Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee:

Thank you for the opportunity of appearing before you to discuss the direction of post-Cold War American foreign policy. It is surely one of the most difficult international challenges in our history, less dangerous than the Cold War had been but more complicated; less ominous than the world we encountered at the end of the Second World War, but more intricate. For the task before us is nothing less than to distill a sense of direction from a world in which almost all key elements are changing simultaneously.

That challenge has not yet been mastered. Too many Americans are under the illusion that their foreign policy tasks are already accomplished and seem tempted to turn their back on the world beyond our shores. A variety of factors--absence of a philosophical consensus, an uncertain Executive Branch, divisions between the Executive Branch and the Congress, Congressional macromanagement of foreign policy--threaten to marginalize American foreign policy. NATO is drifting; Western Hemisphere policy is marking time, torn between constructive pronouncements and operational lassitudes; in Asia, we are confronting the major powers, China and Japan, simultaneously, while relations with China are on a collision course. Around the world, more and more decisions are taken which the United States does not shape and which therefore do not take basic American interests adequately into account. Gradually, a pattern of international politics could creep into being that makes us increasingly uncomfortable, both in terms of our values and of our economic self-interest.

This of course is far from inevitable. The United States remains the world's most powerful nation and the strongest economy. The values which we profess continue to animate the quest for liberty in all parts of the globe. We retain the capability to shape a constructive world order. But to realize our potential requires a coherent foreign policy which engages a bipartisan consensus over an extended period of time similar to what sustained us through to victory in the Cold War.

## The New International Environment

The United States faces an unprecedented international situation on the basis of historical interpretations which

are in fact unique. Populated almost exclusively by immigrants, ours is the only country that has never experienced a powerful neighbor along its borders, and therefore has never had to face the security issues confronted by less favored nations. The Americans' perception of foreign policy was always one of nearly limitless choice and, above all, of having the ability to participate or to withdraw from international engagements at will. Every American initiative of the postwar period was presented to the American public as having a terminal date, after which America could again withdraw, allowing the postulated underlying harmonious pattern of the world to reassert itself.

Much of America's foreign policy has traditionally been presented in alternately psychiatric and theological terms: either as a means by which relations among nations could be conducted as they might be if they were relations among individuals, or when that did not seem possible, as a crusade to destroy or, even better, to convert antagonists to the American perception of international affairs. In that sense, the Cold War and victory in the Cold War were a culmination of America's perception of the special mission of international affairs.

How many historical examples, if any, can be recalled where a nation's leaders stated goals that, some forty years later, were practically all achieved? That is the position in which America finds itself at the end of the Cold War. But what Americans have not sufficiently understood is that foreign policy knows no plateaus; even the greatest achievement--perhaps especially the greatest achievement--leads to a decline if it is not the building block of a new advance.

For the first time in its history, America will be obliged to conduct a global foreign policy in the absence of an overwhelming ideological or strategic enemy, and in a world from which it can neither withdraw nor dominate. Thus, the classic maxim of American foreign policy--the invocation of an overwhelming crisis transmuted into large-scale enterprises--does not apply.

Paradoxically this occurs while the United States is the only remaining superpower. But military power by itself represents a simplistic assessment of the emerging international reality. For the issues susceptible to solution by military action are in decline. The kind of power in which the United States excels is less and less

3

relevant to most foreseeable international crises. On the
other hand, economies and technology are becoming much more
crucial. Even a cursory glance at the condition of the
dollar makes it clear that the relative economic position of
the United States is not what it was even ten years ago.

No, The current world contains six or seven major global players whose ability to affect nonmilitary decisions is essentially comparable. In such an international order, there are only two roads to stability: one is hegemony based on a country's dominance; the other is equilibrium, which is another way of describing the notorious balance of power. The trouble is that the American body politic tends to reject both approaches. Hegemony will prove physically draining; the American public seems determined to reject the role of global policeman which hegemony implies, and the course runs counter to the moral convictions of the American people. But balance of power has been historically rejected by the American political and intellectual communities as a source of endless tensions--though at crucial periods, such as in deciding to enter the two world wars to preserve the global balance of power, Americans have been prepared to overcome their prejudice. Still, a call to rely on the national interest is considered by many a revolutionary, if not a reactionary, proposition. And even when an attempt is made to apply the concept, the national interest continues to be defined in sweeping, ideological terms.

Yet the reality is that the emerging world order will
have to be based on some concept of equilibrium, at least
some concept of balance among its various regions. In
practice, this requires a balancing of dissatisfactions. It
is impossible for every participant in an international
system to be perfectly satisfied with every aspect and at
all times; that happy condition has never been achieved by
humanity. Still, it may be possible for the major players
to be sufficiently satisfied that they do not seek to
overthrow the international system by violence, terrorism,
economic warfare, or other methods so well elaborated in our
century.

But while post-Cold War foreign policy reflects some
traditional patterns, there are important differences as
well. For one thing, modern economics has changed the
nature of incentives. Historically, nations could effect
changes in the balance only by conquest. In our day,
technology permits quantum changes in a society's power by
changes entirely within its own territory. No conceivable
conquest could augment a nation's power like the acquisition

4

of nuclear weapons or the mastering of modern information
technology. Thus the paradox: nuclear proliferation is a
permanent temptation and a permanent danger while, at the
same time, the cost of war, at least among major powers, has
risen to near prohibitive levels.

Then, too, the elements of national strength are no
longer homogeneous. Many economic powerhouses--especially
in Asia and the Middle East--are politically fragile.
Communications are instantaneous, and economies are global.
Every day a trillion dollars moves in world financial
markets, only 5 percent of which is generated by commercial
transactions. Global well-being is becoming both
interconnected and precarious: a bank clerk in Singapore
managed to create $27 billion in derivatives in three days
and bring down a major international bank. But political
loyalties remain imprisoned in the nation state. And with
the breakup of old empires, conflicts have even shriveled to
the ethnic level where their intensity magnifies almost in
proportion as their global relevance is shrinking. Such
dichotomies complicate the evaluation and, even more, the
operation of any conceivable balance of power under modern
conditions.

Not just the United States but every major nation finds
itself in a transitional stage. The traditional European
nation state lacks the scale to deal with the entire
spectrum of contemporary problems. Russia is living within
borders it has not known since Peter the Great. China is
emerging as a world power for the first time in several
centuries while its leadership is changing. Japan is
reversing a pattern of political withdrawal.

How is American foreign policy to be defined in such a
period? Theoretically, the United States could pursue a
pure interest policy in the manner of Britain throughout
most of the 19th century: a posture of "splendid isolation,"
maintaining good relations wherever possible but throwing
its weight to the side that confers certain advantages at a
specific moment (which, in the British case, was generally
the weaker side). This would be a latter-day version of the
European balance-of-power diplomacy.

There are, however, huge, probably insurmountable,
obstacles to such a strategy. The first is that, whereas
Britain conducted its policy primarily in Europe, we would
have to conduct it globally. Secondly, Britain had a
leadership group that had trained itself in the conduct of
public policy. America has neither such a leadership group

5

nor any similar tradition of hard-headed, purely interest-oriented policy. Third, when communications are instantaneous, economics global, and politics democratic, it is probably not possible to conduct the same kind of cold-blooded policy in every part of the world simultaneously. Fourth, international stability is increasingly affected by splinter groups with no interest in the global equilibrium at all, usually ethnic groupings which, in fact, are using the major powers' desire for global order to achieve their own parochial objectives.

For the United States to practice its version of "splendid isolation" on a global basis under these circumstances would exhaust us physically and psychologically. A nation founded by people who have traditionally believed in the universal applicability of their values cannot simply abandon the Wilsonianism that had dominated 20th century American foreign policy.

Finding our way through this maze would be difficult enough were Americans at one in assessing the international situation. We are, however, divided, especially along generational lines. The generation that won the Cold War had its seminal experience in the Second World War and its immediate aftermath. They believed in a constructive American role and in the beneficent role of American power. The generation whose seminal experience was the Vietnam War holds a quite different view. They regard the Vietnam War not only as a terrible mistake but as an indictment of American power in general. Just as many who used the outcome of America's role in World War I as rationale for the nonintervention policy of the 1920s and 1930s, current American policy debates--whether in the Balkans or the Caribbean, in Africa or Asia--can best be understood in the context of a generation that views the world through a lens largely provided by a local and unsuccessful conflict. They do so by abdicating a foreign policy role by fleeing into either extreme multilateralism or extreme nationalism.

That difference in perspective is sharpened by one of the fundamental transformations of human consciousness through which our period is living: the change of the process of learning from books to pictures and from reading to viewing which roughly marks the borderline between the generations I have described. To learn from books, one requires concepts that relate seemingly disparate events to each other; pictures, on the other hand, teach by impressions which emphasize the mood of a moment. All this foreshortens the policy perspective and makes it more

6

vulnerable to fluctuating sentiments and transitory occurrences.

All these factors have shaped the argument between the advocates of a national interest-based philosophy and the so-called multilateralists. The first point of view states that America should base its foreign policy on a clear perception of the national interest, evoking some of the resistances I have sketched earlier. Most of us who embrace this proposition do not interpret the national interest in the extreme version described above. We would argue that the national interest, properly understood, has to encompass the relevance of our values to other societies; indeed, that forming an international consensus was part of America's interest. But we would also insist that objectives essential for American security or American values should be pursued alone, if necessary. While we would prefer some international support, in the extreme, we would be prepared to act alone.

The opposing point of view considers the American role in the Cold War to have been presumptuous, excessive, and even potentially evil, and seeks to discipline American power by reining it in through international institutions. Though the proponents of this view now present themselves as internationalists, they generally derive America's international role on a multilateral consensus.

Emphasis on multilateral diplomacy was one of President Clinton's campaign themes; Undersecretary of State Peter Tarnoff, in May 1993, insisted that America was losing the capacity to act alone while UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright has described Administration policy as "assertive multilateralism." The implication of such statements is that the national interest is on the whole defined by the attainable global consensus.

The trouble is that excessive reliance on multilateral diplomacy is proving starkly at variance with the realities of ethnic conflict, rampant nationalism and the emergence of multiple centers of power sketched earlier. In this fragmented world, excessive multilateralism leads either to abdication (as in Bosnia) or to sacrifices not tolerated by the American public because they are not perceived to reflect basic US interests (as in Somalia).

To be sure, only extreme and unrealistic nationalistic isolationism could categorize the national interest and international consensus as polar opposites. In the real

7

world, the difference is one of nuance: whether to start
with the national interest and exercise American leadership
to shape multilateral views; or whether the definition of
the national interest should be made dependent on the
emergence of a multilateral consensus. Yet on this very
nuance depends the possibility of a dynamic American foreign
policy.

Let me now apply these principles to two foreign policy
areas: Europe and Asia. There are many other policy areas
deserving of your attention, among them the Western
Hemisphere, nuclear proliferation or the Middle East. Given
the limitations of time, I shall deal with these areas on
another occasion as it is in Europe and Asia that our
foreign policy seems to me in deepest trouble.

US European Policy

For over a generation, the Atlantic Alliance has been
the bipartisan bedrock of American foreign policy, uniting
the oldest functioning democracies with genuinely
pluralistic systems and economies based on the market. In
the end, the nations of the Atlantic area need each other in
their own self-interest. Without America, Europe turns into
a peninsula at the tip of Eurasia, unable to find
equilibrium much less unity and at risk of gradually
subsiding into a role similar to that of ancient Greece in
relation to Rome--the only outstanding question being
whether America or Russia will play the role of Rome.
Without Europe, America will become an island off the shores
of Eurasia, condemned to a kind of pure balance-of-power
politics difficult to reconcile with its national genius.
Without America, Europe's role will shrink. Without Europe,
America's path will be precarious and lonely; after all, we
fought two world wars to prevent the domination of Europe by
potentially hostile powers.

A major American role in Europe is a prerequisite for
European coherence. Without it, the European Union would
founder on the fear of German domination; France would see
reinsurance in a Russian option; historic European
coalitions would form, compounding their traditional
tenuousness with irrelevance; Germany would be tempted into
a nationalist role, Russia into revisionism.

An American presence in Europe provides a measure of
equilibrium. It gives France assurance against German
hegemony and Germany a security anchor against Russian

HENRY A. KISSINGER

July 27, 1998

Dear Ted:

Many thanks for your note and deadline
reminder for my contribution to the
volume for Helmut's birthday. Barring
any crises in the course of finishing
my own book, I do not expect any
problem getting my piece to you by
August 15th.

Since our last correspondence, my office
has checked with Welt am Sonntag as to
whether, on this occasion, Die Zeit could
publish my article. My editor has no
objection, and thus you may include my
contribution together with those of the
other authors following the book's
publication.

Looking forward to seeing you this fall,

Dr. Theo Sommer
Die Zeit
20079 Hamburg
Germany

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NOV - 6 1997

Dr. Marion Gräfin Dönhoff
Dr. Theo Sommer

29 October 1997

Dear Henry,

Helmut Schmidt is going to turn 80 on December 23, 1998. Thinking how we could best render homage to him, his friends thought that we should rather not compile one of the usual *Festschriften* but put together a volume in which competent authors present their views about major problems of the next 20 years.

This volume in honour of Helmut Schmidt who has been connected with DIE ZEIT since 1984, first as its Chief Executive Officer, then as one of its Editors, should be in the book stores by the beginning of December 1998. Your contribution and those of other friends of Helmut Schmidt's could then be published in DIE ZEIT during the first half of 1999 under a headline such as "Towards 2020".

We would very much like to count you amongst the authors. You would help many of our contemporaries to find their bearing in time of rapid and unprecedented change. Also we know that Helmut Schmidt values his friendship with you he would certainly be highly gratified to read your contribution.

.../- 2 -

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