[Y]

23

imperative that the nations of the West - that is, the Western
Hemisphere and a Europe consisting of NATO plus most of the
former Soviet satellite countries - form some kind of political
and economic community to deal with the political, economic and
social crises that are inevitable within each of countries if
current technological trends continue. It is going to be tough
enough to deal with these problems even if we are united. But if
we reexhaust ourselves in exercising the nationalisms that have
been the scourge of Western Civilization in these parts, we have
no future at all - especially in the face of the migrations and
the fundamentalism that lie ahead. One idea of how to achieve
this - just to have something to start with - is the North
Atlantic Free Trade Area. But I am not here to push any
particular idea; I was asked to speak about the order of the 21st
century and I have tried to raise some of the issues on my mind.

Let me conclude with a Spanish proverb which may be
relevant. The proverb says: "*Traveller, there are no roads. Roads
are made by walking.*" I think that is the challenge to our

[Y]

24

societies right now, and that is how the 21st century world order
will come into being.

Prof. Henry Kissinger Ph.D., geb. 1923 in Fürth, Studium an der
Harvard University, 1954 Promotion, 1951-1971 Direktor des
Internationalen Seminars der Harvard University, 1954-1971
Professor dort, 1968-1973 außen- und sicherheitspolitischer
Berater der US-Regierung, 1973-1977 Außenminister der Vereinigten
Staaten von Amerika, seitdem Berater internationaler Firmen und
Verbände, 1973 gemeinsam mit Le Duc Tho Friedensnobelpreis, 1987
Karlspreis der Stadt Aachen.

UNEDITED VERSION - SENT TO GINA VIA CCMAIL 2/16/96

UNIV. OF BRAUNSCHWEIG 6/7/95

1

Henry A. Kissinger

Outlook for the 21st century

Herr Präsident Rebe, Herr Ministerpräsident, Freund Carl
Friedrich von Weizsäcker. Ich werde mir erlauben, einige Sätze
auf deutsch zu sagen. Ich weiß, daß nördlich des Mains mein
fränkischer Akzent besonders belustigend empfunden wird, so daß
sie froh sein werden, wenn ich auf englisch weitermache. Ich
denke über alle diese Probleme auf englisch, und wenn ich
versuche, eine Rede auf deutsch zu halten, und für mich selbst
übersetze, wird es immer schwieriger, je länger die Rede dauert.
Wenn ich jemals aufgefordert würde, eine Rede über Fußball zu
halten, könnte ich das glänzend auf deutsch, denn das war mein
Vokabular, als ich Deutschland verlassen habe. Aber jetzt werde
ich auf englisch fortfahren.

My subject is to talk about the outlook for the 21st century. And I wish I could give you a precise description and prescription of what the 21st century should look like. But I'm trying to tell you that I know more questions than answers. We all speak of the new world order as if it has already arrived. But we are at the beginning of an extraordinarily complex process for which none of our countries have any previous experience. The United States have never been in a world which it could neither dominate nor withdraw from Europe has only recently been in a world in which the national state as developed in the 19st century is too small but the larger unit has not yet been formed. Russia lives within borders that it has not experienced since Peter the Great. China and Japan, for the first time in their history, are participating in global international politics. Beyond that there has developed an incommandable ability between political convictions, economic realities and technological necessities. The 19st century was a period of considerable progress because the political organization that evolved the nation-state corresponded to the economic realities so that the political unit that was been governed, reflected the objective necessities and possibilities of the period. And technology maintained a balance between progress and what could be achieved by human labor. All of these conditions are fundamentaly altered. We live in a world of global economics. Not only of global economics but of almost arbitrary decisions.

When a young bank employee can create an international financial
crisis by creating 27 billion dollars of currency with his own
decision in the space of three days it is senseless to talk about
management control in the traditional sense. The other day I was
being briefed by the management of one of the largest American
banks analysis. And they proudly told me that when they had to

[LC]

2

asses a transaction with an opposite number their analyst had 26
criterias as he was sitting before his computer screen. And he
had to keep in mind these 26 criterias. And I said to them: There
are three problems you face as far as I can see. Assuming the
fellow at the other side of the screen also has 26 criterias,
what are the odds that they are the same? And what is more
dangerous that the criteria don't match or that they do match and
everybody runs to the same side of the boat simultaneously and
tips it over? And now we have only spoken about a two-sided
transaction. When you have hundreds of thousands of transactions
taking place simultanously and trillions of currency being moved
daily how can we predict and even more how can we handle
financial crisis and how can our political system survive? The
only one fundamental crisis that can ever happen. Because if it
does happen all our political presumptuous positions on will be
unalteredly changed. I have no answer to this question. But
neither did they and they are the ones sitting at the computer
screens. No previous period had to consider questions of this
kind. In no previous period could statesmen observe events with
this respect of this spectrum which they needed to make a
decision in real time. And this in happening at a moment when the
political conciouses of the majority of the population that are
effected by these decisions is in my view not expanding and may
be shrinking. So that there is no longer any proportionallity
between political loyalness and economic reality. Indeed there is
a temptation by political leaders to use some foreign challenges
as a means to realize their own domestic opinions.

There seems to be a correspondance at least in the United States
between trade-prices and congressional necessities. So there are
unpresented conditions and if they are happening in every country
simultaneously they make it extremly difficult to speak of a
world order. By world order I mean arrangements in the political,
economic, social and scientific field that are preceived to be
legitimated by most ot those who have to preserve them. At least
legitimated enough so that they don't overthrow the whole sytem
and seek their adjustments by marginal changes. That is the
fundamental challenge of our period.

Now it is compounded in the United States and will be in other
countries by the fact that we are also living in a fundamental
change of generations. It is personally depressing to me that I
find myself now speaking of the younger generation. When I was a
student I thought of people of my present age not as older
versions of myself but as a different genius that have been put
into the world in their present age and were a different type.
But anyway I now speak of the younger generation. And when one
reachers a certain stage it is inevitable that there is a
difference in experience. But I believe we are now witnessing
also a qualitative difference in perceptions similar to the one
that occured when printing was invented. My generation was
brought up on books. I learned by concepts. When you think in

[LC]

3

concepts you have to manage to relate disparate experiences to each other. My children's generation learned from pictures on television, on computers. They learned not from concepts but from impressions. I wasted my time trying to write elegantly which helps a reader. It is unnecessary for those who recieve their information on computer screens. It creates a different way of learning that we do not yet fully understand. May be deeper in many respects. In a funny way there may be less room for imaginations because when you read a novel you have to create the picture yourself. When you see a television performance it is handed to you. But certainly more emotional I think it effects politics in a fundamental way.

When I was a young professor, political leaders, if they did ask my opinion, would ask me what to think. Today political leaders ask me what to say. They are much more interested in sound bits. They are much more driven by the evening-news. They want to react to the impressions that have been created among their constitutions and I don't say this as a criticism, this is a reality. If I were in active politics today, I would be driven by the same necessities. The question is: the test of great statesmen is their ability to shape the future. It is their obligation to take their societies from where they are to where they have never been.

For this they must have the intellectual and moral courage to walk alone, for some distance, though in a democracy this must be balanced, against the need of receiving approval at the same point. But very little in our societies produces this inward strength and very little in our political systems indeed produces the possibility of taking such a course and surviving politically. So when we talk about world order, who are the people that can take a broad enough view and are willing to walk that road. I do not say that as a criticism. I say this as a challenge among the questions to which I do not pretend to have an answer.

Now let me illustrate this by some of the countries that compose the international system and than comeback again to the problem with which I began. I begin with the United States. The United States as I said before, finds itself in a world for which it has very little intellectual preparation. America, populated largely by the immigrants, has lived in an environment in which it never had a security problem, until well after the Second World War. Its people believed that they had turned away from Europe, that they had done better and that their internal qualities, applied on a world scale, would produce universal peace. I have always been struck by the phenomena of president Wilson. Who after over a centure of American isolation, emerged on this screen on 1917 and said: everything anybody had ever thought about foreign policies through the centuries, was totally wrong. International affairs had to be reorganized according to principles nobody had

[L.C.]

4

ever heard at that point.

Now I am not going to debate the issue of the merit of his views. To me the interesting thing is, that not one leading American figure that I can think of, either in academic life or in politics said: how do you know all this? What is the evidence for what you are saying? He reflected a deep American conviction, the idea that the spread of democracy automatically produces peace, that self-determination must be the key to international politics, that the balance of power is inherently evil. That foreign policy can be conducted on psychiatric principles, has never been seriously challenged in the United States. Today we have this strange phenomenon that many of the people who have violently opposed to the Vietnam war - at the end, not at the beginning -, who used it as an example of the immorality of America, are now urging us, to go into Bosnia with exactly the same arguments they used at the beginning of the Vietnam war.

There is a journalist on the New York Times, who used to write the most passionate articles against the way Nixon and I extricated our-selves from Vietnam, because it wasn't fast enough, who now, three times a week, is urgin us to enter Bosnia. In fact, the extrem left and the extrem right in American politics: are united on that proposition.

I find myself being battered having gotten out of Vietnam too slowly for not being willing to go into Bosnia at all. But that is a different issue. I am not arguing the merits of these thesis. I am talking about the mentality we have to deal with.

America now finds itself in a world to four, five, six operationaly equal countries. I say operationaly equal. We are told we are then only superpower and in a technically military sense this is true. The problem is that the issues which can be solved by military means are shrinking and the relevance of our military power to almost all ot the issues you can imagine, is declining.

That problem is even more complex because Americans do not like to use military power for politically reasons, they like to fight crusades. And what crusades are to be faught? The cold war is over, there is no ideologically enemy. There is no single huge task of construction.

Now for most Europeans the concept that in a world of five, six, seven more or less equal powers - more or less equal in a sense of what they can do to effect the cause of events - it would be selfevident that one aspect of such a challenge is some idea of equilibrium, some means of reducing the incentive for excassiv action by anybody. That is a very difficult concept to get across in the United States.

[LC]

5

If you look at American foreign policy in the last four weeks. We
have gotten into a fight with Japan, with China, with Iran and
over Bosnia in one four week period. One would say prudence would
require to separate ones opponents and not fight all of them
simultaneously. I don't say this as a criticism of this
administration. It is a conceptual problem, and therefore America
is at the beginning of a complexe intellectual debate, which
hasn't fully started yet; which in my view will start with next
years presidential campaigne and which will take three to four
years to work itself out. We need some definition of the national
interest. We need some concept of world order. All the more so,
as some of the conventional wisdom that is used by all
participants in this world order, seems to me at least not
selfevident.

I believe, for example that all of our Western societies with
high industrial capacities have not yet fully faced the problems
of today. One: In the 19th century technology and labour were in
some balance. That is to say, you could increase production in
the end only by increasing the work force. That is no longer
true. You can increase production substancially today by
decreasing the workforce. And therefore it is possible to have
both, economic growth and social depression side by side with
each other. And indeed the rationality of the modern economies
leads not only to the unemployment of the traditional manual
labourers but also to the unemployment of the white collar
workers. Creating a diseffectiv middle class with our hope
reemployen. I mention this because this reality may contribute
to the demoralisation of all Western societies at the moment
which we face a second challenge which economist dispute. But I
think they are being totally abstract.

When one travels in Asia - in China, South East Asia, soon India,
Indonesia - one sees the extraordinary capacity, industrial
capacity that is being created there by western technology. So
that it is therefore equivalent to western production methods. It
is difficult to see how that productive capacity can fail to lead
to a levelling of living standards around the world. At any rate
it is not a self evident proposition. If that is true all our
societies have domestic problems and an international problem.
They will have to ask themselves - not now when we are selling
maschine but 25 years from now when these maschines are producing
- what will happen to the structures of our societies and to the
nature of international politics.

I would add one other elements. We in the West - Europe, Latin
America and the United States - in our relations with each other
cannot conceive the use of military force in the settlemen of our
dispute. Whatever else we do, a war between European states
outside ethnic conflicts in marginal alliances areas or in the
western hemisphere between major countries is inconcievable. So
that is one pattern of international relation.

[L.C.]

6

It is not true in the other parts of the world. I would say, that if you travel in Asia the relation of Japan, China, Korea, Indonesia, Asian parts of Russia to each other is much more similar to 19th century Europe or pre-world-war II Europe than to the present world. So we have simultaneously two different approaches to world order. The one in the world of the civilization we know best and the one in the other regions. And yet other regions like Africa do not have strategic conflicts, but they have ethnic conflicts of a violence that we have not seen since the Middle Ages, if ever. So if we go and look out other countries, other regions just briefly. I already said that the European national state is no longer adequat for the challenges of this periode, even though it dominated last century. But in what form and into what units it will organize itself is one of the unsolved problems. I will not talk about the relationship between the Maastrich Europe and the more confederated Europe, since this is primarily a problem for Europeans to solve. But I do believe that it is very important to define the bounderies of what that Europe is, that is going to be formed by whatever method. And therefore I believe that we have all been neglectfull, Europe with respect to the European Union, America and Europe with respect to Nato in leaving open the question of what happens to the former satellite states of Eastern Europe. All the technical issues will solve themselves once we know we are delimited. The most dangerous thing to do is to create a nomansland between Russia and Germany that is to say Europe, which will tempt everybody into national policies to try to build that vacuum and which will delay the organization of this Europe.

And this is all the more a problem because contrary to many views I do not believe that Russia is threatened by drawing a border for Europe. I would make the opposite pole. I would say, Russia is threatened most by having vacuums around its borders that will tempt it to go back to ist historic policy of expansionism. Russia has a different tradition. Ist religion has always been a state religion. It had no enleightment. It had no capitalism. It had no age of exploration. It therefore will solve these problems in a different way. But it has huge resources. And wich nuclear wapons the danger of an invasion from Europe is zero.

So the biggest problem for Russia is to encourage it for the first time in its history to turn to its internal affaires and if it does that, there is a better prospect for democracy than to play around with this various political forces that now appear in Moscow and that are by definition transitory phenomena. So, I believe that the atlantic region and Europe should be build and should extend a hand to Russia, recognising that the processes there will be of a different nature.

Let me say a few words about China and Japan. I visit China very

[LC]

7

often and I am struck by a number of phenomena. When I asked or when one asks one of our civilization when an event happened they give you a date. When you ask a Chinese when an event happened he gives you a dynastie. Most of these dynasties have lasted longer than the entire history of the United States. When you travel in China you will rarely come to a province which does not have a population larger than the largest European country, and you will never come to provinces which have a population like a middle-sized European country, say the Netherlands. Luxembourg is inconcivable. These is a billion two hundred people. It is a different rhythm. It is a different perspective. Our countries could not conceive conducting developement on the basis that half the country left out of it entirely.

When Germany was unified the decision was made that it was impossible to leave the new states in a differenciated position from the Federal Republic even for a few years. In China this has been damned to six hundred million people, while the rest of the country is advancing very rapidly and yet was there any other possibility?

In China it is perfectly possible, it has happened to me, that you are told by the central government what its economic program is and than you visit a province close by. And the governor of that province - not some radicals - will give you a program that has no relationship to the central government and will tell you that he has his own resources. And while he will pay his taxes to the central government he feels free to race money on international market where he can get it. Inconceivable in any western society. And yet there has been phantastic progress. But the rhythm is different. The restraines on government are different.

Western businessmen come to me and tell me that they are desperate to get arbitration clauses into their business deals with China. Incomprehensible to the Chinese. Chinese do not believe you can settle these disputes in courts. Basically they keep their agreements. But if necessity would force them to brake an agreement they cannot for the life of them understand why they cannot brake the arbitration clauses as well. So, we in Washington, when we make an overture to Taiwan have the tendency to explain it to Beijing on the ground that it doesn't mean anything. Of course their question is: When it does not mean anything why do you do it? Why would you do meaningless things? What the Chinese want from the United States is: the live in a world of the growth of Japanese power. Of may be a shift of the center gravity of Russia to Asia, may be not, but it's one possibility of possible unification of Korea, the emergence of a powerful India. They want one fundamental thing that is to understand how we are going to operate that balance of power. That is the one question we can't answer because we don't think of it this way. So we go to the Chinese and lecture them on

[L.C.]

8

economics, belief procedures, all the agenda of liberal American
democracy on the supposition that this will also contribute to
universal peace. And when the Chinese says we provoke them it's
really not a deliberate policy, it is a genuine difference in
perspective that could affect the international order.

Chinese had been around for many thousands of years and they are
willing to adjust to the preconceptions of others but they are
not willing to accept the internal political philosophy,
especially of countries that for a hundred years did not treat
them with excessiv respect. And than there is Japan. Americans
and the rest of us in general believe that conversion is a tool
of foreign policy. And so they tended to think that Japan in 1945
underwent a fundamental change. But Japan lived in total
isolation for 500 years with no contact whatever to the outside
world and has a history of two thousand years, perhaps the most
special and particular institutions of any country in the world.
Move like a family than a nation. So the idea of a fundamental
change is not all that self-evident.

I once had a meeting with a group of eminent Japanese and I felt
fascinated by a phenomenen in Japanese politics which is that
their major parties are divided into fractions. And that the
leaders of the fractions are not elected but appointed by their
predecessors - in other words - that they are feudal instruments.
And so I asked this group: Has it ever happened that a member of
a fraction voted against his fraction leader? Moreover,
primeministers are not elected in Japan, either they are produced
by agreement among the fraction. They are always reported between
elections, not after an election. So they thought that was an
interesting question. And they started going back cabinet by
cabinet. Before they knew it we were in the thirties. So in their
mind there was not that big a difference between the cabinets of
the fifties and sixties structurally in policy with the huge
cabinets of the thirties. A country with this self-assurance
could nettle under American protection so long as there was only
one enemy. But with the emergence of Asian pluralism and the
decline of the American capacity, not even to speak of
willingness to influence events, the Japanese position is bound
to alter. The Japanese military budget today is considerably
larger than the German military budget, but nobody pays attention
to it. It is the third largest in the world. But is been used the
way the German military force was built in the twenties and early
thirties to create a basis for their rapid expansion and not yet
to engage in rapid expansion. And Japanese policy will become
more assertive I am not saying anti-American, but more assertive.
Now I have said enough to indicate that there are huge challenges
when we talk about would order.

And we in the United States have the problem that the Vietnam war
has wracked the central community within the intellectual
community. When I was a young professor my colleagues and I never

[LC]

9

expected to get into high government positions. So, we thought
that the way to effect events was to think five or ten years
ahead. And we were working on problems some of which Professor
von Weizsäcker participated in on arms control of that nature.

As a result of the Vietnam war the social science part of the
intellectual community has been divided between those who want to
make revolution and those who want to be job applicants. A part
wants to undermine the system, and another part wants to get a
job in Washington. So neither is contributing to long range
thinking.

And so the questions I am raising are not of systematically
attack. Right now, on the issue of Bosnia, we have this real
debate in America. Is Bosnia a Munich or is it a Vietnam? Those
who want to go in say: You don't go in it is bound to spread.
Those who don't want to go in say: You must not fight a conflict
whose purpose you cannot describe and whose end is unforseeable.
But the underlying features are what is the fundamental
experience? I believe it is not like Munich, because it is not
pure aggression, it is an ethnic conflict.

But I don't want to get into this now. I'm trying to speak of the
need to think through these issues. I have no answers to all the
problems I have given to you. I have only one general condition
and it is this: In the world that I have described it is nearly
imperative that the nations of the West - that is North America,
Western hemisphere and the Europe that I have described, that is
the Europe of Nato plus most of the former satellite countries -
form some kind of political and economic community to deal with
either the political conflicts or the economic conflicts or the
social crises that are inevitable within each of countries if
these technological trends continue. It is going to be tough
enough to deal with these problems if we are together. When we
reexhaust each other in the nationalism that has been the course
of western civilization in this part of this century we have no
future at all. In the face of migrations, in the face of
fundamentalisms that are ahead of us.

How exactly to do this I don't insist on. Just to have an idea
around I proposed a few weeks ago and others have picked it up:
The idea of North Atlantic Freetrade Area, just to have something
to start with. But I am not here, to push a particular idea. I
was asked to speak about the order of the 21st century. And I
tried to raise the questions that are on my mind. And I will
reconclude with a Spanish proverb which may be relevant. The
proverb says: "*Traveller, there are no roads. Roads are made by
walking.*" I think that is the challenge of our societies right
now and that is how the 21st century world order will come into
being.

June 7, 1995

University of Braunschweig

# Outlook for the 21st century

## Henry Kissinger

Herr Präsident Rebe, Herr Ministerpräsident, Freund Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. Ich werde mir erlauben, einige Sätze auf deutsch zu sagen. Ich weiß, daß nördlich des Main's mein fränkischer Akzent besonders belästigend empfunden wird, so daß Sie froh sein werden, wenn ich auf englisch weitermache. Ich denke über alle diese Probleme auf englisch, und wenn ich eine Rede versuche, auf deutsch zu halten, und für mich selbst übersetze, wird es immer schwieriger, je länger die Rede dauert. Wenn ich jemals aufgefordert würde, eine Rede über Fußball zu halten, könnte ich das glänzend auf deutsch, denn das war mein Vokabular, als ich Deutschland verlassen habe. Aber ich werde jetzt auf englisch weitermachen, und mir wurde gesagt, daß ich am Ende meiner Rede einige Fragen beantworten kann. Auf welche Methode das gemacht wird, wurde mir noch nicht verraten.

My subject is to talk about the outlook for the 21st century. And I wish I could give you a precise description and prescription of what the 21st century should look like. But I'm trying to tell you that I know more questions than answers. We all speak of the new world order as if it has already arrived. But we are at the beginning of an extraordinarily complex process for which none of our countries have any previous experience. The United States have never been in a world which it could neither dominate nor withdraw from Europe has only recently been in a world in which the national-state as developed in the 19st century is too small but the larger unit has not yet been formed. Russia lives within borders that it has not experienced since Peter the Great. China and Japan, for the first time in their history, are participating in global international politics.

1

President Rebe, Mr. Ministerpräsident, friend Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. I will take the liberty of saying a few sentences in German. I know that north of the Main my Franconian accent can be annoying so that you will be pleased if I continue on in English. I think about all these issues in English, and thus if I try to give a speech in German—and translate it for myself—it becomes more and more difficult the longer the speech. If I'm ever called upon to talk about soccer, however, that I could do brilliantly in German since that was my vocabulary when I left Germany. But I will now continue in English and will answer a few questions at the conclusion of my remarks—however the organizers wish to arrange this.

When a young bank employee can create an international financial crisis by creating 27 billion dollars of currency with his own decision in the space of three days it is senseless to talk about management control in the traditional sense. The other day I was being briefed by the management of one of the largest American banks analysis. And they proudly told me that when they had to asses a transaction with an opposite number their analyst had 26 criterias as he was sitting before his computer screen. And he had to keep in mind these 26 criterias. And I said to them: There are three problems you face as far as I can see. Assuming the fellow at the other side of the screen also has 26 criterias, what are the odds that they are the same? And what is more dangerous that the criteria don't match or that they do match and everybody runs to the same side of the boat simultaneously and tips it over? And now we have only spoken about a two-sided transaction. When you have hundreds of thousands of transactions taking place simultanously and trillions of currency being moved daily how can we predict and even more how can we handle financial crisis and how can our political system

2

There seems to be a correspondance at least in the United States between trade-prices and congressional necessities. So there are unpresented conditions and if they are happening in every country simultaneously they make it extremly difficult to speak of a world order. By world order I mean arrangements in the political, economic, social, and scientific field that are preceived to be legitimited by most ot those who have to preserve them. At least legitimated enough so that they don't overthrow the whole sytem and seek their adjustments by marginal changes. That is the fundamental challenge of our period.

[Y]

present age not as older versions of myself but as a different genius that have been put into the world in their present age and were a different type. But anyway I now speak of the younger generation. And when one reaches a certain stage it is inevitable that there is a difference in experience. But I believe we are now witnessing also a qualitative difference in perceptions similar to the one that occured when printing was invented. My generation was brought up on books. I learned by concepts. When you think in concepts you have to manage to relate disparate experiences to each other. My children's generation learned from pictures on television, on computers. They learned not from concepts but from impressions. I wasted my time trying to write elegantly which helps a reader. It is unnecessary for those who retrieve their information on computer screens. It creates a different way of learning that we do not yet fully understand. May be deeper in many respects. In a funny way there may be less room for imaginations because when you read a novel you have to create the picture yourself. When you see a television performance it is handed to you. But certainly more emotional think it effects politics in a fundamental way.

4

Now let me illustrate this by some of the countries that compose the international system and than comeback again to the problem with which I began. I begin with the United States. The United States as I said before, finds itself in a world for which it has very little intellectual preparation. America, populated largely by the immigrants, has lived in an environment in which it never had a security problem, until well after the Second World War. Its people believed that they had turned away from Europe, that they had done better and that their internal qualities, applied on a world scale, would produce universal peace. I have always been struck by the phenomena of president Wilson. Who after over a centure of American isolation, emerged on this screen on 1917 and said: everything anybody had ever thought about foreign policies through the centuries, was totally wrong. International affairs had to be reorganized according to principles nobody had ever heard at that point.

Y

If you look at American foreign policy in the last four weeks. We have gotten into a fight with Japan, with China, with Iran and over Bosnia in one four week period. One would say prudence would require to separate ones opponents and not fight all of them simultanously. I don't say this as a criticism of this administration. It is a conceptual problem, and therefore America is at the beginning of a complexe intellectual debate, which hasn't fully started yet; which in my view will start with next years presidential campaigne and which will take three to four years to work itself out. We need some definition of the national interest. We need some concept of world order. All the more so, as some of the conventional wisdom that is used by all participants in this world order, seems to me at least not selfevident.

7

could increase production in the end only by increasing the work force.
That is no longer true You can increase production substancially today by
decreasing the workforce. And therefore it is possible to have both,
economic growth and social depression side by side with each other. And
indeed the rationality of the modern economies leads not only to the
unemployment of the traditional manual labourers but also to the
unemployment of the white collar workers. Creating a diseffectiv middle
class with our hope reemployen. I mention this because this reality may
contribute to the demoralisation of all Western societies at the moment
which we face a second challenge which economist dispute. But I think
they are being totally abstract.

When one travelles in Asia - in China, South East Asia, soon India,
Indonesia - one sees the extraordinary capacity, industrial capacity that
is being created there by western technology. So that it is therefore
equivalent to western production methods. It is difficult to see how that
productive capacity can fail to lead to a levelling of living standards
around the world. At any rate it is not a self evident proposition. If that is
true all our societies have domestic problems and an international
problem. They will have to ask themselves - not now when we are selling
maschine but 25 years from now when these maschines are producing -
what will happen to the structures of our societies and to the nature of
international politics.

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And this is all the more a problem because contrary to many views I do not believe that Russia is threatened by drawing a border for Europe. I would make the opposite pole. I would say, Russia is threatened most by having vacuums around its borders that will tempt it to go back to its historic policy of expansionism. Russia has a different tradition. Its religion has always been a state religion. It had no enleightment. It had no capitalism. It had no age of exploration. It therefore will solve these problems in a different way. But it has huge resources. And with nuclear weapons the danger of an invasion from Europe is zero.

So the biggest problem for Russia is to encourage it for the first time in its history to turn to its internal affairs and if it does that, there is a better prospect for democracy than to play around with this various political forces that now appear in Moscow and that are by definition transitory phenomena. So, I believe that the Atlantic region and Europe should be build and should extend a hand to Russia, recognising that the processes there will be of a different nature.

Let me say a few words about China and Japan. I visit China very often and I am struck by a number of phenomena. When I asked or when one asks one of our civilization when an event happened they give you a date. When you ask a Chinese when an event happened he gives you a dynastie. Most of these dynasties have lasted longer than the entire history of the United States. When you travel in China you will rarely come to a province which does not have a population larger than the largest European country, and you will never come to provinces which have a population like a middle-sized European country, say the Netherlands. Luxembourg is inconcivable. These is a billion two hundred

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people. It is a different rhythm. It is a different perspective. Our countries
could not conceive conducting development on the basis that half the
country left out of it entirely.

When Germany was unified the decision was made that it was
impossible to leave the new states in a differentiated position from the
Federal Republic even for a few years. In China this has been damned
to six hundred million people, while the rest of the country is advancing
very rapidly and yet was there any other possibility?

In China it is perfectly possible, it has happened to me, that you are told
by the central government what its economic program is and than you
visit a province close by. And the governor of that province - not some
radicals - will give you a program that has no relationship to the central
government and will tell you that he has his own resources. And while he
will pay his taxes to the central government he feels free to race money
on international market where he can get it. Inconceivable in any western
society. And yet there has been phantastic progress. But the rhythm is
different. The restrictions on government are different.

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Y

What the Chinese want from the United States is: the live in a world of
the growth of Japanese power. Of may be a shift of the center gravity of
Russia to Asia, may be not, but it's one possibility of possible unification
of Korea, the emergence of a powerful India. They want one fundamental
thing that is to understand how we are going to operate that balance of
power. That is the one question we can't answer because we don't think
of it this way. So we go to the Chinese and lecture them on economics,
belief procedures, all the agenda of liberal American democracy on the
supposition that this will also contribute to universal peace. And when the
Chinese says we provoke them it's really not a deliberate policy, it is a
genuine difference in perspective that could affect the international order.

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And we in the United States have the problem that the Vietnam war has
wracked the central community within the intellectual community. When
I was a young professor my colleagues and I never expected to get into
high government positions. So, we thought that the way to effect events

And so the questions I am raising are not of systematically attack. Right
now, on the issue of Bosnia, we have this real debate in America. Is
Bosnia a Munich or is it a Vietnam ? Those who want to go in say: You
don't go in it is bound to spread. Those who don't want to go in say: You
must not fight a conflict whose purpose you cannot describe and whose
end is unforseeable.

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How exactly to do this I don't insist on. Just to have an idea around I
proposed a few weeks ago and others have picked it up: The idea of
North Atlantic Freetrade Area, just to have something to start with. But I
am not here, to push a particular idea. I was asked to speak about the
order of the 21st century. And I tried to raise the questions that are on my
mind. And I will reconclude with a spanish proverb which may be relevant.
The proverb says: "Traveller, there are no roads. Roads are made by
walking." I think that is the challenge of our societies right now and that
is how the 21st century world order will come into being.

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