Speech by Dr. Henry A. Kissinger

Berlin, January 9, 2004

"A Partnership in Transformation:
How to Turn a Dispute into Opportunities"

The last few years have been difficult for the transatlantic partnership. For decades, relations between America and Europe were the fundamental principle of foreign policy. There were disagreements, but they were always settled with the attitude that we had a common destiny. Now in Europe there is a fashionable anti-Americanism that has a whole catalogue of grievances of domestic policy, of names like Rumsfeld or occasionally the President, of unilateralism. There has emerged a slogan of multipolarism which is designed to create a counterweight to the United States. In America, there is an attack on European neutralism and Europe taking a free ride on American military capabilities.

There are two days that you can say mark the beginning of the dispute. The first one is 11/9, November 9th, when the Wall came down. And the second is 9/11, when the World Trade Center was attacked. The collapse of the Wall, the result of a generation of Western cooperation, changed the strategic environment. The threat to Europe diminished and disappeared in its traditional way. And the necessity for America of having a strategic place in Europe also became less. As a result, the bipolarity of the Cold War turned into something that was perceived to be a more unipolar world in which the United States appeared as the hyperpower that could by itself regulate events. That liberated historic tendencies based on a balance of power politic that was always aimed at whomever was the dominant country. It led to temptations to tie down America either by international agreements or by making it more difficult to exercise its alleged hegemony. In the United States, there developed the theory that America could by itself achieve its fundamental objectives and that the traditional need for alliances disappeared or was weakened.

So on the one side, there were questions about American intentions and, on the other side, there were doubts about the significance of Europe in a strategic sense. The result was not that there were disagreements, they had happened before, but that governments became more subject to the domestic pressures that, for over a generation, they had resisted when they surfaced. So that the attack on allied relationships did not

[Y]

find the resistance that had brought about the cohesion that
existed before.

As Europe became more and more concentrated on the
unification of Europe and on building a united Europe, there
developed a difference in the intellectual priorities of the two
sides of the Atlantic. Most of the European discussions today are
incomprehensible to most Americans who are concerned with
foreign policy. European leaders increasingly focus on the issues
of European unification: Broadening against deepening, relative
voting rights, how to break a constitutional deadlock that most
people in America hadn't even noticed. This shift in priorities is
one reason why there we are facing a certain intellectual gulf
that we have to work at reducing.

Now, 9/11 for America represented a challenge which Europeans
had experienced in their history many centuries earlier. It was
the first attack on the territory of the United States. It was
compounded by the fact that it was carried out by people and
groups that the vast majority of Americans did not realize were
our enemies. And, therefore, it created an atmosphere of
potential insecurity of global proportions. That was compounded
by the fact that all of the history and all of the thinking of foreign
policy for centuries had been focused on the relations of states
to each other. But the challenge of terrorism represents the
privatization of security threats. It is based on states - they
could not operate without states - but it does not carry out the
imperatives of states. So the principles by which we had
conducted the Cold War cannot apply. Deterrence does not work
against groups that have nothing to lose and diplomacy does not
work against groups that have no state and objectives, at least
no objectives that they are willing to talk about. Therefore, the
United States felt itself obliged to undertake the task of
demonstrating that a challenge to Western security, or American
security conceived as Western security, is too dangerous. And
that drew us into global enterprises.

One result of the combination of 11/9 and 9/11 was that the
threat to states has diminished but the threat to societies has
increased. How to deal with this in a foreign policy world based
on states? We have to cope with a huge threat that does not
have a traditional pattern and that cannot be dealt with by
phrases like hegemony and multipolarity or unilateralism against
multilateralism. The United States is without question the most
powerful country in the world. But equally without question, no
country has ever been able to dominate the world by power
alone. Hegemony drains the domestic structure of the state
trying to exercise it, because every problem becomes a domestic

2

[x]

problem. And a domestic institution cannot handle such an array
of issues over an indefinite period of time. So a wise,
nationalistic, self-centered American must come to the
conclusion that it is in our interest to built a consensus. The way
we get to that point may be complicated.

Taking this as a point of departure for shaping foreign policy, the
European effort to create a multipolarity by a conscious policy is
missing the subject. Of course, Europe will be stronger as it
unifies and, of course, Europe will play a significant role. And, of
course, Europe will disagree with the United States from time to
time. The issue is not whether Europe can never disagree with
the United States or vice versa. The issue is whether Europe
should find its identity in opposition to the United States.
Whether it should build its institutions to be better suited to
oppose the United States or whether it evolves its convictions on
a cooperative world order. Whether America and Europe decide
that neither of them have a better potential ally in the world. If
some of the existing trends continue, and if one should think of
Europe as a counterweight to the United States and as the
primary purpose of European policy, to act as a counterweight to
the United States one will have recreated exactly the world of
Bismarck. One will be exactly in the world of prior to World War I
when five or six major nations began competing for influence to
gain a little advantage here and a little advantage there. No
doubt, Bismarck was a great statesman. But he proved to any
student that to conduct foreign policy on the basis of balance of
power alone is so complex that something is bound to break
down somewhere along the line. And that will be the challenge of
the world where you have America and Europe and China and
possibly Russia, or likely India, maybe Brazil. We are clearly
entering a new world order. The international system that
started in 1648 has broken down. Now we have to ask ourselves,
are we going to try to reconstruct it by some of the methods of
that previous system? Or are we going to try to find a way for
constructive cooperation of nations that have after all a more
comparable history and set of values than any other group of
nations?

The United States has announced that it will cede sovereignty to
an Iraqi government by the end of June. Yet some of the debate
concerns the issue whether this should be done by some
international group or by America unilaterally. With all respect
that is an irrelevant debate at this point. We are talking about a
three to six month time interval. The fundamental point we will
all face then is this: a debacle for the West in Iraq would be a
debacle for Americans and Europeans likewise. The people who
are shooting right now at America won't stop shooting at the

3

[Y]

Iraqi border. They will cross the border into as yet unknown
targets. The real question that requires an answer in Iraq is how
do you build a democracy in a multi-ethnic society that has never
had a nation state? In the democratic countries we know, the
state provides order but also protection for the individual. In
Iraq, in all of its history even before there was an Iraq, the state
has been a threat to its citizens and the citizens have sought
security by working with their communities. Therefore, in the
early stage of democratization in Iraq, fragmentation may be
encouraged rather than unity. I am saying that we will not be
able to answer this question if we spend our energies debating
legalistic points as to who should be granting an authority that is
emerging anyway and which the minute it is created will be
under assault and will have to be protected. And these questions
would apply as well to Iran. What does one mean by democracy?
How does one promote it? What is the essence of the non-
proliferation issue?

One well-known stereotype is that America likes to deal with
non-proliferation by force as against Europe doing it with
engagement. But in practice there has to be a period of
diplomacy but one also has to answer two questions: what is the
time limit to that diplomacy before diplomacy becomes a way by
which proliferation becomes encouraged? And secondly, what
does one do when one has reached the end of the diplomatic
option? The recent developments leave no doubt - the state
system is disintegrated. Europe has taken the road of
overcoming its history in its own European way. And America is
overcoming its historic isolation by dealing on a global basis. In
today's America, you can find arguments for hegemony. But you
also find the conviction that, without some consensus, power is
not legitimate and that power must be used as a last resort,
even if overwhelmingly at that point. The difference is not
multilateralism against unilateralism. Multilateralism that is not
based on common convictions will not work. And unilateralism
based on power alone also will not work. That is the challenge
before the Americans and the Europeans. And if we meet it
together, we can look back, also our future generations will look
back, at this period as one of the great turning points.

Now, the task for both sides is to create a community of nations
again with a sense of equality and participation. If Europe and
the United States cannot do it together, it will not happen. We
have to turn the dispute into new opportunities - it is about time
for a new declaration of transatlantic understanding.

4

A PARTNERSHIP IN TRANSFORMATION

How to turn a dispute into opportunities

The last few years have been difficult for the transatlantic partnership. For decades; the relations between America and Europe were the fundamental principle of foreign policy. There were disagreements but they were always settled with the attitude that we had a common destiny. Now, in Europe there is a fashionable anti-Americanism that has a whole catalogue of grievances of domestic policy, of names like Rumsfeld or occasionally the President, of There has emerged a slumber of unilateralism. A desire to achieve a multipolarism which is designed to create a counterweight to the United States. In America there is an attack on European neutralism and Europe taking a freeride on American military capabilities.

down. And the second is 9/11, when the World Trade Center was
attacked. The collapse of the Wall which is the result of a generation
of Western cooperation, changed the strategic environment. The threat
to Europe diminished and disappeared in its traditional way. And the
necessity for America of having a strategic place in Europe also
became less. As a result the bipolarity of the Cold War turned into
something that was perceived to be a more unipolar world in which
the United States appeared as the hyperpower that could by itself
regulate events. That liberated historic tendencies based on a balance
of power politic that was always aimed at whoever was the dominant
country. It led to temptations to tie down America either by
international agreements or by making it more difficult to exercise its
alleged hegemony. In the United States there developed the theory
that America could by itself achieve its fundamental objectives and
that the traditional need for alliances disappeared or was weakened.

[N]

So on the one side there were questions about American intentions and on the other side there were doubts about the significance of Europe in a strategic sense. The result was not that there were disagreements, they had happened before, but that governments became more subject to the domestic pressures that for over a generation they had resisted when they surfaced. So that the attack on allied relationships did not find the resistance that had brought about the cohesion that existed before.

As Europe became more and more concentrated on unification of Europe and on building a united Europe there developed a difference in the intellectual priorities of the two sides of the Atlantic. Most of the European discussions today are incomprehensible to most Americans who are concerned with foreign policy. European leaders increasingly focus on the issues of European unification: Broadening break against deepening, relative voting rights, how to precede as a result of

3

a deadlock that most people in America hadn't even noticed
particularly. This shift in priorities is one reason why there we are
facing a certain intellectual gulf that we have to work at reducing.

Now, 9/11 for America represented a challenge which Europeans
had experienced in their history many centuries earlier. It was the first
attack on the territory of the United States. It was compounded by the
fact that it was carried out by people and groups that the vast majority
of Americans did not realize were our enemies. And therefore it
created an atmosphere of potential insecurity of global proportions.
That was compounded by the fact that all of the history and all of the
thinking of foreign policy for centuries had been focused on the
relations of states to each others. But the challenge of terrorism
represents the privatization of security threats. It is based on states -
they could not operate without states - but it does not carry out the
imperatives of states. So the principles by which we had conducted the

cold war cannot apply. Deterrence does not work against groups that
have nothing to lose and diplomacy does not work against groups that
have no state and objectives, at least no objectives that they are
willing to talk about. Therefore the United States felt itself obliged to
undertake the task of demonstrating that a challenge to Western
security or American security conceived as Western security is too
dangerous. And that drew us into global enterprises.

One result of the combination of 11/9 and 9/11 was that the threat
to states has diminished but the threat to societies has increased. How
to deal with this in a foreign policy world based on states? We have to
cope with a huge threat that does not have a traditional pattern and
that cannot be dealt with by phrases like hegemony and multipolarity
or unilateralism against multilateralism. The United States is without
question the most powerful country in the world. But equally without
question no country has ever been able to dominate the world by

5

power alone. Hegemony reigns the domestic structure of the state trying to exercise it. Because every problem becomes a domestic problem. And a domestic institution cannot handle such an array of issues over an indefinite period of time. So a wise, nationalistic, self-centered American must come to the conclusion that it is in our interest to built a consensus. The way we get to that point may be complicated.

Taking this as a point of departure for shaping foreign policy, the European effort to create a multipolarity by a conscious policy is missing the subject. Of course Europe will be stronger as it unifies and of course Europe will play a significant role. And of course Europe will disagree with the United States from time to time. The issue is not whether Europe can never disagree with the United States or vice versa. The issue is whether Europe should find its identity in opposition to the United States. Whether it should built its institutions

[Y]

to be better suited to oppose the United States or whether it evolves its
cooperation
convictions on a world order. Whether America and Europe decide
that neither of them have a better potential ally in the world. Europe
can support America to come to terms regarding the limits of its
power. If some of the existing trends continue and if one should think
of Europe as a counterweight to the United States and as the primary
purpose of European policy to act as a counterweight to the United
States one will have recreated exactly the world of Bismarck. One will
be exactly in the world of prior to WW I when five or six major
nations began competing for influence to gain a little advantage here
and a little advantage there. No doubt, Bismarck was a great
statesman. But he proved to any student that to conduct foreign policy
on the basis of balance of power alone is so complex that something is
bound to break down somewhere along the line. And that will be the
challenge of the world where you have America and Europe and

7

[Y]

China and possibly Russia or likely India, maybe Brazil. We are
clearly entering a new world order. The international system that
started in 1648 has broken down. Now we have to ask ourselves, are
we going to try to reconstruct it by some of the methods of that
previous system? Or are we going to try to find a way for constructive
cooperation of nations that have after all a more comparable history
and set of values than any other group of nations?

The United States has announced that it will cede sovereignty to an Iraqi government (by the end of June). Yet some of the debate concerns the issue whether this should be done by some international group or by America unilaterally. With all respect that is an irrelevant debate at this point. We are talking about a three to six month time interval. The fundamental point we will all face then is this: a debacle for the West in Iraq would be a debacle for Americans and Europeans likewise. The people who are shooting right now at America won't

8

[y]

stop shooting at the Iraqi border. They will cross the border into as yet
unknown targets. The real question that requires an answer in Iraq is
how do you built a democracy in a multi-ethnic society that has never
had a nation state? In the democratic countries we know, the state
provides order but also protection for the individual. In Iraq in all of
its history even before there was an Iraq, the state has been a threat to
its citizens and the citizens have sought security by working with their
communities. Therefore in the early stage of democratization in Iraq,
fragmentation may be encouraged rather than unity. I am saying that
we will not be able to answer this question if we spend our energies
debating legalistic points as to who should be granting an authority
that is emerging anyway and which the minute it is created will be
under assault and will have to be protected. And these questions
would apply as well to Iran. What does one mean by democracy? How
does one promote it? What is the essence of the non-proliferation

9

issue? One well-known stereotype is that America likes to deal with non-proliferators.

force as against Europe trying to do it with engagement. In practice

there has to be a period of diplomacy and there is a period of
but
diplomacy whatever it is called. But one also has to answer two

questions: what is the time limit to that diplomacy before diplomacy becomes a way by which proliferation becomes encouraged? And secondly what does one do when one has reached the end of the diplomatic option? The recent developments leave no doubt – the state system is disintegrated. Europe has taken the road of overcoming its history in its own European way. And America is overcoming its

history by dealing on a global basis. In today's America you can find arguments for hegemony. But you also find the conviction that

without some consensus power is not legitimate and that power must be used as a last resorts even if overwhelmingly at that point. The

[y]

[Y]

alone

unilateralism based on power/also will not work. That is the challenge

we can look back, also our future generations will look back at this

United States cannot do it together it will not happen. We have to turn

the dispute into new opportunities – it is about time for a new

11

The last few years have been difficult for the transatlantic partnership. For decades; the relations between America and Europe were the fundamental principle of foreign policy. There were disagreements but they were always settled with the attitude that we had a common destiny. Now, in Europe there is a fashionable anti-Americanism that has a whole catalogue of grievances of domestic policy, of names like Rumsfeld or occasionally the President, of unilateralism. A desire to achieve a multipolarism which is designed to create a counterweight to the United States. In America there is an attack on European neutralism and Europe taking a freeride on American military capabilities.

2

As Europe became more and more concentrated on unification of Europe and on building a united Europe there developed a difference in the intellectual priorities of the two sides of the Atlantic. Most of the European discussions today are incomprehensible to most Americans who are concerned with foreign policy. European leaders increasingly focus on the issues of European unification: Broadening against deepening, relative voting rights, how to precede as a result of

3

Now, 9/11 for America represented a challenge which Europeans
had experienced in their history many centuries earlier. It was the first
attack on the territory of the United States. It was compounded by the
fact that it was carried out by people and groups that the vast majority
of Americans did not realize were our enemies. And therefore it
created an atmosphere of potential insecurity of global proportions.
That was compounded by the fact that all of the history and all of the
thinking of foreign policy for centuries had been focused on the
relations of states to each others. But the challenge of terrorism
represents the privatization of security threats. It is based on states —
they could not operate without states — but it does not carry out the
imperatives of states. So the principles by which we had conducted the

4

5

6

[Y]

to be better suited to oppose the United States or whether it evolves its
convictions on a world order. Whether America and Europe decide
that neither of them have a better potential ally in the world. Europe
can support America to come to terms regarding the limits of its
power. If some of the existing trends continue and if one should think
of Europe as a counterweight to the United States and as the primary
purpose of European policy to act as a counterweight to the United
States one will have recreated exactly the world of Bismarck. One will
be exactly in the world of prior to WW I when five or six major
nations began competing for influence to gain a little advantage here
and a little advantage there. No doubt, Bismarck was a great
statesman. But he proved to any student that to conduct foreign policy
on the basis of balance of power alone is so complex that something is
bound to play down somewhere along the line. And that will be the
challenge of the world where you have America and Europe and

7

[4]

8

[4]

9

[M]

issue? One well-known stereotype is that America likes to do it with force as against Europe trying to do it with engagement. In practice there has to be a period of diplomacy and there is a period of *ending* diplomacy *whatever it is called*. But one *also* has to answer two *questions*: what is the time limit to that diplomacy before diplomacy becomes a way by which proliferation becomes encouraged? And secondly what does one do when one has reached the end of the diplomatic option? The recent developments leave no doubt – the state system is disintegrated. Europe has taken the road of overcoming its history in its own European way. And America is overcoming its *nolshamnsein* history by dealing on a global basis. In today's America you can find arguments for hegemony. But you also find the conviction that without some consensus power is not legitimate and that power must be used as a last resorts even if overwhelmingly at that point. The difference is not multilateralism against unilateralism. Multilateralism

10

[4]

unilateralism based on power also will not work. That is the challenge

11

# A PARTNERSHIP IN TRANSFORMATION

## How to turn a dispute into opportunities

There are two days that you can say mark the beginning of the dispute. The first one is 11/9, November 9th, when the Wall came down. And the second is 9/11, when the World Trade Center was attacked. The collapse of the Wall which is the result of a generation of Western cooperation, changed the strategic environment. The threat to Europe diminished and disappeared in its traditional way. And the necessity for America of having a strategic place in Europe also became less. As a result the bipolarity of the Cold War turned into something that was perceived to be a more unipolar world in which the United States appeared as the hyperpower that could by itself regulate events. That liberated historic tendencies based on a balance of power politic that was always aimed at whoever was the dominant country. It led to temptations to tie down America either by international agreements or by making it more difficult to exercise its alleged hegemony. In the United States there developed the theory that America could by itself achieve its fundamental objectives and that the traditional need for alliances disappeared or was weakened.

As Europe became more and more concentrated on unification of Europe and on building a united Europe there developed a difference in the intellectual priorities of the two sides of the Atlantic. Most of the European discussions today are incomprehensible to most Americans who are concerned with foreign policy. European leaders increasingly focus on the issues of European unification: Broadening against deepening, relative voting rights, how to precede as a result of a deadlock that most people in America hadn't even noticed particularly. This shift in priorities is one reason why there we are facing a certain intellectual gulf that we have to work at reducing.

Now, 9/11 for America represented a challenge which Europeans had experienced in their history many centuries earlier. It was the first attack on the territory of the United States. It was compounded by the fact that it was carried out by people and groups that the vast majority of Americans did not realize were our enemies. And therefore it created an atmosphere of potential insecurity of global proportions. That was compounded by the fact that all of the history and all of the thinking of foreign policy for centuries had been focused on the relations of states to each others. But the challenge of terrorism represents the privatization of security threats. It is based on states – they could not operate without states – but it does not carry out the imperatives of states. So the principles by which we had conducted the cold war cannot apply. Deterrence does not work against groups that have nothing to lose and diplomacy does not work against groups that have no state and objectives, at least no objectives that they are willing to talk about. Therefore the United States felt itself obliged to undertake the task of demonstrating that a challenge to Western security or American security conceived as Western security is too dangerous. And that drew us into global enterprises.

One result of the combination of 11/9 and 9/11 was that the threat to states has diminished but the threat to societies has increased. How to deal with this in a foreign policy world based on states? We have to cope with a huge threat that does not have a traditional pattern and that cannot be dealt with by phrases like hegemony and multipolarity or unilateralism against multilateralism. The United States is without question the most powerful country in the world. But equally without question no country has ever been able to dominate the world by power alone. Hegemony reigns the domestic structure of the state trying to exercise it.

2

M]

The issue is not whether Europe can never disagree with the United States or vice
versa. The issue is whether Europe should find its identity in opposition to the
United States. Whether it should built its institutions to be better suited to oppose
the United States or whether it evolves its convictions on a world order. Whether
America and Europe decide that neither of them have a better potential ally in the
world. Europe can support America to come to terms regarding the limits of its
power. If some of the existing trends continue and if one should think of Europe
as a counterweight to the United States and as the primary purpose of European
policy to act as a counterweight to the United States one will have recreated
exactly the world of Bismarck. One will be exactly in the world of prior to WW I
when five or six major nations began competing for influence to gain a little
advantage here and a little advantage there. No doubt, Bismarck was a great
statesman. But he proved to any student that to conduct foreign policy on the basis
of balance of power alone is so complex that something is bound to play down
somewhere along the line. And that will be the challenge of the world where you
have America and Europe and China and possibly Russia or likely India, maybe
Brazil. We are clearly entering a new world order. The international system that
started in 1648 has broken down. Now we have to ask ourselves, are we going to
try to reconstruct it by some of the methods of that previous system? Or are we
going to try to find a way for constructive cooperation of nations that have after
all a more comparable history and set of values than any other group of nations?

3

[4]

face then is this: a debacle for the West in Iraq would be a debacle for Americans and Europeans likewise. The people who are shooting right now at America won't stop shooting at the Iraqi border. They will cross the border into as yet unknown targets. The real question that requires an answer in Iraq is how do you built a democracy in a multi-ethnic society that has never had a nation state? In the democratic countries we know, the state provides order but also protection for the individual. In Iraq in all of its history even before there was an Iraq, the state has been a threat to its citizens and the citizens have sought security by working with their communities. Therefore in the early stage of democratization in Iraq, fragmentation may be encouraged rather than unity. I am saying that we will not be able to answer this question if we spend our energies debating legalistic points as to who should be granting an authority that is emerging anyway and which the minute it is created will be under assault and will have to be protected. And these questions would apply as well to Iran. What does one mean by democracy? How does one promote it? What is the essence of the non-proliferation issue? One well-known stereotype is that America likes to do it with force as against Europe trying to do it with engagement. In practice there has to be a period of diplomacy and there is a period of diplomacy whatever it is called. But one also has to answer two questions: what is the time limit to that diplomacy before diplomacy becomes a way by which proliferation becomes encouraged? And secondly what does one do when one has reached the end of the diplomatic option? The recent developments leave no doubt - the state system is disintegrated. Europe has taken the road of overcoming its history in its own European way. And America is overcoming its history by dealing on a global basis. In today's America you can find arguments for hegemony. But you also find the conviction that without some consensus power is not legitimate and that power must be used as a last resorts even if overwhelmingly at that point. The difference is not multilateralism against unilateralism. Multilateralism that is not based on common convictions will not work. And unilateralism based on power also will not work. That is the challenge before the Americans and the Europeans. And if we meet it together we can look back, also our future generations will look back at this period as one of the great turning points.

4

Berlin, January 9, 2004

Taking this as a point of departure for shaping foreign policy, the
European effort to create a mulitpolarity by a conscious policy is
missing the subject. Of course, Europe will be stronger as it
unifies and, of course, Europe will play a significant role. And, of
course, Europe will disagree with the United States from time to
time. The issue is not whether Europe can never disagree with
the United States or vice versa. The issue is whether Europe
should find its identity in opposition to the United States.
Whether it should build its institutions to be better suited to
oppose the United States or whether it evolves its convictions on
a cooperative world order. Whether America and Europe decide
that neither of them have a better potential ally in the world. If
some of the existing trends continue, and if one should think of
Europe as a counterweight to the United States and as the
primary purpose of European policy, to act as a counterweight to
the United States one will have recreated exactly the world of
Bismarck. One will be exactly in the world of prior to World War I
when five or six major nations began competing for influence to
gain a little advantage here and a little advantage there. No
doubt, Bismarck was a great statesman. But he proved to any
student that to conduct foreign policy on the basis of balance of
power alone is so complex that something is bound to break
down somewhere along the line. And that will be the challenge of
the world where you have America and Europe and China and
possibly Russia, or likely India, maybe Brazil. We are clearly
entering a new world order. The international system that
started in 1648 has broken down. Now we have to ask ourselves,
are we going to try to reconstruct it by some of the methods of
that previous system? Or are we going to try to find a way for
constructive cooperation of nations that have after all a more
comparable history and set of values than any other group of
nations?

WITH HAK HANDWRITTEN
EDITS

# The New Transatlantic Agenda
## Dinner Speech by Dr. Henry A. Kissinger

09.01.2004, Berlin

Liz Mohn and distinguished guests: it is a great honour for me to address this group. I believe I have attended every previous meeting of this forum extending over a period of 17 years. And in this room are also many people with whom I share common experiences going back for a lifetime. So, let me take this opportunity to talk to you about the state of Atlantic relations as I see it.

The last few years have been difficult. I grew up in a generation for whom transatlantic relations were the fundamental principle of foreign policy. There were disagreements but they were always settled with the attitude that we had a common destiny. And that we would therefore adjust to each others point of view. When Ostpolitik started as you know President Nixon and I had serious doubts about where it might lead. But Chancellor Brandt and the German foreign Ministers

M

and then Schmidt and then Genscher convinced us that for the
common future we had an obligation to enable Germany to fulfil its
national aspirations by its methods. And we not only tolerated it, we
actively cooperated with it at every step of the way. Now in recent
years a set of controversies has developed. On specific issues is has
gone deeper than the issues themselves. In Europe there is a
fashionable anti-Americanism that has a whole catalogue of
grievances of domestic policy, of names like Rumsfeld or occasionally
the President, of unilateralism, of a desire to achieve a multipolarism
which is designed to create a counterweight to the United States. In
America there is an attack on European neutralism and European
taking a freeride on American military capabilities. My purpose here
is not to review these disputes. I belong as I said to the generation that
believes in the transatlantic relationship. I believe that the transatlantic
relationship guarantees a global stability that can above all be

2

threatened by our divisions but not by outside forces if we are united.

That it enables a management of the global economy that only the

Atlantic nations can provide. And that it achieves a protection of
shared values to which the nations bordering the Atlantic are uniquely
committed. And so I shared fully the views expressed by Mr.

Schäuble this afternoon about the fundamental importance of the
Atlantic relationship. Let me explain some of the causes of the present
state of affairs as I see it and then outline some directions in which we
might go.

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necessity for America of having a strategic place in Europe also
became less. And as a result the bipolarity of the Cold War turned into
something that was perceived to be a more unipolar world in which
the United States appeared as the hyperpower that could by itself
regulate events. That liberated historic tendencies based on a balance
of power politic that was always aimed at whoever was the dominant
country. And led to temptations to tie down America either by
international agreements or by making it more difficult to exercise its
alleged hegemony. In the United States there developed the theory
that America could by itself achieve its fundamental objectives and
that the traditional need for alliances disappeared or was weakened.
So on the one side there were questions about American intentions
and on the other side there were doubts about the significance of
Europe in a strategic sense. And the result was not that there were
disagreements, they had happened before, but that governments

[Y]

became more subject to the domestic pressures that for over a
generation they had resisted when they surfaced. So that the attack on
allied relationships did not find the resistance that had brought about
the cohesion that existed before. There is also a certain kind of
cultural difference. As Europe became more and more concentrated on
unification of Europe and on building a united Europe there developed
a difference in the intellectual priorities of the two sides of the
Atlantic which to me was very well illustrated by the discussions this
afternoon. I would say that most of the discussions this afternoon
would be incomprehensible to most Americans who are concerned
with foreign policy. And I say this in no sense as a criticism - it is
inherent in the problem. European leaders spent, what?, half their time
on the issues of European unification: Broadening against deepening,
relative voting rights, how to precede as a result of a deadlock that
most people in America hadn't even noticed particularly. And this

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inevitably, unless we make an effort on both sides, creates a certain
intellectual gulf that we have to work at reducing. Now, 9/11 for
America represented a challenge which Europeans had experienced in
their history many centuries earlier. It was the first attack on the
territory of the United States. And it was compounded by the fact that
it was carried out by people and groups that the vast majority of
Americans did not realize were our enemies. And therefore it created
an atmosphere of potential insecurity of global proportions. That was
compounded by the fact that all of the history and all of the thinking
of foreign policy for centuries had been focused on the relations of
states to each others. But the challenge of terrorism represents the
privatization of security threats. It is based on states - they could not
operate without states - but it does not carry out the imperatives of
states. So the principles by which we had conducted the cold war
cannot apply. Deterrence does not work against groups that have

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nothing to lose and diplomacy does not work against groups that have
no state and objectives, at least no objectives that they are willing to
talk about. Therefore the United States felt itself obliged to undertake
the task of demonstrating that a challenge to Western security or
American security conceived as Western security is too dangerous.
And that drew us into global enterprises. I do not want to rehearse the
debate here about the Iraq war which I supported. There can be
endless discussions of what we should have known. But there is
absolutely no question that all American policy makers that I know
believed that there was a real potential danger from Iraq. And that
they did not feel that they had a right to wait until a demonstration
could be made. So, one result of 9/11 was – of the combination of
11/9 and 9/11 was – that the threat to states has diminished but the
threat to societies has increased and how to deal with this in a foreign
policy world based on states of a huge threat that does not have a

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traditional pattern is subject that cannot be dealt with by phrases like hegemony and multipolarity or unilateralism against multilateralism.

The United States is without question the most powerful country in the world. But equally without question no country has ever been able to dominate the world by power alone. Hegemony <u>drains</u> the domestic structure of the state trying to exercise it. Because every problem becomes a domestic problem. And a domestic institution cannot handle such an array of issues over an indefinite period of time. So a wise, nationalistic, self-centered American must come to the conclusion that it is in our interest to built a consensus. The way we get to that point may be complicated but I don't know any serious policy-maker who believes that we can impose our will on the world by military means. I know writers who have this view but they will not be able to translate this into a coherent American policy. And therefore with all respect I believe that the effort of some of our

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European friends to create a multipolarity by a conscious policy is
missing the subject. Of course Europe will be stronger as it unifies and
of course Europe will play a significant role. And of course Europe
will disagree with the United States from time to time. The issue is not
whether Europe can never disagree with the United States or vice
versa. The issue is whether Europe should find its identity in
opposition to the United States. Whether it should built its institutions
to be better suited to oppose the United States or whether it evolves its
convictions on a world order and whether America and Europe decide
that neither of them have a better potential ally in the world. If some
of the existing trends continue and if one should think of Europe as a
counterweight to the United States and as the primary purpose of
European policy to act as a counterweight to the United States one
will have recreated exactly the world of Bismarck. One will be exactly
in the world of prior to WW I when five or six major nations began

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competing for influence to gain a little advantage here and a little
advantage there. Now I thought Bismarck was a great statesman. But
he proved to any student that to conduct foreign policy on the basis of
balance of power alone is so complex that something is bound to ~~play~~
draw
down somewhere along the line. And that will be the challenge of the
world where you have America and Europe and China and possibly
Russia or likely India maybe Brazil - but I don't want to predict
which will be the major players - but at least four or five of the ones I
have mentioned will be the major players. The question we have to
ask ourselves is this: we are clearly entering a new world order. The
international system that started in 1648 has broken down. Are we
going to try to reconstruct it by some of the methods of that previous
system or are we going to try to find a way by which the nations that
have after all a more comparable history than any other group of
nations and a more comparable set of values than similar nations and

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to stop manoeuvring for some of the tactical issues that are now on the table. Let me just give one or two issues that concern me.

The United States has announced that it will cede sovereignty to an Iraqi government by the end of June. Yet some of the debate concerns the issue whether this should be done by some international group or by America unilaterally. With all respect that is an irrelevant debate at this point. We are talking about a three to six month time interval. The fundamental question we will all face then is this: a debacle for the West in Iraq would be a debacle for everybody in this room. The people who are shooting right now at America won't stop shooting at the Iraqi border. They will cross the border into as yet unknown targets. The real question that requires an answer in Iraq is how do you built a democracy in a multi-ethnic society? That has never had a nation state. In the countries we know, in the democratic countries we know, the state provides order but also protection for the

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individual. In Iraq in all of its history even before there was an Iraq,
the state has been a threat to its citizens and the citizens have sought
security by working with their communities. Therefore in the early
stage of democratization in Iraq, fragmentation may be encouraged
rather than unity. I don't say that I have an answer to this question. I
am saying that we will not be able to answer this question if we spend
our energies debating legalistic points as to who should be granting an
authority that is emerging anyway and which the minute it is created
will be under assault and will have to be protected. And these
questions would apply as well to Iran. What does one mean by
democracy? How does one promote it? What is the essence of the
non-proliferation issue? Some people say America likes to do it with
force as against Europe trying to do it with engagement. In practice
there has to be a period of diplomacy and there is a period of ending
diplomacy whatever it is called. But one also has to answer two

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