Nixon, Douglas-Home & Kissinger on Vietnam War and Arms Control

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Mr. President, how are you?

Good to welcome you again.

It's nice to see you again.

I'm sorry to delay you, but we had to, I think you will all understand, I had a group of congressmen, I had to get over the head of that for a vote, we had one on Tuesday, and they ran a little late, so I had to keep them on the phone waiting for 15 minutes, so I had to do that.

I switched one vote with him, Mr. President.

Yeah, you did.

But you paid.

Who is he?

How much did I pay for him?

I had to appear for him.

Oh, God.

I was there the whole time.

oh

I don't know what the problem is.

I don't know what it is.

yeah yeah

It's expensive at the level and necessary, of course, but it seems to be just about $300 million a year.

Fortunately, no ground forces, but

national significance, CIA presence.

How does your Vietnam take a look at the prospect of the next year and do a lot to your relationship with the Chinese?

The reason is that, first of all, there are two different problems.

The problem in Vietnam is one that looks very, very good, despite the

and so forth there.

We've just had General Haig, who is Dr. Kissinger's office, as a top-level man.

He has been out there, how many, four times, Henry, in Miami?

We sent a team along with him of an expert on the domestic situation, an expert on classification.

Did you see our version of him out there, too?

Some of them.

I think it's kind of the same.

Yeah, Robert Thompson.

But anyway, with regard to Vietnam, the situation is stable.

The election, you know, we want to control.

You have noted, I'm sure, as far as honor, and this is a personal indication, as our cashiers are concerned, an indication of how it's wound down this year.

We lost less in the entire summer than we were losing in a week when we came in.

That's losing 12 to 15 a week is a lot different than 300.

The other thing is that, quite from the standpoint of the domestic political situation in the United States,

It's not a hot issue.

It's not creating more esteem in this country.

You don't get the questions, do you?

They really worked you over as a bunch of jerks up here.

I can assure you that, domestically, that's the question I ask you.

The problem, however, is that it will be pinned up and repeatedly acted to as this, quote, so-called election.

Now, that, however, is something that I have just hard-bought.

And I have been doing that as well.

I did take extreme part in that.

I point out that we would prefer to have a contested election.

I also find out that in this country that had no condition, whatever, of democracy, it has had several elections.

It just had a parliamentary election, which over a third of the members of parliament or the House were opponents of the presidents.

About 28 of the senators have about 60 are opponents of the presidents.

So there is, there is a significant opposition.

Now, uh, and the choice actually is not between an imperfect, uh, so-called democracy and a perfect one, but between some and none.

And, uh, which, well, all these, at least that's, that's the very, the other point that we've stated, I think we really hit them very hard when it comes up, is, uh, some would like to,

use the elections as a pretext to call off aid, but in other words, and I pointed out in this case, that if we establish the practice of cutting off aid to countries that do not have leaders who are elected and contested elections,

that we would have to cut off 8 to 61 of the 90 countries we give it to today.

Including, and this is what you're intaking, every one in black Africa.

There isn't one of those countries that has, as you know, the back.

In fact, that, Henry agrees to that.

We got these big state candidates, 30 is an exaggeration.

When you stop and think of it, the only places where you really have some of the British

You prepare your people at the end of the day.

The Indians, they have elections.

I guess some of these have one.

The Pakistanis, of course, but in Africa, even there, you know, you start out, God, they just can't, they can't rule.

This is like hell on earth.

Well, I digress.

Let me say, answering your question specifically, we believe that we can write a domestic thing out because

We will be down to 180,000 Vietnam fighter centers first.

And we'll have another announcement then regarding some of the future plans.

And we also are continuing to pursue the negotiating track.

A very, not a human problem at all, but however it's not one that can't be precisely determined

in determining how we are going to deal with this.

But I say that for the time, I say for the time we might be sitting here next year, that we will make these kind of progress.

I'd like to bring them back.

Everything falls apart within South Vietnam.

This team that I sent in, which included one man, who used to be very hard-line, but was so banged by the election that he wanted us to cut our way.

He didn't make it contested.

Even who came to the conclusion that this situation there is under reasonably good control, under the best control they've ever seen.

Within South Vietnam.

Well, basically, we have to realize Vietnam is a heretic.

It's a heretic in our relationship with other countries in the world.

It's difficult for, you know, people to say, what the hell are the Americans doing here?

For us to end our involvement in a way that is responsible is very important to us, or the United States will turn very strong in isolationist in any way, but they certainly will.

We don't have the prediction of the responsibility of the world that you have.

I just would hesitate to predict what would happen to this country's willingness to

to engage in, frankly, irresponsible foreign policy.

If we go out from Vietnam in a way that is interpreted as a defeat, that's really what it gets down to.

It gets down to the jingoism that has to do with what we do.

So I think we're going to make it.

Now, one thing you may have, and the ambassador that you're watching here is going to find it interesting.

is the race for who gets the credit.

At the present time, some of them now, I had a group of senators in their congress, and I just remember all sorts of Democrats, and they support us all the way up to our executive order.

But there are some who are playing in a partisan way.

And what they want to do is to have some sort of a vote in Congress before the end of the year setting a deadline for us to get out, because they know that by that time we will be on stage.

And they want to be sure that they are ahead of us getting out.

But that should not be something that should confuse you with regard to the fact that it's one damn day.

Mr. Benson, interestingly enough, the past year's event,

He had a slight chance of defeating the class 61 to 38 last time.

That's in the Senate.

In the Senate.

But in the Senate it will be much closer.

One other interesting thing in the Senate, to show you that there is no false discouragement, is that you might think one watches the American scene.

Uh, with the election year coming up and all this talking about changing priorities and the rest, if you remember I had a very, very great company that gave me an approved and holding our defense at adequate levels.

Now, the EGF-1 in 1969 was just one boat.

In 1970, it was a little bit better.

They just had a boat over there, and here's 2-1.

Now, that's an indication that the EGF is the end of all that.

Of course, as you know, it is an absolutely indispensable negotiated deal with the Soviets at the moment.

With them now 500 missiles ahead of us, as far as land-based missiles are concerned,

We have to have a compensating lever, and that is of course some advantage on the defensive side.

And if the Congress were to come up with the EVM appropriation, we would have no choice but to go down that very road and try to build up our own missiles to theirs, and all the repercussions.

Now we have some kind of, I would say that we have had

the most overbecoming, to the extent they can never be forthcoming, discussions with the Soviet that we've had.

by far since we've been here.

And the reason is, I don't mean to impair, we solve all the differences by the way, but the reason I'm convinced is that our posture has been pretty strong.

The Canadians, we've been able to go into a strong posture with regard to defense.

And as I'm negotiating front, whatever it is, like I remember when Mansfield tried to cut off the Negro looting funds and so forth, we won the vote.

Every time we have talked, we have not given an inch on anything.

But so as we look at the next year, there will be this political problem.

And I understand that, I suppose, after all the big prizes involved, and actually the alliance.

to those who consider it important.

the credit of getting this out.

Well, they're not going to get it, I don't think.

But the main thing is to have it come out all right, and it's going to come out all right.

Good.

I think the other thing, Mr. President, really is, of course, that you have to deal with numbers, which makes sense in terms of your own defense.

The number of numbers, of course, the better.

Our ADM really involves, from our standpoint, really involves the protection of our eternity.

rather than the protection of our population.

There we have basically this one protectionary population, the Moscow area, although it happens to protect about 40% of their missile fields.

Of that, it protects about 350 of their missiles.

About 40%.

But if you were to settle for 200 heads there, I mean, it might work if you were up to stick with a smaller ability to penetrate.

One happens to be better.

The better still, but I mean, it's always...

The current proposal is 100 on the other side.

100, yeah.

And combined in the Moscow area.

So that would leave many targets open.

That's the only thing that I thought, you know, I mean, obviously it was great, but in a sense it must, the other number, there's a hundred, there must be one hundred, two hundred, eleven hundred, that's the only thing.

Well, I think, of course, we're having to negotiate very, very hard.

See, there, the announcement of May 20th indicated that there would be, I think, a contemporaneous

We can't sit back because of the other side of the coin.

At a time when we have frozen our offensive numbers, they have been moving up to them until they are headed, you know.

So what we're saying is that we have to look at the whole package that we can on one side freeze equality in the defensive side and freeze inequality in the offensive side.

So what we're trying to do is for us to have more unions on our side.

and then less, and then we will adjust to their end more often.

That's really the way that they came to this.

Now, the reason that you could be, where is this problem?

It's a subject they don't raise, but it's one of the justices.

Where we do have, where we compensate for numbers is on murder.

See, on murder, we're considered to be the head, and they have shown no interest in considering it.

And like that, the reason is they want to go behind.

That's right.

We, uh, we have considered again the total number of warheads.

And also the number of warheads.

Actually, our warheads are more accurate than we had meant them to be, unfortunately.

And we feel sure we have to do this spy thing now.

But we don't want it.

Deliberately tank it after the third living.

Well, we thought we'd have to do something like this.

But the fact that came around, we're concerned with all we knew.

I think that our people are exchanging the information with the others.

But it's been accumulating to a point where we can't even talk to them.

Two best friends are security people.

But we, I had a talk with Grometo, and I said we do not want this to impair our relations, and we want to get on with the preparation of the European security conference.

I hope the Russians will modify their response.

And he did say, when I said to him, I hope that you will take this calmly, he said that, well, we won't descend from the depths that you have descended to.

We won't descend into this.

You'd have to love too to do something like that at high level.

We all know that.

A lot of spying goes on.

We do it.

You do it.

They do.

But that is the way of life of the old Russian diplomatic establishment.

Every country is a spy region.

And we've got to react, isn't it?

That's it.

You ought to tell us just a true fact, Billy.

At the time I saw his face when the contorting was playing, I said to him, I did hope he wouldn't allow the KGB to, um, to, um, to, um, disrupt the Russian diplomatic and foreign policy to the extent that they looked like gooshies.

But I have the impression that, that he doesn't control

automatically all there against you being active.

Well, I have gone with the British on a number of occasions.

I don't usually bother given that they try to recruit somebody against you.

It's usually some adventurer who claims he knows you because he knows Bill Casey or something like that.

Well, I call out to Britta and say, look, if you have something to tell us, you know how to do it.

Why go through all these contours?

And the other thing, if you don't know, I'm very glad you could.

And that is all this stuff.

Now, Phil the victor had a, that's a reasonable head over the seat of interest.

They had a toy manufacturer in New York who was promised a contract.

He got a message for you, which we already had.

It sits on the channel, sir.

And which was not of any significance anyway.

It was just... We, uh, let me say this, sir.

Within the next, uh,

a couple of weeks or so.

There may be some interesting developments that, Henry, that we could, you know, we'd like to run.

Well, we will give you a little more notes and other stuff.

I don't want to play Thompson-Rogers and that sort of thing, but there are things that I just want you to know that we would like to keep you very closely informed on the planning process.

Unfortunately, you can't talk about it.

You can't do it.

So what's everybody asking?

Let me ask you, what law did you take?

I told him that if he could get out of the building, and I couldn't see why.

We were willing to do this.

Now, I hear some strange thing happening about children, about bird-in-the-nile translation, but it doesn't tell the whole thing.

I should have gone and taken them online, next to saying, come on, let's try the treatise with Brad, before the bird-in-the-nile thing is finished.

I don't know what the motive is here.

It wasn't going to be.

The Foreign Secretary has stated it.

It used to be that the Germans said they would not ratify the treaty with the Russians until the present treaty was signed.

And I suppose ratified, they should ratify them together.

Now they haven't done it.

They will not go ahead with the treaty until the German treaty is already ratified, which of course would be political suicide for Bratislava.

He couldn't survive.

Well, if you want to do that, if you want to stop doing it, you can do it.

Henry has been very close to the one thing, I suppose.

But, but, this, I'm told that it would be good for these two of us in order to, uh, show their kindness to them.

Or do they think they have run so much on the run?

I don't know.

But then he used it and really helped every, on every point, without confrontation with any of his allies, on European security countries' mutual downforce reduction.

And it may have created such an impression of weakness that they think they can't do it.

And that they can squeeze them a little more.

But the European Security Conference, I guess, could be quite a minefield if we walked through it without

that I'm having some ideas to work with coming out.

I think that on that, we ought to have been very, very closely in touch.

Our line that I had dealt with, and Roger's also here, he wanted to say, can we say that you favor a very good security conference?

I said, well,

So we felt that since progress came up early, we decided that now we could consider the possibility of proof of security of the right to inform discussions to see what could evolve.

I did not want to get into the position of directly setting a quotient

Oh, he was talking about having one next spring, wasn't he?

That's what he said.

Well, sometime next year, I'll have a little bit better of it.

Yeah.

You want to have a preparatory meeting, but we... Before we had that very loose... Yeah.

Possibly before the Berlin thing was settled, we could have used the West Coast.

That's right.

Well, we haven't gone as far as this gets.

I mean, we have other things that...

Right, right.

We did not go... We said it.

We said it.

The thing... Because I said we had to have Berlin wrapped up.

I think that was a huge... Yeah.

Before we could go down, I said that there should be... That the discussion should be on a primary basis to determine...

whether such a conference would serve his purpose.

I said, you know, Mr. Board, Mr., that the conference that

doesn't accomplish any of his purpose.

He knows very well that's not true from his standpoint.

They like the confidence.

It doesn't accomplish anything.

But for us, for us, it could be that.

Nevertheless, that's the line that we're sort of undertaking.

On the other hand, a lot of Europeans in our principle want that.

Was that better?

Well, they even thought that they thought they were useful because they thought it would just give that extra flexibility, you know, with meeting people.

The Austrians had the same thing.

I think there was something there.

So we do want to be very cautious, I think, as we approach it.

I think we've taken lots of wisdom out of this thing.

When we come to MDFR, it is so essential.

We did not give the game away there.

We negotiated, yes, in fact, we're under enormous pressures to negotiate with our Congress, but that's one where we just believe that we've got to get our common decision in New York.

All the European security conferences particularly emphasize the need to include other countries in it, too.

Is there pressure, Mr. President, is there pressure on you at all to do a bilateral election with the Russians?

I've noticed that.

I mean, people talk for a 5% or 10% cut.

So is there political pressure on that or is there political pressure on that to do a deal with NATO and the Hague against the Warsaw Pact and the Hague?

I frankly don't think they thought it through.

I think that what they really want is those, the proponents, the proponents

of cutting back on America's and the U.S.'s commitment today to run a unilateral action on the part of the United States with the thought that that means that the Warsaw, Russia, and maybe everybody else is going to do something.

That's really what the man's view of it was.

He said, unilaterally, we need to do this.

Now, they haven't really thought through the concerns of the bilateral thing.

It is my view, it is my view, but it has to be multiplied.

It has to be multiplied, because we start making a deal with the Russians.

Except Oscar P. Karnes, of course, there.

Oh, yeah, with a consultation.

But if you know, we keep all of the, we only let the Russians bring in anything that would affect the naval business there.

Is that a... That is a fantasy.

and I know that this weekend the Deputy Foreign Minister is meeting.

And so, our position is, first of all, we will not do anything bilateral, but so would you, and on a particular second, that we, to bet we are not going to be guided by Maxfield and the proposals we make, we will make those proposals which we think will contribute to the security

three or four different ways of looking at it from there.

And we'll ask for your advice on this sort of thing and deal more with you before we put it back into our National Security Council for our final recommendations at the NATO meeting in December.

We're not going to counter one proposal to that meeting.

We went through this whole business in a meeting there and I remember

very clear that the place, you began to get the percentage reductions and then the, what was the other?

The antimetrical reduction.

That's right, yeah.

And then the drop of this, the antiretraction, they didn't bring that with them back in 16 to 25 days.

We can drag out by assuming that Congress doesn't dismantle them in 60 to 90 days.

So this difference in rates wasn't great.

What is your analysis, let me ask you, of freshness in recent weeks?

It goes back to about three or four months.

Well, I think that a lot of countries, even in Asia, are very reluctant to do what we've also been doing as a country, particularly in terms of production of arms.

I think the president's authenticity falls upon very willing ears in this arm scene.

I mean, almost every country wants to relieve themselves of these things.

He's talking to a Western European.

You don't think that he's motivated by any internal consideration?

Might be.

Well, I don't think we ought to reject any of these advances.

I know these advances, but of course, when you talk in terms of a world of armament and confidence, it's almost a recidivist thing, I think.

And you've got all sorts of things.

You've got VFRs, you've got the Geneva Committee, you've got all sorts of places in which we can talk about armament.

Now, of course, this whole business, which has been made, just starts with actors.

that here sits the Soviet government and here sits China.

And this is a, it must be an enormous concern for them.

I don't know, it's hard for me to see why they are so concerned, but they obviously are because they talk about it.

And they used to talk about it in the written.

But it must be that taking a long view

I think that, for example, I think that the Russians are definitely interested in the settlement of the East.

I think they've got the thing on, they've got the air bases in Egypt in which they cover the eastern Mediterranean coast and that's that and it's safe under a treaty of 15 years.

And that will shift them, I think, to have the Israelis and the Egyptians any kind of strokes of those circumstances.

I think they are interested in that.

And so I think, I mean I don't think one has this

I think there are other areas where the Sikhs don't have peace, and maybe other areas where the Sikhs are blue as a disarmament, so to speak.

Can I just say one more thing about the Middle East?

Yes, I'd like to comment on that.

Yes, and I said to my teacher, Bill Rogers, that they were very interested in the Sikh culture in Israel.

And they thought that they were going to get through you after two and a half months.

Not only did they listen to what you talked about, what Sisker talked about, but your own assessment of the possibilities following that.

Now, after that, they sang.

This is a different story.

They heard nothing two and a half months.

And the Reds don't need to hear something.

Now, from you, Sisker back into the talks with them, then back into the talks with these Reds.

Now, what struck me most forcefully was the situation of this.

I wrote a message from Eban to Riyadh that Eban would not stop, his relatives would not stop at the end of the interim phase to withdraw.

In other words, they would withdraw back to an interim nine.

They wouldn't stop there, they would then negotiate about the second.

Withdraw, the final withdraw.

And this was treated as though it was a crack-baking caviar by Riyadh and by me who had such sufficient

And so it's quite clear to me that if one side makes proposals to the other, they'll each retrieve the proposal with complete distrust.

And you are exiting at a distance, right?

You know, it might come out to be a nuisance.

We've got to come up with some way of getting these sellers to exchange views, like this one was solved by eBay, as though they were real propositions on how to work them out on the ground.

Now I, therefore, put Cisco

number one in this, or whoever you'd like to employ in this thing.

I think if you had this sort of dialogue today, now they'd perhaps come in and do their job.

I don't know why that question.

But as for Egypt and Israel, I think that now the Egyptians very much want you back in the picture.

Tell me more about that, sir.

What is your evaluation, like,

Mr. Trevor, you've talked before.

No, I haven't answered that before.

I had quite a long time with him.

Well, I wasn't so sure of him.

He's a front.

A publicity fellow.

A good presenting case.

I think a front publicity line chair.

The fellow who's very wise is Dr. Fossey.

And I think that I've listened to him increasingly.

Really, he's tremendous in

He'd done this especially deeply with the Israelis, and therefore, he'd not been able to ever be flexible unless he could get some available games, could get his game going, unless in that direction.

Now, Sedat was more flexible than Riyad on the mechanics of the draws.

I mean, he said, Sedat said, back to a certain line,

introduce the United Nations observers, open the canal, phase one.

Phase two, Yarding sets in and does a negotiation in the second phase, and back to the final line.

Riyadh said the whole thing is just a telescope, it's two or three months, and we've got no line of lines in which the election that he had read to retired before, you see, to finish phase one.

So there's a difference of emphasis here.

I mean, some of it I'm just going to have to clear up.

But, uh, so now it seems to be a good deal more flexible on this, and a good deal more, uh, political, so to say.

And so did Dr. Spicer say that Riyadh is a part of the White House, I guess, to read to him.

But you've got to operate through the earth, I think, or go through the motions of operating through the earth, through the earth.

I'm pretty sure.

Yeah, I saw him last night in the city.

Did you?

Yeah.

Did you find any kind of movement there?

Well, it was my first contact with him, and I may see him again before he leaves, in more private circumstances, you know.

Too many people sitting down this time.

I don't know.

In my own mind, I'm concerned with the next stage.

That doesn't make any sense.

Let me get over again what you think the Russians find.

What do you want to tell me?

Yeah, what's closing in there?

But I think it's important to know what's motivating these people, and maybe they'll trust.

Well, you think they've got what they want.

They just stood there and asked, why, therefore, should they have a big drag into a competition?

I think they've got the ad bases which they have left to become rich.

I think they want to come out of it.

In my opinion, I think they are.

And that's why I think the pay cut, excuse me, this running fight between Israel and Egypt is not profitable, so they're really not going to... And they may get pulled in to a greater extent than they want.

And you think they'd do that with the high front?

I think they wouldn't mind.

I think so.

Now, this is a higher answer.

This is speculative, but I think so.

And also the Egyptians told me that they were only waiting to get the Russians.

I was not out of the basement.

The Russians thought I was out of control, but away from the canal line, away from the training vessels and stuff.

In fact, Sir Dalton said to me that if the Israelis would define with considerable precision the final line

that he wouldn't have to put Egyptian troops across the canal and they would send the Russians home.

I don't believe this.

But the final line would have to be the 67th.

In fact, the 67th made what he called admissive adjustments.

Even on the Egyptian side?

that he didn't say.

It all centered, I think, the whole thing centered on child-shaping, both the Egyptian and the Israeli's mind.

And Sadowski was flexible to the extent that he said there were all sorts of ways that could be made for child-shaping.

But the Israelis are very insistent that they want to keep some troops there, of course, and this would be impossible unless they were accompanied by UN forces and by, of course, an Egyptian contingent of others.

But the guarantee that I think one might represent to the Israelis in giving them real security would be one where the four powers, which, so to speak, could be so withdrawn.

Well, that was a comedy one that was done last time.

I was in...

No, I can't.

I can't.

No, I can't.

I can't.

No, I can't.

And he said he didn't want to do it, but they're obviously afraid of the morale of the Egyptian army and the effect of the morale of the Egyptian army on the Egyptian government.

And they told me that the troops on the canal had to come back five days, I was so tired, to leave.

Otherwise they'd walk out.

Oh, this is very interesting.

So they say, why should I move?

I sense, and tell Mrs. Meyer, I sense that the Egyptian government now would dare enough to make permanent peace with Israel.

And they think that the morale of the Egyptian army is such that it can have military repercussions politically on the Egyptian government.

And that's something, that's going to get something moving fairly soon.

This is kind of a bad game, if I have my attention to it fairly soon on the job.

Or however you feel that the...

I'd like to say one more thing.

I'd like to say, if I was trying to come in here, I could.

Oh, yes.

I hadn't mentioned the liberty, I hadn't mentioned the economic thing.

I mean, we were worried very much about, you know, the possible weapon for attention to ourselves, the speeches, the protectionists, the difficulty of all this.

And we might have turned away, but now they seem to be talking and looking at all this.

Let me say this on that point.

Sure.

We, of course, cannot want to be responsible.

We have to be.

I know that.

We have a difficult, immediate problem.

And we also want to build a more permanent structure rather than simply settling for a temporary thing.

On the other hand, despite the fact that many men think, well, Connery doesn't know much.

He's done his hell and all that and this and that and the other thing.

that here is a very shrewd and very able man who will be very reasonable with working these things out.

But I think it would be less than candid if I were not to say that with the major countries, with the Japanese and the others, there's just got to be an adjustment.

We've got to hang on till we get it.

But on the other hand, we are

What I have got to resist, and I'm sure the ambassador to the government told you, there is a very grave growth of isolationism in this country.

It's very disturbing.

You've been around to see it.

Vietnam held an agreement to it, as Henry Wilson.

When I gave my speech to the Congress the other day, I had one line in there about the fact that we were going to continue to be, you know, responsible.

The rest of it, we were going to look after America's interests, too.

You see, there's a feeling

I feel like we carried a big burden for a long time.

There's a feeling, as a matter of fact, if you look at the United States, you see its wealth, you see its problems, its overall in comparison to other countries.

You say, well, what are we screaming about?

Nevertheless, it's there.

And now what we have to do is to fight that.

Because it would be very easy to give in to the Senate.

Our late leaders, for example, have turned out in 80 degrees.

Twenty-five years ago when I came to the Congress and voted for civil trade, they were all for it.

Now they're all protectionists.

They want quotas.

They want to tear up barriers.

They want the surcharge kept on indefinitely.

We can't do that.

I know that.

And the same is true with regard to participation in NATO, with regard to coordinating all the other things.

The key point that I made in the press, which I made, is that I think all of you will understand, and let me say the exact, you've got to work it hard, we have to do, the Japanese have to do, and so on.

That's what you made a good deal, it's not for one person to have one side to cave in and the other side to throw it down the throat.

That kind of thing doesn't make good peace.

The people on both sides have got a bargain heart, and then the natals are...

But I think that what we have to realize is that I believe very much, anybody who's watched the Solar Crest for two and a half years, three years, I believe very strongly

the American, the need for America, for the United States to continue to play a responsible role in the military, diplomatically, I need to know, in the world, it is becoming increasingly difficult to wield that in the American political spectrum.

At this time, we're not going to doubt about it.

We're not going to allow for this

this festering solar of isolationism to spread across the country so we can avoid it.

But it must be handled very skillfully.

That's really what we're getting down to here.

Well, good.

Thank you so much, sir.

Do you make your card?

Yes, I do.

Good.

Thank you so much.

The real warfare we have now is really operating in a very wide area of the countryside in East Pakistan.

And it is keeping going.

The Sloan Refugee is finally starting to sail, which is still nothing better than about a week or even more than that.

And it will last them three weeks or so.

The loan ships taking food and supplies, we've got to tell them, have a problem.

And one of our shipping guys is my other children, so take any more stuff to be stressed out and shit it off.

And so this is all going to build up into a situation where however much we want to send relief, and however much the man in question wants to leave those communications and help all there, it's not going to be possible that this will reverse out as it goes on.

But we've done what we can, and everyone knows very much what we can, to get Shahid Khan to move that way to the political front.

And I don't know whether he could make contact with the Bangladesh people,

If he could, I think he would get more substantial people to cooperate, so that he's able to get now, because India itself, and the people he's building into the civil administration now, are people with no consequence, and what they call stooges.

Now, this is a bad version, but I should say.

You are extremely helpful in speaking here in this room to the government, which we show you.

We had been in touch with the Bangladesh people in Calcutta, and we were trying to set up a meeting between the Bangladesh people and the West Pakistanis outside of India.

And we had Yaryas agreement to that.

And the Indians have now closed this border, which has made it impossible for these people to deal with us.

They're forcing them to check everything with them.

They are adding demands which are totally incapable of fulfillment.

That's the smartest of words.

They've cut the supply lines into the full deficit area as you pointed out.

We have all of them.

guarantees that the convoys or ships that go in there would not carry Judah, which is really a tremendous invasion of sovereignty, just to make sure that there would be no additional refugees produced by them.

They refuse to cooperate with that.

The Indians did against the, at Pez, this, you know, very hypocritical and sanctimonious about this.

Now, there is no question that the Yahya has handled it in a similar way.

And the only way that you would expect to follow the military back, he's a very decent man, but it had just been handled badly.

And it may be that the country is inevitable.

It's just inevitable.

It's going to tear apart and come apart.

But the Indians, the Indians are playing, I'm afraid,

from all the reports they're playing a game here, that I think they're deliberately trying to make it insoluble.

And if it becomes insoluble, what happens?

Well, what happens is that, and I think you can't even digest what they already have, probably, how the hell they were on that list.

The other thing is that

There is the danger, and there is the danger that the West Pakistani with the suicidal attitude will decide to out-fight.

To the Kashmir?

Certainly.

It hasn't happened since we were there on the 12th of September.

Well, they are thinking of going into Kashmir because this situation has, the 12th of September has gone down.

What can we do?

I don't know.

They are, you know, but they, at first, they were willing to settle for autonomy.

And as we all know, autonomy would

would produce independence.

There's no other way it can go.

Now the Indians have escalated the demand into total independence immediately.

But that's something I'll never agree to.

There has to be a face-saving formula in the transition period.

That's right, but I think it will.

I think it's too hard.

We've got to have it.

We told the Indians that they could separate the political process and give a little more time to that and to the relief process.

We think everyone in the chief is protected.

Mrs. Candy is coming to see us, quite soon, to the human.

She's seeing him?

She doesn't see us.

And after that comes here.

Well, if you can tell us, if you can keep us informed before she comes, then we'll contact you.

So that she doesn't come in there and, frankly, pull our legs.

Let's be sure we're in contact with this thing.

Can you tell us too?

Now, I raised this subject with Gromyko.

And I was very tough on her.

I said, now that there's a war, we just can't have a war.

You can't encourage the Indians because the Pakistanis might have said, oh, we don't want a war.

And he said they had told her that in Moscow, right?

Yeah.

I know they don't treat it that way.

But they make up all the things they're doing now, as I said.

They're equipping these guerrillas with really very advanced weapons and forming them to have a series of...

The Fong thing is terrifying.

The Fong is humiliating.

I mean, he's ranting on this thing.

How does he intend to do it?

Yes, I told you that I didn't like the way he handled himself.

But besides, they'll say, what can we do?

But I think if we could shock the Indians, because our judgment is that the Chinese will almost certainly come in as the Indians have come in.

And whether the Soviets then will fulfill their opportunity to settle scores with the Chinese is also not clear.

I think if the Indians would be shocked, it would be reasonable, if that is possible, to try and solve it.

But if they're really concerned about East Bengal,

That drop in the sound is very true to accusing East MacDowell to disintegrate all of Pakistan and the state that he should never have existed.

And that, I think, is in the back of this complicated, into my... What they ought to say.

They ought to be encouraging.

That's right.

And my judgment, I had a long talk with Jerry when I was...

And he's really carried out everything he's proposed to.

He's not very bright, but he has tried.

He's a decent man.

He needs some face-saving formula to go towards family.

And given the difference in culture and in public feeling of company, it must be good to have him.

No other way he can go.

Well, let's look at this.

This could be a terrible problem.

It could be awful.

God, wouldn't that be something to happen more in that invisible place?

All that I can say is that the British got out too soon.

Really, you know, I've been down there.

You know, I was there at the last, and I know it was inevitable, but when we think, when you think, you know, of India and Pakistan, they...

They just aren't ready.

They just aren't ready, that's all.

President, thank you for being here.

And this will be within the five principles Smith has made up his mind.

He's not giving a time scale, but he's telling us to provide the talking mechanism, per se, to prevent the evidence to go in question, right?

Absolutely.

And to make it provide common real seats beyond the facility.

Now, we may get rid of it.

And if we do, we're going to have a hell of a time.

Wilson will tell Broaddus, he's going to say this is rough, he can't.

Which way is he going to post it?

Oh, you're going to say this is rough, he can't.

Which way?

Well, because he'll say it's not enough.

It's not enough to relax him.

You're not wrong.

Let me tell you that I want to assure you what I think you heard me say, and I'm not going to keep this, but...

We will not embarrass you on Rhodesia or South Africa now.

The point that I think Henry heard you talk to these academics when they were in here the other day, and you've also seen what I've written on that, and now I'll say it comes true.

We have to take decisions because of our political situation.

But I just feel so strongly on this issue that

Who was the head of that?

Oh, you want to come?

You want to see?

Martin.

They got 1,200,000 people.

He hadn't had any of the problems of the 1,200,000 that were worried about what was happening in Rhodes or South Africa.

So he spent the whole time, you know, yelling about that thing.

Not yelling, but you know, to talk about that.

It reminded me of Sakarno.

When I visited Sakarno in 1953, here's this great country.

Here's this man with this tremendous esteem.

I was the vice president and the person who made quite a bit for me to go and perhaps for him to receive me.

But anyway, I remember when I talked to him, I was at the three-day visit, three-fourths of the time he was talking about West Erie.

Now, the Indonesians couldn't even digest Indonesia, right?

Nobody loved those bunch of cannibals out there, you know what I mean?

But that became the great issue.

It's always this, now, in the case of Indonesia, let me say, whatever you work out, whatever you work out, if I have your evidence, I don't want to be pushed up by that hacker group over there in the state, because I did it.

What was the Cromwell thing that we decided to do?

If we get this written, and take this yourself, which we'll complete later, because he may go back on it, but he said that the Cephalic Rects were all the blocking mechanisms of the movement he wanted, for they had to be brought up to delegate, and the army distracted, rocketed, compacted, ready to kill the proper fracture, and he's willing to authorize all types of declaration of rights.

And so the whole thing looks very, I mean, I want to be informed that you were on this time.

I just don't want it to be over until I want you to get into it there again.

I don't see any possible statement about it.

It won't be until the beginning of November.

But if it's something, if it's anything that evolved part of the aisle, I don't know how we should have said it.

We don't have to have the path you went into.

But listen, you can make sure that I can send them back home before they go.

This is one part where we don't buy parts of it until we come back to tell us where they went.

Well, it's a good thing you're engaged in it.

I'm thinking a little out of your head, because it would mean that you would get a multiracial state of some kind.

On the U.N., as the President did, on some of these procedural points on the China issue, you could give us a hand.

We know you can't do much on these basic things.

I don't know, it's one thing if you've never started out, if you haven't started out at all, but if you want priority for the discussion of the, you know, the reverse important question thing, and whether the turn of things should be so, why don't you move the amendment to the Albanian motion, because automatically you'll get precedence terms of that today.

But instead of getting a special motion, putting it in advance of the Albanian thing, which you won't get, you'll use it there.

Why not move the amendment?

Let me just say on this thing, which we know what your position is, and we respect it, but the point, because for reasons that are quite important,

If on a purely procedural matter, where it isn't going to cost you anything, if we didn't cost you anything in terms of your principal, you could give us a hand either by abstaining or anything.

We would appreciate it.

That's all.

I think, Mr. President,

pushed either to drag out, to delay the debate, or to drag it out until well after I'm back, so that the two events are strongly dissociated.

But I'm waiting.

Wait a second.

I'm sitting.

Wait a second.

You're sitting.

Yes, sir.

Stay right there.

You're staying home.

I'll take it away, though.

There you go.

Yes, sir.

Oh, you'll bring it over?

Yes, sir.

We'll leave the ushers on this.

Oh, they started it right now.

Are they in or out?

The day's not on here.

Yeah, almost there.

Just sit down.

Yeah, all right.

Slightly.

Way around.

What's her name?

I won't remember.

E-R-M-A-L-L-E.

Do you have any of that picture now?

Or not necessarily?

What's that?

Peter's wife?

Let me see that.

So what is it?

I've always assigned the other things to you.

I don't know what to say anymore.

I don't know if it's possible just because of the skin.

Yeah.

The action.

I don't know what to say.

And the paper was 50%.

I don't know what to say.

Initially.

Okay.

What is it?

I don't know.

I think your son did a better job.

You're right.

And so did my director.

And so did everyone.

Yeah.

But that didn't just lay ahead of Kennedy.

And it doesn't make as much of a deal for him.

The reason for that, I'll just be a second here.

If you ask him, can't you see whether they're ready or not?

You see me over there?

Now, if you want to talk to me for a few minutes, you'll need to know how to do it when you're a kid.

You know?

I want you to just, just a few minutes.

You can stay out now.

Go on.

Keep going.

But it is.

Well, I'll tell you the reason that we have to go along is that there's no good time.

If you take your trip after we lose the vote, you just catch hold.

I frankly think, as it turns out, it's probably better to take the damn trip before the vote takes place.

I think, frankly, even if we had to choose, they'll say, well, what the hell is he doing over there?

Well, that would be during the debate, but who would be back before they vote?

I'd be back a week before they vote.

And I could even go up to the UN and have George Bush give a little dinner and talk to dubious people if necessary.

If we want to, but let's see how it goes there.

Well, I don't think you can do that because we've got to be in a position where we're not supposed to... No, we haven't told them we're not going to...

They know we're going to support the China policy.

Well, they know we are supporting our resolution, which we... That's another thing they screwed up.

I told them we would come up with something, which I explained to them, which is not to China, but keeps two seeds.

That is, we would do nothing to elaborate a new doctrine of sovereignty.

So that it could be handled like, say, the Ukraine.

But you can't do that.

Well, we started out doing it, but then they got too crude in defending it.

That's all right.

That we can handle.

But I think if we try to change, they will probably try to move the announcement to after the vote, too.

Then if we lose and we announce right after we've lost that I'm going, that looks worse.

But it really looks like it did.

And also with the Vietnamese game plan.

And with everything else, I think it works.

I am convinced that we have an easy game plan, but you've got to crank it immediately.

My plan, and it's got to come sooner rather than later.

I don't want to have to do it in the middle of next year.

But I remember that the breakdown that I will then resume the bombing, the military targets in the north until the procedure.

And no later than early in January.

And we announced that.

I agree.

And then do it.

I agree.

And then start slamming the bombing again.

I agree.

Now, let's see what effect.

I mean, the American people supported up to a point.

I think they may settle this fall, this winter.

I've never said that before, but my gut feeling tells me they cannot now.

This October 5th announcement, that's another reason why it's useful.

Two days after the Vietnamese election, we announce another trip to China.

That means they are out of the headline all of next week.

The following week, you announce a trip to Russia.

That means they're out of the headlines all of that week.

The week after I'm in China, they're out of the headlines again.

So how are they ever going to crank up a real offensive against us?

Rustically.

Now, wouldn't it be great if the British were strong enough to play a bigger role than Leroy?

They're so goddamn intelligent.

I mean, Clark MacGregor told me, and you know he's usually on the soft line, he said he's astonished at the erosion of support for the Mansfield Amendment in the Senate.

They're bringing back all their absentees because they have trouble getting it through.

I think one thing is certain.

Griffin told me that my statement on the draft, that while they were going to have to lay out, they think they've got to be a leadership role.

And I think that's the line we ought to follow.

Today, Tiger Chief was saying, boy, it was great.

He wasn't there.

He said, I was glad that you went down.

Talk to us, be with us.

And that made her rich.

I think they thought they had us on the run on that.

Because we went in, I went in there, and the goddamn press had to report that we got a good reception.

Whenever you've stood and fought, the Congress you've won, we've always lost when we try to make little concessions.

Because they've granted them their basic points.

But on this channel, there's no good time to have a book.

I mean, there's no good time for you to take a trip.

And there's some good time.

We're in a mess.

We're in a problem in Taiwan.

But actually, Mr. President, what I think the people... Taiwan goes, so I just don't...

I don't know.

I don't know the effect in this country.

I can't judge.

I think what...

Right wing will love the wall.

But on the other hand, we've made a good fight.

And we can make a statement of extreme disappointment in the UN.

We don't care about the UN.

And we're going to continue our support of China.

That's right.

Our relations and so forth.

Remain unaffected.

I think that in terms of public image or of sophisticated image, some people will think I'm taking the trip because of China's domestic problems.

A week later, they'll all think I'm doing it because of the Soviet Union.

So they won't bring it into direct relationship.

There'll be a lot of diversions with respect to it.

You won't be on the trip.

Hence?

I mean, they're going to think of the U.N. vote right then, because the debate won't start.

No, they won't bring it into direct connection.

And then the Soviet thing will come in, and that will be out in the center for a while.

I do want you to give the British money to advance numbers in this thing.

On the Soviet?

Yeah.

Well, I'll give them some 48 hours.

from her is they're totally trustworthy.

Absolutely.

And they'll feel a little better about it.

Absolutely.

I can see why any of these countries would worry about whether the United States is going off on a God-manned condominium.

I think, actually, that those few little, like, separatist remarks on the end of the IMF was the right approach there rather than making a big damn speech.

Because, are you sure?

Oh, God, I've heard more favorable comments about that.

I have to meet more regularly with Connolly because he doesn't the Texans really don't have the diplomatic touch I think he's by far the best man in your cabinet and he is loyal and you can count on him but the subtleties the way you phrase certain things even when it is tasteful he just doesn't have so

But did you hear good comments about my talk with Diane Atkins?

Very good.

I didn't like what you said.

We're not going to be isolated, but we're going to be tough.

Well, but that's what they want to hear, Mr. President.

They like to feel that this is a tough pill for them because it means that they all have to pay a domestic price.

They're taking a free ride on us, but people have gotten used to it.

And whoever stops taking the free ride will have it.

When did you hear from people, I mean, what did they want to do?

Well, and also apparently you said we are willing to do it in a cooperative spirit or something like that.

So that they thought, apparently they get the impression from Connolly that he says, you knuckle under or out.

And they said, well, you didn't say, what I heard was you didn't say anything specific.

But the spirit with which you approached it was one that they... And I heard that, yes, I didn't know you had intended to say anything.

Where did you hear it from?

Well, I...

Nixon, Douglas-Home & Kissinger on Vietnam War and Arms Control

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on September 30, 1971

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