Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 090-002
Date: Wednesday, February 9, 1972 at 7:58 AM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Kissinger, Henry A.; [Unknown person(s)]
Recording device: Cabinet Room
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/090-002

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite it as authoritative.

[37:26] Teksting av Nicolai Winther
[52:14] Teksting av Nicolai Winther
[1:11:47] This is a guy with a camera.
[1:11:48] He's in the back room taking pictures for Christmas.
[1:11:49] I'm not sure if you're all in range, but I think this right side is probably a little farther out, so she can say nothing.
[1:11:53] You guys can go back in a little bit.
[1:11:54] If you want to be in the picture, you can do this.
[1:11:55] If you can see this.
[1:11:56] If you can see this.
[1:13:41] Well, let's see.
[1:13:41] Take it on the side here.
[1:13:42] Okay, this will blow your cover.
[1:13:43] Okay.
[1:14:26] All right.
[1:14:29] Done.
[1:14:29] All right, now you get the first pen.
[1:14:33] Everybody else has a pen, but I do want to take this time to thank you for your work.
[1:14:40] And, you know, we care a lot about who does the work around here.
[1:14:47] You guys tell me who does it, but I don't know.
[1:14:51] I'll keep you up at all times.
[1:14:54] I want you to socialize.
[1:14:55] But I do know that, to show you that I do follow on these things, I told you to come forward.
[1:15:10] And we told you that some of the staff worked all night.
[1:15:11] And I remember on the night, the Sunday when I called, you said, I got you about two o'clock in the afternoon.
[1:15:13] I said, how's it coming?
[1:15:14] You said, we're going to get done by three.
[1:15:14] And I said, the staff has been working all night long.
[1:15:15] And I'm most grateful.
[1:15:16] I wish we could pay you what you're doing.
[1:15:17] But, uh...
[1:15:57] It is the fact that perhaps never in history have people working in the field of foreign policy in this country lived to a mark of magnitude.
[1:16:00] Who would have thought at the beginning of this year, besides the reportings we've got, that this year we'd be writing about a potential Soviet government, and this is China.
[1:16:27] If we decided that there was a credibility gap, of course we know it's going to happen all the time, but while we have had some disappointments, we'd like to make more progress in some areas.
[1:16:31] You may look back at the year 1971, that's the year of the breakthrough,
[1:16:55] This is the end.
[1:16:56] We would also look back at 1972.
[1:16:56] Perhaps we concentrated some of these initiatives.
[1:16:57] I want to put this all in perspective.
[1:16:58] You know Will Hyatt, D.R.
[1:16:59] Eisenhardt, Woodrow Wilson, I didn't like to call him, I said Wagoner Wilson, Democrat.
[1:17:52] It's a great tragedy because he was, of course, in terms of intellectual capability, without question, an ableist man.
[1:18:04] In terms of idealism, we would call it morality, that sort of thing.
[1:18:05] That's what he just remembered.
[1:18:06] In terms of accomplishing, it's as far as speech is concerned, that his life was a failure.
[1:18:08] He knew it.
[1:18:08] It broke him, it broke him physically, it broke him emotionally and everything else.
[1:18:09] As I look back on that, I think we get some lessons.
[1:18:10] And the lessons are that
[1:18:34] We need the idealism of the Wilsons, but we also need that pragmatic approach to these problems.
[1:18:36] It's so easy, I found, when I talked about the China-Turkish relationship.
[1:18:38] It's wonderful.
[1:18:38] Finally, that wonderful relationship the Americans used to have with China.
[1:18:40] Our missionaries might be doing so much more than just going to be restored.
[1:18:41] Of course, that's wrong on two counts.
[1:18:42] It was a wonderful relationship the Americans used to have with China.
[1:19:35] A great story.
[1:19:35] It felt that if only the nations of the world could be better educated, if only they could all get together in a world organization, and all differences could be solved.
[1:19:39] We thought that too.
[1:19:39] The U.N. was set up in a consistent way.
[1:19:40] That's the last war.
[1:19:41] Here's the U.N.
[1:19:41] It didn't work out.
[1:19:41] That's no reason to say the U.N. is a nation.
[1:20:03] It's just a reason to say, let's look at why we set it up.
[1:20:05] And what we should have expected, what we should have expected is exactly what we got.
[1:20:06] The UN was very valuable in many of the fields, in all of them, educational, in all of them, very valuable in settling conflicts that did not major, not major major problems.
[1:20:10] But,
[1:20:28] No practical person could possibly have hoped that any major power would submit its favor to the vote of a hundred and forty nations.
[1:20:31] Now, this doesn't mean that it's a simple world.
[1:20:32] It doesn't mean that idealism doesn't have its place.
[1:20:34] It doesn't mean that it's a world in which we have no hope.
[1:20:53] I think this has been the essence of our policy.
[1:20:54] We set our ideals high.
[1:20:55] We want to be a peaceful world.
[1:20:55] We want to be an open world.
[1:20:56] Everybody has the opportunity to go to China, which we couldn't take.
[1:21:11] As far as we're concerned, we don't talk.
[1:21:12] It's too optimistic for
[1:21:41] Perhaps our rhetoric is not strong enough in terms of saying we're going to do this, this, this, not the other way.
[1:21:43] But let me say, if there's any question about what our ideals are, the point is, we know history.
[1:21:45] We know nations.
[1:21:57] We know leaders.
[1:21:58] We know differences.
[1:21:58] We know the failures of the past.
[1:21:59] We're not going to make those mistakes in the future.
[1:22:00] And as we approach the problems that way, we think that we can perhaps make progress.
[1:22:02] Not to the perfect world, because man is not perfect.
[1:22:03] And never will be.
[1:22:03] But to a world that is safe and cool.
[1:22:24] It's really all in there, because I see this report and know the hours that went into it, the hours that went into my reading, which are so-called European and other summits.
[1:22:28] I know it all skews, and it's thoroughly documented.
[1:22:29] The idea that what counts the most is...
[1:22:48] Not to Sarajevo.
[1:22:49] Everybody does that.
[1:22:49] What counts the most is doing your homework.
[1:22:51] That hard, grubby work with all the discipline, with all the whiplashing, with all the tantrums.
[1:22:53] And, uh...
[1:23:16] I only did it all ten minutes ago.
[1:23:16] But it's that kind of work that does not assure that we will succeed, but gives us the year 1972, a better chance to make progress toward a more peaceful world than we've ever had in the history of the century.
[1:23:21] So, that's all there is to say, and that's what we've done.
[1:23:23] Thank you.