OBSERVATIONS

Was Kissinger Right?

ERVING AS National Security ginning with the OPEC embargo of ments." Yet at the same time he
Adviser and Secretary of State October 1973 a handful of oil-rich hardly ignores the inescapable facts.
to Presidents Richard Nixon and but militarily insignificant states had Instead, while accepting responsi-
Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger daz- managed to put the economies of bility for a number of misjudgments
zled the world for eight years with the United States and its allies on and missteps, he freely points a fin-
his masterful performance on the the rack. Though Kissinger and ger of blame: at the terrible cards
diplomatic stage. Over the course of Nixon had bent every effort to ex- the two administrations he served
his term in office, every instrument tricate the United States with hon- had been dealt by the presidencies
of modern statecraft-shuttle diplo- or from the war in Southeast Asia, of Lyndon B. Johnson and John F
macy, crisis management, square- in 1975 came ignominious and ag- Kennedy; at the malignant political
and round-table negotiations, glob- onizing defeat. And though Kis- legacy left by Richard Nixon's per-
al nuclear alerts-was employed to singer, Nixon, and Ford had striven sonal flaws; at the isolationism that
stunning effect, if not to approba- to forge a more constructive rela- seized the American Left and Con-
tion, in the world media and press. tionship with America's most dan- gress as Vietnam dragged on; at the
Yet when American voters eject- gerous adversary, by 1976 detente betrayal of national security by the
ed the hapless Gerald Ford from of- was in ruins as the USSR recklessly leadership of the CIA and its con-
fice in 1976 and returned Kissinger ignited brushfires in distant corners gressional overseers; at the inepti-
to private life, many were left won- of the globe and raced ahead in a tude and weakness of key players on
dering whether what they had just menacing arms build-up. Ford's White House staff; and at the
witnessed was nothing more than a Victory, it is said, has a hundred failure of American conservatives,
botched circus performance, a high- fathers but defeat is an orphan. In especially including the neoconser-
wire act conducted without a net. In Years of Renewal, the third volume of vatives around COMMENTARY, to
every direction one looked, Ameri- his monumental trilogy of mem- rally to the flag of his embattled
ca's standing had plummeted to a oirs,* Kissinger does not rush to policies.
new postwar low and the prospect claim paternity for the cascade of Some of the finger-pointing that
was one of further disarray, chaos, disasters that came to a culmination one finds throughout Kissinger's
and retreat. in the Ford presidency. In part, as book appears to be transparently
Though the United States had his very title suggests, Kissinger de- self-serving, the wily Machiavellian
entered the 1970's as the strongest nies that the period was a disaster at now skillfully manipulating the past
industrial power in the world, be- all: the Ford administration, he * Simon & Schuster, 1,151 pp., $35.00. The
GABRIEL SCHOENFELD is senior edi- writes, "could take pride in a long first volume, White House Years, appeared in
tor of COMMENTARY. list of foreign-policy accomplish- 1979; the second, Years of Upheaval, in 1982.

[55]
 COMMENTARY MAY I999

in order to secure his own place in America's allies in Indochina. And Cambodian officials a chance to es-
it. As his account is buttressed, how- by the time that rout did in fact be- cape. The reply addressed to the
ever, by a wealth of documentation, gin, America's capacity to answer U.S. ambassador by Sirik Matak, a
one would do well to consider that Hanoi with military power had been former Cambodian prime minister,
much of it may be justified. stripped away by events well beyond and reprinted by Kissinger in full, is
Kissinger's control. one of the more important docu-
SORTING OUT the issues is no easy One such event was Watergate, ments of the entire Vietnam-war era.
task. Years ofRenewal ranges widely, which by the autumn of 1973 had Dear Excellency and Friend:
stepping back to traverse ground al- thoroughly undermined executive I thank you very sincerely for
ready covered in the preceding vol- authority and poisoned the Ameri- your letter and for your offer to
umes of the series while presenting can body politic, destroying in the transport me towards freedom. I
in close but immensely readable de- process the last vestiges of political cannot, alas, leave in such a cow-
tail every aspect of the Ford admin- will for further American exertions ardly fashion. As for you, and in
istration's diplomacy from its ma- in Southeast Asia. Only six months particular for your great country,
neuvering through the labyrinth of after the Paris Accords were con- I never believed for a moment
the Cyprus crisis to its fumbling in cluded, Congress barred the further that you would have this senti-
the dark comedy of the Mayaguez use of American force "in or over ment of abandoning a people
affair.* Undoubtedly, however, two Indochina," rendering the agree- which has chosen liberty. You
of the most important issues it takes ment impossible to uphold. Despite have refused us your protection,
up revolve around the war in In- Ford and Kissinger's intensive lob- and we can do nothing about it.
dochina and U.S. relations with the bying, the provision of supplies that You leave, and my wish is that
USSR. might have given South Vietnam a you and your country will find
Consider, to begin with, Kis- chance to defend itself on its own happiness under this sky. But,
singer's account of American policy was progressively slashed by Con- mark it well, that if I shall die
toward Cambodia and Vietnam. gress, from $2.1 billion in 1973 to here on the spot and in my coun-
When Gerald Ford assumed office $1 billion in 1974 to a paltry $700 try that I love, it is no matter, be-
following Richard Nixon's resigna- million in 1975 (not all of which was cause we are all born and must
tion on August 9, 1974, the Paris actually disbursed). die. I have only committed this
Peace Accords had already been on mistake of believing in you [the
Americans].
the books for a year and a half. As SOUTH VIETNAM, deprived of Please accept, Excellency and
Kissinger contends that he and sustenance and support, began to dear friend, my faithful and
Nixon had been clear from the start crumble, even longtime congres- friendly sentiments.
about the flaws in this settlement sional supporters of the war turned
between North and South Vietnam. their backs. Although Kissinger Immediately after the Khmer
He never harbored any "illusions," finds villains across the political Rouge took Phnom Penh, writes
he writes, that Hanoi's "dour, fanat- spectrum, he singles out for special Kissinger, Sirik Matak was shot in
ical leaders had abandoned their censure the late Democratic Sena- the stomach and left to die over the
lifetime struggle." As he warned tor Henry "Scoop" Jackson, "scourge course of three days from his un-
Nixon in a memo at the time, only of d&tente and Ford administration treated wounds.
an American readiness to intervene critic for its alleged softness on In the beginning, middle, and
could uphold the precarious cease- Communism," who in early 1975 end of this episode, Kissinger shows
fire. But he also expected-"naive- abandoned his perduring support to telling effect, the barbaric nature
ly," he notes here-that the antiwar for the war and, to "our immense of the Communist Khmer Rouge
movement in the United States surprise and huge disappointment," was painted over in soothing tones
"would be able to find satisfaction voted to throw South Vietnam to
*This latest volume is well supplemented by
in the ending of hostilities" and that the wolves just as it entered a last another new book, The Kissinger Transcripts
its agitations against American as- desperate struggle to survive. (New Press, 515 pp., $30.00). Though
sistance to Saigon would cease. With the United States reduced marred by the tendentious commentary of
As Kissinger predicted, the to the role of bystander, the fall came its editor, William Burr, it provides the offi-
cial memoranda of Kissinger's highly classi-
North Vietnamese did flagrantly vi- swiftly. Cambodia succumbed first. fied conversations with Leonid Brezhnev,
olate the 1973 agreement from day As he does also with Vietnam, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and other
one. But as he failed to predict, the Kissinger retells the riveting tale, re- Communist leaders, offering an indelible pic-
"peace movement" in the United counting how, as the Khmer Rouge ture of the virtuoso at work and an eye-open-
ing glimpse of how diplomacy was actually
States did not die out; as quickly be- closed in on the capital city of carried out at the highest levels during some
came evident, it would settle for Phnom Penh in early April 1975, the of the most dramatic moments of the nucle-
nothing less than a complete rout of United States offered a number of ar age.
c,

[56]
 OBSERVATIONS

by much of the American press. intended," writes Kissinger, "to Soviet policy at every turn. On the
The New York Times was the most nudge the Soviet colossus into Center-Right, SenatorJackson and
flagrant offender. In one dispatch, transforming itself from a cause into his highly influential aide Richard
its correspondent Sydney Schan- a state capable of being influenced Perle, in part out of an honest dis-
berg described a ranking Khmer by traditional calculations of reward agreement with policy and in part
Rouge leader as a "French-educat- and punishment, thereby at first for crass political gain-Jackson
ed intellectual" who wanted noth- easing the cold war and ultimately planned to seek the presidential
ing more than "to fight against feu- transcending it." nomination of the Democratic par-
dal privileges and social inequities." But as Kissinger also recounts, ty in 1976-appeared determined
A bloodbath was unlikely, Schan- such a happy transcendence of the to throw one wrench after another
berg reported: "since all are Cam- conflict was not to occur, at least into the works. In public and be-
bodians, an accommodation will be not on his watch. Although in hind the scenes, these two men
found." As the last Americans were Nixon's first term relations with the worked skillfully to deprive the ad-
withdrawn, another upbeat article USSR had been relatively smooth, ministration of carrots, blocking the
by Schanberg appeared under the starting in 1972, the year that expansion of trade, derailing arms
headline, "Indochina Without Amer- marked the apogee of dtente, control through spurious and ar-
icans: For Most, a Better Life." In things began to unravel. The prob- cane objections to administration
short order, the Khmer Rouge pro- lem, in Kissinger's retelling, was not proposals, and demanding ever
ceeded to march nearly two million so much the conduct of Leonid greater levels of Jewish emigration
of their fellow Cambodians to their Brezhnev and company but the un- from the USSR (even as the Nixon
deaths in the killing fields. Also in holy alliance between the American and Ford administrations were
short order, Schanberg went on to Left and Right that impeded the ad- making progress in this area behind
greater glory and a Pulitzer prize.* ministration's best efforts to keep the scenes).t
the Soviet Union restrained. Particularly baneful, in Kis-
KISSINGER IS at his most bitter Liberals, their program of propi- singer's telling, was the unrelenting
when judging those who contribut- tiating the USSR having been stolen hawkishness ofJackson's intellectu-
ed to the tragedy of Southeast Asia, and embraced by their nemesis al allies, the neoconservatives-here
writing that the period "still evokes Richard Nixon, now began em- he singles out by name Irving Kris-
a sinking feeling in me, composed bracing causes like human rights tol, Midge Decter, and Norman
in equal parts of sadness for the vic- and initiatives on arms control that Podhoretz. These figures, he writes,
tims and shame for how they were were more radical than those the were zealots, whose own "defining"
abandoned." But if his most poig- administration itself was advanc-
nant regrets concern Vietnam, he ing-with the aim, in Kissinger's *Although tucking them away in a footnote,
also does not spare the lash when it words, of going "where they Kissinger also provides the later and second
comes to those whom he deems at thought Nixon could not follow thoughts of the journalist William Shaw-
cross, whose highly influential book, Side-
fault for the collapse of detente, his them." After their triumph at the show: Kissinger,Nixon, and the Destruction of
grand strategic edifice aimed at a re- polls in the first post-Watergate Cambodia,had placed the blame for the Cam-
laxation of tensions with the USSR elections of 1974, congressional bodian tragedy squarely on the United
and thus at easing the American Democrats proceeded systematical- States. Wrote a repentant Shawcross in 1994:
burden not only in Vietnam but in ly to deprive the administration of "[T]hose of us who opposed the American
war in Indochina should be extremely hum-
the East-West struggle as a whole. the implements it needed to punish ble in the face of the appalling aftermath: a
By the time Nixon took office in the Soviet Union for misbehavior. form of genocide in Cambodia and horrific
1969, Kissinger maintains, the The defense budget was progres- tyranny in both Vietnam and Laos. Looking
American public had been "drained sively slashed, and the administra- back on my own coverage for the [London]
Sunday Times of the South Vietnamese war
by twenty years of cold-war exer- tion was forbidden by law from aid- effort of 1970-75, I think I concentrated too
tions and the increasing frustrations ing anti-Soviet forces in pivot points easily on the corruption and incompetence
with Vietnam." Under these cir- like Angola where the USSR was of the South Vietnamese and their American
cumstances, the challenge was to demonstrating unprecedented glob- allies, was too ignorant of the inhuman
Hanoi regime, and far too willing to believe
find a middle ground between two al reach. that a victory by the Communists would pro-
dangers: on the one hand, an abdi- Conservatives, for their part, vide a better future."
cation of the American responsibil- perceived Nixon's- conciliatory t As The Kissinger Transcripts make clear,
ity for containing the Soviet bear rhetoric toward the USSR as both Jackson also served as a useful foil to
and, on the other hand, a no less a betrayal of the anti-Communist Kissinger in carrying out his negotiations
reckless decision to challenge it cause and an opportunistic effort to with the Kremlin. He was constantly warn-
ing the Soviet leaders not to engage in be-
frontally. Instead, by means of a expand his domestic political base, havior that Jackson might exploit for politi-
mixture of carrots and sticks, "we and they undertook to check his cal gain.

[57]
 COMMENTARY MAY I999

experience of moving from Left to able course and paid a great per- al affairs, however sound or un-
Right had colored their thinking in sonal and political price for his sound his geostrategic approach, it
destructive ways: pains. cannot be emphasized enough that,
As for those whom Kissinger as Kissinger acknowledges only in
Tactics bored them; they dis-
cerned no worthy goals for holds directly accountable for the passing in this volume, any chance
American foreign policy short of fall of South Vietnam and Cambo- the United States had to ensure the
total and immediate victory. dia, his reckoning of their moral survival of Cambodia and South
Their historical memory did not failure is in many ways the most af- Vietnam was destroyed by the Wa-
include the battles they had re- fecting portion of this book. One tergate burglary and the subsequent
fused to join or the domestic comes away with a distinct sense of efforts to cover it up. Nixon's petty
traumas to which they so often the agony involved in losing a war decisions in the Watergate affair not
contributed from the radical Left that one had not chosen to start only lost him his own tenure in of-
side of the barricades. while being hammered at home fice and divided our own country
from all sides. In this connection, but ended up costing the lives of
To this reproach, Kissinger adds though, the fury Kissinger directs at millions in faraway lands, men and
the rueful observation that it was a Henry Jackson seems seriously mis- women like Sirik Matak whose only
"pity" the neoconservatives cast placed. Jackson, after all, had been mistake had been to take America at
themselves in opposition to his So-
virtually alone among Democrats in its word. Nixon may subsequently
viet policies, since in many respects
sticking with an unpopular war for have been rehabilitated in the eyes
his own analysis paralleled theirs:
as long as he did. Whatever sins he of some, but if one is to take seri-
I shared their distrust of Com- committed in the quest for the pres- ously Kissinger's own vivid descrip-
munism and their apparent de- idential nomination of a party that tion of the far-flung and terrible
termination to thwart its aims. I was turning leftward and away from consequences of the President's ab-
thought once they realized that Democrats like himself, he cannot dication of his basic responsibility
our goal was not to placate but to fairly be compared with the liberals to observe the law, this rehabilita-
outmaneuver the Soviet Union, who led the United States into the tion has come too soon.
we would be able to join forces Vietnam fiasco in the 1960's and
in a common cause. who then spent the 70's attacking NEXT, DETENTE. Kissinger makes
Alas, it was not to be. those bent on getting the U.S. out a very strong case for the proposi-
without sacrificing every shred of tion that his policies were not, in
WHAT ARE we to make of this self-respect. fact, the accommodationist sellout
lengthy and eloquent apologiapro But neither can Jackson's role be to the USSR that they seemed to
vita sua with its accompanying tua fairly compared to that of a player many on the Right at the time. It
culpa? like Richard Nixon, whose conduct cannot be denied that Kissinger and
On some matters, Kissinger's ac- of foreign policy Kissinger here Nixon's diplomacy in those years
count is not easily disposed of. His continues to honor and defend. One did reap dividends in some regions
description of President Ford's ef- can debate endlessly whether or not of the world, by, for example, en-
forts to save South Vietnam, for ex- the entire Nixon policy from 1969 tering the U.S. variable into the
ample, efforts that continued right to 1974 represented an unnecessary Sino-Soviet equation at a time when
up to the horrific end, is a portrait strategic retreat, or whether or not the risk of a nuclear shooting war
of heroic perseverance unappreciat- the Paris Accords were irredeem- between the two Communist rivals
ed and unremarked. Upon assum- ably flawed from the outset, de- was curving upward; shutting out
ing office in August 1974, Ford signed only to secure a "decent Soviet influence in the Middle East
could easily have declared that interval" between the U.S. depar- after the October 1973 Yom Kippur
America was done with the In- ture and South Vietnamese collapse. war; and going some distance to-
dochina conflict and let the chips Some of Kissinger's arguments in ward defanging the European Left
fall where they may; given the at- refutation of this latter point, and in at a moment when it was infused
mosphere at the time, in most quar- particular the statement of this with maximum energy from its
ters he would have been not blamed supreme realist that he had "naive- campaign against the American
but praised. In this and other mat- ly" failed to grasp the true aims of presence in Vietnam.
ters, Ford's image as a bumbler out the peace movement, are difficult to Kissinger also argues cogently
of his depth is dispelled by Kis- credit. But wherever one comes that, given the tremulous nature of
singer's account of a decent man, a down on these matters, the issue of the times, with America embroiled
straightshooter, "a Ford not a Lin- Nixon's part in the tragic course of in a losing war, executive authority
coln" in Ford's own self-deprecat- events cannot be blinked. in a state of collapse, and the Amer-
ing phrase, who chose the honor- However great his grasp of glob- ican defense budget being axed even

[58]
 OBSERVATIONS

as Moscow built up its forces, there the rhetoric in which the Nixon and 1974 when Ford provoked an uproar
was no realistic alternative to the at- Ford administrations couched their by declining to receive the Soviet
tempt to establish some sort of policies'was flawed. This flaw, in- dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in
modus vivendi with the Kremlin. deed, would not be remedied until the White House. Though only a
Considering the utter irresponsibil- the advent of Ronald Reagan, who minor skirmish in the long domestic
ity of Congress in that period-one "proved to have a better instinct for battle over Soviet-American rela-
has only to recall the passage of the America's emotions by justifying his tions, the episode disclosed a funda-
Tunney amendment barring U.S. course in the name of American ide- mental contradiction of detente.
aid to Angola just as the USSR and alism." Even as the Reagan admin- In Years of Renewal, Kissinger of-
Cuba were pouring munitions and istration (Kissinger writes) contin- fers an entirely plausible and even a
troops into that country, or the ued quietly to follow some of the persuasive explanation of how and
Church Committee hearings that detente-inspired policies set by why the decision not to receive
effectively crippled the CIA-the Nixon and Ford-adhering, for ex- Solzhenitsyn was made. He asserts
notion that the U.S. could have ample, to the limits imposed by the that if he could do things over again,
mustered the political will to com- strategic-arms agreements, forging he would have attempted to arrange
pete successfully with the USSR in closer ties with Communist China a "low-key" meeting with Ford. But
an arms race, even given the grow- at the expense of Taiwan-Reagan the striking fact remains that, in
ing constraints on the Soviet econ- himself pursuing the policy of detente, the
omy, seems dubious in the extreme. United States had maneuvered itself
In this light, there is a measure of made sure that his policy decla- into a corner from which it could not
merit in Kissinger's complaint that rations resonated with what was, openly or enthusiastically hail a man
the neoconservatives exhibited lit- in effect, classic Wilsonianism like Solzhenitsyn, whose spoken and
based on democratic virtue. As a written truths struck fear in the
tle "understanding of or sympathy result, he won broader support
for the problems before a nonelect- mind of our country's most impla-
for the defense budget and cable adversary. The reason for this
ed President taking over in the af- geopolitical reengagement than
termath of Watergate and facing a was that our government, out of the
Nixon was able to achieve or weaknesses Kissinger himself de-
hostile McGovernite Congress." Yet could have achieved in his time.
even as he lambastes neoconserva- scribes, was treating that adversary
tives for failing to grasp the essence How to assess this last claim? By as a confrere whose hideous char-
of the times, Kissinger concedes a ringing the bell of freedom, Reagan acter flaws could not be discussed.
great deal to them. unquestionably did sway the public As Kissinger's memoirs make ut-
For one thing, he concedes the in a way that neither of his Repub- terly clear, there is no easy way to
force of their critique: these targets lican predecessors in the 1970's ever untangle this knot. Given the cir-
of his ire, after all, were merely pri- learned to do. And, as Kissinger is cumstances the United States faced
vate citizens whose efforts to shape quick to point out, the Great Com- in those years, a forthright ideolog-
policy were confined to the opinion municator also enjoyed certain oth- ical assault of the sort Ronald Rea-
columns of newspapers and maga- er advantages over Nixon and Ford: gan launched when he called the
zines, something one might find it by 1980, Vietnam and Watergate USSR "the focus of evil in the mod-
difficult to remember in light of the had receded into the background, ern world" might well have gener-
many pages Kissinger devotes to re- and four years of unpleasant sur- ated risks that the country was far
futing their ideas and complaining prises under the profoundly inept from prepared to run. Ford, argues
about their influence. Then, too, his Jimmy Carter had created a ground- Kissinger, simply could not
final appraisal of his neoconserva- swell of support for a more demon- announce a crusade against a nu-
tive adversaries is remarkably gen- strative American posture. clear superpower two months af-
erous: they made, he notes, "signif- Nevertheless, the undermining of ter the collapse of Indochina, in
icant contributions to American detente is traceable to far more than the midst of a delicate negotia-
thinking on foreign policy," espe- what Kissinger suggests was a mere tion in the still-explosive Middle
cially in bringing "a much needed rhetoric deficit. The real problem, East, and while Angola was erup-
intellectual rigor and energy to the visible throughout the entire dura- ting, investigations were paralyz-
debate, which helped to overcome tion of the policy, was rooted not, as ing our intelligence services, and
the dominance of the liberal con- Kissinger would have it, in inade- Congress was urging reduction
ventional wisdom." quate oratory or in any other insuf- of our forces overseas and legis-
Most importantly, however, Kis- ficiency in Nixon and Ford's politi- lating a military embargo against
singer implicitly admits the justice cal temperament or skills but in the Turkey, an indispensable NATO
ally.
of a key element of the neoconser- essence of the strategy itself. This
vative case when he suggests that was illuminated most strikingly in
- - O
There is a high quotient of logic in

[59]
 COMMENTARY MAY 999

this position. But there is an equal- ably paved the way for the more ro- four years, but in recalling the
ly high quotient on the other side. bust American policy-a policy of frightening downward spiral of the
The Soviet Union, after all, never deeds, not merely of "rhetoric"- 1970's one cannot simply point a
for a moment ceased to wage ideo- that followed in the 1980's and that finger of blame at Henry Kissinger,
logical warfare against the Ameri- contributed mightily to genuinely an astonishingly brilliant and agile
can "imperialists"; by failing to an- transcending the cold war by win- American diplomat who, whatever
swer this warfare with our most ning it. his misconceptions and mistakes
formidable weapon-the truth-we Needless to say, Kissinger ap- along the way, engaged in a des-
were, along with everything else, plauds that policy, finally put into perate struggle to right the ship of
practicing a form of unilateral disar- place by Ronald Reagan four years state as it was foundering upon the
mament in the political sphere. after he himself had left office. In- rocks.
More than anything else, this was deed, he claims to have prepared In reconstructing his own very
the sum and substance of the neo- the ground for it. In this, finally, large part in this long saga in a spir-
conservative critique of dtente. even a critic of his policies has to it of both critical and self-critical in-
There were truths about the Soviet acknowledge that he is in a basic quiry, and in extensive and endless-
Union, and about the United States, sense right. Under his stewardship, ly fascinating detail, he has given us
that desperately needed to be told if the country survived a perilous pe- in this volume, as in the previous
there were to be any chance of cur- riod to fight another day. American two, the benefit of his undeniable
ing our country of its weaknesses or foreign policy may have been a lucidity and wisdom as well as one
putting into practice a morally hon- shambles when Ford left office in of the most majestically intelligent
est and aggressive stance. In this 1976, and things were to get even books about statecraft to have been
sense, neoconservatism unquestion- worse under Carter over the next written in this century.

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