Practicing History_ Selected Essays - Barbara W. Tuchman [126]
The plunge into writing seems to carry on a habit and a condition of his office. Its pressures did not allow time to think, to examine a problem on all sides and a course of action in all its consequences. This is undoubtedly a fault of the system rather than of character; public life, as Kissinger acknowledges, “is a continual struggle to rescue an element of choice from the pressure of circumstance.” Surely that is all the more reason, once released from the pressure, to have taken time for thought.
What we have is an immensely long and superfluously detailed account of virtually every message, meeting, journey, negotiation, and conversation in the fifty months from Kissinger’s appointment in November 1968 to the signing of peace with North Vietnam at the end of President Nixon’s first term in January 1973. We do not need all the aide-mémoires and the daily comings and goings of Egon Bahr, Vladimir Semenov, and dozens of other secondary intermediaries to understand what was going on; indeed, the picture would be clearer if Kissinger had taken the trouble to strain out the insignificant and condense his tale as a whole. Since by training he knows better than to confuse setting down the total record with writing history, one must assume that the record—in his version—was what he wanted, and I have no doubt that specialists in strategic arms, the U.S.S.R. NATO, China, Chile, the Middle East, India and Pakistan, and Vietnam will be mining it for years.
It is enlivened (in spots) by small revelations, vivid scenes and portraits, and glimpses of the often astonishing mechanics of official life. For example, out of the blue in August 1969 a Soviet Embassy official asked a State Department official at lunch what would be the United States’ reaction to a Soviet attack on Chinese nuclear facilities. Mr. Nixon’s speechwriting staff had a specialist for every tone the President wished to adopt. In 1969 China had only one ambassador serving abroad—in Cairo. Through names presented privately by Kissinger to Ambassador Anatoly I. Dobrynin, the release of 550 out of 800 hardship cases of Soviet Jews was obtained over a period of time. On a presidential journey every member of the official party is given a little book listing every event and movement timed to the minute, together with charts showing where everyone is to stand. All these are surprises, at least to this reviewer.
There are sparkles amid the long stretches: the “thrill” of the first summit visit when, as the plane door opened on arrival in Brussels, “we were bathed in the arc lights of television,” a red carpet and honor guard were on hand, and the King of the Belgians waited at the foot of the ramp; the papal audience, during which smoke suddenly poured from the garments of Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird (in response to Kissinger’s suggestion that he dispose of his cigar, he had concealed it alive in his suit pocket). There are incisive small history lessons introducing, among others, the problems of Pakistan and of Poland. There are gems of quotation, as when Dean Acheson, asked why a meeting of senior advisers lasted so long, replied, “We are all old and we are all eloquent.”
The author is less good at profundities. When he attempts them, for example in reflections on the space age, his language invariably swells into the sententious, not to say banal, and he sounds less like himself than Gerald R. Ford. On the “agony of Vietnam” he sees his role as “helping my adopted country heal its wounds, preserve its faith and … rededicate itself to the great tasks of construction awaiting it.” Or, on the end of the war, he hopes Americans will “close ranks” and the peoples of Indochina “perhaps attain at long last the future of tranquility, security and progress … worthy of their sacrifices.” Coming from the sardonic gentleman who once, on being thanked by an effusive well-wisher for “saving the world,” is reputed to have replied, “You’re welcome,” this is pure hype on a level with campaign rhetoric, as if he were running for office. Perhaps he is.
Perhaps that explains