60. Memorandum of Conversation, Washington, March 17, 1976, 12:45 p.m.1 2
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Memorandum of Conversation
DATE: March 17, 1976
Time: 12:45 P.M.
SUBJECT: Secretary’s Lunch with Australian Foreign Minister
PARTICIPANTS:
- UNITED STATES
- Secretary Kissinger
- Brent Scowcroft, NSC
- Helmut Sonnenfeldt, Counselor
- Philip C. Habib, Assistant Secretary, EA
- Lester E. Edmond, Deputy Assistant Secretary, EA
- Christopher A. Squire, Director, EA/ANP (notetaker)
- AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Peacock, Foreign Minister
- Alan Renouf, Secretary, Department of Foreign Affairs
- Nicholas Parkinson, Ambassador of Australia
- Gordon Upton, Minister-Counselor, Embassy of Australia
- John Ridley, Private Secretary to Minister Peacock
- Dennis Argall, Counselor, Embassy of Australia
COPIES TO: S, S/S, WH - Peter Rodman
SECRETARY: I will be going to Canberra in August 1976 to head the US delegation to the ANZUS Council meeting there. Mr. Habib will let me go only to Canberra; I would like to see more of Australia.
HABIB: Remember you are going to Bali, too.
SECRETARY: I had you put that in the schedule.
MINISTER PEACOCK: Bali is fine; they just had the ASEAN summit there.
[Page 2]SECRETARY: When is Malik coming here?
HABIB: He was scheduled for April but he’s ill. Now it is in early May.
SECRETARY: I don’t know how your system works (to Peacock).
Here I only get a chance to make a decision when Bureaus disagree among each other. But they are learning this too, so we have less disagreement among Bureaus.
MINISTER PEACOCK: Do you make use of options papers?
SECRETARY: Yes. I am always presented with three options. My 14 year old son — in fact, an illiterate-would quickly learn to check the middle option, and he would be right 90 percent of the time. The options usually come in such forms as “Shall we surrender to Russia”, “Shall we make nuclear war”, or “Will I attend the ANZUS meeting.”
MINISTER PEACOCK: We have the same procedure in our shop, and I’m opposed to it.
SECRETARY: You would think that occasionally they would prefer option 1 — but it is always option 2. The system is amazing. One Bureau has been trying for four weeks to get me to say something. I have refused. In effect, it would invite the Cubans to attack the Rhodesians. Yesterday in a Foreign Relations Committee hearing a particular remark of mine taken out of context, could possibly be interpreted to mean that we would not firmly oppose the Soviets. Wouldn’t you know that Bureau called in the press. Although we cannot support Smith in Rhodesia, we won’t tolerate another Cuban move.
PEACOCK: How can you prevent it? You have to get the Hill’s support.
SECRETARY: We have 60 days under the War Powers Act. If we cannot take care of Cuba in 60 days —
PEACOCK: That is a much stronger statement than I expected you to make.
SECRETARY: We will not let Cuba get away with it. But we will not support Smith or help any white minority regime stay in power in Africa.
[Page 3]PEACOCK: I saw a replay of your Foreign Relations Committee appearance on TV between 1–2 A.M. this morning. I saw Brzezinski interpreting what you were really saying to the audience.
SECRETARY: I told Brzezinski recently that there was no constitutional requirement that the Secretary of State be foreign born.
PEACOCK: You seem to be taking an increasingly hard line now towards Russia. You have been very critical of them recently.
SECRETARY: Oh yes. Russia is taking extreme criticism from us; some of it is unjustified. Senator Jackson of course has been criticizing Russia all along. But the Soviets are not interfering much in the Middle East — not as much as they certainly could. They have remained relatively uninvolved there. Remember, we are talking about detente, not about entente.
PEACOCK: That is, aspiration as opposed to reality.
SECRETARY: What we have as a major problem is the domestic policy line this year.
PEACOCK: What do you see next year then, different from this year? The Soviets have a succession problem too. What do you see post Brezhnev?
SECRETARY: I foresee great difficulties first for our policy coordination. In the Cabinet we have had to position ourselves politically to consider how to resist Soviet expansionist moves from the point of view of maintaining domestic consensus to avoid a repetition of the Viet-Nam experience. Secondly we have a problem with natural competition with the Soviets and the restraints of detente. Thirdly, when you have drawn up the net gains and losses, you come out relatively ahead on detente. The danger is that in this political year the Democrats are trying to move to the right of the Administration. Their public posture is extremely tough. If they came to office, however, they would again do as they did in the 60’s. When in power their actions would be much softer.
You do have to keep after an improvement of relations with the Soviets — partly to keep the Chinese honest, partly because evolution will eventually bring the Soviets to a real detente as China’s power increases.
[Page 4]PEACOCK: What you say is very interesting. We hear criticisms from various quarters that your efforts to make the most important deals with the Soviets may end up dead. What do you feel?
SECRETARY: The primary brake on the Soviets is SALT I. Even if SALT II negotiations are not successful this is not so important in the light of SALT I. Even granted that the Soviets violated SALT I - and if we had an hour I could prove to you that this idea is absurd — SALT I caused a real brake on Soviet missiles.
In any case the Soviets had to cut back and we had no possibility of increasing our nuclear lead even without detente.
PEACOCK: On China itself, again many critics are talking about the bankruptcy of US policy there, with the Formosa question unresolved, the Nixon trip. Do you agree?
SECRETARY: Not at all. First in terms of general strategy, we are after good relations with the Soviet Union, and also good relations with China. It depends on what you mean. When you say bankruptcy of our relations, you are using fictitious yardsticks. Whether a country has diplomatic relations with China or not has made no difference. Without diplomatic relations we have seen no disruption of our basic programs with China in the last three years. But the Chinese cannot understand a country which in effect hobbles itself by taking such actions as dissolving its intelligence services and attacks its allies as we have Turkey. The Chinese are the most cold-blooded analysts of power. Their doubts about US resolution are the main problem. During the Nixon visit they laid great stress, however, on good relations with the US.
PEACOCK: Is China in the long term a still greater danger than the Soviet Union?
SECRETARY: If the country stays together. Within the next ten years, however, they will not be so powerful. If they are attacked during the next ten years we will do our best to support them. They need us to keep the Soviets in check. But China is a most formidable country. After ten years we will have to worry.
I took David Bruce to a meeting with Mao. Bruce has met almost all the world’s great leaders since World War II. [Page 5] Mao knew at the time that Chou was ill — at that point we did not. Mao spent four hours getting on record Chinese foreign policy, presumably so that it would be Mao policy. It was a spectacular tour de force. Bruce said he had never seen anything like it. Mao was lucid, perceptive, elliptical — totally unemotional and non dogmatic. I do not agree that our relations with China are sterile.
The Chinese wish to be in the enviable position that Stalin thought himself to be when he signed the Hitler-Stalin pact. The Chinese would like to see us so embroiled with the Soviets that we both had no other options. Then, I guarantee you that the Chinese would move away from us. When we were bombing the daylights out of Hanoi — the best reception I got in China was six weeks after the Christmas bombing. Most of our detente agreements with the Soviets were signed in 1973. We hear no peep out of the Chinese then. But in 1974 it was different. When you added our accommodation to the Soviets to our apparent weakness that year, that was too much. As long as we remain strong, the Chinese do not object to our accommodation to the Soviets.
PEACOCK: You are, I hear, far more pessimistic about China over the long term than you let on publicly.
SECRETARY: I try to be as realistic as possible. We need them over the next ten years — they need us. They are more able, less bureaucratic, less hidebound by dogma than the Soviets. As they gain strength they will push the Soviets closer to the West. A lot depends on the vitality of the Western nations in the Pacific.
PEACOCK: My Prime Minister will be taking his first trip to Japan and Peking in June. I am somewhat worried about his new-found popularity among the Chinese.
SECRETARY: That’s because the Chinese Ambassador has been telling him how good your relations are with Peking. I strongly support your emphasizing your relations with China. But I found that the Chinese charm you so much on your first trip, that it takes seven trips to put you in the proper perspective.
PEACOCK: We should be as realistic as possible and make our foreign policy as responsive as possible. We do see a role where we can coordinate very closely with you. We [Page 6] will do whatever we can, with our relatively limited resources, to support you in any way we can be of help.
SECRETARY: We should mesh our resources, concentrate on the areas that each of us does best. There are some things we can do. The Chinese cannot go beyond a certain point of visible warmth as long as Formosa remains at issue. But we should not hurry to drop Formosa — we don’t get anything for it.
PEACOCK: We are looking at various possibilities on the Indian Ocean issue. Perhaps we could work out with the Soviets a limitation on ship times in that ocean.
SECRETARY: You can’t believe any military statistics. Our navy tells us that Soviet ship time in the Indian Ocean far exceeds ours. Why they unilaterally accept this fact I do not understand. But if we freeze ship times according to some yearly figure we immediately put ourselves at a disadvantage, since the Soviet rates are already more than ours. I consider this criterion irrelevant, unless you put a limit on ship size.
PEACOCK: We talk about supporting you on Diego Garcia. But although we don’t say it publicly, we feel Diego Garcia is far more important as a back door to the Middle East.
SECRETARY: It provides us with options in case of another oil embargo.
PEACOCK: Jordan’s King Hussein left Australia a few days before we left. He was extraordinarily pessimistic. He indicated he might have to turn to the Soviets for air defense.
SECRETARY: I am not surprised. He has been badly treated by our Congress.
PEACOCK: He said to me, and to the Prime Minister, that it was the Congress which was jeopardizing his country — as well as his personal future.
I’d like to raise another question. We attended last year, under the previous Government, the Non-Aligned Conference in Lima. It is possible we may be invited again this year, to Colombo this time. I believe it might be useful for us to make the best of both worlds, and that if invited we ought to go. Personally I think we ought to take a step back — instead of my going, I am thinking of sending our Ambassador at the UN. Would that worry you?
[Page 7]SECRETARY: No. We have to be mature about this. I think it would be quite useful to have a friend we can trust at these meetings. From what we know about your Government we would think it a good idea.
PEACOCK: It is predicated on our getting an invitation. India is opposed to our presence there.
SECRETARY: Perhaps you could get Moynihan to go for you.
PEACOCK: That would mean you really did not want us to attend.
HABIB: Are you and Indonesia now agreed on Timor?
PEACOCK: Not completely. We’ve said what we had to say. We could not condone what they did. It will probably come up before the Security Council.
SECRETARY: I will not make a formal toast — I never read the toasts they write for me anyway. But I offer you our friendship, and closer relations between our two countries.
PEACOCK: My thanks for your reception. We are looking forward to receiving your wife in Australia. I am most grateful.
SECRETARY: I need not tell you how much I regret the circumstances which make you leave so quickly.
PEACOCK: I am delighted that you could set aside the time.
SECRETARY: I think we should try to agree what each of us is about. We will try to keep you informed of what we are thinking, as well as what we are doing.
PEACOCK: If nothing else came out of our lunch but this, it would be a most useful thing. From time to time, when something serious comes up, I would like without bothering you unduly to discuss the matter with you.
SECRETARY: I think that would be an excellent idea. You could either write or telephone the latter might be more effective. What is the time difference?
PEACOCK: Australia is ahead by 15 hours.
HABIB: To raise a final point. On NPW visits — you said that August might not be a bad time.
[Page 8]PEACOCK: Yes. You told me about Prime Minister Muldoon and that he said August was a good month, as it was too cold for demonstrations. We do not care about protests. I said to you in Canberra that — speaking personally — I had not consulted the Prime Minister — I saw no difficulties.
HABIB: Please get your Department to work on the details. The lawyers seem to have some problems.
PEACOCK: I’ll fire it up at the political level. There are no problems there. The problems are with the legal aspects of liability. When I was still in Opposition I took a decision with my committee on NPW visits.
SECRETARY: We should not make such a big affair out of it — in the US I mean. It should be routine.