KISSINGER SEES THE CONFUSION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350016-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: May 31, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350016-5
ARTICLIt
ON PAGE=
wASHINGTON POST
31 May 1985
Philip Geyelin
Kissinger Sees
The Confusion
As Jeane Kirkpatrick might put it, the Reagan Repub-
licans always blame the U.S. Congress first. When it's '
not President Reagan pounding the table for the benefit
of the president of Honduras, it's Secretary of State
George Shultz lambasting the lawmakers for paralyzing
U.S. policy in Nicaragua.
The administration has a point. "Micro-management
by a committee of 535 independent-minded individuals,"
? as Shultz once said, "is a grossly inefficient and ineffec-
tive way to run any important enterprise." "Surely," the
secretary went on, "there is a better way." Indeed, there
is. Try this: "We have to make a fundamental decision
with respect to Nicaragua. First, what is it we actually
want to achieve? . . . We have to make sure that we
know what our objective is and that we then select the
means that are appropriate to that objective."
That's Henry Kissinger talking, in a recently published
interview that deserved more attention than it got, the
more so since Kissinger was Ronald Reagan's hand-
picked choice to head up the bipartisan commission on
Central America.
True to forth, Kissinger held Congress "largely respon-
sible" for whatever's wrong. But consider his next, preg-
nant sentence: "I think the administration is also partly to
blame in its inability to make up its mind on its objectives
and on its views and to put its objectives to the American
public in a manner that the American public can grasp."
He adds: "I think there is no precise relationship between
the rhetoric we put forward and the measures we are tak-
ing." He accepts the rhetoric, but he can't figure out what
objectives it is supposed to achieve.
He is baffled by whether the administration wants"
u ono . a i ? -
? onna on o
capa ty temrg.,,?.ov???R' "ces" or "a?
ovenunent. s latter
sni m s a a'.t ,4 it is "enough
for us that the Sandinistas maintaining power permit
some democratic opposition, or do we actualt want the
Sandinistas to be overthrown?"
He is downright scornful of the administration's pro-
gram for supposedly covert aid to the Nicaraguan coun-
terrevolutionary forces (the so-called contras). If the ad-
ministration is serious about the "vital interest" it sees in
Nicaragua, Kissinger argues, "it is absolutely unclear to
me how a vital interest can be served by a $14 million
project. If that were all there is to it; you could go to a
foundation and get the money." So what would he do?
"Absolutely nothing for about four weeks." He would
then "design a strategy and explain it to the American
public, and then take a comprehensive series of steps,
not stopping until we have achieved them."
When Henry Kissinger is saying that the administra-
tion "has to make up its mind because if it does not, it
may wind up with the worst of all worlds," you have to
have some sympathy with congressional critics, including
some Republicans, who are saying much the same thing.
This is all the more the case when Kissinger :goes on to
question whether the administration and the president
are even capable of making "long-range strategic deci-
sions that relate various aspects to each other." -
If they aren't, then the question is not whether Con-
gress is a 'poor practitioner of foreign policy but whether
Congress should be castigated for not giving the adminis-
tration what it wants when the administration is unable
or unwilling to say clearly what it wants it for.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350016-5