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Kissinger: And I repeat that if we launched a first strike against them we could use overseas forces which are added to the strategic forces that I gave you.
Teng: I thought what we were exploring today was the position of nuclear and conventional weapons.
Kissinger: I just wanted to answer the Foreign Minister's statement that they could first attack us. But it is true that it is more difficult to use nuclear weapons today than 15 years ago. This is without question true.
Ch'iao: What I was saying was this: At present if the Soviet Union should launch an attack with conventional weapons on not necessarily a large scale, on a medium scale, for you to use nuclear weapons under those circumstances would be a difficult thing to make up your minds about.
Kissinger: It is more difficult now than 10 to 15 years ago. It depends on where the attack takes place.
Ch'iao: As we discussed in New York, if there are changes in Yugoslavia -- they need not make a direct attack, but if they incite pro-Soviet elements to bring in the Soviet armed forces -- what would you do?
Kissinger: Yugoslavia? I went to Yugoslavia after our talk and talked to Marshall Tito and his colleagues about exactly this problem. For one thing, we will begin selling military equipment to Yugoslavia next year. We are now studying what to do in such a case. We will not let it happen unchallenged. It will not be like Czechoslovakia or Hungary. We have not yet decided on the precise measures. But we believe that if the Soviet army is permitted to move outside its sphere, it will create appetites that might not stop. This is why we reacted so violently when they mobilized their airborne divisions during the Middle East crisis. Because it was our judgment that once permitted to operate far from their territory in foreign wars, not in internal quarrels, there would be no end to their appetites.
Teng: In our opinion, not only the Middle East is explosive but also the Balkan Peninsula. And this is an old strategy of the Czar.
Kissinger: For your information, if there is a European Security Conference in the spring, which is, as you know, something we have never wanted, if the President attends, he plans to stop in Bucharest and Belgrade to help make clear the American interest in the independence of these two countries. But we have not announced this, obviously.
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