Though a highly articulate man, and, indeed, a prolific and lucid author, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has lately given an oddly strangulated impression in his public utterances. He has even been, with some regularity, a bit embarrassing, as when—speaking from Moscow, of all places—he chose to place equal blame on the Soviet and American military establishments for the failure to reach agreement on the control of offensive missiles. It is evident that serious analytical differences exist on the question of strategic weapons between Kissinger and Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger. These need to be fully aired. For Kissinger, speaking in Moscow, to equate Schlesinger et al. with Marshal Grechko et al. can only be regarded as a gaffe.
Or consider Kissinger’s request, issued in West Germany on his way home from Moscow, for “widespread debate” on the policy of detente and the problem of security in a nuclear age. The fact is—remarkably enough—that Mr. Kissinger has yet to articulate the assumptions behind and the meaning of “detente” as he himself sees it. How can there be “widespread debate” about an undefined policy? Large initiatives in American foreign policy have in the past been given memorable articulation: Roosevelt’s “quarantine the aggressor” speech; the “Truman Doctrine”; the assumptions behind the Marshall Plan as spelled out by George Marshall in his famous Harvard address; George Kennan’s analysis of “containment” in Foreign Affairs. Such clarification is hardly mere ceremonial. In a democracy, a major turn in foreign policy—especially when war, peace, and even national survival are at stake—cannot be successful unless the nation supports it, and the citizenry will not support it unless they have some general idea of what they are supporting. Vietnam is a cautionary example.
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