Conversation 892-009

Transcript (AI-Generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.

How are you?

How are you doing, Mr. President?

Any point of view that might ask, you know, rationalizations and unfounded admirations, I don't know.

I don't know.

Well, we...

I was going to suggest, Ambassador, to get a different kind of picture, because we can show here a little bit of what it means.

The rose garden now has the...

I've grabbed out the trees, and I've tied them down, so let's walk around.

By the time you are able to win the elections, we'll set up something without you.

You want to.

Press next.

And you know, you and the U.S., you stand on my right side, and we come back in, and we take a picture of the war on the sand.

Thank you.

I'm just going to sit here and talk to her, of course, of course, of course.

I'm just going to sit here and talk to her, of course, of course.

All right, thanks.

Well, you're very, very kind.

As the ambassador can tell you, it wasn't very easy around here.

At certain times, I was thinking back over four years, and here, we've gone through agony, well, many marches, 350,000 on occasion, a quarter of a million another, and so forth, marching around this place.

I can't believe we had pay in line for all of it.

But the toughest one of all was the bar, because basically everybody thought the piece was here and so forth.

It was important to be doing this, and that's what we had to do.

The press here almost would have been a great assist for many of our political people.

Well actually in that period of December I told the secretary for twelve days

I would say that there is probably not a U.S. history that more universal, from the standpoint of the media, that believes in what the rest of the U.S. just said.

That universal criticism, would you say that was the roughest?

Roughest, yeah.

and there was no substance on it at all in the interview.

Can you look at it?

Genocide.

That's right.

Saturday.

But what was your view heard about that?

How do you feel about it?

Well, I'll say this.

Strangely enough, I was the last at the time.

I just moved on.

I'm a few columns there.

I can't talk to you, I think.

I see what you're saying.

Very sad, this is a sad fact.

Yes.

I said the other day, sort of, before the end of January.

Yeah.

You said it.

I said it.

Well, I'm glad that I was proven right.

So am I.

Well, actually, those are all details now.

We've come to a point where

having agreed to the inherent control over the terms of the people, countries, and so forth, what incentives we can give to NAR to keep them there.

At the present time, you know, they're violating it by not withdrawing from Cambodia, not withdrawing from Laos, and by continuing to build their leading apartment.

So we're adding ceasefire to the agreed violations in the south, which will continue after all, Civil War, 25 years of guerrilla work on Scotland, 25 days.

or maybe two or five, whatever it might seem.

But nevertheless, the real question is what this, what now will Hanoi do?

And we're watching it very carefully.

We have to, I don't know, watch it, even though we have politically indicated great concern about their violations.

and privately we have expressed our concern very recently.

We, of course, have also discussed the matter with our Russian and Chinese counterparts.

So, the question now is, these fellow men and women up there, I'm calling their own names,

What do they choose?

Which way?

And if they choose, now that the American withdrawal has continued, if they choose to continue the war around South Vietnam and Cambodia, that's going to pose a very, very problem.

Because in our case, see, in our case,

The legal justification for our being there is already being questioned here in this country.

We see why we're bombing the Cambodian man.

We see why we're bombing the Cambodian with their violating the agreement.

But if you have an agreement, they can come back and say, look, this isn't an agreement.

It's all a treaty that's approved by the Senate.

No, nobody objected to the agreement.

But the innocent way, as you know, justifications from a legal standpoint are quite difficult in this case.

And you do have a...

Among certain cycles of the press, what you were talking about earlier, what we call the establishing of the press, and certain areas of Congress, particularly the Senate, rather a dead wish in regard to topic change.

They don't think we should have gotten there in the first place, and they think we should get out now.

Henry, if I overstate it, because I remember one of those, you used to be one of those,

No, I don't think so.

You too?

Yeah, I've been there.

I've heard you laugh, I know.

He used to come to Harvard every summer and every fall, and he was still the central voice there.

It was a shocking experience for my colleagues to be in a nation who wasn't... Who was supposed to be a liberal radical, and who in fact is, but who's come to face the facts of life.

They don't want to face the facts of life.

It's one of the problems in America which frightens a lot of people, not just in Southeast Asia.

Like, why is that?

You know, by the time you get to this level-headed man, like, sometimes a man sees you and he says, you know, cut down the troops and pull them out, whatever you're doing, but all of a sudden you have two men shooting at you like this.

He's lost his credibility and his sound balance.

He's gone too far.

He's a soft-spoken, very decent, very level-headed.

He says these things.

You've got to take them seriously.

And the Thais, I know, for one, watch this with a great deal of anxiety.

Only, they'll snap out of this move, you see, but they don't know what they've done.

The mass media has a silent conspiracy to keep up this movement, you see.

You know, all right, let's finish with Southeast Asia, let's get out of here.

You know, I...

The press here is fearless and the recent fan play presenting both sides and joining issues.

They invited me to speak with them at the National Press Club.

One of the points I made was that, you know, it's American technology that made such a small world and we have an era of history.

They don't shake off this post-withdrawal, post-disengagement vote from Vietnam and end up with a smaller influence over the smaller world.

Not a word.

As in the meeting of the... As in the meeting of the Christmas discussion.

But this, I think, was more significant.

But if you had asked us to withdraw total power, we would have been on the front page of Southeast Asia.

Well, the question is, sir, it isn't just Southeast Asia, you see.

The same people who want to withdraw from Southeast Asia and want us to get out of Korea, regardless of what happens to the South, to get away from the Treaty of Japan,

and to, in other words, it's the 80 different agents' business that they think of in a different way than the operation, for instance.

And that, they also want to get out of Europe.

In terms of argument, this is very important.

Unilaterally, to demonstrate our good faith, we should go down regardless of what we are able to negotiate.

And even though our going down unilaterally would destroy all the chances to negotiate any kind of large limitation.

So, no way they're going to negotiate unless we've got something to give.

These people want to do it.

It's hard for me to figure it out because so many of these who now are talking this way in our establishment used to be what I call the old internationalists.

Immediately after World War II, they referred to Marshall Klein, and they referred to Point Four, and they referred to the United States playing a responsible role in the world.

And now,

They're obsessed only with the problems of .

They say, in other words, we must turn ourselves to the problems of better education, better housing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, which God knows you want and I want.

I mean, who wants to spend $80 million, $30 million on defense?

I mean, we'd all like to put our different things here, and congressmen and senators would feel happier instead of having to vote as they will today to sustain a veto or some kind of a water and sewer program .

But nevertheless,

I think you put your finger on the problem.

It's a problem in this country, but I should also suggest, I might also suggest, it's a problem which infects what I call the leader class in Britain.

And I'm not referring now to the leader class, I'm referring to he who is responsible for the leader class that, you know, the so-called intellectual leadership of Britain, France, Germany.

Western European, I think you find this growing attitude that we are turning in, or all people are turning away from the responsibilities of the world.

It would be fine if others,

If that were the attitude of the men in the Kremlin, and if that were the attitude of the people, it doesn't have to be there.

They'll turn inward for the moment, but in the end... No, they are people with long histories and long memories and long hell of ambitions.

They don't really give up.

That's right.

Do you agree with my analysis of what it is in Europe that you see?

I would draw a distinction between the men of parity and the establishment intellectuals who write, who propagate views.

People like he, or even what we do.

They're good men.

The articulators of the elite, they believe they know best.

But, mind you, some of them, like Rees-Mogg, the editor of the London Times, he's very scared, and I spent one morning with him, and I said, what happens if this goes on to its logical conclusion, and the last American troops go

and you haven't got an incredible amalgamation of your response.

And you know, the way he answered me was quite striking, because it meant he must have, he and the others must have spent a long time thinking this problem, and the eventuality, our own understanding.

He says, well, between the French and us, we've got a clutch.

that could hurt America.

I said, come with us, maybe, and around Moscow.

How can you really believe that this is the only way we can develop this further?

And we went, how China?

We should, West Europe, yes, how China develops over the people.

Russia's busy with the East.

But they are so alarmed at this trend.

that they have actually worked out a horrendous difficulty they face if it wouldn't happen.

In other words, they have not ruled this out.

If the next president is a weak man or muddle-headed, muddle-headed, it's also possible.

Well, you know, I don't know what I...

I was reading a Lord Moran's biography of a man who was in church,

I think that should be prescribed reading for a lot of these.

Lord Warren was Churchill's doctor.

Oh, yes, yes, yes.

And he was more candid than Churchill was.

You know, after these meetings with Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, he was aghast and enraged with virtue.

Churchill expressed himself, which he did in his own government.

Well, you know, Churchill, Churchill, uh, Churchill expressed very vigorously his

this good boy of crime and tragedy, you know, what he went through.

Roosevelt was not well.

And, of course, Churchill saw what was happening in Europe.

He saw what the Soviet was up to, and was thinking in geopolitical terms.

And Roosevelt was hoping to have a huge structure for Berlin, which the Russians had no intention of.

Ever.

No way.

Well, you know, the best answer, the best reflection on that is, Jim Boland has always been sensitive about criticisms of the Altair 3.

And Boland once told me, when he was ambassador to Paris, I was out of office.

He said, there was nothing wrong with the Altair.

He said, it had been adhered to.

I'm not sure he was right about the first point, but at least certainly the second point.

When you say it had been adhered to, well, what they agreed to in the order, for example, regarding Poland, that the moment was written down was broken.

If that one doesn't make an agreement, if you don't help it, which depends on how you're going to go about it, that's what we're up against.

And we're trying to come up with this, that...

whether we have to support the treasonous and try to get under which remove both that's intended to try to see if the congress says one you can't aid in art if they comply and second if the congress says that you can't uh strengthen art if they comply then what incentive do they have then all you have left is firstly the

the force of being, which is rather considerable now.

The South Vietnamese are very tough.

They're stronger than the bear.

Whatever it involves, we can have the rights to the Chinese, which is also considerable.

We still have some faults and things to play.

Tell me what you feel that, tell me what you feel we ought to do in Southeast Asia in the present.

What's your advice?

Well, that was disgusting.

First, you must create an air of certainty that your policies are going to prevail, regardless of all the sarcophony from congressmen, senators, House of Representatives,

you're going to see this story therefore a new chapter in history you're going to like this chapter

And this chapter, everybody, all of this will end more gloriously if there is a substance that is not common, scum, and young.

My assessment of what substance is...

Oh, yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

As of now, the problem is

In the process of the death of China, a lot of the leaders and, for the worse, they don't differentiate between great power politics and that small countries, because they can't be governed.

whether these alterations in our relations, which is really in search of a new world balance, affects them or allows them to play this game.

But it doesn't mean that because the Americans can speak in friendly terms with Beijing and Moscow, they too can afford it.

And I think that's being recognized.

That's dawdling on most.

except a few, like the Malaysians, who believe that in terms of peaking now, or in their behavior themselves, a lot of times, change in leadership, well, the orthodox behavior would have been established.

But that's really because they want to believe that in order to avoid having to make a dozen economic and social policy changes.

But then, I think myself that the South Vietnamese government stands

very good chance if they do not rely just on military strength.

That's exactly what the communists want them to do.

The South Vietnamese communists should be treated as South Vietnamese communists as the state of the North.

That's the first distinction.

The South Vietnamese communists cannot live on their own.

not for a long, long time, not unless the social-economic base is eroded and begins to disintegrate.

They need an author before they can be.

So if I were a South Vietnamese advisor to a few whites here, I'd offer these chaps a place under the South Vietnamese sun, and we're supposed to have a meeting with the government.

hundreds of districts flooded.

Never a Czechoslovak situation when the police, interior army, that's out.

And wheel them away from the North.

To make a distinction between the North and South.

And it's not a game which the North alone can decide.

They've got to get a concurrence of a jet cop to be able to play this game, unless of course they want to wrestle.

a full-scale, open, open aggression with all that it means.

So if they can succeed in this, then they can slowly concentrate more of the whatever aid you can give them, whether it's 500 million dollars or 600 million dollars or 700 million dollars.

They begin to spend more and more on social and economic policies than on disarming.

that, hand on hand, the DEFCON, I mean, that strategy would be to have more and more of this, if not all of this, spent on armed forces, energy expenditure.

And that's so that you get the base, the road that you get.

There's people, you see, peace, but there's been no change, no improvement.

More casualties, more hardship, more privation.

That's the solution.

I would say that this is the critical factor because I don't see the situation remain the same and therefore it can go more and more in two ways back to more and more conflict, more and more military expansion which can only

the situation is very dangerous for the South Vietnamese government.

I think they really have to adapt and adjust their minds on what has been before, where the emphasis wants to resist aggression from the North into what is possibly a completely new situation.

And there must be an argument in hand-off as to whether

are sensibly on a peace agreement, any which can be habilitated and accosted in any Chinese or Russian name, or Soviet name, but at the same time also sending infiltrators and arms down to the south to keep the hot volume, not enough to bring about a radical reaction, but enough to keep

the South Vietnamese economy on a constant warfare.

I think he's got to move away from that by making some bold moves, getting the South Vietnamese a place at municipal level as part of the center.

I don't believe, you know, that any one of the others, who I don't so well know, wants to be a functionary in Hanoi.

And I think this, it should make this appeal to their desires.

Now, to what extent do you look at the current policy?

However, I know I have some real interest to speak as well as a character.

Yes.

A lot depends, but again, if I use the word certainty, that is the earlier reason.

I must be certain that we may, that we're going to stay in that area in a responsible way.

This is where I find it's very difficult to make a prediction of what the end-table belief was.

You know, they've made so many great miscalculations before.

Yes.

And the reading of the American press, hearing American senators and congressmen, House of Representatives, and so on.

And then, you know, government coming out and saying, the American president now has a great mistake.

He'll turn it into another death penalty.

They think that this is a time of history on their side.

This is a danger of miscalculation again.

But I would think that if I were, and I think there would probably be in the end a majority in this collective English that would believe that having gone thus far, you're going to

Having started this new chapter, you're going to write this chapter up and complete it in an honourable way.

And therefore, if I were there, I'd play it safe, but then I know that that is the unpredictable element, this collective leadership on the other side.

Hence, I think, the value of both the canon and the stigma.

actually exposing that leadership to the extent we can possibly expose it to, whether it's in Kissinger or others, is vitally important, because from all accounts, except for, you know, Doe and the rest, they are, uh, they are, uh, harrowing, horrible, uh, very, very,

I was talking to one of our prisoners of war, and he said, you have to remember that as far as these leaders in the higher concern are concerned, most of them have been in prison for a number of years.

He said, they do very well out of work on this.

because they knew the mentality of people who were in prison.

And, well, that's what they say.

It's a great experience.

We had social conversations at dinners.

It was almost morbid to think of the fact that Tom and his colleagues most likely thought about it.

It's a great experience.

What is your judgment, Tom?

I believe that the most, the principal action is in South Vietnam.

If they want to take Cambodia, they run a risk of taking the towns, of having to feed the towns, of themselves being under siege, bombarded and so on.

So I think they just want to keep this up, keep the pressure up, both for psychological and creating problems of logistics and so on.

Just keep...

Keep the bomb in the foyer, you know, congressmen, they don't say, bombing is a deal and so on and so forth.

But the key is still South Vietnam.

I mean, they can take the number, 12 bombs, they're going to get back there quickly.

Maybe a psychological boost or something like that.

If they don't get any troops that will capture the North Vietnam, they'll come here rouge.

And that's no great propaganda, but I guess they're coming out with just a different thing.

Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

They'd be a hated enemy occupying force, whereas the Persians were invading the city.

That's right.

And I don't think they're going to handle it, because they'll come with us.

Well, let me tell you, let me just say to you,

As I said previously, we're going to ask these questions.

I don't want to raise any doubts.

You can put any doubts in your own mind as to what we intend to do or what I intend to do.

I can't speak for the fellow governor.

Oh, I can't speak for the governor, but I cannot speak for the Congress of the nation, which is generally .

Yes, but then it's not that easy.

The point that I make is that we do face, in my opinion,

We face in this country a really what I would call a, in terms of our intellectual class, if there is something, we see a very distressing and dystopian softness and weakness.

It is that, it's an introverted attitude, selfishness, I would put it.

in every sense of the word.

And as a result, it translates itself into isolations, to try to cut down the fence, get out of Europe, get out of Asia, no more foreign adventures.

We had Korea, now we had Vietnam, both miserable little wars, and we weren't able to win.

I'm sure you and I would agree, it's a very different thing to say, after all, the Republic of Korea is a non-communist state, and that was worth fighting for.

The Republic of Vietnam is a non-communist state, and that was worth fighting for.

Looking at that, I'd say, here's this attitude.

I see it also, and I see, I couldn't agree more with you, I have the highest respect for it,

heave, yield, and character, and they're strong, fine men.

But they have, beneath them, a, uh, a very intellectual class.

More responsible than ours, I must say.

But there it is.

Uh, the French have, Pompidou's a good man, he's gone, he's gone.

The Germans have, they're schizophrenic, so we all know that.

But the point, the point that I make is that, that at the present time, the, uh, the, uh,

It's going to take, on the part of us here, very strong, vigorous leadership in order to get the support from our Congress and the American people who need to maintain a credible defense and also to undertake a broad

the kind of foreign policy leadership which we must undertake.

I'm not referring to it in terms of an America dominant in the world or in India.

That's right.

I mean, there was a time before World War I we could say, well, they're the British and they're the French.

They could stop the countries that it was then.

Before World War II, well, there was the Franks and there was the British.

And after the Franks were gone, there was still the British and so forth.

And now there's no more.

Let's face it.

The Japanese could do it, but they can't be allowed to.

The Germans might do it, but they can't be allowed to.

The British and the Franks can't do it.

And so here we are.

It isn't because the United States wants it.

the first great power that became a world power, but unintended to be so.

Therefore, we don't have policy yet until recently.

But I want you, but I feel at this time that if we gave

That's why that's what the war in Vietnam was about.

When I say the war was about, I'm not referring to how we've done it, which I supported.

I'm not referring to how it was conducted before we got here.

I have great doubts about the gradual escalation of it in a different way.

But nevertheless, whatever those stages were made, I have no doubt about that.

That's nothing to do with that.

That's true.

But if the United States invented war in Vietnam, on the basis of the majority of our sense of justice,

Look, give us back our prisoners, and we'll withdraw.

First, our prisoners would have come back.

This is a personal sense of shame, and it was very edged out and so forth.

But that would have been cool.

But that would show exactly what it's about.

It would have meant the United States would lose the trust of its allies and its friends.

And more than that, you would lose respect to its adversaries in the world.

We had to do it right.

I did.

We had to do it right.

Having done it right paid that cost.

As you say, if you turn this chapter, this page or this chapter, we've got to write a new one.

And we must not now, in the post-war period, say, oh, thank God it's over.

And now we can turn away from all these things and turn away from what we have to do.

Right now we have to turn to, we have to turn to, because there's nobody else, because also there's another interesting historical thing which you see, which when I first saw it when I called in from your office to see before, it was interesting.

But you have this interesting point that you have the Soviet Union, a major superpower.

You have the PRC, a potential superpower, no question.

They'll be there one day.

You have them sitting there.

At this particular point, it's rather ironic that the United States of America, among the great nations, is perhaps the nation that the Soviet Union on the one hand and the PRC on the other most wants to talk to.

Now, therefore, we must use this particular time in history

not in any blatant way of playing one against the other, maybe counterproductive, but in a way to attempt to

the extent that we can to love their own policies as against our neighbors and in the world so that we can have the uneasy, at least whatever it is we can get to, but it would be better than just continued competition, an uneasy period of live above live, negotiation, et cetera, whatever you want to call it.

But in order for that game to work,

And that comes back to this.

The United States must continue to be strong, and it must continue to be trusted, and continue to be respected.

And that's the key to the game, as I said.

And we've got to stay in Asia.

Now, when I say stay in Asia, you know the so-called Nixon doctrine has been misinterpreted by some of our state department people, maybe deliberately, maybe because they didn't understand it.

And many a nation, many of them, Mansfield, that's the next document, for example, is simply a bargain for getting out of a,

And we're quite the contrary.

It's a part that we're staying in.

We're in effect saying, we're not going to go in, and that this is a mistake, and that Vietnam or places like that can furnish the money and furnish the arms and the men.

What we're going to do, we're going to help others help themselves, and basically that's what we're trying to do.

And this, I think, this is a work in Asia.

She worked in Latin America.

She worked in other places, recognizing that always behind them must be

that we are determined.

But I think the, I suppose the only reason I'm saying this to you is that you will read and hear

so much when you return and as you travel around the world about the fact well the united states has now been through war and so forth and it's going to recede into basically an isolationist position for lack of a better term if you were to vote if you were to vote the the college backgrounds of the ivy league schools it'd be 90 for that kind of policy if you were to vote the utah uh

editorial staff of The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time Magazine, News Magazine, and ABC, NBC, CBS, the three members.

It'd be 90% for that kind of policy.

If we were both this White House press card, it'd be 90% for that.

So you see, we're up against one hell of a problem.

But I just want you to know that Henry and I, you know, you may read this on its crap for the effect that we disagree on this.

That's all.

They just turned it.

But there are two men who came from very different backgrounds who feel more strongly about this than I do.

I don't know who they are.

We believe this very deeply.

We feel that if we don't do it, I won't speak personally, I'm speaking if the leadership does not come from this office at this time, then I think the whole thing could go right down the chute now.

That's probably talking too melodramatically, but I think it's true.

Well, looking at it from outside,

You know, the next coalition for this kind of movement is partly resentment at non-cooperation of the West Europeans on economic monetary problems and gains, problems, colors, advantages, helping the Japanese and having the Japanese not willing to give and so on.

So let's create this movement.

I have no doubts in my mind.

of the policies between now and January 77.

But we've got to live beyond January 77.

My own belief is that if Vietnam was stiff, you could have a change in mood in the whole of America.

A lot of all the white speakers who could written this whole thing off.

They're going to hang their heads in shame.

They'll search and wound the country, I think, for change.

And it is why I think having gone so far is worthwhile.

You carry it one step further, and you get your bipartisan policy emerging again.

The people who suggested surrender, who suggested giving in,

That question will be silent.

The same way as Salza by Carol was made to look ridiculous, you know, that he would go to Hanoi and take his prisoners home in a moment, he's going to try to, but that sort of thing.

They'd still be there if people were, but if South Vietnam sticks,

then this whole policy would bring about a complete change in the world.

The Democrats can't go on just being self-pitying themselves, right?

They are people with a lot of resilience.

They're snagged in about patience.

That's right.

But the resilience would come back, and if there's something viable there, then all this would not have been in vain.

And then they could see, after another four years, there is no choice.

You are the anchorman on the other side.

And Harvard divided the communist world into the Soviet Union and China.

Yes, you're communist.

You can collaborate, you can cooperate in space,

The oceans of this Earth, never mind the Earth itself, is going to be competition.

Absolutely.

And it's going to be very vigorous.

And a weak America is dangerous for the whole of the non-communist world.

And you've listed the communist world.

Yeah.

What do you see about Japan?

You once told me, I was trying to recollect this morning, on our conversations, not while we were here, but years ago, and you once were talking about the Japanese, and you were saying, you were just analyzing some people, and you said that

people with their history and their ability are not going to be content with making transistor rail or transistor radios and changing agents out of robots or something like that.

You tell us what's going to happen.

What do you see the challenges today?

I think... Are they going to start playing the role of other people now?

Well, you take the difference between the Japanese and the Germans.

The Germans haven't asked for a poetic mission as a major power of the United Nations.

The Japanese say, well, we ought to be a part of the number of the Security Council.

They thought that they should have been in Paris for this Paris Agreement.

There is a surge on that part.

They do want to play a role.

They do want to play a role, but I would be very unhappy if they were playing a role of their own.

I'd much rather they were still playing a subsidiary role as part of a Western alliance.

So we can keep them in the Western role, I think, because that's going to be... Monetarily, economically.

We constantly emphasize in our talks with the Europeans

that it's vitally important that it not be at our own.

Of course, there is the possibility that Europeans might get together and say, hello, America.

And we know that can't be played by some.

That wouldn't be useful to them, we think, in the long run.

There's also the possibility that the United States and Europeans could have a forum, speaking about monetary and trade and the rest, and the Japanese would be on that.

It seems to be vitally important that we always think in terms

as part of the free world complex economically, because basically they are the second most productive, the biggest GNP in the free world today, and there are going to be more going to be on there.

But you would not want them, how would you feel about them gaining certain military capability?

Well, if they went nuclear, even underwater, even without a first-time capability,

That means, for the rest of Asia, an independent Japanese policy on its own, which adds another joker to the pack of cards, which is not a good idea at all.

Far better than the idea of an accumulated and an economy interwoven with Western Europe and Latin America.

So then, they cannot embark on any intentions.

See, what was interesting,

I was looking through these figures and talking to the Atlantic Institute and Brussels in December of the year, is that today, their trade with Southeast Asia, their trade has become global.

And their trade with Southeast Asia is only about 10% of that open world trade.

Their imports are mainly raw materials and so on.

That's right.

90% exports and manufacturing.

About 12%.

Their main trade, 32%, anyone that is with them. 90%.

a very small percentage, 3-2% with West India.

And I was telling the West Indians, if you want peace and prosperity, then you must have this multilateral sharing of all the opportunities and the burdens.

In other words, if you don't give the Japanese the economic opportunities,

If you shut them off with tariff boards out of Europe, out of America, then you have introduced an element of instability, because then they've got to carve out some mafia for themselves.

Sure.

Sure, I think.

Sure.

Far better than keeping them empty and meshed with Western economies and giving them an economic place under the sun and their military role

purely as part of a Western security net.

I agree.

But even with that, 3% of the trade to Western Europe... What, Europe, yes, and Japan, Europe?

Yes.

They've managed to get a $1.3 billion surplus.

What?

But I think... With Western Europe, yes.

But I think Tanaka is on the level.

Right.

He will open up his markets.

He knows that.

It's impossible to be in surplus with every country of the world.

They have a $9 billion surplus now.

4.6 with us, 1.3 with Europe.

And then 3 billion with us.

That's it.

I know this.

I just had a bit in mind in my meeting this morning.

A lot of parts of the industry belong to our trade unions.

Plus, I didn't really listen.

About 80% of it is directed toward our problem with Japan.

That's our major problem.

And I think if they didn't know that, they'd have got to go now.

Not to reduce the rate, but... Oh, no, no, no, no.

We want to increase it, yes, but you must begin to buy.

The economy... As a matter of fact, here's somebody... Somebody raised here in your country this morning.

Apparently, he must be selling us textiles today.

That is, you know, why... Why don't we work the canvas shoes or something that they raise?

You're going to be very, very tough on some of our people.

I know.

This we entered, you might sort of like, at a time when the British put out this work to be pretty drastic and dramatic and anything that would mock our Americanity.

But the last thing we want is to be dependent on shoes or textiles because they are sensitive always.

Good.

Cheers.

Well, no, no, no, not computers.

This is where the Japanese authors began buying instead of trying to make that old.

The authors began opening up their markets and buying American computers instead of having a zero-order computer.

But you've done well.

I think we're, you know, everybody's sort of pressed that and I think that came back.

It's challenging response.

You either face a challenge immediately, climb up the face of the cliff to a higher ledge, or just flop down on your knees.

gravel at a time.

Let me ask you about one other place, if I may, Indonesia.

Have you been there recently?

I'm going there soon.

But they're very important.

We're watching it very closely.

It could be a lot better if they spread the development beyond Jakarta.

If the army generals listen more to the technocrats, the civilians, perhaps they're less asking too much.

They're modeling themselves on the Thai pattern, where the army will charge the civilians as functionaries.

And part of the pattern, of course,

Germans in charge, inevitably, with power.

First you acquire wealth to complete your mission, then you acquire power.

And the Indonesian philosophy always has been, and this is, I think, in part a contribution of the Islamic religion.

Islam is the one religion that depended on power, where power comes from.

And it's this problem that we'll have to live with.

It's possible to find the odd man.

Dr. Sir Rachel was one such man.

I'm sure that he is now.

But there's a situation where, you know, Hunter, who was vice president, once said that corruption is part of an ancient culture now.

It's not just a way of life, it's part of Indonesian culture, and I think that slows down their development, considerably.

You can have a culture.

Yes.

We had a seminar recently in Singapore, and our South-East Asian Institute had an Indonesian intellectual defending corruption as a means of lubricating the wheels of administration.

And now you've got an intellectual rationale for why it is what it is.

Let me ask you one other thing, and I believe we can get you on here.

Let's leave the paper for the last.

You certainly have a better feeling for the PRC and China and so on, and its future and so forth.

Do you think we are pursuing the correct policy?

Or do you anticipate the future there?

How do you see that?

I have always said, you know, it was not a dramatic advantage to join the CWM, because you've got no real issues that the streets are almost always an unnatural boundary.

I think if Joe and I plus Mao lived long enough to send this line, we might be well-recent for an equity plus, namely friends with all the rest, borrowing, buying technology, not from anyone, so that it can be switched off.

And in fact, when we started, as we were with Russia in the late 50s,

But buying, owing to Americans, buying tridents from the British, never mind all the complications of different tombs and spas and so on.

They were born owing seven, three cents to come to the US.

Why buy tridents?

But just spreading their sources.

They've cultivated the Japanese, they've cultivated the Western Americans individually, collectively, encouraged the common market to grow stronger.

Their main preoccupation is Russia.

And so, I don't know when they developed a really safe second strike capability, which will make them sleep well at night.

And they are really afraid of the Russians.

And deep down in every China was hard, or at least self-conscious.

He can berate the Americans as a puritan, but he knows that the Americans are people with a conscience.

He also knows that the Russians have no conscience.

So he's really under no illusions about this.

Therefore, you have to play everything very carefully.

You're not going to upset the Russians.

You're not going to give away your showing as either.

You're taking all the stars and so on.

You can do your best.

Then you'll give up the next century in the Americans if you engage us.

But building up, and I think once they reach this second strike capability, then there is no possibility of reaction.

And that's a new phase, and that's a new generation, and that's about as far as we can go.

When you look around, fewer cities came to the present time.

I mean, from their view, from their standpoint, and I say this without quoting anybody, they're higher than the leader there, I think, around.

I would see 40 or 50 Russian divisions on the border.

To the south, I would see India with 500 million people.

They have to demonstrate India that they can respond to them.

And they're right.

They're right in terms of what they've been doing to the military.

But nevertheless, India, in their eyes, rapidly becomes a Soviet settlement because the Indian arms are there.

And that's why India and Pakistan get worried so much.

They look further around.

Southeast Asia is the Soviet Union.

So that's why their policy in Southeast Asia is probably they would prefer not to have a North Vietnam charge to hold the business.

They would prefer to have, in fact, they talked to us in terms of the board, the Chinese state, perhaps, as the Chinese do.

And then they looked to the northeast, northwest, east.

They see Japan, and despite what Japan is doing at the present time toward peaceful directions, they know and respect the Japanese, and respect the manhand reason, all the kind of fear that they find.

And then they look out, straight east, due east, to that wide blue Pacific, and they see America and Hawaii.

Now, what friend do they have in that group?

Us.

I mean, they may not like our system,

and so forth, and they may, but deep down, I think they have another thing that they must know.

You put it in terms of consciousness, I think that's true.

But I think also they're aware that this is truly,

It's a self-serving thing for anybody in the U.S. to say this, but, and we've got many things, and perhaps a wrong, our wrong, I agree.

What we did to Mexico, the acquisition of Texas, the Spanish war, and so forth.

I mean, there were all nations.

But in terms of World War I and World War II in Korea and Vietnam, whatever mistakes we have made,

It has not been American policy to wage war for the purpose of gaining territory and gaining domination.

And I don't believe they think we are a threat to them.

I don't know.

Do you think?

I think they've seen you that way for a long time.

You know, they just kept up the rhetoric.

They just kept up the chant.

You know, it's something you...

You get hypnotized by it.

They've got to keep it up in order that they don't appear to have become revisionists.

But they never believed in the American record in China as against the European.

That's why they never built shelters at the moment of maximum hostility for the United States.

They never built shelters.

The shelter program is not supported by a minister's view.

No, they never believed, never believed that the world were out to destroy them.

We were there, too.

We were in Japan.

But at the same time, I'll add this right there, that they don't know what follows.

And we don't either.

As a matter of fact, we don't know what policy they're going to play on each other.

So they would want to consolidate as quickly as possible so that any successor to them would pursue this policy.

And this policy must mean for them not a dependence on America alone for technology, but a spread in America

The West Europeans, the Japanese.

And the West Europeans, again, a further split.

So that there's always a supply.

And there's no sudden shock, withdrawal of plants, half-finished.

That's, I think, part of their thing.

But that's been built into this present leadership.

That shock of the way in which the Russians ruthlessly just let plants half-finished, just pour them.

We'll get into a more important subject, how she got off.

I understand that you're still worried about it.

What?

No, no, it's not very good.

No, it's not.

That's very good, very good.

Minus, I have played for a long time, about 20, I guess.

I was once 14.

But you like it, don't you?

We played here.

We have a place in here.

One of our footage, sir, the legacy was a nine hole golf course around my official residence in that area.

So you get a bit of, and it's not so much because it's out in the open.

Moving around.

Absolutely.

You know, trees, fresh air.

It's the antidote to the communal.

Well, anyway.

You might lose golf balls.

Super.

It's all you get out of this.

All this great advice, I'm excused.

Some of mine, you know.

Oh, it's what you know now.

I can't remember.

Yeah, it's a good one.

He now owns Wilson.

Wilson.

Oh, sorry.

Bring me in a box of my golf balls, please.

There's a lot of them.

No, there's no rough ones.

So that's rough.

You couldn't lose them all.

That is the outside of all the rules.

Okay.

If there's water, close it.

Well, we'll have a chance to chat again tonight.

We have an Italian-Irish opera singer tonight.

They say she's pretty, so I don't mind.

There you are.

And you've got her, too.

These are pretty good.

You got it?

All right.

I bet you got a lot of stuff in this time.

Thank you very much.

I'll get you started in your comments.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.