World: An Interview with Kissinger

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Détente should not become a tranquilizer

Henry Kissinger, in or out of power, is a judicious analyst of geopolitics. Last week the former Secretary of State discussed the global dimensions of the Iran crisis with TIME State Department Correspondent Christopher Ogden. Excerpts from the interview:

Q. How will the turbulence in Iran affect the surrounding area?

A. It is bound to magnify an already enormous unreadiness. Even before, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were re-examining their policies. Turkey was in a state of turmoil or, at any rate, in a state of reappraising its policy. Clearly, Saudi Arabia has shown at the Baghdad conference of rejectionists and with respect to the rise in the price of oil that it has opted for a more autonomous course from us. I think all of these tendencies will be magnified by the turbulence in Iran. Geopolitically, this area has been a barrier to Soviet expansion, and it has defined the limits of Soviet influence. Such countries as Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia have had a clear-cut foreign policy orientation. There is now a great danger that this will become much more ambiguous and therefore an area of enormous uncertainty.

Q. What is the Soviet role in this area?

A. The Soviet role is twofold: one, geopolitical. During all of the postwar period, the countries bordering the Indian Ocean believed that the United States was strategically predominant in that area and that, therefore, that friendship with the United States assured their security, both internationally and, to some extent, domestically. The Soviet march through Africa, with Cuban troops, from Angola to Ethiopia, and the Soviet moves through Afghanistan and South Yemen, or at least the moves of Soviet clients, altered that perception. That inevitably decreased the importance of friendship with the United States and emboldened our opponents We simply did not understand that what happened in the Horn of Africa had a geopolitical design, independent of any specific action that the Soviet Union might have undertaken to foment any particular upheaval.

Secondly, I believe that sophisticated kinds of strikes occurring simultaneously in widely separated parts of Iran and run so effectively that even when people go back to work they do not increase production could not have taken place without central organization. Whether they were organized in the Soviet Union or organized by people trained by the Soviet Union in other countries is really a secondary question. I think it is certainly the result of Soviet support of radical movements on a global basis, which has also now reached Iran.

Of course, there are other factors. I do not think that the mullahs were triggered by the Soviet Union. However, some trained agitators probably helped fan the flames that already existed even there. No doubt there existed objective reasons for discontent, but the margin between unrest and revolution came at least in part from the outside.

Q. Can we expect more from the Soviets along this arc?

A. The more that the United States looks out of control of events, the more it appears as if our friends are going down without effective American support or even effective American understanding of what is occurring, the more this process will accelerate. It will seem self-started and, in effect, spontaneous.

Q. What should we be doing?