REPUBLICANS: The Kissinger Issue: Whose Alamo?

In the words of one White House aide, Henry Kissinger is “the only red-hot issue” in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Unfortunately for the Secretary of State, the man he is making uncomfortably warm at times is none other than President Gerald Ford. For months, right-wing Republicans have been rallying behind Ronald Reagan, whose most effective campaign ploy has been to argue that the Secretary is cozying up unnecessarily to the Soviets. Washington last week was electric with rumors that Ford was thinking seriously of dumping Kissinger. With a key primary coming up on May 1 in Texas—where the G.O.P. right is especially strong—it looked for a while last week as though the Secretary was being stalked by the President’s political hit men.

The first to take a shot at Kissinger was Melvin Laird, one of the chief cooks in Ford’s kitchen Cabinet, who predicted to newsmen that “we will have a new Secretary of State in the next Ford Administration.” Four days later, Rogers Morton, Ford’s campaign chairman, told a delegation of California Republicans that after seven years as the nation’s top diplomat, Kissinger “has enough scars to worry about. I’m sure Mr. Kissinger is getting toward the end of a long political career.”

President Ford moved swiftly to pledge his continued faith in the beleaguered Secretary. After receiving a phone call from campaign headquarters, Morton backtracked and declared that Kissinger was “an asset, not a liability” in the President’s effort to win the nomination. Speaking in Wisconsin, Ford declared: “I would like Secretary Kissinger to be Secretary as long as I am President, and I can’t expand on that.” The morning after his primary victory in Wisconsin, the President went out of his way to share the psychological spoils with Kissinger. Said he: “I thought that the results certainly fully justified my faith in Henry Kissinger. That was an issue in Wisconsin because my opponent made it an issue.” Rabbit-chopping the air for emphasis, Ford then added: “I think he is one of the greatest Secretaries of State in the history of the U.S.”

Demagogic Slogans. In part, Kissinger’s troubles stem from the complex nature of detente policy, with its subtle double aim of both relaxing tensions and yet remaining tough with Moscow. Legitimate questions can be raised about the manner in which he has executed the policy, but there is little serious basic disagreement with its aims. Yet attacks on it have deteriorated to demagogic slogans. Other Kissinger troubles grow from his habit of making off-the-rec-ord remarks that seem to conflict with his public statements—remarks that almost invariably get distorted when leaked. A case in point is his speech to an assembly of U.S. ambassadors in London last December. There he argued that American efforts to foster “stability” in Europe meant keeping Communists out of power in Western Europe while accepting Soviet hegemony over the Eastern bloc.

Last week the New York Times printed a summary of Kissinger’s speech to the ambassadors that proved the Secretary is at least as concerned as Reagan is about keeping Communists out of Western governments. If there were a “major Communist participation in Western governments,” said Kissinger, it would be “inconceivable that the U.S. could maintain ground forces in Europe.” In the event that the Communists actually won control of some Western European governments, he warned, NATO would not be able to survive and the U.S. “would be alone and isolated in a world in which we had no relations by values to other countries.”

Kissinger’s fears about Western Europe’s future gave Ford no trouble and Reagan little ammunition. But the Republican challenger had an easy target in what has now been dubbed “the Sonnenfeldt doctrine”—named for State Department Counselor Helmut Sonnenfeldt, Kissinger’s top expert on East-West relations and arms control. Sonnenfeldt enunciated his ideas at the same gathering of ambassadors that Kissinger addressed (TIME, April 12). In essence, Sonnen-feldt’s thesis was that the U.S. should not encourage a violent political uprising in the satellites because it could only lead to Soviet intervention—and to the danger of an incident that might set off World War III. What was more, even if the U.S. wanted to help a rebellion, it could not easily intervene in that part of the world. Example: the Hungarian revolt in 1956. There was a further and more subtle danger as well: if the Communist nations in the East evolved into pluralistic, liberalized societies, the nations of Western Europe might be less wary of Red candidates in their own elections.

Last week the hassle over Sonnen-feldt’s ideas continued as the Times also printed a summary of his remarks. He was quoted as saying that U.S. policy in Eastern Europe should “strive for an evolution that makes the relationship between the Eastern Europeans and the Soviet Union an organic one.” The use of the word organic seemed to imply that he was advocating that the Soviet Union and its satellites should form one whole—a position calculated to infuriate not only G.O.P. conservatives but also ethnic groups with roots in Eastern Europe.

At a press conference, Sonnenfeldt conceded that the word organic was poorly chosen. What he really meant was a relationship in which the Soviet Union tolerated autonomy and a sense of national identity in the countries of Eastern Europe. Sonnenfeldt said that the U.S. should encourage the gradual development of such a relationship by easing restrictions on trade with the Soviets, encouraging Moscow to devote more attention to the needs of the consumer and fostering a general relaxation of tensions in the Communist bloc.

Some Notetaker. When Sonnen-feldt’s statements first leaked to the press, Kissinger tried to explain away the views attributed to his aide by saying that the cable was written by “some notetaker who summarized what he thought Sonnenfeldt meant.” Last week White House Press Secretary Ron Nessen suggested that the whole “misunderstanding” over the remarks might have stemmed in part from the distortions of the notetaker “who did violence” to what Kissinger’s man had said.

In fact, the notetaker was no inexperienced secretary but Warren Zimmermann, special assistant to Arthur Hartman, Kissinger’s deputy for European affairs. Moreover, both Kissinger and

Sonnenfeldt initialed their approval of the summary before it was cabled to U.S. embassies round the world. At his press conference, Sonnenfeldt conceded that the summary was accurate. The Secretary’s attempt to lay the blame on an underling stirred more bitterness in the State Department, where officials resent his tendency to blame his problems on his subordinates.

Things could get worse for Kissinger in the weeks ahead. Reagan is making the Secretary and his policy of detente one of the main themes of his campaign in the crucial Texas primary. Ford admits, “We have some troubles there.” Campaigning last week in the state, Ford volunteered no praise of Kissinger, but came to his defense when asked about him. (“Dr. Kissinger has been an excellent Secretary of State.”) The President chose to stand and fight at the Alamo in San Antonio, where he countered Reagan’s charge that the U.S. is now No. 2 militarily. The Alamo’s defenders were eventually overwhelmed, he noted, by a Mexican army “of superior size and strength. In global terms, America must never give away such an advantage to any potential enemy—and we never will.”

One White House aide says that if the President loses Texas, “there’ll be blood and guts all the way to Kansas City” (where the G.O.P. will hold its nominating convention, starting on Aug. 16). Kissinger fears that he will be blamed if Reagan does win and that Ford will come under increasing pressure to ask for his resignation. Indeed, two Kissinger loyalists in the Administration are afraid that the President may suggest that the Secretary depart before the primary on May 1. According to their paranoid scenario, Ford would then try to sew up the state by quickly giving the post of Secretary of State to the political pride of Texas:

John Connally, the Democrat-turned-Re-publican, who was Governor from 1963 to 1969 and served John F. Kennedy as Secretary of the Navy, and Richard Nixon as Secretary of the Treasury. Connally recently displayed his interest in foreign affairs by chairing a blue-ribbon Washington panel on “The Political Stability of Italy in the European-Mediterranean Context.”

Asset to Ford. Kissinger’s supporters in the Administration believe that the campaign against the Secretary is mistaken and conducted by “amateurs.” Despite undeniable hostility toward him in the South and elsewhere, he remains popular with the public at large. A Louis Harris poll last month showed that 58% of those surveyed approved of the way he was handling his job. Furthermore, Harris doubts that Reagan could defeat Ford by appealing to fears about detente. Many G.O.P. state chairmen believe that Kissinger is still more of an asset than a liability to Ford. Forcing him to resign before the election would simply be publicly caving in to Reagan and would severely damage current U.S. foreign policy; for all his reduced reputation, Kissinger is still better able to cope with America’s foreign problems than any successor who could be moved in quickly.

There is no question that the President’s effusive praise for Kissinger is sincerely meant. Privately, Ford has assured him that he wants him to stay on—for at least the rest of his term. Says a top presidential aide: “The President is absolutely adamant. He is not retreating one inch in his support of Kissinger. As far as he is concerned, there is no footsy going on.”

At the same time, the President has begun to disengage himself unobtrusively from the Secretary, at least as far as the future is concerned. Referring to Ford’s previous claims that he wanted Kissinger to remain in his Cabinet for four more years, a White House aide says: “You won’t hear the President make that statement again, at least not while Reagan is still breathing down our necks.” Even Kissinger fans have long assumed that he would not necessarily be kept on for a second term, and while such talk does turn him into something of a lame duck in negotiations, his departure in an orderly transition to a new Administration would be quite different from dumping him now.

Even in the best of times, Kissinger is hypersensitive to what he considers unfair criticism. His concern about distortions of his policy are compounded by the problem that his old diplomatic magic has not been working too well of late. The U.S. seems, for example, to have lost some of its prestige as the primary peace broker in the Middle East.

The prospect of gaining a SALT II arms agreement with the Russians is growing dimmer—although Kissinger was able to announce some good news last week, revealing that the Soviets had accepted in principle an accord providing for on-site inspection of peaceful nuclear explosions. But the hard bargaining to work out the final agreement remains to be done. (Asked if he was going anywhere to sign the accord, Kissinger quipped, “The desire to get me out of town is overwhelming.”)

Confused and Tarnished. According to TIME Diplomatic Editor Jerrold L. Schecter, “Kissinger senses his own cycle has hit bottom; yet he feels that his plight is a reflection of the national mood of self-criticism and self-searching that has grown out of Viet Nam and Watergate. He refuses to face the reality that he too is a part of that history and that his own role remains confused and tarnished. He believes he is fighting to prevent the nation from consuming itself in bitterness and self-recrimination.

“Kissinger remains perpetually sensitive to the problems of his effectiveness. Privately, he has said he will resign if he becomes so much of an issue during the campaign that he cannot function. He stays on because he feels that he is the man holding American foreign policy together, especially in the Middle East.”

This week Kissinger will leave to spend seven days in Palm Springs, Calif., with his wife Nancy. During his brief vacation, he will undoubtedly try to think through his future in the Ford Administration. His troubles do not seem to have affected his wry sense of humor or his capacity for enlightened self-pity. After delivering an address in New York City on the law of the sea, the Secretary was asked to comment about the political upheaval in China (see THE WORLD). “I must say I have some sympathy with what [ousted Deputy Premier] Teng Hsiao-p’ing has been going through,” he replied. “I’m at the wall-poster stage myself.”