary.

  At least some of the practical measures we were proposing — emergency sharing, conservation, and joint development of alternative energy sources — involved no risks; whatever posture the consumers adopted toward the producers, craven or courageous, these steps would strengthen their bargaining position. It was recognized that we were not defending the American interest in any narrow sense; this was Jobert’s Achilles’ heel. Of all the participants in the conference, we were in the best position to go it alone. But a world in which all kindred nations were reduced to scavengers or supplicants did not accord with our idea of progress or justice.

  There were two more key conversations before the formal opening of the conference on the morning of February 11. The first was around 7:00 P.M. on Sunday evening, February 10, with my old and cherished friend Helmut Schmidt, then German Finance Minister. Schmidt and I had met twenty years earlier when on a visit of mine to the Federal Republic he had been introduced to me as a promising young man. He struck me then as brash, fo
rceful, and intelligent. We stayed in touch over the years. Gradually it dawned on me that the somewhat overbearing manner was the defense mechanism of a gentle, even sentimental, man who had to stress his intellect and analytical power lest his emotions run away with him. Our friendship soon transcended the tasks that destiny imposed on us. We both knew that we served our countries not by imposing our views but by seeking solutions both of us could believe in. I will deal with my evaluation of Schmidt as Chancellor in another place. That evening, as the dusk settled over Washington, we ruminated in my cavernous office at the State Department overlooking the Lincoln Memorial. I told Schmidt of my fear that the crisis of authority in America might become so obvious that no diplomatic tour de force could rescue us from disaster. Nor did I see other countries able to step in to play the role we risked vacating. The West was beginning to act like the old Greek city-states; by exalting self-will it dissipated its inspiration. The conference about to start would become a symbol of our decline or, with luck, a turning point.

  Schmidt had his own political crisis at home, for Chancellor Willy Brandt was beginning to lose his own grip on events. But Schmidt never referred to it. He was tired of politics, he affirmed. He had been battling for twenty years, in the cockpit for five. He saw no sense in going on. Later on that year he would probably retire. I had heard him muse like this before; it seemed that this pugnaciously gentle man could keep himself going only by announcing periodically that he would abandon the sole profession that really interested him. I appealed to him with an argument that I knew Schmidt prized above all others: human reliability. I said that everyone had to judge for himself when the wear and tear of high office became too much. I only wanted him to know that it was a great solace to have such an absolutely trustworthy person in high office in the Western world.

  Schmidt did not debate the point. Because he did not care whether he stayed or went, he said, he had nothing to lose. He shared our general assessment of the energy crisis and the need for the kind of program we had outlined. He would do his utmost to fight for it. And since Foreign Minister Scheel had to serve as President of the European Community Council of Ministers, Schmidt would in effect present the German point of view. He would not participate in the attempt to turn Europe against America on an issue insoluble except by common efforts. He would affirm a program parallel to ours.

  With Germany, Japan, and Britain essentially supporting our approach, we held the stronger hand at the conference. But my preference was to bring Jobert into the consensus rather than to outvote him. He had arrived, almost directly from the Middle East, in the early evening of February 10. I called on him at the French Embassy shortly after, around 9:30 P.M. He was the only foreign minister whom I did not ask to come to my office (my schedule would have been unmanageable had I tried to call on all of them). This was intended as a sign of goodwill. Despite Jobert’s taunts during his recent trip to the Middle East, I was too committed to Franco-American friendship to court a clash that could benefit no one. And I liked him personally very much. I had sharply criticized the Kennedy and Johnson administrations for pushing for a showdown with France and thereby polarizing European politics. I was persuaded that there were no winners in such contests; therefore, I wanted to make a final effort to find a solution and, failing that, prove to myself that conflict was unavoidable.

  Later Jobert wrote dramatic descriptions of the encounter. I had been making frightful scenes to terrorize the other Europeans, he claimed. He tamed me by warning me not to use such tactics on him; this allegedly left me speechless and neither of us spoke for a long period while tempers cooled.2 It is a tale in keeping with Jobert’s romantic streak. Perhaps in a meeting with no witnesses it is impossible later to capture the historical truth objectively. Philosophers may argue that there are many truths and that they reside exclusively in the perception of the participants, as in the Japanese film Rashomon.

  Be that as it may, my recollection of the meeting is quite otherwise. When I asked Jobert what disturbed him about the energy conference, he replied quite simply, “American leadership.” I appealed to him for a turn away from a collision course that would be a disaster for all free peoples. The United States had called the conference, I said, not to establish our dominance over the Atlantic community; rather, the world’s petroleum crisis permitted no other course. If the dispute was one of form, I would do my utmost to ease matters for France psychologically. For example, as I had told Scheel, I would be prepared to see an energy action group placed under the aegis of OECD if this overcame the French objection to new institutions. But the substance was valid; we would all doom ourselves if every consumer nation was left to its own devices.

  Jobert, as I remember the encounter, was sardonic. He would happily support seizing OECD with energy but only in existing committees (which, as he knew, did not cover all the tasks that we had outlined). France would welcome a continuation of the Washington conference in OECD’s Paris headquarters but would not pledge itself in advance to an agreed outcome (meaning it reserved the right to exercise its veto). In other words, Jobert was giving me an opportunity — and offered his cooperation — to scuttle our own energy design. Adjournment in Washington without an agreed outcome would guarantee failure in Paris, if indeed OECD ever met on the subject. Sighing, Jobert hinted once again that his life was hard: He was caught between the realities of a conference and the pressures of his sick President, with whom he did not fully agree. I could sympathize with Jobert on this point. But I could not help him resolve his own domestic political dilemma by sacrificing the purposes of the conference. So we were at least able to agree as to the outcome of the meeting: A showdown was now inevitable.

  The Washington Energy Conference

  TACTICALLY, the United States was in a good position; the principal participants were not going to support French intransigence. But it was not yet clear whether they would be lined up behind a meaningful, positive program; our danger was not failure but half-measures. After the opening session on February 11, I told Al Haig:

  The French are isolated but we are not getting what should be happening — a response of united action. They are all looking for ways of getting into talks with the Arab producers before they know what they want. The basic theory [of consumer unity] they are not willing to buy. We will get enough to make it look respectable. There is no strategic conception there.

  The ministers and delegates assembled in what is now called the Loy Henderson Conference Room of the State Department, a vast hall on the ground floor. A large rectangular table had been set up around which the delegates sat by country in alphabetical order. Ministers were at the table, assistants just behind them. Yet another row or more of interested parties was lined in a third echelon. The American contingent was, as customary, especially large — every interested federal agency insisted on being represented in some manner and it was hard to think of an agency, other than the US Postal Service, that did not claim to have a stake in the conference. As a host I sat at the head of the table together with Walter Scheel. Each nation was represented by at least two ministers — usually foreign and finance (the Japanese had sent their foreign minister and minister for science and technology). Only Jobert was alone. Pompidou had disapproved the attendance of Finance Minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing; he wanted to downgrade the conference as much as possible and he had always been waspish about his brilliant Finance Minister — perhaps because they were both experts in the same field and Giscard made it clear that he hoped to succeed his ailing chief.

  I opened the conference with an exposition of the energy problem that my colleagues had leaked in bits and pieces before. I quoted from my great predecessor, Dean Acheson, to the effect that usually failure lies “in meeting big, bold, demanding problems with half measures, timorous and cramped.” I asserted that the United States had called the conference before everybody’s position hardened, for one central purpose:

  to move urgently to resolve the energy problem on the basis of co
operation among all nations. Failure to do so would threaten the world with a vicious cycle of competition, autarky, rivalry, and depression such as led to the collapse of world order in the thirties. Fortunately, the problem is still manageable multilaterally: National policies are still evolving, practical solutions to the energy problem are technically achievable, and cooperation with the producing countries is still politically open to us.

  I then put forth the seven-point program for consumer cooperation outlined above. I made my bow to the dialogue with producers that all my colleagues were advocating. But I stressed that in our view it would have to grow out of consumer solidarity, not be a substitute for it:

  A well-conceived producer-consumer meeting in which the consumers do not seek selfish advantages either as a group or individually, far from leading to confrontation, could instead lay the basis of a new cooperative relationship. But it will do so only if it is well prepared — and if the consumers have first constructed a solid basis of cooperation among themselves.

  My speech was buttressed by a presentation by energy czar William Simon. Simon sought to take the terror out of the energy crisis by analyzing its causes and remedies. He showed that the situation, while serious, was manageable over a period of time provided the consuming countries cooperated in the sharing of information, development of new energy sources, and conservation. Simon pressed his favorite theme that it would be in the interest even of producers to reduce prices from the current level of more than $11 per barrel — an argument always more persuasive to him than to any other audience. Treasury Secretary George Shultz suggested measures of joint action to overcome the financial dislocations caused by high oil prices. The American theme, in short, was one of optimism: The consuming nations, while buffeted by crisis, still held their future in their own hands. The energy cataclysm was not the result of sinister forces but of remediable conditions. The way to deal with them was not by submission to the dictates of the producers, but by remedying the economic circumstances that had created the crisis.