Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [79]
On several occasions, President Nixon and I had talked about the possibility of a foreign policy post. At this meeting, Nixon told me he was going to appoint Elliot Richardson as Secretary of Defense, and that Pete Peterson, the Secretary of Commerce, would probably go to NATO as the U.S. ambassador. As a result, I assumed that the NATO position, which Nixon had discussed with me previously, was out. That had all but decided it for me, since I knew I did not want to remain in the White House.
The President understood that I was starting to move on to other plans. “Don, we will find the right spot,” Nixon assured me as the meeting drew to a close. “To use the chess analogy, I want you to know that you are not a pawn.”30
A few days later, the Peterson nomination was scratched, and the President informed me he wanted to nominate me to serve as U.S. ambassador to NATO after all. While I knew he had reservations about the way the NATO alliance was functioning, and that Europe hadn’t exactly been at the epicenter of his foreign policy in his first term, the President spoke positively of NATO as a good place for me. In one conversation he said that NATO was more interesting and substantive than other ambassadorial posts because it dealt with many countries rather than just one.31
Because of NATO’s collective security approach—an attack on one member nation was to be considered an attack against all—the alliance had served as an effective deterrent against the Soviet Union. As such, the NATO headquarters in Brussels tended to be a prestigious destination for Europe’s most seasoned diplomats. I told the President I would be pleased to be nominated for the post.
The assignment had two important attractions: First it was an opportunity to serve in a new field, and to learn, which I had always enjoyed. Second, I would be out of the White House. My preference to be out of Washington seemed counterintuitive to some. After the public announcement on December 2, 1972, Washington Post reporter David Broder wrote: “Much of official Washington was surprised” by my selection.32 It was true enough that a former congressman from the Midwest who had primarily worked on domestic and economic policy issues might not have been the obvious choice for NATO ambassador.
Others in town, who measured people’s power solely in terms of their proximity to the Oval Office, thought I had ruined my career by leaving for Europe right after President Nixon’s landslide reelection victory. They could not see why anyone would voluntarily leave the cabinet and the White House—the seat of world power—to move so far from what they believed to be the center of the universe. But I had worked in two administration posts for close to four years. I had served in the White House and the cabinet, and I was uncomfortable with the thought of staying. I knew the White House was no longer the place for me.
CHAPTER 10
NATO and Nixon’s Fall
As much as he appreciated the symbolic importance of NATO, Nixon found the alliance frustrating. It operated by consensus—requiring unanimity in any major decision—and Nixon didn’t have a great deal of patience for policy making by committee. Unanimity is hard to achieve in any organization, and it was not easy with a group of the most respected diplomats from fourteen other nations operating on instructions from their capitals, each with different country histories, needs, cultures, and languages, not to mention lingering animosities toward one another after two world wars.
The move to Brussels, Belgium, where NATO is headquartered, turned out to be a treasured experience for our family. But first we had to overcome some initial qualms. Our oldest child, Valerie, was sixteen and had been looking forward to learning how to drive. In Belgium, driver’s licenses weren’t available