261. Minutes of the Secretary of State’s Staff Meeting, Washington, January 6, 1975, 8 a.m..1 2
In Attendance (Mon., 1/6/75)
- Secretary of State Kissinger (presiding as Chairman)
- D - Mr. Ingersoll
- P - Mr. Sisco
- E - Mr. Robinson
- M - Mr. Brown
- C - Mr. Sonnenfeldt
- AF - Mr. Mulcahy (Acting)
- ARA - Mr. Rogers
- EA - Mr. Habib
- EUR - Mr. Hartman
- NEA - Mr. Atherton
- INR - Mr. Hyland
- S/P - Mr. Lord
- EB - Mr. Enders
- S/PRS - Mr. Anderson
- PM - Mr. Stern (Acting)
- IO - Mr. Buffum
- H - Mr. Holton
- L - Mr. Feldman (Acting)
- S/S - Mr. Springsteen
- S - Mr. Borg
[Omitted is material unrelated to Korea.]
Mr. HABIB: We have an interesting problem with respect to Korea which I thought has brought some significance — which I would like to get some of your views on.
Korea is looking toward three countries for arms purchases because they can’t get what they like in the way of sophisticated weaponry. In this case, the immediate problem involves their desire to purchase advanced ground to surface missiles — and which we’re not ready to supply them yet.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: Why not?
[Page 03]MR. HABIB: This concerns a missile that is ship-mounted, called the Harpoon, which our assembly line is not ready to provide them yet.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: Yes, but why are we really not giving them the assembly-line argument?
MR. HARTMAN: It’s a fairly known inventory.
MR. HABIB: It’s been known for some time that they want to buy French missiles — which we think they shouldn’t buy.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: That’s their problem.
MR. HABIB: Well, there’s another reason too. That is, it goes completely contrary to the priority arrangements made on weapons supply. Now, if they’ve got money to buy weapons and they want to buy weapons, they can buy them from us. They don’t have to have these French missiles.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: But they can’t buy them from us if we won’t sell them to them.
MR. HABIB: We’ll sell them to them at the right time.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: What’s the right time?
MR. HABIB: Well, there’s an interim missile that’s good for them.
[Page 04]SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, we don’t, obviously, think so.
MR. HABIB: Second, the French are pushing arms on them.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: But why is it in our interest to be the sole supplier of Korean arms? — all the more so, as we are demonstrably totally unreliable.
MR. HABIB: It is in our interest that Korea should get the arms that they need in their priority and not take other arms. If we’re short on MAP money — as we are — we have priority requirements that have been set jointly between ourselves and the Koreans as to what arms they need. Why don’t they spend their money on those things instead of buying things like submarines?
Let me give you the next item they want to buy. They want to buy British submarines
SECRETARY KISSINGER: Before four or five years are over, we’ll be grateful for any strength Korea has, because you know goddamn well what’s going to happen. You and I know they’re going to go the way of Chile sooner or later. Sooner or later you put a democratic administration in here and they’ll pull the Second Division out. I don’t see that it’s against our interest that Korea has some other source of arms.
[Page 05]MR. HABIB: It is against our interest if we decide what kind of an armament we require jointly —
SECRETARY KISSINGER: We’re not the bloody pro-consuls.
MR. HABIB: It’s not a question of pro-consuls; it’s a question of rational arms procurement policy.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, what is a rational arms procurement policy? Why does Korea not get American airplanes? For the reason that the Air Force wants to have an excuse to keep two wings there.
MR. HABIB: No. Korea is going to get American wings. As a matter of fact, they buy American airplanes than buy British submarines. They obviously need American airplanes.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: They also need the assurance of not being totally dependent on us. And I can only applaud anything that comes to this conclusion.
MR. HABIB: Well, you’re producing a situation where they supply x-dollars; they support the bulk of their military needs themselves. And they proceed then to take their own resources and buy things which, all the while, we [Page 06] are, unfortunately, unable to supply within the terms of our limits — Congressional appropriation limits. We can’t supply the things that are required.
MR. ENDERS: Will the French and the British give them credit?
MR. HABIB: Of course. That’s the whole idea.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: Then why not?
MR. HABIB: It’s a simple question of whether or not that’s the best use of resources at a time when you’re spending 125-135 million dollars of our own money in grant aid.
Now, we supply grant aid — 145 million this year. And then they turn around and take foreign exchange and buy advanced weaponry that is not particularly within priority-list desirability.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: But the priority-list desirability, you know as well as I know, is total nonsense.
MR. HABIB: No, it’s not.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: Oh, come on! You know how they’re done in the Pentagon.
MR. HABIB: No; they’re not done in the Pentagon. Our military sit down with them.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: Our military, first, [Page 07] decides what they’re going to give them.
MR. STERN: No, no.
MR. HABIB: I was involved in the process, and I didn’t allow it to happen that way. You went through a rational system of determining how do you modernize Korean armed forces? And you produced such things as airplanes — airplanes they need. They have to get rid of the -86s and get something that’s worth buying.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: There’s no reason why they should be inferior in airpower to the North Koreans, except our Air Force ought to have them in a position where we must have some wings there.
That has been the case all along. I have just seen too many military instances —
MR. HABIB: It’s a matter of money. Airplanes are expensive, and the number of aircraft needed are.
As it turns out, this year, for example, about the only thing we could purchase from our MAP funds are the scheduled airplanes —
SECRETARY KISSINGER: Why?
MR. HABIB: — because we don’t have enough funds [Page 08] and the numbers as well. I’m talking in addition to some other priority items. But when you figure up the cost of shipping, what you can do is beat your FY purchase order for this year by five million dollars. And, meanwhile, instead of buying the other things you need, these fellows are going to go off and contract for submarines and missiles they don’t require.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: To establish some other foreign interest in their country, which is not a bad idea. That’s how I look at it.
MR. HABIB: Well, if I were a Congressman and I discovered that I appropriated 145 million dollars to a country which spent another hundred million dollars for weaponry front another country, I don’t think I’d appropriate 145 million dollars.
MR. STERN: That’s exactly what would happen. It serves them right. It would force the Koreans to go to a third country.
MR. HABIB: Oh, come on! We’re not out to prove to Congress a point like that.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: But we are. I am.
MR. HABIB: We have a rational modernization program for Korea I think we’re going to be able to beat it, [Page 09] but Congressman Fraser doesn’t realize that the amount of money he has provided is sufficient to meet the real needs — for example, for modern aircraft.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: There are two problems. One is —
MR. HABIB: It’s a question that involves a number of countries. Arms sales now are a big item. It’s going to happen elsewhere.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, it’s going to happen, as sure as anything. If we are going to be the only country that is adopting these purist policies, then it is indeed going to happen that other countries are going to pre-empt the arms market. And there’s absolutely something. If the Congress takes the position that when we do something for other countries we do it in their interest and they can turn it off and on — this is exactly what will happen.
No country in its right mind is going to make itself dependent entirely on American arms any more.
M. HABIB: Do you want to give them missile-propellant capabilities so they can produce long-range missiles that can carry nuclear warheads? Do you want that promise from them too?
SECRETARY KISSINGER: Look, I cannot decide [Page 10] individual items.
I would say that South Korea, within five years, would be substantially left alone by us.
MR. HABIB: But they said, “If you cannot provide the missile propellant, we’ll buy it from the French.”
SECRETARY KISSINGER: That’s not the idea. Any country that is totally dependent on America, in its present state of domestic situation, is in deep trouble. And I think it is politically important for them to have other connections.
How do you know whether next year or in ’76 Congress isn’t going to legislate the same sort of restrictions on Korea that it done on Chile? You go through the list of restrictions that have been legislated, and the sanity is no greater in Korea than in Turkey.
Now, if we do it once more with another extension, we might just as well cut it off, because if they feel they’re living on a six-weeks margin each time, they’re going to look for alternative sources too. Then they’re going to look for great lectures about how unwise this is — but that’s going to be the fact.
At any rate, what do you want to do — beef them up a bit?
[Page 11]MR. HABIB: No, no, no First of all, I’ll try to speed up the schedule of our own missiles procurement so we can satisfy, if we can, the requirement. I think it’s a waste of money. I’d like to prevent the French-buying.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: The waste of money doesn’t bother me.
MR. HABIB: Secondly, they want the British submarines. These are World War II-vintage submarines, the same general class.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: Look, there are two general problems. One is the difficulty we may have with Congress; they’re unwilling to listen.
The second is, within some rational limits, if a country wants to assure its own defense with its own conception of what it needs for defense, I’m not offended for that — even if they buy one or two weapons it’s idiotic. After all, we’re spending 70 million dollars on a P-1, for which no one has yet described to me any conceivable mission. You tell me why we need a supersonic airplane going around the Soviet Union in a general war. Either we have knocked out the missiles — and it doesn’t have to be supersonic — well, it isn’t going to fly supersonic there, in any case. Anyway, let’s not get into that.
[Page 12]I mean, we are the last country in the world to tell people that they can not do crazy things.
MR. HABIB: But you’re going to have that kind of problem with Congress.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: I don’t know whether I’m going to have that kind of problem. That’s why I’d like an opinion.
MR. HABIB: For example, they’re talking in Thailand about building up defense industries. They’re talking about providing their own.
Korea has already started on that. We’ve urged them to do that; that makes sense.
I think we’ll find the Philippines are buying elsewhere, the next thing you know.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, you tell me how far Congress is passing restrictions, with the dictator in the Philippines, on that.
MR. HABIB: I think he’s next after Korea. I think Korea they’ll take care of first.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: So what are you talking about?
MR. HABIB: That’s why I raised the subject, because it’s not an easy one.
[Page 13]SECRETARY KISSINGER: Look, when I say I think this is going to happen, I think it’s a national disgrace. To conduct the foreign policy of a great power that senselessly reduces its own influence and weakness itself and acquires by legislative action a reputation for unreliability is not an elevated thing to do. But you have to say that that’s what’s happening.
MR. HABIB: Now we’re dealing with a country in which we have 38,000 troops — one of the few countries in the world in which we can be engaged in combat without even knowing it.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: Yes, but I also have to say that it is not against the interests of Korea to have some emotional interest in something else That’s how I look at it.
MR. HABIB: That’s exactly why they’re doing it. There’s some skullduggery involved also with the French.
That’s all right. We’ve got a lot of skullduggery on other things well. On that one there’s less justification.
All right, we’re thinking about this now. I just wanted to —
SECRETARY KISSINGER: Raise it again.
[Page 14][Omitted is material unrelated to Korea.]