Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
National Arts Center Speech -- Ottawa, Canado

October 21, 1980

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentleman: Having headed the State Department, I am not fooled by the humility of Ambassadors. I used to tell my colleagues in the Foreign Service of the U.S. that I knew very well that they were convinced that, but for the accident or maybe misfortune of my appointment /by the President, I would never have reached my position through the ranks of the foreign service. So they would put up with me with the amount of tolerance that people develop that are certain that they will outlast you and that your victories can only be temporary, that they control the machinery and you really do not, and so I have no false illusions about the significance of Secretaries of State or Foreign Ministers, as against Ambassadors of any historical period. Now I understand that the purpose of this conference is to discuss U.S.-Candadian Relations. I once made a seminal contribution to U.S. Canadian Relations here in Ottawa when I attended a dinner that your then Secretary of External

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Affairs offered to me and expressed various views about
leading American personalities, while the microphone was
open in the press room. And my dilemma was compounded
by the fact that I had offered views on three or four
personalities, but the press reported my comments only on
one of them. And I lived in constant terror that if I
protested too (inaudible word), they might decide to publish
some of my other views, some of which included the opposite
sex, That might of been of enormous interest to readers of
the less eloquent newspapers. So I got away very easily,
I must tell you in that respect.

Now, I thought that it would be more useful for me to
talk about American foreign policy and then only at the end
of my remarks bring it into/relationship of U.S.-Canadian
relations. Because our relations are very curious. The
bilateral negotiations between us usually concern highly
technical subjects, , economic agreements, and

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similar matters, and while they in the course of the
negotiations generate their quota of tension, they
almost invariably are brought to reasonable conclusion.
And some of the problems that exist between us can neither not
be articulated or if articulated have no inherent solution.

One of them being the relatively large size of the United
States, compared to that of Canada. So that there is the
psychological problem of how a superpower can deal with a
neighbor which its destiny is linked, with which it shares
many common values, and many common approaches, but the
neighbor has the problem of identity, and wants to maintain,
as it must, a margin of decision that is recognizably
itself. Again I must say that in my personal experience, and
I suspect in the experience of those before and after me,
this is a problem that when it is stated theoretically
is more accurate than when it is exercised in practice. I
always found that on major decisions, it was important for

selfish American reasons to consult with Canada because
its perspective was occasionally different from ours, was
motivated by the same general values, and because the
leaders of Canada with whom I worked were men whose

I must say
opinions mattered to us in their own right. And/I'm delighted
to see my old friend, Mitchell Sharp here, and have this
opportunity to pay tribute to him and to renew our acquaintance.

So let me talk to you about the problems of American
foreign policy as I see them at this moment, then make
a few observations at the end of how they relate to
Canada, and the United States. But leave it to you also to
make your own judgments.

We are suffering in the United States at this moment,
from two developments. One, mentioned by our chairman, and
which is the disintegration of the international order that
emerged out of World War II, and the second is the collapse
of the America national consensus on the nature of foreign

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policy. And both of these issues are very closely related
to each other. Americans think back to the period after
World War II as one of the great creative periods of American
foreign policy. And one of my predecessors, Dean Achison,
with the humility that is so characteristic of men who have
held that office, called his book "Present at the Creation".
The other day I attended a dinner with my current successor,
Muskie; he said "My next book is going to be called 'Waiting
for the Resurrection'" and I said to him that I hope his
next book will be called "State Department Months". But,
the period right after World War II, as I said, is considered
in American mythology as the great seminal period of American
initiative. And it was a great period. But the fact of the
matter is, it wasn't really foreign policy. It was the
application on a global basis of the experience of the new
deal, and the experience of World War II, both of which
were very specialized events. The new deal taught the United
States that the greatest political stability was the gap
threat

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between expectation and reality in the economic field.

And at the end of World War II, we found a world which
at that time was still largely the industrialized world,
which was an economic ruin. The first membership of the
United Nations was some 50 nations. The overwhelming of which
was what today would be called developed nations. In such
a world, the economic chaos caused by World War II yielded
extraordinarily well to American methodologies, to engage
in large economic aide programs, to restore the economies
of Europe, and Japan. To begin on a relatively small basis,
economic aide programs to the few nations that then existed
had the dual advantage of responding to the American experience
and being relevant to the problem. I say it was not foreign
policy in the strict sense. Because foreign policy in the
strict sense, as I understand it, involve the balancing of
interest of sovereign nations capable of independent actions.
And the creation of a consensus among states that will not

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ever totally agree, but which will on balance decide
that the maintenance of international order is preference
to an assault on it. But in the postwar period, for many
years, for almost twenty years, the United States did not
meet among its friends any nation that was physically
capable of taking truly autonomous actions. All of the
nations of which we dealt were for a long period of time
economically dependent on us. And foreign policy in the
great days, of, say Dean Achison, or what I consider the
great days of Dean Achison, and John Foster Dulles, consisted
of that magic word consultation, which really meant that
foreign leaders attempted to influence the American decision
making process. And when you look at the difference between
two great Frenchmen, Monet and DeGaulle, you see the difference
in the perception. Monet was operating within a system in
which the United States was preeminent. DeGaulle was attempting
to achieve a system in which whatever unity appeared resulted
from the normal pressures of diplomacy, and therefore

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it seemed important to him to create at least/appearance
of other options. I often thought that Monet and DeGaulle
really didn't disagree so much about what they were trying
to do, which was to achieve a larger role for Europe.

But I also thought that a dialogue between them might take some
thing like this form: where Monet would say "you are foolish,
I can exact from the Americans by flatery, kindness, and
making
penetrating their decision/process. But you are trying

to extort from them by pressure, and thereby I'd make the
inequality of power explicit. And to which DeGaulle might
well have replied "this is quite true, but if we are to
retain any sense of identity, our cooperation with the

Americans makes sense only if we can demonstrate that we could
have done otherwise, and therefore it is essential for us
to appear to extort what you want to weedle out of them."

Now, this is the fundamental change to which our chairman
referred, not without significance, incidentally, for relations

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between our two countries. And in East-West relations,
which is the one area which we dealt with a country of
roughly equivalent power, we approached it by analogy
to the Nazi period. In the American experience, aggression
was always unambiguous. The challenge to the international
order always came from evil people, who did not recognize
the inherent advantages of peace. Therefore, resistance to
aggression always took a moral as well as a physical form.
And the opponent was in doubt with lack of ethics, in
addition to being conceived as physically threatening. And
so we build NATO really in the expectation that the Soviet
Union would act like Hitler. And the war against Hitler
was really the ideal war from the American point of view.
Absolute evil confronting at least relative good. Total
challenge to every existing principle. It required no
complicated choices. But, while I think the communist system
is morally repugnant, its challenge is much more complex
than that of the Nazi period. There was no clear cut military

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aggression at any point. But there was a linkage between
communist objectives and autonomous revolutions that were
occurring for their own reasons all over the world. The
developing countries were taking on a new significance
and the merging of the military threat against Europe, economic
threat against the established world order, and the political
threat, combined with the fact that Europe and Japan, as our
chairman pointed out, as the result of the success of our own
policies, developed the capacity to conduct autonomous
policies. All guaranteed that there would be a crisis in
American foreign policy about the time that the Nixon Administra-
tion, in which I served, came into office. The state of
affairs that had predominated in the post-war period could
not be maintained. Unfortunately, its decline was accelerated
by a traumatic event for the United States--the Vietnamese war.
The shape that that debate about Vietnam has taken obscures
that some of the most vicious critics of what was later done

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were those that got us into the war. And that when
the Vietnam war started it was carried by the consensus
of almost the entire American establishment and all
the leading newspapers. It was the painful learning of
our limits that made the Vietnam war so traumatic. Not
the least of the ironies of it was that the worst crisis
occured in a challenge to an administration that tried to
get us out of the war. However, you may debate its message
and its particular strategy, and not to the decision to get
us into the war which was disseminal decision. And a number
of things happened as a result of that war, and this why
I am dwelling so much on it. Among the most important was
the collapse of the consensus and the demoralization of the
foreign policy establishment that had carried American foreign
policy / much of the post war period. And the collapse of
the consensus meant that all the incoherent strength of
American political tradition came to the surface. And if you
look at these strengths you will see that American has a

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tradition
/of thinking about foreign policy in terms of law, which is
one of the strengths. And therefore you find that in almost
every crisis there is some debate on whether the particular
action that we are confronting is legal or illegal. And the
impression is created that we will resist if we resist at
all, illegalities primarily. The second strand is purely
pragmatic that says that we will deal only with problems
as they arise. We don't need a strategy. The third strand
is idealistic, which claims that the United States is
specially blessed among the nations of the world and has
a special obligation to set a moral example to the others.
And not only set a moral example, but that the United States
alone among the nations of the world can prevail by setting
a moral example and must the old balance of power
doctorates. None of our historical tradition prepares
us for the world in which we live, in which we may be morally
superior, but the rest of the world has not yet come to an
appreciation of that evident fact. A world in which the legality

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of an action is of course important. But in which the balance
of power also plays a role. I have recently been writing
the second volume of my memoirs, and after devoting
about the first 1000 pages to a refutation of the review
of the NYT, I turn to some of the problems in which I
which
was involved, and in a volume/I intend the call The Study
of Invalibility. I had an opportunity to read with care some
of the documents with which I dealt athletically, when
I was in office and it hadn't occurred to me during the mid-
East war of 1973 that fundamentally, if one studies what went
on at the U.N., which our chairman knows so well, the fact
of the matter was that here was a war going on for several
weeks, affecting the vital interest of many states, which
brought about a revolution in the world economy and yet
all of the maneuvering at the security council was to avoid a
vote. Nobody wanted to take a position, until there was
a military outcome to ratify. We spent a week trying to
bring about a cease fire. Nobody, we could quite literally

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find nobody who was willing to put forward the cease fire
proposal as long as anyone was still ready to fight. And
the way this thing was finally ended was very ineloquently,
by our saying to hell with it; if that's the way its going
to be, we're going to make somebody win. And we're going
to pour weapons in there until somebody quits.

I'm sure there are more elevated ways of looking at
foreign policy, I'm sure that Mitchell Sharp will explain
them to you when he speaks to you, but it is at least one
fact of life. And for us with more limited moralition
that's the way the war ended. So, for America to live in
a world of balance of power is a tremendous emotional
experience. And therefore you find that in the middle of
Watergate, if you look back into the early 70s, in the
middle of Watergate, suddenly, and at the end of the Vietnam
war, suddenly there develops in America a school of thought
of foreign policy that says we mustn't just engage in foreign

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policy, we must engage in domestic policy. The human rights
policy was to be the substitute for what was considered the
Vietnam type policy. And it wasn't understood that it
really got us right into a Vietnam type policy. It lead
to a challenge to confront the Soviet Union on human rights
grounds, not on foreign policy grounds. And into mixing into
the domestic affairs of almost every country in the world.
A doctrine of universal intervention while we were going through
a tremendous trama, but very American, very understandable.

There was also the additional theory that if Richard Nixon
was for peace, maybe war wasn't all bad. But that was a
peculiarity that you cannot describe to general American thinking.

I have gone back into the period in which I served because
what we face today has its origins in what our chairman described
at the beginning. The fundamental alteration of the interna-
tionl environment. It is very difficult for Americans to live
with an alliance which is not unitary in its approach. Its
all very well to have consultation as long as we decide and
the magic formula which every presidential candidate has now

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been advancing since 1960 that we will improve our consultations
with our allies, assumes that we'll agree. But what happens
if we don't agree. Why is it to be assumed that you will
always reach the same conclusions if you consult. And I'm
not against consultation. But as Europe became more powerful
and Japan became more powerful, inevitably they had to develop
their own sense of identity, and inevitably this will be one
of our big problems when sanity returns to the United States
after the elections which despite appearances to the contrary,
will end on November 4. One of these fundamental problems
we will then face is this. We now have a common defense
of Europe. We do not have a common approach to East-West
diplomacy. We have five-plus divisions in Europe. But we
do not agree on what to do about the Persian Gulf. We are
sort of responsible for the defense of the Persian Gulf, but
we cannot possibly defend all areas of the world simultaneously
with American forces and conduct separate diplomacies, Who-
ever wins the election will have to address the problem of

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how much unity we can want, and how much diversity we can
stand. I'm not even going to pretend to have an answer here.
But it cannot go own indefinitely that we pretend to have
a common military strategy, and everybody pursues his own
independent diplomacy in East-West relations, Middle-East
negotiations, and so forth. And this is all the more a
problem. Because really we don't have any agreement on
military strategy either. For thirty years of the post-war
period, we have maintained the defense of free countries
by our nuclear superiority. As late as 1962, when the
United States confronted the Soviet Union over Cuba, we had
an advantage of about 50 to 1, over the Soviet Union in
strategic delivery vehicles. In 1973 during the Middle
an
East war, we had/advantage of 10 to 1. I will not now go
into the American debate here of who is to blame for the
fact that the margin was lost. Moreover, I think we can stipulate
that even if somebody is to blame for the fact that the margin
was lost, it would have been lost anyway as a result of the

evolution of technology, so we may be a few years earlier
at a point that we were going to reach anyway. But we
have now reached a point where, to rely on strategic nuclear
war, is an act of moral and political abdication. Every
time I say this, I'm accused of undermining confidence in
the United States, especially when I say it in foreign
countries. I say that what would surely undermine confidence
in us, in each other, is to maintain propositions that
represent a complete abdication of national responsibility.
The European nations did not recover for a generation from
World War I in which 20 million people were killed over a
period of four years. How can we conceive that our societies
can be anything like what we now know after the catacalism
of a general nuclear war. And therefore it cannot go on that
we pretend that NATO is just a triggering device to our
(inaudible word) . It is an absolute necessity that
we stop playing games with ourselves. And incidentally, I'm
not saying this as a criticism of any particular administration.

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That this situation would arise, everybody has known for
a long time, but has been afraid to face. And I would say
also that no matter who wins the election in the United States,
the losing side has an obligation to get behind the president
that emerges in solving some of these issues that I'm raising.
Second problem is the general issue of East-West relations.
It is just as difficult for Americans to live with allies
that are both competitive and cooperative, so it is even
harder to live with an enemy with which we are doomed to
coexistence. I have no difficulty whatever, granting the
proposition that the communist system is irreconcilibly hostile
to us. It is also true that the Soviet system over the last
18 years has developed a degree of military power that is
a threat to all surrounding countries, and that this has not
been matched by comparable exersions in the West, because
every leader of our allies has managed to shift the burden
of defense conceptually on our shoulders, and because we
domestically have not been willing to face the fact that the

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security blanket of our overwhelming superiority was slipping away and that we had to make alternative arrangements. But how to live in a world of simultaneous hostility and coexistence is a tremendous problem for us. And we see it now in the SALT debate that is going on in the United States.

I regret, I'm frank to tell you, that SALT having been dormant for a year, should have been raised in the last two weeks of a political campaign in which the possibility of serious discussion is practically zero. But I'd like to say a few general things that we have to deal with, in which whether or not to ratify one particular agreement is a subsidiary problem. The first thing is, in all of my experience with Soviet negotiators, it is simply not true what so many intellectuals are saying. That the Soivet Union is antagonized by the development of Western strength. In 1967, President Johnson proposed to Prime Minister Kosygin, negotiations

missile when on limiting anti-ballistic/defenses at a time/we had not,

Kosygin said this was the most absurd proposition he had ever heard, and refused to even discuss it. Three years

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President Nixon was building an anti-ballistic missile defense, which was assaulted by every liberal in the United States as forever dooming the chances of arms control.

When we were building it, our problem was to get the Soviets to talk about anything else. And therefore, without some parity, there can be no serious negotiation. And it is precisely that parity that in the minds of many is now missing. Second, any negotiation, or any agreement must last a sufficiently long time. So that it affects decisions on weapons development. The time that is left now in SALT II is three-three and a half years. That is much to short to affect anything. It becomes a ratification of what countries were going to do anyway. Third, it is not possible, and it is not helpful to anybody to pretend that arms control can be conducted (word inaudible) isolation from the rest of foreign policy. We have had in recent years Cuban troops in Angola, Cuban troops in Ethiopia, two communist coups in Afghanistan, the occupation of Cambodia, upheavals all over

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war
the Persian Gulf, a guerilla/in the former Spanish Sahara,
all of them fermented in courage by the Soviet Union. It
isn't going to work to pretend that we can control arms while
international tensions are systematically fermented. We
need some code of international conduct, side by side with
arms control. And in that framework we must have both.
I'd like to say a few words about underdeveloped nations.

of course
In my experience in office,/all the areas I've discussed,
Canada was particularly sensitive to especially arms control
and especially the developing nations. Because while a developed
nation, itself, Canada is of the dimension that makes it
easier to understand the problems of societies that have to
relate themselves to a larger international framework and
that cannot pretend to solve all problems by themselves.
But the problem of developing nations for us is complicated
by the same factors that I've already described in other areas
of our policy. Again, the American notion is, and I suspect
that may be true even here to some extent, that the problem
of the developing nations is largely an issue of economics,

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And that as one improves the economic prospects of these nations, one also improves the chances of political stability.

Now I do not deny that there is a major economic element, but I would suggest that that is only the tip of the iceburg.

Because paradoxically, in developing societies, the process of development produces not political stability, but political instability. In America, in the inexhaustable masochism of our intellectual community, it has now become accepted wisdom that what overthrew the shah was the sale of american arms to Iran. Its a curious phenomena that the sale of Soviet arms never seems to have overthrown any country that received them. But the sale of arms to Iran was to balance the sale of arms to Iraq that had preceeded it and the in withdraw of the British of the Persian Gulf and/the absence of it there would have been a power vacuum. I think what overthrew the Shah most of all, if any one factor could be said to have overthrown the shah, it was that he learned too well the economic lessons of the west. It was/attempt to

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create a secular state in a feutal religious society. It
was a rate of economic development that outstripped any
possibilities of political adaptation. It was moving
peasants, as industrialization does, into the cities where
they were rootless; expropriating large land owners, attacking
(inaudible phrase ) that created this coalition of all
Western interest that is the hallmark of revolution, of
small which only a very segment was what we in the west would
call radical progressive or what ever you want to call it.
I mention that not to be redebating the issue of Iran.
I mention to say that this is a big problem in the future.
In other developing countries, what exactly is it that were
after. What do we tell an oil rich country in the Middle
East today that comes to us and says we want to avoid the
fate of Iran. We know that the oil revenues are going to
destabilize our whole society. What exactly do we tell them.
Maybe you in Canada know what to tell them. We in the
United States haven't got a clue. And therefore, we are

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confronting these societies with a series of dilemmas.
And we are now in the developing world living in a never-
never land. Those in the West who want to develop a policy
for developing countries are frequently, what I consider,
starry eyed idealists, who say we've got to keep weapons
out of these areas; we've got to make them concentrate on
development; they are the nobel savages that have higher
moral principles than we; they are going to judge us by
our moral adequacy; and we are going to out flank them by
our human rights campaign, in total defiance of any
empirical experience. Which country has been won over to
our side by a human rights campaign, in the whole history
of the developing world. At a time when all the issues
in the developing world are getting increasingly settled
by military force, we are asserting abstract theories.
Now don't misunderstand me. I believe we, in the West must
have a policy in the developing world. We must have someting
to which reasonable people can repair. Not to support us

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in the United Nations, which I think is not the most
people
crucial issue. But in which reasonable/have an alternative
not
to the radical program. But we must/elude ourselves
about two fundamental factors. One, that the energy crisis
is producing a progressive impoverishment of the industrial
democracies. And second, that in the developing world
radical forces are gaining ground not simply because they're
economically agrieved, but because there is no political
and security structure which is an alternative to that
sweep that one now sees. In some respects in the Caribbean,
in some respects in Central America, in some respects in
the Persian Gulf. In the war between Iran and Iraq, I was
asked a few weeks ago what I thought of it at a press
conference, and with a tact with which I was noted in office,
I said my only regret is that only one of these countries
can lose the war. They are taking my advice to heart, and
they are trying both to lose the war. But the impact of
this war, regardless of what we do, is going to be very

grave. It's another example of force being the arbiter.

It is another strengthening of radical, anti-western, anti-economic, anti market forces. It is another encouragement or discouragement for modern elements who will have to adopt radical programs. It makes it even harder to negotiate the Arab-Israeli dispute. I have said all of this, not because I have an answer for every problem that I have put before you, but to indicate that there is a huge agenda for America. This is an agenda that is absolutely impossible for us to solve entirely within an American context. Partly because we don't have the leadership groups anymore that are coherent enough to develop one common position, this profound division in our country. Second, because its beyond our capacity, even militarily. Third, because we have to adjust our economy to massive structural changes. I know that in Canada we are considered an economic giant, and perhaps oppressively so, and maybe that is true as far as Canada is concerned. But if you look at statistics that the United States is facing, in terms of productivity, in terms

-28-

of investment, in terms of research and development, in
terms of the quality of our products, we are facing a
revolutionary situation, and we must have another industrial
revolution almost if we (tape inaudible) get there before
they do. Now, I have described our problems. I just want
to leave you with one note. Which is as serious as the
American problems are, they pale before those of the Soviet
Union. The Soviet Union has a temporary advantage in
military power, but the Soviet Union has a political system
in which they have no method for succession. The Soviet
Union has an economic system that is guaranteed to produce
stagnation. We have seen in Poland what happens when
a communist system permits even the smallest latitude
for self expression. Sooner or later, the Soviets will face
the problem of domestic reform. And if I look at it as a
historian, it is more likely that in the '90s, the Soviet
Union will be the sick man of Europe than it is that they
will run the world, provided that we get through the next
decade with some cohesion among the industrial democracies,

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with some relevance to the developing countries, with
some strategy for the kind of world for which we want
to bring about. That is our big challenge. That is really
quite frankly the main issue also in our relations with
friendly countries, including Canada. Now I know I have
not spoken specifically about Canadian-American relations,
because quite frankly my recollection and perception of
Canadian-American relations is that the detailed issues
that excite us of a secondary nature and the fundamental
issues in which Canada and the United States can cooperate
and have cooperated are in this area of the perception of
the international environment, in which in my experience
Canada has played an important role. But more than that, it
is not a condescending grant of participation to a neighbor,
it is that the United States if it has wits about it
must recognize that we cannot do it alone intellectually,
and there must be various types of approaches that are now
combined in the world that I've described to you because

what we now face is either a deliberate decision to build
an international order relevant to our times, or chaos.
And in this sense, the free peoples have perhaps one last
opportunity to shape their own future and that is something
that with all the problems I have described, no other
group of nations can say for itself.