[Y]

is closer to Seattle than it is to Moscow. There is no nation in Europe of such dimensions. Russia includes Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Historically, Russian foreign policy has been equally of a scale unique unto itself. Now it is true that Russia has been invaded twice (or, if you include the Crimean War, three times) from Europe. It is also true that, if you look at history since the time of Peter the Great, Russia has fought more wars than any other country and against more of its neighbours, in the process acquiring more and more territory. And it did not acquire this territory by plebicite.

Thus Russia is presently living within borders unprecedented since the early 18th century. Yet many in the West think that the spread of democracy and market economics in Russia will automatically produce a peaceful world. For that was the essence of the Wilsonian dream. Indeed, an American scholar wrote a text only three or four years ago called The End of History in which he professed that the spread of market economics and democracy had caused foreign policy to come to an end and that all history would

13

EYJ

henceforth consist of domestic economics. That sort of attitude tempted all the Western nations to identify foreign policy with the (still current) preoccupation with Russian domestic politics. It has moreover led, first to the view that Gorbachev was essential for peace and, subsequently, to the view that Yeltsin is essential for peace, together with a temptation to try to identify groups in Russia that we ought to back and encourage.

I believe this to be a grave mistake. The internal evolution of Russia is a Russian problem. We can encourage reform by economic assistance where that assistance genuinely brings about change. But we can not identify personally with Russian leaders or approach that country's historic evolution on the basis of our domestic preferences primarily. What we need to do is to identify the foreign policy problems that Russia creates as well as the foreign policy opportunities which cooperation with Russia can provide.

Historically, Russia has had a curious attitude towards foreign policy: in those issues beyond the reach of the Russian armies, or beyond the capabilities of the Russian armies, Russia

14

[Y]

conducted typically European policies in its international affairs.

In other issues - Central Asia, the Far East, the Balkans - that is, areas where there was no balance of power - were the responsibility of the so-called Asiatic Department. There Russia refused to submit its policies to European or international conferences and acted unilaterally, just as we have been witnessing lately in Chechenya. This was true even in the post-World War II period when the Soviet Union would not discuss Eastern Europe as an international problem but simply occupied it, thus creating an altogether new geopolitical reality.

From the Russian point of view, one can argue that the tragedies of Russia were caused by overextension. Having so many foreign peoples under its rule imposed on Russia the requirement of maintaining an army much larger than any required by other European states. But, thereby, Russia also frightened its neighbours. And a seemingly endless expansionism ensued that had no specific goal other than eliminating vacuums.

I would therefore argue that there are two necessities in

15

[Y]

foreign policy: first, to discourage Russian military activities beyond its borders. A country of the vastness that I have described, larger than the United States and with huge resources, should not feel claustrophobic in the vast region between St. Petersburg and Vladivostok. Secondly, Russia must be given an honest opportunity to participate - as an equal - in the resolution of international problems. These seem to me the primary requirements of foreign policy, nor do they bring with them the necessity of dealing with Russia's internal problems as if they were our own or those of the world community.

Now what does all this signify for Eastern Europe? I believe that the most dangerous situation there would be to permit a vacuum to arise between the Eastern border of Germany and the Western border of Russia, threatening as it does stability in both directions. For it would oblige Germany over a period of time to try to take care of its security east of the Oder by its own national means. (One can not expect Germany to sit by and wait until a threat emerges fifty miles or so from its borders.) Such

16

a vacuum would also tempt Russia to try to recreate Finnish conditions among its former satellites. And I say this as somebody who greatly admires Finland's heroic capacity for achieving independence.

Nevertheless, the temptation will be there for Russia to seek to influence the domestic situations of its neighbours. Therefore I believe that the countries of that region should be encouraged and permitted to join the European Union. I also think that the key countries should be invited or permitted to join NATO as soon as possible. I realize that many people out there would say that this will make things difficult but I would argue that a vacuum will make things even more difficult. Now I know this to be an issue that is being studied, and I know there is a standard phrase to the effect that the issue is not whether, but when. To this, my response is that it is not a problem for study but a problem that requires some decisions. Statesmen should not ask rhetorical questions; they should answer them. And these questions we can answer as soon as we want to. Hence every effort should be made,

17

first, to reassure ourselves against, however absurd it may seem,
the danger of a military invasion over land. Indeed, one could
accept a German arrangement whereby no foreign troops are moved
beyond the pre-unification dividing line in Europe.

Secondly, Russia should be given every opportunity to
participate on an equal basis in the resolution of international
problems. If Russia in fact develops into a Western-style democracy
and is, for the first time in its history, concerned above all with
domestic development, then the NATO countries would surely be
jubilant. There is no sense in an anti-Russian foreign policy.
Quite the contrary. But the fundamental question, at least from an
American point of view, is whether we can develop a new set of
purposes among Europe -- Western and Central Europe -- and the
United States. I do not believe it is possible to use NATO as an
institution in which military representatives from all over the
former Soviet Union show up in Brussels twice a year because
Uzbekistan and Belgium are not likely to unite on any common
program. But I do think the basic members of NATO have to decide

18

what they mean by political cooperation, how they can exchange
their views in a meaningful manner, and what their limits and
attitudes are towards various countries.

Now it is true that NATO did not develop a common policy on Bosnia but, even more importantly, it never developed a common definition of what the Bosnian problem was. The basic issue in Bosnia was whether it was possible in an administrated unit that had never been a nation to make Serbs, Croats and Muslims live together in a unitary fashion when they had proven that they could not live together in a much larger Yugoslavia. If that question had been asked at the beginning, perhaps a common policy could have been developed that recognized the national and ethnic peculiarities of the country's minorities and a kind of *de facto* partition achieved - in which case the Muslim area would have been much larger than it is likely to be under any of the current proposals. Therefore, on so many of these issues Europe and the United States need the kind of dialogue which has not been taking place in recent years. On the other hand, when one looks at the

19

challenges around the world, I believe that Western democracies
still have a unique contribution to make to world peace.

Thus I come back to where I began. The reason Johan Jören
Holst was a friend over so many years was not only because we had
certain intellectual problems to discuss but because we had certain
commom values to achieve. We could always start the dialogue again
where it had ended. That used to be and still is in many respects
the essence of the Atlantic Alliance. But it can not continue with
new generations coming into office in every country. Especially in
America, where a change of leadership - not between parties but
between regions of the country - leads to the creation of new
constituencies. That is the challenge of the Atlantic relationship
as I see it. And it is symbolic that we should discuss it here, at
an institute dedicated to peace, and honour a man who contributed
so much to peace - a man whom many of us do not consider a
Norwegian but a citizen of all of our countries, and a citizen of
the Atlantic area.

Thank You.

20

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger's Lecture for The Norwegian Atlantic Committee in Memory of Johan Jörgen Holst in The Nobel Institute, Oslo, Friday 13 January 1995.

Members of the Holst Family, Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Johan Holst was a friend of mine. We first met when he was a student at Harvard. I have had many students but very few of them became personal friends. In any event, I had the privilege of observing what Johan Jörgen Holst did as a researcher, as Defense Minister, and as Foreign Minister. Though best known for this last achievement, I have valued him as much for his attention to the permanent problems of the democracies as for his concern with the preservation and extension of peace, together with his human politics - of humility, simplicity, and dedication. And it is symbolic that a country so far geographically from the conflicts of the Middle East should have made such a major contribution to the settlement of conflict there and to the beginning of a reconciliation between the Palestinian and the Israeli peoples.

[Y]

When I was Secretary of State it was a requirement of our foreign policy to promise to Israel that we would not talk to the PLO; and of course, any idea that the Israelis would talk to the PLO was considered impossible. Yet here in Oslo the Palestinian and the Israeli leaders met and made a very strange agreement, strange in the sense that, when I first viewed it, it was from the perspective of a technical diplomat. And I could think of innumerable things that were wrong with it. For one thing, it was vague and imprecise, and I had considerable concerns. I still have concerns, not with the document of agreement but with the situation.

Nevertheless, the essence of that agreement was that it did not pretend it could solve the suspicions, tensions, and injustices of several generations in a single stroke. The strength of the agreement was the fact that it requires of the Israelis and the Palestinians that they work together almost every day for years to come, which will give it specific content in individual situations. In many ways it perfectly reflects the necessities of the situation

2

and it is a tribute to Norway - and a tribute to Johan Jörgen Holst
- that such an agreement could have been made.

In fact, I believe it was due to the fact that neither Holst
nor Norway were trying to prove anything by achieving such an
agreement. Unlike ~~many~~ other would-be mediators in ~~many~~ other
~~conflicts~~, Johan and his country did not try to prove a general
theory about the specific contribution which Norway could make.
Rather, they seized on the fact that ~~nobody~~ had any specific
~~interest~~ other than the advancement of peace. Throughout, the
dignity and the humility with which Norway and its Foreign Minister
presented their seminal contribution represents one of the most
impressive diplomatic performances I have seen. For this, both his
country and Johan Holst will be long remembered.

It is therefore truly a privilege for me to have been asked
to speak here and to pay tribute to my friend, at an institute in
the name of which I was myself once honored - though I never had
the opportunity to visit it because, at the time that I received
the Peace Prize, the judgement was that emotions were running too

3

high to permit an undisturbed visit to Oslo. So this is a very
meaningful occasion. And the topic about which I have been asked
to speak is one that Johan and I talked about for twenty years,
together with many other Norwegian friends. As the Prime Minister
pointed out, I was also a good friend of Foreign Minister
Frydenlund. So it can not be an accident that, having known so many
Foreign Ministers and so many former students, it should be
representatives from this relatively small country with whom I have
formed personal relationships in addition to the necessary professional

My subject today is the Atlantic Relationship after the Cold
War. We are in an unusual situation in that the problems we have
now were created by our successes, not by failure. The needs of
adaptation being talked about result from the fact that the
Atlantic Alliance achieved almost everything it set out to do forty
years earlier. If one compares the statements of purpose being made
when the Atlantic Alliance was formed with what in fact transpired,
there is a degree of close correspondence for which I know of no

4

other historical precedent, and surely not in such a short period
of time.

One result is that every country dealing with the new
situation is facing a historically unprecedented challenge. The
United States has become for the first time in its history one
nation among many, still the most powerful but no longer the only
dominant nation. We now neither can control all events nor can we
withdraw from them. In Europe the unification of Germany has
overthrown many of the premises of the post-Cold War period which
had assumed that the unification of Germany would come in a very
distant future, if ever. And Russia lives within borders which it
has not known since Peter the Great. Between the Europe of NATO and
the post-Soviet Russia lie many countries, historic European
states, that now organically belong or function in a kind of a
vacuum with no institutional connections to either side, or at
least with insufficient institutional ties.

So let me talk about each of these areas in turn. For the sake
of the emotional stability of our distinguished American ambassador

5

[Y]

here, let me emphasize that I speak as an individual and not on
behalf of the Administration, although my views and the views of
the Administration are not very different except on some tactical
details. And in any event, with all the electoral changes you read
about in the United States, they concern almost exclusively
domestic problems. Foreign policy has not been a major issue in the
recent campaign, and there are many of us in both parties who will
make every effort to keep foreign policy from becoming a political
issue in order to guarantee continuity to both friends and
adversaries.

As I said, the United States faces a philosophically unique
situation. Among the great powers, no other nation can say that
its history began on a specific date or that it was populated
entirely, or almost entirely, by immigrants. Moreover, America has
never had a powerful neighbour or really felt threatened, until
very recently. Therefore foreign policy has always had a different
character in the United States than anywhere else. There has been
in the United States, precisely because most of the population came

6

from the middle class, a view that America had about it a
missionary quality, indeed a duty. The way to seek peace was not
by the methods of European diplomacy but by transforming the whole
world and making that world democratic. This has led to great
achievements but it has also led recently to some tragedies, as
when we tried to export democracy to South-East Asia under
conditions for which there was no historical preparation and in
which the strategic necessities were quite different from the ones
we knew NATO too was for America a fulfilment of its democratic
tradition and a validation of the American experience in World War
II, when it organized overwhelming force against a recognized evil.

Broadly speaking, the Cold War with its two-power world
coincided with the American genius for large-scale mobilization of
resources and capacity for overwhelming dedication to big causes.
Without sounding nationalistic, I cannot think of any other major
country that would, as the United States did at the end of World
War II, dedicate itself to the spread of its technology around the
world thus creating economic competitors to itself; to building up

7

defeated enemies; and to convincing itself that this was its
contribution to peace. I think these were major achievements. But
now we live in a different world. There are no clear-cut enemies,
no central ideological conflict. It is not possible, as it was
throughout the Cold War, to develop a general concept and to apply
it uniformly all over the world. We will henceforth be obliged to
recognize special circumstances and to calculate rewards and
penalties the way nations in less favourable environments than ours
have always had to do. Now this will require a big emotional
adjustment in the United States.

I have written a book on the importance of the study of the
national interest. In Europe one would not have to spend three
minutes on such a proposition. In America it produces intense
debate. But even once you have said, we now need to have a national
interest, you still have to define what you mean by the *national*
~~interest~~. At this moment America is preoccupied with domestic
affairs. But inevitably, for the rest this century a foreign policy
debate will start - not so much between the parties, but within

8

each party - as to what the American national interest really is.
At the end of it, I expect some definition to emerge just as
"containment" had in the Forties and which will likewise guide
American policy for another fifty years.

One of the questions America must answer for itself is why we
should have close relations with Europe. For it is no longer a
self-evident proposition. It is as well a key challenge for America
because, when I look around the world, I see huge transformations
occurring in its every reach. We are seeing in Latin America, an
area which has been consigned to permanent progress, another one
of those crises which, though it may be perfectly conceivable from
the perspective of overall development, also illustrates just how
complex, unpredictable, and in some ways utterly different, these
societies still are from the advanced economies. And in Russia we
see nearly every day evidence of the turmoil associated with moving
from totalitarianism toward a set of relationships associated with
democracy and the free market.

Everybody is talking about the economic recovery of Asia. But

9

[Y]

the fact is that this economic recovery is being conducted by
nations with national orientations and attitudes towards foreign
policy similar to that of Europe in the 19th century. People talk
about a Pacific Community, but the nations of Asia do not think of
themselves as a community in the same sense as the Europeans do.
The nations of Asia look at their relationship with each other in
terms of competition and rivalry. Japan, China, Asian Russia,
Korea, South-East Asia, and India deal with each other more
according to the maxims of 19th century Cabinet-diplomacy than they
do by the maxims of the European Union, among whose members war and
military competition have literally become inconceivable.

And then there are changes in the Muslim world, where the rise
of fundamentalism is causing complicated challenges from North
Africa to Central Asia. Given all of this, if Europe tries to act
alone it will be driven back to its traditional national rivalries
and will end up in a position that is perhaps similar to that of
Greece after the rise of the Roman Empire. And if America tries
to act alone, it will find that even the richest and the most

10

powerful countries are unable to deal with problems of such
complexity in isolation. For any of us in America who have been in
high office - and I know all the former Secretaries of State and
Presidents - there is no question that, despite all the
disagreements existing across the Atlantic, we have found it easier
and more natural to deal jointly with Europe than with any other
region in the world. That does not mean that disagreements cannot
occur but, for America, this relationship remains crucial. And for
Europe it is equally crucial, probably because Europe by itself
will not be able to sustain a national policy. In all likelihood,
that policy will become fragmented again and, on some of the key
European issues, an American role is absolutely essential.

The Europe of the Cold War was based on two premises: that
the American role was essential to the defense of Europe; and,
secondly, that the European Union - or rather the European
Community at that time - was crucial to providing a home for a
divided Germany, which it was assumed would remain divided for an
indefinite period of time. Within that context, America had the

11

[Y]

military leadership, France played a major role politically, and Germany played a major role economically but without trying to assert a politically dominant role. The unification of Germany has changed these equations. The defence of Europe against the Soviet Union is no longer as central. A unified Germany has no reason to subordinate its political leadership to another country over a period of time. Therefore the internal relationships of Europe as well as the trans-Atlantic relationships require new definitions. The internal relationships of Europe are a matter for the Europeans to decide, and I will not talk about these today. The trans-Atlantic relationship has to be rethought.

NATO is the only organic link between Europe and the United States. It is the only institution in which America is required to deal with Europe on a regular basis. But since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been a temptation to try to use NATO as a bridge for relations with Russia, for which in my view a military alliance is not ideally suited.

Now let me say a few words about Russia. The history of Russia

12

is an important part of the history of Europe. But the history of Europe does not exhaust the history of Russia. Russia is out of scale as far as the European countries are concerned. St. Petersburg is closer to New York than it is to Vladivostok, and Vladivostok is closer to Seattle than it is to Moscow. There is no nation in Europe of such dimensions. Russia engulfs Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Historically, Russian foreign policy has been equally of a scale unique unto itself. Now it is true that Russia has been invaded twice (or, if you include the Crimean War, three times) from Europe. It is also true that, if you look at history since the time of Peter the Great, Russia has fought more wars than any other country and against more of its neighbours, in the process acquiring more and more territory. And it did not acquire this territory by plebicite.

13

[Y]

of the Wilsonian dream. Indeed, an American scholar wrote a text
only three or four years ago called The End of History in which he
professed that the spread of market economics and democracy had
caused foreign policy to come to an end and that all history would
henceforth consist of domestic economics. That sort of attitude
tempted all the Western nations to identify foreign policy with the
(still current) preoccupation with Russian domestic politics. It
has moreover led, first to the view that Gorbachev was essential
for peace and, subsequently, to the view that Yeltsin is essential
for peace, together with a temptation to try to identify groups in
Russia that we ought to back and encourage.

I believe this to be a grave mistake. The internal evolution
of Russia is a Russian problem. We can encourage reform by economic
assistance where that assistance genuinely brings about change. But
we can not identify personally with Russian leaders or approach
domestic that country's historic evolution on the basis of our preferences, primarily
What we need to do is to identify the foreign policy problems that
Russia creates as well as the foreign policy opportunities which

14

Historically, Russia has had a curious attitude towards foreign policy: in those issues beyond the reach of the Russian armies, or beyond the capabilities of the Russian armies, Russia conducted typically European policies in its international affairs.

In other issues - Central Asia, the Far East, the Balkans - that is, issues which were open and not within the foreign ministry but were responsibility of the so-called Asiatic Department, Russia chose not to submit its policies to European or international conferences but, in reality, unilaterally, just as we have been witnessing lately. This was true even in the post-World War II period when the Soviet Union would not discuss Eastern Europe as an international problem but simply occupied it, thus creating an altogether new geopolitical reality.

15

[Y]

European states. But, thereby, Russia also frightened its neighbours. And a seemingly endless expansionism ensued that had no specific goal other than eliminating vacuums. I would therefore argue that there are two necessities in foreign policy: first, to discourage Russian military activities beyond its borders. A country of the vastness that I have described, larger than the United States and with huge resources, should not feel claustrophobic in between St. Petersburg and Vladivostok. Secondly, Russia must be given an honest opportunity to participate - as an equal - in the resolution of international problems. These seem to me the primary requirements of foreign policy, nor do they bring with them the necessity of dealing with Russia's internal problems as if they were our own or those of the world community.

16

try to take care of its security east of the Oder by its own
national means. (One can not expect Germany to sit by and wait
until a threat emerges fifty miles or so from its borders.) Such
a vacuum would also tempt Russia to try to recreate Finnish
conditions among its former satellites. And I say this as somebody
who greatly admires Finland's heroic capacity for achieving
independence.

Nevertheless, the temptation will be there for Russia to seek
to influence the domestic situations of its neighbours, therefore
I believe that the countries of that region should be encouraged
and permitted to join the European Union. I also think that the key
countries should be invited or permitted to join NATO as soon as
possible. I realize that many people out there would say that this
will make things difficult but I would argue that a vacuum will
make things even more difficult. Now I know this to be an issue
that is being studied, and I know there is a standard phrase to the
effect that the issue is not whether, but when. To this, my
response is that it is not a problem for study but a problem that

17

requires some decisions. Statesmen should not ask rhetorical
questions; they should answer them. And these questions we can
answer as soon as we want to, hence every effort should be made,
first, to reassure ourselves against, however absurd it may seem,
the danger of a military invasion over land. Indeed, one could
accept a German arrangement whereby no foreign troops are moved
beyond the pre-unification dividing line in Europe. Secondly,
Russia should be given every opportunity to participate on an equal
basis in the resolution of international problems. If Russia in
fact develops into a Western-style democracy and is, for the first
time in its history, concerned above all with domestic development,
then the NATO countries would surely be jubilant. There is no sense
in an anti-Russian foreign policy. Quite the contrary. But the
fundamental question, at least from an American point of view, is
whether we can develop a new set of purposes among Europe, Western-
and Central Europe, and the United States. I do not believe it
is possible to use NATO as an institution in which military
representatives from all over the former Soviet Union show up in

18

Brussels twice a year because Uzbekistan and Belgium are not likely to unite on any common program. But I do think the basic members of NATO have to decide what they mean by political cooperation, how they can exchange their views in a meaningful manner, and what their limits and attitudes are towards various countries.

19

[Y]

United States need the kind of dialogue which has not been taking
place in recent years. On the other hand, when one looks at the
challenges around the world, I believe that Western democracies
still have a unique contribution to make to world peace.

Thus I come back to where I began. The reason Johan Jören
Holst was a friend over so many years was not only because we had
certain intellectual problems to discuss but because we had certain
commom values to achieve. We could always start the dialogue again
where it had ended. That used to be and still is in many respects
the essence of the Atlantic Alliance. But it can not continue with
new generations coming into office in every country. Especially in
America, where a change of leadership - not between parties but
between regions of the country - leads to the creation of new
constituencies. That is the challenge of the Atlantic relationship
as I see it. And it is symbolic that we should discuss it here, at
an institute dedicated to peace, and honour and a man who
contributed so much to peace - a man whom many of us do not
consider a Norwegian but a citizen of all of our countries, and a

20

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23.01.95

15:43

P. 2

Johan Holst was a friend of mine. We met when he was a student at Harvard. I have had many students, and not all of them, and very few of them, became personal friends. I therefore had the privilege of observing what Johan Jörgen Holst did as a researcher, as Defense Minister, and as a Foreign Minister. Best known for his last achievement, I have valued him however as much for his attention to the permanent problems of the democracies, his concern with the preservation, and extention, of peace. And for his human politics of humility, simplicity, and dedication. It is symbolic that a country as far away from the conflicts of the Middle East geographically, as it is possible to be, makes such a major contribution to the settlement of a conflict, and to the beginning of a reconciliation between the Palestinian and the Israeli people. When I was Secretary of State it was a requirement of our foreign policy to promise to Israel that we would not talk to the PLO, and of course, any idea that the Israelis should talk to the PLO was considered the ..(??).... Yet here in Oslo the Palestinian and the Israeli leaders met and made a very strange agreement, strange in the sense that when I saw it at first, as a technician, looking at it as a technical diplomat, I could think of innumerable things that were wrong with it. It was vague, imprecise, and I had considerable concerns. And I still have concerns not in document of the agreement, but in the situation. But the essence of that agreement was that it did not pretend it could solve the suspicions, tensions, and injustices of several generations in one time. The strength of the agreement is the fact that it requires a necessity for Israelis and Palestinians to work together almost every day for years to come, to give it specific content in individual situations. In many ways it is perfectly reflecting the necessities of the situation. It is a tribute to Norway and a tribute to Johan Jörgen Holst that such an agreement could be made. I believe it is due to the fact that Norway was trying, and Holst was trying, to prove nothing by making that agreement. Unlike many other would be mediators in many other conflicts Johan and this country did not try to prove a general theory of the specific contribution that Norway could make. They used the fact that nobody had no specific interests except the advancement of peace, that Norway sought no glory for itself, and conducted itself in this matter, both as a country and as an individual throughout this whole process in which the dignity and the humility with which Norway and its Foreign Minister presented their seminal(??) contribution, was one of the most impressive diplomatic performances that I have seen, for which both the country and Johan Holst will be long remembered. It is therefore a privilege for me to have been asked to speak here and to pay tribute to my friend and to this country in an institute in the name of which I was once

JAN-23-1995 09:40

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15:45

honored, though I have never had the opportunity to visit it
because at the time when I received The Peace Prize the
judgement was that the emotions were running too high to
permit an undisturbed visit to Oslo. But it is a very
meaningful occasion. And the topic about which I have been
asked to speak is one that Johan and I talked about for twenty
years, and with many other Norwegian friends. As the Prime
Minister pointed out; I was a good friend also of Foreign
Minister Frydenlund. So it can not be an accident having met
so many Foreign Ministers and so many students, that it should
be representatives from this relatively small country with
whom I have formed personal relationships in addition to the
necessary professional relationship.

The subject is the Atlantic Relationship, in affect, after the
Cold War. It is an unusual situation in which the problems
have been created by success, not by failure. The needs of
adaptation that are being talked about today result from the
fact that the Atlantic Alliance achieved almost everything
that it set out to do forty years earlier. If one compares
what statements were said when the Atlantic Alliance was
formed with what in fact has happened, there is a degree of
correspondence for which I know no historical precedence, and
surely not in such a short period of time. One result is that
every country dealing with the new situation is facing a
historically unprocodontod challenge. The United States has
become for the first time in its history one nation among
many, still the most powerful, but no longer the only dominant
nation. We now neither can control all events nor can we
withdraw from them. In Europe the unification of Germany has
overthrown many of the premises of the post-war period which
have assumed that the unification of Germany would come in a
very distant future, if ever. And Russia lives within borders
which it has not known since Peter the Great and the
conditions of the collapse of its previous domestic
institutions. And between the Europe of NATO and the Post-
Soviet Russia lie many countries, historic European states,
that now organically belong or function in a kind of a vacuum
with no institutional connections to either side, or at least
with indeed insufficient institutional ties. So let me talk
about each of these areas and their...(?). For the sake of the
emotional stability of our distinguished American ambassador
here let me emphasize that I speak as an individual and not on
behalf of the administration, although my views and the views
of the administration are not very different except on some
tactical details. And in any ovont with all the electoral
changes you read about in the United States, they concern
almost exclusively domestic problems. Foreign policy has not
been a major issue in the recent campaign, and there are many
of us in both parties who will make every effort to keep
foreign policy from becoming a political issue and to
guarantee continuity to both friends and adversaries. As I
said the United States faces a philosophically unique
situation for itself. Among the great powers no other nation
can say that its history begins on a specific date or that it
is populated entirely, or almost entirely, by immigrants. That
it has never had a powerful neighbour, has never felt
threatened until very recently from foreign policy. Therefore

JAN-23-1995 09:42

***END***

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foreign policy has always had a different character in the United States than anywhere else. There has been in the United States, precisely because most of the population came from the middle class, a view that America had a missionary quality, a duty. That the way to seek peace was not by the methods of European diplomacy but by transforming the whole world and making the whole world democratic. This has led to great achievements, but it has also led recently to some tragedies when we tried to export democracy to South-East Asia in the conditions for which there was no historical preparation, and in which the strategic necessities were quite different from the ones we knew. That NATO was to America (?) a fulfilment of the democratic tradition and moreover it reflected the American experience in World War II of organizing overwhelming force against a recognized evil. In its broad terms the Cold War with its two power world coincided with the American genious for large scale mobilization of resources, for great dedication to big causes. Without sounding nationalistic, I cannot think of any other major country, that would, as the United States did at the end of World War II, dedicate it self to spread its technology around the world, creating economic competitors to itself, building up defeated enemies, and convincing itself that this was a contribution to peace. I think these were major achievements. But now we live in a different world. There are no clear cut enemies, there is no ideological conflict, it is not possible, as it was, through the cold war to develop a general concept and apply it uniformly all over the world. We will be forced to recognize special circumstances and calculate rewards and penalties the way nations in a less favourable environment have always had to do. This requires a big emotional adjustment in the United States. I have written a book on the importance of the study of national interest. In Europe one would not have to spend three minutes on such a proposition. In America that produces an intense debate. And it is treated in the debate not the book but the country, it is a discovery. Even though it does not say much, because once you have said we now need to have a national interest you still have to define what you mean by the national interest. At this moment America is preoccupied with domestic affairs. But inevitably for the rest this century a foreign policy debate will start. Not so much between the parties, but within each party as to what the American national interest really is. How we should interpret it with some nostalgia.....?? At the end of it I expect that there will be a definition just as "containment" emerged in the forties which can guide American policy for another fifty years. Now one of the questions that America must answer for itself is why we should have close relations with Europe. It is not a self evident proposition anymore. I believe it is a key challenge for America. Because when I look around the world I see huge challenges and huge transformations in every part of the world. We are now seeing, in Latin-America, an area that have already boon consigned to permanent progress, another one of these crises which may be conceptible from the process of development but which also illustrates how complex, unpredictable, and in some ways different, from the advanced economies these societies still are. We see every day in Russia the turmoil associated with moving from totalitarianism

JAN-23-1995 09:43

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and a history quite different, into a new set of relationships.

Everybody talks about the economic recovery of Asia. But the fact is that this economic recovery is being conducted by nations with a national orientation and an attitude towards foreign policy more similar to that of Europe in the 19th century. People talk about a Pacific Community, but the nations of Asia do not think of themselves as a community like the Europeans. The nations of Asia look at their relationship with each other in terms of competition and rivalry. Japan, China, Asian Russia, Korea, South-East Asia, India, deal with each other more by the maxims of 19th century Cabinet-diplomacy than by the maxims of the European Union, among them members of which war and military competition have literally become inconceivable.

And then there are these changes in the muslim world where the rise of fundamentalism is causing complicated challenges from North Africa to Central Asia. Now, with all of this I believe; if Europe tries to act alone it will be driven back to its own national rivalries and wind up in the position perhaps similar to Greece after the rise of the Roman Empire, the Greek city states. And if America tries to act alone it will find that even the richest and most powerful countries cannot deal with problems of such complexity in isolation. For any of us in America who has been in high office, and I know all the former Secretaries of State and Presidents. I have talked to them about it, there is no question that despite all the disagreements that exist across the Atlantic we have found it more easier, more natural, to deal jointly with Europe than with any other region in the world. It does not mean that disagreements cannot occur, but for America this relationship is crucial. And for Europe it is equally crucial probably because Europe by itself will not be able to sustain a national polity that will, in all likelihood, be fragmented again. But also because on some of the key European issues an American role is absolutely essential. The Europe of the Cold War was based on two premises; that the American role was essential, to defend Europe, and secondly that the European Union was crucial, or the European Community at that time was crucial, in order to give a home to a divided Germany, which it was assumed would remain divided for an indefinite period of time. Within that context America had the military leadership. Within Europe France played a major role politically, and Germany played a major role economically, but did not try to assert a politically dominant role. The unification of Germany has changed these equations. The defence of Europe against the Soviet Union is no longer so central. A unified Germany has no reason to subordinate its political leadership to another country over a period or time. And therefore the internal relationships of Europe as well as the trans-Atlantic relationships require new definitions. The internal relationships of Europe is a matter for the Europeans to decide, and I will not talk about those today. The trans-Atlantic relationship must be given some new....??......... NATO is the only organic link between Europe and the United States. It is the only institution in which America is

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JAN-23-1995 09:45

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required to deal with Europe on a regular basis. But NATO has not been given, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a nicer(??) American administration. Nor in Europe a systematic consideration of the increased political functions that it must pursue. Instead there has been a temptation to try to use NATO as a bridge to relations with Russia, for which in my view a military alliance is not ideally suited.

Now let me say a few words about Russia. The history of Russia is an important part of the history of Europe. But the history of Europe does not exhaust the history of Russia. Russia is out of scale as far as European countries are concerned. St. Petersburg is closer to New York than it is to Vladivostok, and Vladivostok is closer to Seattle than it is to Moscow. There is no nation in Europe of such dimension. Russia captures Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. The Russian foreign policy, historically, has had a scale that is unique. It is true that Russia has been invaded twice, or if you add the Crimean war three times, from Europe. It is also true that if you look at history since the times of Peter the Great that Russia has fought more wars than any other country against more of its neighbours, and has acquired more territory than that is did not acquire this territory by plebicite, so now Russia is living within borders unprecedented since the early 18th century. And many in the West have thought that the spread of democracy and market economics would automatically produce a peaceful world. It was the Wilsonian dream, and indeed there was an American scholar who wrote a book only a three or four years ago called the end of history, saying that with its spread of market economics and democracy foreign policy has come to an end and that all history now will be domestic economics. This attitude has tempted the Western nations, all of them, to identify foreign policy with a current(??) preoccupation with Russian domestic politics. It has lead first to the view that Gorbatchev was essential for peace and now to the view that Yeltsin is essential for peace, and an endless temptation to try to identify groups in Russia that we should back and encourage. I believe this to be a great mistake. The internal evolution of Russia is a Russian problem. We can encourage reform by economic assistance where that economic assistance geneologically brings about structures of economic change. But we can not identify Russian leaders and face a historic evolution on our preferences among Russian leaders. What we need to do is to identify the foreign policy problems that Russia creates, and the foreign policy opportunities that cooperation with Russia provides.

Historically Russia has had a curious attitude towards foreign policy, which is this; in those issues beyond the reach of the Russian armies, or beyond the capabilities of the Russian armies, Russia conducted normal European policies of international kinds(??). In other issues, and they were under the foreign ministry; Central Asia, the Far East, the Balkans, in all the issues that were open, they were not in the foreign ministry the work in the Asian department, and the Asian department did not choose to submit its policies to European and international conferences. It acted unilaterally just as we have been seeing lately. And this was true even in post-World War II period. The Soviet Union would not discuss Eastern

JAN-23-1995 09:46

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Europe as an international problem, they occupied it and created a new reality. Looked at from the Russian point of view one can argue that the tragedies of Russia have been caused by overextension. That having so many foreign people under their rule imposed on Russia the requirements of an army much larger than any other European state. Thereby frightening its neighbours. And an endless expansionism that had no specific goal but was created by the existence of vacuum. I would therefore argue; that there are two necessities in foreign policy, one, to discourage Russian military activities beyond its borders. A country of the vastness that I have described, larger than the United States, with huge resources, should not feel claustrophobic if it is confined between St.Petersburg and Vladivostok. On the other hand Russia must be given an honest opportunity to participate as an equal in the solution of international problems. Those seem to me the primary requirements of foreign policy. And they do not bring with them the necessity of dealing with all the internal Russian...(??)........

Now what does this mean for Eastern Europe. I believe that the most dangerous situation that could exist is to permit a vacuum to arise between the Eastern border of Germany, and the Western border of Russia. It threatens stability in both directions. It will oblige Germany over a period of time to try to take care of its security east of the Oder by its own national means. Cause one can not expect Germany to sit there and wait until a threat emerges fifty miles from Germany. It will tempt Russia to try to create Finnish conditions in the former satellites. And I say this as somebody who greatly admires Finlands heroic capacity to achieve independence, in all its............but the attempt is to influence the domestic situation of neighbouring countries and to achieve a.....(??).......I therefore believe that the countries of that region should be encouraged and permitted ...(??)....... to join the European Union. And I also think that the key countries should be invited or permitted to join NATO as soon as possible. I know that people say that this will make things difficult. I would argue that a vacuum will make things even more difficult. And I know it is an issue being studied, and a know there is a standard phrase that says the issue is not whether but when, and I would say to that it is not a problem to a study it is a problem for decision. And statesmen should not ask rhetoric questions they should answer them. We can answer them as soon as we want to. As soon as every effort should be made, one, to reassure ourselves against which(??) even an absurdity, namely the danger of a military invasion over land against a country that has 30.000 nuclear weapons. ....(??) one could accept a German arrangement where no foreign troops are moved beyond the pro-unification dividing line in Europe. And secondly, Russia should be given every opportunity to participate on an equal basis in the solution of international problems. From Bosnia to Islamic fundamentalism, to economic international...(??)....... If Russia in fact develops into a Western style democracy, concerned for the first time in its history with domestic development, then NATO countries would be jubilant. There is no sense in an anti-Russian foreign policy, quite the

JAN-23-1995 09:48

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contrary. But the fundamental question, at least from an
american point of view, is whether we can develop a new set of
purposes between Europe, Western Europe and Central Europe,
and the United States. I do not believe it is possible to use
NATO as an institution in which military representatives from
all over the former Soviet Union show up in Brussels twice a
year...(??) Uzbekistan and Belgium are not likely
to unite on a common program. But I do think the basic members
of NATO have to decide what they mean by political
cooperation, how they can exchange their views in a meaningful
manner, what their limits are, their attitudes towards various
countries. Because as I look at the crisis, the so called
crisis or the real crisis, what has been the problem? It is
true that NATO did not develop a common policy on Bosnia but
even more importantly it never developed a common definition
of what the problem was in Bosnia. The basic issue in Bosnia
was whether, in an area, in an administrated unit that had
never been a nation, it would be possible to make Serbs,
Croats and Muslims live together in a unitary when they could
not live together in a much larger Yugoslavia. If that
question had been asked at the beginning maybe a common policy
could have been developed that recognized the national, and
specialities and peculiarities of the country's minority
rights, and achieved a kind of de facto partition in which
case the Muslim area would have been much larger than it is
likely to be under any ...(??) And so, on many of
these issues Europe and the United States need the kind of
dialogue which has not been taking place in recent years. But
on the other hand, when one looks at the challenges around the
world I believe that Western democracies still have a unique
contribution.

And I come back to where I began. The reason Johan Jörgen
Holst was a friend over many years was not only because we had
certain intellectual problems to discuss, but also because we
had certain common values to achieve. We could always start
the dialogue again where it had ended. That used to be and
still is in many respects the essence of the Atlantic
Alliance. But it can not continue when new generations come
into office in every country. When especially in America you
have a change of leadership, not between parties, but between
regions of the country. So that now constituencies have to be
created. That is the challenge of the Atlantic relationship as
I see it. And it is symbolic that we discount it here in an
institute dedicated to peace in honour of a man who
contributed so much to peace and whom many of us do not
consider a Norwegian but a citizen of all of our countries,
and a citizen of the Atlantic area.

Thank You.

JAN-23-1995 09:49

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