gone through for 35 years.

Q: You're just ... (a historic figure)

HK: And I'm perfectly willing to stand on whatever judgement that will be made eventually. But I am not eager to go through this debate of the Vietnam war mentality, whatever. And ...

Q: There is not one question that ...

HK: But I mean, it is the mentality of the "good" against ... the "noble" against the "realists" and "the people who like dictators" against "the ones who like democracy." And this is a longstanding argument now. And I want to pursue it.

Q: In whatever it was I read, your comments about globalization were intriguing. And they were not what many people would think you would feel.

HK: Only those people who ...

Q: Yes, okay.

HK: Who had ...

Q: Okay, fine.

HK: Those people who know me would not feel at all surprised that these are my views.

Q: You are concerned that there is a kind of heartlessness to the globalization.

HK: Yes, and the lack of understanding of the political and social context.

28

HK: Well, I mean that on the one hand where I differed from the rioters or the demonstrators, it's... I think globalization is the most effective machinery that we've been invented for the increase of wealth and well-being.

On the other hand, mere competitiveness is not enough to create human fulfillment.

And the process of industrialization, to the extent that it works, is extraordinarily unsettling for society because it moves people from the countryside to the cities. It removes them from their traditional moving. And even if their standard of living rises somewhat compared to the countryside, otherwise they wouldn't be moving to the cities, it produces a kind of situation where people are being subject to forces that are beyond their control. And this is why in most industrial revolutions you've had, there's been a simultaneous emergence of a certain kind of radicalism in the 19th century and now in the 20th and 21st century.

And I believe politically that we must take that into account. And they must also take into account the propensity for crises the system has exhibited and the damage these crises do—even when they overcome. Because when they are overcome, they're overcome in statistical banking terms and not necessarily in terms of the individual human beings that are affected.

Q: So in the recent crisis in Asia that began in Thailand the middle class was ...

HK: Wiped out.

Q: Wiped out. And you point out to people that that creates an instability.

HK: It creates a long-term problem. We barely have well, in Indonesia, it led to the overthrow of the political system. And while many people consider that a great blessing, it remains to be seen whether the more evolutionary modification of the regime might not have been better. In any event, so far they have not restored the

29

there is enormous turmoil. ~~ part of it was caused by our policies, by the
IMF policies. And so I think we can say we got through this one, but it is not an
attitude which should continue.

And above all, we have to consider the impact on the world of an American
recession, which is mathematically certain. Sooner or later there will be an American
recession.

Q: I think you are perhaps the only person which has said this out loud.

HK: I don't know, others may have ... I know many people say it. They usually say it in more economic terms and I don't pretend to be an economist. But then again, this isn't a book about economics either. It is a book ~~that tries to discuss~~ proceed what are the fundamental thought processes through which America should go as the new century begins, not throughout the new century.

And we have ~~an~~ extraordinary difficulty because we have never had to conduct a real
foreign policy. We've been either isolated or dominant, ~~so we've never had the~~
need of a continuous foreign policy that has no end—(is this the word correct?) and
that you cannot break up into phases. ~~So there is no American tradition which we~~
even is
can debate under, and that what I have attempted to do.

Q: In the '40s and '50s there were great statesmen...

HK: In the '40s and '50s, we have great achievements throughout the 1940s and
other country could have done what we did. But it wasn't foreign policy. It was a
~~global application of the New Deal, like World War II. It was tremendous. My hero,~~
as in reconstruction
~~and Secretary of State was Dean Atcheson, I have huge admiration for Truman.~~

Q: Well, the question is: why aren't there foreign policy giants now?

30

longer possible today because we are no longer that dominant. Other nations are no longer that much in need of us. It was absolutely essential that only America could do it.

And I once asked Truman of what he was most proud. And he said, "I am most proud of having totally defeated our enemies, ~~and brought them back to the community of nations, as equals.~~ And I would like to think only Americans would have done that."

Q: Meaning World War II.

HK: Yeah. And that's a remarkable thing, ~~those were noble statements, and I have great admiration for them, but that's no longer possible.~~

Q: Giants like Achechson and George Kennan, we don't seem to be producing them anymore.

HK: That's a different issue, but also true.

Q: I'm curious, do you have any sense of why?

HK: Because our politics has become brutally competitive. Because there was a leadership group, mostly from the Eastern states, that had some experience of Europe. Now foreign policy is not a subject that occupies budding careers. You don't make a career around foreign policy. And so, there is no comparable group to those ones we had in the '40s, '50s and '60s, that was sort of destroyed during the Vietnam War and was never really reconstituted. So any new President that comes in, will find that.

I wrote an article last year, in which I said X about the impact of Vietnam, that when I was in graduate school, we thought government

[Y]

31

directly, so one thought of middle terms was a contribution to thinking. In the Vietnam War, the intellectual community split into two groups - job applicants and the revolutionaries.

The job applicants repeated the arguments of the bureaucracy and the revolutionaries rejected the very concept of American foreign policy. But the ground on which our policy has to be conducted is the long term of progressing by stages towards a higher goal. It has been sort of ceded to temporary managements of crises.

Q: Well, the other day you said to me you thought nobody cares about Vietnam anymore, but the lasting effects of it are enormous.

HK: Yeah, but most people don't know what (it) meant and most people forget that It was entered into by Kennedy and Johnson with the noblest of motives. And we just overreached and then the problem was how to extricate. But I don't want to get into that debate.

Q: Well, I just raise it to suggest that perhaps it isn't so irrelevant to us in this day after all--the country changes at that moment.

HK: At some point we need an assessment of the Vietnam experience. But not by the people who lived through it directly, on either side of the barricade.

Q: Why do you say that? Can you elaborate?

HK: No, that's my observation. Later on, actually, when this book is finished, I will publish all the chapters I wrote in Vietnam in my memoirs which are sort of scattered about, in one group, a compact book just edited a little bit so that they fit together.

was very excited.

HK: What?

Q: An announcement of that, he was very excited about it.

HK: It will be madly contentious.

Q: Well, you also talk about how you think the IMF often engages on policies that end up being destabilizing where they don't mean to.

HK: Almost invariably.

Q: Can you say more?

HK: Well, the IMF thinks its basic problem is to restore the creditworthiness of the country so that more money can be lent to it. And they have certain standard policies - austerity, raising taxes, devaluing the currency, all of which have a terribly blighting effect on the lives of the people. And the theory is, like in the 1930s, it's going to have to be local, not global. And in America, that in them as the economy improves, people will start lending money again. But when that hiatus is prolonged, it undermines the governments that are supposed to carry out the reforms.

In Korea I think they were lucky because Kim Dae Jung who was on the Left, and a radical all of his life, was elected at a moment when these programs were put in place and he had the legitimacy to do it. But if the normal Korean government had done it, it would not have worked there either.

Q: Places where it has not worked are...?

HK: Well, it never totally failed and it never totally succeeds. One can make the argument that it worked in Asia, in the sense that growth has resumed. And one

33

[Y]

political chaos in Indonesia is something it will suffer from for a long time.

Q: It's a little difficult to ask you today what advice you would give to an incoming President, because it's such a confusing matter as to who it will be.

HK: Well, that is what my book is attempting to do, but it's hard to summarize in two sentences.

Q: Well, one of the things I sense you are concerned about is ...

HK: But not the version you read. I don't know why they gave it to you. I raised more hell with Korda (Micheal) than I am with you.

Q: I'm sure you did. I'm sure you ruined Korda's day. But it doesn't ...

HK: It's awfully warm in here.

Q: Yes, it is.

(Dr. Kissinger attempts to open window.)

HK: Is it warm out?

Q: Can I do that? I work out with weights.

HK: Can you get it open?

Q: I got it! All the work I do with my trainer has some use!!! One senses, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you feel that with the fall of the Soviet Union, the prosperity, that there has developed a kind of complacency and almost for want of a better word, isolationism here.

HK: Triumphantalism.

34

Q: Triumphalism. And that it's not healthy.

[Y]

HK: No. No, I think when you are as powerful as America is, you can either go the road towards trying to dominate the whole world, which in time could destroy us because it will unite people against us, and then turn every foreign policy problem into a domestic debate--or we can transform our achievements into some sort of international consensus which requires giving other societies a sense of participation in the process.

We have found that hard to do in either Party, which is not a political matter, for different reasons. And I think that would be the overwhelming challenge.

Q: Well, is the UN then the answer or ...

HK: Well, I think the UN has a certain role. Well, I think it is more the objectives which we proclaim and the methods by which we pursue them. And I think in too many parts of the world today, there is a belief that America is hegemonious, and it's an irony this is said of a (Clinton) administration staffed by veterans of the Vietnam protest, and who have no particular intention to be hegemonious. But this is the general concern of many people about America today.

Q: Well, in Europe, where the US is synonymous with bad cooking and genetically engineered food. There is this sense that ... I feel like an international unity or an international unity is forged on sort of loathing of American culture.

HK: Well, on the one hand some resentment of American culture. But on the other hand they all imitate American culture. So it isn't that they offer an alternative culture. But I think Europe is sort of torn at this moment because to have the political identity at least the continentals and certainly France, they want to assert in

35

England doesn't feel exactly this way.

On the other hand, while I respect that, and while I think that is even good for us to have counter forces in the world, when they drive you to the point that they don't want to assert the capacity that insist no matter what our position is, then that becomes the identifying principle of European politics. Then we begin to slide back in the name of European Union to the kind of national competitiveness that produced the First World War and contributed to the Second.

Q: My sense is you are suspicious of the European Union as it's been going.

HK: Well, as a historian, I favor the concept of a European identity. In its practical implementation, I have my questions.

Q: And they are?

HK: They are the existence on opposition to the United States as an organizing entity. And the assertion of a kind of Pan European nationalism that sometimes is a European affliction. The inability to separate the long from the short term problems. And finally, I am concerned because like every other current country, it put domestic policies, about foreign policy. They treat foreign policy issues as an aspect of domestic politics.

Q: I didn't follow, I'm sorry.

HK: They conduct their foreign policy primarily in terms of the immediate impact on their various pressure groups rather than on some concept of what they are trying to achieve.

Q: You seem very skeptical about Russia.

36

C4J

Q: No?

HK: I didn't think there isn't any... much about Russia and what you have, I wrote... I believe that the general... that in the conduct of foreign policy it is very important to understand the history of societies with which you deal. I do not believe you can invent foreign policy for any society on the basis of some abstract model. But I think that a country that has had viscous forms of autocracy for 400 years, and has been an empire for most of that period, will ~~not~~ transform itself into a pluralistic American-style democracy from one day to the next. And therefore I think it is very important to understand what our priorities should be with respect to Russia. And the good thing we should try to achieve with Russia is: ~~for them~~ to leave its neighbors alone, which would be already a tremendous change.

If Russia, for any historic period, concentrates on developing its own resources--some of which they've never done as a top priority--that will change the nature of their society in an extraordinary fundamental way. So again you have got all these bits and pieces of things.

Q: Well, I'd rather you just expand on my impressions and set it straight.

HK: I think that Russia, bringing Russia into the international system as a non-autocratic state is a very important objective. I think it is also a very complicated one, because Russia is part of Asia, and part of Europe. It has had a shared part of its history with Europe, but it has never fully committed itself, and cannot because of its geography, through one of the regions that it has oscillated back and forth in its priorities. And it has had a different religious background in the sense that the Russian Orthodox Church was always a state organ, compared to the Western Churches. Then concept of democracy was never as developed in Russia as it was in

37

capital.

So all of this now has to be indicated and we have made it too simple for ourselves
by identifying this process which Gorbachev and with Yeltsin, and not understanding
the complexities. And now I have noticed one of the European temptations is to try
to play with Russia as conceivably part of Europe. But I think it would be a major
change in Europe if Russia were considered more a part of Europe than America is.
There would be an intellectual revolution!

Q: So do you see it going that way?

HK: No, some of the things that the French did when Putin visited Paris sort of implied that there is a special security relationship that Russia and Europe can work up between themselves.

Q: But in the Clinton administration ... sort of attempts to placate Russia by offering some kind of honorary membership with NATO or some ...

HK: I think that was ridiculous.

Q: Yeah?

HK: I think Russia should be offered serious participation and political acceptance.
But to offer it membership or honorary membership is really a most
(Inaudible) thing. So of course those were the technical arguments about a treaty,
but now that it is completed it's irrelevant. So most of this discussion is ...

Q: But you, Clinton sort of bet the farm on Yeltsin and it was a mistake.

38

that the Cold War probably could have been avoided by a more understanding
handling of Russia.

And so he fuzzes up the dividing line and I think the political dividing line can be fuzzed up, but there is no future if Russia is part of NATO and NATO has no meaning. On the other hand, we could not make major foreign policy moves without discussing it with Russia. There is a legal framework in the European security conference, which was created in Helsinki, with which we could consult with political matters as often as we want and we should do it frequently.

Q: One of the things you talk about ...

HK: Well, I think it makes a meeting in which the membership of Kazakstan to 50 nations, and public relations exercises which destroy the meaning of NATO.

Q: Is NATO still important with the Soviet Union gone?

HK: Well, that is an interesting question and that is one of the issues that the question whether the two sides of the Atlantic, one of the points that I have made in the rewrite of the book which you have not seen as yet, is that Americans like to think of the world following one single formula, usually some form of Wilsonianism. But in fact there are at least three different worlds existing right now.

And it is the 21st century world which is Europe and the Americas, and there actually Wilsonian principles are quite applicable. Wars are highly improbable. Economic and political relations are very crucial. (Tape recorder briefly shut off) And then the question is since NATO is the only institutional link we have to Europe, what is its meaning in the contemporary world. It would be a pity to think that the democracies cannot develop some institutions. I actually would favor something like

39

19th century Europe, had been so easily handled.

Then we have the Middle East, which is more like 17th century Europe. And we as Americans have to try to deal with all of them, ~~by the formulas appropriate for them.~~

And if we misunderstand what we are dealing with, we create the sort of debacle that we had Camp David this (last) summer.

Q: Which is?

HK: Which is to forget that ~~the~~ universal reconciliation and general compromise of the Wilsonian world can not apply when one of the parties believes that there is a fundamental ideological or religious conflict. Because then, compromise is an insult.

Q: What would you have done differently?

HK: I would have done almost everything differently. I would not have assembled the meeting without knowing what the range of disagreements was. ~~Or~~ without having some definition of what the discernable outcome was. I'm not sure I would have aimed for a complete solution.

Q: But it was called for by a timetable in Oslo...

HK: Well that's...

Q: You can just ...

HK: It was called for that an agreement ~~could~~ be reached in that time frame. And then what happens when you don't reach an agreement? Then, you have to live through the consequences of not having the agreement. And that is probably what will happen, actually, where we are now, and that is what we'll have to be done now. It

40

foreseeable future ~~So I think that the attempt~~ And Arafat said it from the beginning.

Q: What did he say?

HK: He didn't want to come. He said, "we are not ready."

Q: Is there any way out of the mess now?

HK: It would have to be slow.

Q: You spoke about your friend Rabin. How would he have done things differently?

HK: I don't think he would have bet the farm on one negotiation. He was extremely thoughtful, also very cautious. He would not have had a negotiation whose outcome he couldn't describe. Barak is a commander of raiders and he wants to look at the objectives, saying, "This is my goal. So let's do it all at once." But Rabin was a strategist. I have respect for that. I respect Barak for what he was trying to do. But Clinton didn't help him because Clinton should have said, "this can't work". And instead he kept egging him on. The further they went down that road, more frustrated all the parties became. So now there is no basis within Israel, or the Palestinians for that overall solution.

Q: So where do things go from here, being that the alternative is unthinkable?

HK: One has to define a pattern of co-existence for a while. They have to coexist for a bit, and actually they may learn habits that you don't achieve reconciliation by writing it on a piece of paper. First they have to learn to coexist and I think it's big

41

negotiations still looked as if they were going succeed.

Q: Clinton's other supposed success was Northern Ireland. Is it an actual success?

HK: I have never addressed the problem of Northern Ireland. I think it was a political success. It was a similar type of problem and these things simply do not have grand finales. But again I don't know anything better in Northern Ireland that could have been done.

Q: So that you would grant him.

HK: I grant him high intelligence on all things.

Q: Bush, how will what is presented here be ... how will he be different?

HK: Well, first of all, I'm not at all sure that he will be President. But I think the difference between Gore and Bush is that Gore is sort of inscrutable. He really doesn't share his views with anybody. And one doesn't even know who his advisors are. Well, when and if he becomes President, then we'll know this. And Gore is of the view that, look at foreign policy as American foreign policy, an agent of a global domestic transformation. And Bush would be more oriented towards a more precise definition of the American national interest. There would be some overlap, but I think overall, this would be the distinction.

Q: Condellza Rice was saying that there would be a policy of restraint, is that a code word for saying no more of these humanitarian missions?

humanitarian mission, you have to be able to describe an outcome. And you cannot have American military outposts all over the world, in non-concluded civil wars.

Q: Well, I know you're very critical of the Kosovo ...

HK: No, that's not perfectly correct either. It depends on how you define the objective. If you define the objective as reducing the killing that is going on in Kosovo and giving the local population a greater scope for self-expression--which is an objective I approve--then the means chosen were inappropriate. To demand the military occupation of a country before anything has yet happened, seemed to me about wrong. But again I have written that at great length, so there is no point repeating it here.

Once the war started, I was one of the strongest public defenders of it. Because then I thought it was important for me to also thought it was wrong for NATO to make demands beyond the defensive purposes for which it was formed, at a time when we were trying to bring Russia into the international system. So the methods I was much more sympathetic to the message of Holbrook, who wanted to put in as many UN inspectors as possible to reduce the scope of the civil war. It was taking longer than before, but now we have replaced one ethnic group with another. And we have put ourselves into a spot where, what will be the outcome now that it's a Democratic government in Serbia?

Q: Well, surely that's good.

HK: No, that's not quite right. That's good. But what if they demand that we have never denied that they have sovereignty in Kosovo? Are we back to the original problem?

Q: But you don't have a million refugees all over Europe.

43

measures (inaudible) (tried there)

[Y]

Q: When you talk about a possibility of economic crisis in the US ... this generation of young people have never really known the kind of suffering and dislocation that an economic crisis would mean.

HK: I don't know whether the younger generation would react to any crisis because they have never lived through economic crisis, military crisis. If we talk to them about the Korean War, for example, you go to any Ivy League school, they wouldn't know whether that was before or after the Spanish American War. It has no operational meaning to them. The Cold War has no meaning to them. So you have to focus much more on economics than on politics.

Q: You wrote that ...

is

HK: They have been brought up on computers rather than books, which in itself was a totally different outlook on the world.

Q: But what I'm asking is do you think they are tough enough to handle down-times?

HK: Well, they're tough all right. I mean, in their economic competitiveness with each other, they certainly don't lack toughness. But they maybe tough enough. But whether they know how to do it, I don't know. When you look at Franklin Roosevelt, the great leaders were people who had a vision of the future and were willing to move towards it, if necessary alone for awhile, until they could bring their people with them. Do we generate people now who have that sort of toughness? Probably in the economic world but not in the political world.

44

[Y]

fortunes and the easy way to make money in a way that I have never seen in my lifetime ...

HK: I don't blame them. It is a different culture. If you read the other day I read some letters that Theodore Roosevelt wrote to Senator Cabot Lodge. I mean, that was a highly educated man who could quote from the Greek classics, who could write about geography and history. Our present leadership group doesn't have that foundation. They are very competitive, very tough in a much foreshortened world.

Q: Toughness ... one of the things that seems to be a truism in US foreign policy is an unwillingness to sustain any losses in a battle.

HK: Yes, but that's a symptom that we are not serious. If you have a vital interest you use military force without being willing to suffer casualties, you are setting ourself up for potential disaster. You at least owe it to the families of those who are killed to be able to explain to them what caused the ... (what was the word here?) If you can't do that, then you shouldn't use military force.

Q: Well, there was a kind of smugness about Kosovo, that there were no American casualties, except maybe in a car accident.

HK: Well, again I repeat, I supported Kosovo once it started, I objected to what America and NATO giving an ultimatum that one knew had to lead to war before any significant action in any large-scale ethnic cleansing had started. I thought it was inappropriate to proceed in that manner. I would have strongly favored a greater UN presence and at some point might have supported military force.

45

policy had been well explained... there would have been a completely different
reaction if there had been some casualties.

HK: Yes, but that's a very dangerous course to be engaged in. We should try it
only for those things that we are willing to suffer casualties. I was willing to use
ground forces in Kosovo once the war started.

Q: Well, no one else was.

HK: No, no, a number of people were. Prime Minister Blair was. Senator McCain
was.

Q: Well, are you pleased with the way things turned out in Belgrade?

HK: Belgrade ... (Pause) But again in the completed version of my book you will
have a more thoughtful analysis of Kosovo. Or you can read some things I wrote for
Newsweek and the Washington Post.

Q: Those I think are online.

HK: We have to bring this to a conclusion.

Q: I hope you don't find this an annoying question. But, it's sort of a pop culture
truism that Stanley Kubrick based, supposedly, on Dr. Strangelove on your work. Did...

HK: I won't answer that question.

Q: Did you ever run in ...

HK: It's an unworthy question and it's one that I won't answer. You shouldn't ask
it.

46

HK: It may be a pop cultural thing, it's a simple minded thing to say and there are people who know me and they can easily see in what sense these characterues apply. It presumes I love war and that I can hardly wait to get a war started.

Q: I was wondering if you'd ever run into Kubrick, in any point of your ...

HK: No.

Q: No.

HK: Nor do I know whether it's true that he based it on that. The fact that you people say that doesn't mean that is correct.

Q: Now, this may not be in your book anymore. But one of the things you mentioned was how astounded you were to go to the historical museum in Hanoi and see the degree to which they were absorbed with their conflict with China, and not that much with us.

HK: Well, that's what they showed me. They may have a wing of that museum that concentrates on their war with the United States.

Q: Let me ask one more question that may be regarded as unworthy but that indeed people will ask ...

HK: Not everybody would ask these questions. You are one of the few people that ever presumed to ask me that question about Dr. Strangelove. Go ahead, ask it. So you shouldn't think just because the people you move in the circle you move in, it holds these views, that that is a general view. You know, the public wouldn't even understand that question. But go ahead, ask the next one.

47

HK: Of what?

Q: China.

HK: Well, I think China is a very important country and it is going ahead, ask the question.

Q: Well, the question ... and this is a question my editor asked, is some people would say that ... is there a conflict of interest in ...?

HK: Why should there be, um, I mean, what is the conflict of interest?

Q: You represent businesses that want to work with China in your private consulting firm.

HK: Look, I have a thirty year record in expressing my views. Anybody who thinks my views are for sale, well, that opinion shouldn't read anything. I say, I'm not going to try to justify myself. I would also be amazed, but I won't even go into what, if any money I'm making in China. But that's not the point. It's an insulting question.

Q: I don't mean it to be.

HK: It is an insulting question, whether you mean it to be or not.

Q: You say you were writing with ... the summer when you were not well.

HK: Look, I'll do this. You and I come from different worlds. We will not come to an understanding on any of these issues. You will do the best you can, and you will make as fair an interview as you can. But we should bring it to a conclusion. What's this, I wrote in the summer, what?

48

Q: Well, this is not a deep question. But I'm fascinated... I was friends with William Shirer, the late William Shirer.

HK: I know who he is, I've read him.

Q: And at the end of his life, he could hardly see but he found ways to write. He wrote a book about the death of Tolstoy. But it was the thing that kind of pulled him through the difficulties. What does writing do for you? Because it couldn't have been easy to write that way.

HK: Well, my life has been an attempt to make a difference. Which you can easily reconstruct from the experiences that I've had and what I've seen. Some of which parallel yours and some of which are different. And writing is one of the forms in which I do that. But I really think, why don't we bring it to a conclusion. I will look forward to seeing it. I don't want to see any quotes. And you are free to do what you want. And um... it's entirely up to you.

Q: I thank you for your time.

HK: I'm glad to have met you, I was impressed with your article.

Q: My grandfather, when he first came here, would walk across the George Washington Bridge every day, he was just so happy to be alive.

HK: Well, I was lucky enough to leave just before the Kristallnacht so I didn't experience the worst of it. Most of the people I knew who stayed behind, all of them saw the worst of it, including my grandparents. But I didn't. I didn't enjoy it, but I did not have the daily terror and the daily inconveniences of persecution. But they were not yet killing people when I left.

49

chapter on called "Peace and Justice," in which I discuss the evolution of American thinking, which is a chapter of 176 triple spaced pages. At the very end of which...there is not a chapter on Pinochet...there is a discussion of the concept of universal juristiction and within that, I have a discussion of Pinochet.

Q: In the book that I read, and I'm sure that point is there, you say that you think it is a disaster what happened?

A: I think it was wrong, yes.

Q: Why?

A: Because it established a principle that any...It has nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of Pinochet. And I would not object and I do not object to a Chilean court trying him, or to a special court being set up by the United Nations on the model of the Yugoslav. I think the principle of an individual judge anywhere in the world (as was the case with a Spanish judge CD) being able to pursue any individual at his discretion, I think, is a very dangerous concept to establish, independent of the guilt or innocence of Pinochet.

Q: In the book, you talk about the Presidential campaign having almost no foreign policy discussion.

A: Yes.

Q: How did we get to such a place where this is true?

A: I think at this moment, the American public does not think it is in

in which we think the spread of ideas in both politics and economics, will automatically guarantee universal peace. And that our obligation is really not foreign policy anymore, but missionary work. And I think that is not a sustainable position because the world will come back and impinge on us.

Q: But it seems as if almost nothing but Elian Gonzales was discussed in the last election and the one semi foreign policy question wasn't one at all.

A: Because all the problems that I perceive in the world...are medium and long term problems--how do you fit Russia into an international system, what is our relationship to a Europe that is becoming a political unit? What is the future of China that we have (indistinct) What is our role in areas like Southeast Asia--where I think Indonesia is being turned into a debacle, partly by American actions. All of these are medium and long term issues which are very hard to bring across to the American people as impacting on their immediate life.

And then you have Presidential candidates who are totally obsessed with the short term consequences of their remarks, who are driven by focus groups. So It is very hard to imagine a Presidential candidate today who like Roosevelt in '37 would speak of "quarantining" an aggressor years down the road. But soon or later the world will impinge on us and then we will have to deal with it.

Q: In your book, you deal with the internationalization of American culture. That reality would be astonishing to a President like Coolidge who feel believe we even had an American culture. And now we have culture that we sell, and do. Do we under estimate how important that is?

A: You know, I think basically, we don't care--as a people, right now,

52

HENRY KISSINGER TRANSCRIPT

CHECKED AGAINST TAPE

HK: My problem with the New York Times starts with the new publisher, not with the old. But it's not a vendetta. It's a tone. They haven't done anything to me. I have no personal concerns.

Q: I believe we also have a mutual friend in Karsten Voigt.

K: Oh yes...Karsten Voigt. I mean this is not...Oh, I like him very much.

Q: I usually stay with him when I'm in Germany

K: When you are in Germany, In Berlin.

Q: Yah. (A dog enters the room) Ah, a sweet puppy

K: (To the dog) Yes, my sweetheart, my good girl...She's getting too old.

Q: I feel that if we can just give this enough time, we can do a fabulous Interview.

HK: Well, we'll have two...we have about 45 minutes now and about 35 minutes on Friday.

Q: The President is on his way to Vietnam today.

HK: Yes.

Q: In your book, in your new book which comes out in June, and this will not come out till June, one can almost hear your annoyance with the epidemic of apologies that we've been sending out, for the last few years.

HK: Have you read any chapters?

Q: Yes, I've read the manuscript.

HK: Wait a minute. Which one?

Q: The manuscript to the book that comes out in June.

HK: But which version have you read? Because it was rewritten, major parts of it.

Q: Whatever version that exists as of three weeks ago. But I have an impression, and let's just ... I'm not going to quote from it.

HK: But a much better version is around now. Much better, no comparison.

Q: Well, I have a sense of your ideas.

HK: Yes. But, you know ...

Q: I'm not going to quote specifically from it because it's too early.

HK: Well, I think that it's wrong for the President of the United States to go around the world apologizing in various countries for the alleged misdeeds of various of his predecessors, drawn from the vocabulary of the Vietnam protest. When foreign nations deal with us, they have to assume a certain continuity of philosophy. And actually what you read was not intended to refer, primarily, to Vietnam.

Q: Well, what was it then, that you referred to?

HK: Well, it was meant to refer to apologizing all over Africa for our part in the absence of democratic institutions in those countries. The leaders of those countries were almost invariably those who had lead the independence struggle. And the United States had a very marginal influence if any, in selecting the leaders. And

really very little of this happened when I was in office. So this is just not a defense
of ... except for the Congo, I really don't know anyplace where the United States
played a role in installing a leader in Africa.

Q: Well, and foremost ...

HK: And then, he is apologizing really for the alleged support of junta(?), and he apologized to Iran, for the removal of Mossedegh(?). This is separating events from a historical context. And it is always done with the argument that other people at Cold War inventions or actions ... as if the Cold War were some invention. There were real problems, and whether they were treated well or badly, it's open for discussion.

But not in the categories that were invented 30 years later. I thought it was inappropriate. Not inappropriate for us to have a domestic discussion of these issues. I'm talking about the President of the United States apologizing ABROAD for these things.

Q: He's not the only one who has apologized. I mean, this seems to be a trend.

HK: Well, he is the President of the United States.

Q: In his book on the Vietnam War, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara wrote, "We were wrong, tragically wrong." How do you feel aesthetically, politically about him saying something like that?

HK: Well, I don't think we were wrong. We made a mistake.

Q: What was that mistake?

HK: The mistake in Vietnam was that we applied the values by which we had conducted the post-war reconstruction to cultures and circumstances in which it was

difficult to apply them. And to which they really did not fit. But unlike many of the
critics, I do not think it was a moral mistake--I think it was a mistake of historical
imagination.

The motive was noble. We wanted to bring democracy to a region of the world that
was engaged in civil war. And to prevent the spread of communism--this was our
operating philosophy throughout the Cold War period. I understand that objective. I
don't think Vietnam was the place to exercise it.

Q: Did you say that then?

HK: Then, I didn't understand it well enough and I didn't ... I don't know what I said then because I was not involved in Asian policy. I said as soon as I visited Vietnam, and the first time that was, was 1965, I said that the war could not possibly be won that way.

Q: With this nation building and ...

HK: And I'm urged to ... negotiated outcome. But when I parted company with
the protesters, is in treating the War as a moral stain on America and as a reflection
on American moral inadequacies.

Q: One of the (Overlap)

HK: But I certainly I don't want to make this interview ... this book is not about
Vietnam.

Q: No, and clearly this interview is a general interview but there's ...

HK: I am amazed they gave you the manuscript. It was so unready.

Q: Well, I'm not quoting from the book, you know, it was just to get a sense of what you were saying and thinking. As someone who lived through the hell of the Nixon impeachment and the subsequent resignation, how did you feel last year as you watched the Clinton impeachment?

HK: I was opposed to the impeachment.

Q: You were?

HK: And I thought that the correct outcome would have been some form of censure by the Congress of what had been done. I am very worried about turning our system into a kind of parliamentary system by using the impeachment process to get rid of our chief executives. So I did not favor the impeachment process.

Q: But your feelings as you watched it?

HK: Well, I had a lot of sympathy for what... people were going through. I think that Nixon...that CLINTON was a President unusually given to operate in and at the edge of legal procedures. But I did not think Impeachment was the right way to deal with it.

Q: So when you say you had sympathy ... for the Iraq War Democrats?

HK: I had sympathy for the Democrats, sure.

Q: Could you elaborate a little bit?

HK: Well, I've been through procedures ... every day, there is something about our media culture now that once a crisis starts, it almost cannot end. And you cannot hide from the repetition of news stories, what is new or what is a recycling of what has already been covered. And therefore ... and I saw in the Nixon period this growing preoccupation with survival from day to day and the focus on technical

[L.C]

if you are successful, or do well, may hopefully represent some progress to some idea. So I was probably too power oriented for the liberals, and too conciliatory for the conservatives.

Q: Conciliatory with whom?

HK: I did not say ... there was one word ... you see...you also have to understand that some of the conservative agenda of the '80s was shaped by people who had been radical liberals in the '60s and early '70s, and who converted in the early '70s to conservatism, and who therefore had no recollection of what this country had gone through during the Vietnam trauma. When I was in office, under both Nixon and Ford, I felt that our country had to avoid these oscillations between over-commitment and despondency and dedicate itself to a program of measurable objectives. And the crusaders on the other side wanted final outcomes. So um, some of the conservatives preferred a more confrontational course than I favored.

Q: Well, I think specifically that they were very annoyed about the d·c·t·e?

HK: Well, I mean, 'annoyed about d·c·t·e,' what did one mean by 'd·c·t·e?' I mean, that's really the question about d·c·t·e. This was a country that had gone through a decade of a bitter conflict, and many of the population, certainly many of the intellectual population, thought it was unjustified. So I believed we owed it to our public to demonstrate that we were not an obstacle to peace, and practically were contributors to peace.

We thought we would make an attempt to help bring about the transformation of the Soviet Union from a cause to a nation. We were very tough, even ruthless in seeking to prevent the expansion of the Soviet sphere. And on every challenge to the dividing line, we resisted.

What some of the conservatives wanted to do was to turn this whole thing in a showdown about nuclear readiness. And we did not think that that was the arena in which we faced the overwhelming facts. Because if there was a threat, it was the gradual expansion of the Soviet sphere, and not an all out assault on the United States.

Q: The Helsinki Accords, which you negotiated ... a lot of people now say that is the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union.

HK: Yes

Q: But you are not credited for that. Is it the beginning of the end?

HK: It's one of the contributing factors. And in fairness, I don't want to say that I foresaw all the consequences. To us the Helsinki Accords were part of a mosiac in which we tied down the Soviets to a series of commitments, which we had no illusions, necessarily, that they would keep--but which would then improve our capacity for resistance, if they didn't keep them. In the Helsinki Accord, the two provisions that made historically the biggest difference were... three provisions. One was that boundaries could be changed in Europe by peaceful means. It was not that they were sacrosanct-- only that they couldn't be changed by force.

Q: Which in theory protected some of the eastern countries wanting to break away?

HK: From what?

Q: From the Soviet Union.

HK: Yes. Secondly, that each country which was part of the same provision. was free to choose its own alliances--which was an attack on the Brezhnev doctrine.

And thirdly establishment of Basket III, the humanitarianism (section) which made humanitarian conduct, for the first time, the subject of international judgement, of international assessment. Now, that last provision we thought we might use if the Soviet Union repressed dissidents as they had in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. We did not imagine that the dissidents would use it as an offensive weapon against the Soviet Union. We were delighted, but that was not ... I don't want to take credit for how valiant Walesa...(Switch in tone) But let me understand, what is the purpose of this interview? I thought it was about my book, and not about my history.

Q: It's a general interview ... As all of these interviews are, it is a general broad interview about a person's philosophy, ideas, and we will be discussing the book.

But ...

HK: Not (Inaudible) profile.

Q: To some degree, yes, let me get ...

HK: There is nothing in the book that deals with any of this. And what chapters have you read?

Q: I looked through the whole manuscript as much as I could. Let's go on so that we don't waste time.

HK: That was very naughty. They should never have done that.

Q: Well, I promised not to ...

HK: I'm not worried about ... this is not a case where I'm worried about your revealing it. I'm worried about the fact that what you had seen is very, very unfinished.

Q: I understand that.

HK: And totally rewritten.

Q: I'd like to read a later version.

HK: I'd be happy to let you see the later version.

Q: Fine, I'll read it in the next day. I'll look through it.

HK: Okay, next week. There's a better version around.

Q: In the book you talk about how you are concerned with some off the conservatives and the neo-conservatives, are now using ...

HK: Look, I've taken almost all of this out. This is debates ... this is no longer a relevant debate.

Q: About China?

HK: Not even about China.

Q: Well, that was what that question was to be. I was going to ask you if ... one of the things that was in the version I read was a quote where you basically thought it was wrong for some of the neo-conservatives to make China as the new target.

HK: Right.

Q: Do you want to talk about that?

HK: I don't want to aim at the neo-conservatives because this will not be the debate of the next few years.

Q: Well, let me rephrase it. In the next few years, who do you think is America's enemy?

HK: I don't think we have anyone, anymore.

Q: Any one enemy? Then, what is the enemy?

HK: We have a plethora of PROBLEMS. I think the emergence of China as a major country is a challenge to America and to the international system. And I think it is a test for us, whether we can live in world in which we are the most powerful country, but in which we do not insist on dominating, as we did in the immediate post-war period. I believe that any attempt by the United States to achieve a position of hegemony in the world will unite, in time, all the rest of the world against us. And make us suffer the fate of other empires, and that we will use more and more of our resources, our energy, by turning foreign policy into domestic issues. And we will lose our relevance. Our challenge as a society is to turn foreign policy power into some sort of international consensus. And that is a much more complex problem. Now, it could happen that China becomes our enemy. But it is not foreordained, and it should not happen as a result of our actions.

Q: In the book you talk about the concern that there are people who are kind of solidified and hard against China already, that in the wake of the Cold War, there is a desire for an enemy.

HK: You know, the reason I sort of regret that you have seen this is the following.. when you write a book like this, you always have the temptation of what triggers you immediately, and what you want people to think say two, three years from now. A lot of the arguments that were made in the internal Republican debate last year, are not going to be relevant in the future. There will be the problem of how to deal with China. That problem remains relevant. And It is true that there are people who see

[L.C.]

China as a surrogate Soviet Union. But China is a different phenomenon. First of all, the Soviet Union was legitimized by a universal ideology. And (the Soviets) claimed they had a universal relevance ...

China does regard itself as a necessary guide to anybody else. The Soviet Union was surrounded by very weak countries. China is surrounded by quite strong countries. So the idea of China marching around the world, when it has the almost inconceivable task of moving over a billion people into the modern period, that it should spend it's resources countering what, for what purpose? So I don't believe it is a realistic assessment. (Now,)As China becomes stronger, it will become more influential. That is inherent. I do not believe America should spend its energies, weakening China. If China challenges us, we should resist. But that I do not believe is foreordained.

Q: Well, you advocate on one hand closer relations with China. And you also on the other had support a rededication to a strategic missile program. How does that affect each other?

HK: Not a strategic ... a missile defense.

Q: Yes. Well then the revival of a kind of star wars project

HK: I know. It's an axiomatic view of the Left around the world is that missile defense is sinful and that it's desirable, to keep each nation as vulnerable as possible on the proposition that unless it is totally vulnerable, it may do dangerous things. That's a debatable premise. I believe that this is an unrealistic concept in the present world.

Q: But who are we to be defended against?

HK: Against whoever has missiles, that would threaten) the United States. I have not played the game of saying it's North Korea, or it's Iran. I include China, I do not believe it is very likely that China will use nuclear missiles against the United States.

Or Russia I do not see how an American President of whatever party should one nuclear weapon explode in America, can face his people and say I had the means to protect you against a certain missile, but I kept you totally vulnerable on some obtruse theory on the basis of, which, if one weapon would kill ten million people, I will kill fifty million of the attackers. Because it's a great theory until you have to apply it.

Q: But some people are asking now, is it worth all this treasure to defend against an abstract enemy that you can't even name?

HK: Incidentally, talking about the Chinese, the Chinese know my views. It has not affected my personal relationship with the Chinese. And it's not meant as a devise to keep China impotent. It's an insurance policy. People take out a lot of insurance policies. It's in the nature of a world in which nuclear weapons are proliferating... and you don't have to be able to name an enemy. I don't play that game. Nor do I say that the defense has to be airtight against any level of attack. I think if you can bring about a situation in which an attacker has to do it at a level that forces consideration at a high level, that already worth something.

Q: How have you felt watching events in Korea unfold? Have they astonished you?

HK: I am reserving judgement on Korea for awhile. Yes, it may have opened up a whole new ... there are many possibilities. There is the possibility that North Korea is using it to establish itself as our principal interlocutor on the Koreans' peninsula and thereby lowering the standing of South Korea. There is the possibility that they think they can get ... solve some of their economic problems without changing their

[L.C.]

system. There is the possibility that they have started something that they will not be able to control as it evolves. And we have to be open to all the possibilities. I do not particularly appreciate their use of ... in a country in which hundreds of thousands starve to death each year, the development of missiles and nuclear weapons becomes their form of international blackmail and their means of triggering a visit with the Secretary of State and perhaps even the President to their country in order to dispose of something they should never have done in the first place.

Q: What were your feelings as you watched Madeleine Albright go before the staged ceremonies in the final year of the Clinton Administraion? You've been to that movie, I mean, you have seen that sort of thing.

HK: Well, I would not have recommended the Secretary of State attend the ceremonies.

Q: Really?

HK: Not without more happening. Many people said it was the same as Nixon going to Beijing. Nixon's going to Beijing was a reversal of alliances, and by itself, created an objective new reality. The visit (of Mrs. Albright) as of yet, changed nothing. A lot will depend on what happens afterwards.

Q: How would you rate Mrs. Albright as a Secretary of State?

HK: Look, she is a friend of mine, and anybody who has been in that position knows the complexity of the job.

Q: Let me ask you a question. I'm writing a book about women heads of state at the moment.

HK: Yeah, they are a hell of a lot tougher than men heads of state.

[L.C.]

Q: And more interesting.

HK: That too could be true.

Q: But I am wondering if you think that there is somewhat of a hinderance for a woman to be a Secretary of State if there were men in power who had trouble dealing with a woman.

HK: I think Madeleine handled that part of it quite effectively. I can't think of any situation in which she was handicapped.

Q: So she became the United States ...

HK: The Secretary of State represents the United States. And I think she has done a more than adequate job. I disagree with her on a number of things. I would not have handled Kosovo the way she did, but that is no reflection--it's a philosophical difference.

Q: The book has a lot about Kosovo in it.

HK: Yeah, but (Overlap)

Q: That's what I (Overlap), okay.

HK: I will say to you the interview is driving me mad.

Q: Well, I don't mean to drive you mad.

HK: I have put all of Kosovo ... I mean, everything in that book about Kosovo in the first chapter I've taken out because it was written ... I mean, when you write a book you go through phases - at least I go through phases. And I ... I have turned all of it into more general issues.

Q: Let me ask you, and I don't know if this is still in the book. But you have a moment when you discuss what things that you have to Deng said to you. Is that still there?

HK: Yeah.

Q: Yeah. And you say that he repeated six times to you that if stability had been lost and that it would have taken a generation to restore it.

HK: Yeah.

Q: Do you feel in retrospect that the decision that Chinese Communist Party leaders made in 1989 was the only one they could have made.

HK: I don't know that. I must say: I knew Deng for 20 years. I consider him one of the great reformers maybe of history, who took a society that was completely totalitarian, highly regimented and opened it up. And in the process he made the opposite mistake that Gorbachev made. Gorbachev thought that we could upon up the politics and the economics will follow. Deng thought he could open up economics and didn't worry about the political evolution. And he didn't realize that the processes that he had started. And so I have understanding for his tragedy. Could he have done it better? Well, if you assume that all his successes were foreordained, and all the failures were avoidable, then this might have been avoidable....

Q: Did they have to send the tanks into Tiananmen Square?

HK: I regret that they sent the tanks into Tiananmen Square. But I still consider Deng a great reformer.

[L]

Q: You don't deal, in the version of the book that I read, very much with the Middle East.

HK: No, I have to write that chapter now.

Q: As the father of shuttle diplomacy which was effective, (Dog makes move for affection. We talk about dogs. Do you think Bush will be more muscular with the Israelis than Gore might have been.

HK: I don't think that's the issue anymore.

Q: What's the issue?

HK: Well, the issue now is that for about a decade... you know, my closest friends, of all these people was Rabin, not a political friend. He was my genuine friend.

Q: Is he Irreplaceable in the world?

HK: Well, the Arab-Israeli conflict went from an irreconcilable cultural clash, to a belief that maybe it was all a terrible misunderstanding--and that if only the psychological barriers could be removed, a final settlement was quite easy. And this is what led Barak to go to Camp David, and Clinton to organize Camp David in the belief that in one session, you could finish the peace process.

But it turned out that they were deeply religious and philosophical obsticles. And so that, as a result, all the parties trapped themselves and have made the situation ... pushed it almost back to the point where it was when the peace process started. It is one thing to settle territorial disputes. And it is another to ask for a compromise holy places. And when Clinton kept sending emissaries around to the other Arabs, asking them to reach a compromise, he was creating a situation in which Arafat ... the other Arabs wanted Arafat to be a local leader. But by becoming the defender of the holy places, he was again an Arab leader. So everybody was trapped by their

[L.C.]

preconceptions. And I think now we have to go back to a much more modest
understanding. We have to get back to co-existence.

Q: Well, how do you do that?

HK: Well, it has to be done, somewhere along existing deviding lines and territorial adjustments from Camp David. But I don't think that the issue of Jerusalem can can be solved?) right now.

Q: Many people in the work of all of this have wondered what Barak was thinking in terms of letting Ariel Sharon go into the Moslem holy places...?

HK: The Sharon thing was irrelevant.

Q: Irrelevant?

HK: Irrelevant, it gave a pretext of something that was certain to (Inaudible).

Q: But it absolutely set the fire.

HK: No, it gave the pretext of the fire. You don't get uprisings all over a territory, with stones prepared, and ambulances only because of one incident. Nobody can believe that.

Q: No, of course not, but they've always been prepared for that sort of thing.

HK: They haven't always been prepared. I think the outcome of Camp David, one way or the other, was going to be something like that. And I said that all along.

Q: Can you elaborate? Because most people would think that in a peace negotiation, the outcome is peace.

[L.C.]

HK: Unless demands are made that aren't fulfilled. For example the Israelis very understandably set out with Arafat that he should make a proposal, that he should sign a statement that he has no further claims. It's not possible. But there are a million refugees in camps. And you can avoid pressing the claim, as it's an factual matter that he can do.

Q: But he can't sign it.

HK: He can't say it. And so there was a terrible misunderstanding.

Q: But surely Barak was smart enough to know this.

HK: No, he wasn't. Israel has become a sort of a high tech middle class society, that thought all they needed was a deal. They are in the 21st Century, and philosophically some of the Arabs in the 17th Century in terms of religious convictions. And it was a whole series of things like this.

Q: So you think the kind of things that Samuel Huntington has written about the clashes of civilization are on target?

HK: I think it's on target and not on target in assuming that whenever there is a clash of culture, there must be conflict. But it does mean that in the clash in culture, each side has to be careful not to impose its cultural values on the other. Because if it does, disputes become intractable.

I do not question the solution that cross cultural lines are achievable and most of the time desirable. But the very attempt to make a final definitive resolution, in the territory in which each side believes it is entitled to their own territory. And certainly the Arabs believe this, the Palestinians believe this ... created a tension, that with some thoughtfulness, could have been avoided.

[LC]

Q: So am I correct, if I hear you saying that the solution there had to be kept fuzzy?

HK: Or partial.

Q: But wasn't the Camp David compromises that were being suggested, they weren't giving them all of these ways ...

HK: You can't compromise religious convictions. The territory can be compromised. There is no urgency either to do it at this time. When people said if they don't do it they declared a state, so what? Let them declare a state. That's the inevitable result of outcome anyway.

Q: And if they then declared a state, would that then lead to automatic conflict?

HK: I don't see why.

Q: If you were designing a policy for the next Secretary of State what would it look like now?

HK: I really think everybody should step back. I believe a new President should send somebody he trusts around and listen very carefully to all the parties. To their tangibles as well as their intangible demand, and try to inspire some confidence that we understand the problems. And then not come up with American solutions, but see in what area solutions are possible. Because all the parties are all so trapped. Because on the one hand, they cannot agree to what is on the table. But they cannot win any conflict. So some solutions will have to emerge.

Q: When I was in Israel in 1979, I was doing a story on how they were improving their cuisine.

HK: Their what?

[L.C.]

Q: Their food, and it seems ...

HK: Hasn't reached me yet.

Q: No. But it seems to me like the whole country was involved in smoking turkey, and it was just the (Inaudible), tastes just like ham, doesn't it?

HK: I don't know about how three million Jewish mothers can produce such appalling food.

Q: It's remarkable. At any rate ...

HK: It's not like any food that I know anywhere. It is not Jewish food either. I don't know what the hell it is.

Q: It really is weird. At any rate, one night I went to a restaurant, I was taken to a restaurant called Moishe's in Jerusalem which was run by a Moroccan Jew who was famous for his stuffed vegetables. And there was a guest book of all the famous people who had eaten there. I was told that it was a very exclusive restaurant and you needed reservations from God to go there. And you had just been there also.

HK: Yeah, I think I know the place too.

Q: And in the guest book which was proudly shown to us, you had signed "Henry Kissinger, Furth, Germany".

HK: What?

Q: You had signed the guest book, "Henry Kissinger, Furth Germany?".

HK: Germany?

Q: Yeah.

HK: I don't think that's true.

Q: Well, I saw it.

HK: "Furth, Germany?"

Q: Well, I always wondered about that. I thought it ...

HK: Impossible.

Q: Yeah, okay. I thought that perhaps you had been, you know, as they say in the South, "getting down" or gone folkie.

HK: Absolutely impossible.

Q: Okay, it never happened.

HK: Well, I don't know in what context it could conceivably have happened.

Q: Well, he said ... because I asked about it, that you had been there during the shuttle diplomacy period.

HK: But why would that bring Germany into it.

Q: Well, I thought maybe it was sort of like a Proustian thing.

HK: Like a what?

Q: It was Proustian ... that you were there and you were perhaps going back to an earlier placer ... no? Totally wrong.

HK: Most certainly. I just can't remember what the conceivable context of it would be.

[L.C.]

A: Because it established a principle that any...it has nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of Pinochet. And I would not object and I do not object to a Chilean court trying him, or to a special court being set up by the United Nations on the model of the Yugoslav. I think the principle of an individual judge anywhere in the world (as was the case with a Spanish judge CD) being able to pursue any individual at his discretion, I think, is a very dangerous concept to establish, independent of the guilt or innocence of Pinochet.

A: Yes.

A: I think at this moment, the American public does not think it is in danger from anybody. We are living through a phase of American triumphalism, in which we think the spread of ideas in both politics and economics, will automatically guarantee universal peace. And that our obligation is really not foreign policy anymore, but missionary work. And I think that is not a sustainable position because the world will come back and impinge on us.

I:NTPAELDERLAW\01 Annual Update. DOC

A: You know, I think basically, we don't care--as a people, right now, whether it is or it isn't. It is, as a matter of fact, hugely important and certainly people are wearing blue jeans and watching American television around the world. So in that sense.....

Why don't we do this...we are going to have a second interview, are we not?

DREIFUS: Let's talk about what we agreed upon on tape.

(Interview ends--at his request. Turn off machine. I turn on machine again to get
on tape exact meaning of what I've agreed to.

KISSINGER: What I understand is that I have the right to edit the transcript, not to
change meaning, but to clean up the English...

LC

DREIFUS: I've agreed to let you look at the transcript to make the English fully grammatical but not to change any meaning of what has been said.

KISSINGER: That's correct.

DREIFUS: And you agree to that?

KISSINGER: Yes.

DREIFUS: And I agree to that.

Q: Well, your comments were very interesting and very unexpected, and will surprise a lot of people.

OLGA: (Offering tea and cake.) My English is no good

HK: You are doing fine, Olga. I got her a picture from Kirk Douglas yesterday so I am now on good terms with Olga.

Q: I understand that Adam Michnik was going to come and see you.

HK: I had to cancel it because I was working. I love Adam Michnik, remarkable man. Would have loved to have seen him, but I had to...So why don't we do one or two questions, and then sort of wind it up because I don't see where we are going to take this in any meaningful manner anymore. It's, you know, about done.

Q: I think you're focussing too much on (the fact that I've read the manuscript ...)

HK: Look, I've covered Deng. We've covered Pinochet. We covered Vietnam. Name me one constructive thing that I would consider that I would want to talk about for publication. Why would I want to talk about Deng now? Or about Pinochet?

Q: I'm sorry, I only read it in the book. Forgive me for reading it in the book. I mean, I didn't get it out of thin air. I mean, I didn't come with a set agenda, I came with ...

HK: Well, they had a ... I don't know.

Q: It's not irreparable. But one of the things I found in whatever it was that I read, were some interesting comments from you about for instance the Seattle demonstrations and your feeling that while they were appalling and violent, they pointed to something that is legitimate that's out there.

HK: Can you tell me what are the subjects you want to cover today?

Q: IMF, globalization, Russia. You had said something about Rabin being a close friend but we never discussed ... never came to the end of that thought. And I was hoping you could finish it. Agenda for the new President, whoever that will be--a feeling about why the Europeans seem to build their unity on anti-Americanism.

HK: You see, with the best will in the world ... I'm not saying you start with any preconceived notion. You are reflecting exactly what you have. And what you have are sort of contentious points which I threw together to get myself started.

Q: But they do reflect your thinking, don't they? Where did they come from?

HK: Well, in the way first drafts reflect one's thinking ... they do not reflect my considered opinion in a comprehensive way. So we are in a ... on the other hand you have nothing else to base it on. So you are innocent here.

Q: So help me a little bit.

[L.C.]

Q: Meaning?

HK: Well, meaning that on the one hand where I differed from the rioters or the demonstrators, it's ... I think globalization is the most effective machinery that we've has been invented for the increase of wealth and well-being.

And the process of industrialization, to the extent that it works, is extraordinarily unsettling for society because it moves people from the countryside to the cities. It removes them from their traditional moring. And even if their standard of living rises somewhat compared to the countryside, otherwise they wouldn't be moving to the cities, it produces a kind of (situation where people are) ... being subject to forces that are beyond their control. And this is why in most industrial revolutions you've had, there's been a simultaneous emergence of a certain kind of radicalism, in the 19th century and now in the 20th and 21st century.

And I believe politically that we must take that into account. And they must also take into account the propensity for crises the system has exhibited and the damage these crises do--even when they overcome. Because when they are overcome, they're overcome in statistical banking terms and not necessarily in terms of the individual human beings that are affected.

HK: Wiped out.

HK: It creates a long term problem. We barely ... well, in Indonesia, it led to the overthrow of the political system. And while many people consider that a great blessing, it remains to be seen whether the more evolutionary modification of the regime might not have been better. In any event, so far they have not restored the

economy nor have they managed to establish a fully functional democracy. And
there is enormous turmoil. And part of it was caused by our policies, by the
IMF policies. And so I think we can say we got through this one, but it is not an
attitude which should continue.

HK: I don't know, others may have ... I know many people say it. They usually say it in more economic terms and I don't pretend to be an economist. But then again this isn't a book about economics either. It is a book ... that tries to discuss what are the fundamental thought processes through which America should go as the new century begins, not throughout the new century.

And we have an extraordinary difficulty because we have never had to conduct a real
foreign policy. We've been either isolated or dominant ... so we've never had the
need of a continuous foreign policy that has no ends (?--is this word correct?) and
that you cannot break up into phases. So there is no American tradition which we
can debate under, and that what I have attempted to do.

HK: In the '40s and '50s, we have great achievements throughout the ... and no other country could have done what we did. But it wasn't foreign policy. It was a global application of the New Deal, like World War II. It was tremendous. My hero, and Secretary of State was Dean Acheson, I have huge admiration for Truman.

HK: But this is not a foreign policy that can ... this sort of foreign policy is no longer possible today because we are no longer that dominant. Other nations and are no longer that much in need of us. It was absolutely essential that only America could do it.

And I once asked Truman of what he was most proud. And he said, "I am most proud of having totally defeated our enemies And brought them back to the community of nations, as equals. And I would like to think only Americans would have done that."

Q: Meaning World War II.

HK: Yeah. And that's a remarkable thing ... those are noble statements, and I have great admiration for them, but that's no longer possible.

HK: Because our politics has become brutally competitive. Because there was a leadership group, mostly from the Eastern states, that had some experience of Europe. Now foreign policy is not a subject that occupies budding careers. You don't make a career around foreign policy. And so, there is no comparable group to the ones we had in the '40s, '50s and '60s, that was sort of destroyed during the Vietnam War and was never really reconstituted. So any new President that comes in, will find that.

I wrote somewhere ... I wrote an article last year, in which I said ... about the impact of Vietnam, that when I was in graduate school, we thought government

service was a high calling. We didn't think that we could serve in government directly, so one thought of middle terms --contributions to thinking. In the Vietnam War, the intellectual community split into two groups - job applicants and revolutionaries.

The job applicants repeated the arguments of the bureaucracy and the revolutionaries rejected the very concept of American foreign policy. But the ground on which one policy has to be conducted, in the long term, of progressing by stages towards a higher goal, it has been sort of ceded to temporary managements of crises.

HK: Yeah, but most people don't know what (it) meant and most people forget that it was entered into by Kennedy and Johnson with the noblest of motives. And we just overreached and then the problem was how to extricate. But I don't want to get into that debate.

Q: Well, I just raise it to suggest that perhaps It isn't so irrelevant to us in this day after all--the country changes at that moment.

Q: My editor, who is a Vietnam veteran, said in at the announcement of that he was very excited.

HK: What?

HK: Almost invariably.

Q: Can you say more?

HK: Well, the IMF thinks its basic problem is to restore the creditworthiness of the country so that more money can be lent to it. And they have certain standard policies - austerity, raising taxes, devaluing the currency, all of which have a terribly blighting effect on the lives of the people. And the theory is, like in the 1930s in America, that in them as the economy improves, people will start lending money again. But when that hiatus is prolonged, it undermines the governments that are supposed to carry out the reforms.

In Korea I think they were lucky because Kim Dae Jung who was on the Left, and a radical all of his life, was elected at a moment when these programs were put in. So he had the legitimacy to do it, but if the normal Korean government had done it, it would not have worked there either.

Q: Triumph-alism. And that it's not healthy.

HK: No. No, I think when you are as powerful as America is, you can either go the road towards trying to dominate the whole world... which in time could destroy us because it will unite people against us, and it will turn every foreign policy problem into a domestic debate--or we can transform our achievements into some sort of international consensus which requires giving other societies a sense of participation in the process.

HK: Well, on the one hand some resentment of American culture. But on the other hand they all imitate American culture. So it isn't that they offer an alternative culture. But I think Europe is sort of torn at this moment because to have the political identity, at least the continentals and certainly France, they want to assert in

Money Maturity

distinction from the United States, not necessarily against the United States. And
England doesn't feel exactly this way.

On the other hand, while I respect that, and while I think that is even good for us to
have counter forces in the world, when they drive you to the point that they don't
want to assert the ( ) capacity (?_, but insist no matter what our position is, then
that becomes the identifying principle of European politics. Then we began to slide
back in the name of European Union to the kind of national competitiveness that
produced the First World War and contributed to the Second.

HK: Well, as a historian, I favor the concept of a European Identity. In its practical implementation, I have my questions.

Q: And they are?

HK: They are the existence on opposition to the United States as an organizing entity. And the assertion of a kind of Pan European nationalism that sometimes is a European affliction. The inability to separate the long from the short term problems. And finally I am concerned because like every other current country, it put domestic policies, *above* foreign policy. They treat foreign policy issues as an aspect of domestic politics.

[LC]

HK: No.

Q: No?

HK: I didn't think there isn't any ... much about Russia and what you have, I wrote ... I believe that the general ... that in the conduct of foreign policy it is very important to understand the history of societies with which you deal. I do not believe you can invent foreign policy for any society on the basis of some abstract model. But I think that a country that has had viscious forms of autocracy for 400 years, and has been an empire for most of that period, will (not?) transform itself into a pluralistic American-style democracy from one day to the next. And therefore I think it is very important to understand what our priorities should be with respect to Russia. And the good thing we should try to achieve with Russia is for them to leave their neighbors alone, which would be already a tremendous change.

If Russia, for any historic period, concentrates on developing its own resources-- which they've never done as a top priority--that will change the nature of their society in an extraordinary fundamental way. So I ... again you have got all these bits and pieces of things.

HK: I think that Russia ... bringing Russia into the international system as a non-autocratic state is a very important objective. I think it is also a very complicated one, because Russia is part of Asia, is part of Europe. It has had ... shared part of its history with Europe. But it has never fully committed itself, and cannot because of its geography, through one of the regions, that it has oscillated back and forth in its priorities. And it has had a different religious background in the sense that the Greek Orthodox Church was always as State organ, compared to the western Churches. Then concept of democracy was never as developed in Russia as it was in

the west. It was developed as part of a small intellectual group in the Russian
capital.

So all of this now has to be ~~indicated~~ and we have made it too simple for ourselves
by identifying this process which Gorbachev and with Yeltsin, and not understanding
the complexities. And now I have noticed one of the European temptations is to try
to play with Russia as conceivably part of Europe. But I think it would be a major
change in Europe if Russia were considered more a part of Europe than America is.
There would be an intellectual revolution!

Q: Yeah?

But to ask ... offer it membership or honorary membership is really a most

~~conceding~~

[L.C.]

HK: Well, Clinton in my view doesn't really believe in NATO. And Clinton believes that the Cold War probably could have been avoided by a more understanding handling of Russia.

And so he fuzzes up the dividing line and I think the political dividing line can be fuzzed up, but I see no ... There is no future, if Russia is part of NATO and NATO has no meaning. On the other hand, we could not make major foreign policy moves without discussing it with Russia. There is a legal framework in the European security conference, which was created in Helsinki, with which we could consult with political matters as often as we want and we should do it frequently.

HK: Well, I think make a meeting in which the membership from Kazakhstan to..uh, 50 nations, are public relations exercises which destroy the meaning of NATO.

HK: Well, that is an interesting question and that is one of the issues that...the question whether the two sides of the Atlantic... one of the points that I have made in the rewrite of the book which you have not seen as yet, is that Americans like to think of the world following one single formula, usually some form of Wilsonianism. But in fact there are at least three different worlds existing right now.

And it is the 21st century world which is ... Europe and the Americas. And there actually Wilsonian principles of are quite applicable. Wars are highly improbable. Economic and political relations, very crucial. (Tape recorder briefly shut off) And there the question is since NATO is the only institutional link we have to Europe, what is its meaning in the contemporary world. It would be a pity to think that the democracies cannot develop some institutions. I actually would favor something like

the trans-Atlantic free trade area. Then we have the world of Asia, which is more like 19th century Europe.

Then we have the Middle East which is more like 17th century Europe. And we as Americans have to try to deal with all of them, by the formulas appropriate for them. And if we misunderstand what we are dealing with, we create the sort of debacle that we had Camp David this (last) summer.

Q: Which is?

HK: Which is to forget that it's sort of a universal reconciliation and general compromise of the Wilsonian world and does not apply when one of the parties believes that there is a fundamental ideological or religious conflict. Because then, compromise is an insult.

HK: I would have done almost everything differently. I would not have assembled the meeting without knowing what the range of disagreements was. And without having some definition of what the discernable outcome was. I'm not sure I would have aimed for a complete solution.

HK: Well that's...

Q: You can just ...

HK: It was called for that an agreement could be reached, in that time frame.

And then what happens when you don't reach an agreement? Then, you have to live through the consequences of not having the agreement. And that is probably what it ... this is actually where we are now, and that is what we'll have to be done now. It

[C]

is now no longer possible to have an overall agreement, at least not for the
foresable future it. So I think that the attempt ... and Arafat said it from the
beginning.

Q: What did he say?

HK: It would have to be slow.

HK: I don't think he would have bet the farm on one negotiation. He was extremely thoughtful, also very cautious. He would not have had a negotiation whose outcome he couldn't describe. Barak is a commander of raiders and he wants to look at the objectives, saying, "This is my goal. So let's do it all at once." But Rabin was a strategist. I have respect for that, I respect Barak for what he was trying to do. But Clinton didn't help him because Clinton should have said, "this can't work". And instead he kept egging him on. The further they went down that road, more frustrated all the parties became. So now there is no basis within Israel, or the Palestinians for that overall solution.

HK: One has to define a pattern of co-existence for awhile. They have to coexist for a bit, and actually they may learn habits of ... you don't achieve reconciliation by writing it on a piece of paper. First they have to learn to coexist and I think it's big

[L]

step backwards. But I wrote all of this several times during the summer when the negotiations still looked as if they were going succeed.

HK: I have never addressed the problem of Northern Ireland. I think it was a political success. It was a similar type problem and these things simply do not have grand finales. But again I don't know anything better in Northern Ireland that could have been done.

HK: I grant him high Intelligence on all things.

HK: Well, first of all, I'm not at all sure that he will be President. But I think the difference between Gore and Bush ... Gore is sort of inscrutable. He really doesn't share his views with anybody. And one doesn't even know who his advisors are.

Well, when and if he becomes President, then we'll know this. And Gore is of the view that looks at foreign policy as America as a agent of a global domestic transformation. And Bush would be more oriented towards a more precise definition of the American national interest. There would be some overlap, but I think overall, this would be the distinction.

Q: Condelza Rice was saying that there would be a policy of restraint, is that a code word for saying no more of these humanitarian missions?

Charleston Choice

HK: No, but I think it may be a way of saying that if you engaged in a humanitarian mission, you have to be able to describe an outcome. And you cannot have American military outposts all over the world, in non-concluded civil wars.

HK: No, that's not perfectly correct either. I saw...It depends on how you define the objective. If you define the objective as reducing the killing that is going on in Kosovo and giving the local population a greater scope for self-expression--which is an objective I approve--that the means chosen were inappropriate. To demand the military occupation of a country before anything has yet happened, seem ed to me wrong. But again I have written that at great length, so there is no point repeating It here.

NATO is wrong.
Once the war started, I was one of the strongest public defenders of it. Because then I thought it was important for I also thought it was wrong for NATO.. to make demands beyond the defensive purposes for which it was formed, at a time when we were trying to bring Russia in the international system. So the methods ... I was much more sympathetic to the message of Holbrook, who wanted to put in as many UN inspectors as possible to reduce the scope of the civil war. It was taking longer but now we have replaced one ethnic sense into another. And we have put ourselves into a spot where, what will be the outcome now that it's a Democratic government In Serbia?

Q: Well, surely that's good.

HK: No. No. That's good. But what if they demand that ... we have never denied that they have sovereignty in Kosovo? Are we back to the original problem?

Where We Take Our Friends

HK: Well, I don't think there would have been a million refugees with other measures (Inaudible) (tried there??)

HK: I don't know whether the younger generation ... how it would react to any crisis because they have never lived through economic crisis, military crisis. If we talk to them about the Korean War for example, you go to any Ivy League school, they wouldn't know whether that was before or after the Spanish American War. It has no operational meaning to them. The Cold War has no meaning to them. So you have to focus much more on economics, than on politics.

Q: You wrote that ...

HK: They have been brought up by computers rather than books, which in itself was a totally different outlook on the world.

HK: Well, they're tough all right. I mean, in their economic competitiveness with each other, they certainly don't lack toughness. But they maybe tough enough. But whether they know how to do it, I don't know ... when you look at Franklin Roosevelt, the great leaders were people who had a vision of the future and were willing to move towards it, if necessary alone for awhile, until they could bring their people with them. Do we generate people now who have that sort of toughness? Probably in the economic world but not in the political world.

Q: But if the economic world doesn't give them those fast fixes, the great fortunes and the easy way to make money in a way that I have never seen in my lifetime ...

HK: I don't blame them. It is a different culture. If you read ... the other day I read some letters that Theodore Roosevelt wrote to Senator Cabot Lodge. I mean, that was a highly educated man who could quote from the Greek classics, who could write about geography and history. Our present leadership group don't have that foundation. So they are very competitive, very tough, in a much foreshortened world.

HK: Yes, but that's a symptom that we are not serious. If you have a vital interest, if you use military force without being willing to suffer casualties, you are setting ourself up for potential disaster. You at least owe it to the families of those who are killed to be able to explain to them what caused the...(what was the word here) If you can't do that, then you shouldn't use military force.

HK: Well, again I repeat, I supported Kosovo once it started. I objected to America and NATO giving an ultimatum, that one knew had to lead to war before any significant ... any large scale ethnic cleansing had started. I thought It was inappropriate to proceed in that manner. I would have strongly favored a greater UN presence and at some point might have supported military force.

[L.C.]

Q: But what about that aspect of not being willing to take any loses. If the policy had been well explained... there would have been a completely different reaction if there had been some casualties.

Q: Well, no one else was.

HK: Belgrade... (Pause) But again in the completed version of my book you will have a more thoughtful analysis to Kosovo. Or you can read some things I wrote for Newsweek and the Washington Post.

Q: Those I think are online.

Q: I hope you don't find this an annoying question. But, it's sort of a pop culture truism that Stanley Kubrick based, supposedly, Dr. Strangelove on your work. Did...

Q: Did you ever run in ...

Galley View: inside.plantations (R/O) Page: 3 12/14/00 4:25 PM

Q: Did you ever (Overlap--run into him socially and what did he say) Well I ...

HK: It's may be a pop cultural thing, it's a simple minded thing to say and there
are people who know me and they can easily see in what sense these characterures
apply. It presumes I love war and that I can hardly wait to get a war started.

HK: No.

Q: No.

HK: Not everybody would ask these questions. You are one of the few people that ever presumed to ask me that question about Dr. Strangelove. Go ahead, ask it. So you shouldn't think just because the people you move in ... the circle you move in, holds these views, that that is a general view. You know, the public wouldn't understand that question. But go ahead, ask the next one.

[L.C.]

Q: Well, this is not a deep question. But I'm fascinated ... I was friends with William Shirer, the late William Shirer.

HK: Well, my life has been an attempt to make a difference. Which you can easily reconstruct from the experiences that I've, this is what I have had and what I've seen. Some of which parallel yours and some of which are different. And writing is one of the forms in which I do that. But I really think, why don't we bring it to a conclusion. I will look forward to seeing it. I don't want to see any quotes. And you are free to do what you want. And um... It's entirely up to you.

Q: I thank you for your time.

HK: Well, I was lucky enough to leave just before the Kristallnacht so I didn't experience the worst of it. Most of the people I knew who that stayed behind, all of them, saw the worst of it, including my grandparents. But I didn't. I didn't enjoy it, but I did not have the daily terror and the daily inconveniences of persecution. But they were not yet killing people when I left.

Kissinger: They really have done a wicked thing. What I have done a long chapter on called "Peace and Justice," in which I discuss the evolution of American thinking, which is a chapter of 176 triple spaced pages. At the very end of which...there is not a chapter on Pinochet...there is a discussion of the concept of universal juristiction and within that, I have a discussion of Pinochet.

A: I think it was wrong, yes.

Q: Why?

A: Yes.

Q: But It seems as if almost nothing but Elian Gonzales was discussed in the
last election and the one semi foreign policy question wasn't one at all.

A: Because all the problems that I perceive in the world...are medium and long term problems--how do you fit Russia into an international system, what is our relationship to a Europe that is becoming a political unit? What Is the future of China that we have (indistinct) What is our role in areas like Southeast Asia--where I think Indonesia is being turned into a debacle, partly by American actions. All of these are medium and long term issues which are very hard to bring across to the American people as impacting on their immediate life.

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really very little of this happened when I was in office, so this is just not an intended defense of those actions. Except for the Congo, I really don't know any place where the United States played a role in installing a leader in Africa.

Q: Well, and foremost ...

HK: And then, he is apologizing really for the alleged support of Junta(?), and he apologized to Iran for the removal of Mossedegh(?). This is a separating event from their historical context. And it is always done with the argument that other people at the time of the Cold War inventions or actions as if the Cold War were some invention. There were real problems and whether they were treated well or badly, it is certainly at that time an open question.

inappropriate. Not inappropriate for us to have a domestic discussion of these issues. I'm talking about the President of the United States apologizing ABROAD for these things. Actions of predecessors in a different context.

Q: What was that mistake?

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difficult to apply them but And to which they really did not fit. But unlike many of the
critics, I do not think it was a moral mistake-I think it was a mistake of historical
imagination.

Q: Did you say that then?

HK: Then, I didn't understand it well enough and I didn't say I don't know what I said then because I was not involved in Asian policy. I said as soon as I visited Vietnam, and the first time that was in 1965, I said that the war could not possibly be won that way.

Q: With this nation building and ... ?

HK: And I'm urged to ... negotiated outcome. But when I parted company with the protesters, it was in treating the War as a moral stain on America and as a reflection on American moral inadequacies.

Q: One of the (Overlap)

HK: But I certainly I don't want to make this interview as if my new book is not about Vietnam.

HK: I am amazed that they gave you the manuscript. It was so unready.

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Q: You were?

HK: Well, I had a lot of sympathy for what people were going through. I think that Nixon, that CLINTON was a President unusually given to operate at the edge of legal procedures. But I did not think impeachment was the right way to deal with it.

Q: So when you say you had sympathy ... for theFACTORS bush, Clinton?

HK: I had sympathy for theFACTORS bush, Clinton, sure.

HK: Well, I've been through procedures every day, there is something about our media culture now that once a crisis starts, it almost cannot end. And you cannot hide from the repetition of news stories, what is new or what is a recycling of what has already been covered. And therefore, I saw in the Nixon period this growing preoccupation with survival from day to day and the focus on technical

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if you are successful, you do well, may hopefully represent some progress to some idea. So I was probably too power-oriented for the liberals, and too conciliatory for the conservatives.

Q: Conciliatory with whom?

HK: I did not say there was one word you said you also have to understand that some of the conservative agenda of the '80s was shaped by people who had been radical liberals in the '60s and early '70s, but who converted in the early '70s to conservatism, and who therefore had no recollection of what this country had gone through during the Vietnam trauma. When I was in office, under both Nixon and Ford, I felt that our country had to avoid these oscillations between over-commitment and despondency and dedicate itself to a program of measurable objectives. And the crusaders on the other side wanted final outcomes. So some of the conservatives preferred a more confrontational course than I favored.

Q: Well, I think specifically that they were very annoyed about the détente?

HK: Well, I mean, annoyed about détente, what did one mean by détente? I mean, that's really the question about détente. This was a country that had gone through a decade of a bitter conflict, and many of the population, certainly many of the Intellectual population, thought it was unjustified. So I believed we owed it to our public to demonstrate that we were not an obstacle to peace, and practically were contributors to peace.

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What some of the conservatives wanted to do was to turn this whole thing in a showdown about nuclear readiness. But we did not think that was the arena in which we faced the overwhelming threat. Because if there was a threat, it was the gradual expansion of the Soviet sphere, and not an all-out assault on the United States.

HK: Yes

HK: It's one of the contributing factors. And in fairness, I don't want to say that I foresaw all the consequences. To us the Helsinki Accords were part of a mosiac in which we tied down the Soviets to a series of commitments, which we had no illusions, necessarily, that they would keep out which would then improve our capacity for resistance if they didn't keep them. In the Helsinki Accords, the two provisions that made historically the biggest difference were the three provisions. One was that boundaries could be changed in Europe by peaceful means. It was not that they were sacrosanct, only that they couldn't be changed by force.

HK: From what?

Q: From the Soviet Union.

HK: Yes. Secondly, that each country which was part of the same provision was free to choose its own alliances--which was an attack on the Brezhnev Doctrine.

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And thirdly establishment of Basket III, the humanitarians, (section?) which made the humanitarian conduct, for the first time, the subject of international judgement, of international assessment. Now that last provision we thought we might use if the Soviet Union repressed dissidents as they had in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. We did not imagine that the dissidents would use it as an offensive weapon against the Soviet Union. We were delighted, but that wasn't ... I don't want to take credit for how vailant Walesa... (Switch in tone) But let me understand, what is the purpose of this interview? I thought it was about my book, and not about my history.

But ...

HK: Not (Inaudible) profile.

HK: I'm not worried about... This is not a case where I'm worried about your revealing it. I'm worried about the fact that what you had seen is very, very unfinished.

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Q: I understand that.

HK: And totally rewritten.

Q: About China?

HK: Not even about China.

HK: Right.

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HK: We have a plethora of PROBLEMS. I think the emergence of China as a major country is a challenge to America and to the international system. And I think it is a test for us, whether we can live in world in which we are the most powerful country, but in which we do not insist on dominating, as we did in the Immediate post-war period. But we must figure out any attempt by the United States to achieve a position of hegemony in the world will unite us in time, all the rest of the world against us. And make us suffer the fate of other empires, and that we will use more and more of our resources, our energy, by turning foreign policy into domestic issues. And we will lose our relevance. Our challenge as a society is to turn foreign policy power into some sort of international consensus. And that is a much more complex problem. Now, it could happen that China becomes our enemy. But it is not foreordained, and it should not happen as a result of our actions.

HK: You know, the reason I sort of regret that you have seen this is the following, when you write a book like this, you always have the temptation of what triggers you immediately, and what you want people to think say two or three years from now. A lot of the arguments that were made in the internal Republican debate last year, are not going to be relevant in the future. There will be the problem of how to deal with China. That problem remains relevant. And it is true that there are people who see

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China as a surrogate Soviet Union. But China is a different phenomenon. First of all, the Soviet Union was legitimized by a universal ideology, And (the Soviets) claimed they had a universal relevance

China does regard itself as a necessary guide to anybody else. The Soviet Union was surrounded by very weak countries, China is surrounded by quite strong countries.

So the idea of China marching around the world, when it has the almost insurmountable task of moving over a billion people into the modern period, that it should spend its resources countering what, for what purpose? So I don't believe in that of course, is a realistic assessment. As China becomes stronger, it will become more influential. That is inherent in the strategy of America should spend its energies, weakening China. If China challenges us, we should resist. But that I do not believe is foreordained.

HK: Not a strategic missile defense.

HK: I know. It's an axiomatic view of the Left around the world, that missile defense is sinful and that it's desirable to keep each nation as vulnerable as possible on the proposition that, unless it is totally vulnerable, it may do dangerous things. But that's a debatable premise. I believe that this is an unrealistic concept in the present world.

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HK: Against whoever has missiles that would threaten the United States. I have not played the game of saying it's North Korea, or it's Iran. I include China, but I believe it is very likely that China will use nuclear missiles against the United States, could it.

Or Russia. I do not see how an American President of whatever party should one nuclear weapon explode in America, even face his people and say I had the means to protect you against a certain missile, but I kept you totally vulnerable on the basis of the abstruse theory on the basis of which, if one weapon would kill ten million people, I will kill fifty million of the attackers. Because it's a great theory until you have to apply it.

HK: Incidentally, talking about the Chinese, the Chinese know my views. It has not affected my personal relationship with the Chinese. And it's not meant as a device to keep China impotent. It's an insurance policy. People take out a lot of insurance policies. It's in the nature of a world in which nuclear weapons are proliferating, and you don't have to be able to name an enemy. I don't play that game. Nor do I say that the defense has to be airtight against any level of attack. I think that if you can bring about a situation in which an attacker has to do it at a level that forces consideration at a high level, that already worth something.

HK: I am reserving judgement on Korea for a while. Yes, it may have opened up a whole new area of possibilities. There are many possibilities. There is the possibility that North Korea is using it to establish itself as our principal interlocutor on the Korean peninsula and thereby lowering the standing of South Korea. There is the possibility that they think they can solve some of their economic problems without changing their

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I do not particularly appreciate their use in a country in which hundreds of thousands starve to death each year, the development of missiles and nuclear weapons becomes their form of international blackmail and their means of triggering a visit with the Secretary of State and perhaps even the President to their country in order to dispose of something they should never have done in the first place.

Q: Really?

HK: Not without more happening. Many people said it was the same as Nixon going to Beijing. Nixon's going to Beijing was a reversal of alliances and by itself, created an objective new reality. The visit (of Mrs. Albright) as of yet, changed nothing. A lot will depend on what happens afterwards.

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Q: And more interesting.

HK: That too could be true.

HK: The Secretary of State represents the United States. And I think she has done a more than adequate job. I disagree with her on a number of things. I would not have handled Kosovo the way she did, but that is ~~no reflection on a~~ philosophical difference.

HK: Yeah, but (Overlap)

HK: I have put all of Kosovo - I mean, everything in that book about Kosovo in the first chapter, I've taken out because it was written... I mean, when you write a book you go through phases - at least I go through phases, and then I have turned all of it into more general issues.

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HK: Yeah.

HK: Yeah.

HK: I don't know that. I must say: I knew Deng for 20 years. I consider him one of the great reformers, maybe of history, who took a society that was completely totalitarian, highly regimented and opened it up. And in the process he made the opposite mistake that Gorbachev made. Gorbachev thought that we could open up the politics and the economics without following what he didn't worry about the political evolution. And he didn't realize that the processes that he had started. And so I have understanding for his tragedy. Could he have done it better? Well, if you assume that all his successes were foreordained, and all the failures were avoidable, then this might have been avoidable....

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Q: What's the issue?

HK: Well, the issue now is that for about a decade... you know, my closest friends, of all these people was Rabin—not a political friend. He was my genuine friend.

Q: Is he irreplaceable in the world?

HK: Well, the Arab-Israeli conflict went from an irreconcilable cultural clash, to a belief that maybe it was all a terrible misunderstanding, and that if only the psychological barriers could be removed, a final settlement would be quite easy. And this is what led Barak to go to Camp David, and Clinton to organize Camp David in the belief that in one session, you could finish the peace process.

But it turned out that they were deeply religious and philosophical obsticles. And so too, as a result, all the parties trapped themselves and have made the situation almost back to the point where it was when the peace process started. It is one thing to settle territorial disputes. And it is another to ask for a compromise on holy places. And when Clinton kept sending emissaries around to the other Arabs, asking them to reach a compromise, he was creating a situation in which Arafat, the other Arabs wanted Arafat to be a local leader. But by becoming the defender of the holy places, he was again an Arab leader. So everybody was trapped by their

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that
preconceptions. And I think we have to go back to a much more modest
understanding, we have to get back to co-existence.

Q: Well, how do you do that?

HK: It has to be done somewhere along existing dividing lines and territorial adjustments from Camp David. But I don't think that the issue of Jerusalem can be solved?) right now.

Q: Many people in the work of all of this have wondered what Barak was thinking in terms of letting Ariel Sharon go into the Moslim holy places...?

Q: Irrelevant?

HK: It gave a pretext of something that was certain to (Inaudible).

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Q: But he can't sign it.

HK: No, he wasn't. Israel has become a sort of a high tech middle class society, that thought all they needed was a deal. They are in the 21st Century, and while some of the Arabs in the 17th Century in terms of religious convictions. And it was a whole series of things like this.

HK: I think it's on target and not on target in assuming that whenever there is a clash of culture, there must be conflict. But it does mean that in the clash of culture, each side has to be careful not to impose its cultural values on the other. Because if it does, disputes become intractable.

I do not question the solution that cross-cultural lines are achievable and most of the time desirable. But the very attempt to make a final definitive resolution, on the territory of which each side believes it is entitled to their own territory, and certainly the Arabs believe this, the Palestinians believe this created a tension that with some thoughtfulness, could have been avoided.

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Q: So am I correct, If I hear you saying that the solution there had to be kept fuzzy?

HK: Or partial.

HK: You can't compromise religious convictions. The territory can be compromised. There is no urgency either to do it at this time. When people said if they don't do it, they will declare a state, so what? Let them declare a state. That's the inevitable result of outcome anyway.

HK: I don't see why.

HK: I really think everybody should step back. I believe a new President should send somebody he trusts around and listen very carefully to all the parties— to their tangible needs as well as their intangible demands, and try to inspire some confidence that we understand the problems. And then, not come up with American solutions, but see in what area solutions are possible. Because all the parties are all so trapped. Because on the one hand, they cannot agree to what is on the table. But they cannot win any conflict. So some solutions will have to emerge.

HK: Their what?

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HK: Hasn't reached me yet.

HK: What?

HK: Germany?

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Q: Yeah.

Q: Well, I saw it.

HK: "Furth, Germany?"

HK: Impossible.

HK: Absolutely impossible.

Q: Okay, it never happened.

HK: Like a what?

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Q: I looked through the Walter Issacson book about you, I don't know if you like it...

HK: I hate it.

Q: Well, there is a letter in here that you wrote (Inaudible) from Germany, where you found the one Jewish survivor of Furth, and it was a letter to his relatives in the States. And it is so beautifully written and so moving that it made me think you could have been a great novelist.

HK: I don't think I ever had the passion to write.

Q: It's not the Henry Kissinger the world thinks of. It is a deeply emotional letter, sensitive and it is very deeply knowledgeable about human nature

HK: I haven't read the whole book but ... I don't deny that it is a letter that I wrote.

Q: The chapter on Pinochet...?

A: What I have done is I have written a long chapter called "Peace and Justice," on which I discuss the evolution of American thinking. It is a chapter of a hundred and seventy-six pages. It is not a chapter on Pinochet. At the very end of which, there is a discussion of the concept of universal juristiction and within that, I have a discussion of Pinochet.

Q: Well, in the book that I read, and I'm sure that that piece is there, you say that it is a disaster, the English detention of Pinochet...?

K: I think it was wrong, yes.

Q: Why?

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A: Because it established a principle that any crime has nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of Pinochet. And I would not object and I do not object to a Chilean court trying him, or to a special court being set up by the United Nations on the model of the Yugoslav. I think the principle of an individual judge anywhere in the world (as was the case with a Spanish judge CD) being able to pursue any individual at his or her discretion, I think, is a very dangerous concept to establish, independent of the guilt or innocence of Pinochet.

A: Yes.

A: I think at this moment, the American public does not think it is in danger from anybody. We are living through a phase of American triumphalism, in which we think the spread of ideas in both politics and economics, will automatically guarantee universal peace, and that our obligation is really not foreign policy anymore, but missionary work. And I think that is not a sustainable position because the world will come back and impinge on us.

A: Because all the problems that I perceive in the world are medium and long term problems. How do you fit Russia into an international system, what is our relationship to a Europe that is becoming a political unit, what is the future of China that we have (indirectly), What is our role in areas like Southeast Asia--where I think Indonesia is being turned into a debacle, partly by American actions. All of

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INTRODUCTIONALAW01 Annual Update.DOC

And then you have Presidential candidates who are totally obsessed with the short-term consequences of their remarks, who are driven by focus groups. So it is very hard to imagine a Presidential candidate today who like Roosevelt in '37 would speak of "quarantining" an aggressor years down the road. But soon or later the world will impinge on us and then we will have to deal with it.

A: You know, I think, basically, we don't care if we are a people, right now, whether it is or it isn't. It is, as a matter of fact, hugely important and certainly people are wearing blue jeans and watching American television around the world. So in that sense...

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KISSINGER: That's correct.

KISSINGER: Yes.

DREIFUS: And I agree to that.

HK: I had to cancel it because I was working.. I love Adam Michnik, remarkable man. Would have loved to have seen him, but I had to...So why don't we do one or two questions, and then sort of wind it up because I don't see where we are going to take this in any meaningful manner anymore. It's, you know, about done.

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HK: Well, in the way first drafts reflect one's thinking ... they do not reflect my considered opinion in a comprehensive way. So we are in a... on the other hand you have nothing else to base it on. So you are innocent here.

Q: So help me a little bit.

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HK: Look, I'm 77 years old. I hate to go through life, These are arguments I've gone through for 35 years.

HK: Only those people who ...

Q: Yes, okay.

HK: Who had ...

Q: Okay, fine.

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Q: Meaning?

HK: Well, Meaning that on the one hand where I differed from the rioters or the demonstrators, it's... I think globalization is the most effective machinery that we've been invented for the increase of wealth and well-being.

HK: Wiped out.

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economy nor have they managed to establish a fully functional democracy. And there is enormous turmoil. ~~ part of it was caused by our policies, by the IMF policies. ~~ And so I think we can say we got through this one, but it is not an attitude which should continue.

And we have an extraordinary difficulty because we have never had to conduct a real foreign policy. We've been either isolated or dominant, ~~so we've never had the~~ need of a continuous foreign policy that has no ends (to do this, we need) and that you cannot break up into phases. So there is no American tradition which we can debate under, and that what I have attempted to do.

HK: In the '40s and '50s, we have great achievements throughout the world, ~~and~~ No other country could have done what we did. But it wasn't foreign policy. It was a global application of the New Deal, like World War II. It was tremendous. My hero, ~~as~~ in reconstruction, ~~and~~ Secretary of State was Dean Atcheson. I have huge admiration for Truman.

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HK: But this is not a foreign policy that can be done in this sort of foreign policy is no longer possible today because we are no longer that dominant. Other nations are no longer that much in need of us. It was absolutely essential that only America could do it.

And I once asked Truman of what he was most proud. And he said, "I am most proud of having totally defeated our enemies, those who have not that community of nations, as equals." And I would like to think only Americans would have done that.

Q: Meaning World War II.

HK: Yeah. And that was a remarkable thing, those who were noble statements, and I have great admiration for them, but that's no longer possible.

Q: Giants like Achchson and George Kennan, we don't seem to be producing them anymore.

HK: Because our politics has become brutally competitive. Because there was a leadership group, mostly from the Eastern states, that had some experience of Europe. Now foreign policy is not a subject that occupies budding careers. You don't make a career around foreign policy. And so there is no comparable group to the ones we had in the '40s, '50s and '60s, that was sort of destroyed during the Vietnam War and was never really reconstituted. So any new President that comes in, will find that.

I wrote an article last year, in which I said that about the impact of Vietnam, that when I was in graduate school, we thought government

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service as a high calling. We didn't think we could serve in government directly, so we thought of middle terms and contributions to thinking in the Vietnam War, the intellectual community split into two groups - job applicants and the revolutionaries.

The job applicants repeated the arguments of the bureaucracy and the revolutionaries rejected the very concept of American foreign policy. But the ground on which one policy has to be conducted in the long term, of progressing by stages towards a higher goal, has been ceded to temporary management of crises.

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HK: What?

HK: Almost invariably.

Q: Can you say more?

HK: Well, the IMF thinks its basic problem is to restore the creditworthiness of the country so that more money can be lent to it. And they have certain standard policies - austerity, raising taxes, devaluing the currency, all of which have a terribly blighting effect on the lives of the people. And the theory is, like in the 1930s, it's not just the local, it's all America, that in them as the economy improves, people will start lending money again. But when that hiatus is prolonged, it undermines the governments that are supposed to carry out the reforms.

In Korea I think they were lucky because Kim Dae Jung, who was on the Left, and a radical all of his life, was elected at a moment when these programs were put in place, and he had the legitimacy to do it. But if the normal Korean government had done it, it would not have worked there either.

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