"What is important to record is the inextricable relationship the Nixon Administration's perversion of the policy-making process bore to its ignoble outlook. Its contempt for the patriotism and intelligence of the American people, for the judgment of its own officials and experts reflected Henry Kissinger's world view: that the dynamics of history are on the side of the Soviet Union; that before long the USSR will be the only superpower on earth and the United States will be an also-ran; that a principle reason this will happen is that Americans have neither the stamina nor the will to do the hard things they would have to do to prevent it from happening; that the duty of policymakers, therefore, is at all costs to conceal from the people their probable fate and proceed as cleverly and as rapidly as may be to make the best possible deal with the Soviet Union while there is still time to make any deal. The political-military policies of the Nixon Administration flowed quite logically from that view of the world, which the President certainly went along with whether or not he arrived at it independently of Kissinger. I think what I learned during four years in the thick of that miasma made it my duty to write a book."
|
