THE CHAIRMAN: Ladies and Gentlemen, I am proud to introduce Dr Henry Kissinger, whose lecture is entitled, "Transatlantic Relations in the Twenty-first Century".

DR KISSINGER: Madam Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen.

It is a great honour for me to address this audience in a lecture named after one of the greatest men of British history. The dilemma of statesmen is that, by the time they know what's what, it is very often too late to act; and when there is scope for action, it is frequently very difficult to convince one's environment of its necessity.

Winston Churchill knew what needed to be done. Not only before World War II when he warned the free peoples of their dangers, but in an equally significant period after World War II, Winston Churchill not only warned about the imminent Cold War but put forward a contract. In terms of the international order and European relationships, it proved extraordinarily prophetic.

I am a great believer in this country and I would like to begin by stating my preconceptions of why I believe that the transatlantic relationship in which Winston Churchill believed so passionately before the war, and after the war, is equally important - if not more important - in the post Cold War period.

Without America, Europe threatens to turn into a peninsula at the tip of Eurasia, unable to find equilibrium and at risk of gradually subsiding into a role similar to that of ancient Greece in relation to Rome. Without Europe, America threatens to become an island off the shores of Eurasia, condemned to a kind of pure balance of power politics that does not reflect our national genius. Without Europe, America's past would be lonely; without America, Europe would struggle for relevance. A close transatlantic relationship is a pre-requisite for a significant American role and for European coherence. Without it, the European Union might founder on the fear of

1. German domination. There would be temptations to seek

2. reinsurance in eastern options, and historic European

3. coalitions might return. Therefore it is important that

4. Europe achieve a definition of itself that is historically

5. valid. That is to say, that it includes the nations of

6. western, as well as of central, Europe.

7. It is remarkable that Winston Churchill foresaw this

8. as early as 1946 when he called for a united Europe and

9. when he stressed that the first step in the recreation of
the European family had to be a partnership between France
and Germany. Since then, the evolution of Europe has gone
further than anyone could have visualised in the Forties.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

What Churchill had in mind was a united Europe, a
British Commonwealth, the United States of America and
possibly Russia - what he called the Four Pillars of world
order.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

The British Commonwealth did not maintain the
coherence for which he had hoped. But Britain played a
very special role in the relationship with the United
States, labelled as 'the special relationship'. I would
argue that the challenge of the next decades is to see how
the genius of that relationship can be applied to the new
conditions. I would argue also that it is of particular
relevance to America today.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

The Cold War coincided in important ways with American
expectations of what the international challenges might be
like. There was one major, ideologically hostile enemy
that was strategically threatening on a global scale. It
was therefore possible to think of foreign policy as
bipolar and to conduct it from the point of view that any
gain for one side would be a loss for the other.

32.

33.

34.

35.

It was also a period of great initiatives, like the
Marshall Plan, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation,
which also coincided in important ways with the American
genius for assembling large resources on the basis of

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comprehensive ideas and from there building an
international structure.

But the world in which we live in the post Cold War
period is quite different, and it poses a profound
challenge to American expectations. If we try to manage it
entirely on our own, we will be riven by major divisions
within our own country. The post Cold War world is one of
global communications and global economics but of national
political organisations. And there is no overriding
ideological and strategic threat.

New powers are emerging to play an increasingly
significant role. Of these, China is the most prominent.
But India is not all that far behind. America thinks of
foreign policy in terms of Utopia. Ever since Woodrow
Wilson, it has based its views on the concept that we must
strive to achieve the moral unity of mankind by bringing
about consensus with respect to domestic institutions; and
that once that is achieved, the normal foreign policy
problems will fall away automatically. The fact that this
has never been demonstrated empirically anywhere has not
prevented us from pursuing this conviction. In fact, the
overriding debate in America today concerns the application
of the principles of human rights to any society and the
strategy for it is the application of sanctions to
countries with whose domestic structure we essentially
disagree.

In the long run, this is not a sustainable foreign
policy. All over the world the new nations that are
emerging inevitably attempt to achieve a definition of
their own destiny. A country like China, with 5,000 years
of uninterrupted history, is not easily persuaded that,
having managed to navigate 4,800 years of it without
significant advice from the United States, the key to its
salvation resides in our prescriptions with respect to
their domestic order.

Indeed, we face two separate challenges in the world - at least two. One is the relation with the democracies, especially those in the Atlantic area. The second is our relation to emerging power centres. The requirements for these are quite different.

In the Atlantic area, we are dealing with democracies whose institutions developed over the centuries and in which democracy has a compatible meaning. There too, the countries are practising market economics from a comparable sociological and material base. Therefore the challenge in that region is precisely whether it is possible to develop parallel policies in which the people who grew out of the same civilisation can mutually support each other. I do not argue that civilisations must necessarily clash. But I would argue that civilisations become stronger if they cooperate and if they do not exhaust themselves in internal civil war.

In Asia, we face a totally different situation. There, the nations consider themselves as potential strategic opponents. In Europe, wars - except relatively minor ethnic struggles at the periphery - are currently inconceivable. In Asia, wars are not necessarily probable but neither are they excluded from the calculations of the major countries. Therefore we face in Asia a challenge with which America has next to no experience, namely the management of a balance of power.

In March 1936, Winston Churchill described that challenge as follows:

"For 400 years the foreign policy of England has been to oppose the strongest, most aggressive, most dominating power on the Continent, and particularly to prevent the Low Countries falling into the hands of such a power... On all occasions England took the more difficult course. Faced by Philip II of Spain, against Louis XIV... against Napoleon... it would have been easy and must have been very tempting to join

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with the stronger and share the fruits of his
conquest. However, we always took the harder course,
joined with the less strong powers, made a combination
among them, and thus defeated and frustrated the
Continental military tyrant whoever he was, whatever
nation he led... Observe that the policy of England
takes no account of which nation it is that seeks the
overlordship of Europe. It has nothing to do with
rulers or nations; it is concerned solely with whoever
is... the potentially dominating tyrant. Therefore,
we should not be afraid of being accused of being pro-
French or anti-German. If the circumstances were
reversed, we could equally be pro-German and anti-
French. It is a law of public policy which we are
following, and not a mere expedient dictated by
accidental circumstances, or likes and dislikes, or
any other sentiment."

I read this at such length because it is an approach almost
totally foreign to the way America, since President Wilson,
has looked at foreign policy. And yet it is the way we will
be obliged to approach the challenges of Asia.

We have no reason at this point to nominate any
country in Asia as a potential tyrant. We weaken ourselves
if we manoeuvre ourselves into a position of a priori
hostility towards the potentially most populous and in some
ways most dynamic nation. It is in our interest to
maintain good relations with all countries of Asia and to
reserve our intervention on one side or the other for a
challenge when it arises. This is what maximises the
influence of democracy and any other course will have the
paradoxical consequence of encouraging nationalism,
neutralism and divisions prematurely and perhaps quite
unnecessarily. If there is a significant dialogue between
the United States and Europe, then there can be some
expectation that the American approach - generous,
idealistic and on many issues more nearly correct than that

of our critics - can be brought into some operational

balance with the necessities of a region that has long

memories and that does not believe that history culminates

at any particular point.

To stay with Asia for just one more moment, when we

first encountered India it took a position of moral

superiority which we used to arrogate to ourselves and

which made contact for Americans with Indians extremely

irritating. But as time goes on, I am sure we will find

that the policy that used to be identified with the British

Empire east of Suez, which after all was made in Calcutta

and then later in New Delhi, will reappear, as it is

already beginning to, and that India will try to play a

role between Singapore and Aden, if not Mombasa, and will

become a significant element to be integrated into the

equilibrium that will have to be constructed in Asia.

What does all of this mean for the transatlantic

relationship?

I began with a reference to the 'special relationship'

between Britain and the United States, partly based on my

personal experience but also based on my study of history.

It is so often described as a sentimental vestige of a

bygone period. President Nixon, with whom I served, can be

accused of many things but excessive sentimentality was not

one of them. And the reason this relationship has worked

well is because Britain, abandoning by necessity its world

role, nevertheless maintained a significant influence

through the confidence it inspired and the quality of

consultation that was arranged. It was, moreover, a

consultation that not only took place at the highest level

but permeated every level of the two governments in, I

would say, every department concerned with foreign policy.

I have stated publicly that there were one

or two documents that saw the light of day as American

documents but were in fact drafted at our request in the

British Foreign Office - creating some potential

[L.C.]

1 difficulties when they were discussed in the European

2 Community and necessitating Britain to take a position with

3 respect to them. That kind of relationship must be

4 preserved, either by Britain or by a European Union that

5 articulates its own identity.

6 We are now in the period when an extraordinary

7 phenomenon is occurring: the adoption of a common currency

8 by a group of nations that has not brought about, as yet,

9 the accompanying institutions by which this common currency
10 is going to operate; and the concept of a free-standing
11 Central Bank not related to any political organisation.

12 The British monetary policy is going to try to bring about coherence in interest rates, labour mobility, and even our regional disparities. It is not one with respect to which the United States needs to take a position, or with respect to which it needs to give advice to countries that are perfectly capable of making their own decisions as to what their national interest requires. Obviously, there are really only two ways this decision can go.

20 A European currency will surely come into being.

21 After that, the difficulties I have described will either
22 cause it to implode or bring about strengthened political
23 institutions. For anyone following European developments in
24 the entire post war period, one can only hope that this
25 project reaches the fruition its founders envision. And
26 its failure would create an extraordinary crisis, since it
27 is the only political project to which any really creative
28 thought is being given in so many European capitals. But
29 if it succeeds, and I repeat I would hope that it succeeds,
30 the relationship between Europe and the United States and
31 the relationship of Britain to Europe in the political
32 field would become a serious challenge. The conventional
33 wisdom of the entire post-war period has been that the two
34 pillars, Europe and the United States, can only benefit
35 from the strengthening of each other and that cooperation
36 will emerge automatically from this accumulation of power -

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as if transatlantic relations were a kind of joint stock
company in which the various members vote in proportion to
their shares in it. But in the real world, it is not going
to happen this way. In the real world, if the common
currency succeeds, there will be years during which the
inevitable political companion organisations are elaborated
and in that period, of the challenges which I mentioned,
only one will not wait to be addressed.

I have mentioned Asia. We see in all the media today
the challenges of the Gulf - of which the crisis in Iraq is
only a tip of an iceberg, and in which the question of how
we tame fundamentalists and which countries are relevant to
order and progress has not been fully addressed. The
economic crisis in South East Asia and its impact elsewhere
raises the challenge that the gap between global economics
driven only by economic considerations and the political
organisation of regions and countries runs the risk of
political reactions to periodic crises which will make the
present concept of globalisation harder and harder to
sustain.

And this raises the need either for warning systems to
prevent these crises or will generate attempts, perhaps
misguided attempts, to distinguish between speculation and
investment; and while I do not claim to have answers to
these challenges, I do claim that there is a need to
address these and other foreseeable challenges, first of
all in a transatlantic framework. Right now, the western
nations have demonstrated an extraordinary capacity for
material progress, but they have also shown symptoms of the
re-emergence of the almost original sin of western
civilisation, which is the propensity towards internal
civil war. The embarrassment of one side of the Atlantic
in a region can be seen as an opportunity for the other,
but it could also be treated as a challenge to common
efforts and reason for a more creative response. I would

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argue there is too much of the former and too little of the latter.

For the transatlantic dialogue, the question of the organisation of Europe is of crucial importance. So long as these nations organise themselves along strictly bureaucratic patterns according to which a foreign minister deals with the United States without any flexibility and on the basis of either unanimity or a majority vote, the genius of what I consider the special relationship will be threatened. There must be, either on a national or on a super-national basis, the continued possibility for the kind of exchanges I have described as having characterised the Anglo-American relationship. I would be saddened to see these abandoned on behalf of abstract theories of unification.

The western democracies - and by that I mean not only the nations that waged the Cold War but the historic nations that were the victims of the Cold War and whose participation in Europe is a challenge as significant as the elaboration of the institutions to accompany the single currency - represent nations that have stood together through two wars in this century. They have integrated their former enemies into the community of nations. They have won the Cold War and they now face a world that needs a concept of world order in which they could easily find themselves besieged on all fronts by crises inseparable from the historic changes taking place. But they could also play in the next fifty years the same extraordinary role that has brought us this far. Indeed, the overwhelming challenge to them is whether, in an age in which politics is driven so much by the media, they can raise their sights - whether they can ask the questions that will transcend the pressures of the moment. Because if they can, their contribution could equal what they have accomplished up to now. And in a lecture dedicated to Winston Churchill, it is very important to remember that

every great accomplishment was an idea before it became a
reality, that cynics do not build cathedrals and that the
future really depends crucially on whether we can maintain
the attitudes and the spirit that has brought us to this
point.

Thank you very much.

THE CHAIRMAN: It is now my pleasure to introduce Sir John Kerr, the Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who will give the vote of thanks. Sir John Kerr.

SIR JOHN KERR: I am not accustomed to such an introduction, because today is in fact the first day in which I am Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office and if the surroundings are always this pleasant and the intellectual fare is good it will be all right. So far so good.

I would like to offer three words of congratulations to Lady Brigstocke. First, on her sense of timing in inviting me on my first day. Second, on the health of the ESU.

As Ambassador in Washington, I spoke on many ESU platforms. It was not the content, it was the accent they liked. In ESU in America those people do really like to hear English spoken.

I would also like to congratulate Lady Brigstocke seriously on her choice of speaker. To present for us tonight one of the foremost living professional practitioners and authoritative authors on the art and practice of international relations is a great achievement.

I, you will not be astonished to hear, regard the Profession of International Relations as rather a respectable profession. I think I remember Henry Kissinger telling me that his mother did not. I think I remember Henry Kissinger telling me that his mother contrasted him many times (to his disadvantage) with his brother, who had

DEC-08-1991 10:54

NH1 DC

KISSINGE, SP

DR KISSINGER: Madam Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great honour for me to address
in a lecture named after one of the greatest
British history. The dilemma of statesmen:
the time they know what's what, it is very
to act; and when there is scope for action, it is
frequently very difficult to convince one's environment
of its necessity.

[y]

Incorporates
Gina's edits

DEC-08-1997 10:54

KHI DC

KISSINGE, SP

Page 3

It is a great honour for me to address you in a lecture named after one of the greatest British history. The dilemma of statesmen, the time they know what's what, it is very difficult to act; and when there is scope for action, frequently very difficult to convince one's environment of its necessity.

DEC-08-1957 10:54

NH1 DC

KISSINGE, SP

Page 3

KISSINGE.SP

relevance. A close transatlantic relationship is a
pre-requisite for a significant American role and for
European coherence. Without it, the European Union might
founder on the fear of German domination. There would be
temptations to seek reinsurance in eastern options, and
historic European coalitions might return. Therefore it
is important that Europe achieve a definition of itself
that is historically valid. That is to say, that it
includes the nations of western, as well as of central,
Europe.

It is remarkable that Winston Churchill foresaw this
as early as 1946 when he called for a united Europe and
when he stressed that the first step in the recreation of
the European family had to be a partnership between
France and Germany. Since then, the evolution of Europe
has gone further than anyone could have visualised in the
Forties.

KISSINGE.SP

It was also a period of great initiatives, like the
Marshall Plan, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation,
which also coincided in important ways with the American
genius for assembling large resources on the basis of
comprehensive ideas and from there building an
international structure.

KISSINGE SP

DEC-08-1957 10:55

KH1 DC

212 103 1240 1.01

LEY

KISSINGE SP

Page 7

"For 400 years the foreign policy of England has been to oppose the most aggressive, most dominating power on the Continent and particularly to prevent the low countries falling into the hands of such a power. On all occasions England took the more difficult course. Faced by Philip II of Spain against Louis XIV, against Napoleon, it would have been easy, it must have been very tempting, to join with the stronger and share the fruits of its banquets. However, we always took the harder course, joined with the less strong powers, made a combination among them and thus defeated and frustrated the Continental military tyrant, whoever he was, whatever nation he led, observed that the policy of England takes no account of which nation it is that seeks the overlordship of Europe. It has nothing to do with rulers or nations. It is concerned solely with whoever is the potentially dominating tyrant. Therefore we should not be afraid of being accused of being pro-French or anti-German. If the circumstances were reversed, we would equally be pro-German and anti-French. It is a law of public policy we are following and not a mere expedient dictated by accidental circumstances or likes and dislikes, or any other transient sentiment."

DEC-08-1997 10:55

KHI DC

212 133 7240 r.00

KISSINGE,SP

I have stated publicly that there
were one or two documents that saw the light of day as
American documents but were in fact drafted at our
request in the British Foreign Office - creating some
potential difficulties when they were discussed in the
European Community and necessitating Britain to take a
position with respect to them. That kind of relationship
must be preserved, either by Britain or by a European
Union that articulates its own identity.

We are now in the period when an extraordinary
phenomenon is occurring: the adoption of a common
currency by a group of nations that has not brought
about, as yet, the accompanying institutions by which
this common currency is going to operate; and the concept
of a free-standing Central Bank not related to any
political organisation. The British monetary policy is
going to try to bring about coherence in interest rates,
labour mobility, and even our regional disparities. It
is not one with respect to which the United States needs
to take a position, or with respect to which it needs to
give advice to countries that are perfectly capable of
making their own decisions as to what their national
interest requires. Obviously, there are really only two
ways this decision can go.

KISSINGE.SP

After that, the difficulties I have described will either cause it to implode or bring about strengthened political institutions. For anyone following European developments in the entire post war period, one can only hope that this project reaches the fruition its founders envision. And its failure would create an extraordinary crisis, since it is the only political project to which any really creative thought is being given in so many European capitals. But if it succeeds, and I repeat I would hope that it succeeds, the relationship between Europe and the United States and the relationship of Britain to Europe in the political field would become a serious challenge. The conventional wisdom of the entire post-war period has been that the two pillars, Europe and the United States, can only benefit from the strengthening of each other and that cooperation will emerge automatically from this accumulation of power - as if transatlantic relations were a kind of joint stock company in which the various members vote in proportion to their shares in it. But in the real world, it is not going to happen this way. In the real world, if the common currency succeeds, there will be years during which the inevitable political companion organisations are elaborated and in that period, of the challenges which I mentioned, only one will not wait to be addressed.

KISSINGE, SP

NH1 DC

212 155 1240 1.11

And this raises the need either for warning systems to prevent these crises or will generate attempts, perhaps misguided attempts, to distinguish between speculation and investment; and while I do not claim to have answers to these challenges, I do claim that there is a need to address these and other foreseeable challenges, first of all in a transatlantic framework. Right now, the western nations have demonstrated an extraordinary capacity for material progress, but they have also shown symptoms of the re-emergence of the almost original sin of western civilisation, which is the propensity towards internal civil war. The embarrassment of one side of the Atlantic in a region can be seen as an opportunity for the other, but it could also be treated as a challenge to common efforts and reason for a more creative response. I would argue there is too much of the former and too little of the latter.

KISSINGE.SP

Thank you very much.

TOTAL P.12

"For 400 years the foreign policy of England has been to oppose the strongest, most aggressive, most dominating power on the Continent, and particularly to prevent the Low Countries falling into the hands of such a power... On all occasions England took the more difficult course. Faced by Philip II of Spain, against Louis XIV... against Napoleon... it would have been easy and must have been very tempting to join with the stronger and share the fruits of his [its banquets] conquest. However, we always took the harder course, joined with the less strong powers, made a combination among them, and thus defeated and frustrated the Continental military tyrant whoever he was, whatever nation he led... Observe that the policy of England takes no account of which nation it is that seeks the overlordship of Europe. It has nothing to do with rulers or nations; it is concerned solely with whoever is... the potentially dominating tyrant. Therefore, we should not be afraid of being accused of being pro-French or anti-German. If the circumstances were reversed, we could equally be pro-German and anti-French. It is a law of public policy which we are following, and not a mere expedient dictated by accidental circumstances, or likes and dislikes, or any other sentiment."

TOTAL P.02

DEC-10-1997 10:08

KAI DC

212 753 7248 P.02

with the stronger and share the fruits of his conquest. However, we always took the harder course, joined with the less strong powers, made a combination among them, and thus defeated and frustrated the Continental military tyrant whoever he was, whatever nation he led... Observe that the policy of England takes no account of which nation it is that seeks the overlordship of Europe. It has nothing to do with rulers or nations; it is concerned solely with whoever is... the potentially dominating tyrant. Therefore, we should not be afraid of being accused of being pro-French or anti-German. If the circumstances were reversed, we could equally be pro-German and anti-French. It is a law of public policy which we are following, and not a mere expedient dictated by accidental circumstances, or likes and dislikes, or any other sentiment."

TOTAL P.02

DEC-08-1997 10:54

KAI DC

212 753 7248

P.03

KISSINGE.SP

DEC-08-1997 10:54

KAI DC

212 753 7248 P.04

KISSINGE.SP

DEC-08-1997 10:54

KAI DC

212 753 7248 P.05

KISSINGE.SP

DEC-08-1997 10:55

KAI DC

212 753 7248 P.06

KISSINGE,SP

DEC-08-1997 10:55

KAI DC

212 753 7248 P.07

KISSINGE.SP

We have no reason at this point to nominate any country in Asia as a potential tyrant. We weaken ourselves if we manoeuvre ourselves into a position of a *priori* hostility towards the potentially most populous and

DEC-08-1997 10:55

KAI DC

212 753 7248 P.08

KISSINGE,SP

DEC-08-1997 10:55

KAI DC

212 753 7248 P.09

KISSINGE.SP

DEC-08-1997 10:56

KAI DC

212 753 7248 P.10

KISSINGE.SP

DEC-08-1997 10:56

KAI DC

212 753 7248

KISSINGE,SP

DEC-08-1997 10:56

KAI DC

212 753 7248 P.12

KISSINGE.SP

Thank you very much.

TOTAL P.12

# Transatlantic Relations in the Twenty-First Century

Henry Kissinger hopes that Britain and the United States will remain politically close despite Britain's further integration into the EU heralded by the advent of the common European currency

I am a great believer in Great Britain and would like to begin by stating my preconceptions of why I believe that the transatlantic relationship in which Winston Churchill put his trust so passionately before the war, and after the war, is equally important – if not more important – in the post-Cold-War period.

Without America, Europe threatens to turn into a peninsula at the tip of Eurasia. Without Europe, America threatens to become an island off the shores of Eurasia. Without Europe, America's past would be lonely; without America, Europe would struggle for relevance. A close transatlantic relationship is a prerequisite for a significant American role and for European coherence. Without it, the European Union might founder on the fear of German domination. There would be temptations to seek reinsurance in eastern options, and historic European coalitions might return. Therefore it is important that Europe achieve a definition of itself that is historically valid. That is to say, that it includes the nations of western, as well as of central, Europe.

What Churchill had in mind was a united Europe, a British Commonwealth, the United States of America and possibly Russia – what he called the Four Pillars of world order.

maintain the coherence for which he had hoped. But Britain played a very special role in its relationship with the United States, labelled as "the special relationship". I would argue that the challenge of the next decades is to see how the genius of that relationship can be applied to the new conditions.

The Cold War coincided in important ways with American expectations of what the international challenges might be like. There was one major, ideologically hostile enemy. It was therefore possible to think of foreign policy as bipolar and to conduct it from the point of view that any gain for one side would be a loss for the other.

It was also a period of great initiatives, like the Marshall Plan, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which also coincided with the American genius for assembling large resources on the basis of comprehensive ideas and from there building an internal structure.

## The post-Cold-War world

But the world in which we live in the post-Cold-War period is quite different. If we try to manage it entirely on our own, we will be riven by major divisions within our own country. The post-Cold-War world is one of global communications and global economics but of national political organisations. And there is no overriding ideological and strategic threat.

Ever since Woodrow Wilson, it has based its views on the concept that we must strive to achieve the moral unity of humankind by bringing about consensus with respect to domestic institutions; and that once that is achieved, the normal foreign policy problems will fall away automatically. The fact that this has never been demonstrated empirically anywhere has not prevented us from pursuing this conviction. In fact, the overriding debate in America today concerns the application of the principles of human rights to any society and the strategy for it is the application of sanctions to countries with whose domestic structure we essentially disagree.

In the long run it is not a sustainable foreign policy. All over the world new nations that are emerging inevitably attempt to achieve a definition of their own destiny. A country like China, with 5,000 years of uninterrupted history, is not easily persuaded that, having managed to navigate 4,800 years of it without significant advice from the United States, the key to its salvation resides in our prescriptions with respect to their domestic order.

We face two separate challenges in the world. One is the relation with the democracies, especially those in the Atlantic area. The second is our relation with emerging power centres. The requirements for these are quite different.

In the Atlantic area we are dealing with democracies whose institutions developed over the centuries and in which democracy has a compatible meaning. There too, the countries are practising market economics from a

8 CONCORD WINTER 1998

In Asia, we face a totally different situation. There, the nations consider themselves potential strategic opponents. In Europe, wars – except relatively minor ethnic struggles at the periphery – are currently inconceivable. In Asia, wars are not necessarily probable but neither are they excluded from the calculations of the major countries. Therefore we face in Asia a challenge with which America has next to no experience – namely the management of balance of power.

In March 1936, Winston Churchill described that challenge:

For 400 years the foreign policy of England has been to oppose the strongest, most aggressive, most dominating power on the Continent, and particularly to prevent the Low Countries falling into the hands of such a power... On all occasions England took the more difficult course. Faced by Philip II of Spain, against Louis XIV... against Napoleon... it would have been easy and must have been tempting to join with the stronger and share the fruits of his conquest. However, we always took the harder course, joined with the less strong powers, made a combination among them, and thus defeated and frustrated the Continental military tyrant, whoever he was, whatever nation he led... Observe that the policy of England takes no account of which nation it is that seeks the overlordship of Europe. It has nothing to do with rulers or nations; it is concerned solely with whoever is...the potentially dominating tyrant. Therefore, we should not be afraid of being accused of being pro-French or anti-German. If the circumstances were reversed, we could equally be pro-German and anti-French. It is a law of public policy which we are following, and not a mere expedient dictated by accidental circumstances, or likes and dislikes, or any other sentiment.

It is an approach almost totally foreign to the way America, since President Wilson, has looked at foreign policy. And yet it is the way we will be obliged to approach the challenges of Asia.

We have no reason at this point to nominate any country in Asia as a potential tyrant. It is in our interest to maintain good relations with all countries of Asia and to reverse our intervention on one side or the other for a challenge when it arises.

What does all this mean for the transatlantic relationship?

The reason this relationship has worked well is because Britain, abandoning by necessity its world role, nevertheless maintained a significant influ-

Dr Henty Kissinger

ence through the confidence it inspired and the quality of consultation that was arranged. It was, moreover, a consultation that not only took place at the highest level but permeated every level of the two governments. That kind of rela-

## An extraordinary phenomenon

We are now in the period when an extraordinary phenomenon is occurring: the adoption of a common currency by a group of nations that has not brought about, as yet, the accompanying institutions by which this common currency is going to operate, and the concept of a free-standing Central Bank not related to any political organisation.

A European currency will surely come into being. For anyone following European developments in the entire post-war period, one can only hope that this project reaches the fruition its founders envision. And its failure would create an extraordinary crisis. But if it succeeds, the relationship between Europe and the United States and the relationship of Britain to Europe in the political field would become a serious challenge. The conventional wisdom of the entire post-war period has been that the two pillars, Europe and the United States, can only benefit from the strengthening of each other and that cooperation will emerge automatically from this accumulation of power – as if transatlantic relations were a kind of joint stock company in which the various members vote in proportion to their shares in it. But in the real world it is not going to happen this way. In the real world, if the common currency succeeds, there will be years during which the inevitable political companion organisations are elaborated.

I have mentioned Asia. We see in all the media today the challenges of the Gulf – of which the crisis in Iraq is only the tip of an iceberg, and in which the question of how we tame fundamentalists and which countries are relevant to order and progress has not been fully addressed. The economic crisis in South-East Asia and its impact elsewhere raises the challenge that the gap between global economics driven only

For the transatlantic dialogue, the question of the organisation of Europe is of crucial importance. So long as these nations organise themselves along strictly bureaucratic patterns according to which a foreign minister deals with the United States without any flexibility and on the basis of either unanimity or a majority vote, the genius of what I consider the special relationship will be threatened. There must be, either on a national or on a supra-national basis, the continued possibility for the kind of exchanges I have described as having characterised the Anglo-American relationship.

The western democracies – and by that I mean not only the nations that waged the Cold War but historic nations that were the victims of the Cold War and whose participation in Europe is a challenge as significant as the elaboration of the institutions to accompany the single currency – represent nations that have stood together through two wars in this century. They have integrated their former enemies into the community of nations. The overwhelming challenge to them is whether, in an age in which politics is driven so much by media, they can raise their sights – whether they can ask the questions that will transcend the pressures of the moment. Because if they can, their contribution could equal what they have accomplished up to now. And in a lecture dedicated to Winston Churchill, it is very important to remember that every great accomplishment was an idea before it became a reality, that cynics do not build cathedrals, and that the future really depends crucially on whether we can maintain the attitudes and the spirit that has brought us to this point.

*This is a summary of the 1997 Churchill Lecture given by Dr Kissinger, former US Secretary of State, in Guildhall.*

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