The Nation: The Real Thing

No branch of the negotiator's art is more demanding, delicate or deadly than nuclear diplomacy, and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is one of the few men in the world who can be said to have mastered it in both theory and felt-table practice. Recently, while escorting West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher to San Clemente to meet with President Nixon, Kissinger stopped off en route to visit the nuclear-missile installation at Grand Forks Air Force Base, N. Dak. There, 150 Minuteman missiles stand at the ready beneath their giant manhole covers, and Kissinger, who as a negotiator handles Minuteman, Polaris and Poseidon missiles like poker chips, had a request: might he see one?

For the first time in his life, Kissinger descended into a 90-ft. silo and gazed at a 75,000-lb. Minuteman III, the newest and largest American ICBM (range: 7,000 miles). After watching a simulated firing in an underground command center, Kissinger emerged and remarked that the world of payloads, throw weight and delivery systems had been largely an "abstraction" to him up until now. Coming face to face with the real thing had clearly been a sobering experience for the onetime Harvard professor who made his reputation with a book entitled Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy.