[y]

11

with 5000 years of uninterrupted history, and America, the
world's only superpower.

I agree with the Clinton Administration that engagement
with China is in our national interest. But the policy is
losing impetus because of the tendency to see policymaking as
a series of photo opportunities and the Clinton strategy of
neutralizing opposition by preempting its criticisms. The
President has turned his encounters with Chinese leaders into
television spectaculars and/or discussions of immediate,
tactical issues, mostly on trade. Though a "strategic
partnership" has been proclaimed, it has been given little
content. Real strategic discussions on the highest level have
been rare. During a nine day sojourn in China, the President
managed only two hours of dialogue with the top Chinese
leaders. And he has felt obliged to balance his own China
policy with periodic bows to his critics.

12

A good example was the visit to Washington in early April of Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji - generally considered among the most reformist and market-oriented of the Chinese leaders.

That visit was bracketed by the announcement just before Zhu's arrival that the United States would support a UN resolution condemning China's human rights practices, and the sale of long-range radars to Taiwan immediately afterwards. And during the visit, the Administration declined to sign an agreement regarding China's entry into the WTO, for which the Chinese had made major concessions and which they had reason to believe would be the centerpiece of Zhu's visit. (To compound Zhu's embarrassment, the Administration published all the concessions he had made, causing him to appear accommodating without being able to achieve his goal.)

The merit of these decisions is not at issue here.

Whatever one's view of their substance, their timing conveys

[y]

13

an impression of a government incapable of consistent policy
and driven by its critics.

In this atmosphere, the bombing of the Belgrade embassy
proved the match that set off the explosion. It was given
impetus by the President's original apology - made not in a
prepared statement but as a response to a question at a press
conference during a visit to Oklahoma and linked to a
justification of NATO strategy. I have described the Chinese
reaction, especially the violence against our embassy, as
"unacceptable." But if the Sino-American relationship is not
to spiral toward a confrontation, it is essential to examine
just how precarious our relations with other major powers like
China have become.

Kosovo is in the process of turning into the sort of
watershed the Vietnam war was for an earlier generation. A
debate going to the premises of the Clinton Administration

14

foreign policy is looming - and necessary. The paradox is that
an Administration that thinks of itself as acting in the name
of universal values is seen by too many others as acting
arbitrarily, or inexplicably, or arrogantly. (Yeltsin has been
using the word "co_p__tly.")

No issue is more in need of clarification than the
concept of humanitarian foreign policy put forward as the
Administration's contribution to a new approach to foreign
policy. Kosovo is justified as establishing the principle that
ethnic cleansing will henceforth be punished. But we did not
punish it in Algeria, the Sudan, Sierra Leone, Croatia,
Rwanda, the Caucasus, and the Kurdish areas. The answer is
that we act where we are able to, not elsewhere. But what are
the criteria for this distinction, and what is the moral
difference between these expediences compared to the much
decried expediences of the so-called realists? And what kind

[4J]

15

of moral policy fights for unlimited objectives with limited
means and assaults the civilian structure of its adversary
because it will risk no casualties of its own troops? Foreign
policy must reconcile ends with means. The fact that ethnic
cleansing is repugnant does not relieve leaders of the
responsibility that, in the name of morality, [their] strategy
devastates both Kosovo and Serbia and has already produced
more refugees and casualties than any conceivable alternative
[and therefore] should [not] go unquestioned.

The United States can rightly take pride in elevating
human rights to an integral part of foreign policy. But when
one observes the progression from the call for moral pressure
of the 1970s, to economic sanctions in the 1980s, to military
intervention in the 1990s, the time has come to call for a
definition of purposes and a dialogue on priorities. Whether

16

the Administration initiates it or not, it will soon be
imposed on us by our NATO allies.

The inevitable debate about NATO's future is being
delayed by horror at Milosevic's barbarities and by the
paradox that Europe's new left wing governments - especially
in Germany and Italy - are afraid of being accused of
undermining their conservative predecessors' legacy of pro-
American and pro-NATO foreign policy. (Which is why - at least
in Germany - our traditional friends, the conservatives, are
far more reserved about Kosovo than the new government.) But
these new left-wing governments may well consider that they
have now paid their dues to the traditions of allied
solidarity. They can be expected to pay increasing attention
to the mounting indignation of their rank and file, who would
be protesting in the streets in their tens of tens of

17

thousands had former Chancellor Helmut Kohl won the election
and carried out a similar policy.

The issues ducked at the NATO summit brook no further
delay. Specifically, what is the proper mission of NATO in
so-called "out of area" conflicts? What are the relative roles
of Europe and America in availability of resources, military
dispositions, command arrangements and diplomacy? How does a
basically military organization find a political role in
stabilizing still unstable parts of Europe? Europe (the UK
included) has already begun to draw the conclusion from Kosovo
that it needs to accelerate the building of its own
institutions in order to enhance its autonomy from us - hardly
a vote of confidence in the middle of a war. But if it will
not supply the resources for this task, we will be left with
the worst of all worlds: a Europe asserting ____ freedom of

18

action from the United States but with little actual ability
to act alone; and an America estranged from Europe.

Our relationship with Russia is drifting into a ______
dead end. However Kosovo ends, the ______ end inflicted on
Russia's pride will last a long time. To its credit, the
Administration has, from its beginning, recognized the
importance of bringing Russia into the international
community. But it has identified this primarily with
democratic reform and market economics inside Russia -
enhancing the Russian sense of having become a kind of
colonial appendage to the West. In this phase, attention must
be paid to Russia's image of itself as a historic player on
the continental stage. This requires less lecturing and more
dialogue; less elaboration of an agenda devised in Washington
and more scope for the expression of Russian concerns; less
sociology and more foreign policy.

19

With respect to China, the leaders of both countries seem
aware that a confrontation would be catastrophic for both
sides as well as for the peace of the world. But both are
under pressure from ideological opponents at home. As for the
United States, there is no way to dodge this debate. The
critics are serious and so must be the Administration. There
is no more important task for American foreign policy than to
design a strategy that recognizes adversarial elements yet
masters them by a clear definition of the importance of
cooperative relations with China. We must not repeat in Asia
the superficialities that dominated our policy and brought us
such grief in the Balkans.

This is a tall order for the last eighteen months of an
Administration heretofore more given to tactics than strategy,
more to soothing domestic criticism than to shaping history.
The agenda will not be completed in the time left. But if the

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17

Our generation can rightly take pride in elevating human rights to an integral part of policy. But when one observes the progression from the call for moral pressure of the 1970s, to economic sanctions in the 1980s, to military intervention in the 1990s, the time has come to call for a definition of power and a dialogue on priorities. Whether the Administration initiates it or not, it will surely be imposed on us by our NATO allies.

The inevitable debate about NATO's future is being delayed by horror about Milosevic's barbarities and by the paradox that Europe's new left wing governments - especially in Germany and Italy - are afraid of being accused of undermining their conservative predecessors' legacy of pro-American and pro-NATO foreign policy. (Which is why - at least in Germany - our traditional friends, the conservatives, are far more reserved about the Kosovo strategy than the new

05-16-99 12:00 TO:

FROM:5617450358

P17

2958 WORDS

KISSINGER NEWSWEEK ARTICLE 5/16/99

The war over Kosovo has spread far beyond the Balkans. It has exposed a number of sore spots in the conduct of our international relations that have heretofore been obscured by band-aids that made them invisible without curing them.

The Chinese reaction to the bombing of their embassy in Belgrade reflects many tensions in Chinese society but it was given powerful impetus by accumulated frustrations about the Sino-American relationship. All observers agree that the reaction in Moscow may leave a legacy of humiliation that may overhang US-Russian relations for decades. And NATO unity is brittle. Several allies are eying the exits; domestic opposition is building in Germany and Italy and was always

[Y]

2

powerful in Greece. If the bombing goes into the summer, a
crisis is likely to become public.

The causes are partly related to growing uneasiness about
the precedent set by the decision to start military
operations, the conduct of these operations and the opaqueness
about the meaning of the final terms. But these specific
causes are exacerbated by the style and approach to foreign
policy of the Clinton Administration, which produces an
accumulated sense of impotent frustration. The leaders of
Russia and China are products of a generation that looks at
foreign policy in terms of historic nations of national
interest. That is, they assess decisions of peace and war by
whether they enhance a nation's security or further its
prosperity. If they can find no traditional reason for such
actions, they ascribe one's motives not to altruism - which is
the American interpretation - but to a quest for domination.

[Y]

3

They will seek an explanation in indifference to their concerns and a hidden (and hypocritical) penchant for domination.

In Europe the situation is more complex. There, the allies respect our motives but are beginning to question our competence. And they find themselves under increasing domestic pressure as the damage from the bombing begins to approach the devastation of ethnic cleansing.

Through all this, America is handicapped because the style of the Clinton Administration has prevented the achievement of a genuine position of leadership. The formative experiences of its key personnel were either in the Vietnam protest movement or in the politics of presidential campaigns, or both. The former attitude was suspicious of the scale of power in foreign policy. It emphasized the so-called "soft" issues like environment and had little concern with

[Y]

4

equilibrium. The experience with presidential politics produced an extraordinary concern with polls, to a degree that foreign policy became handled increasingly as an aspect of domestic politics. The combination of these elements has produced a foreign policy quite skillful in dealing with short-term tactical issues but obtuse with respect to strategy; adept at spinning American public opinion but tone deaf to the prescriptions and sensitivities of other societies, especially of Russia and China. The neglect of long-range strategy explains how it was possible to slide into the Kosovo conflict without adequate consideration of all its implications.

In the days before the start of the bombing, it was conventional wisdom in Washington that Serbian attachment to Kosovo was tenuous and that Slobodan Milosevic was looking for a pretext to get rid of the incubus it represented - which our

5

bombing was supposed to supply. But plausibility does not make
a policy. What if Milosevic did not yield, as Serbia never
had? What if the country that had fought the Turkish and the
Austrian empires and had defied Hitler and Stalin at the
height of their respective powers did not yield? How far were
we willing to go? Not to ground war, it was announced at the
very beginning, tempting Milosevic to test his endurance of
sustained bombing. But how was a war of attrition to be ended?
No provision was made, either for a long war or the flood of
refugees it was bound to create - not to speak of the ethnic
cleansing. The result was not so much a miscalculation as a
failure to perceive and to provide for foreseeable
consequences.

This is why public explanations are so frequently at
variance with the measures looming as necessary for a
settlement. Allied public pronouncements since the beginning

[Y]

6

of the crisis have almost ritually compared Milosevic with
Hitler. But the military dispositions and the transparent
reluctance to accept casualties have conveyed an unwillingness
to conduct the kind of struggle necessary for the overthrow of
the accursed tyrant. But if the outcome was to be some kind of
negotiation over the composition of the International Force
and the continuation of Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo, all
the ambiguities that had aborted the Rambouillet agreement
would reemerge, compounded by the accusation of dealing with
the equivalent of Hitler. Thus the Alliance, under American
leadership, has set a trap for itself of a justification of
the war requiring a total victory and a strategy impelling
______.

This was apparent as early as the so-called negotiation
at Rambouillet. The Rambouillet proposals were not a
negotiation but an ultimatum certainly unacceptable to the

[Y]

7

Serbs even after prolonged warfare. And its intention was made clear when NATO announced it would bomb Yugoslavia were the proposal to be rebuffed. But no Serbian government - not only Milosevic - would turn over the administration to a foreign occupation that was implied by the NATO proposal that it station 30,000 NATO troops on Yugoslav territory, which would soon become the de facto administration of a province the Serbs regard as their national shrine. This inconsistency guaranteed a fight to the finish that NATO never intended, and for which it was not prepared militarily, psychologically or politically - guaranteeing that NATO purposes and internal arrangements will become a major subject of internal NATO discussions once the war is over.

One of the most important decisions taken in those now seemingly far-off days in February, when its choices were still open to it, was precisely the decision to impose 30,000

[Y]

8

troops onto the territory of a state with which NATO was not
at war, and to use the refusal to accept this demand as
justification for opening hostilities. This decision - hailed
by American and British leaders as the opening of a new phase
of humanistic diplomacy - marked a dramatic departure from
historic NATO political doctrine and ran counter to all
existing international rules - an astounding departure for an
administration that had entered office proclaiming its
devotion to the UN and "aggressive multilateralism." There is
no indication that these implications were ever discussed,
either within the Alliance or at Rambouillet, which treated
the Kosovo crisis as a tactical problem. In fact, it
transformed NATO from a defensive military alliance into an
institution prepared to impose its values by military force -
at least in certain circumstances. Since this occurred in the
same months that three former Soviet satellites joined NATO,

[Y]

9

it seemed to confirm the most paranoid Russian suspicions that NATO, under American leadership, was being transformed into an instrument of world domination.

In this manner, Kosovo has become a symbol of Russia's postwar frustrations. The trials of Russia's traditional friend (despite the interruption of the Tito years) brought home Russia's decline and has generated a hostility to America that could blight Russian policy toward America for a long time and hasten the emergence of a kind of Nationalist and Socialist Russia - akin to the European Fascism of the 1930s. This would be a sorry end for a decade of devoted efforts by the Clinton Administration to support Russian reform. This sincere and dedicated effort has always suffered from the reluctance of the Clinton Administration to engage in a real strategic dialogue rather than a consultation consisting of a technical elaboration of American so-called soft issue

[Y]

10

programs, like proliferation. But these are no longer enough
to give meaning to US-Russian relations, if they ever were.

For now, unless Russia achieves a genuine sense of
participation in international affairs, resentments are bound
to fester and, in time, may become unmanageable.

This is why I believe that exorbitant expectations are
attached to the Russian mediation in Kosovo. If he wants to
maintain a public position, no Russian leader can be seen to
support the NATO program. Hence a Russian mediator faces a
double dilemma: if he is perceived as supporting the NATO
program, he loses standing at home; if he induces us to reduce
our demands, American political leaders will use Russia as a
scapegoat for the assault to which they will be subjected.

Hence Russian mediation of a ceasefire risks mortgaging US-
Russian relations even further. The most constructive role for

[Y]

11

Russia will be at a conference for political arrangements in
the Balkans following a ceasefire.

China's reaction to the bombing before the attack on its
Belgrade embassy was more muted but equally intense. Every
nation views international events through the prism of its
history. And to China, the new NATO doctrine of humanitarian
intervention evokes its experience with Europe's claimed?
civilizing mission that led to the fragmentation of China and
a series of Western interventions. These humiliations were
capped in the Twentieth Century, first by the Japanese
invasions and then by the so-called Brezhnev doctrine
according to which the Kremlin claimed the right to sustain
Communist regimes and to punish those that strayed from its
ideological line by force of arms. It was to resist the
Brezhnev doctrine that China moved to restore its relations
with the United States in 1971.

[Y]

12

That policy is now in question. The attack on its embassy culminated what, in Beijing, is perceived as increasingly peremptory American conduct insensitive to Chinese dignity and subordinating a relationship that should be based on mutual interests to American domestic politics. President Clinton's overall China policy has reflected the conviction of all his predecessors that both China and the United States have much to gain from cooperation and risk exhausting themselves - in different ways - in confrontation. For China, confrontation would mean a threat to its economic program and ultimate reform. For America, it would spell an Asia in turmoil torn and weakened by the constant need to choose between the world's most populous country with 5000 years of uninterrupted history, and America, the world's only superpower.

I agree with the basic premises of the Clinton Administration's China policy. But it has lost impetus because

[Y]

13

of the tendency to see policymaking as a series of television
opportunities and the Clinton strategy of paralyzing
opposition by preempting its programs and criticisms. The
President has turned his encounters with Chinese leaders into
photo opportunities or discussions of immediate issues, mostly
on trade. Though a strategic partnership has been declared,
real discussions of it on the highest level have been rare.
During a nine day sojourn in China, the President managed only
two hours of dialogue with the top Chinese leaders, spending
most of the rest of his time on television spectaculars aimed
at American audiences. And he has felt obliged to balance his
own policy with bows to his critics.

A good example was the visit to Washington in early April
of the Chinese Premier Zhu Rong Ji - generally considered
among the most reformist and market-oriented of the Chinese
leaders. That visit was bracketed by an announcement that the

14

United States would support a UN resolution moderating?

China's human rights practices just before the visit, and the
sale of long-range radars to Taiwan immediately afterwards.

And during the visit, the Administration declined to sign an
agreement regarding China's entry into the __, for which the
Chinese had made major concessions and which they had reason
to believe would be the centerpiece of Zhu's visit.

The merit of these decisions is not at issue here. In
Beijing they were perceived as either deliberate disregard of
Chinese sensibilities or as a bow to an opposition so powerful
that it could override the spirit, if not the substance, of
Administration policies.

In this atmosphere of mounting frustration, the bombing
of the Belgrade embassy proved the match that set off a
wildfire. The Chinese considered the original apology - made
in response to a question at a press conference on other

[Y]

15

subjects and linked to a justification of NATO strategy in Kosovo - as more daunting? than satisfactory. I have described their reaction to this perceived slight as "excessive." But if the Sino-American relationship is not to drift toward a confrontation, it is essential to examine how dangerous these examples of mutual misunderstanding are becoming.

Kosovo is becoming the sort of watershed the Vietnam war was for an earlier generation. A debate going to the very premises of the Clinton Administration foreign policy is looming. And the Administration can not indefinitely delay joining the issue on a philosophical level. If it fails to do so, it will witness the simultaneous disintegration of its policies with NATO, Russia and China, with attendant impact on other key areas.

The first issue in need of clarification is what is meant by humanitarian intervention. When it is pointed out that its

[Y]

16

principles are obviously not being applied in Algeria, the
Sudan, Sierra Leone, Croatia, the Caucasus and the Kurdish
areas, the answer is that we act where we are able to, not
elsewhere. But what are the criteria for this distinction, and
what is the moral difference for these expediences compared to
the much decried expediences of the national interest school?
And what kind of policy fights for unlimited objectives with
limited means and assaults the civilian structure and
possibility of living? of its adversary because it will risk
no casualties - especially in a ground war? Foreign policy
must reconcile ends and means. The fact that ethnic cleansing
is repugnant does not prove that a strategy that devastates
both Kosovo and Serbia and has already produced more refugees
and casualties than any conceivable alternative should be
elevated to an absolute level.

[Y]

17

Our generation can rightly take pride in elevating human
rights to an integral part of policy. But when one observes
the progression from the call for moral pressure of the 1970s,
to economic sanctions in the 1980s, to military intervention
in the 1990s, the time has come to call for a definition of
c____ and a dialogue on priorities. Whether the Administration
initiates it or not, it will surely be imposed on us by our
NATO allies.

The inevitable debate about NATO's future is being
delayed by horror about Milosevic's barbarities and by the
paradox that Europe's new left wing governments - especially
in Germany and Italy - are afraid of being accused of
undermining their conservative predecessors' legacy of pro-
American and pro-NATO foreign policy. (Which is why - at least
in Germany - our traditional friends, the conservatives, are
far more reserved about the Kosovo strategy than the new

[Y]

18

government.) But these new governments have now paid their
dues to the traditions of allied solidarity. They can be
expected to pay increasing attention to the attitudes of their
rank and file, who would be protesting in the streets in their
tens of tens of thousands had former Chancellor Kohl carried
out a similar policy.

A reexamination of ends and means regarding Kosovo will
soon be upon us. NATO has neither prevented ethnic cleansing
nor degraded the Serb ability to carry it out - at least until
it was too late. Since no NATO government seems prepared to
undertake ground action and since their only recourse seems to
be civilian devastation, a reexamination is upon us. But
beyond this, the issues ducked at the NATO summit brook no
further delay.

Specifically, what is the relationship between NATO and
so-called out of area conflicts? What are the relative roles

[Y]

19

of Europe and America in availability of resources, military
dispensations, c______ arrangement and diplomacy? Is it
possible to find means of conciliation transcending a
basically military organization? Europe (the UK excepted) will
almost surely draw the conclusion from Kosovo that it needs a
greater sense of identity. It remains to be seen whether it
will pay the price.

The same is true of our relationship with Russia. However
Kosovo ends, the ____ end inflicted on Russia's pride will
last a long time. The Administration has, from its beginning,
recognized the importance of bringing Russia into the
international community. But it has identified this primarily
with democratic reform and market economics inside Russia -
enhancing the Russian sense of having become a kind of
colonial appendage to the West. In this phase, attention must
be paid to Russia's image of itself as a historic player on

[Y]

20

the continental stage. This requires less lecturing and more
dialogue; less elaboration of an agenda conceived in
Washington and more scope for the expression of Russian
concerns; less sociology and more foreign policy.

With respect to China, the leaders of both countries seem
aware that a confrontation would be catastrophic for both
sides as well as for the peace of the world. But both are
under pressure from largely ideological opponents at home. As
for the United States, there is no way to dodge this debate by
the method of throwing a baby to the lions every once in a
while in the hope that they will be placated. But the critics
are serious and so must be the Administration. There is no
more important test for American foreign policy than to design
a strategy that recognizes adversarial elements and yet
sub____ in a clear definition of common interests. We must not

[Y]

21

repeat in Asia the superficialities that thwarted us in the
Balkans.

This is a tall order for the last eighteen months of an
Administration heretofore more given to tactics than strategy,
more to domestic battles than to the shaping of history. The
agenda will not be completed in the time left. But if the
President evokes a debate on it before the end of his term, he
will have left an important legacy.