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Advising a President
I have become convinced that a President should make the Secretary of State his principal adviser and use the National Security Adviser primarily as a senior administrator and coordinator. If the Security Adviser becomes active in the development and articulation of policy, he must inevitably diminish the Secretary of State and reduce his effectiveness. Foreign governments are confused and, equally dangerous, given opportunity to play one part of our Government off against the other; the State Department becomes demoralized and retreats into parochialism. If the President does not have confidence in his Secretary of State he should replace him, not supervise him with a personal aide. In the Nixon Administration this pre-eminent role for the Secretary of State was made impossible by Nixon's distrust of the State Department bureaucracy, by his relationship with Rogers, by Rogers' inexperience and by my own strong convictions. Rogers' understandable insistence on the prerogatives of his office had the ironical consequence of weakening his position. In a bureaucratic dispute, the side having no better argument than its hierarchical right is likely to lose.
High military officers must strike a balance between their convictions and their knowledge that to be effective they must survive to fight again. Their innate awe of the Commander in Chief tempts them to find a military reason for what they consider barely tolerable. They rarely challenge the Commander in Chief; they seek excuses to support, not to oppose him.
Far from being the hawkish band of adventurers portrayed by its critics the Central Intelligence Agency usually erred on he side of the interpretation fashionable in the Washington establishment. In my experience the CIA developed rationales for inaction much more frequently than for daring thrusts Its analysts were aware that no one has ever been penalized for not having foreseen an opportunity, but that many careers have been blighted for not predicting a risk. Therefore the intelligence community has always been tempted to forecast dire consequences for any conceivable course of action, an attitude that encourages paralysis rather than adventurism.
Confronting and Managing a Crisis
In negotiations I always tried to determine the most reasonable outcome and then get there rapidly. This was derided as a strategy of "pre-emptive concession" by those who like to make their moves in driblets and at the last moment. But I consider that strategy useful primarily for placating bureaucracies and salving consciences. It impresses novices as a demonstration of toughness. Usually it proves to be self-defeating; shaving the salami encourages the other side to hold on to see what the next concession is likely to be, never sure that one has really reached the rock-bottom position. Thus in the many negotiations I undertook—with the Vietnamese and others—I favored big steps taken when they were least expected, when there was a minimum of pressure, and creating the presumption that we would stick to that position. I almost always opposed modifications of our negotiating position under