Kissinger - Gary Allen |
If there is one ever-recurring image that made Henry Kissinger, it is that of an inspired flight-bag diplomat shuttling hurriedly between the capitals of the Middle East in the quest of an elusive peace.
No one can deposit the intermittent Arab-Israeli war at Kissinger's doorstep. It goes back too far for that, suffice it to say that American foreign policy in the Middle East was destined to get the United States into hot water from the beginning. By supporting the artificial creation of the state of Israel in the midst of the Arab world, this nation (the U.S.) alienated hundreds of millions of potential allies. From the Arab point of view, America's massive support of Israel since 1948 has been a hostile action for three decades.
This assessment has nothing to do with the noteworthy achievements of the Jewish state. It is obvious that Arab opposition to Israel, and Israel's determination to survive, constitute the unstoppable force colliding with the inexorable object.
Nobody in his right mind believes the "peace"—actually an "interim peace agreement"—engineered by Henry Kissinger can endure for very long.
The 1975 Israeli-Arab accords negotiated by Kissinger did avoid an immediate confrontation between the super-powers. But what they may very well have done is prepare the way for a much greater war—one in which the United States will have, as usual, equipped both sides with sophisticated weapons.
The cost to the United States for the secret agreements secretly arrived at has been estimated at $10 to $25 billion, which is hardly cheery news to the U.S. taxpayers who will have to foot the bill. Nor did the interim agreement delight the Israelis, who were literally arm-twisted into accepting it.
Indeed, an Israeli journalist named Matti Golan claims that Israeli leaders feel they were repeatedly deceived by the U.S. Secretary of State. In The Secret Conversations of Henry Kissinger, Golan portrays Kissinger as an inveterate gossip who delights in malicious stories about the leaders with whom he negotiates. "He seems to have a need to prove to the world—and to himself—how great he is", Golan writes. "And that's another reason why he talks so much."
Golan charges that Kissinger:
According to Golan, Israeli Premier Golda Meir was "shocked and furious" at Kissinger after the Secretary promised to delay talks in Moscow concerning the Middle East ceasefire (so Israel could recover from its serious set-backs in the war), then suddenly signed a cease-fire agreement with the Soviets.
The 1973 war, which was as striking a defeat for Israel as the Six-Day War in 1967 had been an amazing victory, may also have provided a smoke screen for something of more moment than the actual hostilities: namely, the rise in oil prices by the international petroleum cartel.
The prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies in London has described the use of the "oil weapon" by the Arabs in the fall of 1973 as "the greatest shock, the most potent sense of a new era, of any event in recent years." The Arab boycott of the Western world, and the huge increase in oil prices which resulted, caused such economic and political repercussions that 1974 became known as "the year Europe lost its head"—a reference to the number of European rulers who were replaced in the ensuing panic.
Several commentators suggest that it was detente, arranged by Henry Kissinger, which gave the Arabs confidence to use the "oil weapon." Prior to detente, no one questioned the credibility of the U.S. nuclear umbrella or our determination to protect the nations of the Free World.
In the post-Vietnam world of detente, however, our reputation was on the skids. The militarily weak Arabs obviously placed their faith in the ability of the Soviets to block any Western retaliation for the oil boycott.
The new economic realities pummeled the dollar and European currencies furiously. The only beneficiaries of the oil crisis turned out to be the Arabs, the Soviet Union, and—lest we forget—the Western oil cartel. (It is the Western oil cartel, dominated by Rockefeller interests, which refines, distributes, and retails Arab oil.) As a result of the crisis, the Soviets were able to reap huge windfall profits from the value of their own gold reserves and from favorable exchange rates in deals with the West.
But the whole crisis also brought a bonanza to the oil barons in the West. So much so that some suspicious critics believe the Rockefeller-Kissinger team "put in the fix" at the beginning. The game plan, as these cynics see it, goes like this: the Arabs were encouraged to go to war to recover the territories they lost in 1967; in the meantime, the U.S. provided massive support to Israel, which in turn induced the Arabs to cut off supplies of oil to the West. This permitted U.S. oil companies to increase domestic prices a few cents a gallon every week; meanwhile, oil-producing nations doubled and tripled crude oil prices. The American oil firms with interest in both camps—that is, those companies that are part of the Rockefeller-CFR team—made a bundle.
Whether that exact sequence of events occurred because it was planned that way is still speculation. But the Arab oil embargo did provide a windfall for the Western petroleum cartel, shooting the Rockefeller-controlled Exxon into number one in Fortune's list of the nations' largest industrials. And there can be no doubt that the alarmist cries of a great petroleum scarcity were completely contrived.
At the time of the "crisis" of 1973-74, the Interior Department estimated the amount of "easily recoverable" oil at 80 billion barrels, and shale oil accessible through intensive technology at 600 billion barrels—or enough to last 100 years at present consumption rates. This is in addition to the estimated 780 billion barrels available in offshore oil reserves. Nor does it include at least 20 billion barrels of oil easily accessible in Alaska. The sum total of these reserves, including the easily recoverable shale oil, is 880 billion barrels—enough to last well in the 21st century!
In the meantime, the squeeze is on the consuming public and the small independent oil companies, not the giant multinational conglomerates. Back in 1969, the independents had urged President Nixon to lift oil import quotas, which would have allowed the importation of lower-priced foreign oil while easing the drain on domestic reserves.
But Nixon kept the import restrictions in place until just before the convenient 1973 Middle East war, thus guaranteeing a much higher price for foreign crude oil. The price tag for consumers in this country? Between $4 and $7 billion a year in higher prices.
Even by mid-December 1973, there was no genuine shortage at the gasoline pumps. Then along came William E. Simon of the CFR. The nation's new federal energy czar, who had been an investment banker with Salomon Brothers (an international banking house linked to the Rockefellers), established an intriguing program whereby gasoline was allocated away from areas of high demand into areas where the demand was less.
Very quickly a panic began to develop. Who could tell people who had just spent hours waiting at the pump for their gasoline rations that there was no real shortage of petroleum?
Despite the overwhelming evidence that we were not "running out of oil", the petroleum panic of 1973 set the stage for Kissinger's next move—promotion of a "global energy strategy". Another contrived panic was leading inevitably to its contrived solution—more power and controls for the Insiders who were running the show.
For a more complete account of how shortages are deliberately created, especially in food and fuel, to drive up prices and prepare the way for more national (and later, international) controls, see Chapters Ten and Eleven of The Rockefeller File.
About this time, the public relations boys were called in to sell the public on the merits of Project Independence. But in a moment of candor, Secretary Kissinger admitted that talk of national "energy independence" is a fraud. Project Independence, he said, is simply "a way station on the way to Project Interdependence".
Another way station on the road to interdependence—or, as Kissinger prefers to call it, a New World Order—may be the flow of Western dollars to oil producers in the Middle East. The present flood of $100 billion a year is greater than the total of all U.S. investments abroad. If the rate continues much longer, the Middle East oil producers may accumulate so much capital they will be able to "buy out" the West. Already their deposits in 21 of the largest U.S. banks have reached the astronomical total of $14.5 billion.
In March 1975, Harper's published a curious article called "Seizing Arab Oil", written by someone (the pseudonym Miles Ignotus was used), "close to the Pentagon and to the highest level of U.S. policy-makers". The magazine presented a complete scenario of how the United States might use military action in the Arab countries to secure "vital" supplies of oil.
About the same time, you will recall, Kissinger had already spoken openly about possible U.S. military intervention in the Middle East, to protect our "vital" supplies of oil. His remarks, although totally out of place for a diplomat, did underscore our alleged dependence on Arab oil—even though the Middle East supplies less than ten percent of all petroleum consumed in the United States.
In the meantime, the effect of Kissinger's action has been to protect the Arabs' position and profits! The Los Angeles Times commented in March 1975 that it was "indeed strange" to see the Ford Administration arranging "what would amount to a price support program for Arab oil—a safety net that would protect the cartel from market forces that might otherwise destroy it".
As the Times observed, when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries quadrupled the price of oil, it acted "like a 300% sales tax", draining away billions of dollars that otherwise would have been spent in the United States, therefore deepening the recession in the U.S. and Western Europe.
"A major drop in oil prices", the Times analysis continued, would "contribute enormously to a return to prosperity by putting billions of dollars back into consumer pockets. It is amazing that. . . an Administration policy that would shut off the possibility of this happening has aroused so few questions".
It is amazing—unless, of course, the real objective was not to rescue the West from a contrived shortage, but to strengthen the oil cartel, weaken national governments, grease the tracks for yet another slide toward interdependence—meaning global government, meaning global monopoly.
Are the Arab sheiks being set up to trigger a war in the Middle East, a bloody conflict whose final outcome would be a major step toward world government and the "internationalization" of oil? And could the United States be drawn into such a conflict? Quite possible. The "interim peace agreement" constructed by Kissinger supports both possibilities.
Aside from the geographical concessions involved in the agreement (Israel withdrew to a new line in the Sinai, withdrew from the Giddi and Mitla passes, surrendered the Abu Rodeis oil fields on the Gulf of suez, and gave up another corridor north of the fields), American guarantees to Israel include at least $2 billion for military hardware during the current year, plus another $350 million per year for five years as a "fuel replacement guarantee".
All of this will be underwritten by U.S. taxpayers, of course. Egypt already the recipient of gobs of American largess, did not fare quite as well, receiving promises of only $750 million in aid. To sweeten the deal, the United States also threw in a $2 million helicopter for Egyptian President Anwar Sadat (which no one in Egypt was trained to fly), and the promise of some $16.5 million worth of wheat under a long-term low-interest loan.
When the terms of the deal were first announced, it was understood that the package also contained some secret commitment negotiated by Kissinger. Over the Secretary's strong objections, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to release all of the agreement. The terms turned out to be even worse than the parts already leaked to the press.
Among such routine matters as a U.S. pledge not to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization and American assurances to continue providing Egypt with economic aid were two shockers.
First, the United States promised to consider supplying Israel with Pershing ground-to-ground missiles. The 460-mile-range Pershing missiles would put key Arab population centers within Israeli reach. And although the agreement calls for us to provide only conventional warheads, if reports are correct that Israel already has at least a dozen atomic bombs, there is no reason not to think Israel could equip the projectiles with nuclear warheads. Such a development could lead to an arms race in the Middle East that would make the early challenges seem as mild by comparison as a Saturday afternoon game of marbles.
The second part of our secret pledge to Israel was the promise that we would provide the country with petroleum should it be boycotted by other oil producers!
The total cost of the deal boggles the imagination. Senator Jesse Helms called the pact a "blank check agreement" and warned that the final cost would not be known. Senator Harry F. Byrd stormed that the price tag, during the five years of its implementation, might be as high as $15 billion. Other observers set the true cost at $25 billion. Not a few Congressmen were aghast that, at a time when our citizens were being told that a full supply of oil could not be guaranteed in our own country, American taxpayers were being asked to guarantee oil supplies for Israel.
There have been almost as many explanations offered for the incredibly generous American promises as there have been critics of the interim agreement itself.
Ernest Cuneo of the North American Newspaper Alliance, who described the Israeli-Egyptian accord as "a Munich with Hitlerian terms dictated by Henry Kissinger", has suggested that Super K may have been trapped into making such mind-boggling pledges when he was betrayed by his Russian friends. Cuneo reports the following scenario:
"When the Russian general staff saw that the Israelis had surrounded the Egyptian Third Army, it loudly threatened military intervention and moved the Red Air Force into battle alert. Succumbing to the bluff, Kissinger ordered a cease-fire, which saved the Egyptian armies and forced the Israelis to yield the east bank of the Suez Canal."
Even the brothers Kalb, hardly hostile biographers of our super Secretary, don't seem to know what to make of Henry's negotiating prowess on this one. In their adulatory study Kissinger, Marvin and Bernard suggest that Kissinger was caught off-guard when the Soviet-subsidized Arabs attacked Israel. Henry had been convinced, the Kalbs state, that detente was working and that Soviet intransigence was melting. "Just as he had misjudged prewar intelligence", they wrote, "so too had he misjudged the will and capability of the Arabs and the duplicity of the Russians".
Possibly. But neither theory explains an even more mysterious occurrence: The worldwide alert of U.S. strategic and conventional forces on the night of October 24, 1973. Nixon and Kissinger said at the time that the United States was in the midst of its "most difficult" crisis since the Cuban missile episode of 1962. But neither man, despite promises to the contrary, has ever revealed what the crisis was! The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were, presumably, nose-to-nose and eyball-to-eyeball—a whisker away from Armageddon. And no one knew why.
In Kissinger on the Couch, the authors suggest that the strategic alert might have been a Kissinger ploy to sell the nation a dual message. First, that Kissinger somehow had stared down the Russians in a crisis and, second, that our strategic forces were still sufficiently frightening to fend off a Soviet attack. Such doomsday imagery was used at the SALT talks in Moscow and helped obscure the fact that the negotiations covertly but decisively favored the Soviet Union.
Of the various explanations that have been advanced, one that we may now firmly rule out of consideration is one that seemed to make the most sense—and is the most charitable to Secretary Kissinger. It is that those sneaky, deceitful Russians were up to some diabolical stunt, the details of which can't be released, and Herr Henry stopped them cold in their tracks.
We now know this isn't what happened, because the United States and the Soviet Union were both represented by the same man in the Middle East—Henry A. Kissinger!
Yes, so confident was Moscow of Kissinger's flight bag diplomacy in the crisis that he was used as a negotiator for both sides! That was the surprise disclosure by Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, Kissinger's friend, who told other diplomats in Washington that Kissinger was serving as negotiator for the Soviets as sell as the United States in the Middle East.
But if the worldwide "precautionary alert" by American forces was not meant to call the Soviets' bluff, for whom was it arranged? Perhaps to hide the fact that the Soviets and our Secretary of State were working hand-in-glove all along!
Impossible? But why not? The net result of the latest pax Kissingerae will cost Americans anywhere from $10 to $25 billion. It will cost the Soviets not one red cent. Or should we say, not one Red ruble. We have agreed to provide Israel with the latest advanced weaponry. At the same time we will give massive economic aid to Egypt and other Arab countries, guarantee the sheiks' oil profits, and thus enable the Arab bloc to go shopping for weapons to counter the new Israeli gadgets.
The result, then, of Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East was a "peace" package which guarantees peace for neither Israel nor her neighbors.
It shackles United States taxpayers with an incredible new burden. And its only clear beneficiaries are the Soviet Union, the oil cartel, and the promoters of a New World Order.
Once again the question arises: Who is Kissinger really serving?
Anyone who still contends that he is a sincere servant of the American people must also admit that he is then a miserable failure. His every act, every new accord he arranges, seems to help our enemies and hurt ourselves and our friends.
Reviewing the whole incredible picture, we can't quell the still small voice that keeps insisting, "It was all planned this way in the first place". Was it?