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Nixon deserves great credit for tough decisions taken in the face of enormous public pressures; for his strategic grasp; for his courage. His administrative approach was weird and its human cost unattractive, yet history must also record the fundamental fact that major successes were achieved that had proved unattainable by conventional procedures.
KISSINGER ON STATECRAFT
Having entered office as a self-described "apprentice statesman, " Henry Kissinger departed an acknowledged master. Herewith some of his observations on the statesman's craft.
The Art of Decision Making
The old adage that men grow in office has not proved true in my experience. High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.
The inclination of all Cabinet departments is to narrow the scope for presidential decision, not to expand it. They are organized to develop a preferred policy, not a range of choices. If forced to present options, the typical department will present two absurd alternatives as straw men bracketing its preferred option—which usually appears in the middle position. A totally ignorant decision maker could satisfy his departments by blindly choosing Option Two of any three choices submitted to him.
A President cannot take away the curse of a controversial decision by hesitation in its execution. Use of military force must always be made with a prayerful concern for Bismarck's profound dictum: "Woe to the statesman whose reasons for entering a war do not appear so plausible at its end as at its beginning."
A leader's fundamental choice is whether to approve the use of force. If he decides to do so, his only vindication is to succeed.
There are no awards for those who lose with moderation. Nations must not undertake military enterprises or diplomatic initiatives that they are not willing to see through.
If key decisions are made informally at unprepared meetings, the tendency to be obliging to the President and cooperative with one's colleagues may vitiate the articulation of real choices. This seemed to me a problem in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. On the other hand, if the procedures grow too formal, if the President is humble enough to subordinate his judgment to a bureaucratic consensus—as happened under Eisenhower—the danger is that he will in practice be given only the choice between approving or disapproving a single recommended course. This may be relieved by occasional spasms of presidential self-will, but such erratic outbursts are bound to prove temporary since his refusal to accept the agreed recommendation leaves him with no operational alternative.
All societies of which history informs us went through periods of decline; most eventually collapsed. Yet there is a margin between necessity and accident in which the statesman must choose. The statesman's