Dr. Henry A. Kissinger

Keynote Address at The Asia Society's conference
on "Asia Role in the Changing World Order" May 12-14, 1993 Tokyo

Transcript

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure for me to address this group and especially after the nice words that were said about me. When you reflect about the books the Chairman was so kind to mention, I must point out to you what a British reviewer said about one of these books, but I won't tell you which one. He said "I don't know whether Mr. Kissinger is a great writer but anyone finishing this book is a great reader." When the Chairman mentioned some of the activities in which I was involved in government I must say it did not seem very probable to me at the time that I would be participating in a meeting in which I would be listening to a Prime Minister from Vietnam speaking about peace and reconstruction and reconciliation with the United States or that he would then come and hear me speak about the future of the United States in the Pacific area. It shows what tremendous changes have taken place in the last decade.

I would like to begin with a few observations on the American scene. The United States finds itself after the events of 1989 to 1991 in an extraordinary position. George Bernard Shaw once said there are two tragedies in life. The first tragedy is if you do not fulfill your heart's desire, and the second tragedy is if you fulfill your heart's desire. The United States at the beginning of the 90s found itself with the agenda of the post war period almost completely fulfilled. It had set out to contain communism. It had painted a vision especially in Europe of the victory of democracy over planned economies and totalitarian systems. And, except for Indochina, it achieved the objectives it had set for itself. If one compares what American leaders were saying in 1950 with the world that existed in 1990 there is extraordinary correspondance. I do not say this to be boastful and I do not think it is appropriate for us to keep speaking of victory as a guide to the future. I mention it because it indicates that all of us in this room including the United States, perhaps especially the United States, find themselves in a totally new position. If you look at American history, you will see that America has oscillated between isolationism and crusading. America has never had to live in a world that it could neither

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ignore nor dominate. We have always been in one or the other of these situations. Until World War II, the United States was to all practical purposes not a participant in international affairs. And if you read the discussions on foreign policy in the United States, there was a firm belief that in effect nothing that happened anywhere else could affect the security of the United States. And, while America maintained that its values were relevant to the rest of the world, there was a sharp division whether those values would best be spread by practicing them at home or by actively defending them overseas.
On the whole until 1941, except for very brief period at the end of World War I, America concentrated on the practice of these values at home.

I mention this because in my view, the end of the so called cold war has projected the United States into a world for which it has very little intellectual preparation. In the Cold War, America was defending its democratic values as it saw them, against a communist onslaught which it wrongly believed to be uniform and centrally directed. But in a two power world, one can look at a final outcome. And one can interpret every event in terms of a zero-sum game. The world that is now emerging is more similar to 19th century Europe except on a global basis, than, it is to what we have experienced in the Cold War. If one wants to understand events in Yugoslavia, one is better off reading pre World War I history than post World War II events. The significance of this for the United States is that America, together with its friends, has to learn a new way of thinking about international affairs, new for itself. America will be engaged in a set of permanent relationships from which it cannot withdraw and which it cannot prescribe. It used to be a standard phrase of American official pronouncement that nationalism was old fashioned and outdated, and yet what we see around the world, even including Europe, is the emergence of nationalism as a unifying force for some societies and in any event as the dominant experience. Nations, therefore, have to learn how to deal with each other in an environment for the first time global, for the first time international with instantaneous communications, for the first time with a global economy with and yet decisions being made more and more on a national basis and in another environment which is this.

As democracy spreads around the world there is the phenomenon that the requirements of achieving office are not necessarily the requirements needed to be in office. An amount of time and energy is used to achieve high positions that makes it very difficult to engage

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in long term thinking when one is in high positions. I'm struck by this reality in almost every country I know. The leaders compulsively take public opinion polls and obsessively want to know what various focus groups are thinking about this or that issue. And yet it is also true that in almost every country the political class is distrusted more than it has been for a long time. So a new world has to be created in an environment in which there is unprecedented pressure on all leaders. What I said here does not apply to any particular leaders and it doesn't fit everyone equally. I'm talking about trends. Now, having said this, let me apply it to concrete circumstance.

As far as the US is concerned, it has almost always justified its policies in a way unique to itself and not always believed by our interlocutors. Namely, almost every American president which I have studied I would say every American has said that the US is engaging in any action for what it is engaging in, not for itself, not because it has any interest in the matter, but on behalf of some abstract universal principles which it is justifying on a moral or other basis. Many foreigners consider this hypocrisy. The fact is that it is serious. That it how it has been justified and believed, but now we are living in a world without major ideological conflict, without a clear cut physical danger, and, therefore, we need a concept of the national interest that at one and the same time takes care of the needs of our society but is embracing enough to take care of the relationships of societies to each other. This is especially true in the world at a time where more and more nationalistic moods emerge, there are also problems that are common to all of mankind and that can only be dealt with on a cooperative basis. These are, for example, in the nuclear field, in the environmental field, and in economics. Now let me turn to Asia.

Asia is without doubt the most dynamic region in the world today -- with the highest sustained growth rate, with the most rapidly developing countries and with nations like China emerging to great power status, with nations like Japan returning to more traditional roles, nations like Vietnam reentering the international community and Southeast Asia becoming one of the great economic success stories. At the same time, no nation in Asia really has experience with foreign policy on a global basis. China considered itself the middle kingdom, cut off from much of the world by its size and its majesty but not conducting foreign policy but trying to balance off various barbarians

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against each other as they impinged on China. Expanding when it did as much by culture
as by the more European and western method, and then for 100 years the subject of
outside imperialism. Japan did not even go this far. It was cut off for 400 years totally
until it was forcibly opened up by the black ships of Commodore Perry and the impetus
for Japan's reentry on the international scene was precisely to avoid ever having to suffer
such an intrusion again. It was due to the unique culture developed in the 400 years of
total isolation without any dealings with any foreigners that Japan had the tremendous
courage of believing it could absorb all kinds of foreign influences and still remain
uniquely Japanese. This is something we all now know but which during the Meiji
Restoration but then could not know when they started down that road. An attitude that
has characterized much of Japanese policy to this day but which did not develop a sense
of global cooperation or indeed a culture or a style that permits easy dialogue with other
societies, as a succession of American presidents have found out when they thought they
had Japanese agreement to something when all they had was this statement of American
position was understood, not agreed to.

Southeast Asia did not have to conduct a national policy. Indeed, many of these nations did not exist until the modern period. And, therefore, there exists in Asia very particular circumstances. There is a group of nations of evergrowing strengths that have not in the past needed to develop a global policy, some of whom were sheltered by the American alliance like Japan. Others were absorbed with their domestic developments like China. Others were absorbed in their own anticolonial struggles, like Vietnam. And others were concentrating on developing their national cohesion, like Indonesia. In their relations to each other, these nations are more akin to the way European nations conducted their affairs in the 19th and early 20th centuries than in the global concepts that have been described before. They have never cooperated as a unit like the western Europeans have, whatever the problems are. The other day the Japanese Prime Minister was asked if Japan could accept Korean nuclear weapons, North Korean nuclear weapons, and then in very uncharacteristic fashion he said "NO." Uncharacteristic only because I'm used to more circumlocutions when direct questions are asked of Japanese ministers. Whether it is avowed or not, the nations of Asia are conscious of their relative positions towards each other in an unusual way.

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Let me begin with a few observations about Japan. I believe that during the 90s Japan will inevitably emerge as one of the major political and security players in the world. I believe objective conditions will bring this about not because America wants Japan to carry our security burden but precisely because Japan no longer believes or will no longer believe that its security burden is exactly the same as ours. When there was one threat in the world, it was possible to subordinate everything to the United States. When there are multiple threats not evenly perceived then it is in my view highly unlikely that the pattern of the cold war will continue. It may be that we will think with nostalgia of the days when all the problems we had with Japan were in the economic field. On the other hand, I think it is inevitable and even desirable that this evolution take place. But as time goes on there is no question in my mind that Japan will be conscious of the strength of Korea, the rising power of China, and the potential shift of gravity of Russia from Europe to the Urals and that it will have to develop its own policy in relation to it, as well as to the emerging and dynamic development of SE Asia.

We all know the statistics of Chinese growth, which are extraordinary. And which will transform China into the major country in Asia that it has always been. By the major I don't mean more major than Japan but one of the major powers in Asia. Korea, after unification, will be a significant, industrial military and political force. And so will SE Asia, either as ASEAN or as another grouping. Now, therefore, for the United States, the relationship of these units and nations to each other will be the dominant feature of the next decade. We have to be very careful in our relationships with the various nations, not to be so blinded by immediate short term problems as to lose sight of the necessity that the United States is one country that can contribute to stability and equilibrium in the relationship of these nations to each other. Having had to negotiate with Japanese opposite numbers on economic matters occasionally I do not think that is an occupation people eagerly seek. And yet, I think it is important for us not to be so obsessed with the immediate problems and so provocative in the methods of negotiation that we lose the opportunity that must be seized. I think it is also important for Japan to find a way of not conducting every negotiation so that it turns into a bitter last ditch guerilla war. But my major point is to keep in mind that the Japanese alliance, the alliance between the United States and Japan, is in the next decade perhaps of even greater consequence, not so much in the military field, as in the political field. I would not like for the US to be forced into

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the position where it has to try to balance Russia, China, Japan, SE Asia, all by its own policy, first, because we have absolutely no tradition in conducting such a policy, because there is absolutely no intellectual background for it right now in the United States but also because I believe it would get us involved in needless, exhausting struggles. But I think if the US-Japanese alliance is maintained and strengthened in the political field it can on the one side give Japan enough of the sense of belonging somewhere so it does not push its political objectives to the absolute limit and yet in enable us together, in so far as it is possible, to work on the other element in this relationship.

Let me say a word about China, as many of you may know I have been opposed to the policy of pressuring China with sanctions to the deterioration in political relationships that has taken place between the US and China. It is not because I approved of what happened at Tianamen Square. But it is part of the necessity of the US to understand what it should do about those things it prefers and those things it must accomplish. We have clear preferences to the internal conduct of foreign countries. But if the world is anything like what I described, then the US must also be able to waive its domestic preferences against the international necessities. Nobody can conceive of a serious foreign policy in Asia in which China is not a major component of American foreign policy and in which China is not in constant dialogue at the highest level with the U.S. Once one begins with these premises, one can, of course, within them advocate whatever human rights concerns we properly have. But to subordinate everything to this need will isolate the U.S. not only in Asia but in the world. It will make it impossible to achieve the equilibrium in Asia without which eruptions of one kind or another will become highly likely and will make it very difficult to construct the global economic environment that is needed for worldwide prosperity.

Some of you may know that in the US I have urged our people not to tie themselves to individuals in Russia not because I have any objection to the leaders, but because I think we have to understand that Russia is a great nation and that it has permanent interests. We have to understand the difficulties or opportunities have to result from underlying realities and not from personal preferences. And the new role of Russia in Asia is a matter that requires serious reflection and will affect the future of this area in a fundamental way. Southeast Asia is coming together, and certainly it will include former

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adversaries. And that, too, will be an element to which India in one way or another will soon be joined.

Now, what I want to stress is not that there exist solutions to all of these problems now. As an American, who participated in some of the successes and some of the searing tragedies of American foreign policy, I believe that great things were accomplished in the last period. But I also believe that we have not in America as yet produced the George Kennan and the George Marshall that have shown the way to the new period. The old period began being focused on Europe, the new period will involve Asia in a crucial way and also Latin America, which is not the subject for our discussion. So, we cannot anymore talk about these major schemes in which everybody has the same objectives.

We now have to achieve global objectives by a balance of incentives and penalties. This is something that Lord Palmerson would have no difficulty understanding but in which we in America will have to go through a crucial educational period. But it also means that other nations have an absolute obligation to approach this process with some compassion and to ask themselves the same questions because their attitudes are often the reverse side of the American attitude that I described. They have waited passively for some American initiative or to bargain within the overall accepted framework. As a major political factor, Japan will have to act differently than they have in the past, just as we did. So, I would above all like to stress that the problems that I have described are really great problems to have almost all societies are growing. Almost all societies are developing their greater identity. Almost all societies have no inherent obstacle to cooperation and they have to learn to manage their various rivalries so that hegemony does not develop so that they can work together in dignity. And that Asia, which was a kind of a passive spectator, or the source of innumerable wars, can now be the area where some of these problems find their creative solutions.

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