Henry Makes the Best of it

Henry Kissinger seemed like his old self last week, calm, humorous, thoughtful and persuasive, reported TIME'S Washington bureau chief Hugh Sidey. He is making a determined effort, at a moment when much of the world calls his policies a failure and the U.S. withdrawal from Viet Nam a debacle, to put the best face on things. The Secretary of State appears ready to launch a new period of foreign policy evolution and innovation--if events let him. He thinks they will, concludes Sidey, a longtime observer of the Secretary.

The final Viet Nam convulsion was not exactly what he wanted or thought would happen, but now it is over and Kissinger is known to believe that we came out better than we might have. The Secretary realizes full well that there will be public and congressional postmortems, but he doubts that the American people are going to sustain interest in a recriminatory debate for more than a few months.

Kissinger, it can safely be said, will not resign. He wants to finish the term with Ford--if the President wants him, and Kissinger has no doubts now that Ford does. The Secretary might have resigned if Nixon had survived Watergate, or if he himself had succeeded in the Middle East and Viet Nam had not gone under. But now he will not, even though he has accumulated some rather impressive enemies, which was perhaps inevitable once Nixon left the scene.

Lately, Ford and Kissinger have been working on the agenda for the NATO summit meeting in Brussels this month. At first, they thought that they might launch a series of new diplomatic initiatives to show the world that the U.S. is not moribund. But then they decided that that might aggravate the problem of credibility more than it would help. Thus the approach at Brussels will be steady and low-key. Ford, who will set aside time for every head of state in private, will not propose sweeping reappraisals but will reaffirm old ties, old friendships and promise new dimensions to the programs that exist, the alliances that endure. After Brussels, however, Ford will meet with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Salzburg and will visit Spain and Italy, two Mediterranean countries whose fragile political future might be affected by leftist currents in Portugal.

These are tricky times, Kissinger believes. There is considerable concern abroad about the ability of a President to conduct foreign policy--specifically to give his word on a matter. The worries are not so much directed at Ford and Kissinger as at the American system. A President may well decide he wants to do something, but even if he pledges to do it, will Congress in its present mood allow it? Kissinger believes he can cope with that question. Indeed, he believes that the Congress will be far more conciliatory on the new foreign policy issues. Getting Watergate and Viet Nam behind us may work some minor miracles in terms of mood, atmosphere and the ability to move things along now.

One of Kissinger's hopes is that the press and his critics will look upon his foreign policy failures as mistakes of judgment rather than exercises in duplicity. Of course, there were times when he was less than perfectly candid, and when he seemed to be talking out of both sides of his mouth at once. But he believes that within the context of the human experience his mistakes were not as bad as some journalists would have us believe.

Kissinger feels that had we given South Viet Nam the aid that it wanted and that the Administration felt was needed, the fall of the Saigon government might have been delayed another two or three or more years. That, in Kissinger's view, would have been better for this country. A new Administration would have been in place; Nixon, Kissinger and the war would have been farther back in the national consciousness. But the end result would have been the same for Viet Nam.

Could we have won that war? Kissinger is known to doubt it. Even if the U.S. had unleashed massive bombing back in the mid-1960s, the results in the 1970s might have been the same. The cost in dollars would have been immense. But then, after a time, those little men padding around in rubber sandals carrying their mortars probably would have been right back in South Viet Nam raising hell.

The current argument about secret agreements is understandable, in Kissinger's view, but not very important. He feels reasonably clean on that one. The Secretary still believes that the American exit from Viet Nam as devised by Nixon was proper and best for the nation.

Kissinger believes that we are in for a fascinating period of realignment in Southeast Asia. Viet Nam, with 42 million people and a good army, will be the major force. Cambodia and Laos will be satellites of Hanoi. With the Soviet Union and China in competition for influence, it would not surprise the Secretary if in five years or so there could be some feelers to us to come back and help stabilize things. Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia will spend the next couple of years aligning themselves with Hanoi. With luck, nothing drastic will happen to them. China is now afraid that we might leave that part of the world entirely, and so Kissinger believes it will hold North Korea back from any drastic action. Japan and the Philippines are manageable.

The real danger now is what the Soviets will decide to do. So far it looks O.K. But if the U.S.S.R. and its friends decide that this is a time in which the U.S. is vulnerable, then there could be a series of nasty incidents.

The Middle East is the powder keg.

We have come to the point, the Secretary feels, when our actions must anger both the Israelis and the Arabs. That is hazardous, but less so than not doing anything, which probably would mean a war within the next twelve months. Aside from the Middle East, the world looks pretty good to the Secretary. Most leaders seem to be responding to the desires of their people for peace.

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