Dour Tour

Kissinger gives his world view

The contrast between the two approaches to U.S. foreign policy could hardly have been more marked. President Carter, addressing the American Society of Newspaper Editors, concentrated almost entirely on two specific crises, Iran and Afghanistan, and strongly defended his actions in each. The next speaker, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, went far beyond those issues to deliver a sweeping global critique. He charged the Administration with lacking a world view that would produce a consistent policy and offered one of his own in a dour tour d'horizon of impressive scope.

"I happen to agree with President Carter that the danger to our country is the gravest in the modern period," said Kissinger. "We are sliding toward a world out of control, with our relative military power declining, with our economic lifeline increasingly vulnerable to blackmail, with hostile radical forces growing in every continent, and with the number of countries willing to stake their future on our friendship dwindling." To reverse these trends, said Kissinger, the U.S. must grapple with four interrelated issues:

1) The Balance of Military Power. It is shifting so rapidly against the U.S., said Kissinger, that in a future confrontation "like that in Cuba in 1962 or the Mideast alert in 1973, it will be the Soviet Union which will possess the quantitative superiority in strategic weapons." The danger, he said, "is less an imminent nuclear attack on us than an increased Soviet willingness to run risks in local conflicts." In such cases, said Kissinger, Soviet superiority in conventional arms could no longer be offset by a credible threat of U.S. nuclear retaliation. "The present Administration has compounded the problem by systematically deprecating the role of power, by canceling or stretching out every strategic program it inherited."

2) The Geopolitical Equation. Said Kissinger: "By this I mean the alignments and assessments that determine whether moderates friendly to us or radicals hostile to us dominate key regions; whether our alliances are vital or sliding toward lassitude." He left no doubt which way he thought the tide was running: "Precariously situated countries in the Middle East see the Soviet-supported Cuban advance coming up through Africa to Ethiopia right across the Red Sea. To them the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan now overshadows the Persian Gulf like the northern arm of a great pincer. And they see no effective resistance. Somewhere, somehow, the United States must show that it is capable of rewarding a friend or penalizing an opponent." Otherwise, he said, the "inevitable effect is to accelerate the demoralization of all moderate allies, driving friends toward neutralism and neutrals toward radicalism."

3) Revolutionary Upheaval. The Carter Administration, said Kissinger, has encouraged revolts against right-wing regimes in the belief "that by demonstrating our moral values and concern for human rights we will gain the approbation of mankind and thus outflank the Soviets. [But] reality is more complex. It is a hard act that some societies whose security is vital to us--particularly in the Persian Gulf--are governed by authoritarian conservative regimes." While the U.S. should not defend the status quo everywhere, "Iran should teach us that humane values are not necessarily served by the overthrow of conservative regimes."

4) U.S.-Soviet Relations. "We have confused the Soviet leaders by inconsistent pronouncements and unpredictable reactions. We repeatedly rejected 'linkage,' which would have made progress in areas in which the Soviets had a stake, such as trade or SALT, dependent on Soviet restraint in exploiting tensions. [But] when Soviet troops moved to the Khyber Pass, we suddenly rediscovered linkage with a vengeance." In negotiations with the Soviet Union, the U.S. should try to "spell out the limits of acceptable conduct," offering concessions only after making clear that "the era of proxy forces, military pressures and encouragement of terrorists must be ended."

In conclusion, Kissinger held out one hope: in five years or so, "the certainty is that Soviet domestic problems will mount" and limit foreign adventurism. "The Kremlin's dilemma is that one cannot run a modern economy with total planning, but it may also be impossible to run the Soviet system without such planning." But that hope also implies a threat: the Soviets will be tempted to push their advantages to the limit in the intervening period. So in the next five years, Kissinger warned, "we face a period of maximum danger."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.