Nixon, Kissinger & Bull on Foreign Policy and People's Republic of China

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I called Reagan.

He said, tremendous coup.

You really showed it, didn't you?

Really?

I got him at the airport.

He thought it was a...

He said tremendous... All of a sudden, after you left, he said he was so... As I was, I thought there would be big news, but they seemed so surprised.

They were sitting there with their mouths open.

It must be that...

I was just talking to Pierpont and the whole... Yeah.

The trip that I was walking up to you.

And, you know, you can tell when they get a sort of vicarious kick out of it.

Just after the July 15th announcement, you know, they figure that's really doing it right.

I mean, they thought, yeah, right.

Oh, yeah, and they say, I wish we could come along.

And we're going to, that one next week, though, that's just going to knock them off the,

Just keep it out of here.

It's spooky.

We're going to keep it in here.

We haven't blown one yet.

No.

Well, they really got a chunk of it on the ground.

Is it fixed up?

Mr. Karasack, we can do it in 45 minutes.

Oh, yeah.

But the mere fact that we are moving at such a steady pace, God, we remember what shape we were in in Asia and how we brought this thing back against the Senate, against public opinion, and, for that matter, against our bureaucracy.

Yeah.

Well, we can play it.

And the Soviet thing, Mr. President, we've said linkage, we've got linkage.

We've said that, uh,

We'll go to a summit when there's been a lot of preparatory work.

We've done that.

You had the guts to face them down on three and four acres and on Jordan in the middle of an election campaign.

You were willing to do the Cambodia thing four months before an election.

You were willing to risk a summit to do Laos.

All of this showed tremendous strength and made you a worthwhile partner for them.

And

That's, they don't deal with weak people, that's not worth their while.

What good is, is Humphrey to them?

He can't deliver, he's a soft head.

I mean, Kennedy sent Townsend chasing them all over Siberia.

No, no, no, he's, he can't deliver, he's a soft head.

But also, he cannot deliver anything against them.

That's, that's the problem.

They know damn well, they also, I think, have feedback in their minds.

Well, Romania, Mr. President, Romania, that shot across the bow, Romania, Yugoslavia.

Well, the North Vietnamese must, however, know one reality, Mr. President.

They can't make them settle.

But they sure as hell aren't going to let them risk everything by trumping you next year.

I think Hanoi is in a tough spot in that respect.

President is playing a big game.

Why should he risk everything for a war that's in any event ending?

for some marginal benefit to Hanoi that took no benefit to Moscow.

Same is true of Peking.

Except that as communists, I suppose they'd like to see the United States embarrassed by another communist power and not support the revolutionaries.

They cannot move into open opposition, Mr. President.

That they will not do to Hanoi.

But the intent, we don't know what they are saying privately.

I noticed, for example, what Gornitz

hasn't made any tough, rabble-rousing speeches there yet.

It's an understatement.

But that's not the worst thing.

That, for them, is a rather mild statement.

And that happens to be true.

That's nothing compared to what's going to happen next week.

Next week is going to get them.

We will.

That's going to get them into another frenzy.

See, they haven't speculated on that at all.

And if they do, we don't worry about it.

We just can't.

We'll just kill the speculation.

The only way the speculation can... No one is expecting anything to happen with Russia right now.

They think it's sort of cooking along.

We annoy them.

I can just see Harriman.

What?

Harriman sort of mumbles along that we are risking our relations with Russia.

Good.

I wish Terry or Muskie would come and say that this week.

It might.

Some of these may say it.

I know you, you, you hit on one thing, but we have sort of put the war on the back pages.

And that's a major defeat for, for Hanoi.

That has some effect.

There's no reference to Hanoi.

Well, there is.

What do you want?

If that one comes out, I think that I'll know.

Yeah, I know.

Well, you know, it's about three o'clock.

I don't want to see it.

I'll see you in a second.

I don't want to see it.

One of our guys, Sears, you know Sears, John Sears?

I've met him.

Sears has got some screwball idea.

He thinks that I should have used Mitchell in the campaign next year.

He should get, he said, he should get rid of our friends.

He should get rid of Sears.

On the ground, we've got to get somebody to do something in the campaign that has, that compresses it with more credibility.

I know of all of them, I just shouldn't suggest it.

Ziggler is pro, and I can't believe you want Claude to go.

Ziggler is incredible.

Ziggler is terrific.

He sets up there.

I can only follow my things.

But he sticks to his guidance, religiously.

He never plays the game that he's a good influence.

He never tries to suck up to them.

He doesn't suck up to them.

He helps you.

He's there to help himself.

That's right.

But he's there to help you.

He isn't there to help himself.

He isn't there to look like a great genius.

And sure, they nag away at him.

But the only way you can avoid that is to work with them against the president.

Moyers did that.

Uh, not Hagerty, uh, Salinger.

He didn't work against the president, but he worked...

He played himself a lot.

All right.

We'll... keep guessing.

I'll bet you this is rigged today around this town already.

Your press audience have just found me.

Oh, yeah.

They don't know what they're doing.

Fake Vietnam on top of their...

Well, I find it very interesting that Swansea has agreed to see, to see Walters below this station.

Right.

Right, it's happening.

Walters delivers a message.

Well, he reformulates our influence.

So there's an election process tied in now with Q resigning before the election, but we won't say whether he'll run or not.

We'll save that for the negotiation.

But you haven't offered him that before?

No, no.

And, you know, it gives us a great position domestically.

Q resigning before the election.

The election takes place six months after a settlement.

You resign one month before the election.

Good.

And then you have us to let the final coup d'etat you're going to give us.

And you agree, sir.

That's right.

But I want to wait until they give us that.

Thank you.

I think Alex will feel pretty good about this.

Oh, yeah, I called him this morning.

He is aggrieved.

Very good reaction in Thailand.

He is concerned.

The Taiwan thing they know is just tough.

They know it's tough, Mr. President.

This is... You remember about...

In a sense, though, Henry, while it embarrasses some of the Chinese, we have to take this fight on Taiwan.

we have to make it but now but the state is making it in a stupid way you know they're raising the issue of universality that every government has a right to be represented we shouldn't face that issue we should say we are not making a judgment on whether these are two governments just as the Soviet Union is represented by two seats so China which we can consider an entity is represented by two votes how they vote among each other

We could have made it a lot.

It's done now.

It's done.

It's 11 later right now.

No, we have to make the five.

But we have to say this, Mr. President.

The Chinese have given us really very good treatment.

No American press has been permitted into China.

We didn't even ask that, except for those who were already in China when I was there, namely Russians.

But I don't know whether you've noticed, they have not admitted any American report.

I wonder at this time if we make the, when we make the Soviet announcement, if the Chinese might react by, uh, in writing or something, like, some way, like, carry their musket or whatever forward.

Yeah.

Not until I was there, and I'll fix that.

You've got to fix that.

And... You said there's plenty of time for that.

Yeah.

Well, that they don't care about.

They care about what we can do for them.

Yeah.

They just have to have defense.

The thing they appreciate, Mr. President, is I have kept them meticulously informed about any big contact I have with the Soviets.

I haven't told them the whole story, but I've given them three weeks' warning on the accidental war treaty.

I've given them warning on the Berlin Agreement.

I've given them warning about the invitation.

I've now told them the invitation has come.

I'm going to give them three days' warning on the announcement.

They won't believe.

No, I don't believe.

And they appreciate that.

They've never been treated that honestly before.

And you know, and I told you, or maybe I haven't, we have an intelligence report where one middle-level official criticized you in front of foreign press.

They immediately fired him.

I saw that.

They immediately fired him.

They've got the mistake in you, but we must needle them.

And this is where this weekend...

thing was unfortunate.

Well, your thing today... My thing today will help a lot because they're going to get better.

They're going to pay more attention to what you say.

Oh, much more.

Much more.

They know what they know.

They are a fool when contacted by all this crap on the street.

But... And they also know that we can speak with two voices sometimes.

Well, luckily, I sent them a message last week saying that

Because I wanted to set up your private meeting to exclude the State Department.

I said, look, we will meticulously carry out every instruction, but we have a problem from the right wing and from the established bureaucracy, and therefore we want three different forums to discuss issues.

Because they had said, why should we discuss subsidiary issues, I said, to occupy the bureaucracy.

They're not there to say it.

But they've really been very...

They've been...

They've done nothing compared to us today.

Must be three.

Probably start around two.

I think Muskie's gonna kill himself the more exposure he gets.

How can he play that Lincoln game against you when you are on such a high level?

You know, I'm not being mean to anybody at the moment.

And you may not have to be.

You know, we're just really thinking about it one way.

They're going to have one hell of a time running next year.

What is their issue?

And if we contrast their story record with what we've come to in foreign policy, our domestic assets can't judge how that's going to go.

God, if we

If we wrap up this war, it's just going to be unbelievable.

We are one break away from it.

I just can't believe that they'll run out this train.

I cannot believe it.

If they do though, as I said, we have got to go on the bombing business for the purpose of the prisoners.

I'm just convinced I'll work.

But if they were to turn me down in November, for example, I think we ought to do a three-day strike right afterwards because that's when they'll be building up supplies.

Maybe a three-day strike, but I don't seem to know.

No, I mean, that's separate from the regular bombing, which we would start around January.

I don't think we should start it before Christmas.

But that's a decision you can make then.

I don't think they'll turn us down.

I think it will take a month before we know.

I don't know.

You think how far we've come.

There's China rushing in.

Mr. President, if you had said on May 1st that within six months you'll announce a summit with Russia, a summit with China, an assault agreement, a Berlin agreement, and an accidental war agreement, and that all of this will be done before six months are over, they might have tried to impeach you for having lost your mind.

I don't believe it.

I don't know.

Less than six months.

Six months.

I had a column this week saying that she doesn't understand why the Berlin Agreement has received so little attention.

It's one of the great seminal changes and... You see?

Henry, your analysis is correct.

The Berlin Act, actually, or two, you see, historically,

That's right.

Too big.

Well, they'd do a hell of a lot more if Kennedy had done it.

The China thing would have been bigger, continued longer if he'd done it.

Well, it's hard.

So that caused the public imagination to such a degree.

Oh, yeah.

First American.

Jesus Christ.

Oh, my God.

Nixon, Kissinger & Bull on Foreign Policy and People's Republic of China

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on October 5, 1971

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