The price of power : Kissinger in the Nixon White House by Hersh Seymour M

Author:Hersh, Seymour M
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: United States, Kissinger, Henry, , Foreign relations, History - General History, Politics/International Relations, General, 1974-1977, 1923-, 1969-1974, Kissinger, Henry, 1923-, Kissinger, Henry, Diplomatic relations, Außenpolitik, Politik
Publisher: New York : Summit Books
Published: 1983-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

prepare a series of studies on all aspects of China’s foreign policy and the Sino-Soviet split, with the aim of increasing his knowledge to the point where the White House could take control. Roger Morris recalls the China negotiations as “one of the few places where Henry really felt intellectually insecure and could be educated. He was aware of his limitations and approached China in a relatively scholarly way.” Morris had been brought in on the China initiative to help analyze the flow of papers from Defense and State on such critical issues as the Chinese-Russian border disputes because, he says, Kissinger believed that John Holdridge, the former West Pointer who was the senior White House aide, “simply couldn’t handle it.’’

One of the few outsiders who ever played an important role in the White House policy, Morris recalls, was Allen S. Whiting, a former State Department official who was then teaching at the University of Michigan.* Whiting, a Democrat, was a critic of the Vietnam War but was also one of the leading intelligence experts on China, having served from 1962 to 1966 as director of the State Department’s Office of Research and Analysis for the Far East. On visits to Washington in the summer of 1969, Whiting repeatedly met with his former intelligence colleagues and learned, he says, that they felt “cut off from the White House. They felt useless and unwanted. Henry wasn’t asking any questions, because if he asked, the bureaucracy might know what he was planning.’’ During that summer, Whiting learned that senior intelligence officials believed a Soviet bombing attack—with conventional weapons—against Chinese nuclear production facilities was possible. The March battles between Soviet and Chinese border guards had died down by early spring, but the Russians, so Whiting’s former colleagues told him, had immediately begun serious preparations for air raids inside China. In May, late-model Soviet aircraft were transferred from Eastern Europe to newly enlarged airfields in Outer Mongolia, within easy reach of China. By June, the Soviets seemed to have completed planning for conventional air strikes against the Chinese nuclear production facility at Lanchow. There were other, equally ominous, military moves. The number of Soviet infantry divisions near China’s borders began to increase, and would eventually double from fifteen to thirty; there was also reliable intelligence showing that Soviet missiles, which were probably nuclear-equipped, were being installed near Manchuria, in northeast China, for possible retaliation in case the Chinese fired a nuclear weapon in response to the conventional bombing attack. The ground troops were poised to respond to a nonnuclear retaliation by China. The American experts realized that all these preparations had to be known to the Chinese, who were able to monitor

* The necessity for a change in American policy toward China was clearly felt throughout the academic community. As early as November 6, 1968, the day after Nixon’s election, eight prominent China scholars from Harvard University, Columbia University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology drafted a memorandum for the President-elect urging his administration

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