Guided by his own inclinations and Nixon’s guarded nature, and/or cool tactical choice, Kissinger frequently cloaked his most important negotiations in secrecy, operated through “back channels,” and played a dominant personal role, supported by a very small staff. He dealt with Anatoly Dobrynin on SALT through the private White House Channel, with Zhou Enlai as part of a clandestine mission, with Yitzhak Rabin and Golda Meir separately from Foreign Minister Abba Eban, with Anwar Sadat covertly, and with Le Duc Tho confidentially in a secluded Paris villa. It was not merely the content of the discussions that was hidden, though. The fact that they were taking place at all also was often a closely guarded secret.
Either at Nixon’s direction or with his encouragement, Kissinger’s talks frequently bypassed colleagues who might have opposed an initiative, including Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, Secretary of State William Rogers, and the State and Defense bureaucracies. He circumvented Gerard Smith and his SALT experts in nuclear talks. Also, American allies, whether South Vietnam’s president Thieu or the Japanese prime minister, could be brought into the process late, if at all.
Tactical Choices
Three tactical choices intermingle in these and similar cases; these choices are almost inseparable as we analyze their more general pros and cons:
Unsurprisingly, opting for centralized control, back channels, and a “Lone Ranger” approach offers a complex mix of costs and benefits. (For brevity, we will sometimes use “secrecy” as shorthand for the combination of these three tactical choices.)
Advantages of Secrecy in Negotiations
Secret talks have a long diplomatic pedigree. Cardinal Mazarin, who succeeded Richelieu and whose diplomacy led to the landmark Peace of Westphalia, cautioned diplomats in 1684: “Even if they are perfectly justified, reveal nothing of your political projects.”1 A few decades later, Louis XIV used François de Callières on important diplomatic missions. Arguing that secrecy was indispensable to success, de Callières warned that it “is easy to derail great initiatives if they are discovered too early.”2
Preempting Likely Internal and External Opposition
These centuries-old admonitions resonate with many who cogently defend back channels in important cases. Earlier in this chapter, we saw a number of tangible benefits for U.S.-Soviet relations resulting from Kissinger’s increasingly productive relationship with Dobrynin in the Channel. Winston Lord, later U.S. ambassador to China and someone who often accompanied Kissinger, argued for secrecy in connection with the initial China trip. Lord gave several reasons:
“The Chinese indicated that they wanted some degree of confidentiality as well . . . If it had been known in advance that Kissinger was going to China, first, you would have had the Washington bureaucracy weighing in with specific, and, in Kissinger’s and Nixon’s view, second level concerns, that we had to get this aspect of trade, cultural exchanges, or whatever. Or that we had to be careful about Russian sensitivities. This would have hamstrung the early discussions.
“Secondly, we would have had our allies weighing in, in advance, trying to bind us, whether this involved our South Vietnamese allies, the Japanese, or the Europeans making demands and limiting us in our discussions with the Chinese.
“Thirdly, there would have been a firestorm among the conservatives and many of the Republicans domestically in the U.S. about the President’s even considering making this dramatic move toward China, causing an uproar. . . . All of this would also have put off the Chinese.
“Fourthly, all of this would have been exacerbated by the understandable anguish of our friends on Taiwan.”3
Kissinger underscored the importance for his purposes of preempting both internal and external opposition, arguing that “a public mission would have set off a complicated internal clearance project within the U.S. government and insistent demands for consultations from around the world, including Taiwan (still recognized as the government of China). This would have mortgaged our prospects with Beijing, whose attitudes we were being sent to discover.”4 Beyond the China case, secrecy surrounding the negotiations themselves (not the contents of bargaining known to be ongoing) could prevent adverse publicity and opposition from domestic and international sources. Avoiding such publicity and opposition could facilitate tentative exploration and movement in a delicate process.
Sidestepping Bureaucratic Involvement
The tactical decision to keep talks secret was not Kissinger’s sole prerogative. Richard Nixon entered office with a deep suspicion of the federal bureaucracy in general and the State Department in particular. Kissinger also reports that the president intensely disliked direct confrontation with cabinet officers with whom he disagreed. An example from fairly early in Nixon’s first term may have accelerated the tendency to centralize the process in the White House and opt for secrecy. Working through standard Executive Branch policy channels, Kissinger and Nixon had arrived at a clear decision to link nuclear arms control talks with the Soviets to Middle East and Vietnam negotiations. Many in the State Department strongly preferred that these issues be dealt with separately, and took steps that, as a practical matter, would frustrate any meaningful linkage. Nixon and Kissinger’s firm preference to link these issues was delayed and temporarily thwarted as a result of direct internal opposition, foot dragging, and a carefully orchestrated campaign of leaks to the press and Congress.5
However, Kissinger maintained that “the bureaucracy’s victory was Pyrrhic. After yielding [i.e., temporarily abandoning linkage on this issue] . . . Nixon, buttressed by me, moved the conduct of negotiations more and more into the White House. While [Nixon’s] preference for secrecy would have inclined him in this direction anyway, the bureaucracy’s indiscipline accelerated it . . . There sprang into existence what came to be known in US-Soviet parlance as ‘the Channel.’”6
Centralization of negotiations in the White House and secrecy suited both men, as Kissinger made clear: “Nixon also welcomed the secrecy because, among other reasons, it postponed an argument with his Secretary of State. I favored secrecy because it freed me from the necessity of living up to criteria set beforehand by the media and critics. When we gave briefings after the event, we would be able to do so in the context of whatever had been achieved, not what other people expected or desired or invented.”7
Permitting Unhindered Exploration and Flexibility
Beyond circumventing potential opponents and keeping them in the dark, Kissinger stressed that secrecy and tight control of the policy apparatus offered negotiating flexibility and avoided cumbersome and formulaic processes. As an example, he cited the 134 fruitless U.S.-Chinese meetings in Warsaw in which the “main point . . . had been our relationship to Taiwan, a classic Catch-22 topic: no solution was conceivable so long as US-Chinese hostility persisted, and the hostility would not end so long as the Taiwan issue was unsettled. Other questions . . . were the hoary standbys . . . American claims to compensation for nationalized property and defaulted debts; Chinese efforts to recover assets in the United States, frozen after 1949 under the Trading with the Enemy Act; [etc.] . . . All the familiar themes were due for tedious rehearsal again at the 135th meeting.”8
Relying on normal bureaucratic and diplomatic channels to address these essentially frozen issues frustrated genuine exploration of interests and joint possibilities. Each meeting called for “a statement that had been painfully cleared through the bureaucracy and among friendly countries. Our Ambassador would then read his statement; he received a reply no doubt produced by analogous procedures. The ambassadors’ permitted discretion did not go beyond a few clarifying questions. At the next session they read out a response ponderously prepared anew in the respective capitals. It all took time and got nowhere.”9 Of course, there was nothing necessary about this formulaic rehash; the president could have ordered that a different approach be taken on a higher-level agenda, providing the Chinese counterparts could reciprocate. (This, in effect, was ultimately done, leading to Kissinger’s China trip.)
While this represents a fairly extreme example, Kissinger found the interagency policy process ponderous and constraining, especially for genuinely new initiatives. He sought a much more flexible process: “I considered it essential to move the dialogue to a level where the negotiators could engage in some give-and-take and were sufficiently familiar with the thinking of their leaders to grasp the underlying strategy.”10 As Kissinger began to forge subtle linkages and manage delicate balances, the negotiating freedom offered by secrecy and a process centralized in the White House became increasingly irresistible.
Costs of Secrecy, Centralization, and Personal Dominance
Kissinger saw formidable advantages to a White House–centered, secret negotiating process that he personally dominated. Yet he and others were acutely conscious of a number of drawbacks.
Risks of Discovery
Most obviously, secret talks risk premature discovery. Blown cover can cause embarrassment, create awkwardness, and draw the potential wrath of parties who feel they have been wrongfully cut out. Revelation can energize opposition (internal, external, domestic, and international) on the grounds of secrecy as well as substance.
Inadequate Technical Understanding Due to Reduced Expert Input
Less dramatically, as Kissinger put it, “there was the problem of mastering the subject. My staff was too small to backstop two complex simultaneous negotiations.”11 Beyond Kissinger’s practice of intensively studying the substance of a negotiation, however, he found somewhat surreptitious ways to generate input from various government agencies and bureaus. “The control of interdepartmental machinery served as a substitute. It enabled me to use the bureaucracy without revealing our purposes. I would introduce as planning topics issues that were actually being secretly negotiated. In this manner I could learn the views of the agencies (as well as the necessary background) without formally ‘clearing’ my position with them.”12
In the opinion of some of his colleagues and subordinates, however, Kissinger’s knowledge was stretched perilously thin, especially in highly technical negotiations. From the bureaucratic trenches, it is hardly surprising to hear this view. SALT delegation member Raymond Garthoff, often a critic, claimed that Kissinger had “developed a conviction that he did not need the government bureaucracy. A small personal staff, he felt, could skim the cream off the ponderous interagency staff studies that he ordered to keep the bureaucracy occupied. In this way, he thought, he could learn all he needed to know about a subject. . . . On some occasions, his penchant for going it alone prevented him from getting needed advice, and U.S. interests suffered as a consequence.”13
Even some whom Kissinger admired offered similar critiques. Ambassador Gerard Smith, for example, was chief SALT negotiator and head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Though the two often disagreed, Kissinger described Smith as “dedicated, indefatigable, and shrewd,” and as “one of those talented executives who serve successive administrations and epitomize the ideal of public service.”14 Also, on balance, Smith viewed Kissinger positively.15
Yet, in measured fashion, Smith chided Kissinger for not taking full advantage of government experts and for trying to shoulder too much of the burden: “no matter how able a presidential confidant may be, he cannot produce best results while simultaneously negotiating, as Kissinger was, a number of important issues.”16 A bit more pointedly, Smith described how experts and delegates became cynical, even disheartened, about their own supposed roles when major aspects of the deal were done “by the intervention of a presidential aide unsupported by a staff save a few White House officials whose military and arms control experience was modest.”17
Risks of Confusion and Poor Coordination
Two tracks, a front channel and a secret back channel, inevitably led to some confusion, often on all sides. Smith observed that “Several covert back-channel negotiations deemed necessary by the President to break SALT deadlocks led to confusion and discontinuities in the U.S. negotiating posture . . . not much effort was made to enlighten the U.S. bureaucracy . . . I suspect that the Soviet delegation was also confused by this random process of high-level and somewhat erratic participation in a negotiating process that depended for progress on a painstaking process of developing and recording common understanding about complicated concepts.”18 He further claimed that the two-track approach and insufficient effort to inform those who had not been involved led to problems when the bureaucracy was called on to transform general terms reached in the private channel into precise, detailed agreements.19
Such criticisms were not limited to SALT. With respect to China, Kissinger acknowledged that “Senior officials who might have been conscious of China’s concerns had been excluded from the opening to Peking. Hence, there was no one at State who felt fully responsible for the ‘China account’ or even fully understood its rationale—this was one of the prices paid for our unorthodox method of administration.”20 With respect to the Shanghai Communiqué, when the State Department, which had been kept in the dark, “demanded a host of changes” it was able to obtain some of them.21
William Bundy, a CIA and State Department official, noted with respect to U.S.-Israeli negotiations that, “at an early stage, Nixon and [Israeli prime minister] Golda Meir agreed to handle major matters via Kissinger and Rabin, leaving out Secretary Rogers and Foreign Minister Abba Eban. Yet the State Department remained very much involved . . . so that its frequent lack of information on what was passing on the White House circuit was frustrating as well as confusing.”22
Similar confusions arose in talks over a Soviet guarantee of unfettered Western access to Berlin and enhanced political, economic, and cultural ties between East and West Germany. Kissinger observed “that the secret conclusion of the agreement among us, the Federal Republic [of Germany], and the Soviets dramatized the bureaucratic problem generated by our system of two channels. Somehow we had to see to it that our own State Department did not complicate matters. Moreover, the agreement had to be ratified in a Four-Power forum staffed by diplomats exquisitely conscious of their prerogatives as representatives of occupying powers. In addition, the speed with which the ‘negotiation’ had suddenly proceeded was mystifying to those who for a decade had been used to the rituals of stalemate . . . For the third time in three months a negotiation was being completed in which the regular bureaucracy had not participated, indeed, was unaware of its existence. There is no agreement that cannot be picked to death by professionals not involved in negotiating it.”23
This situation led to what Kissinger described as a “serious quandary,” one “that might force us to reopen issues settled already twice with the Soviets.” The quandary was overcome only by a frenzied process, requiring President Nixon, who “had a genius for thinking up explanations for a fait accompli,” to inform and graciously bring on board Secretary of State Rogers, who, along with the State Department, had been excluded.24
With a modicum of trust between the White House and State Department, a fairly common fix to such coordination problems involves designating a senior official from each “side” to accompany the chief negotiator. Not only does this prevent crossed signals, but it can also calm suspicions that otherwise could grow unchecked.
Risks of Contradiction and Sabotage
Such confusion led to other problems. For example, American arms control negotiators operating in the front channel sometimes made statements, innocently or manipulatively, that led to potent domestic demands for the negotiators to accept disadvantageous terms. As Kissinger lamented, “our secret style of negotiations left us vulnerable to these pressures; our critics did not know that we could do better.”25
Outright sabotage was occasionally possible as well. In reflecting on an occasion in which the cover for secret talks with the Egyptian foreign minister was blown, Kissinger’s language became dramatic: “There is no fury like that of a Foreign Service Officer bypassed . . . The offended diplomat [who has somehow learned about secret talks] . . . can report his knowledge in regular channels, thus spreading it through the bureaucracy by means of the computerized distribution system. This will quickly churn out enough copies to explode any aspiration to secrecy.”26
Risks of Being Whipsawed
Beyond inadvertent “friendly” miscues, adversaries could and did take advantage of the public front-channel/secret back-channel structure to whipsaw the American negotiators. For example, the North Vietnamese could trumpet their alleged flexibility and American alleged intransigence in order to stir up public, media, and congressional criticism of the U.S. government and its negotiators. In one case, Madame Binh, Vietcong delegate to the talks, publicly implied that a U.S. withdrawal and release of American POWs might be decoupled from other issues. This new “chance for peace” triggered widespread U.S. criticism of Nixon and Kissinger for not taking up the “offer.”
Such domestic criticism frustrated Kissinger because Hanoi’s actual positions in the secret channel took a much harder line and linked all the issues.27 He believed that the odds of a deal were best via secret talks, yet “[w]e were constrained from demonstrating that the ‘chance’ was bogus . . . [secrecy] enabled our cynical adversaries to whipsaw us between a public position we dared not rebut and a private record we could not publish.”28 Such episodes led Kissinger to “wonder whether we paid too high a price for secrecy.”29
Lack of Bureaucratic Support for Results
A further price came when Kissinger’s secret talks bore fruit: “The procedures I developed enhanced decisiveness in negotiations, but they made it more difficult to develop a consensus behind the results.”30 This could fatally hamper the process of implementation. Moreover, secrecy and exclusion demoralized the “bureaucracy,” which “reacted by accentuating the independence and self-will that had caused Nixon to bypass it in the first place.”31 Especially on the SALT talks, Kissinger observed that “we paid the price that negotiators, excluded from a process they consider their prerogative, are likely to take a harder position after the fact than when they conduct the talks themselves.”32 Such a hard line from the experts can help equip legislative and outside opponents with potent arguments against a deal that they might have supported had they been involved.
Bureaucratic Isolation
A cumulatively damaging consequence of Kissinger’s frequent recourse to secrecy and White House control of negotiations was the increasingly widespread expectation within the government that the “real” negotiations would take place outside normal channels. After Kissinger’s negotiating delegation had been kept in the dark, Gerard Smith reported that its “trust in its Washington authorities was never restored. Afterwards we always assumed that other contacts with the Soviets were taking place which we could not be trusted to know about—which proved to be the case.”33
Kissinger ruefully reflected on this development: by 1973, various agencies “had discovered that the major negotiations took place without their knowledge. Hence I could be blamed for failure, or be made to bear the brunt of whatever controversy even success was sure to bring. Each department thereafter would stake out its maximum objective, whatever sense it made. If that pristine position was not achieved, the agencies were not responsible. The inevitable compromise that would be necessary for a solution, and which in normal procedures they would have urged, could now be blamed on inadequate vigilance by the negotiator. My position, in short, had become bureaucratically untenable . . . So it was that for the first time since I had come to government I was bureaucratically isolated.”34
Allied Embarrassment and Unhappiness
Secrecy can pose considerable problems for American allies, especially if not handled with sensitivity. With respect to the opening to China, Kissinger reflected that “even with the perspective of nearly a decade[,] I do not know how the fundamental secrecy could have been avoided. The delicacy of the event and the uniqueness of the opportunity made it essential that the United States be in control of the context of its presentation.”35 Yet the Japanese prime minister, Eisaku Sato, “a staunch friend of the United States,” was blindsided by Nixon’s announcement of Kissinger’s trip, as was the American ambassador to Japan, who heard the news on Armed Forces Radio. Considering that it was “particularly painful to embarrass a man [Sato] who had done so much to cement the friendship between our two countries,” Kissinger wished he had at least sent an envoy a few hours before the announcement to brief Sato.36 Similarly, British prime minister Heath displayed “lasting pique at not having been informed by Nixon in advance of the China gambit. He was particularly hurt because he had hitherto assumed that Nixon and he had a good relationship.”37
Far more serious was the fact that South Vietnamese president Thieu, America’s ally, did not participate in the secret Paris talks and felt badly misled as to their substance and direction. Kissinger indicated that Thieu “had authorized such secret talks at the Midway meeting and . . . was kept thoroughly briefed on my secret negotiations from the beginning.”38 How fully Thieu was informed or consulted is a matter of considerable disagreement.39 After Kissinger and Le Duc Tho finally came to a tentative deal, Kissinger did not initially share the full text with Thieu. When he did, Thieu soon became enraged: “Kissinger says I was always kept informed. Yes, I was informed—I was told what he chose to tell me. But I trusted my ally never to deceive me, make deals over my head and secretly sell my country out.”40 (As we earlier elaborated, both Nixon and Kissinger would vehemently deny this intent.)
Thieu’s staunch opposition to the tentative deal would have presented major problems to Nixon, who absolutely did not want to be seen, domestically or internationally, as betraying South Vietnam. Getting Thieu’s agreement required extreme American pressure, promises of support, and efforts (including the so-called Christmas Bombing of North Vietnam) to obtain changes from Hanoi to the deal sought by the South Vietnamese president.
Although Thieu ultimately acquiesced in the accords, many factors beyond the secrecy of the Paris talks drove this story. Arguably, had Thieu been involved and enjoyed the capacity to block progress along the way, agreement might never have been reached. Secrecy surrounding the Paris talks, and the fact that Thieu was excluded from what was a U.S.–North Vietnamese negotiation, helped avoid this outcome. Yet, in Kissinger’s view, Thieu’s outraged opposition was not fundamentally a matter of tactics, tact, or whether the talks were in front or back channels.
Instead, given incompatible national interests (the United States’ imperative to end its involvement and South Vietnam’s terror of abandonment to the North), the two parties were “doomed to collision.” Kissinger ultimately concluded that “We failed early enough to grasp that Thieu’s real objection was not to the terms but the fact of any compromise. Conflict between us and Thieu was built into the termination of the war on any terms less than Hanoi’s total surrender.”41 It is hard for us to determine whether Kissinger’s fatalistic assessment is correct. If it is, secrecy was likely necessary to agreement and unimportant to the denouement of the talks; if not, the manner by which the secrecy was handled and how a deal was unveiled to Thieu could have mattered greatly.
Evaluation of Secrecy, Centralization, and Kissinger’s Personal Dominance
Henry Kissinger’s negotiations were often very public and visible; think of the Middle East shuttles, Rhodesia, dealings with China after his initial trip, or the many negotiations associated with the fifteen covers of Time magazine on which he appeared. Yet, like many of his diplomatic predecessors back to the eighteenth century, he frequently opted for a dominant personal role in talks whose existence and substance both were hidden from broader view.
Secrecy permitted talks to proceed without arousing opposition from domestic, political, legislative, bureaucratic, or foreign sources whose interests or agendas might have clashed with Kissinger’s purposes. By centralizing the process in the White House, Kissinger could move quickly, largely escaping what he often regarded as a cumbersome and irrelevant interagency process of consultation and clearance. Freedom from outside interference was especially important when talks were in a fragile, exploratory state or when Kissinger wanted to present agreement as a fait accompli. If talks were not public, Kissinger or Nixon could announce their results in a context that had not been shaped by others’ expectations or agendas.
Yet secrecy, centralization, and personal dominance carried costs and risks to weigh against their potential advantages. A secret process could be discovered and denounced, embarrassing and angering parties who had been cut out or not informed. Although more sensitive handling could sometimes have mitigated the problem, key American allies could be humiliated if blindsided by news of talks or agreements.
Depending on the nature of the issue, secret negotiations could violate norms of transparency, democratic accountability, and legitimacy that many Americans held in high regard. After all, reacting to a long history of European diplomatic intrigue and deception, the very first of President Woodrow Wilson’s famous Fourteen Points was “Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.”
Kissinger would doubtless agree with many analysts who believe that, although the fact that negotiations are ongoing may be widely known, progress will be stymied if the actual discussions themselves take place in public. Even as idealistic a source as Getting to Yes would amend Woodrow Wilson’s appealing point to read “open covenants, privately arrived at.”42
Going it alone, in secret, meant losing the full advantages of the considerable expertise in various government agencies and departments. A front-channel/back-channel structure could lead to damaging confusion and contradiction on all sides, especially when the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing (or even that there is a left hand). Converting more general agreements reached in secret into detailed form could be challenging for those not party to the secret talks. Internal players could even sabotage the process. Cynical adversaries could and did publicly whipsaw U.S. negotiators who could only respond by blowing the cover of the private talks.
As the expectation grew that important negotiations would be handled directly by the White House, not by the relevant government departments, Kissinger found himself increasingly isolated. And when previously secret talks became public, resentful agencies could withhold active support or find ways to snipe at results.
Weighing all the factors, various observers come out very differently on whether Kissinger’s centralized, back-channel tactics were wise. Stanley Hoffmann emphasizes the downsides: “frequent confusion when America’s negotiators did not know the agreements in the making through the back channels; it also gave the Soviets opportunities to try to play one team against the other. It created deep resentments among American diplomats ignored or undercut by the White House. It even created suspicion in Moscow and Peking, for Soviet and Chinese diplomats wondered why the Americans wanted so much secrecy. It meant that vital decisions . . . were taken behind the backs or against the opposition of Secretaries Rogers and Laird.”43
After attributing some of Kissinger’s penchant for secrecy to “vanity,” Walter Isaacson indicates that “Kissinger believed, with some justification, that in order to establish subtle linkages and calibrate delicate balances, he had to keep tight control over various strands of policy through back-channel machinations. In addition, he felt that he could better negotiate an opening to China if he kept the State Department in the dark, that he could more easily reach a settlement in Vietnam if he kept President Thieu uninformed, and that he could piece together an arms control accord if he circumvented Gerard Smith and his SALT experts.”44
Kissinger’s own assessment of these tactical choices is hedged but, on balance, positive, given the remarkable results. Freely admitting that “to individuals like Smith, it was unfair and demeaning”45 and that “[i]t was demoralizing for the bureaucracy . . .”46 Kissinger nevertheless came out clearly: “But it worked . . . In 1971 and 1972 these methods produced the SALT breakthrough, the opening to China, a Berlin agreement, the Peking and the Moscow Summits without any setback. The results should be judged on their merits, though I recognize a price was paid in the manner of their achievement.”47
Intriguingly, however, he recognized both the unusual circumstances in which he and Nixon employed this approach and its disadvantages and limitations. As a general matter, he mused, “I do not consider this a procedure that can stand institutionalization.”48
Clearly, when we move beyond Kissinger and the diplomacy of the 1970s, the decision to pursue secrecy in negotiation continues to be very much alive—although ubiquitous camera-equipped smartphones and pervasive social media render the task much more difficult. After all, the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal really began in earnest when facilitated by secret contacts in Oman between Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns in 2012 and 2013. And secrecy in financial negotiations is extremely common, given concerns about market reaction, competitive advantage, and internal morale. On balance, then, are secret negotiations a good idea? Our review of Kissinger’s use of the tactic, with its many potential pros and cons, suggests that the answer is a less-than-rousing “it depends.”