# Giving Europe's Leaders Something to Think About

by Henry Kissinger

The Washington Post

Thursday, July 5, 2001

I cannot recall when a president left on a foreign trip amid such a cacophony of low expectations as that which preceded President Bush's European tour. Yet its result is likely to mark a turning point in the Allied debate on such key issues as missile defense, the environment and America's relations with Vladimir Putin's Russia.

The level of expectations for the trip was defined by a White House briefer as an effort to disabuse Europe's leaders of the image of the president as "a shallow, arrogant, gun-toting . . . Texan buffoon." Paradoxically, these alleged European perceptions enabled the new president to emphasize his distinctive qualities. Since no one expected the traditional diplomatic style, Bush was free to indulge his instinct of getting directly to the point. This, in turn, brought out the truth that, on the core disputes of the Atlantic disagreements -- missile defense and the environment -- Europe and America were divided not by the personality of the new president but by differences in political philosophy.

The new president's intellectual convictions were shaped by the conservative side of the American political spectrum, and he was elected by espousing its principles. In foreign policy, this translated into a firm commitment to the nation's security -- of which missile defense has emerged as a central focus -- the nurturing of established links with traditional allies and a definition of the national interest that stops short of universal interventionism while utterly

rejecting isolationism. This has been interpreted by some as a move toward the center; hence the internal pressures from the party's right wing, insisting on the verities of the campaigning period.

By contrast, the majority of European governments the president encountered on his European trip are center-left. As these European governments have also moved, albeit from the opposite pole, toward the center and market-oriented policies in domestic affairs, they are under pressure from their left wings to maintain familiar leftist principles, at least in foreign policy. These include opposition to any modification in the established nuclear equations (except to reduce them), suspicion of American military expenditures and purposes, the erosion of European security budgets and emphasis on the so-called "soft" issues, such as the environment.

The formative political experience of the European leaders was in the anti-Vietnam protests of the 1970s and the anti-missile demonstrations of the 1980s; that of the American administration, in the Reagan-era rejection of those attitudes. Clashing perceptions were therefore inevitable.

As it turned out, the caricature of the American president in the European media and by some European leaders facilitated a positive outcome of the presidential trip. For, with the president holding fast to his fundamental views on missile defense but inviting consultation on their application, the European leaders were obliged either to

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initiate a philosophical challenge -- risking the entire relationship -- or to accept the principle while retaining the option of modifying its application. President Bush faced a comparable challenge with respect to European attitudes toward the environment and made a comparable adaptation. The outcome was to preserve the option of what each side considered essential while setting the stage for consultation to define its implementation.

On missile defense, European leaders face contradictory domestic pressures: to oppose it as either unworkable or as working so well as to destroy the strategic balance, and in any event as being too expensive. They now realize that the Bush administration, while prepared to consult in great detail, will not equate consultation with a veto. No president can take the responsibility, in a world of proliferating nuclear and missile technology, for leaving the American people vulnerable to attacks for which a demonstrated and growing capacity exists -- not when he has available an emerging technology that shows promise in protecting against at least the lower end of these dangers. Thus the real choice of Allied leaders was between a national American missile defense and one that includes Allied territories. Future consultation will have to focus on such issues as appropriate technology, levels compatible with stability and the form for expressing any agreement reached.

Similarly, there are no advocates in the Bush administration or in Congress for ratifying the Kyoto protocol -- even among those who thought the Bush administration's rejection of it was too peremptory and undertaken with too little regard for the sensitivities of our allies. The president's posture in Europe conveyed an American willingness to

consider some joint responses to the issue of global warming. But it could not be based on the Kyoto protocol, which the U.S. Senate has indicated by a vote of 95 to nothing it would never ratify and which only one European government has ratified.

Finally, the successful meeting between Putin and Bush, which made clear that Russia is receptive to a substantive dialogue, including on the subject of missile defense, has helped transform the atmosphere.

All this should turn the transatlantic debate toward concrete issues rather than preconceptions driven by domestic politics. Still, the new atmosphere leaves a range of issues to be resolved. For example, against what specific danger is the proposed missile defense to be directed? In my view, the emphasis on so-called rogue states is a mistake. It confuses the issue by an abstract exercise of dividing the world between countries defined as evil and other nuclear countries, including Russia, somehow defined as irrelevant to the nuclear threat. Such an exercise would involve us in a never-never land of kaleidoscopic changes in definition. A serious defense system must seek to provide protection against attacks from any direction; the meaningful subject of the debate should be the scope of the threat against which protection is sought rather than its origin.

As for the dangers of triggering an arms race, no foreseeable missile defense can afford protection against an all-out Russian attack. Thus, of all the nuclear weapons states, Russia is the least affected by a missile defense system -- even if its capacity for lower-level blackmail will be reduced. Missile defense is unlikely to spur an arms race with Russia -- though it may alter the composition of Russia's missile forces.

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The country most affected by an American missile defense program is China. Even a modest American anti-missile program will have an immediate impact on the small Chinese strike force. Though I reject the proposition that China is an inevitable strategic adversary, an increase in the Chinese strategic program is to be expected -- probably in any event. Once a dialogue with China develops, its limits might become an important subject. As for the so-called rogue states, they are already at the limit of their capabilities independent of an American or Allied missile defense.

The issue of preventing an arms race can be addressed most immediately by the significant reduction of strategic offensive arsenals. Some administration sources have spoken of a reduction to 1,000-1,500 warheads -- a cut of more than 50 percent from START II levels. A significant reduction can be undertaken unilaterally if necessary and is largely independent of the level of missile defense, since none foreseeable could defeat an attack of such magnitude. Once a decision has been reached on technology, the level of protection and against what scale of attack, attention must be paid to the international framework for implementation; whether as unilateral American decisions, agreements with NATO allies or agreements, bilateral or multilateral, with other nuclear powers. Unilateral American decisions should be a last resort; the most powerful nuclear country should not adopt unilateralism until the possibilities of agreement have been fully explored. And our NATO allies should be given every opportunity to participate in a common program.

It is clearly impossible to create the technology for the necessary missile defense under the existing ABM treaty. Whether the

treaty can be amended to make it compatible with the requirements of missile defense deserves consideration, though care must be taken lest amendment talks become a means to postpone deployment into the indefinite future or create by implication a Russian veto over the ultimate deployment.

Within these limits, the building of missile defense should proceed side by side with explorations of what international agreement can embody a new global strategic design. But this should be freed to the greatest extent possible from the nit-picking detail that blighted previous arms control negotiations. The preconditions for such a dialogue were created in the Bush-Putin meeting.

A comparable pragmatism governed Bush's approach to the environment. But having made the point that the Kyoto protocol as it stands is unacceptable, room must be left for common action on global warming by the states that most contribute to dangerous emissions. The issue has become politicized, especially in Europe, where it is being used to play up to the green constituencies. Science, not emotions, should guide the appropriate response. Why not form two study groups with short deadlines: an American group, to relate environmental concerns to economic growth; and an Atlantic group, to decide what programs are able to achieve a genuine amelioration that can in fact be implemented?

The dialogue between presidents Bush and Putin has done much to remove from the Allied agenda the contention over how to deal with Russia. Until the meeting in Slovenia, too many European leaders saw their roles as mediators and facilitators of a Russo-American dialogue. The encounter of the two presidents has made evident that such a role is unnecessary -- even if some