The Response: "It Gives Me Faith"

The world's problems seemed far away as Henry Kissinger sat at a small table outside his San Clemente office. The sun was bright, the air cool and clear. Flowers ringed the small patio, and beyond the immaculate lawn lay the blue Pacific. From this tranquil outpost, the world looked peaceful. Watergate seemed manageable, the Congress friendly, and the press tame. But Kissinger's strength is that he knows all this is deceptive. The real world is not so idyllic, and Kissinger wants to get back into the real world as fast as he can.

In an interview with TlME's Hugh Sidey, Kissinger spoke carefully, fie must still face the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and be confirmed. He did not want to talk plans and programs, techniques and hopes, grand ideas for his New World. He was obviously rather awed by his new nomination and yet not the least bit afraid of it. A German-born Jew, unpropertied, unelegant and unimposing, Henry Kissinger seemed ready to move toward the pantheon of national greats.

"1 have been heartened by the response to my nomination," he told Sidey, "by telephone calls from people who have disagreed--Averell Harriman, Mac Bundy, John McCloy. It makes me hope we can really unite this country. There are elements of a truly constructive period ahead. If we don't tear ourselves to pieces domestically, we can build something that will last beyond this Administration. It must be built on previous Administrations too. We have brought some major changes, but some of them were open only to us. But they wanted what we wanted.

"In many ways it is a great paradox. It gives me faith in the history of this country. Back there, we would have said that the least likely man elected to do all these things would be Richard Nixon. But he has done them. What is important is that he did.

"I realize that we can't put Watergate behind us. But I hope now that we can treat it as a cancer that has been excised, and the wound will take a long time to heal. If we can get the country thinking about the future, that it has a future, then we can leave something behind. That is the positive thing I see. Somehow I think it will happen.

"We have a lot to do. We want to revitalize our relationships with our friends in Europe and Japan. The Middle East is probably the most dangerous spot. I still hope that we can find a basis for negotiations between the parties there. I intend to make a major effort to reinvigorate Latin American policy. We will work to maintain the settlement in Indochina within the limits now prescribed by Congress. It is the first time since the war that we have had a world that is at peace. We will be judged by whether or not we can make this the natural state of things.

"I plan to see what I can do to bring the Senate Foreign Relations Committee into the conceptual area of foreign policy so that they do not have to make ad hoc decisions. I had lunch with [Chairman J. William] Fulbright three weeks ago, and he said then he would welcome this development [the nomination]. If I am confirmed, I hope to get a few dedicated men in the State Department in key areas and develop a sense of excitement that will last. Great Presidents have done that. They made public service an adventure. You go back now and read some of the things they said, and the content doesn't matter so much as the attitude. When I was a professor, I didn't mind too much if my students forgot the details. What was important was that they got a sense of what really mattered. Then they could teach themselves.

"The perception of ourselves in this nation must change now. We are no longer self-sufficient. One-half of our energy will soon be coming from abroad. All of our exports soon will pay only for the raw materials we must import. Our agriculture products now have to be thoughtfully allocated. Take the wheat deal, for which we have been criticized. Our intelligence was faulty. But there was not a thought by anyone that we would not have enough wheat. Our whole orientation--by Congress, by farm experts, by businessmen--has been to sell it when we could. We must rethink where we are.

"We face problems now that no past generation has faced, they are common problems of humanity. They are food, energy, environment, communication. Up until Western imperialism, there was no world history. There was only regional history. When we talk about the Roman Empire, we talk about people who hardly knew the Chinese existed. Most great cultures developed independently. Now we are in close contact each day, yet it is a fact of our existence that we have never really assimilated. Yes, we must rethink where we are."

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