The Difficulty of Being Henry Kissinger

These are prickly and painful times for the U.S. Secretary of State, and as a believer in the tragic destiny of man, Henry Kissinger may not be too surprised at his current plight. After a series of almost unbroken diplomatic successes, he has taken two jolting defeats. His very triumphs--in Viet Nam, in the Middle East--have returned to haunt him. In his dealings with the Soviet Union, with Turkey and the oil-producing countries, an increasingly truculent and suspicious U.S. Congress questions and curtails his efforts. Long deemed an indispensable national resource, Kissinger is being buffeted by intimations of mortality. Critics foreign and domestic are suggesting he might best serve the U.S. by stepping aside.

Last week the Long Island daily Newsday called for his resignation because of the "secret understandings" between Nixon and President Thieu. "It is not America's credibility that will be questioned now as a result of the debacle in Southeast Asia; it is Kissinger's. It is not the character of the American people that will provoke doubts among America's allies and adversaries; it is Kissinger's." In Britain's Guardian, former Washington Correspondent Peter Jenkins wrote: "South Viet Nam is the latest victim of the most cynical superpower diplomacy of which Henry Kissinger is the outstanding Western exponent ... The meaning of that 'Peace with Honor,' now revealed, strips Henry Kissinger of his own honor." In Latin America, there is scant enthusiasm for Kissinger's scheduled trip to Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela this week. A former Argentine ambassador to the U.S. remarked: "No one down here is thinking that Ford and Kissinger are going to come up with anything new. As far as we're concerned, Kissinger and Ford are already lame ducks."

The essential criticism of Kissinger is that he has made American diplomacy too much of a one-man show. Says a Democratic adviser to several Presidents: "When you personalize foreign policy to the extent he has, you must be prepared to rise with success and descend with failure. You live by the sword and you die by the sword." Jun Tsunoda, who advises the Japanese government on U.S. affairs, makes the same point. "Diplomacy in today's complex world is too big a job for one man to handle in person."

Yet Kissinger continues to have the ear--and the respect--of the President, who recently called him "a person of unbelievable wisdom." Kissinger, in fact, is more comfortable with Ford than he was with Nixon, who delighted in occasionally deflating his foreign policy adviser. Ford is straight-arrow all the way. When he finds Kissinger expendable, the Secretary will be the first to know. For the moment, the President does not blame him for the debacle in Viet Nam or the setback in the Middle East. A top aide says that Ford still believes Kissinger has "an inner sense of strategy that can put all this back together in the next year or 18 months."

Conciliatory Tone. Ford's loyalty to Kissinger was put to the test when some top presidential aides--Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld, Counsellor Robert Hartmann, Congressional Liaison John Marsh and Press Secretary Ron Nessen--opposed Kissinger's heated reaction to the Viet Nam defeat. Prior to Ford's first major foreign policy address before Congress, they urged him not to concentrate too heavily on the fiasco or to blame Congress for it. They were also backed up by two noted Republicans outside the Government who sent word to Ford through Rumsfeld that they thought the President should take a conciliatory tone toward Congress and not ask for more military aid for South Viet Nam. Heartened by the growing support for his point of view, a presidential aide let members of the press know that Ford would be his own master in foreign policy.

But Ford's advisers underestimated the staying power of their antagonist. Compared with what Kissinger had suffered at the hands of the Nixon palace guard, the Ford crew behaved like rank amateurs. Kissinger made sure that his views prevailed in the President's speech, and Ford had no objections. Once they had lost the skirmish, the doves dove for cover, at least temporarily, and tried to conceal their tracks. Nessen fired one of his assistants, Louis M. Thompson Jr., who some said was being blamed for leaking the facts of the anti-Kissinger cabal to the press. In fact, Nessen is the prime candidate for the source of the leaks. By dumping Thompson, Nessen may have been trying to appease Kissinger.

Despite his obvious zest for office, Kissinger has devoted considerable thought to leaving it--but on his terms, at his own choosing. "Timing is everything," he has told friends. "You can leave office or you can be carried out of office. I'm not going to be carried out of office." TIME has learned in fact that

Kissinger was seriously thinking of retiring if the last round of Middle East negotiations had been successful. At the moment, precisely because of his setbacks, he is determined not to quit. It would be a reflection not only on him, he believes, but also on American policy. Both he and the country would look like losers, and to Kissinger nothing in statecraft is more important than appearances, for they may decisively influence other nations' actions.

Success Story. Foreign leaders tend to echo his argument. The British Foreign Office fears that his removal would encourage the Soviets to adopt a more aggressive posture in the belief that the U.S. was retreating from its international commitments. Danger zones might be vulnerable to Russian probes:

Yugoslavia, Finland, West Berlin, even Austria. Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East may have been frustrated, but both Israelis and Arab moderates continue to have confidence in him. Says former Israeli Minister for Foreign Affairs Abba Eban: "Even with the present setback, the Middle East is an American success story."

In his speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors last week, Kissinger gave no sign that he planned to step down, but he also sounded like a man somewhat chastened by adversity. "In our foreign involvement, we have oscillated between exuberance and exhaustion, between crusading and retreats into self-doubt." That is surely a description of his own recent state of mind as well as his country's policies.

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