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• CNN AMERICA,INC. 111 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C.20001 (202)898-7900 MAY 1 8 1989

May 16, 1989

Dr. Henry Kissinger Kissinger Associates 350 Park Ave. 26th Floor New York, NY 10022

Dear Dr. Kissinger:

Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to appear as a guest on the May 6, 1989 edition of EVANS & NOVAK.

Your comments on the changing situation in the Soviet Union gave our viewers a valuable analysis of President Gorbachev's reforms and how they affect U.S. foreign policy.

A transcript is enclosed for your records.

I hope that you will be able to join us again soon on CNN.

Si cerely,

SaL_ Elissa Blake Free Executive Producer EVANS & NOVAK

Ends.

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EVANS & NOVAK

AIR TIMES: Saturday, May 6, 1989; 12:30 PM, ET Sunday, May 7, 1989; 12:30 & 8:30 AM Monday, May 8, 1989; 3:00 AM

ORIGINATION: Washington, D.C.

GUEST: HENRY KISSINGER Former Secretary of State

INTERVIEWED BY: Rowland Evans & Robert Novak

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Elissa Free

ASSOCIATE PRODUCER: Kevin Bohn

PRODUCTION COORDINATOR: Lisa Lawrence CONDITION OF USE: Credit "Evans & Novak" (CNN)

EDITOR: This is a rush transcript provided for the information and convenience of the press. Print and broadcast media are permitted quote this transcript to provided credit is given to "EVANS & (CNN). Video NOVAK" and audio cassettes are available upon request media. For to the further information, please contact Lisa 898-7567. Soloman (202)

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MR. NOVAK: I'm Robert Novak. Rowland Evans and I will question a major world figure about the Gorbachev revolution and what President Bush's policy should be. MR. EVANS: He is Henry Kissinger. MR. EVANS (on tape): Last weekend Defense Secretary Dick Cheney created a political firestorm on this program when asked about Mikhail Gorbachev's prospects. SECRETARY CHENEY (Evans & Novak, 4-29-89): If I had to guess today, I would guess that he would ultimately fail, that is to say that he will not be able to reform the Soviet economy, to turn it into an efficient modern society. And that when that happens, he's likely to be replaced by somebody who will be far more hostile than he's been in terms of his attitude towards the West. MR. EVANS: On Monday, President Bush tried to counteract Cheney's frank warning. PRESIDENT BUSH: You know, I made clear to Mr. Gorbachev up there in New York, Governor's Island, when we met, that we wanted to see perestroika succeed in the Soviet Union. MR. EVANS: That means that on the eve of Secretary of State James Baker's mission to Moscow, there is disagreement over U.S. policy on how to deal with Gorbachev.

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MR. EVANS: Dr. Kissinger, do you agree with Secretary Cheney that Mr. Gorbachev will probably fail? MR. KISSINGER: I agree with Secretary Cheney that the odds against Gorbachev succeeding are very long. I don't agree that he will necessarily be replaced by a figure more hostile to the United States, because Gorbachev is not conducting the policy he does as a favor to us, or because he likes the United States, but because he needs a breathing space, and so would any other Soviet leader. MR. NOVAK: We'll be back with more questions for Henry Kissinger after these messages. ,

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(Announcements) MR. NOVAK: Dr. Kissinger, let me see if I understand your answer to my partner's opening question. You agree with Dick Cheney that Mikhail Gorbachev probably will fail, but disagree that he will necessarily be replaced by somebody more hostile to us. Are you saying because you consider Mr. Gorbachev pretty hostile to us anyway? MR. KISSINGER: I think we should stop psychoanalyzing Mr. Gorbachev. Mr. Gorbachev wants to make the Soviet Union strong. He wants to modernize its economy. For this he needs time. This has nothing to do with liberal, pacifist views as it's so often presented in the United States, and I think his foreign policy is very daring, and actually is more designed to undermine the Atlantic Alliance than that of his predecessors. MR. NOVAK: Do you think, then, it's a mistake for the president and the secretary of state, other U.S. officials to repeatedly say we hope perestroika succeeds? MR. KISSINGER: I think we should say that perestroika is essentially a Soviet problem, and that we should not gear our expectations of Soviet policy to the internal reforms of the Soviet Union. It is not self-evident to me that a Soviet Union that becomes domestically stronger but has not changed its foreign policy will be easier for us to deal with. And therefore, we should focus on Soviet foreign policy and have general good will towards perestroika, but not make our own expectations and policies dependent on assessments of whether it will succeed or not. MR. NOVAK: Do you think it's counterproductive also to speculate on the nature of Mr. Gorbachev's successor? MR. KISSINGER: I think that Gorbachev is acting as he does out of necessity, not out of idiosyncrasy. And I on't see that we have any knowledge of who could be his possible zw!cessor, or, indeed, whether his policies would differ signit:c,rtia,, though I think the panache and the daring wth which ;Arrbz,,,cv conducts his policy are surely peculiar to him. Jot

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And not all of this is an unmixed blessing to us. MR. EVANS: Dr. Kissinger, you once said, about two or three years ago, that there are two great dangers from Mr. Gorbachev's reform effort. First danger, he may succeed, second danger, he may fail. Have you changed your mind? MR. KISSINGER: No. I think danger in the sense that if we gear our foreign policy to what happens in the Soviet Union, and we don't have a constructive creative policy of our own, then no matter what happens in the Soviet Union we are apt to be caught off-base. In that sense I have not changed my mind. MR. EVANS: Is it wrong for an American official as well placed as a secretary of defense to raise a question aboUt the success or failure of the Soviet leader in the sense that the president came back so fast to kind of Undercut What Dick Cheney has said as though it were somehow wrong to question the success or failure? Do you see anything wiong with that? MR. KISSINGER: Well, as I said, I agree with that part of Cheney's analysis that has questions about how likely Gorbachev is to succeed. I would prefer it if these debates were not carried out in public and if a unified position by the American government were presented. On the other hand, I don't think it did any particular damage. I would not show that great eagerness to reassure Gorbachev. We have to conduct our foreign policy, he has to conduct his foreign policy. He's a big boy. We don't have to give him psychiatric treatment. MR. EVANS: Do you think, Dr. Kissinger, that a total success of Mr. Gorbachev, a stLengthenod Coviet economy, a rampant Soviet foreign policy backed by new strength, and thy have not changed their foreign policy, would in fact represent c;reater threat to the united States or the West? MR. KISSINGER: I think if Gorbachev uccec.%he modernization of the Soviet economy, which I blievc is unlikely, t.. 1.sI: ;

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agreements and if in the meantime there have not been political end the causes between the Soviet Union and the United States to of the Cold War, the conditions will indeed be dangerous. Kissinger, MR. EVANS: Don't you worry a little bit, Dr. toward the that the German movement in its political attitudes on this whole Soviet Union today away from the United States and maybe weapons question of NATO is a little bit disconcerting, troublesome, worrying? MR. KISSINGER: It's more than a little bit disconcerting. a nationalistic It's extremely worrisome, because it is in effect policy, no matter what the Germans say. In fairness to the Germans, our conduct in the previous the administration at Reykjavik and the INF agreement separated States and strategic defense of Europe and that of the United Germany, as laid the groundwork for what we are now seeing in many of us said at the time. is a But whatever, what we are seeing in Germany now for Europe, national assertion, and that has been a disaster I. And no leaving aside the Nazi period, or any before World War like is to matter what the Germans say, what the Germans would the Soviet stay in NATO, conduct an independent policy towards Europe, unify Union, conduct their own policy towards Eastern will fall Europe in the east, unify Europe in the West, and they between all schools if they keep this up. the MR. NOVAK: Do I understand you're saying that of NATO, advent of an independent German policy, independent for the without talking about a Nazi resurrection, is disquieting rest of the Western alliance? a Nazi MR. KISSINGER: No. I don't believe there's resurrection. That is extremely unfair to the Germans. their I think they do have a democratic system, but German foreign national concerns are coming to the forefront. The required him to minister said last week that his oath of office West Germans. look after the East Germans, and not only after the

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And the justification for this policy of in effect denuclearizing Central Europe is in effect a national German policy, because to say you debate--you want to discuss about short-range weapons, and I see all of these clever proposals of what formula one can come up with, there are 88 short-range nuclear weapons in Germany. What's the difference between 88, 43, 36, 62? There is no stopping point between 88 and zero. And if there is a stopping point it's a fraud. It doesn't make any difference. MR. NOVAK: You brought up this question of the short- range weapons, which is the great rage in Washington this past week. Paul Nitze, the veteran arms control negotiator, left government service with a blast, saying that the administration is making a big mistake in opposing Gorbachev's call for negotiations. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle are echoing him. Do you think that the president is making a mistake in adamantly opposing these negotiations? MR. KISSINGER: No, I think the president is absolutely right. All these cards show that arms control has become almost a liturgical religious exercise. What exactly is achieved by these negotiations? To what level can you reduce those 88 that is any different from where it is? Or if you reduce, let's say, 4,000 tactical warheads that are there to 2,000, then what have you achieved? These things become their own purpose. And in the meantime, one does not discuss the fundamental issues. How can Germany be related to Western Europe so that the German national aspirations become part of a larger framework less disquieting to everybody? What is the new security relationship urope and the United States? How does Eastern Europe fit All of these issues have to be addressed, ane ;ithe numbers games that people have become so enar.o6 in beccz:e.! tirly '

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of demoralizing the West and creating the illusion of progress without anybody being able to explain what has been achieved. MR. NOVAK: One more question on that, Dr. Kissinger. Senator William Cohen, Republican of Maine, a member of the Armed Services Committee, said the other day that if the Germans do not want to modernize short-range weapons, if they want to negotiate them out of existence, maybe we ought to consider pulling the troops out. What do you think of that reasoning? MR. KISSINGER: Well, I think pulling troops out of Europe would be an earthquake. It would change the whole pattern of relations in Europe, it would change relations also in Eastern Europe, because then it would deprive those people of any hope that there's some support close by. But I believe that if the Germans conduct on a national policy a denuclearization of Central Europe, that the pressures in the United States to withdraw troops will become irresistible. They already exist without this. MR. EVANS: Dr. Kissinger, Sam Nunn, Senator Nunn, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has publicly called for a reduction of troops. Your friend, Zbignew Brzezinski, has publicly called for a reduction of troops, not a withdrawal of all, and I thought you, sir, were in favor of a pullback of some U.S. troops, quite apart from this current controversy over short- range weapons.

MR. KISSINGER: I'm against the unilateral pullback of troops.

I think the next phase of the arms control negotiations should be in the conventional field, and to see whether a new troop pullback of some significant part of the troops can be negotiated. And it should be negotiated also from the point of view of freedom for Eastern Europe, namely by putting restrictions on the scope of action of Soviet troops that may remain in Eastern Europe, so that they are not available for the repression of domestic difficulties.

EVANS & NOVAK (CNN) - May 6, 1989 7

So I agree that there should be arms control negotiations on conventional weapons, but somebody better think through what we mean by this. Throughout history, evenly matched armies have defeated each other in the conventional field, and all of these things, all of these negotiations, are now becoming domestic issues in each country, where every bright fellow can come up with his own set of numbers, but nobody explains what the strategic balance ill be after those numbers have been negotiated. MR. EVANS: Dr. Kissinger, before I move to USA, to the Soviet Union, as my next topic, let me just wind this up on NATO. Tell the American people your view right now. Is this crisis as serious as any we have faced in the last 40 years of NATO alliance? MR. KISSINGER: I think it is a serious crisis, and it is not an issue that you can settle by finding some form of words that are communicate--which obscures the issue. The problem is, one, whether any member of NATO should conduct a national negotiation on deployment on its territory. MR. EVANS: Well, is the seed of destruction of NATO in this controversy, possibly? MR. KISSINGER: I think that it's the seed of a great weakening of NATO, and I think we ought to face it explicitly, and I think President Bush when he comes to NATO should put forward a comprehensive political and military concept for these relationships in the Atlantic area, and not get caught in negotiating individual weapons systems. MR. EVANS: Now, Dr. Kissinger, when President Bush-- MR. KISSINGER: But I agree with his fundamental policy.

MR. EVANS: Yes. When President Bush states that the U.S. hopes, and he hopes, that Gorbachev will succeed--can you hear me, sir? Did you hear that? MR. KISSINGER: Just a minute. 7 ri. , 4 •• ; :

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MR. EVANS: Doesn't that indicate, or at least it leads to a proposition where we should help him succeed. Do you think that is part of U.S. policy, that we should do what we can here in the way of loans, wheat sales, whatever, to help Gorbachev in his kind of domestic revolution? MR. KISSINGER: I think we should help Gorbachev only to the extent--first of all, we should not help on a general basis. Secondly, we should help only on those projects that contribute to the genuine democratization of the system, and who moving towards market economies, to the extent that the Soviet Union reduces its military expenditures. As long as they spend 20 to 30 percent of their GNP on military expenditures, any aid we give them is really a way of easing their military burden. And the Soviet Union has to make a choice whether they're willing to stay within their national territory and reduce their military forces which are top-heavy. MR. NOVAK: Dr. Kissinger, a question of whether we should help, or how much we should help, the Soviet Union reminds me of something that's been very curious to a lot of people in Washington, and that is that you met with Secretary of State Baker on January 28th. And a couple weeks later on February 12th a distinguished diplomatic correspondent of the Washington Post, Don Oberdorfer, did a story in which he said the people at the State Department were worried that your views would destroy the consensus in the West, disrupt the alliance, give extra aid to the Soviet Union, and all other catastrophes. What in the world did you propose that got the State Department so excited? MR. KISSINGER: Well, let's not talk about the State Department. I don't think there's any significant difference between my views and Secretary Baker's views, with whom I have a very amicable relationship. It is the normal debate that is going on between a new rrs

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secretary of state and the bureaucracY that he inherited from his predecessor. The people that conducted the policy of the previous administration obVioUsly want to continue that, and that means almost exclusive eMphasis on arms control, and no discussion of the political issues. My view, which I expressed in a lengthy artiCle, are as follows. We have to find--we have a series of new conditions. The increasingly self-assertive policy of the Federal Republic of Germany, which has now become self-evident, the role of a united Western Europe, the relationship of Western Europe and Eastern Europe, the role of arms control in conventional weapons in which negotiations have started, and within all of that, the overall east-west relationships. And I think that all of these have to be tied together into some concept to decide what the Europeans should do, what we might probably do, so that this does not become a way of breaking up the Atlantic alliance and having chaos in the rest of-- MR. NOVAK: Sir, we have less than 30 seconds before the break. Do you think that this administration, the Bush administration, in its foreign policy reassessment, has taken a little too long to get going? MR. KISSINGER: No, I don't think so. I think they're making a serious effort, and a few months against a four-year perspective don't seem to me excessive. MR. EVANS: Dr. Kissinger, we have the big question coming up for you right after we return to you after these messages.

(Announcements) MR. EVANS: Dr. Kissinger, the big question, should the United States, President Bush, tell Gorbachev we will do everything wo can to help you succeed if you get out of Central America? I. KISSINGER: No. I don't like blank checks anyway. I think th': we should tell Gorbachev that to give military aid to Central hmerica is a threat to what has historically been e •

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considered close to the American borders, it used to be covered, in many ways still is, by the Monroe Doctrine. And I do not think that we should give them a blank check in economic aid. MR. EVANS: Should we say, get out of Central America to show your good faith in this new Russia? MR. KISSINGER: I think we should. MR. EVANS: Are we? MR. KISSINGER: I don't know whether we are or not. We've certainly made a lot of public statements with which I agree. I don't know what we're telling them privately. MR. NOVAK: Let me ask you about another possible deal that has been speculated on that maybe the Kremlin would be interested in, and that is an exchange for their keeping hands off Central America in exchange for our keeping hands off Afghanistan. Does that make any sense to you? MR. KISSINGER: Well, we will face within the foreseeable future the problem of what we want in Afghanistan. Which of these freedom-fighting factions, or which of those factions that fought the Soviet occupation, do we have any particular interest in? And I could conceive that if all outside countries would stop sending arms into Afghanistan, including the Soviet Union, that we might participate in that. MR. NOVAK: Thank you very much, Dr. Henry Kissinger. My partner and I will be back with some comments after these messages. (Announcements) MR. NOVAK: You know, Roly, Henry made a Kissingerian touch on the Cheney dispute, he agreed with Cheney that Gorbachev will fail, but said we really shouldn't even consider whether the guy that follows is worse, and we shouldn't go the Bush route of sticking up for Gorbachev. He says, Gorbachev's a big boy who can take care of himself. MR. EVANS: And he said something very important you don't hear much down here in Washington with the Bush administration, .6

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he said, what is the real purpose of this whole Gorbachev program? To detach Europe from the United States and destroy NATO. Not the only purpose, but a fundamental purpose. MR. NOVAK: I was really struck by his evocation of a nationalist Germany with a national policy outside of NATO. Henry Kissinger is a little scared by that prospect. MR. EVANS: He was also very careful to back President Bush's position on no negotiations on reducing short-range weapons in NATO, and he made some very alarmifig comments about what may happen in NATO if we don't bridge this gap between us and the Germans on short-range weapons. I'm Roland Evans. MR. NOVAK: I'm Robert Novak. ••

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