The Superstar on His Own

As he whirled through the capitals of Europe and the Middle East last week, Henry Kissinger more than ever before warranted comparison to Metternich, Talleyrand and other great foreign ministers of the past--2;or, perhaps, to the fast-moving comet Kohoutek. No other Secretary of State in U.S. history has ever carried so much power, so much responsibility or so heavy a burden. One of Kissinger's principal tasks on his two-week trip was to mend at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels, the severely strained relations with Amer ica's allies, a task he performed with moderate success. The other and far more difficult assignment was to create a climate for an auspicious start to this week's Geneva peace talks between the Arabs and the Israelis.

Long viewed as the second most powerful man in the U.S., Kissinger --largely as a result of Watergate--is now the supreme architect of American foreign policy. He is the one figure of stature remaining in the rums and the devastation of Richard Nixon's stricken Administration. He may be, because of his prestige on Capitol Hill, the largest single barrier separating Nixon from impeachment (see following story). Even the Russians seem to consider him now more important than the President. When Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin called on Vice President Gerald Ford last week, what he really wanted to know was not whether a Ford Ad ministration, if it comes about, would continue detente but whether it would keep Kissinger, whom the Russians know and respect, as Secretary of State. He came away satisfied, and Ford has publicly said that he would keep Kissinger at State.

In Europe, Kissinger's birthplace, the feelings toward him are mixed: a combination of resentment, awe and total fascination. His breakneck tour, the second in six weeks, pushed from the headlines such problems as the oil shortage and a spiraling inflation. Alternately glowering and glowing, Kissinger was pictured on TV sets from Glasgow to Miinchen Gladbach as he shook hands with Britain's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Sir Alec Douglas-Home, brushed breakfast crumbs from the lapels of French Foreign Minister Michel Jobert, and pointed a stubby finger at NATO Secretary-General Joseph Luns. No poll has been taken, but the U.S. Secretary of State is undoubtedly better known to many Europeans than are their own foreign ministers. Newspapers in Belgium and West Germany summed up the general mood by dubbing him "Henry Kissinger, Superstar."

Heated Exchange. In the light of his bitter, derisive comments about the NATO allies during the Middle Eastern war, many foreign ministries were awash with rumors about how he would behave in Brussels. "Henry Kissinger," said West German Chancellor Willy Brandt sarcastically, "will come to Brussels to spank all of us naughty Europeans." Not trusting to their own embassies in Washington, diplomats buttonholed American journalists with worried questions about Kissinger: Would he, as Brandt suggested, scold them as if they were high school students? Or would he bang on the table?

Kissinger, of course, did neither.

Like a Mr. Fixit, at the two-day NATO meeting, the Secretary was--as diplomats have it--firm but conciliatory, trying to soothe the feelings that had been bruised by his own harsh words, by the surprise alert of American forces in the last days of the Middle Eastern war, and by U.S.-Soviet agreements that the Europeans believe have been made over their heads.

In the most heated exchange of the meeting, Foreign Minister Jobert accused the U.S. of undermining European security by signing an Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War with the Soviet Union last June. The French have long argued that if the crunch ever came, the U.S. would never risk the destruction of New York to save Paris--or Manchester, Munich or Milan. Echoing the thoughts of many of his colleagues, Jobert maintained that the U.S.-Soviet pact had brought into question the guarantee of the U.S. nuclear deterrent and, by implication, the Atlantic Alliance itself.

Kissinger argued that the French had misinterpreted the agreement and that not even the Russians expected it to undermine NATO. With a roundabout but nonetheless pointed jab, he added: "If these misinterpretations continue to come up, I would have to come to the conclusion that they are not inadvertent." Jobert, however, had the last word. "We will see," he said with a verbal Gallic shrug.

Despite the clash, perhaps the sharpest open display of acrimony in NATO'S 24-year history, the Brussels meeting did do something--how much is still in question--to restore the dangerously frayed lines of communication across the Atlantic. Jobert and Kissinger, who seem to have a genuine liking for each other outside the conference room, met privately in Kissinger's 16th floor Hilton suite and emerged smiling and joking. "Tout va bien [All goes well]," Jobert told reporters. Indeed, at the weekend summit meeting of Common Market chiefs of state in Copenhagen, Kissinger's visit seemed to have a lingering effect. Originally called as almost a show of defiance against the American giant, the summit was noticeably devoid of anger toward the U.S., and was obsessed instead by the Middle East and the problem of oil.

After Brussels, Kissinger flew to London, where he spoke to the Pilgrims, a prestigious Anglo-American society. In a remarkable address that evoked comparison with his "New Atlantic Charter" speech in Manhattan last February, Kissinger offered an eloquent assessment of the state of American-European relations.

He frankly acknowledged that the rising economic strength of Europe, coupled with the comparative decline of the U.S., had altered the traditional big-brother role of the U.S., and that "some Europeans have come to believe that their identity should be measured by [their] distance from the U.S." In part, he admitted, the U.S. had been to blame for not consulting more with its allies; but the Europeans were also to blame and at times had sought to exclude the U.S. from their decision-making process. "We do believe," he said, "that as an old ally the U.S. should be given an opportunity to express its concerns before final decisions affecting its interests are taken."

To meet the most immediate problem facing the Atlantic community, the energy crisis, Kissinger proposed the creation of a group to ensure the world's fuel supply at reasonable cost. The group would include Japan, as well as the oil-producing nations, and would coordinate an international program of research to develop new energy technologies, work out conservation programs and search for new sources of energy.

Whirlwind Tour. Sir Alec, who is rarely impetuous, felt Kissinger's proposal so important that he called in aides after the Pilgrims' dinner to draft a British response, welcoming the Secretary of State's "positive, timely, statesmanlike initiative." Prime Minister Edward Heath went even further and said that Kissinger's speech was "in the great tradition of the Marshall Plan after the war." The French, who had already proposed a European-Arab energy cooperation that would leave out the U.S., were far less enthusiastic about the idea. Even in Washington, energy experts doubted that much would come of the Kissinger proposal.

The only quick solution to the world's fuel shortage would be an opening of the Arab pipelines. At week's end Kissinger took his whirlwind tour on to the Middle East, where he sought to put a firm foundation under the peace talks and induce the Arabs to relent on oil. In Algiers, his first stop after London, he was accorded surprising warmth from one of the most radical Arab states. "The discussions we have had are a turning point in relations between Algeria and the U.S.," proclaimed Algerian Foreign Minister Abdel Aziz Boutaflika. The result: diplomatic relations, broken off in 1967, are likely to be resumed.

In Cairo, he was welcomed as an old friend by President Anwar Sadat.

Kissinger also breakfasted with the British and French ambassadors; and so that the Russians would not feel left out, he met twice with the Soviet ambassador. Kissinger then flew on to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, where he met with King Feisal for 90 minutes. Afterward, an American spokesman said that there was a "better than fifty-fifty chance" that the Arabs might lift the oil embargo in January. Kissinger's Middle East itinerary also included Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel.

Encouraging as were the smiles and Kissinger's apparent flair for couscous diplomacy, there were nonetheless huge roadblocks that had to be bypassed before peace could be assured in the Middle East. The Egyptians last week felt that Kissinger had lured them into making concessions as part of the six-point cease-fire package and that the Israelis had not fulfilled their part of the bargain by withdrawing their troops to agreed-upon lines. The Israelis, for their part, were apprehensive that they might be the victims of a kind of international lynch mob in Geneva, with the whole world pressuring them to make concessions that would start the oil flowing again.

There were other problems. Never in recent history has a peace conference been so hastily assembled with so many key questions left dangling. Days before the delegates were to gather, it still had not been decided where in Geneva the meeting was to take place, what the shape of the table would be or who would bang the opening gavel. No one was even certain what language or languages would be spoken.

In another time, serving another President, Kissinger might be seen in a different perspective. Under Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy or even Dwight Eisenhower, he would not have had the power or the prestige he has today. In Nixon's court, however, he towers above other presidential aides, past or present. No one else in the Administration has his intellectual grasp, his experience of the real world, his discreet, subtle sense of how government should be conducted.

Cement Relations. Most Secretaries of State--from Thomas Jefferson and Daniel Webster to John Foster Dulles--have been lawyers. However, as Kissinger has pointed out, lawyers are not usually good at looking beyond the case. "Kissinger is effective because he has a policy," says Maurice Couve de Murville, De Gaulle's longtime Foreign Minister. "One may not agree with the policy, but one can see its directions."

Different as he is from Nixon in so many other ways, Kissinger yet shares with the President a passion for secret diplomacy and dramatic breakthroughs. He also seems to be more at ease in dealing with the leaders of totalitarian states than with the heads of elected governments--which is one reason for the widespread feeling in Europe that Washington does not really understand the Continent's problems. Like Nixon, Kissinger is impatient with bureaucracy.

"Bureaucracy," he once said, "considers originality unsafe."

Like many Europeans, the Japanese believe that Kissinger is better at dealing with adversaries than with allies. They have never forgiven him for failing to advise them of his first trip to Peking--in violation of a U.S.-Japanese agreement on consultations. During his recent visit to Tokyo, Kissinger came across to various Japanese as "arrogant," "cold-nosed" and "discouraging." Whether it is true or not, the Japanese have become convinced that Kissinger simply does not like them.

Even Kissinger's dramatic innovations and his magical mystery tours are coming in for increasing criticism. "We know he is brilliant, and nobody prays that he is successful more than we," says a Japanese source. "But no one man can deal with the Arabs, the Israelis and the Russians--and at the same time with the Europeans and the Japanese too."

In the months ahead, Kissinger must cement relations with Europe and Japan; try to marshal cooperative efforts to alleviate growing international shortages of fuel, food and raw materials; preserve the promise of detente with the Communist powers and find some peaceful conclusion to the off and on again war between the Arabs and the Israelis. These problems, moreover, must be handled by battalions of bureaucrats and batteries of computers, and their solutions require broad domestic consensus. A summit will not suffice, nor will a jet trip or a presidential decree.

There are signs that Kissinger is aware of these problems. He is making efforts to revitalize the State Department bureaucracy with fresh ideas and bright young men. But so far he has yet to demonstrate that he can combine power politics with unexciting but necessary day-to-day diplomacy. If he succeeds in doing that, the 56th American Secretary of State may be remembered as the greatest in U.S. history.

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