A Super Secretary to Shake Up State

The momentous decision was an nounced in, of all places, a swimming pool. Julie Nixon Eisenhower telephoned Henry Kissinger and asked whether his two young children would like to come over for a dip at the Nixons' San Clemente estate. Indeed they would. A little later, Julie called back and asked Kissinger to come along too.

So Kissinger and his children were contentedly paddling around in the pool, behind the expensive bulletproof wind screen, when Nixon himself appeared in his trunks and strolled out into the afternoon sunshine. He got into the pool and then said to Kissinger, "Why don't you and I go down to the other end?"

Stunning News. The two men splashed to the shallow end of the pool. Kissinger took a seat on the steps, half in and half out of the water, while the President stretched out and floated on his back in front of Kissinger. Then Nixon gave him the news. "If you will let me," said the President, "I would like to nominate you for Secretary of State tomorrow."

No matter how prepared Henry Kissinger may have been for that moment, it still stunned him. He had heard the rumors ever since last year's election: that Secretary of State William P. Rogers was ready to resign and that the President was thinking of making Kissinger his top foreign policy adviser in name as well as in fact. A few weeks ago the President had told Kissinger that Rogers wanted to resign, and he had asked Kissinger's opinion about several possible successors. Later, when Kissinger mentioned that he had been planning a trip to Europe, Nixon cautioned him: "You'd better not make any travel plans for the next month or so. I'll need you close by." But none of this had altogether prepared Henry Kissinger for the news that he, an immigrant, a Jew, a professor who still spoke English with a marked German accent, was about to become the nation's 56th Secretary of State. He told the President --what else could he say?--that he certainly had no objection to his name being submitted to the Senate for confirmation. Then, still in the pool, the two men talked about problems ahead.

In one sense, of course, Kissinger's nomination was simply a confirmation of the true state of American diplomacy. It was Kissinger, the theorist of a Bismarckian balance of power, who had created the intellectual framework for Nixon's greatest achievements in foreign policy, the new detente with China, the progressive improvement of relations with the Soviet Union and, finally, the truce in Viet Nam. It was Kissinger, too, who personally brought those theories into reality in an endless series of secret flights and exhaustive negotiations in Peking, Moscow, Paris. Secretary of State Rogers traveled to official conferences and presided over the traditional routines of foreign affairs.

Yet, although Kissinger's accession to power in the State Department is a formalization of his key role in Nixon's Administration, it can hardly help bringing profound changes in the conduct of American foreign policy. In the White House, as the President's personal adviser on national security affairs, Kissinger could concentrate on certain specific problems; as Secretary of State he must confront the whole world. The secret negotiations in Communist capitals have left America's traditional allies in a state of unease; the old ties need to be reconstructed. The "Year of Europe," which Kissinger himself proclaimed as one of his top priorities, has hardly begun, and yet the calendar year is nearly over. In the Middle East, which Kissinger has largely avoided, new initiatives are needed. Latin America, too, is once again in a state of turmoil that can hardly be ignored. And even in the fields that Kissinger has made his own, he himself has expressed a desire for what he calls "institutionalization"--a process by which fragile one-man accomplishments can become the cornerstone of future policy, to be carried on by his successors. With his wide experience, his considerable prestige and his special position in the White House, Henry Kissinger, just turned 50, will be a sort of Super Secretary, uniquely equipped to shake up the old systems and reach his ambitious goals.

On the domestic side, Kissinger faces problems that he has never encountered before. The first is in his relations with Congress, which has long chafed over the fact that Kissinger has been immune to legislators' questions. When Nixon announced the nomination at his press conference last week, he emphasized that Kissinger would stay on as his personal adviser in order to achieve "a closer coordination between the White House and the departments." Kissinger will therefore have offices in both places--and greater powers than any Secretary since John Foster Dulles. At his own press conference the next day, Kissinger sought to allay any suspicions that he might try to take advantage of his dual position to avoid congressional scrutiny. On the contrary, he promised, he will testify freely and conduct an "open" foreign policy.

First Team. Nixon urged the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to "move expeditiously" to confirm Kissinger's nomination at hearings next month. The Senators admire the new appointee's talents, but they are not without misgivings. They are expected to'subject Kissinger to close interrogation, not only about his views on foreign affairs but about his acquiescence in the wiretapping performed on several members of his own staff. In the end, though, Kissinger will undoubtedly be confirmed, as he deserves to be.

Kissinger's other domestic problem concerns his new subordinates--that vast empire of 12,000 diplomats, code clerks, economic analysts, secretaries and linguists known collectively as the State Department, or Foggy Bottom or, in Kissinger's own term, "the bureaucracy." Bill Rogers is genial and placid, a gentleman to the end, and he liked to keep banker's hours, with golf on weekends. Kissinger is intense, impatient and sometimes rude. He has never administered a large organization; his White House staff numbered a mere 120, all hand picked, closely watched, and driven mercilessly. "I don't know if Henry will be able to live with the bureaucracy," mused one official who knows both the incoming and outgoing Secretaries, "in a way that will satisfy him or the bureaucracy."

Many State Department officials, on the other hand, are prepared to welcome a brisk shake-up if it means that, after years of neglect at the hands of Kissinger's White House staff, the department will once again be thrust into the center of policymaking. "We're on the first team again," gloated a career officer in Paris. Others were biding their time, waiting to see whether Kissinger would genuinely attempt to reorganize and make proper use of the department's human resources--or ignore them and create his own elite, as John Foster Dulles did. In the meantime, Kissinger, well aware that many men at State were uneasy, went out of his way to reassure them last week--in his own way. He praised the department's staffers as "great professionals," but he also urged them to see as much of their wives as possible in the next few weeks, because after his confirmation, he promised, they will be too busy. Did he expect to take any of his White House aides along to State? "I would expect that some of my associates would join me at the State Department to ease the cultural shock," said Kissinger. "But we would keep the agency structure in place."

The question might well be asked why Kissinger would want to take on the State Department bureaucracy at all. As a presidential adviser, he has already become the nation's most important diplomat. Why (except, perhaps, for a salary increase from $42,500 to $60,000) would he want to occupy himself with the endless details of instructing ambassadors, receiving obscure Prime Ministers and princes and even Boy Scouts? Part of the answer is obviously personal: he aspires to the post once held by Thomas Jefferson and Daniel Webster, George C. Marshall and Dean Acheson--a post that, in terms of international prestige, is second only to the presidency. Part, too, is a desire to see his personal accomplishments made permanent.

"What we are going to try to do," he said last week, "is to solidify what has been started, to conclude the building of a structure that we can pass on to succeeding Administrations." But yet another part, and by no means the least important, is a desire to help heal the wounds that have torn his adopted nation. "We've had the legacy of a war that bitterly divided Americans," he said. "Therefore one of the prime objectives of the Administration will have to be to create a consensus [among] the American people and the American Congress."

Can he, the outsider, perform such a feat? The question at his press conference was slightly different--and somewhat more embarrassing. Would his being a Jew, he was asked, affect the problem of the Middle East? "I'm asked to conduct the foreign policy of the United States," he said, "and I will conduct the foreign policy of the United States regardless of religious and national heritage. There is no other country in the world in which a man of my background could be even considered for an office such as the one to which I have been nominated, and that imposes on me a responsibility, which I will pursue in the national interest."

Around the world, the reaction to Kissinger's nomination was, not too surprisingly, mild and muted. Except in a few areas where he is viewed with suspicion, Kissinger is widely admired for his skill and intellect, and even for his cosmopolitanism. He is, as much as any incoming American Secretary of State is ever likely to be, a known quantity. Nonetheless, diplomatic experts in many countries were still uncertain about precisely how he would deal with the wide range of problems that now confront him.

Among the most delicate of these is the one he knows best, and the one to which he has the most personal commitment: the truce in Indochina. It took Kissinger nearly 3 1/2 years and 24 rounds of talks to negotiate the frail and complex agreements that permitted U.S. forces to withdraw under the umbrella of what Nixon repeatedly calls "peace with honor." The truce agreements still survive, but peace is by no means certain. The fighting in South Viet Nam sputters along in the form of sporadic guerrilla action accompanied by confused reports of remote outposts threatened and then relieved. Laos stands at the edge of a ceasefire, but only last week an attempted army putsch threatened to jeopardize the ac cord. In Cambodia, now that U.S. bombing has finally ended, the feeble government of President Lon Nol is under constant threat from the Khmer insurgents. Kissinger will have to find a way to negotiate some sort of Cambodian settlement, possibly one that would bring back the exiled Prince Sihanouk as head of a coalition government.

In the course of such negotiations, Kissinger may need to call on his ties with the Communist leaders of both Moscow and Peking. No other Secretary, indeed, could come to office with such a background of personal relations with the highest figures in the Communist hierarchy. Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow, Chou En-lai in Peking, both recognize the theory of power politics that Kissinger personifies; both have a personal stake in seeing the detente of the last few years become permanent.

Paradoxically, it is among some of America's closest allies, particularly the Europeans, that Kissinger has the most immediate labors to perform. This is not to say that the Europeans were not pleased with the Kissinger appointment. The French respect him as an intellectual as well as a boulevardier. The Germans seem modestly pleased that Kissinger is the first prospective U.S. Secretary of State who speaks their language like--well--a native. Said one official in Bonn: "When we get upset about some problem or other, he'll take us aside and explain it in German. That always makes us feel better." Most Europeans seemed to agree with the judgment of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: "For Europeans, this foreign minister is a gain. No one knows the Atlantic problems like Kissinger."

Despite these praises, there are real difficulties. Recognizing the need to rejuvenate the Western alliance, Kissinger proposed last April a "new Atlantic Charter" (later redesignated a "Declaration of Principles" after West German Chancellor Willy Brandt complained that the original name sounded too much like the Allies' World War II pact), which was to redefine the principles of cooperation in such varied fields as military security, monetary reform, trade, energy, science. Eventually the blueprint was to include--in most fields other than security--Japan as well. But the Kissinger proposal for the "Year of Europe" has been coolly received in most of the Continental capitals. "Every year in Europe," one bemused British diplomat remarked last week, "is the Year of Europe."

Most of Kissinger's ideas remain to be worked out in a wide range of forthcoming conferences: On the balance of forces (MBFR) in Vienna, on European Security in Geneva, on SALT II in Geneva. President Nixon himself is expected to tour Europe in the fall, and there may be a European summit meeting as well.

Energetic Role. So far during his operations at the White House, Kissinger has intentionally stayed away from the Middle East problem--partly because he was busy with other matters, and partly perhaps because he could see no way to solve it. Instead, Secretary of State Rogers proposed a plan that led to a cease-fire along the Suez Canal for the past three years but has resulted so far in a stalemate rather than a peace settlement.

The first reaction of many Arab newspapers to Kissinger's appointment was to object to the fact that he is a Jew. KISSINGER BECOMES THE FIRST JEWISH U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE, headlined Beirut's al Moharrer. On the other hand, many Arab diplomats were waiting to see whether Kissinger would take as energetic a role in settling the Arab-Israeli impasse as he did in ending the Viet Nam War. Some wondered whether, in the Kissinger view, Palestinians should play as vital a part in Middle East peace talks as the Viet Cong did at the conference table in Paris.

Certainly the problem cannot be postponed indefinitely. The energy crisis has spotlighted the world's reliance on Arab oil, and the Arabs are fast learning how to use their oil as a political weapon. King Feisal of Saudi Arabia, long a friend of the U.S., has informed Washington that it cannot continue to support Israel and expect to receive Arab oil. Feisal, whose country contains the world's largest petroleum reserves, knows full well that the U.S. and the other industrial nations need oil more than the oil-rich Arabs presently need money.

The Arabs are not alone in their suspicion of Kissinger. The Indians, too, have vivid memories of Kissinger's saying that although the U.S. would remain neutral in the Indo-Pakistani war over Bangladesh, President Nixon wanted that neutrality "tilted" in favor of Pakistan. More generally, the Indians also resent being left out of Kissinger's concept of the "five-power world" (the U.S., Western Europe, the Soviet Union, China and Japan). Last week Kissinger remarked that he hoped to come to a better understanding of Indian problems.

Like the Indians, the Japanese remember Kissinger for past slights--notably his secret journey to Peking two years ago without any warning to Tokyo. Indeed, the Nixon Administration's diplomatic shokkus of 1971 did lasting damage to Japan's relations with the U.S. The ceremonious Japanese have also found it exceedingly embarrassing, more than most allies have, to deal formally with Rogers while seeking ways to bypass him when they needed to get the attention of the White House. On balance, they probably welcome the change and look forward to a period of improved relations.

In the transfer of power to Kissinger, everybody went out of his way to salute the departing Secretary Rogers. Nixon expressed "personal regret" at the resignation of "a close personal friend." Kissinger praised him for his "enormous dignity, grace, wisdom, and above all humanity." At the same time, however, Kissinger acknowledged that there had been "a difficult relationship" between the rival foreign-affairs agencies. He added: "You wouldn't believe me if I said anything else."

These have, in fact, been difficult years for Bill Rogers, an eminently successful corporation lawyer, a self-made millionaire, and a respected Attorney General in the Eisenhower Administration. With the 1968 election of his longtime friend Richard Nixon, Rogers was rewarded with the prestigious office of Secretary of State, and he foresaw the next four to eight years as perhaps the height of his public career.

Natural Restraint. But Rogers had hardly taken over the graceful seventh-floor office overlooking the Lincoln Memorial when his disappointments began. His hopes for a quick end to what he privately referred to as "that goddam war" were killed by Nixon's decision to make a protracted withdrawal during four years of negotiations. Nor was he ever able to make good either in public or in private his official role as the President's chief foreign policy adviser.

An elegant and essentially decent man, but a mediocre speaker with no background in foreign affairs, Rogers had a tendency to approach international problems from the viewpoint of a corporation lawyer. As he explained privately, "In handling an important lawsuit, you tell the other guy that you know you can't win all your points, nor can he, and it's best for all to reach a compromise." It was a decent, honest, somewhat guileless approach.

Unlike the amiable Rogers, Kissinger was no old friend of Nixon's. He had served as a foreign-affairs adviser to Nelson Rockefeller and, even worse, was a friend of the Kennedy establishment. But Nixon had read and liked Kissinger's books, and wisely recognized in Kissinger the sort of man he was looking for. The two still treat each other with a certain formality, a natural restraint; they are in no sense cronies. Occasionally there have been strains, and even reports that Kissinger might be on the way out. One such strain occurred late last year following the breakdown of the Paris peace talks, when Nixon waged his fierce Christmas bombing campaign on Hanoi. Kissinger loyally defended the President, but managed to give the impression that his heart was not in the bombing. Still, for all his pride, Kissinger remembers that Metternich was not the Emperor, nor Richelieu the King, and he finds a certain security in presenting himself simply as the agent of Nixon's foreign policy.

That slightly disingenuous discretion has suited Nixon admirably. Observers have described how the President, at National Security Council meetings, will say with a touch of pride, "Henry, will you present the options for us?" Then he settles back to listen while Kissinger becomes the professor once more.

The contest between Kissinger and Rogers had a predictably adverse effect on the State Department, an overly bureaucratized machine without any constituency among the general public, and thus without independent influence. The emergence of the "Kissinger shop," the predominance of Kissinger himself, the lack of administrative talents in Rogers--all these led to abysmally low morale and low effectiveness in the State Department. At first there were attempts to cover it up, but even that pretense gradually fell away, and by the time of Nixon's second Administration, none of it was left.

Yet Rogers' tenure had its important positive aspects. His Middle East initiative, at first received skeptically by his aides, did result in the still-lasting Suez cease-fire and at least some overtures by Egypt and Israel toward negotiations. Rogers also performed, with distinction, the task of representing the U.S. in negotiations abroad. He further bore the brunt of congressional committee hearings and congressional opposition on Viet Nam. Rogers, unfailingly courteous, remained loyal to his President and argued his case well. "He's a decent, fine man, a terribly underrated, misused man," Senator Mansfield once remarked.

Despite the genuinely warm feelings about Rogers, most foreign service professionals seemed to feel last week that Henry Kissinger might be just what was needed at Foggy Bottom. Clearly Kissinger had it in his power to rebuild the Department of State and restore it to its rightful place as the central foreign policy agency in the Government, and he seemed to relish the prospect of doing just that. Immediately he summoned home David K.E. Bruce and Daniel Patrick Moynihan from Peking and New Delhi for talks. Moreover, he seemed committed to the concept of formulating a foreign policy of reconciliation for the post-Viet Nam period: an aim that Congress, as well as the nation at large, could well applaud. If Richard Nixon has truly decided, in the wake of Watergate, to create a more open presidency, his appointment of Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State marks an imposing beginning.

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