Office of the Historian

127. Memorandum From Helmut Sonnenfeldt of the National Security Council Staff to the Presidentʼs Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger)1

Washington, June 26, 1972.

SUBJECT

  • Secretary Rogersʼ Trip to Hungary

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter on June 22 made a lengthy foreign policy speech in the course of which he termed the “American war” in Vietnam “despicable” and said the US “makes a mockery of the history of mankind.” State called Saturday to ask whether we thought this raises a question about the wisdom of the Secretaryʼs visit.2 Neither they nor Ambassador Puhan thought so since it is fairly routine for the Hungarians to speak this way and the rest of Peterʼs speech was a not unsophisticated review of the current state of East-West relations with a good many positive comments about the US.

I had not heard of the Hungarian trip until five minutes before the public announcement which itself came some 24 hours after word on it had been leaked (while I was in London) and, of course, well after all the arrangements had been made. My judgment would have been that this trip is premature. There are many uncertainties in the Soviet-Hungarian relationship and in Hungarian domestic politics due to Kadarʼs experimentation with the New Economic Mechanism3 and I would question the wisdom of our blundering into this situation at this time. Moreover, if our Eastern policy has demonstrated anything over the last three years, it is that we do far better picking off these countries one by one instead of rushing them all at once. We are still in process of digesting our Romanian,4 and now Polish,5 moves; why rush into the next one? And in domestic terms, the Hungarian-American community has quite different views of its ancestral home under Kadar than the Polish-American community has of Poland under Gierek (and the Cardinal).

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But a different judgment obviously prevailed and if it was right a week ago it must still be right today regardless of Mr. Peterʼs obscenities. These may or may not have some profound domestic Hungarian political implication as Puhan suggests. More likely, they simply reflect the fact that, Protestant Bishop though he was in his former life, he is a slippery, utterly unreliable character who well deserves his German nickname Schwarzer Peter. But I am sure he will be the most graceful of hosts for the Secretary of State.

Unless you think differently, I will plan to say nothing further to State. I gather that Secretary Rogers, who has seen the traffic on this matter, is content to let things proceed as arranged.

  1. Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, Box 953, VIP Visits, Secretary of Stateʼs Visit to Mid-East and European Countries, 28 Jun–7 Jul 1972. Secret; Sensitive; Outside System. Sent for information. According to an attached routing slip, the memorandum was “noted” by Kissinger.↩
  2. See Document 128.↩
  3. See footnote 19, Document 26.↩
  4. On Nixonʼs visit to Romania, see Documents 183 and 184.↩
  5. On Nixonʼs visit to Poland, see Documents 163–166.↩