Kissinger 1923 - 1968

Niall Ferguson “Kissinger 1923 – 1968: The Idealist, Volume I ” Penguin Press, 2015, 882 pp.

Geez…882 pages not including notes, bibliography or index, and, this is just Volume 1—Volume II is not yet available.  But it was worth the journey, covering the first half of Kissinger’s life which involves his departure from Germany in 1938 and ending in 1969 as he entered the White House to serve Tricky Dick as national security adviser.  It is important to note that as early as 1965 Kissinger believed that only negotiations could end the war in Vietnam and that military means would not work.

I found it particularly surprising that around 1955 there was so much casual discussion among the military, the president, and civilian advisers, unbeknownst to the general public, about using small tactical nuclear weapons in any engagement with the Soviets or Chinese.  These discussions were allegedly out-of-sync with the Eisenhower public policy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).  Of course, at the time, Kissinger did not know of all the CIA assassination and government overthrow plots instigated by Eisenhower and the Dulles bothers, John Foster & Allen.  Kissinger maintained that MAD would lead to the domination of the planet by the Soviets as they would just nibble piece-meal so it would not be judged worthwhile by the U.S. to respond with all-out nuclear war, which allegedly was the only response Eisenhower’s public polices allowed.

My Notes:

*At least 13 members of Kissinger’s family were killed in the Holocaust, with the actual number probably closer to 30. Despite this, he has always strongly denied that the Holocaust was crucial to his development. More important, he claims, was his return to Germany as a private in the U.S. Army. He led a team responsible for historical research and psychology, in an effort to prevent sabotage and to identify ardent Nazis.   

*In November 1963, after constant religious protests and non-violent resistances, Diệm was assassinated, along with his brother, Ngô Đình Nhu, by Nguyễn Văn Nhung, the aide of ARVN General Dương Văn Minh during a coup d’état that deposed his government.

Pg. 169:  By the end of WWII at least 5.2 million German servicemen had lost their lives—nearly three in every ten men mobilized—and more than 2.4 million German civilians.  Total mortality approached 10 percent of Germany’s prewar population.  To a remarkable extent, these casualties were inflicted in the final year of the war.  Not until the end of 1948 did western German industrial output recover to 75 percent of its prewar level.  There were chronic shortages of food, fuel, and shelter.

Pg. 209:  Kissinger was one of more than two million American servicemen who took advantage of the GI Bill to go to college. 

Pg. 346:  In spite of NSC-162/2 (1953) which enshrined the US “capability to inflict massive retaliatory damage by offensive strategic striking power” as the keystone of Eisenhower’s strategy, one of his administration’s earliest acts was secretly to deploy tactical nuclear weapons to Western Europe.  The final text of NSC-162/2 included the line: “In the event of hostilities, the US will consider nuclear weapons to be as available for use as other munitions.”  Eisenhower also told Admiral Radford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that “we should use the bomb in Korea if the aggression is renewed” by the Chinese. 

Pg. 382:  The 1957 R7 rocket launch of Sputnik launched Kissinger into a role as a media personality.  He was very alarmed at the Soviet’s technological edge and said so.  (In fact, there really was a missile gap until July 1959, when the Atlas D was successfully tested.  The US now had a missile capable of delivering a hydrogen bomb as did the Soviets.  After 1959, there was no missile gap despite the politician’s statements at the time.)

To be precise, in 1962 the Soviets had 20 intercontinental ballistic missiles; the US had at least 180.  The Soviets had 200 long-range bombers; the US had 630.  The Soviets had only six submarines with the ability to launch up to three ballistic missiles from the sea; the US had twelve Polaris submarines each carrying twelve nuclear missiles.  These figures make it clear how absurd the ‘missile gap’ panic of the late 1950s was. (Pg. 516)

Pg. 450:  The Senate Foreign Relations Committee in closed session, with JFK present, was told that there was no missile gap in February 1959—a judgment based on aerial photographs taken by U-2 spy planes.  By 1961 the CIA’s Corona spy satellite had established with near certainty that the Soviets had hardly any ICBMs and still lagged some way behind the US in the nuclear arms race. 

Pg. 463:  In his farewell address to the nation, Eisenhower had warned about the rise of the “military-industrial complex.”  Under Kennedy, it was the academic-intellectual complex that ruled.  (Eisenhower had originally intended to refer to the “military-industrial-congressional complex,” reflecting his frustration at the insistence of certain congressmen—including his own successor as president—that there was a missile gap that at all costs needed to be closed.  At the last minute, he stuck out “congressional.”)

Pg. 483:  The Berlin Crisis of 1961 is less well remembered than the Cuban Crisis of the following year.  Yet in many respects it was the more dangerous of the two.  The Soviets had two main concerns: first, to halt the flow of migrants from East Berlin to West Berlin, which was threatening the viability of the German Democratic Republic as a state; second, to counter the military revival of West Germany, which the Soviets feared would end with its becoming a nuclear power in its own right.  The US concluded that any war over Berlin was going to be a nuclear war or an immediate surrender; it was impossible to oppose the Soviets in that surrounded city with conventional forces.  (Note: Kennedy even stated to Rostow at the time that Khrushchev would “have to do something to stop the flow of refugees.  Perhaps a wall.  And we won’t be able to prevent it.”)  On August 13, 1961 East Germans began to build the Berlin Wall.  This result was actually the most optimal solution as a nuclear war had been avoided (or a humiliating surrender).  As Kennedy put it, “A wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.”  In any event, the East German lackeys had been exposed for what they were: stony-faced enemies of freedom.  (Kissinger was very critical of the wall and that the West did not oppose it even if it meant a possible war)

Pg. 547:  The true reason Khrushchev placed missiles in Cuba was that by turning Cuba into a Launchpad for intermediate-range missiles directed at US targets, he could narrow the gap in nuclear capability between the Soviet Union and the US, the true nature of which the Soviets knew full well.  To justify this action he had only to look out from his Georgian holiday house at Pitsunda toward Turkey where fifteen US PGM-19 Jupiter missiles had been deployed in 1961.  Khrushchev’s second reason was to checkmate the Americans in Berlin.  So, whatever the US did in regard to Cuba would give Khrushchev the right to do to Berlin.  (Note: the missiles in Turkey were judged obsolete and were scheduled to be replaced by Polaris submarines.  Ultimately, Kennedy secretly agreed to remove them as part of the deal with Khrushchev over settling Cuba).

.Russian Arms In Cuba:  In addition to the missiles, the Soviets sent four motorized regiments, two tank battalions, a MiG-21 fighter wing, some antiaircraft gun batteries, twelve SA-2 surface-to-air missile detachments with 144 missile launchers, and forty-two Il-28 medium jet bombers equipped with nuclear bombs.  They also sent nuclear warheads for the Sopka coastal defense cruise missiles that had previously been supplied to the Cubans.  Ultimately, more than fifty thousand Soviet troops ended up in Cuba.  Yet between September 8, when the first nuclear ballistic missile reached Cuba, and October 15, when US intelligence identified the missile sites, the US government was oblivious to the fact that the arms being supplied to Cuba were nuclear.

Pg. 584:   The origins of US involvement in the Vietnam war can be traced back as far as 1956, though it was always possible for the US to have changed course at almost any time between then and 1965—the crucial year when LBJ increased the US military presence beyond the level at which a unilateral withdrawal could have been achieved at a modest cost.

Eisenhower opted not to sign the 1954 Geneva Accords in which France agreed to withdraw its troops from Indochina, which was split into three countries: Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.  Vietnam was to be temporarily divided until elections could be held, after which the country would be united.  However the elections never took place when the US did not sign the document. 

Pg. 598:  Goldwater was the Trump of his day.  He suggested on Meet the Press that diplomatic recognition of the USSR ought to be withdrawn.  He argued for arming the Cuban exiles to launch another invasion of their homeland.  He called on the administration to violate the Test Ban Treaty.  He proposed that, in a crisis, the NATO commander should be empowered to use tactical nuclear missiles without reference to the president.  He proposed amending the UN Charter in order to get rid of the Soviet veto on the Security Council.  He even cast aspersions on the dependability of US nuclear missiles.

Pg. 633:  In 1965 Kissinger tasked with studying the Vietnam problem.  He had three conclusions.  First, separate government agencies from the Pentagon to the State Dept. and CIA all had varying estimates of the likelihood the US could succeed in Vietnam, most saw a less than 40% chance of success and many felt we would have to abandon the project in the future.  Also, the agencies all kept their information and conclusions secret from the others.  Also, Kissinger concluded this was a Civil war.  Civil wars usually evoke the most intense passions.  Involving people of the same backgrounds and culture, inhabiting the same area, the terms are extremely difficult to enforce.  This is why those civil wars which have ended since WWII have usually been concluded with the predominance of one side or the other—as in Greece, Malaya, the Philippines, or China—without formal acknowledgement by the defeated side.  Formal settlements have almost invariably been the starting point of new conflict.

Pg. 844:  Nixon’s 1968 election was mostly due to the fundamental rift within the Democratic Party created by Johnson’s push to enact civil rights at maximum speed.  This created the candidacy of George Wallace (received 13.5 percent of the votes) which cost Humphrey the election.  What had happened between 1964 and 1968 was one of the biggest reshaping’s of the voting landscape in American history.  Thought generational conflict was a factor, race was the key.  Among whites who voted in both elections fully one-third switched party.  An astonishing two-fifths of Nixon’s votes came from citizens who had supported Johnson in 1964.  Fully 97 percent of black voters cast their ballots for Humphrey, while fewer than 35 percent of white voters did.

Pg. 872:  The biggest philosophical problem that confronts the historian of foreign policy is that the historian deals only with successful elements.  He has no way of knowing what was most significant to the participants: the element of choice which determined success or failure. 

Pg. 873:  It was in Vietnam that Kissinger grasped just how dysfunctional the US government could be.  The lack of capacity for countering guerrilla methods, the overreliance on bombing, and the absence of interagency cooperation, combined with the chronic weakness of the South Vietnamese regime, patently made the war unwinnable.  Kissinger saw this early.