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From Analysis

23rd August, 2001

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger,
Kissinger Associates,
1800 K St., N.W., Suite # 1021,
WASHINGTON, D.C.,
20006,
U.S.A.

AUG 3 1 2001

Dear Dr. Kissinger,

Quentin Peel of the *Financial Times* and I were most grateful to you for taking the trouble recently to record a brief interview with us on international security issues for our *Analysis* radio documentary, *From Berlin Wall to Great Wall?*, broadcast earlier this month. What you had to say provided listeners with some particularly important reflections for which we were most grateful.

I now enclose, as promised when we spoke, a transcript of the broadcast for your records, together with a copy of Quentin's relevant column in the *FT*; a contract note for your signature will be sent under separate cover.

Thank you again for making the time to help us.

enc

Please note that this is BBC copyright and may not be
reproduced or copied for any other purpose.

CURRENT AFFAIRS

RADIO 4

ANALYSIS
FROM BERLIN WALL TO GREAT WALL?

TRANSCRIPT OF A RECORDED DOCUMENTARY

Presenter: Quentin Peel
Producer: Simon Coates
Editor: Nicola Meyrick

BBC
White City
201 Wood Lane
London
W12 7TS

020 8752 6252

Broadcast Date: 23.08.01
Repeat Date: 26.08.01
Tape Number: TLN133/01VT1034
Duration: 27.40

Taking part (in order of appearance):

**John Bolton**
Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs

**Joseph Cirincione**
Director, Non-Proliferation Project
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

**Richard Perle**
Former Assistant Secretary for Defence &
Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

**Ted Galen Carpenter**
Vice-president for Defence and Foreign Policy Studies,
Cato Institute

**General Brent Scowcroft**
National Security Adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George
H.W. Bush

**Dr Henry Kissinger**
National Security Adviser to President Richard Nixon
and former Secretary of State

**Lawrence Freedman**
Professor of War Studies at King's College, London

**Frances G. Burwell**
Programme Director on Transatlantic Relations
The Atlantic Council of the United States

**Alexander Yereskovsky**
Former Soviet diplomat and senior Russian Embassy official

**Sandy Berger**
National Security Adviser to President Bill Clinton

**Dominique Moïsi**
Deputy director, French Institute for International Relations

[x]

**PEEL** More than a decade after the end of the Cold War, the United States remains the solitary superpower. No other country can begin to match its wealth, its technology and its military hardware. It has no rivals; no serious threats. Or so it would seem.

**BOLTON** The threats that we face today come from a variety of rogue states, terrorist groups caused by the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War and the proliferation of the technology of weapons of mass destruction, including ballistic missiles. So, we don't face a single, heavily-armed adversary. We face a diverse group of very-hard-to-characterise states that don't share our interests, and they pose potential threats to us.

**PEEL** John Bolton, the Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs. He's one of the most prominent foreign policy conservatives in the new administration of President George W. Bush.

It's odd that a country whose armed forces and weaponry are far more powerful and deadly than those of any potential rival should fear attack by so-called rogue states. But we shouldn't forget the shattering impact on American national consciousness of Pearl Harbor nor indeed the Vietnam War, when a small nation humiliated the US. But how justified is today's fear of weapons proliferation among - well, just how many hostile regimes? Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is a leading authority on the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

**CIRINCIONE** I spend my time tracking proliferation and the spread of nuclear, chemical, biological weapons and missile delivery systems and I've concluded over the last couple of years that the threat is actually a lot less than many people believe. I don't believe proliferation is out of control; I don't think it's spreading inexorably; that when you come right down to it, we have been tremendously successful in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons to most countries around the world. The vast majority of nations in the world do not have chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or missiles. We do have a problem with a few hard cases and that's what we're down to at this point. You often hear the phrase, "Countries like Iran, Iraq and North Korea." Well, there are no countries like Iran, Iraq and North Korea - there are only Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

**PEEL** So John Bolton's potential threats may be quite limited. Of course, Joseph Cirincione is an outspoken critic of the US government's assessment of the threat of nuclear proliferation, and its commitment to counter it with a ballistic missile defence system. He represents one pole in a fierce debate raging in Washington.

Proponents of missile defence say it's the right system to meet the new security realities after the fall of the Berlin Wall. But is it new thinking or old? Will it alienate America's leading allies, in Europe and Asia, or will it give them greater protection? And is it really directed at rogue states or is it not rather aimed at the next superpower - China, behind its Great Wall?

Richard Perle, former assistant secretary for defence under President Ronald Reagan, is an influential conservative voice from the past, still close to the new administration. What's driving America's obsession with those rogue states such as Iran and North Korea?

**PERLE** All of these rogue states - and the organisations that derive support from them - are a potential threat. And they are rather more of a threat to the United States than to anyone else because we have been identified in some places in the world as the Great Satan, and in others we are the obvious source of help and support to friends and allies around the world. The price, I suppose, you pay for being the only superpower is that you're also high up on everyone's hate list.

**PEEL** He has a point. It's a vital part of the justification given by the US government for pressing ahead with testing and developing a fantastically expensive and technologically unproven system of ballistic missile defence. Unique vulnerability requires unique defence. But that, in turn, would require scrapping, or at least drastically amending, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, signed back in 1972 by the US and the former Soviet Union. It's been the cornerstone of nuclear deterrence for the last thirty years.

Abandoning the ABM Treaty is what alarms and dismays America's allies, and erstwhile rivals, like Russia. We in Western Europe don't share the US sense of vulnerability. After all, we're a collection of competitive nation states living cheek-by-jowl on a single continent - in contrast with the US sitting comfortably between two oceans. Nor do many Europeans regard rogue states as their main threat. Some

conservatives in Washington have the same doubts. Ted Galen Carpenter is Vice-President for Defence and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute.

**CARPENTER** Most political leaders in the world, even leaders of so called rogue states - and that concept is inherently quite vague - are not suicidal. And the most reckless way to deal with the United States would be to launch a ballistic missile against American forces or territory with a return address because the United States has, by far, the largest strategic arsenal in the world. And the political compulsion would be to retaliate for any strike using weapons of mass destruction. So, any leader that would launch an attack on the United States would quite literally be courting national suicide as well as personal suicide.

**PEEL** So the rogue state threat clearly doesn't persuade all ideological supporters of the Republican Party, any more than it does traditional critics. The party lines are blurred on missile defence. After all, President Clinton launched a testing programme during his term of office. It wasn't from a position of any great enthusiasm, but rather to head off what he realised might be a Republican vote-winner. Many Democrats do support it, and ballistic missile defence enjoys a large majority of public backing. But the true believers lie on the conservative wing of the Republican party, where the idea has deep roots.

General Brent Scowcroft was National Security Adviser to President Gerald Ford and to the first President Bush, the present incumbent's father. How does he read the background to the present enthusiasm?

**SCOWCROFT** Part of the reason that it is such a high priority is the way it developed. It, of course, first started under President Reagan as the Strategic Defence Initiative and got a lot of emotional baggage there. With the collapse of the Cold War it diminished as an issue, then in comes the Clinton administration and says, "Don't want to talk about it; don't want to do anything." And that, given the emotion of the Republicans about President Clinton in many respects - and this in particular - is what started the emotion over again and gave it the guise of a crusade, if you will. A crusade which the Republicans eventually won with the help of a couple of missile tests from North Korea.

**PEEL** That political "crusade" for missile defence is complemented by a strong dislike of the doctrine of mutually-assured destruction - the guarantee of massive civilian casualties from any nuclear retaliation to a first strike. In order to ensure that vulnerability, the ABM Treaty effectively outlaws any substantial system of missile defence. That's why supporters of missile defence want to scrap the treaty.

Dr Henry Kissinger was National Security Adviser to a Republican President, Richard Nixon, in the early 1970s. What does he think now of the ABM Treaty he helped negotiate, and the doctrine of destruction on which it is based?

**KISSINGER** To base defence entirely on the mass extermination of civilian populations is something that is neither morally nor practically sustainable indefinitely. It was barely conceivable when there were two nuclear powers. It's not maintainable when nuclear weapons spread around the world even at the present

extent. Missile defence cannot prevent the implementation of mutually-assured destruction if madmen are in charge of arsenals. But it can reduce accidents, low level threats and a certain amount of miscalculation, and stability has to be sought in limiting missile defence to a level in which the ultimate deterrent is maintained but the capacity to apply it in more limited forms is reduced.

**PEEL**

So Dr Kissinger today sees a limited missile defence as a more stable solution, but one that cannot entirely replace the threat of mutually-assured destruction. That *sounds* like pretty cautious support. Does Joseph Cirincione at the Carnegie Endowment believe think such thinking will weigh with the Bush administration? Are there other factors being assessed as it decides how to proceed with missile defence?

**CIRINCIONE**

The United States has spent a hundred and twenty billion dollars over the last forty years trying to construct an effective missile defence. We still don't have one; we're not close to having one. But it does appear likely that, some time in the next four years, President Bush might deploy something: a thin line of defences, a system that's been tested once or twice and is then put out in the field - a kind of a scarecrow defence - something that will appear to the adversary to be an effective missile defence but, in fact, would have very little chance of success. This seems to be a political goal of the administration for a couple of reasons. One, they think it'll enhance their re-election prospects in 2004. Two, they want to make this inevitable. They know that this is their chance to do it and they want to commit the United States on this course so that there's no turning back. And they want to create facts

[c]

on the ground - put these things on ships, put them in Alaska, put them in the air -
"Let's get the United States going and rally public opinion behind that."

**PEEL** The prospect of such hasty deployment by the time of the next US presidential election is precisely what prompts soul-searching in Europe, where there are growing divisions among America's Nato allies over whether to support the whole project. It's compounded by a lack of sympathy for the US sense of urgency, and a lack of understanding for its causes. What's the reason for the differences in perception across the Atlantic? Lawrence Freedman, Professor of War Studies at King's College, London.

**FREEDMAN** I think there's two sides to this problem - which is a problem. The first is that the American armed forces - the Pentagon more generally - tend to think in terms of big wars and prepare for big wars, whereas the European experience and actually the American experience is that they're.. you're likely to get much more involved in a lot of smaller operations - messy, complicated, political affairs, rather than with clear enemies who can be defeated in a decisive way. So, in terms of the sort of threat you'd like to have almost, there is a difference. I think on the rogue state question, Europeans wouldn't dissent from the view that there are some countries that cause an awful lot of trouble and have to be dealt with. Where, I think, there is a difference is probably a greater confidence on the European side that political measures have an important part to play.

**PEEL** In other words, Europeans tend to believe that diplomacy is the right tool to deal with so-called rogue states, not anti-missile missiles. And as far as

[c]

messy, complicated affairs are concerned, the Balkans - including our latest intervention in Macedonia - provide an obvious example. Frances Burwell, programme director at the Atlantic Council of the US in Washington, points out the consequences of that divide.

**BURWELL** We tend to focus more on the larger strategic issues. The Europeans have focused on peace keeping operations and peace enforcement - those all come out of the Balkans. I think that this tends to reflect different capabilities between the United States and Europe.

**PEEL** The tension emerging at the heart of the Nato alliance is aggravated by the accelerating technological gap - a big part of the gap in capabilities - between the US and her allies. As the Kosovo conflict and the Gulf War revealed, American armed forces have already much fancier and more sophisticated equipment than their European counterparts. If missile defence works, that disparity will simply grow wider. There's no evidence of governments in Europe showing any enthusiasm for spending more on defence.

The Europeans are nervous about directly criticising the American desire to protect its citizens from the threats of rogue states. So instead they've sought to hide behind Russia's skirts. President Putin insists that he wants to preserve the ABM Treaty which, to all intents and purposes, would mean maintaining the ban on missile defence, sometimes called NMD. The question is, how reliable is the Kremlin's position? Alexander Yereskovsky is a former Soviet diplomat. He was most recently

[10]

the senior official responsible for arms control negotiations at the Russian embassy in Washington.

**YERESKOVSKY** The dominant view in Moscow is clearly that the United States' intentions toward Russia are hostile and that NMD is not for counter-proliferation purposes. Current level of Russian strategic nuclear forces are large enough to penetrate through a potential limited US NMD. However, for economic reasons, their size will significantly decline in the future.

**PEEL** Do you believe that the Russian government would be prepared to abandon or at least to substantially amend the ABM Treaty?

**YERESKOVSKY** It is possible to both maintain the viability of the Treaty and permit a limited national missile defence deployment. I strongly believe that modified treaty is better than no treaty. Therefore, a further confrontation between Russia and the United States seems to be me absolutely unproductive.

**PEEL** That sounds suspiciously like someone interested in a deal.
Sandy Berger was National Security Adviser to President Clinton until the beginning of this year. He was one of the top officials most intimately involved in the last administration's plans for missile defence and the ABM Treaty. He's conscious of the importance for the European allies of President Putin's response to American overtures. What does he think the consequences would be of a deal on the Treaty?

[7]

**BERGER** If President Putin agrees to scrap the ABM Treaty, I suspect many in Europe will not try to be holier than the Pope, in a sense. But if, in fact, we are in a situation in which on the one hand the administration is saying, "There are no amendments to the Treaty that we're interested in and we're interested in no treaty," and the Russians are saying, "Well, we may be prepared to amend the Treaty but not to scrap the Treaty," I think the Europeans will be deeply troubled by that, particularly if it seems to be proceeding on a timetable that is precipitous.

**PEEL** It's not as if the Europeans aren't troubled already. But they're in some disarray in the face of President Bush's apparent determination to press ahead. France and Germany, for example, are more sceptical than either Tony Blair or his counterparts in Italy and Spain. Silvio Berlusconi and Jose-Maria Aznar have told President Bush they're supportive. A mixed response, then, for John Bolton at the US State Department to ponder.

**BOLTON** I really think that most of the Western European allies are moving in a fairly rapid pace in our direction on this. I think that the extensive consultations we've had over the past several months, the growing common assessment of the threat that we face to rogue states and I think also the growing belief in Europe that there's no intention on our part to decouple the United States from Europe. I think one of the things that many allies feared was that the development of a national missile defence would cause the United States to hide behind this impenetrable shield and leave our friends and allies kind of hanging out to dry. It was never the intention of any serious advocate of missile defence to do that.

**PEEL** But that's precisely the problem for the Europeans: this US administration sees just what it wants to see in their response, whether they're divided or not. The Europeans perceive a deliberate deafness to their doubts. And they do worry about being left in the cold by an impregnable America. Is Richard Perle sympathetic?

**PERLE** We're not looking for impregnability, first of all. We're looking to avoid the situation we're now in where even a single missile would be guaranteed to destroy the city in which it might be aimed because we have no defence whatsoever. So, we're looking at a limited defence, and we think it's feasible, we think it's affordable and it's our technology and our money, thank you very much, and if our European allies don't like it, that's just too bad.

**PEEL** Oh, dear! Is that the sound we can hear of the transatlantic gap widening? Dominique Moïsi, Deputy Director of the French Institute for International Relations in Paris, interprets the European reservations about American plans.

**MOÏSI** There are probably three logics behind the European mind. On the one hand, there are those, like the French, who fear the end result of the process which will be that America will really become the hyper-power - be more powerful than it was before. Then, there are those in Europe who say, "Well, the Atlantic alliance was based on a community of destiny. We are really moving apart now with the Americans able to protect themselves from the rest of the world. What is the notion of solidarity - Atlantic solidarity - if they have those kind of defensive weapons

[10]

and obviously we do not have them?" And then there are those who would say, "Well, it's very destabilising simply to break what we have and what may be rational for the Americans may lead to destabilising consequences for the Asian continent in particular or will give alibi for the Chinese, the Russians - whoever - to do absurd things."

**PEEL** So the Europeans are worried about the destabilising effect of missile defence - and not just in their own immediate neighbourhood. They're concerned that the real agenda of what Dominique Moïsi calls the US "hyper-power" is not about rogue states. The Cold War may be over, but old habits die hard. Spy planes are forced down over the South China Sea. Are there people in the Bush administration who think they face a serious rival there? Are they looking for one?

**MOÏSI** Yes, I think the Americans are looking for an enemy. They can't define what they call "vital interest" if no-one is threatening them and, in a way, rogue states are second best; you can't really mobilise the Americans against the threat of Iraq or North Korea. Russia is no longer a credible threat. So you don't need necessarily to invent one because there's one in the coming and that is China. They are considering - and, I would say, Republican and Democrats alike - that the only possible competitor in the twenty years to come for them is going to be China. And what can you do with a possible competitor? You can declare it as a strategic partner or you can simply say, "Well, this is a strategic competitor, adversary."

**PEEL**

But is China the inevitable adversary? Henry Kissinger was the man who unfroze US relations with Beijing after the Cultural Revolution, back in 1972.

**KISSINGER**

I disagree with the point of view that slides China in to the role vacated by the the Soviet Union. I do not believe that China represents, even in purely military terms, the capacity that the Soviet Union did. The Chinese defence budget is at a maximum a tenth of ours, and I don't see that China can pose a strategic threat to the United States for the next fifteen to twenty years. It can pose a threat in the Taiwan Straits, but not a threat capable of expelling the United States from the rest of the Pacific, as is often alleged.

**PEEL**

The architect of *détente* with Beijing doesn't believe that a new Cold War is inevitable. He fears that if the US seeks to define its security by trying to prevent the emergence of any possible challenger, it will end up turning all nations against it. So does Richard Perle think Beijing needs to be reassured about missile defence?

**PERLE**

Well, it isn't directed at China, but if it were directed at protecting against a Chinese attack on the United States, who is going to say that we should make ourselves vulnerable to a Chinese nuclear attack? The idea that we mustn't have a defence because it might be offensive to somebody who wishes to be able, at any time, to deliver nuclear weapons against us leads you in an absurd direction. Should we be vulnerable to everyone in order to satisfy a Chinese desire to hold us at risk? Of course not. At the same time, the Chinese nuclear force is such today

that we could almost certainly destroy it in a pre-emptive strike if we chose to do so -
that has not led the Chinese to panic, and there's no reason why they need to worry
in future. But if they choose to worry about their ability to destroy us, that's going to
be their problem and not ours.

**PEEL** But Washington *does* have a problem with China. It doesn't have a policy. Even a sympathetic observer of George W. Bush, like General Scowcroft, a man whose *protegées* now work deep inside the new Bush White House, sees trouble ahead.

**SCOWCROFT** I believe that if there is a real division within this administration, it is probably on China, and I think there is a division between those who see China inexorably developing into the primary security threat to the United States and those who feel that China is transforming rapidly. And there are great ups and downs but if you look at the direction of that transformation since President Nixon's visit in 1972, it's been overwhelmingly positive.

**PEEL** Should we in Europe really be concerned about US relations with China? As Henry Kissinger says, a new Cold War is not inevitable. Nor is it desirable. Europe's security instincts are to embrace China as a strategic partner, not seek to contain it as a foe.

The trouble with ballistic missile defence is that it appears all too like some twenty-first century technological Great Wall of China - except this time it is a Great Wall of America. It's an attempt to achieve security through physical means, not political

[i]

engagement. And it presents America's allies in Europe - all the member states of the Nato alliance, of the European Union and, perhaps above all, Britain with its divided loyalties across the Atlantic - with a dilemma.

**MOÏSI** In a way, the problem is that we are in the west. We can only associate ourselves with America, but we feel America has too much power. America is unbalanced today in it's supremacy. We can't ask, we can't hope for the Chinese to balance that power - that's not a credible dream even for Frenchmen denouncing the hyper-power of the United States!

**PEEL** Dominique Moïsi. Like it or not, the US is going to press ahead with some form of missile defence. It will destabilise the present nuclear stalemate - perhaps particularly in Asia, more than in Europe. But just as America has failed to work out its future relationship with China, so Europe has not thought through its future ties to the US. Are Europe and America allies or competitors?

Ballistic missile defence is demanding that we make up our minds. First, Europe must seek to persuade America to keep it as limited as possible, to minimise its destabilising consequences. Second, we must decide whether we want to be in or out. Inside Washington's new Great Wall, we'd be in danger of losing our room for manoeuvre, the chance to use our diplomatic skills and to pick our own enemies. And we'd have to pay a lot for the privilege.