Henry Kissinger, the american dream, and the Jewish immigrant experience in the cold war

Diplomatic History

Volumn 32, Issue 5, 2008, Pages 719-747

  Suri, Jeremi ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 54249157035     PISSN: 01452096     EISSN: 14677709     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7709.2008.00726.x     Document Type: Article

References (153)

1. Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston, 1979), 228-29.
2. Author's interview with Henry Kissinger, 26 October 2005.
3. For some of the best recent work on the history of American immigration that deconstructs the traditional narrative of the United States as a welcoming "immigrant nation," see Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ, 2003)
4. Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ, 2002)
5. Donna R. Gabaccia, "Is Everywhere Nowhere? Nomads, Nations, and the Immigrant Paradigm of United States History," Journal of American History 86 (December 1999): 1115-34
6. Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917 (New York, 2001).
7. For a thoughtful effort to draw attention to the inclusive elements of American nationalism, see David A. Hollinger, "HowWide the Circle of the 'We'? American Intellectuals and the Problem of the Ethnos sinceWorldWar II," American Historical Review 98 (April 1993): 317-37.
8. Henry A. Kissinger to Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., 8 September 1961, Box WH-13, Folder: Kissinger, Henry 4/19/61-12/2/61, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Papers, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston, Massachusetts (hereafter JFKL).
9. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York, 1994), 833.
10. Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston, 1982), 432.
11. On Kissinger's display of emotion at the swearing-in, see David Binder, "Kissinger Sworn, Praised by Nixon," New York Times, 23 September 1973, 11.
12. Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 431.
13. Quotation from Henry Kissinger's videotaped oral history interview with Louise Bobrow, 11 January 2001, Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York, New York.
14. These are all topics discussed at length in my book; see Jeremi Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century (Cambridge, MA, 2007).
15. Quotation in Guy Stern, "The Jewish Exiles in the Service of U.S. Intelligence: The Post-War Years," Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 40 (1995): 52.
16. McGeorge Bundy, "The Battle.elds of Power and the Searchlights of the Academy," in The Dimensions of Diplomacy, ed. E. A. J. Johnson (Baltimore, 1964), 3. A number of books document and describe the arrogance, self-confidence, and Boston Brahmin insularity that characterized McGeorge Bundy as a college dean and foreign policymaker.
17. See David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York, 1972)
18. Kai Bird, The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms (New York, 1998)
19. Robert D. Dean, Imperial Brotherhood: Gender and the Making of Cold War Foreign Policy (Amherst, MA, 2001)
20. Andrew Preston, The War Council: McGeorge Bundy, the NSC, and Vietnam (Cambridge, MA, 2006).
21. McGeorge Bundy to Henry Kissinger, 28 January 1961
22. Bundy to Kissinger, 18 February 1961, Folder: StaffMemoranda, Henry Kissinger, 5/61, Box 320, National Security Files, JFKL.
23. See also McGeorge Bundy to President Kennedy, 8 February 1961, Folder: Staff Memoranda, Henry Kissinger, 1/61-4/61, Box 320, National Security Files, JFKL.
24. For an excellent account of the prep school background that deeply in.uenced the social assumptions and policymaking of the Kennedy New Frontiersmen, see Dean, Imperial Brotherhood.
25. For more on Kissinger's relationship to Bundy, Kennedy, and others around them, see Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century, ch. 4.
26. See Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century, ch. 2.
27. Quotation fromWalter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York, 1992), 61.
28. See also ibid., 59-62
29. Stephen R. Graubard, Kissinger: Portrait of a Mind (New York, 1973), 4.
30. See Ralph Blumenfeld and the staff and editors of the New York Post, Henry Kissinger: The Private and Public Story (New York, 1974), 80-86.
31. Henry Kissinger toWilliam Elliott, 12 December 1950, Folder: Memos-U.S. Strategy- Kissinger, Henry, 1951, Box 27, Papers of William Y. Elliott, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, California (hereafter Elliott Papers). Emphasis in original.
32. See also Kissinger to Elliott, 2 March 1951, Folder: Memos-U.S. Strategy-Kissinger, Henry, 1951, Box 27, Elliott Papers; Henry Kissinger, Memorandum to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., 8 December 1954, Folder: Kissinger, Henry A., 1954-1957, Box 39, Hamilton Fish Armstrong Papers, Seeley Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey.
33. For evidence that Kissinger's ideas were conveyed to Paul Nitze and others in the State Department, seeWilliam Yandell Elliott to Paul Nitze, Policy Planning Staff, U.S. State Department, 11 December 1950, Folder: N, Box 55, Elliott Papers.
34. For a much more detailed discussion of the International Seminar, Kissinger's networking, and cosmopolitanism in the Cold War, see Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century, ch. 3.
35. Kissinger to Elliott, fall 1950, Folder: International Seminar, Harvard, 1951-1959, Box 2, Elliott Papers.
36. Ibid.
37. See "Recommended Position: U.S.-U.S.S.R.," prepared by Kissinger for Nelson Rockefeller's brie.ng book, 15 May 1968, Folder 8, Box 5, Series 35, Record Group 15, Nelson A. Rockefeller Papers, Gubernatorial, Rockefeller Archive Center, Pocantico Hills, New York
38. Henry Kissinger, "The Policymaker and the Intellectual," The Reporter (5 March 1959): 30-35
39. Henry Kissinger, "Central Issues of American Foreign Policy," in Agenda for the Nation, ed. Kermit Gordon (Washington, DC, 1968), 585-614.
40. For an extensive analysis of this issue, and Kissinger's grand strategy as a whole, see Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century, ch. 4.
41. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 471.
42. These quotations come from Walter Isaacson's 1988 interviews with Henry Kissinger. See Isaacson, Kissinger, 40, 56-57.
43. See also Kissinger's videotaped oral history interview with Louise Bobrow, 11 January 2001.
44. On the creation of a "Judeo-Christian" ethic during the midtwentieth century, and its connection to government policy, see David A. Hollinger, Science, Jews, and Secular Culture: Studies in Mid-Twentieth Century American Intellectual History (Princeton, NJ, 1996), 17-41
45. Mark Silk, "Notes on the Judeo-Christian Tradition in America," American Quarterly 36 (Spring 1984)
46. Deborah Dash Moore, "Jewish GIs and the Creation of the Judeo-Christian Tradition," Religion and Culture 8 (Winter 1998)
47. Wendy Wall, Inventing the "American Way:" The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement (New York, 2007), especially chs. 5-6.
48. On the emerging perception of Jews as part of a "white" American race after the Second World War, see Eric L. Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (Princeton, NJ, 2006)
49. Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century (Princeton, NJ, 2006).
50. Author's interview with Kissinger, 12 September 2006. 1 51 Transcript of the audio recording from Nixon's meeting with Charles Colson, 1 January 1973, in Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes, ed. Stanley I. Kutler (New York, 1997), 191. Max Frankel was a German-Jewish immigrant to the United States, who spent his late teenage years in the Washington Heights section of New York City, like Kissinger.
51. See Max Frankel, Times of My Life, and My Life with the Times (New York, 1999).
52. Transcript of Kissinger's telephone conversation with Nixon, 16 October 1973, available from the U.S. Department of State's Freedom of Information Act website, http://foia.state.gov/SearchColls/ CollsSearch.asp, accessed 31 July 2006 (hereafter State FOIA).
53. For Kissinger's incomplete published version of this transcript, see Henry Kissinger, Crisis: The Anatomy of Two Major Foreign Policy Crises (New York, 2003), 268.
54. C. L. Sulzberger's diary entries for his 26 February 1970 and 8 March 1971 meetings with Kissinger, reprinted in C. L. Sulzberger, An Age of Mediocrity: Memoirs and Diaries, 1963-1972 (New York, 1973), 613, 714. I want to thank Salim Yaqub for drawing my attention to these diary entries.
55. Leonard Garment, Crazy Rhythm: My Journey from Brooklyn, Jazz, and Wall Street to Nixon's White House,Watergate, and Beyond ... (New York, 1997), 186-87. Before serving in the White House, Garment was Nixon's law partner in New York. Garment's account of the anti-Semitism in the Nixon administration is particularly credible because he expresses a generally favorable judgment of Nixon. Garment is not recounting the anti-Semitism of the Nixon White House to condemn the president.
56. Transcript of Kissinger's telephone conversation with David Abshire, 3 October 1973, State FOIA. In this conversation, Kissinger is mistaken in his assumption that Joseph Sisco was Jewish. Sisco was the child of Italian immigrants, from a non-Jewish background. See his obituary in the Washington Post, 24 November 2004, B07. I want to thank John Tortorice for his insights about Sisco's background.
57. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 833.
58. Kissinger, White House Years, 228-29.
59. See Robert Schulzinger, Henry Kissinger: Doctor of Diplomacy (New York, 1989)
60. Jussi Hanhimäki, The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (New York, 2004)
61. Margaret Macmillan, Nixon in China: The Week that Changed the World (Toronto, 2006)
62. Isaacson, Kissinger
63. John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York, 2005), ch. 5
64. Robert Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power (New York, 2007).
65. On this point, Anders Stephanson, Andrew Rotter, and Frank Costigliola offer very instructive models to broaden the explanatory frame for policy analysis. See Anders Stephanson, Kennan and the Art of Foreign Policy (Cambridge, MA, 1989)
66. Andrew Rotter, Comrades at Odds: The United States and India, 1947-1964 (Ithaca, NY, 2000)
67. Andrew Rotter, "Saidism without Said: Orientalism and U.S. Diplomatic History," American Historical Review 105 (October 2000): 1205-17
68. Frank Costigliola, " 'Unceasing Pressure for Penetration': Gender, Pathology, and Emotion in George Kennan's Formation of the ColdWar," Journal of American History 83 (March 1997): 1309-39
69. Frank Costigliola, " 'Like Animals orWorse:' Narratives of Culture and Emotion by U.S. and British POWs and Airmen behind Soviet Lines, 1944-1945," Diplomatic History 28 (November 2004): 749-80.
70. For some of my own idiosyncratic re.ections on broadening the explanatory frame for policy analysis, see Jeremi Suri, "The Cold War, Decolonization, and Global Social Awakenings: Historical Intersections," Cold War History 6 (August 2006): 353-63.
71. Ernst Hans van der Beugel Oral History, ch. 7, Archive Location 2.21.183.08, Inventory 60-65, National Archive, The Netherlands. Van der Beugel oversaw Dutch administration of American Marshall Plan aid. He became deputy foreign minister in the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with special oversight for NATO matters. He also served as the president of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and the secretary general of the Bilderberg Group, organizing annual meetings of in.uential transatlantic elites. More biographical information is available from http://www.parlement.com/ 9291000/biof/01847, accessed 10 July 2006.
72. For similar comments from Hamilton Fish Armstrong, the long-time editor of Foreign Affairs, see Hamilton Fish Armstrong to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 2 December 1964, Box 39, Folder: Kissinger, Henry A., 1963-1972, Hamilton Fish Armstrong Papers, Seeley Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. I want to thank Floris Kunert for helping me to use the Van der Beugel materials. I also want to thank Danielle Kleijwegt for her translation of the Van der Beugel Oral History. Quotations from this oral history are her translations.
73. See Isaacson, Kissinger
74. Bruce Mazlish, Kissinger: The European Mind in American Policy (New York, 1976)
75. John G. Stoessinger, Henry Kissinger: The Anguish of Power (New York, 1976).
76. For more on this crucial point, see Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century, ch. 1.
77. Quotations from Kissinger's videotaped oral history interview with Louise Bobrow, 11 January 2001.
78. Transcript of Kissinger's telephone conversation with Alexander Haig, 6 October 1973, 8:35 am
79. transcript of Kissinger telephone conversation with Richard Nixon, 7 October 1973, 2:07 pm, State FOIA.
80. See also "Indications of Arab Intentions to Initiate Hostilities" (circa summer 1973), Folder: Rabin/Kissinger (Dinitz) 1973, January-July (2 of 3), Box 135, Henry Kissinger Office Files, NSC Files, Nixon Presidential Materials Project, National Archives, College Park, Maryland (hereafter Nixon Papers).
81. Abraham Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter that Transformed the Middle East (New York, 2004), esp. 65-100, quotation on 89.
82. See also Avi Shlaim, The IronWall: Israel and the Arab World (New York, 2000), 318-20.
83. Dayan quoted in Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur War, 219. Rabinovich reports that, after hearing Dayan's remarks, Prime Minister Golda Meir contemplated suicide.
84. Ibid., 219-20.
85. Transcript of Kissinger's telephone conversation with Nixon, 6 October 1973, 9:25 am, State FOIA.
86. Ibid.
87. transcript of Kissinger's telephone conversation with Anatoly Dobrynin, 6 October 1973, State FOIA.
88. Transcript of Kissinger's telephone conversation with Haig, 6 October 1973, 12:45 pm, State FOIA
89. Douglas Little, American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2002), 106
90. Hanhimäki, The Flawed Architect, 307-8
91. Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 507-15.
92. Transcript of Kissinger's telephone conversation with Nixon, 16 October 1973, State FOIA.
93. Memorandum of conversation between Kissinger, James Schlesinger, William Colby, Admiral Thomas Moorer, and Brent Scowcroft, 19 October 1973, Digital National Security Archive Document Database (hereafter NSA), available from http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu, accessed 10 August 2006.
94. See also Kissinger's brie.ng at the secretary of state's staff meeting, 23 October 1973, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book 98, document 63, available from http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/ NSAEBB98, accessed 2 October 2006.
95. Memorandum of conversation between Kissinger, Rabin, and Peter Rodman, 24 January 1973, Folder: Rabin/Dinitz, Sensitive Memcons, 1973 (2 of 2), Box 135, Kissinger Office Files, Nixon Papers. On Kissinger's advocacy for mixing diplomacy with force, including nuclear weapons, see Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century, ch. 4.
96. On the night of 24 October 1973, as Kissinger prepared to raise the American nuclear alert to "Defcon III" in response to Soviet threats in the Middle East, he told Alexander Haig: "You cannot be sure how much of this is due to our domestic crisis ... I don't think they would have taken on a functioning president." Kissinger and Haig then discussed whether they should wake Nixon for the decision about raising the nuclear alert. In the end, the president did not attend the White House Situation Room meeting that decided on this extraordinary course of action.
97. See transcript of telephone conversation between Kissinger and Haig, 24 October 1973, 10:20 pm, State FOIA
98. Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 585-88. On 25 October 1973, Kissinger and Haig discussed the alert and its aftermath with the clear understanding that they had made the key decisions, not the president: Kissinger: You and I were the only ones for it. These other guys were wailing all over the place this morning. Haig: You're telling me. Last night it seemed like someone had taken their shoes away from them. You really handled that thing magni.cently. Kissinger: I think I did some good for the President. Haig: More than you know. Kissinger then called Nixon, who was evidently preoccupied withWatergate.
99. See transcript of telephone conversation between Kissinger and Haig, 25 October 1973, 2:35 pm
100. transcript of telephone conversation between Kissinger and Nixon, 25 October 1973, 3:05 pm, State FOIA. I thank William Burr for clarifying my understanding of Defcon III.
101. Quoted in Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 594-95.
102. Memorandum of conversation between Anwar Sadat, Ismail Fahmy, Henry Kissinger, Hermann Eilts, and Peter Rodman, Cairo, 30 May 1974, NSA.
103. Transcript of Kissinger's telephone conversation with Brent Scowcroft, 18 October 1973, State FOIA.
104. Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 636.
105. Memorandum of conversation between Anwar Sadat, Hosni Mubarak, Ismail Fahmy, Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger, and Joseph Sisco, 1 June 1975, NSA.
106. Memorandum of conversation between Kissinger, Nixon, Brent Scowcroft, and a bipartisan congressional delegation, 31 May 1974, NSA. For Kissinger's analysis of the "grey areas," see Henry Kissinger, "Military Policy and Defense of the 'Grey Areas,' " Foreign Affairs 33 (April 1955): 416-28
107. Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century, ch. 4.
108. Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 647, 638.
109. Anwar el-Sadat, In Search of Identity: An Autobiography (New York, 1978), 291; Memorandum of conversation between Sadat, Mubarak, Fahmy, Ford, Kissinger, Sisco, 1 June 1975, NSA.
110. Memorandum of conversation between Sadat, Mubarak, Fahmy, Ford, Kissinger, Sisco, 1 June 1975, NSA
111. Memorandum of conversation between Sadat, Fahmy, Kissinger, Eilts, Rodman, 30 May 1974, NSA.
112. Memorandum of conversation between Sadat, Fahmy, Kissinger, Eilts, Rodman, 30 May 1974, NSA
113. Sadat, In Search of Identity, 291.
114. Edward R. F. Sheehan argues that the leaders of Saudi Arabia similarly believed that Kissinger had powerful personal leverage over Israel
115. see Edward R. F. Sheehan, The Arabs, Israelis, and Kissinger: A Secret History of American Diplomacy in the Middle East (New York, 1976), 75.
116. Memorandum of conversation between Sadat, Fahmy, Kissinger, Eilts, Rodman, 30 May 1974, NSA.
117. Transcript of Kissinger's telephone conversation with Brent Scowcroft, 18 October 1973, 10:45 pm
118. transcript of Kissinger's telephone conversation with Mr. Jameson, 2 November 1973, State FOIA.
119. Menachem Begin's 15 November 1973 speech in the Israeli Knesset, quoted in the Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz, 16 November 1973, 5. After the Yom Kippur War, vituperative criticisms of Kissinger saturated the Israeli press. Critics focused on Kissinger's alleged deference to the Arabs.
120. See Ha'aretz, 2 November 1973, 7-8
121. 6 November 1973, 4
122. 7 November 1973, 6
123. 22 November 1973, 5
124. 6 December 1973, 7
125. Ma'ariv, 29 October 1973, 2
126. 2 November 1973, 13
127. 16 November 1973, 17
128. Yediot Akhronot, 2 November 1973, 8
129. 8 November 1973, 24.
130. A group of Israeli right-wing extremists allegedly hired one or more foreign hit men to assassinate Kissinger. See "Bare Plot to Kill Kissinger," Chicago Tribune, 14 January 1977, 1. I want to thank my research assistant, Gil Ribak, for helping to find and translate these materials.
131. Quotations from Blumenfeld, Henry Kissinger, 254
132. Memorandum of conversation between Kissinger and American Jewish intellectuals, 6 December 1973, NSA.
133. See also Blumenfeld, Henry Kissinger, 248-61
134. Joseph Kraft, "Secretary Henry," New York Times Magazine, 28 October 1973.
135. Yitzhak Rabin with the assistance of Eithan Haber, Yitzhak Rabin mesocheach im manhigim ve-rashey medinot [Yitzhak Rabin converses with leaders and heads of state] (Giva'atayim, Israel, 1984). My research assistant, Gil Ribak, translated these passages from the Hebrew original.
136. Author's interview with Henry Rosovsky, 7 July 2006.
137. Rabbi Alexander Schindler's remarks at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, 11 January 1977, quoted in Washington Post, 12 January 1977, A16.
138. Memorandum of conversation between Kissinger and American Jewish intellectuals, 6 December 1973, NSA.
139. Memorandum of conversation between Yitzhak Rabin, Henry Kissinger et al., 11 September 1974, NSA. Between 1969 and 1973, Kissinger frequently met with Rabin in Washington, DC. The two men had an intense, frank, and trusting relationship. See the accounts of their meetings in Boxes 134-35, Henry Kissinger Office Files, NSC Files, Nixon Papers.
140. Memorandum of conversation between Yitzhak Rabin, Henry Kissinger et al., 11 September 1974, NSA. Between 1973 and 1974, annual U.S. assistance to Israel increased from $492 million to $2.6 billion.
141. See Congressional Research Service report, "Israel: U.S. Foreign Assistance," updated 26 April 2005
142. available from http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/ IB85066.pdf#search=%22us%20foreign%20aid%20israel%201973%22, accessed 4 October 2006.
143. Yigal Allon quoted in Richard Valeriani, Travels with Henry (Boston, 1979), 208.
144. Kissinger's address to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Hotel Pierre, New York City, 11 January 1977, in Department of State Bulletin 76 (31 January 1977): 90.
145. See also "Kissinger Is Honored by U.S. Jewish Group," New York Times, 12 January 1977, A3
146. "An Emotional Kissinger Af.rms Support of Israel," Washington Post 12 January 1977, A16
147. "Kissinger Says 'Shalom' to Jewish Leaders," Daily News (New York), 12 January 1977, 13.
148. Kissinger's address to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, 11 January 1977, 91. Emphasis added.
149. On the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis, see David Farber, Taken Hostage: The Iran Hostage Crisis and America's First Encounter with Radical Islam (Princeton, NJ, 2004).
150. Author's interview with Henry Kissinger, 26 October 2005.
151. Kissinger explained his long-standing position on political morality and policy ef.cacy most clearly in my interview with him, 26 October 2005.
152. See also Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century, ch. 4.
153. This final point draws on the theoretical insights of political scientist Alexander George. See his classic article: Alexander George, "The 'Operational Code': A Neglected Approach to the Study of Political Leaders and Decision-Making," International Studies Quarterly 13 (June 1969): 190-222.