FOREIGN RELATIONS: A Super Secretary to Shake Up State

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Can he, the outsider, perform such a feat? The question at his press conference was slightly different—and somewhat more embarrassing. Would his being a Jew, he was asked, affect the problem of the Middle East? "I'm asked to conduct the foreign policy of the United States," he said, "and I will conduct the foreign policy of the United States regardless of religious and national heritage. There is no other country in the world in which a man of my background could be even considered for an office such as the one to which I have been nominated, and that imposes on me a responsibility, which I will pursue in the national interest."

Around the world, the reaction to Kissinger's nomination was, not too surprisingly, mild and muted. Except in a few areas where he is viewed with suspicion, Kissinger is widely admired for his skill and intellect, and even for his cosmopolitanism. He is, as much as any incoming American Secretary of State is ever likely to be, a known quantity. Nonetheless, diplomatic experts in many countries were still uncertain about precisely how he would deal with the wide range of problems that now confront him.

Among the most delicate of these is the one he knows best, and the one to which he has the most personal commitment: the truce in Indochina. It took Kissinger nearly 3½ years and 24 rounds of talks to negotiate the frail and complex agreements that permitted U.S. forces to withdraw under the umbrella of what Nixon repeatedly calls "peace with honor." The truce agreements still survive, but peace is by no means certain. The fighting in South Viet Nam sputters along in the form of sporadic guerrilla action accompanied by confused reports of remote outposts threatened and then relieved. Laos stands at the edge of a ceasefire, but only last week an attempted army putsch threatened to jeopardize the ac cord. In Cambodia, now that U.S. bombing has finally ended, the feeble government of President Lon Nol is under constant threat from the Khmer insurgents. Kissinger will have to find a way to negotiate some sort of Cambodian settlement, possibly one that would bring back the exiled Prince Sihanouk as head of a coalition government.

In the course of such negotiations, Kissinger may need to call on his ties with the Communist leaders of both Moscow and Peking. No other Secretary, indeed, could come to office with such a background of personal relations with the highest figures in the Communist hierarchy. Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow, Chou En-lai in Peking, both recognize the theory of power politics that Kissinger personifies; both have a personal stake in seeing the détente of the last few years become permanent.