questions: what is the time limit to that diplomacy before diplomacy becomes a way by which proliferation becomes encouraged ~~what a~~ cover for proliferation. And secondly what does one do when one has reached the end of the diplomatic option. Those are questions we need to deal with. But beyond this we have a whole set of problems. How does one create, if one talks about say Africa, political legitimacy in countries that were created for colonial convenience? And I could go through a whole list of things that I have written down. But I believe that I have made my basic point. My basic point is this: I came to this town in 1946 the first time. Before the airlift when there wasn't a building standing and not a tree in the Tiergarten. And I have seen the recovery of this country because of the faith in themselves of the people and their ability to work for the first time in a long time in a Germanist way in an international framework. And I have seen this for fifty years. Anyone who saw Berlin ten years ago would have not

13

believed it possible that it would grow to its present status in this
period. All of this has happened through a combination of national
efforts, European efforts and Atlantic efforts. And we must not go
back to patterns that were not so successful when the international
framework was different. 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.
And anyone who really follows the American debate knows that in
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 us. And if we meet it together we can look back,

14

also our future generations will look back at this period as one of the
great turning points.

I once when I was very young asked President Truman what he
had done of which he was most proud. And he said: "What I was most
proud of is that we totally defeated our enemies and than we brought
them back to a community of nations as equals. With a different
substance and in a different way we now have to create a community
of nations again. And with a sense of equality and participation. And
if Europe and the United States cannot do it together it will not
happen. But I want to say that what we see as a dispute should be
turned into an opportunity and that is the great task before us. Thank
you very much.

15

CLEAN

# 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

Y

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.

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

3

[Y]

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

4

[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

5

[4]

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

6

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

41

7

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 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 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

8

[Y]

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

9

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
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

10

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

11

[4]

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
diplomacy whatever it is called. But one also has to answer two

12

questions: what is the time limit to that diplomacy before diplomacy becomes a way by which proliferation becomes encouraged what a cover for proliferation. And secondly what does one do when one has reached the end of the diplomatic option. Those are questions we need to deal with. But beyond this we have a whole set of problems. How does one create, if one talks about say Africa, political legitimacy in countries that were created for colonial convenience? And I could go through a whole list of things that I have written down. But I believe that I have made my basic point. My basic point is this: I came to this town in 1946 the first time. Before the airlift when there wasn't a building standing and not a tree in the Tiergarten. And I have seen the recovery of this country because of the faith in themselves of the people and their ability to work for the first time in a long time in a Germanist way in an international framework. And I have seen this for fifty years. Anyone who saw Berlin ten years ago would have not

13

14

15

Los Angeles Times: ratany riawu reace rioposal

Los Angeles Times
latimes.com.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-avineri4jan04,1,837442.story

ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT

Fatally Flawed Peace Proposal

The Geneva proposal fails to commit Palestinians to accepting Israel as a state, or to giving up the right of return.

By Shlomo Avineri

Shlomo Avineri is a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

January 4, 2004

JERUSALEM — Now that the worldwide fanfare accompanying the so-called Geneva Accord has died down a bit, perhaps it's time to look at why most Israelis have failed to rally behind the unofficial plan's outline for how to achieve peace with the Palestinians. The biggest problem for Israelis is that what the document's authors claim it says and what it actually says are very different. Moreover, there are serious matters of credibility with the way the initiative was presented.

Take the identities of the initiative's authors. They presented themselves as independent Israeli and Palestinian public figures, intellectuals and writers. Not so. On the Israeli side this was true — the initiating group included some prominent opposition politicians, intellectuals and writers. On the Palestinian side, however, the picture is very different: The chief Palestinian initiator, Yasser Abed-Rabbo, is a former Palestinian Authority minister of information and culture. Moreover, at the Geneva unveiling of the proposal last month, a letter from Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, generally supporting the initiative, was read, and a number of Palestinian ministers also attended the ceremony. In truth, the Geneva Accord is a document endorsed by part of the Israeli opposition and most of the Palestinian governing establishment. This is not a document originating in both "civil societies."

The initiators present the document as signaling an explicit Palestinian acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state. There is nothing of the sort in the document. There is a vague reference in the preamble to the Jewish right to a state, but nowhere does it say that this state will be in Israel; it could be in Uganda. Since the root cause of the conflict lies in the unwillingness of Arabs to accept Israel as a Jewish state, many Israelis feel that the initiators were far from candid.

This applies also to the issue of the right of return of 1948 Palestinian refugees and their descendants, — a cornerstone of Palestinian nationalist dogma. The initiators claim that in their document Palestinians explicitly give up the right to return to the property in Israel from which they fled or were expelled during the 1948 war. But this is not the case. It is true that in the document the right of return does not appear explicitly, but it does state that the refugee problem will be addressed according to United Nations Resolution 194. This 1948 resolution, while not mentioning a right of return specifically, does say simply and explicitly that the refugees "shall return." Every Palestinian child is taught that 194 is the international legitimization of the Palestinian right of return. Again,

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Los Angeles Times: Fatally Flawed Peace Proposal

many Israelis felt the initiators were far from truthful.

On the issue of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, the initiators presented their plan as "insuring" that most settlers would remain where they were. Again, not so. A perusal of the maps appended to the documents shows that of the 220,000 settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, 140,000 would have to be relocated. This is a considerable number, involving difficult political, economic and human decisions. Even those who support uprooting many settlers resent that the initiative's authors chose not to level with them.

There are further issues that come up when reading the document: The accord envisages setting up an International Implementation and Verification Group, which would be responsible for refugee resettlement, border issues and the complex structure that would oversee a redivided Jerusalem. Not only the U.N., the United States and European Union would be part of this group, but also the Arab League. Given the wide authority granted to this international body, many Israelis feel that their country's sovereignty and independence would be seriously curtailed if not forfeited, and the country would be turned into a quasi-protectorate.

To this unease is added the fact that the Geneva document stipulates that not only would Palestinian refugees of 1948 be entitled to compensation, which seems reasonable to most Israelis, but Arab countries in the region would also receive compensation from Israel for the years they have "hosted" the refugees. Given the cynical use many Arab countries made of the Palestinian refugees in the decades of the conflict, this seems to many a bit too much — especially as it was never mentioned in the PR campaign preceding the final publication of the initiative.

One can understand why the Palestinian leadership, in which Abed-Rabbo has played a central role, feels that it has to dig itself out of the hole in which it found itself after years of involvement in terrorism and suicide bombing. It should not come as a surprise, however, that many Israelis — including those ready to make considerable concessions — feel that with the Geneva initiative, they have been taken for a ride by the Palestinian propaganda machine and some willful — or naive — Israeli accomplices.

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