Is It Over, Over There?

As is now widely known by those with an interest in such matters, the Department of State, with the authority of the former Secretary of State, Mr. Henry Kissinger, last year issued an important telegram of guidance to certain American diplomatic posts. It is true that the telegram was based on the record of a talk given at a London meeting of American diplomats by Mr. Helmut Sonnenfeldt. But Mr. Sonnenfeldt was one of the Secretary of State’s principal advisors, and no one, presumably, will be naive enough to believe that his dissertation was inconsistent with the views of his chief; or that if it were, it would have had immortality conferred upon it in a State Department telegram. Whatever may be the finer points of qualification and exegesis, it seems clear that the telegram represented the thinking of the State Department —or more specifically of the man who was then responsible for American foreign policy. A question now much in the minds of political leaders, especially among America’s European allies, is whether the general lines of that thinking are likely to survive the change of Administration in Washington.

The Kissinger doctrine may not have been to everyone’s liking, but it had the merit of being lucid, logical, and brutally realistic. Its basic premise was that the Soviet Union is emerging as a global superpower, and that there is very little anyone can do to prevent it. The leaders of the Soviet Union, it was accepted, are the new imperialists, and their power is based almost entirely on military strength. At the same time, Communism is making substantial advances in Western Europe; and Mr. Kissinger, one of the principal architects of the policy of detente, was apparently unwilling to believe that French, Portuguese, British, or Italian Communists were fundamentally different from their comrades in Moscow. In other words, he recognized that if Communists began to participate in, and eventually to dominate, the governments of certain Western European countries, that would be the beginning of the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the signal for a radical transformation of American foreign policy.

LC

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Lord Chalfont

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As is now widely known by those with an interest in such matters, the Department of State, with the authority of the former Secretary of State, Mr. Henry Kissinger, last year issued an important telegram of guidance to certain American diplomatic posts. It is true that the telegram was based on the record of a talk given at a London meeting of American diplomats by Mr. Helmut Sonnenfeldt. But Mr. Sonnenfeldt was one of the Secretary of State’s principal advisors, and no one, presumably, will be naive enough to believe that his dissertation was inconsistent with the views of his chief; or that if it were, it would have had immortality conferred upon it in a State Department telegram. Whatever may be the finer points of qualification and exegesis, it seems clear that the telegram represented the thinking of the State Department —or more specifically of the man who was then responsible for American foreign policy. A question now much in the minds of political leaders, especially among America’s European allies, is whether the general lines of that thinking are likely to survive the change of Administration in Washington.

The Kissinger doctrine may not have been to everyone’s liking, but it had the merit of being lucid, logical, and brutally realistic. Its basic premise was that the Soviet Union is emerging as a global superpower, and that there is very little anyone can do to prevent it. The leaders of the Soviet Union, it was accepted, are the new imperialists, and their power is based almost entirely on military strength. At the same time, Communism is making substantial advances in Western Europe; and Mr. Kissinger, one of the principal architects of the policy of detente, was apparently unwilling to believe that French, Portuguese, British, or Italian Communists were fundamentally different from their comrades in Moscow. In other words, he recognized that if Communists began to participate in, and eventually to dominate, the governments of certain Western European countries, that would be the beginning of the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the signal for a radical transformation of American foreign policy.