# The Wake-up call

## Henry Kissinger

FOR America, the events of 11 September were a wake-up call against the background of a period of indolence and self-satisfaction. The illusion was that history was over. Foreign policy had become a version of economics or sociology; we believed there were no major political issues left.

MUCH of the debate that has characterised our discussions since the Vietnam War – between power and morality, between national interests and idealism – is being subsumed and, at the moment, overshadowed by a situation in which it is clear that these are not the ultimate alternatives of foreign policy. Our alliances, our relations with Russia, China and South Asia, can be looked at in a different context.

WHEN I speak of the conduct of the war against terrorism, I look at it as a common enterprise – not as an American projection of an American national view. Indeed, in its deeper sense, it is a common enterprise not just for the United States but for all peoples concerned with world order. It is a war that has no front lines. It is a war that had no issues on September 10th. Until then the American public would have been astonished to hear that there were fundamental differences between the United States and Islam, or that there was such a thing as a concept of a war of civilisations. For them, that was confined to academic treatises.

THE American public still does not understand why, exactly, we were attacked nor what, precisely, it is that we are supposed to do. This is what has generated this extraordinary sense of defiant unity which I have never seen in America, not even after Pearl Harbour, to quite this emotional extent. That is why there has been no pressure on the American Government that it might be doing too much. If there is any psychological pressure, it will come from the opposite direction.

IT seems to me that the fundamental challenge of terrorism is that it exists in many cells all over the world, but it cannot survive without some base and without some direction. If one reads of the structure of the various plots that one knows about, they all go back to a variety of base areas that provide organisation, recruitment, fund-raising and a sort of coherence. It is for this reason that the elimination of these base areas, or at any rate the suppression of them by the host governments, has to be the strategic objective of the common policy.

I do not believe that the elimination of bin Laden will end the problem; nor do I believe that success in Afghanistan will, by itself, end the issue. What America is

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attempting to do, together with those members of the Coalition who in fact are doing something, is to demonstrate that safe havens cannot be tolerated if terrorism is to be ended. This is the key to anti-terrorism strategy.

THESE safe havens come about in various ways, but mostly they come about when a government closes its eyes because it agrees with at least some of the objectives of the terrorists - as in Afghanistan, to some extent in Iran and Syria and, until recently, in Pakistan. Even ostensibly friendly countries, such as Saudi Arabia, sometimes make a tacit bargain with terrorists, so long as terrorist actions are not directed against the host government. A serious anti-terrorism campaign must break this nexus.

IF America takes the lead it is, of course, in part because of the effect of the offence in attacking New York and Washington. But it is also, importantly, because for the entire post-war period, the security of free peoples anywhere has depended upon America's willingness to defend them, whether that was always recognised or not. If America fails in its reaction to an attack on its own territory, the whole structure of the security of the post-war world will disintegrate - even for those people who are critical, or sometimes for domestic reasons pretend to be critical. That is the fundamental issue.

IN Afghanistan we clearly cannot have as an objective the occupation of Afghanistan. Our goal needs to be to destroy the network of bin Laden and, in removing the Taliban from the government of Afghanistan, to make clear the penalties for tolerating and even encouraging this sort of activity.

BUT the next challenge in the war against terrorism is not the rebuilding of Afghanistan. Rather, it is how to deal with state-supported terrorism in the military campaign's aftermath. If we slacken in this effort - if we think that what I have defined as "victory in Afghanistan" is the only purpose, and is an adequate reaction to what happened on 11 September - we will find that terrorism will come back. It will engulf, first, the moderate states in the region, but blackmail many other countries - as we see now in the nature of the Coalition in many parts of the world. We will then face the question of what the Coalition is supposed to do; whether the Coalition is a convoy that sails at the rate of the slowest ship, or whether there is another way of interpreting it.

THE US President and the Secretary of State have spoken of a Coalition in which every member does what it is most comfortable with - what might be called an "à la carte" Coalition policy. What matters, however, is what those members of the Coalition who are prepared to act will do in response. At some point, those countries which are now technically part of the Coalition will be obliged to choose between whether they wish to remain in the Coalition, or to engage in actions that support terrorism.

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IT is often said that this is not simply a question of terrorism, but that there are other issues which have caused terrorism and which must be eliminated in order to achieve what we have set out to do.

ECONOMIC development is often seen as the solution for all problems. There is no doubt that many governments in the Islamic region are backward and have not fulfilled the aspirations of their populations. Compare the economic development of these countries since the 1950s with, say, Korea. There is no doubt that a country like Korea, that has undertaken major reforms, has made much more rapid progress - and this is not primarily due to the actions of foreigners.

ANOTHER challenge we face in this respect is to know what it is we want. An attempt to bring about, in a very brief period of time, the evolution that took centuries in the West is more likely to produce chaos than democracy. What the intermediate steps should be, and how one can have reforms such as those which brought Islamic Turkey to a democratic system, are matters on which Western thinking has been largely confined to domestic debates, between those who are allegedly concerned primarily with expediency, and those who claim for themselves the mantle of abstract idealism. Such people forget that, sometimes, crusades can produce more suffering than incremental steps.

BEFORE 11 September it was fashionable in some circles in America to speak of the end of history; it was certainly fashionable on the Continent to think that there was no longer the sort of danger that justified an Atlantic relationship. Indeed, it was commonplace to seek European identity in distinction from the United States. NATO ran the risk of becoming an institution that was used for "liturgical" purposes and occasional meetings, but with less operational content.

I think that on both sides of the Atlantic there is now a much greater understanding of the continued importance of restoring the vitality of the Atlantic relationship. Many of the issues that on 10 September absorbed us, like missile defence or the Kyoto protocol, will now be able to be dealt with in a quite different context. Missile defence will find a solution, so far as the overall global relationship is concerned, in the negotiations between President Bush and President Putin. Meanwhile, the global significance of environmental and medical issues will have to be addressed when we deal, as we must, with the new question of biological warfare.

IN relation to Russia, we face a situation that none of us has had to consider in the period since World War II. In fact, they are attempting to enter the international system on the basis of borders that have not existed in Russia since Peter the Great. Up until now it has been tempting to believe that perhaps Europe should act as a mediator between an excessively slow America and a Russia that needed

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psychological help. That is no longer the case. Indeed, a considerable opportunity
now exists for America to engage in a bilateral negotiation.

THERE are some who argue that the way to deal with Russia is to respond to
occasional Russian hints that they might join NATO, but I believe this to be a great
mistake. NATO is not an organisation for bringing Russia into the international
system. The attempt to do so would only lead to confusion in NATO, to a
bureaucratisation of the process, and to a weakening even of the prospect of the
ultimate reconciliation between Russia and the West. However, Russia should be able
to participate in the political and fundamental choices about the future of the issues
raised by terrorism, and the construction of the international system for which the
opportunity exists.

TO the many people who think that I read the debates of the Congress of Vienna by
candlelight, let me say that there is indeed an analogy. At the end of the Napoleonic
Wars there was a quadripartite alliance directed against the resurgence of French
expansionism, but there was also a Concert of Powers in which France participated as
an equal and full member. The quadripartite alliance was never invoked and the
Concert of Europe operated very well - at least until Britain withdrew from it,
upsetting the necessary balance. It seems to me that some kind of new relationship
should be established, first within the Atlantic region - and on the political side, open
to Russia - in which, in time, NATO would play the role of the quadripartite alliance
of the previous period. This is a great opportunity for the West and a great
opportunity for Russia.

THE debates, at least in America, on many of the issues like missile defence and those
generated by the Kyoto protocol, are coming to an end. So are those about China. The
theories of some of those who attempt to slight China - to put China into the position
vacated by the Soviet Union, and to organise the international system as a kind of
coalition against China - are also substantially superseded by the co-operation that is
now taking place on the issue of terrorism.

THE conditions of international support for a firm policy exist. The attack on the US
has produced an extraordinary congruence of interests among the major powers. Our
Asian allies, Japan and Korea, share our conviction that there is a continuing need for
an Atlantic security structure. India, profoundly threatened by domestic Islamic
fundamentalism, has much to lose by abandoning a common course. Russia perceives
a common interest due to its contiguous Islamic southern regions. China shares a
similar concern with respect to its western regions and has an added incentive to
bring an end to global terrorism well before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
Paradoxically, terrorism has evoked a sense of world community that has eluded
theoretical pleas for world order.

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MY point is this: we have been challenged by terrorism, and this has given us an opportunity to rediscover fundamentals. It is an occasion to think, not simply of how to overcome the immediate challenge, but of how to deal with the deeper issue of what a world order for the 21st century should look like.

WHEN I was a young professor, in an indescribably long ago past, I once called on President Truman who had just left office. I asked him what he had done of which he was most proud and he said: "I am most proud of the fact that we totally defeated our enemies and that then we brought them back to the community of nations as equals." In a way, we now have the same opportunity as the leaders who created the post-war world between 1945 and 1950; but we have got to get the sequence straight: we have got to defeat the enemies, and only then shall we be able to create a community of nations.

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# The Wake-up call

## Henry Kissinger

IT seems to me that the fundamental challenge of terrorism is that it exists in many cells all over the world, but it cannot survive without some base and without some direction. If one reads of the structure of the various plots that one knows about, they all go back to a variety of base areas that provide organisation, recruitment, fundraising and a sort of coherence. It is for this reason that the elimination of these base areas, or at any rate the suppression of them by the host governments, has to be the strategic objective of the common policy.

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The Afghan dimension

AFGHANISTAN is now in the headlines all over the world. Much has been made of
the 'impossibility' of foreign powers ever making sense of the coalition of tribal and
ethnic interests aiming to form the government of Afghanistan. As Henry Kissinger
has pointed out, pacification of all of Afghanistan has eluded many previous
countries that have attempted it.

YET the young men who distinguished themselves in East India Company service in
the Punjab and North West Frontier Province in the 1840s and 1850s proved past
masters at understanding, reconciling, neutralising and harnessing precisely these
tribal forces - so potent as enemies, so useful as (neutral) allies or enlisted friends in
north-west India of the day. Charles Allen has written movingly about their collective
years of service in his recent book *Soldier Sahibs: The men who made the North West
Frontier* (John Murray 2000). We have taken extracts from his book as a commentary
on Afghan issues likely to be with us until well into the New Year. Can the Pakhtuns
help Western powers to restore a sense of order in that place of which they say: *When
Allah created the world he had a pile of rocks left over, out of which he created Afghanistan?*
For Hakluyt's latter-day East India Company they certainly did. In Allen's words:

‘THESE early recruits were drawn mostly from the three largest Pakhtun tribes settled in the Vale of Peshawar, the Yusufzai, Khatak and Muhammadzai. An early authority on these tribes was Henry Bellew, who spent more than a decade living and working among them as the first surgeon of the Corps of Guides. What Bellew has to say (in his pioneering monograph *A General Report on the Yusufzais*, published in 1864) on the character of the Yusufzais can be applied equally to any of the other Pakhtun tribes who supplied the Corps of Guides not only with the bulk of its recruits, but also with its principal enemies in the scores of military engagements in which it has participated from 1847 to the present day. ‘Like the rest of the Afghan nation generally,’ writes Bellew, ‘the Yusufzai view themselves as a peculiar and favoured people. The most notable traits in their character are unbounded superstition, pride, cupidity and a most revengeful character. They eternally boast of their descent, their prowess in arms, and their independence, and cap all by “Am I not a Pukhtun?” They despise all other races: and, even amongst themselves, each man considers himself equal to, if not better than, his neighbour. Hence most of the bickerings and jealousies so rife in every family throughout the tribe.”

THE Yusufzai were guided in their actions by the social code known as Pakhtunwali, the 'way of the Pakhtuns'. This included a number of 'distinctive laws', all of which revolved in one way or another around the concept of *nang* or honour: 'The most remarkable illustration of the pride of the Yusufzais is their exaggerated notion of their own honour, *Nang i Pukhtana*, as it is termed, any slight or insult to which is instantly resented.' This code of honour required the strictest obedience to various laws, of which three were key components: *nanawati, badal* and *melmastia*. By the first, 'the Pukhtun is expected, at the sacrifice of his own life and property, if necessary, to shelter and protect any one who in extremity may flee to his threshold and seek an asylum under his roof. This applies even to the protector's own enemies.' By the second, 'Badal, or retaliation, must be exacted for every and the slightest personal injury or insult, or for damage to property.' By the third law, every Pakhtun was bound 'to feed and shelter any traveller arriving at his house and demanding them'. Of the

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three laws, the one most strictly observed was badal, governing revenge, which taken to its limits, had created a state of violent near-anarchy as blood-feuds continued to be waged from generation to generation, often on a tribal scale.

YET at the same time, the wishes of the individual always had to take second place to the interests of the tribe or the clan. Communities were governed by maliks who were in turn subordinate to the tribal chief, or khan. But the powers of both khans and maliks were restricted by a remarkably democratic system of decision-making based on the institution of the jirga or council: 'In matters affecting the welfare or interests of the tribe or clan, they cannot act in opposition to the wishes of the general community. These are ascertained through the maliks by jirgah, or council, of the "elders" of each clan, and its sectional "khails" - separately first, and collectively afterwards. Each clan is a separate democracy. Their members are guided in their views by the grey-beards or elders, the patriarchs of the different families, who, in concert with the malik, decide all matters relating to their own society.'

Does that much ever change? As Charles Allen points out:

'THE North-West Frontier was to Britain and British India what the Wild West was to the United States of America. Service on the Frontier always carried risk. It was (as it remains) a hard country of hard men, who bore arms almost from the moment their mothers first set them on the earth, who were merciless to the loser yet always offered hospitality whenever it was asked, who would go to the ends of the earth to settle old scores, who stuck to their own code through thick and thin, and who refused to become part of the fold, even when this meant bringing the wrath of government down on their heads.'

THROUGHOUT the period of British crown rule in India, from 1858 to 1947, scarcely a year passed without some form of military force or punitive expedition having to be raised and sent into the Tribal Areas of the NWFP to bring one or other of the clans to heel. But once a settlement had been reached and punishments or fines levied, those same punitive forces always marched away again - out of the Tribal Areas and back into the Settled Areas. And throughout the British period the Pakhtuns in the Tribal Areas, uniquely, retained a high degree of independence. They never paid taxes, other than collective fines, and even received what they regarded as tribute from the Raj to keep the peace-danegeld, in the form of cash payments as well as lesser favours such as gun licences. So when the British troopships finally sailed away from Karachi in August 1947 they left behind, in the NWFP, one of the biggest of their headaches.'

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