Before there was the Soviet Union that could inflame matters. Now you have states not as powerful as the Soviet Union, but states like Iraq, like Iran, and to some extent Syria, having made it possible for some of these groups to operate. So it is a very difficult situation.
In the hands of a determined Secretary, the Foreign Service can be a splendid instrument, staffed by knowledgeable, discreet, and energetic individuals. They do require constant vigilance lest the convictions that led them into a penurious career tempt them to preempt decision-making.
I have said there are three principles that should be followed. One, we should maintain the "one China" policy that every American president has articulated, including President Reagan. Secondly, we should make clear that we want a peaceful resolution. And three, Taiwan should not challenge that arrangement in a way that will provoke a conflict. Those are three perfectly clear principles. I haven't used any of the other slogans.
No, [the U.S.] has made it clear that we consider a peaceful resolution an essential aspect of American foreign policy. This I believe to be a situation understood by China, but again, it is important to not sound too truculent. Taking on a billion-plus Chinese is not an enterprise which one should enter lightly.
If a Chinese plane landed at Los Angeles Airport having just bought down an American military plane, he wouldn't be permitted to leave the next day. So then we developed a framework which should have been acceptable as a concept to the Chinese, namely to express regret for the loss of life and maintain our position that we had a right to fly these missions.
America has made it very clear in several administrations that if there is an attack by China on Taiwan, the United States is very likely to resist.
When you travel as secretary, one problem you have is that the press comes with you and wants an immediate result because it justifies their trip. And sometimes the best result is that you don't try to get a result but try to get an understanding for the next time you go to them.
Competing pressures tempt one to believe that an issue deferred is a problem avoided; more often it is a crisis invited.
Iraq has to be made an international, and not just a national American problem.
The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.
Our concern for human rights comes to the fore when there are gross violations of human decencies. Then other countries, including China, must recognize that this affects the American attitude towards their country. But towards what precise institutions will it evolve? I think we ought to leave something to history.
Nixon had three goals: to win by the biggest electoral landslide in history; to be remembered as a peacemaker; and to be accepted by the 'Establishment' as an equal. He achieved all these objectives at the end of 1972 and the beginning of 1973. And he lost them all two months later-partly because he turned a dream into an obsession.
We first became conscious of the plane publicly on a Monday. I thought then by the weekend it would be done. But then the Chinese military, the defense minister made a statement saying that if there was no apology from the United States, the Chinese military and the Chinese people would never understand. No reference to the government or the Communist Party, and that obviously presented an internal problem to the Chinese leadership, which was travelling at that moment.
The defining issue is that the government in Taiwan was considered to be the government of all of China, and the authorities in Beijing were not recognized as a government of China. So Taiwan was the residuary for all of China.
[Nixon] wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn't want to hear anything about it. It's an order, to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves.
For the Soul of France is masterful history, brilliantly researched, and hard to put down.
Left to its own devices, the State Department machinery tends toward inertia rather than creativity; it is always on the verge of turning itself into an enormous cable machine.
The first reactions are often instinctive. So one of the first things we said was that the Chinese had no right to inspect the plane, and that we had a sovereign right to. I don't know what the legal position is, but it was surely psychologically absolutely the unwise thing to do.
Withdrawal of US troops will become like salted peanuts to the American public: The more US troops come home, the more will be demanded.
I would say the special experience of American wartime policy in the last 40 years, from Vietnam on, is that the war itself became controversial in the country and that the most important thing we need in the current situation is, whatever disagreements there may be on tactics, that the legitimacy of the war itself does not become a subject of controversy. We have to start with the assumption, obviously, that whatever administration is conducting a war wants to end it.
A nation riven by factions, in which the minority has no hope of ever becoming a majority, or in which some group knows it is perpetually outcast, will seem oppressive to its members, whatever the legal pretensions.
The public life of every political figure is a continual struggle to rescue an element of choice from the pressure of circumstance.
In a nuclear war, even if one side were to come out ahead by systems analytical standards, both sides would be so weakened, that it would - they would be in the position of Europe after the two World Wars.
One has to remember that every progress that has been made towards peace in the Middle East has come under American leadership.
Where position is felt to be a birthright, generosity is possible (though not guaranteed); flexibility is not inhibited by a commitment to perpetual success.
