FOREIGN RELATIONS: A Super Secretary to Shake Up State

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Certainly the problem cannot be postponed indefinitely. The energy crisis has spotlighted the world's reliance on Arab oil, and the Arabs are fast learning how to use their oil as a political weapon. King Feisal of Saudi Arabia, long a friend of the U.S., has informed Washington that it cannot continue to support Israel and expect to receive Arab oil. Feisal, whose country contains the world's largest petroleum reserves, knows full well that the U.S. and the other industrial nations need oil more than the oil-rich Arabs presently need money.

The Arabs are not alone in their suspicion of Kissinger. The Indians, too, have vivid memories of Kissinger's saying that although the U.S. would remain neutral in the Indo-Pakistani war over Bangladesh, President Nixon wanted that neutrality "tilted" in favor of Pakistan. More generally, the Indians also resent being left out of Kissinger's concept of the "five-power world" (the U.S., Western Europe, the Soviet Union, China and Japan). Last week Kissinger remarked that he hoped to come to a better understanding of Indian problems.

Like the Indians, the Japanese remember Kissinger for past slights—notably his secret journey to Peking two years ago without any warning to Tokyo. Indeed, the Nixon Administration's diplomatic shokkus of 1971 did lasting damage to Japan's relations with the U.S. The ceremonious Japanese have also found it exceedingly embarrassing, more than most allies have, to deal formally with Rogers while seeking ways to bypass him when they needed to get the attention of the White House. On balance, they probably welcome the change and look forward to a period of improved relations.

In the transfer of power to Kissinger, everybody went out of his way to salute the departing Secretary Rogers. Nixon expressed "personal regret" at the resignation of "a close personal friend." Kissinger praised him for his "enormous dignity, grace, wisdom, and above all humanity." At the same time, however, Kissinger acknowledged that there had been "a difficult relationship" between the rival foreign-affairs agencies. He added: "You wouldn't believe me if I said anything else."

These have, in fact, been difficult years for Bill Rogers, an eminently successful corporation lawyer, a self-made millionaire, and a respected Attorney General in the Eisenhower Administration. With the 1968 election of his longtime friend Richard Nixon, Rogers was rewarded with the prestigious office of Secretary of State, and he foresaw the next four to eight years as perhaps the height of his public career.

Natural Restraint. But Rogers had hardly taken over the graceful seventh-floor office overlooking the Lincoln Memorial when his disappointments began. His hopes for a quick end to what he privately referred to as "that goddam war" were killed by Nixon's decision to make a protracted withdrawal during four years of negotiations. Nor was he ever able to make good either in public or in private his official role as the President's chief foreign policy adviser.