Rusk TTTTT, Dean Rusk interviewed by Richard Rusk and Tom Ganschow, Part 2, 1986 January 3

GANSCHOW: I was going to ask if Professor Rusk doesn't think that another problem in the limited war period is that, if we win the goals of the military on the battlefield, we seem to, if not lose in the peace negotiations, they seem to drag on for so long and so much propaganda comes out of them that the American people at least lose the clearness and preciseness of what did we win and what did we lose? And generally this fogginess, this obfuscation, comes through the peace negotiations.

DEAN RUSK: Well, this turns in part, Tom, on the question as to what one means 00:01:00by winning. To some, winning means destroying the enemy and his country or imposing upon the enemy unconditional surrender as happened in World War II. I think in this postwar period, the real notion of winning means achieving the objectives for which you engaged in the battle in the first place. Now our central purpose in Korea was to prevent the North Koreans from overrunning South Korea, and we did that. Our central purpose in the Berlin blockade was to get the blockade removed. We did that. Our central purpose at the time of the Greek guerrillas was to prevent the Greek guerrillas from seizing Greece, and we helped to do that. We failed to achieve that purpose in Vietnam for a variety of 00:02:00reasons that I've discussed on other tapes. The notion of winning needs to be understood as accomplishing the basic purpose of the use of military forces. [Karl von] Clausewitz, the angel of many people in uniform, was very careful to point out that war aims are to be determined by national party and not by the military. He was very clear on that. And so one has to look at the question of why you are engaging your forces in operation, what purpose they are there to achieve, and whether or not you achieve those purposes.

GANSCHOW: Peace negotiations oftentimes become media events in todays1s high 00:03:00tech society.

DEAN RUSK: I'm not sure I put this on other tapes, but I think the negotiations about Korea were prolonged because of Truman's decision: a] to demand the line of the existing forces which was not exactly the 38th parallel, and b] his decision not to return prisoners who did not want to be returned. And I'm not sure that those two factors prolonged the war, because they were not involved in the discussions which George [Frost] Kennan had with Ambassador Yakov [Alexandrovitch] Malik at the United Nations which preceded the negotiations on Korea.

RICHARD RUSK: Pop, you argued strongly, as Assistant Secretary, on behalf of both points, I believe, or certainly on the point of not repatriating the North Korean prisoners, and yet you yourself have said that it did prolong negotiations. A lot of Americans were being killed as a result of the delayed 00:04:00negotiations. What can you say in response to that? Why was it such an important--well, we got that. We got that.

DEAN RUSK: You got that out of me.

GANSCHOW: I'm not necessarily, is there a way to have the war cease the hostilities and then negotiate questions such as the exchange of prisoners? Why, for example, in Korea wasn't that possible, and is this one of the characteristics either of warfare or is it a peculiar characteristic of limited warfare?

DEAN RUSK: Well it's pretty hard to stop the shooting until there's an agreement to stop the shooting. If the other side continues to shoot, then you've got to shoot back or let them--

GANSCHOW: But if both sides have come to an agreement that we can now talk--And we know there's gonna be outstanding differences--why does the war go on?

DEAN RUSK: Well, the war goes on until you've agreed that the war doesn't go on, and that's one of the principal issues in the talks themselves. But there were no major offensives by either side during the time of the Panmunjom talks.

GANSCHOW: Once the negotiations had started.

DEAN RUSK: Now there's another point that's very important. I'm not sure if I've commented on it elsewhere. It's true that we had forces from some fifteen nations involved in Korea, but even so the Americans put up ninety percent of the non-Korean forces in Korea. There was a British Commonwealth Division made up of British, Australian, New Zealanders, maybe Canadians. I'm not sure there were Canadians in that division. There was a battalion of Turks that did a very 00:06:00good job. There were other forces, a total of about fifteen nations all together. But for most of them--there was a French unit--these were in effect, token forces. They were welcomed because the flying of so many different flags there was very important for the home front here in this country. To know that we were members of the party and we were not doing this all alone although actually the principal burden fell upon us. Well now we put up eighty percent of the non-Vietnamese forces in Vietnam. Now this has a very important bearing on the attitude of the American people toward the idea of collective security. I think I put this on another tape, but if my cousins in Cherokee County were to say me, "Look, if collective security means fifty thousand American dead every ten years and it's not even collective, maybe collective security is not a good 00:07:00idea." I have profound respect for that reaction. And so other nations, particularly our allies, must take that into account. For example, Middle Eastern oil: Western Europe is more dependent upon Middle Eastern oil than we are. I myself do not believe that the American people would accept the idea that somehow we go to the Middle East with our armed forces to save that oil without the major and active participation of our European allies. I once talked to a distinguished German who expressed his appreciation of some statements that had been made in Washington about the Persian Gulf. And I said to him, "Now look, American Armed Forces can go to the Persian Gulf only along with British, 00:08:00French, German, Italian and other forces." He said, "But we can't do that." I said, "Well then forget it because we're not going to go out there and sacrifice our young men for your oil.

RICHARD RUSK: Who was that German?

DEAN RUSK: I forget his name at the moment.

RICHARD RUSK: Can you remember his position?

DEAN RUSK: He was a former member of the German government but I think he was in Parliament at the time. But, I'm sorry, I forget his name. And he was rather abashed by this idea.

GANSCHOW: Go ahead, you finish your comment.

DEAN RUSK: Yeah, well I think there tends to be a feeling among our allies that somehow at the end of the day Uncle Sam will be there and will do what has to be done. Now they must realize that at long last, the ability of Uncle Sam to do 00:09:00these things alone has disappeared. That we can do a lot alongside other people, but we're not going to do these things alone any more.

GANSCHOW: But Professor Rusk, don't we have to show proof of that first? In fact, don't you think that if push came to shove, we would end up in the Persian Gulf with ninety percent of the forces? I mean they may say--

DEAN RUSK: No, I'm not sure of that Tom.

GANSCHOW: You see, that's what bothers me.

RICHARD RUSK: Things have changed.

DEAN RUSK: I'm no longer sure of that because of this postwar experience that we've been through. Now for example, at one point we put in three transport aircraft into the Congo to give some symbol of a white nation's resistance to these white mercenaries who had rebelled against the Congolese government and 00:10:00established a position over in the eastern Congo. And there was a threat of anti-white massacres all over the country. Well, I remember at that time, again a German--this time maybe it was the German ambassador--came in to say that they hoped that we would keep those three aircraft there for a while because they had a lot of Germans in the Congo. And I said, "Why don't you put in three of your own transport aircraft down there?" He said, "We can't do that." Now just another little sample of this attitude, this frame of mind, and somehow we've got to get our allies to understand that we cannot draft farm boys out of Kansas and steel workers in Pittsburgh and go off to do their job for them.

GANSCHOW: But for example--I kow this isn't relevant to what you're writing 00:11:00right now--

RICHARD RUSK: This is all relevant.

GANSCHOW: But let's take the Libya-[Moammar] Khadafy thing. Everybody knows, all the world's nations that have any sort of civilized way about them know, that the use of terror against women, children, indiscriminate terror as Khadafy is proposing and condones, is wrong, and that if something is done about Khadafy, my uneasy feeling is, instead of a collective force or collective agreement from the United Nations or from European nations with the United States, we will end up, perhaps with Israel, doing something about Khadafy.

DEAN RUSK: Well I would be opposed to that unless a good many other flags were flying at the same time. I just heard on the news this morning that Italy is 00:12:00very reluctant to take any action against Khadafy because they have fifteen thousand Italians living in Libya. Now we've got fifteen hundred Americans living in Libya, but we just can't--no one has elected us as a world's policeman, although they seem to try. But the American people have not accepted the role of the world's policeman. We're not going to take on these jobs for everyone else without their maximum effort alongside of it. And I hope very much that we will not unilaterally take action against Libya unless there is a large multilateral force with a good many other flags flying that would be alongside of American forces.

RICHARD RUSK: Pop, I think I hear you saying that despite the fact that it contributed to the failure in Vietnam, that to some extent, the shift in the 00:13:00opinion of the American people is sort of a good thing. Do I hear you saying that?

DEAN RUSK: Well I don't even reach that question. Because I've told you before--Your mother has said that I have an infinite capacity to adjust to the inevitable. I'm simply saying that the days when we can do these things alone are finished and that other nations, particularly our allies, must understand that. They've got to be in on the party if we do these things anymore.

GANSCHOW: And that means that we have to make every effort to get them in on the party. If I could make a suggestion, I think for example, the Secretary of States' meetings are a very important way in which the former Secretaries of 00:14:00State can emphasize to the present government that it's necessary to work in a collective way, not to work as--if we act as the individual policeman, or at least even express ourselves kind of propaganda-wise as the individual policeman, the other nations will say okay.

DEAN RUSK: Well, we went through a period in the fifties and sixties when our relations with the Soviet Union were not very good and when our friends in Europe were reaping the rewards of large trade relationships with Eastern Europe, particularly the Soviet Union. Well then, in the sixties when we began to talk to the Soviet Union about trade, our western allies, in effect said to us, "What are you doing?" And I remember saying to one of them, "We're following 00:15:00you." "No," they said, "What are you doing? What are you doing behind our backs?" And I said, "We're following you! If you follow somebody, you're usually behind their backs." There was a time there when I felt that our friends in Europe wanted us to have a hostile attitude toward the Soviet Union so that they could have a monopoly on trade with the Soviet Union. And when we entered the field of trade with the Soviet Union, some of them didn't like it too much, you see. So there's that kind of an attitude that creeps in. But you see this phenomenon often. I think I put on another tape that during the West New Guinea affair, Joseph [M. A. H.] Luns, the Dutch foreign minister, said to us, "Now, we put eight thousand Dutch in West New Guinea. The rest of it is up to you." And I said, "Look, you haven't gone into general mobilization in Holland. We're not 00:16:00going to use our young men to go out there and do a job that the Burgers of Amsterdam won't do for themselves. The hell with it." And he was very disappointed by our reaction on that. But we're just not going to do that. We just can't do that kind of a thing anymore. Well, I've been disappointed that our present administration has allowed the Nicaragua-El Salvador problem to become a unilateral issue for the United States. We should be working as hard as possible, through the Organization of American States to turn that into a hemispheric problem and not let it become simply a unilateral American problem. We've got to share this burden with other nations because we're not going to carry it alone anymore.

GANSCHOW: Is this where the Secretary of State can make his voice more strongly 00:17:00known, Professor Rusk? In other words, would this perhaps be a little different from what your view was when you became Secretary of State, that you follow the President's policy? What if the President's policy today is a kind of bombastic or "go it alone" approach but the Secretary of State says or believes otherwise, that we have to have a more collective approach? Can the Secretary of State in some way make that policy known?

DEAN RUSK: I think this point has to be made initially, very strongly, but privately. Now for example, in Vietnam: Britain, France, and Pakistan had exactly the same treaty obligations that we had, to take steps to meet the common danger if any of those covered by the Southeast treaty were subject to attack, and that included South Vietnam. But [Charles Andre Joseph Mario] de 00:18:00Gaulle told President Kennedy in the early 1960s that there would never be another French soldier in Southeast Asia. In effect, he resigned from SEATO [Southeast Asia Treaty Organization].

RICHARD RUSK: Do you blame him for saying that? Based on their experience? They lost more men than we did.

DEAN RUSK: Well, it indicated--Yeah, but that was under different circumstances. De Gaulle said that despite the fact that France was a signatory to the Southeast Asia Treaty. Pakistan didn't lift a finger in Vietnam because they had always interpreted the Southeast Asia Treaty contrary to what was made clear to them at the time of the conclusion of the Southeast Asia Treaty, that somehow SEATO was aimed at India, in their point of view. And we said, "No, that's not true. It's aimed at communist aggression." Britain gave us some political support but didn't make any effort to take steps to meet the common danger. I 00:19:00had a colloquy with my old friend Denis [Winston] Healey in Atlanta one evening. We had a large dinner over there. And at one point I said to him, "Now, if Sussex were attacked, would you be content if the American reaction was the same as your reaction to the SEATO treaty and the attack on South Vietnam?" And he turned red in the face and said, "That's an indecent question." Why? I once told the NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] foreign ministers that they must not expect us to be a virgin in the Atlantic and a whore in the Pacific, that these notions of the fidelity of the United States to security treaties was something that we had to think of in both areas. I once reminded the NATO foreign ministers that they ought to be concerned about what was happening in 00:20:00Mao Tse-tung's China because the NATO treaty extended to the Bering Straits. And they looked at me as though I were a man from Mars. To them, NATO simply meant the central front in Europe. And it was very hard in my day to get the NATO foreign minister to discuss any matters outside of the geographical limits of the NATO area even though these events outside the NATO area had critical bearings on NATO itself. No I think there's--One hesitates to use sloganeering words--I think there's a considerable degree of isolationism among our NATO allies. And somehow we've got to work on that and try to overcome it.

RICHARD RUSK: Well, it's almost a human characteristic. It's almost worldwide. People don't like to get involved.

DEAN RUSK: Oh yes, it's always easy to let somebody else do the dirty work. But the point I'm making here is that I think that time has come to an end as far as the United States and the American people are concerned. And our other allies must realize that and take it into account.

GANSCHOW: I think that's particularly why I feel that the State Department, the Secretary of State, today can serve a very important function.

RICHARD RUSK: That's his constituency (unintelligible). That's it.

GANSCHOW: Yeah.

RICHARD RUSK: Pop, back during the Korean War, as Assistant Secretary for Far Eastern Affairs, you undoubtedly were in touch with our U.N. allies, trying to get them to contribute more men and arms. Do you recall anything from those discussions?

DEAN RUSK: Well let me say that we did not have to put on pressure, twist arms, to get those original contributions from other countries. They came in 00:22:00voluntarily. I remember for example, at the moment of the outbreak of the Korean War, the New Zealand ambassador came in immediately and said, "What do you want from New Zealand?" And the same attitude was true with the Australians, the Turks, others. We did not make a sustained effort to get them to increase their forces in Korea. We would have welcomed it. But for--I don't know exactly what the reasons were, but we did not put major pressures on them to contribute more, partly because we were so thankful that they had contributed anything at all. (laughter) But in those regular meetings of the fifteen ambassadors, fifteen countries that had troops in Korea, there was a high degree of unity in that group. But when the problems with [Douglas] MacArthur developed, there was also a considerable amount of nervousness as to who was really in charge and who was 00:23:00in command. That was reflected in the reactions I had from the ambassadors of these countries when I telephoned them at midnight on the night that Truman relieved MacArthur to inform them of this action. And with one exception, they all seemed to be gratified with the demonstration that it was the President who was in control and not General MacArthur. The only exception was Carlos [P.] Romulo of the Philippines who idolized MacArthur and thought this was a great mistake, but also felt that General MacArthur had made a great mistake in defying the President of the United States.

RICHARD RUSK: Yeah, he did say that.

GANSCHOW: This is my view now, Rich, that here they say that foreign aid authorized for the Chinese government since V-J [Victory over Japan] Day has amounted to approximately 2.2 million dollars.

DEAN RUSK: Million or billion?

GANSCHOW: It amounted to approximately 2.2 million dollars, of which the United States had provided ninety percent or slightly more than--

RICHARD RUSK: You're talking billion friend.

GANSCHOW: Two billion dollars of which the United States had provided ninety percent, or slightly more than two billion dollars in the form of grants and credits. Now, it seems--

RICHARD RUSK: And that's from the time of the end of the war up until the time of the issuance of the White Paper. And what year was that,'51? When did you guys issue the White Paper?

DEAN RUSK: It's got a date in the beginning of it.

GANSCHOW: August, '49. Now, I think the question here is not so much how much was given. But the arguments used from the other side, that we contributed to the loss of China, were that at crucial times Truman cut the aid when it was most important; secondly, the type of aid that was given was not useful enough 00:25:00in fighting the war against the communist; and probably finally, our lack of presence itself in China. In other words, once the real crunch came, between let's say '48 and '49, could we have made a difference? Would the communists at least have backed off if we would have made a sustained effort to help Chiang [Kai-shek]?

RICHARD RUSK: Take those same figures and ask the question a different way. Despite the fact that our policy did not succeed in '49, and obviously we could not or did not send enough aid to really affect the outcome of that, is it still not true that we sent enough aid to the extent that we did take sides in that 00:26:00civil war? It was obvious that we were for Chiang Kai-shek and we were opposed to the communist takeover of China to the extent that it really irritated the Chinese Communists, and that our involvement in the forties heavily contributed to the deterioration of relations and the antagonisms that followed throughout the fifties.

DEAN RUSK: Well, I think that it's understandable that we supported the Nationalist Government of China against the Communists. After all, these were the people who had somehow kept China in the war against Japan under the most extraordinary difficulties for a period of ten years before Pearl Harbor.

RICHARD RUSK: Did Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communists have legitimate reason for being upset with the American position in the late forties? And you yourself have talked at some length as to Mao's response, if he's singled out the United 00:27:00States as public enemy number one. And he tried to whip up a lot of hostile Chinese feeling toward everything American. Is that almost inevitable, or certainly understandable, in light of the fact that we did intervene, not successfully. But we were there to continue--

DEAN RUSK: Oh, I think one could expect that the Chinese Communists would be resentful of our continuing support, although at modest levels, for Chiang Kai-shek in that situation. After all, we had been primarily responsible for denying them a seat in the United Nations. We withheld recognition of them when they, in 1949, reached out to obtain recognition by other governments. No, it was to be expected. Now you used the word "legitimate." Let's just say it was naturally to be expected. Whether it was legitimate or not is something that one could debate.

RICHARD RUSK: When General [Joseph Warren] Stilwell said, back in '45 or '46 I think it was, that we should get the hell out of China, was this what he was referring to?

DEAN RUSK: Well, it was the sense of many of us who'd had experience with China during the war that the forces there, that is the total situation there, was so massive a problem that our ability to influence it was extremely limited. Again, we could have put millions of men into China and held only a few coastal cities. When you're talking about hundreds of millions of people and their sense that the Nationalist Government of China could no longer effectively govern China, you put that alongside of the other problems that were brought out in this famous White Paper. Our ability to influence what happened inside China was minimal.

RICHARD RUSK: Did Stilwell mean more than that? Did he mean more than "we could not be effective?" Did he also mean that we were going to make things worse, that we were gonna screw around in China and not effectively intervene, which would piss off a lot of people?

DEAN RUSK: Well, I don't think that his remark meant that he himself was in favor of a communist takeover of China. I think it simply reflected our inability to have a decisive influence on what happened inside China. After all, when General [George Catlett] Marshall went out to China at Truman's request, on paper the Nationalist forces outnumbered Communist forces by some ten to one. But they proved to be wholly ineffective in dealing with the Chinese Communist forces, first up in the northeast of China and then along the Yangtze river line 00:30:00which they could not even hold.

RICHARD RUSK: You know a lot of your revisionist scholars make the viewpoint that the United States has done this repeatedly in the postwar period. We tend to get involved in domestic politics of these other countries.

END OF SIDE 1

BEGINNING OF SIDE 2

RICHARD RUSK: You look at China, some of us look at Vietnam, look at Nicaragua. We tend to screw around in the affairs of these other countries and we just make things worse.

DEAN RUSK: That's not uniformly true. For example, we did help the Greeks deal with the guerrilla problem. We did play a considerable role in bringing out three former enemies, Germany, Italy and Japan, into the postwar world as constitutional democracies.

RICHARD RUSK: And in all those situations we did get involved in the domestic problems?

DEAN RUSK: Oh yes, yes. So, we've had some disappointments and setbacks. But bear in mind that in many of these situations in other countries the United States is a long way away. And when people locally in these countries decide to make what John Locke called the appeal to God and take up arms or take other action to produce a new situation, they are the ones whose actions become critical because they put their own lives on the line and the United States is thousands of miles away. So the ability of the United States to have a decisive influence in many of these situations is very limited.

RICHARD RUSK: You're arguing that we have the right to intervene and try and take sides in these domestic conflicts, internal to other countries.

DEAN RUSK: Particularly where other people are intervening. After all, if we just sit still, well--if you took out a map of the world and you painted in red those countries which are openly and confessedly communist and then you expand that red color to include Iran and Turkey and Greece, Berlin and its consequential effects in Germany, Korea, and so forth, it'd be a hell of a different world today than it is, and to our disadvantage. So the revisionist historians have left out a lot in their analysis. It is simply not true that the United States has failed everywhere it's tried to make an effort along these lines.

RICHARD RUSK: Do you ever recall putting together (unintelligible)

DEAN RUSK: I don't think so, because in a good many of these situations, you don't brag about it. You don't beat your breast and say, "Look what we did." Think of the effect in the domestic impact in Germany, Italy, and Japan if we had tried to take the credit away from the leaders of those countries who in fact brought those countries into constitutional democracy. You don't do that to people. As a matter of fact, as a general rule, it usually is a very bad idea to claim a diplomatic victory because that means somebody else has suffered a diplomatic defeat. Well, President Kennedy told us at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis that he didn't want any of his administration to gloat over this, 00:34:00and if [Nikita Sergeevich] Khrushchev wanted to play the role of the peacemaker we should let him do it. It's usually a pretty bad idea to claim diplomatic victories. You take the benefits and go on from there. You don't brag about it.

GANSCHOW: The other side of this also, Rich, is what if we had not done anything? What would the revisionist historians be saying today? In other words, in the China situation there are those who say, "Well, if we would have put such and such, a dollar more into China, we could have." Well, who knows? But if we had not even done this much, certainly--

DEAN RUSK: Well you know we were aware of the fact--I should suspect you could find some evidence of this in that famous White Paper--we were aware of the fact 00:35:00that a good many of the dollars that we put into China just after the war went off to a number of Swiss bank accounts. That was not a very attractive thing to be doing.

RICHARD RUSK: Well you know there were some very knowledgeable China specialists that recommended that we in fact get out and terminate our aid, I do believe, in the late forties.

GANSCHOW: I don't know if they were saying terminate our aid. I think they were saying either get him to clean up his act. In other words, if we're going to continue to give Chiang aid, let's make sure this aid is effective.

RICHARD RUSK: I think [John Paton] Davies was saying that our objective there was contradictory. On the one hand we were trying to aid Chiang Kai-shek and enable him to restore some unity and control over China. On the other hand, we were trying to bring about a coalition regime with two parties there that were just terribly antagonistic to each other. And he said the policy itself was 00:36:00inherently contradictory.

GANSCHOW: I think you've brought up a good question, Rich, and that is this, Professor Rusk: At least to the perception of many people, there is this feeling that we will do anything practically to prop up a government that claims to be anti-communist. Now let's take the South African situation at this time. Whenever South Africa and the government says, "Well if we fall, this will be a great place for the communists to come in and take over," the feeling is that we'll pump in more aid to prop up that government as long as they keep saying that. As long as they keep saying, "We're anti-communist," we're willing to--you know, "If we fall, communism will come in." And it seems to me, this is where, 00:37:00if we go wrong, we may go wrong in that way. Chiang Kai-shek was able to use that constantly. You know, "If I fall, the communists are going to take over."

DEAN RUSK: Yeah, but Chiang Kai-shek lost the capacity to clean up his own act. His own position was very tenuous. It was built upon payments to warlords and all sorts of things and he simply did not have the ability, the power, the administrative structure to clean up his own act.

GANSCHOW: Then why support him?

DEAN RUSK: Well that got to be the problem at the time of the issuance of this White Paper. And our support was somewhat limited because there were those who felt that such resources would be lost in a swamp and would not have any real effect on the situation in China.

GANSCHOW: Then why not make it clear, very clear, that our aid has ended until 00:38:00you are able to show improvement in human rights or improvement in the operation of your government so that if the other side does win, it is clear to them that--Okay, naturally we supported Chiang Kai-shek against the Communists for a while. I mean, I think that's a natural position of the United States. But, there comes a point when we won't even do that if we see this government to be so corrupt or so oppressive--

DEAN RUSK: Or weak and ineffective.

GANSCHOW: Or weak and ineffective.

RICHARD RUSK: In other words, why don't we draw a bottom line on who and what we're willing to support?

GANSCHOW: Yes, it seems to me that that's the distinction that isn't made. We continue to prop up governments--

DEAN RUSK: Well, I think the situation is somewhat more complicated. For 00:39:00example, in the case of South Africa it's very difficult for us to support the South African government in the face of apartheid. But in a sense, we're gambling on the idea that somehow at the end of the day, the whites in South Africa will not permit South Africa to fall under communist hands they have the physical power to prevent that from happening. And so we continue to criticize apartheid and press them to make changes. But, on the other hand, we do not commit our own resources to the whites in South Africa, and it's partly because of our view that the whites themselves are not going to allow South Africa to be taken over by the communists. They have a lot of power, the whites in South Africa. A lot of heads will be bashed before anything like that could happen. 00:40:00But in Angola you have a different situation. You have thirty-thousand Cubans there, and there are important resources in Angola and Namibia. And yet, any assistance to the opposition in Angola and to what might be a friendly regime in Namibia is limited because we find ourselves alongside the South Africans, and that's a very tough thing for us to do. Yet there are very important resources in that part of Africa that we would certainly hope would not fall into the hands of those who are enemies of the United States.

GANSCHOW: Couldn't two things here be argued: First, that many of the revolutionaries in many of these countries, and especially that was true in China, were not necessarily communists. I mean, there were communists, but there were an awful lot of people who were fighting against Chiang and that corrupt 00:41:00government, not because they were Communists, but because they truly were Nationalists. And therefore, we may be willing to take a chance that those Nationalists would win out rather than the Communists--

RICHARD RUSK: Well, yeah, the revisionists say that we tend to be as ideological as the other side is, and we take these local indigenous situations and we blow them up into East-West confrontations, communism vs. capitalism, and this doesn't necessarily have to be. Now you know, the other side is guilty of the same thing.

DEAN RUSK: Well one of the problems you run into--and we ran into it in China--there was no third force to support. There were lots of Chinese people, leaders who were able and theoretically could have formed a fairly effective constitutional democratic regime, but they didn't have the muscle to make that 00:42:00into a realistic choice.

GANSCHOW: But could it be argued, Professor Rusk, so what? In other words, let them do it!

DEAN RUSK: Well that's what we did.

GANSCHOW: No, but I mean, don't we push to the point, don't we support the anti-communist side to the point that when we finally do get out it's too late?

RICHARD RUSK: In terms of the way we've vindicated ourselves. Yeah, we did eventually withdraw, Pop, but only after 2.2 billion dollars and a hell of a lot of support to Chiang Kai-shek.

DEAN RUSK: Two-point-two billion is chicken feed in the face of the situation in China.

RICHARD RUSK: It's enough to piss off a lot of people. No it wasn't enough to be effective, but Mao Tse-tung and his forces taking the losses that they took in that Civil War. It was enough to damage our relationship that's for sure.

DEAN RUSK: Well yeah, but if you look at the factor of time, that attitude on the part of Mao Tse-tung has changed considerably as far as Peking is concerned. 00:43:00The Chinese, in the long run, are going to be pretty pragmatic and realistic people.

RICHARD RUSK: Yeah, but we paid the price for our two decades of bad relations. Vietnam was probably one part of that to some extent.

DEAN RUSK: To some extent.

END OF SIDE 2