Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  One can argue that the differential in our favor of several thousand warheads makes no strategic difference; one cannot maintain at the same time that the Administration was “soft” in being willing to achieve it at the price of 300 single warhead launchers. Nor did it ever make any sense to ask SALT negotiators to reduce Soviet forces by diplomacy to a nonthreatening level when we had no building program to produce an incentive for it. But even a building program would have had to answer the query: If an advantage of 1,500 warheads in SALT was meaningless, what edge could a building program achieve that was strategically significant? In other words, as I said in a much-maligned press conference in Moscow at the end of the summit: “What in the name of God is strategic superiority?” Until we answer that question, arms control will be threatened by demagoguery and the strategic buildup by the absence of a rationale.

  To be sure, the Soviets’ offers were almost invariably preposterous. But this is par for the course. I cannot prove what would have happened had negotiations evolved in normal circumstances with a strong and functioning President and a united American government. I am convinced that in the spring of 1974, SALT became the whipping boy in a more fundamental philosophical contest over East-West relations. For its votaries, SALT turned into an end in itself; for its opponents, it was a danger to be combatted at any cost. SALT was no longer a part of a broader, coherent security policy or an overall strategy. Thrust upon itself, it became an orphan and a victim, ground down between a liberal idealism unrelated to a concept of power and a conservative dogmatism unleavened by a sense of proportion or strategy. And it was doomed above all by the inability of the President to supply consistent leadership during his Watergate travail.

  Missed opportunities unfortunately can never be proven. What gave the period discussed here its melancholy cast was that the United States weakened its capacity both to resist Soviet aggression and to build a better world by domestic disputes that turned honest disagreements into a species of civil war. Shortly after Golda Meir tendered her resignation, I said to her in a somber mood:

  The world may be heading for a war because the totalitarian countries are too bureaucratic and the democracies too demagogic. Frankly, I may have to consider in the next six months the same decision you made. I can’t keep fighting against labor, the Congress, the liberals, the intellectuals. It has nothing to do with your problem. Six months of Cold War and we will be back to “peace at any cost.” The people who demoralized us for years about Vietnam are responsible. If I explained in detail what I am doing, I would win Meany but lose the Russians. I am carrying out the toughest policy that can be sustained over a long period.

  This is not to suggest that we “provoked” the Soviets into the acts of aggression that followed. Nations do not have the right to send proxy troops around the world because they have been denied MFN. Nor is it proper for a country to shift to its interlocutor the intellectual burden of breaking every deadlock as has been the Soviet attitude in SALT. There is no excuse for the Soviet-Cuban expeditionary forces in Angola and Ethiopia, the Soviet encroachment in South Yemen and invasion of Afghanistan, the Kremlin’s encouragement of North Vietnam’s takeover of first South Vietnam and Laos and then Cambodia, and the brutal pressures on Poland. Other nations have suffered disappointment without assaulting the international order in response. Though we made our share of mistakes, the fundamental assault on détente came from Moscow, not Washington.

  Still, I reflect with melancholy on the way America consumed its unity in 1973–1974. One would have thought that an America racked by Watergate, with the Vietnam cease-fire in a precarious state, and a Middle East and energy crisis on its agenda, would be surfeited with confrontation. Instead, we found that the area of policy we had quieted down — East-West relations — became increasingly controversial. We reckoned it a considerable achievement to have kept Moscow from taking advantage of our crisis of authority, just as we earlier had used détente to isolate Hanoi and extricate ourselves from Vietnam. We were in the process of dramatically reducing Soviet influence in the Middle East. None of this prevented first rumblings about détente and then open season on it — as if a mortally wounded President had that much choice about the risks to which he could expose his country.

  There is no question in my mind that one of the casualties of the period was a balanced, careful, thoughtful approach to East-West relations. The sober teaching of the 1973–1974 period is that idealism did not, in the end, enhance the human rights of Jews in the Soviet Union (the emigration figure for 1975 was less than 40 percent of that for 1973); that the undermining of SALT did not improve our military posture; and that where the crusade against détente was successful it produced perverse consequences. The approach being legislated did not deter Soviet expansion. That increased, and the same domestic divisions that had spawned the confrontation prevented an effective response. The Soviet Union was not induced to behave in a more reasonable manner. The Administration had no illusions about Soviet purposes, but the domestic debate confused, instead of illuminated, the nation’s understanding of the complexity of our challenge. Thereby it diminished, rather than enhanced, our nation’s ability either to block Soviet adventures or to explore the possibilities of coexistence.

  The fact was that our critics had a better philosophical case than the technical obstacles that they were so ingeniously throwing into the path of our policy. It was a serious issue whether the American people could sustain a long drawn-out contest on grounds other than a moral crusade. Our policy did involve the risk of lowering vigilance through the fact of constant negotiations — this surely was the Soviet strategy. On the other hand, our critics refused to face the reality that the alternative they advocated involved the danger of isolating us from our allies and alienating us from our own people. We believed that our policy of seeking to dominate the peace issue would better prepare us for the long struggle in which we agreed with our conservative critics we were involved. It was a national tragedy that those who shared a similar strategic analysis should conduct a civil war over tactics.

  For our security and well-being in the nuclear age and to give hope to the world, our foreign policy must have a sense of positive purpose and design. That, in turn, requires a united people and a sense of continuity. Our goals in the world must not again be subordinated to our differences; foreign policy cannot be segmented into a series of domestic skirmishes. A divided America deprives the world of all hope; only a united country has a chance to help preserve international security and to help shape a better future for the peoples of this planet.

  * * *

  I. See Chapter VII, p. 242.

  II. The trade bill passed — with the Jackson amendment — at the end of 1974. Emigration from the Soviet Union fell to 13,200 in 1975, down more than 20,000 from the peak of 1973.

  III. The counterargument is that they would be tempted into a preemptive strike against us. So long as we retain the proper mix among various categories of strategic forces, that danger can be reduced. As it is, less than 40 percent of our throwweight is in land-based missiles, while more than 85 percent of the Soviets’ is — creating an asymmetry in our favor. If the Soviets can attack or pressure neighbors only by simultaneously attacking the United States, deterrence will be greatly enhanced. They will think twice if they must fear the destruction of their retaliatory force. If they have to choose between an attack on a neighbor coupled with an attack on the United States or doing nothing, they will probably do nothing.

  IV. We would give up 600 MIRV warheads (three for each of 200 Minuteman IIIs) and substitute 200 single warheads; hence the figure of 400.

  V. Depriving the Soviets of 280 medium-range missiles with six warheads, minus the 280 single warheads they would be permitted.

  XXIII

  The Syrian Shuttle

  IN the spring of 1974, it was clear on any calculation that the Syrian negotiation required priority. It was the capstone of the Middle East peace process. Its achievement would enable S
adat to proceed without being accused of betraying his ally; it would prevent pressures for the restoration of the oil embargo; and it would seal our domination of Middle East diplomacy. But the world does not stand still so that one may gather one’s wits. While a diplomat is often flatteringly viewed as moving in an orderly manner from one chess puzzle to another, in practice that cocoon of urbane concentration is not often or easily reached. I returned from the travels that established the negotiating procedures for the Syrian disengagement on March 4. Immediately afterward, we had the blowup with our European allies toward which both sides had been building for the better part of a year. Less than two weeks later I was in Moscow. Then the Sixth Special Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, focusing on problems of economic development, brought a seemingly unending stream of distinguished visitors to Washington.

  And on March 30, in an act transcending all else in its effect on my life, Nancy Maginnes and I were married.

  In all, it was almost two months before I resumed my Middle East travels. Not until the end of April did I embark on the Syrian shuttle, the exhausting negotiation that finally led to the disengagement of the Israeli and Syrian armies on the Golan Heights. I invited my new bride to join me and I told her to pack lightly. Little did I realize when I set out what a prolonged effort and drama lay ahead. For thirty-four weary days, I was to shuttle back and forth between Damascus and Jerusalem, greeted by hostile demonstrations against me in Israel and sullen stares in the streets of Damascus. How well I came to know the roads to the airports in these two capitals less than 150 miles apart and yet so totally uncomprehending of each other, the stark Judean hills and the flat plain of Damascus with snow-covered Mount Hermon framing the horizon! I interpreted each side to the other, came up with proposals to break the recurring deadlocks, and spent many a long night grappling with arcane issues whose intrinsic insignificance was transmuted into historic causes by the passions and traumas of the Middle East.

  And yet that was not the essence of the story. What made the Syrian-Israeli shuttle as moving as it was tortuous was that in the process each side caught at least a glimpse of the truth that the only hope for their future lay in coexistence. And in traveling that road they did more than achieve an agreement; they discovered something about themselves.

  Caging the Bear

  BEFORE any of this could begin, the most important preliminary task was to prevent the Soviets from intruding into the negotiation in a manner that would have made it futile. Détente assisted in this process; so did the design of the negotiation. But success here was more than anything a reflection of the strategic reality our policy had fostered — that we were the only power capable of talking effectively to all parties.

  One result of my February shuttle was that Israel and Syria had agreed to send emissaries to Washington to discuss disengagement separately with me. This plan had been devised to get around the difficulty that the Israeli plan for disengagement was so grudging that I could not conceivably put it to Asad; indeed, it was less a plan than a stopgap device to permit Israel to resolve its cabinet crisis before turning to serious negotiation. I set the visit by Moshe Dayan to follow my trip to Moscow in March so that I would not have to brief the Soviet leaders on what he brought, which I anticipated to be still less than satisfactory. The visit of the Syrian emissary was scheduled so that it followed the start of a visit by President Asad to Moscow in mid-April; this would forestall any temptation for Syria to add Soviet pressures to its own.

  None of these stratagems would have worked if Asad and Sadat had not had a clear understanding that their own interests were best served by American mediation. I was reasonably certain of Sadat but Asad had not yet really been put to the test. An opportunity soon arose. When I visited Moscow on March 24–28, both Brezhnev and Gromyko demanded that the Syrian disengagement be negotiated in Geneva in the presence of Soviet representatives. My judgment about the futility of this course had not changed since I had turned it down in February. As then, I used the Soviets’ Arab friends as an excuse; from Moscow I sent cables to obtain the reaction of both Sadat and Asad.

  On Sadat’s behalf, Fahmy asked me not to “budge” even if Asad yielded. I expected this because Sadat — even more than we — needed a demonstration that only the United States could deliver in the Middle East.

  Heroic as Sadat’s posture was, I have no idea how we could have insisted on an exclusively American mediation had Asad chosen other wise. Nothing so much demonstrated the weakness of the Soviet position than the fact that Asad did not. Within hours of receipt of my query, Asad replied that he stuck to the agreed procedure. He favored a movement to Geneva only after I had worked out the main features of an agreement “in the area”; Geneva could then tie up loose details. There had been nothing, we were told, to require a change in the procedures settled upon in early March. The President of Syria, remarkably, preferred to negotiate without his principal ally.

  The Soviets did not, of course, give up. A transparent example of Soviet disinformation followed. Reports began circulating in the Middle East that while in Moscow I had told the Soviets that Israel would never withdraw from the Golan Heights. On March 30, in a message to Asad, I sharply denied this story. Asad replied on April 2, accepting my version and characterizing the reports as malicious and specious. Asad specifically assured me that he did not believe the rumors.

  Next, there was a double squeeze, with Gromyko confronting Nixon in Washington at the same time that Brezhnev was attempting to suborn Asad in Moscow. Gromyko, taking time out on April 12 from the special UN General Assembly session in New York, assailed Nixon with acerbic complaints. He called our actions “separatist”; he would not be satisfied with a form of consultation that did no more than keep him informed. Joint action was the Soviet desire, though Gromyko was at a loss how to give it concrete meaning. Prior to the meeting I had warned Nixon by memorandum:

  Any direct Soviet participation in Middle East negotiations would inevitably greatly reduce the chances of success in bringing peace to the area. For one thing, Sadat and Asad as well as Israel want to keep them out. For another, they want to lump all the issues together in one big negotiation at Geneva, and we believe the whole process will stall unless we can continue to segment the negotiation into politically manageable units. Thus, we must continue to exclude the Soviets, while at the same time publicly minimizing their exclusion and privately reassuring them of our intention to keep them informed at every step of the negotiations. We are prepared to discuss the Syrian-Israeli disengagement in a general way or to discuss in theory the future role of the Geneva Conference, but we do not want to get into such detail as to enable the Soviets to build resistance to specific proposals.

  Nixon threaded his way through that maze with admirable ambiguity. Nothing was further from his mind, he told Gromyko, than to exclude Moscow. Indeed, our whole strategy was designed to enable the Soviets to play a significant role — which was nearly as much news to me as to Gromyko. The United States was simply dealing with those parts of the problem where it was better placed to produce progress. If Gromyko wanted to exchange roles and deliver the Israelis to a Golan agreement, he was surely welcome to try. In that case, we would be glad to take on the Syrians as clients. (Of course, even that definition of the problem would always leave the Soviets on the outside since there was no foreseeable issue on which they would be able to exercise a major influence on Israel.) But Nixon affected the pose of being above such trivia as the modalities of an agreed negotiation; as in February, he turned the solution of this technical problem over to foreign ministers, whose mission prevented them from sharing his lofty vision: “I hope you and Dr. Kissinger can work out some understanding so we can proceed to our goal, the peace settlement which we both pursue. I leave it to both of you and Dobrynin can be the referee.”

  In my own discussion with Gromyko I proposed a meeting with him in Geneva on my way to the Syrian shuttle in late April. Gromyko countered with Damascus as a ve
nue. But it takes two to meet, and I would not import the implication of US–Soviet condominium into a Middle Eastern capital.

  Asad, of course, held the key. He could have ended our diplomacy at any time he chose. As a reflection of his crucial position, he was wooed with a lavish reception on his visit to Moscow; at the Kremlin dinner in Asad’s honor, Brezhnev warned that “ersatz plans” for disengagement would mean “replacing an overall settlement with partial agreements of a different kind.” Rather pathetically, he went on to thank Syria for recognizing “the importance of the Soviet Union’s participation” in any peace settlement. What that meant was unclear. It surely did not extend to the current negotiation.

  The joint Soviet-Syrian communiqué issued on April 16 asserted that any disengagement “must be part and parcel” of an overall Middle East peace settlement. The two sides had “discussed and outlined steps for further strengthening” Syria’s military capacity. Mischievously throwing a match into a vat of oil, the Soviets affirmed Syria’s “inalienable right to use all effective means for liberation of her occupied lands.”1

  Asad, a supreme nationalist, pocketed the Soviet arms aid but did not adopt the Soviet program. On April 18 he wrote me that while in Moscow he had conducted a “general review” of activities concerning disengagement. However — and that was the important part — he maintained that no agreement was reached which would contradict the procedure he and I had already agreed on. In other words, lavish reception in Moscow or not, Asad would stick with the plan that excluded the Soviets. As for Gromyko’s desire to meet with me in Damascus, Asad went as far as he dared to dissociate himself; the Soviets had not raised the subject, he pointed out. Syria would agree provided it represented “a joint desire” by the two superpowers. In other words, Asad would not request such a meeting nor would he seek to undo my opposition to it; he would not, however, be the fall guy — that honor he reserved for me. Later in the day a Syrian Presidential aide, fearing that his chief had not been explicit enough, spelled it all out for our chargé, Tom Scotes. The aide made clear that if both sides desired the meeting, Syria would agree, but Damascus would not agree if Washington did not agree. I got the point.