Keynote Address by
Dr. Henry Kissinger

Dedication of
Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

September 12, 2000

President Bollinger, Governor Engler, Mr. President, I confess I had a
moment of panic there when the President of the University and President
Ford were consulting before my turn.

I thought that perhaps President Ford had developed some second
thoughts about our association.

Now, for those of you who like to know the inside story of how
events like this unfold, those of us on the platform have been handed a
schedule. And the schedule says that I should finish by 11:42.

Exactly.

First of all, that will enable all of you to say you were present at an
historic occasion.

Second, since my native language is German, I can easily go till
11:42 without placing a verb.

It is a great privilege for me to come here to pay tribute to one of
the great human beings I have been honored to know in my life.

I treasure the years that I could serve as Secretary of State and, for
a while, as National Security Advisor under the leadership of President
Ford.

It means an enormous amount that so many of our
associates of that period are here again to pay tribute to our President.

Washington is about power, and it is very rare, indeed it is unheard of, that so many people who were associated in the Ford administration, and were friends then, have remained friends since.

In Washington, competition among key persons is what keeps the newspapers going, and it is what public officials usually engage in.

President Ford took over at one of the most tragic periods of American history, at a time when the administration was demoralized and, internationally, our adversaries were beginning to question whether we had the will or the ability to perform America's role as the defender of freedom. Our allies no longer knew where America was heading. There were crises in the Middle East. There was a still nascent relationship with China and there was a still formidable Soviet Union.

President Ford took over in that period, the first non-elected President in our history.

And because, I would say, of the goodness of his character, the integrity of his convictions, and the conciliatoriness of his nature, he helped overcome the crises and made it look as if no other course had even been possible.

I say this, moreover, as somebody who believed then and who believes now that his predecessor, Richard Nixon, performed outstanding services for the United States; and that the crisis President Ford inherited was a crisis of the nation and of our society. It is no reflection on any other individual to say that President Ford saved this country from its worst crisis since the Civil War. Therefore, I know I speak for all of my colleagues, who also happen to be my friends when I say that it means a great deal to us to be present at the opening of a school of public service that carries the name of Gerald Ford -- a man whom history will treat even better than his contemporaries did. He thought that his accomplishments were natural,

and they thought it because we had never a more self-effacing President, or
a President who thought more of service and less of himself.

Now, I am supposed to -- and will -- make some remarks that may
be relevant to the idea of public service. I would like to discuss one aspect
in which I perhaps have some competence, namely the perspective brought
to public service by academicians versus to the perspective of policy
makers.

When you are on the outside, you can pick your subject. You can
work on it for as long as you choose. You are responsible primarily to
yourself, and you can afford to pick, among the range of options that are
available, those that are most persuasive, perhaps even the most elevated.
And you have the great privilege of changing your mind and going back to
the library saying, "I am going to write another book." And you will even get
some credit for having adapted your views.

As a policy maker, you are always under pressure. You don't
choose your subject. The subject presents itself.

And anybody in high office will tell you the eerie feeling you have at
the end of each day when you have a list of telephone calls and a pile of
documents, and you have to decide which of them you are going to neglect,
whom you are going to add to the list of your enemies -- which, in my case,
was never short --

and which of the problems that is in these memoranda you are going to
let go for a little bit and hope that they do not flare up before you can go
back to that pile again.

The most difficult problem of a policy maker is to separate the
urgent from the important. And the urgent always has a constituency while
the important may be some years in the future.

You don't have to deal with problems that are five years down the road, because you may be out of office when they become acute. So your priorities are always skewed.

The policy maker is usually -- I would say, invariably -- as aware of the choices as the academician. Most policy makers are as intelligent as the anchormen or the evening news though you may not believe this.

But there are some experiments that they cannot attempt; not because they don't think the result would be great if the theory on which it were based were true, but because they cannot run the risk.

There were many people during the Cold War -- which of course most of the present undergraduate and graduate generation doesn't even remember very well who used to think that some unilateral disarmament by the United States would morally impel the Soviet Union to follow suit.

That argument had to be rejected; not because a succession of American Presidents didn't understand it, not because they wouldn't have liked the outcome, but because they could not risk a policy of faith.

So you have to understand what, especially a President, faces and, especially in the field I know best, which is foreign policy.

Most Americans think that foreigners are aspiring Americans and that they react to events the way Americans would. But we are a uniquely blessed society. We have never had a powerful enemy until very recently. We have never had to conduct foreign policy with a sense of imminent catastrophe.

Because we have had a history that is totally different and unique, when we look at Russia, or China, or Europe, or anywhere in the world, it is very hard for us to understand the cultural and historical context.

When we deal with the Chinese, we deal with a country that has had 5,000 years of uninterrupted history.

They have had fourteen dynasties the individual history of each
having been longer than the entire history of the United States.

And they think, maybe wrongly, that they managed to get through
most of that period without advice from the United States.

So it is not self-evident that lectures from Washington are the best
way to persuade Chinese leaders; that process requires respect and
understanding.

In our system, it is the President who has to bridge the gap
between our national experience and our vision of the future.

The President has, in a sense, to walk alone and to bear the
burden of the gap between what his society has experienced and what it
will require.

Public opinion polls are no help because the public does not forgive
its leaders for disasters, even if the disasters reflect what the public was
believed to have wanted.

In 1938, after Munich, Neville Chamberlain was the most popular
man in England and two years later, he was finished.

Those of us who served under President Ford will never forget the
way in which he handled Israel. And in 1976, President Ford was in a
primary fight for the presidential nomination just as I was going on to Africa
to promote majority rule for Southern Africa. I had with me the draft of a
speech which would break entirely new ground for the United States, which
had never previously supported majority rule unambiguously.

As I was going off -- and, in those days, domestic politics was not
part of our foreign policy discussions -- I said, "Some of your advisors are
telling me that this will not help you in Texas. You want me to delay this
trip?"

President Ford said, "We can't change our foreign policy every time we have a primary, or we are not going to have a foreign policy."

Of course, he won only one delegate in Texas.

And though people have long since forgotten who won the primary in Texas, they will not forget who was the American President who supported majority rule in Southern Africa.

Now if I may let me say a word about the end of the Vietnam War, those tragic last few months, without discussing the passions that animated the debate. In those last two months, when the collapse was certain, there was only one issue that we in the White House were concerned about, and that was to rescue as many Vietnamese who had staked their lives on American promises.

We had the intelligence reports. We knew what was happening better than anyone else.

And there were 5,000 Americans left.

President Ford made the heroic decision to withdraw them so gradually that, every day we could, together with some Americans we would take out a lot of Vietnamese.

And we managed to rescue 150,000 lives.

And I had a record of the telephone conversation when the Saigon airport was already under artillery fire. I was calling the President and telling him, "We've got to pull the plug. This is it."

And he was resisting. Not because he wanted to keep a war going, but because there were still 2000 people at the airport. And he was trying to see whether there was some way we could get them out of the airport.

In the event, the last helicopter left about an hour before the North Vietnamese entered Saigon and sent a million people to concentration camps.

I mention all of this because policy disputes come and go, but the purposes and the values that animate an administration persist forever.

It is a particular challenge for us at this moment in our society, when we have so many different generations overlapping. There is the generation of President Ford and, to an extent of myself, which was brought up believing in the beneficent use of American power and in an American policy based on our experiences in World War II and in the construction of the recovery of Europe and Japan.

Then there is the Vietnam generation that is more doubtful about an American role in the world.

And there is the new computer generation, which knows perhaps not too much about either of the previous ones, having a broad knowledge but very little incentive for historical depth.

It is truly a privilege to be at a school dedicated to the name of our President here, and our friend, at this crucial period in American history as we move from the Cold War to a world less dangerous but more complicated, from the simple verities of the previous generation to a more complex understanding of how to distill wisdom from knowledge.

So I would like to thank the President, and the President of the University, for giving me this opportunity. Let me conclude with a proverb that a Chinese -- or, rather, a Singaporean friend -- told me about the nature of policy in our period.

I frankly am not sure that there are as many Chinese proverbs as they lay upon us.

And he may have made it up as he went along -- but it goes like this.

When there is turmoil under the heavens, little problems are dealt with as if they were big problems, and big problems are not dealt with at all.

# It's Official — The Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

## Henry Kissinger Keynotes Naming Ceremony

Gerald R. Ford, 38th president of the United States and a 1935 UM graduate, addressed a group of 2,500 people at Hill Auditorium during a ceremony making official the naming of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. "This is a very high honor and a wonderful occasion in my life," he said. "I am excited by the plans for the future and new partnerships among the Ford Library, School, and Ford Museum." President Ford added, after noting that he had lectured at more than 200 universities since leaving public office: "I can't imagine a better place to hang around!" Following the ceremony was a gala luncheon at the Michigan League and a panel discussion at the Ford Library with former cabinet members on "Policymaking in the Ford Years and Beyond."

"There is no higher honor for a man than to have a school bear his name, especially when it is dedicated to public service."
President Gerald R. Ford
(AB '35, HLLD '74)

Dean Rebecca Blank said that the name change is extremely important for the School. "It helps us honor Gerald Ford and affirm our commitment to training students who are as committed to public service as he has been. His work in Congress and in the Presidency teach us much about leadership and working across party lines." Dean Blank added that the naming "also raises the visibility of our School by associating it with one of the University's most prominent alumni and one of the State's most effective politicians."

Many members of President Ford's family, friends, legislators, and associates from his term as president from 1974-1977 were in the Hill Auditorium audience. Henry Kissinger, secretary of state from 1973-1977 during the Nixon and Ford administrations and winner of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, gave an inside look at the Ford presidency during his keynote speech. Other speakers celebrating the only U.S. president to come from the State of Michigan were: Michigan's Governor John Engler; Rebecca Blank, Dean of the Ford School; UM Regent Rebecca McGowan; University President Lee Bollinger; Provost Nancy Cantor; and recent UM Ford School graduate Omorotimi T. Lewis.

During the ceremony, President Ford expressed his optimism about the political process in the future directing his thoughts particularly to students in the audience: "Your America does not look the same as mine, but I hope the new generation will never lose faith in America, whose greatest weapons are moral, not military."

Dr. Henry Kissinger praised his former boss, citing President Ford's skills as a thoughtful negotiator. In a time Dr. Kissinger described as one of the most tragic periods in American history, it was "the integrity of President Ford's convictions and his conciliatory nature" that allowed him to overcome the worst crisis in the country since the Civil War. "Those of us who served under President Ford will never forget him."

Dr. Henry Kissinger,
former secretary of state under
President Ford: "We never had
a more self-effacing President
who thought more of service
than himself."

Provost Nancy Cantor, Gerald Ford, President Lee Bollinger, and Dean Rebecca Blank signing the ceremonial certificate.

ADERS&BEST / Winter 2001 6

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN GERALD FORD SCHOOL

President Gerald R. Ford and Dr. Henry Kissinger
School of Public Policy
Celebration & Naming Ceremony
University of Michigan

9/12/00

>> PRESIDENT BOLLINGER: Dr. Henry Kissinger, chairman of the international consulting firm Kissinger Associates, served as the nation's 56th Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977. A national security advisor to Presidents Nixon and Ford, he played a major role in formulating U.S. foreign policy, including reestablishing relations with China.
He has received many honors, including the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Medal of Liberty.

Dr. Kissinger is also a scholar. The author of a dozen books and numerous articles on U.S. foreign policy, international affairs and diplomatic history, he earned his Bachelor's, Master's and Doctoral degrees from Harvard University and taught there from 1954 to 1969.

you,

On behalf of the University community, we welcome
Dr. Kissinger, and thank you very much for joining us on this
occasion.

(Applause)

>> DR. KISSINGER: Thank you very much.

turn.

(Laughter)

(Laughter)

Now, for those of you who like to know about the

(Laughter)

Exactly.

(Laughter)

historic occasion.

(Laughter and Applause)

without placing a verb.

tribute to one of the great human beings that I have been

honored to know in my life.

of State and National Security Advisor for a while under the

leadership of President Ford.

And it means an enormous amount that so many of our

President.

it is unheard of, that so many people who were associated in
the Ford administration were friends then and have remained
friends throughout the remainder of our lives.

President Ford took over at one of the most tragic
periods of American history, at a time when the administration
was demoralized, when internationally our adversaries were
beginning to question whether we had the will or the ability
to perform America's role as the defenders of freedom.

Our allies did not know anymore where America was

heading. There were crises in the Middle East. There was a
just beginning relationship with China. There was a still
formidable Soviet Union.

And President Ford took over at that period, the
first non-elected President in our history.

And because, I would say, of the goodness of his
character, the integrity of his convictions, and the
conciliatoriness of his nature, helped overcome this crisis
and made it look as if no other course were even possible.

I say this, moreover, as somebody who believed then
and who believes now that his predecessor, Richard Nixon,
performed outstanding services for the United States, and the
crisis that President Ford inherited was a crisis of the
nation and of our society. And it is no reflection on any
other individual to say that President Ford saved this country
from the worst crisis since the Civil War.

And so I know I speak for all of my colleagues, who

also happen to be my friends, to say that it means a great
deal to us to be present at the opening of a school of public
service that carries the name of Gerald Ford, whom history will
treat even better than his contemporaries did, who thought

that his accomplishments were natural, and they thought that because

we have never had a more self-effacing President or a

Now, I am supposed -- and I will -- make some remarks

And I would like to stress one aspect in which I

perhaps have some competence, which is the perspective that is

brought to public service by academicians as compared to the

perspective of policy makers.

and going back to the library and say, "I am going to write
another book." And you will even get some credit for having
adapted your views.

(Laughter)

And anybody in high office will tell you the eerie
feeling you have at the end of each day when you have a list of
telephone calls and a pile of documents, and you have to decide
which of them you are going to neglect, whom you are going to
add to the list of your enemies, which in my case was never

short --

(Laughter)

memoranda you are going to let go for a little bit and hope
that it doesn't flare up before you can go to that pile again.

The most difficult problem of a policy maker is to
separate the urgent from the important. And the urgent always
has a constituency, and the important may be some years in the
future.

You don't have to deal with problems that are five
years down the road because you may be out of office when it
becomes acute. So your priorities are always skewed.

The policy maker is usually -- I would say,
invariably -- as aware of the choices as the academician. Most
policy makers are as intelligent as anchormen in the evening
even though you may not believe this.

(Laughter)

There were many people during the Cold War -- which of
course most of the present undergraduate and graduate
generation doesn't even remember very well. There were many in
the period of the Cold War who used to think that some
unilateral disarmament by the United States would morally impel
the Soviet Union to follow suit.

That argument had to be rejected; not because a
succession of American Presidents didn't understand it, not
because they wouldn't have liked the outcome, but because they
could not risk the policy of faith.

So you have to understand what especially a President
faces, and especially in the field I know best, which is
foreign policy.

Most Americans think that foreigners are aspirant
Americans and that they react to events like Americans would.
But we are a uniquely blessed society. We have never had a
powerful enemy until very recently. We have never had to
conduct foreign policy with a sense of imminent catastrophe.

We have had a history that is totally different and unique.
And so when one looks at Russia, or China, or Europe,
or anywhere in the world, it is very hard for us to understand
the cultural and historical context.

They have had fourteen dynasties whose individual
history is longer than the entire history of the United States.

States.

(Laughter)

So it is not self-evident that lectures from
Washington are the best way to persuade Chinese leaders, that
it requires respect and understanding.

The President has, in a sense, to walk alone and to
bear the burden of the gap between what the society has
experienced and what they will require.

Public opinion polls are no help because the public
does not forgive its leaders for disasters, even if disasters
reflect what the public was believed to have wanted.

In 1938, Neville Chamberlain was the most popular man
in England after Munich, and two years later, he was finished.

Those of us who served under President Ford will never forget the way in which he handled Israel. In 1976, President Ford was in a primary fight for the presidential nomination and I was going on to Africa to promote majority rule for southern Africa. And I had a draft of the speech, which would break entirely new ground for the United States, which had never unambiguously supported it.

And I was going off. And in those days, domestic politics was not part of our foreign policy discussion.

But as I left, I said, "Some of your advisors are telling me that this will not help you in Texas. You want me to delay this trip?"

President Ford said, "We can't change our foreign policy every time we have a primary or we are not going to have a foreign policy."

(Laughter)

But people have long since forgotten who won the
primary in Texas, but people will not forget who was the
American President who supported majority rule in southern
Africa.

(Applause)

And if I may say a word about the end of the Vietnam
War, those tragic last few months, without discussing the
passions that animated the debate, but in those last two
months, when the collapse was certain, there was only one issue
that we in the White House were concerned about, which was to
rescue as many Vietnamese who had staked their lives on
American promises.

And President Ford made the heroic decision to

withdraw them so gradually that every day we could, together
with some Americans, take out a lot of Vietnamese.

And I have direct order of the telephone conversation
when the airport of Saigon was already under artillery fire.
And I was calling the President and telling him, "We've got to
pull the plug. This is it."

And he was resisting. Not because he wanted to keep a
war going. Because there were 2000 people at the airport. And
he was trying to see whether there was some way we could still
get them out at the airport.

And the event, the last helicopter left about an hour
before the North Vietnamese entered Saigon and sent a million
people to concentration camps.