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between your Foreign Minister and ours. We will consider the invitation to our Secretary of Defense and if we can both determine the right moment to do it, we will certainly do it. We will be glad if there is any other Cabinet member you think would be desirable to have here. We can arrange it very quickly. But it is entirely up to you.
Teng: So this request is still for the consideration of your government.
Kissinger: Yes, and we will keep it between your Ambassador and me. That is on the assumption that he comes back soon.
Now, I wanted to tell you one other thing that I have already mentioned to your Ambassador for your information: When I was in Moscow in October, Brezhnev made a proposal for a new treaty to us and repeated it in more detail to President Ford in Vladivostok. And it is a rather novel and ingenious proposition. The proposal is as follows: The U.S. and Soviet Union should make a treaty with each other in which they will defend each other against any attack by any other country or they will defend each other's allies against nuclear attack from any other country.
[Meeting temporarily interrupted by Chinese girl opening outer door.]
Kissinger: I have people in the other room but they will join us for the later discussion.
Translator: They must be able to hear me because of my loud voice.
Kissinger: We asked for a practical explanation of how this would operate. The practical explanation is that in any use of nuclear weapons, regardless of who initiates it, in a war between the Soviet Union and another country or between the U.S. and another country, or between an ally of each, then the U.S. and Soviet Union would have to help each other, and if physical help is not possible, then they would have to observe benevolent neutrality.
We think it has two, well three, general purposes. The first is to undermine NATO, because it would specifically oblige us to cooperate with the Soviet Union against our allies if nuclear weapons were involved. Secondly, it would force those Arabs who are afraid of nuclear weapons being used by Israel into an alliance relationship with the Soviet Union.
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