BREAKFAST WITH DR. KISSINGER

April 2, 1997

Tape Side A

MR. MORRISON: Good morning, I'm Alan Morrison.

I'm executive vice chair of the Asia Circle, and on behalf of the Asia Circle I'd like to welcome all of you to this morning's breakfast event.

A number of the Asia Circle's more special events are of great interest not just to our own members, but all the members of the Presidents Circle, and this morning's breakfast meeting is obviously one of those occasions. I'm very proud to welcome the members of the Presidents Circle as our distinguished guests for this morning's event.

We're deeply honored to have Dr. Henry Kissinger as our speaker this morning. The very spirit of the Asia Circle is increasing the understanding between Asians and Americans and no one embodies this spirit better than Dr. Kissinger. So without further ado, I'd like to present Kevin Patet Tehrani (phonetic), the Chairman of the Asia Circle, who will now introduce Dr. Kissinger.

MR. TEHRANI: Good morning. I'd like to welcome the members of the Presidents Circle, the Asia Society trustees, and all of you guests today, as well as the Asia Circle members.

NATION-WIDE REPORTING & CONVENTION COVERAGE, INC.

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Today we are deeply honored to have as our guest, Dr. Henry Kissinger. It is with great admiration that I introduce Dr. Kissinger to you today.

His career has spanned over four decades where he has distinguished himself in the fields of government, diplomacy and academia. Over this period of time he's been a trusted advisor to Presidents, to heads of state, and to the corporate boards of leading corporations world wide.

He has served as U.S. Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977; as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs from 1969 to 1975; and as a member of the President's International Intelligence Advisory Board from 1984 to 1990.

Currently Dr. Kissinger serves on numerous corporate boards and is also chairman of Kissinger Associates. In addition, Dr. Kissinger has had the honor of being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

It is with great pleasure that I bring you Dr. Henry Kissinger.

DR. KISSINGER: Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, when I accepted this, I thought it would be sort of a small discussion group sitting around the table, and so I did not come here with any formal remarks. But let me talk to you about some things that are very much on my mind right now,

BREAKFAST WITH DR. KISSINGER

April 2, 1997

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informally and without notes, and then let's have a discussion about it.

First, I should like to address the issue of American foreign policy, obviously with some emphasis on Asia and a special emphasis on China.

America is in a very curious position right now. We trumpet around the world the fact that we are the only super power. We act as if we can prescribe to the whole world what its institutions should be, and yet we have no visibly coherent policy of what it is we are trying to accomplish. We have the Vice President of the United States visiting China without anybody having apparently told him that, in China, you cannot go to a dinner without there being a toast. I've never been to a Chinese dinner where there wasn't a toast. So if you're afraid to go to China and to have a toast at a banquet, you had better not go. It's an absolute absurdity to think you can go to China, refuse to have toast at banquets, spill your champagne when they bring it in a perfectly normal way while you're celebrating the signing of an agreement, and not inflict grievous psychological damage. And the fact that, for their own reasons, the Chinese may not necessarily show it, does not change the basic situation.

BREAKFAST WITH DR. KISSINGER

April 2, 1997

Tape Side A

It is equally astonishing to permit yourself to be
blackmailed by a bunch of traveling journalists who think that when
the Vice President or the Speaker go to China, they've got to come
back with the bodies of people who were in prison as a test of
whether it was a useful visit. That, of course, depends on the
extent to which you pursue the issue of human rights.

What rather depresses me is that as long as Clinton
was pursuing what I thought was the wrong foreign policy, the
Republicans behaved as you might expect an opposition party to
behave, that is, they were driven into saying occasionally
sensible things. But right now we have a coalition and
Clinton pursuing - though I still don't quite understand what
he's trying to do - at least a policy of taking individual
steps, and that I can live with.

So now we have an alliance of conservative
Republicans and liberal Democrats pursuing - pursuing what?
That is the question I want to address. And it is in essence
also the fundamental problem of American foreign policy. Yes,
we may be the only super power in the nuclear field, but the
issues to which force can be applied are shrinking and
therefore our military superiority is not relevant to most of
the issues before us. Secondly, we are now for the first time

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in our history in an internationalist system, by which I mean
the following.

In the past, we could present - and did present -to
ourselves every American initiative as a remedy for some
particular crisis with a clear cut terminal point. It might
go on for decades, but it related to an unusual situation,
unusual in the sense that our involvement was considered to be
not typical and that it would at some point be terminated once
the grievance was remedied.

Now we no longer have a permanent enemy. We have
no clear cut, single, overwhelming task. There is no visible
end to our involvements. We are dealing with a group of
nations whose relationship with us will be more or less
permanent, and where the goal of our foreign policy must be to
create incentives and penalties toward a desirable course of
action and in the direction of an international system that we
can live with.

When President Bush used the term "world order," he
did so in the classic American sense of believing that there
was a world order out there subject to the occasional assault
of such villains as Saddam Hussein. If he could remove Saddam
Hussein, the world would be enlightened to a consciousness of
harmony and a sense of universal justice. That, in short, was

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the world order he was sort of talking about - as a static condition.

Now that's easy enough to ridicule because the fact is, every international system that has ever existed has tended towards some kind of world order, at least in the sense of there being rules by which disputes can be settled. There are within it those issues which can be defined as justifying military action, and others that cannot. And there is a set of procedures by which outcomes are determined. That is the operation of a world order.

In this sense, we are caught in the mesh of a truly chaotic world, because there are so many new nations emerging on the basis of so many different principles that it cannot but take a long time to shake it all down, and even then under conditions that are quite different from the historic conditions. Nor has it ever been a global system with major players in every part of the world simultaneously, or one with a truly global economy. There's also never been such a thing as instantaneous communications.

Expansion, too, has attained a different meaning than in the past. Formerly, a nation could increase its power by expansion, that is, by acquiring territory and population as a means by which to achieve Great Power status.

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Today this is no longer true. Some of the greatest transformations in society have been taking place in terms of influence, and have been achieved entirely within the territory of sovereign states. It would take a special kind of mentality to believe that one has to expand in order to become a Great Power, though of course one might well go to war for other reasons. But one would not go to war as one did in the past, to change the status of one's country.

There are also vast differences among the various regions. In Europe, for example, war between the major countries is, at the moment, out of the question for all practical purposes. Not only is war out of the question but the European nations do not think of each other as strategic opponents, or only in a very limited sense, and will conduct their conflicts, if they have any, primarily in the economic field.

It is surely an interesting question what will happen to the societies that were once Great Powers when they are no longer conducting traditional international politics. Because, looking at the historical record of such political units as Austria, Venice and so forth, it is simply not true, as most professors would claim, that you gain in cultural eminence as you decline in physical power. There seems to be

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some relationship between the two but it is altogether another question. Suffice it to say that, in terms of American foreign policy, we no longer have to take into consideration the possibility of war between European countries.

In Asia, to which I now turn, that is not the case.

I'm not saying war is probable, but I am saying that the nations of Asia think of each other as potentially strategic opponents in their assessments of each other, and that they think more in the way of the 19th century European countries than of 20th century European countries. It doesn't mean they'll go to war, rather that traditional foreign policy methods are more applicable today to relations among Asian countries than the European countries.

Now, for the United States, this means that we have to adjust our thinking about foreign policy. We have to, at the very least, develop concepts of foreign policy that are relevant to global and instantaneous communications and rapid changes in every field, and relate these to how other societies look at us. Only in that way will they give us the capacity to shape it somewhat.

I must admit that I am appalled by what is going on in the United States in both parties. It is probably no secret that Mr. Clinton was my second choice in the last election,

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but I have to admit that the Republican party, too, has no
operating concept with respect to foreign policy.

The one operational view throughout has been that,
since democracies do not go to war, it is our duty to engender
democracy all around the world and thereby achieve universal
peace. Every messianic society has always held that view. It
is what the Communists said and what the European Liberals
proclaimed in the 19th century when they avowed that the only
reason there were any wars was because people were under
foreign rule. Once you removed the people from foreign rule
and each nation achieved independence, none could possibly
wish to go to war. It was the same with the Communists when
they said that war was caused by social conflict and that,
therefore, the state was destined to disappear.

It is, in a sense, what we are saying today: that
democracies do not go to war. I do not know whether it is
true. There have never been enough democracies in conflict
with each other to judge that. And in a way, demagoguery has
gained the upper hand with the various focus groups. Still,
it's not self-evident to me that at least in some democracies,
for example in the Russia of today, nationalism might not
prove to be a rallying point. Or in China, if there was a
truly pluralistic democracy.

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April 2, 1997

Tape Side A

In any case, I am not about to argue the point
because I simply don't know. One other thing. I do not know
how we are going to bring about democracy all over the world
simultaneously as an operational principle of American foreign
policy. That is not to say that the United States should not
avow its preference for human rights and democratic
institutions; nor do I reject the proposition that there's
some margin within which our treatment of others should be
affected by their human rights record. But it is surely a
rather simple-minded view when it comes to taking on a country
with a 5,000 year history - such as China is.

We are 250 million people. How can we possibly
think that we can put out every year a book with 160 other
nations in which we make pronouncements relating to all their
domestic institutions; or then pretend that we can gear all
our foreign policy to it? (I wouldn't even mind putting out
that book if we had some sense of modesty about what we can do
with it.) If this keeps up, we will only wind up isolating
ourselves, no matter what successes we have in the meantime.
grand confrontation. Having totally misinterpreted history,
they make it sound as if all foreign policy was some sort of
disaster wrought by soft-minded fools until Ronald Reagan said

Th

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the words "Evil Empire." And then, just imagine, in three
short years it all collapsed. It's the American dream.

At the beginning was The Word. But what is it
exactly that we want from China? What do the
confrontationists want? What is our vision of how this thing
is going to play out?

Now, of course, it is inevitable that the argument
should go that all the things I am saying about China are an
outgrowth of my commercial interests in China; and the only
way I can defend myself against that charge is to reveal how
small my interests are in China, in which case people will
wonder, what the hell is he doing in this business?

Therefore let me talk to you about China and Asia
in general terms. What do we face in Asia? We face a Japan
which must inevitably return to a more national approach to
foreign policy. It was never natural for Japan to meld its
foreign policy entirely to that of the United States, and it
is absolutely inconsistent with Japanese history. It was also
incompatible with the way the Japanese look at the world.

That does not mean we cannot have friendly
relations with Japan. I hope we shall, and that we maintain
our alliance. But in the next phase of Japanese foreign
policy, they will gradually edge towards a more national

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assertion, because they simply will not believe that a society
as changeable as the United States - or as far away as the
United States - will always take their view on Korea, China,
Russia and the emergence of Southeast Asia and India.

So our problem with Japan is to orient ourselves
towards its newly emerging national approach, though it will
be handicapped by the fact that, first, we are not very good
at articulating a national approach and, second, that the
Japanese are not very good at articulating anything, making it
rather difficult to have the right sort of dialogue.

We see changes in Korea, too, and the emerging
strength and cohesion in Southeast Asia, as well as the
emergence of India as a player in Asia. With respect to all
of these, we have to look at our relationship with China.

China, after all, has had a history going back
5,000 years. The Chinese managed to stagger through all but
200 of these without significant advice from the United
States. So it is not exactly self-evident to the Chinese that
we have any standing with respect to their domestic
institutions. Secondly, their experience with foreigners,
especially with Westerners in the last 150 years, has not been
so elevated that our prescriptions are very likely to be
interpreted as being motivated by moral principle alone.

BREAKFAST WITH DR. KISSINGER

April 2, 1997

Tape Side A

Moreover, the Chinese have a problem with fitting themselves into a world in which they are not the central kingdom.

My fundamental point is this: in our relationship with China we're dealing with a country of ancient traditions whose interpretation of international affairs follows some amazingly settled principles. These, in my experience, incorporated some of the best analyses of international relations from a pure balance of power point of view that I've ever heard.

At the height of Mao's rule, Chinese analysis was sober, matter of fact, and not visibly influenced by Communist ideology. When I first encountered them, their problem was that they were afraid of the Brezhnev Doctrine and were rather cold-bloodedly analyzing the necessities of counteracting it by bringing the United States into the overall equation; and that they then faced the quandary of how to relate the United States to other countries.

Since then, I've been in touch with and talking regularly with the Chinese leaders and I have come to know a succession of them. Their basic interpretation of international affairs has not changed. But, of course, the conditions have.

BREAKFAST WITH DR. KISSINGER

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Tape Side A

We no longer have an overwhelming threat, but neither do they. Throughout the '70s and until the collapse of the Soviet Union, they needed us to balance their environment, but they don't necessarily need us anymore, at least not to the same extent.

The Chinese look at India as they look at every strong country at their borders. They look at Vietnam as they will look at Korea if it unifies, and at Russia as it becomes strong again and turns into a potential threat - because that has been their history - but also as possible collaborators whose fangs can be pulled by an effective diplomacy.

And they look at us as one player, everything being equal, they'd probably prefer to deal with provided we show a minimum of understanding for the international environment. However, if the United States takes the position that the Chinese must change their domestic institutions, and if we pose criteria that keep ever cropping up in our media and that affect our leaders in the sorts of weird ways that led to the performances of both Gingrich and Gore in China last week, then the impression cannot but gradually grow that we are indeed becoming a permanent enemy.

For the next ten years it will be hard to provoke the Chinese because the Chinese have, in my view, decided that

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the way to deal with Taiwan is to marginalize it. And the way to marginalize Taiwan is to improve relations with us. Moreover, they believe that their economic development will suffer if they get into an unnecessary and prolonged confrontation with the United States.

In this country, even if one puts the human rights issue aside, there are many who now argue that China is a potential strategic opponent, that China will eventually want to push us out of Asia, and that therefore we have to oppose it - it is the direction in which the neo-conservative critique is now moving.

It is indeed quite possible that China will become a strategic opponent, and it may become one no matter what we do. But American foreign policy should be conducted in such a way that China does not become a strategic opponent as a result of our actions.

Secondly, if we state that we cannot tolerate a nation that grows in strength and develops its economy, then we launch ourselves onto the road to hegemony. And somewhere down that road, if India should start growing at a rate of 10%, we will be saying that we cannot tolerate it and that would be a huge decision for America to take.

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Tape Side A

Since I generally get accused of excessive concern
with the balance of power, it is unlikely that I've suddenly
gotten soft in the head and am saying that I don't care if the
Chinese dominate all of Asia.

If the Chinese were to move toward hegemony in
Asia, I would be likely to be in the forefront of opposition;
while many of the rhetorical heroes of today would be heading
for the hills - as they usually do when the going gets tough.

Still, that would be a fateful decision and it
should not be taken before the Chinese have shown some
evidence to support it. Nor should we go around the world
talking about the Spratley Islands or building a platform over
a disputed island that's under water at high tide; or be ever
on watch for a riot to occur in Hong Kong so that we can feel
self righteous about it and ignore all the heroic things being
said about the Chinese intelligence operation in the United
States.

After all, there are other countries and I would
bet that Taiwan is putting a lot more money into our campaigns
than China is, not to speak of some other countries we could
name.

So let us analyze what we consider hegemony or
aspirations to hegemony, and when it begins to happen, let's

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resist it. But until it is happening, let us not get the
Chinese into a frame of mind where we appear as the congenital
enemy, where everything becomes an issue, and where even when
we do the right thing, we do it in such an embarrassed way
that we pay for it five or ten years down the road - though
for reasons of prudence it cannot be reacted to by the Chinese
at the time it happens.

Looking at the probable evolution in China, I
cannot say what will happen, only that it is not possible for
a country to go through the economic transformation they are
undergoing without significant political consequences. I'm
not saying they're going to become democratic, but that they
will have to become more predictable, more constitutional -
though a new generation is coming in with fairly unpredictable
consequences.

Moreover, the one-child family is going to bring
about transformations in China that none of us can as yet
imagine. China without an extended family? China with four
grandparents competing for one child? China in which cousins,
uncles, and nephews no longer exist? It's going to be a
different China.

Again, I cannot say what that means, only that, in
comparison to these sorts of changes, the current behavior of

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our journalists and politicians will seem frivolous. It is
all rather profoundly worrisome.

We are going through a phase - not of American
isolationism but of American unilateralism. We want to manage
the whole world simultaneously via rhetoric but without a
strategy or ideas without a definable outcome. If we take on
China in the way both our liberals and conservatives seem to
want, what after all is the objective? What is the intended
outcome? Where are our allies?

If we can't answer these questions, then we are
grandstanding. Saying so has nothing to do with anybody's
commercial interests in China but with the future of America.

If a country of 250 million makes itself irrelevant in every
part of the world simultaneously and suffers from the illusion
that the whole world is waiting with baited breath for the
things we say and yet we back these up with nothing, that is
indeed a very dangerous situation which can only end in
imperialism or the collapse of our foreign policy.

It is precisely in this sense that I'm deeply
concerned about how we approach China. I have no illusions
about what China may or may not do when it gets stronger. But
if we believe China is a potential strategic adversary, then
the sensible response is to build up our relations with all of

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China's neighbors. And that policy is much easier to carry out when we have good relations with China, because the alternative is that China will try to push us out all over Asia, making every move involving the United States controversial. Paradoxically, confrontation with China will produce nationalism in the other Asian countries rather than support for the United States, especially since the issues we consider subject to confrontation are not shared by any neighbor of China.

At any rate, these are my inchoate reflections about what I read in the newspapers these days. I can tell you that I was less worried about our China policy in its former phase when it was, in my view, wrong than I am now as we stagger along toward some seeming improvement. Yet what we should want from China is not a visit from their president but some discussion of how we view the world in order to see, as adults, which issues we can manage together and on which we differ.

Despite the picture painted in our press that they are sending nuclear weapons around the world in defiance of American prescriptions, it should be possible to have a rational dialogue with the Chinese on proliferation, as long

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as we don't first pass the laws which they have to obey and
put it before them as a matter of adherence.

Well I've said enough by now to make it clear that
I'm concerned, and perhaps to get a debate started. Thank you
very much.

MALE VOICE: This was always meant to be a discussion, and when we first issued the invitation, it was supposed to be at a small table, but then the table got bigger and bigger and when people realized that you were really coming, it exploded, so here we are in this room.

Now this room is a very good room for our discussion as you can see everybody, you can hear everybody and they feel that they're in the same living room with you. So, let's begin the discussion.

Now what I'd like to do is when people raise their hands, let me recognize them, and then someone will come with a mike so that others can hear the question, or the comment, and then you can identify yourself, who you are, what your profession is, and then the discussion can continue.

So who would like to open the biddings. The mike will come.

MALE VOICE: My name is [inaudible], I'm president of Global India Think Tank and [inaudible] Advisory Council.

BREAKFAST WITH DR. KISSINGER

April 2, 1997

Tape Side A

I have a question. How do you see, Dr. Kissinger, role of
India in the future in this perspective?

DR. KISSINGER: First of all, I believe that India ought to grow at a substantial rate. Of course, you can say that every country will either disintegrate or grow, and the same is true of China. But India will grow at a slower rate than China, though even at that it will be a substantial rate, and India will therefore become a significant player.

In my view, the likely conduct of Indian foreign policy can be deduced from the conduct of British policy east of Suez in the imperial period, because that policy was made in New Delhi - or in Calcutta before they moved to New Delhi - by the Indians more or less under the Viceroy. So it is natural for India to look at a major preeminent role from Singapore to Aden, Durbin, that region, and with uncertain delineations in the Himalayas. That, in fact, has been the thrust of Indian foreign policy.

And it's sort of interesting to see what is happening in Burma. The Indians are building a road from the west, the Chinese are building a road from the north, and the Japanese are coming up from the south - turning it into a classic 19th century pattern of spheres of influence. I would

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not go so far as to say that it will lead to war, only that it
is a perception.

In the area west of Bombay, I think our interests
and those of India are very comparable with respect to
fundamentalism and no Great Power penetration. In the area
between, say Calcutta and Singapore, India will become part of
a complicated diplomacy that involves Japan, China, Indonesia
to some extent, and to some extent us.

There's no law of nature that says the United
States must be in the frontline of every dispute that goes on in
the world. Much of what the Chinese are doing with respect to
Pakistan has to be viewed in terms of their specific interpretation
of what is possible. I think India will be a major player, and
it's very curious that we have next to no meaningful dialogue with
India. In fact, we have more dialogue with China, albeit on the
wrong subjects, than we have with India. I have just been to
India, my third time in the past 18 months. It's an important and
fascinating country, but there's a real lack of dialogue between us
and India.

Still, I am convinced that when we talk about China
or Japan, it is not desirable for the United States to declare
itself on every issue. We should let some of the issues
mature and in the process attain a certain degree of modesty.

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Tape Side A

But, being used to running the whole world, the idea that we
must be in the front line of every single international move
will be hard to shed.

At this particular moment, when we talk about
India, we are talking about Kashmir and Pakistan and we're
still in our lecturing phase on issues that we have no
capacity to affect.

When people ask me what's going to happen in China,
I always say that I only really know the Chinese leaders. I have
known them and their families for some 30 years but if you ask me
in what room which decisions are made or by which method it is
determined who has won, I have no idea.

In India, where I don't have the same sets of
relationships, I know very well how they make their decisions.
It's a qualitative difference but, to sum up, I can say that
India will indeed be a very significant country.

MALE VOICE: Okay. Up in the corner.

MS. MEYNARD: Would you comment, Dr. Kissinger, on
Newt Gingrich's.

MALE VOICE: Could you identify yourself, please.

MS. MEYNARD: Oh, Jane Meynard. Would you comment
on Newt Gingrich's statement --

[END TAPE SIDE A]

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[BEGINNING TAPE SIDE B]

DR. KISSINGER: -- our leaders in China, not because I disagree with everything they said but because they seemed to be totally driven by domestic considerations and incapable of articulating national interests separate from their immediate political interests. That is not the same as disagreeing with what Gore or Gingrich were trying to do.

Now with respect to Taiwan. From the first day, we have faced a delicate problem in relation to Taiwan: on the one hand, if we treat Taiwan as a separate country, we will be in permanent hostility with China. I don't know anybody acquainted with China who does not accept the proposition that they will fight in one way or another to prevent this. They will not accept alienation by a foreign country of what they consider Chinese territory, if only because this would set a precedent for their worst nightmare.

On the other hand, we clearly have a concern with there being a peaceful evolution and, up to now, we have managed to maneuver through it all in a delicate manner. In the Shanghai Communique, which was drafted when we were in China in the early 1970s and we still recognized Taiwan, we put into the Communique that all the Chinese on both sides of

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Tape Side B

the Taiwan Straits would assert that there was only one China
-- and the United States has not challenged that proposition.

When we first showed this to the State Department,
the reaction was, how do we know that all the Chinese hold
that view? So we had to wrangle on for a few more hours. In
any event, the Chinese have never accepted the proposition
that we have a right to tell them how they should unify China,
but they've also understood our concerns.

One of the very first things Mao said to Nixon was,
we're in no hurry about Taiwan. The last thing Mao said to
me, I mean the last time I saw him, was, we can wait 100
years, we're in no hurry. When I saw Chung Tse Minh after the
blow up in the Taiwan phase, I reminded him of this and asked
whether it was still true. He said, no. I said, why isn't it
true anymore? And he said, because that was 23 years ago; we
can only wait 77 years.

So if we challenge them in a formal way, we may
indeed evoke unpredictable consequences. I believe that a
succession of American administrations has been able to make
their point to China without challenging it on the defense
issue formally.

The Chinese are taking a lot of guff from us these
days, and we get a lot of plaudits in Washington for standing

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Tape Side B

up to them. But we'll pay for it because it doesn't come
free. And the Chinese will not be provoked into a
confrontation with us unless we leave them absolutely no other
choice - though we must pay for it.

MALE VOICE: Okay.

MR. BERNSTEIN: My name is Robert Bernstein, I'm
[inaudible], to make a very small question ... very broad
question, I'm Wei Gee Shang's literary agent,

DR. KISSINGER: Whose?

MR. BERNSTEIN: Wei Gee Shang who is a Chinese
prisoner, as you know, his book will be published in the
United States. He's very, very ill in a cell in China.
Assuming that it is possible to do something for him, he is
not getting medical treatment according to his relatives.
What is it possible to do if you want to do something, or is
that beyond our ability?

DR. KISSINGER: With respect to all these things,
I probably had more to do with getting Wu out of prison in
China than anyone else did. It depends on how you put it to
the Chinese. First of all, I have never objected to agitation
by human rights groups in this country. That is their right,
in fact it may even be their duty. But I have objected to the
American government making it an official pressure point. I do

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April 2, 1997

Tape Side B

not object telling the Chinese that their standing in the
United States will be affected by how they treat people like
those you mention. Indeed, I told them myself that what one
has to be careful about is making it a state to state issue,
as if it were yielding to political pressures. I believe that
the people the Chinese recognize as their friends should - and
could - make appeals provided they do it relatively quietly.

I also believe that public grandstanding in
individual cases is apt to backfire. Still, one can and
should have some influence. But it's a fine line. The key is
not to do it on the basis of the principle that we have a
right to tell the Chinese how to conduct their domestic
affairs.

MS. TAYLOR: My name is Amy Rose Taylor, I'm a
high school student and this summer I will be interning with
NBC to cover the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China.
How do you feel this event will affect U.S./Chinese
relations?

DR. KISSINGER: Hong Kong?

MS. TAYLOR: Yes.

DR. KISSINGER: The return of Hong Kong is a dramatic event but, again, it depends on how one analyzes it.
First, we should start from the assumption that the Chinese

[LC]

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April 2, 1997

Tape Side B

are at least as intelligent as we are - and the statistics
indicate that they're probably more intelligent. Cho En Lai
once said to me, you're a very intelligent man. I said, by
this you mean, Mr. Prime Minister, that I am intelligent by
Western standards. For in China, I would be considered to be
of average intelligence. (In fact, he didn't go on to say, oh
no, you're smart even by Chinese standards.)

Based on my many conversations with the Chinese
leaders, it is clear that they understand that if they want to
have one country and two systems, Hong Kong is important. They
also know that if Hong Kong were to suffer a dramatic decline
in its economic fortune that this would be a reflection on
China, so they have every incentive to make it work.

Now, can they make it work? I don't know. There
are four obstacles in my view. First, on the Chinese side,
can they operate a pluralistic system? I don't think they
know. I think they would like to, and I think the method they
will choose is to let Tong run it as a Hong Kong affair and
keep the Beijing bureaucrats out of it.

The second is, will they introduce a level of
nepotism that is unsustainable in terms of Hong Kong's
history? Again, I don't know. I think they understand it,

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April 2, 1997

Tape Side B

but do they know how to do it? Can they control the governor
of Kwang Chow? We'll see.

The third obstacle is the so-called democracy
advocates, not for pushing democracy but for trying to produce
demonstrations so that everybody here can say, see these guys
-- and I don't know exactly how many people it takes to get on
American television, but anything upward of more than, say
five, tends to look like a riot. And the point is, what will
Taiwan do? I tell you quite frankly that I am very proud of
the role Taiwan is playing in all of this. Not just in Hong
Kong, but in the domestic debate going on in the United
States. I think a careful analysis would show they're putting
a hell of a lot more money into American think tanks and
research institutions.

At any rate, these are the core uncertainties. It may
not work. If it doesn't work, it's going to be a tragedy for Hong
Kong, for China, and for a peaceful evolution over there. And all
I ask of the United States is this: of course we have an interest,
but if we use it for grandstanding we are going to produce what we
fear most. This also happens to be an issue where we are much
better off telling it to the Chinese quietly. But they don't need
a lecture on it because I do think they understand it. The problem
is, can they do it? And this I don't know.

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Tape Side B

MR. SUMER(?): Hi, my name is Mark Sumer, I'm a student at Columbia law school, and I just want to get back to the topic of what you began at the beginning about the necessity of toasting your host in Asia. And I was just wondering,

DR. KISSINGER: Poaching?

MR. SUMER: Toasting your hosts in Asia at a dinner banquet, and I was just wondering if you were in Beijing and at a private function with President Jung Tse Minh, what kind of views would you express to him as far as how he might manage the relations for U.S./Asia with U.S./Asia relations in your toast to him?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, first of all, if I have views I wish to express to him on Asia, I'd do it in a private conversation and not in a toast. But I would go to the banquet with Tse Minh confident that I could find a linguistic format compatible with his self respect and with American self respect. It is not such a hard thing to talk about the fate of these two countries being related in some manner. Giving a toast is easy. And what I would say to him in a private conversation is very similar to what I have said here.

The idea that you can have one real view and one sort of diplomatic view is for children. Because, in

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April 2, 1997

Tape Side B

diplomacy, you keep meeting the same people over and over
again and credibility is after all one of your greatest
assets. One of the most useful things I could think of doing
with Chung Tse Minh - or anybody for that matter - would be to
tell him how we think without doing so in a hectoring way.

They're big boys. They don't object to our saying,
this is our view of the situation. What they object to
violently is - well, let's take as an example the issue of
proliferation. We say that 300 miles is the limit of the
missiles they can send, and we even pass a law without anybody
ever asking them what they think. Then we say, all right, you
can sell 280 mile missiles but not 305 mile missiles. That is
just not the way.

If you say, we both have a common interest in
proliferation so let's analyze what that means in practice, I
would bet that in 90% of the countries we would agree. And it
stands to reason that China has a lot more countries around
its borders that could get nuclear weapons than we have; and
that it's much more dangerous for them than for us. But the
hectoring way in which we proceed to inform them that they
have to join a regimen we have negotiated before they were
even present is hardly the way to go about it. And the toast
part is the easiest part. Surely the only thing you really

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April 2, 1997

Tape Side B

have to make up your mind to do when you go to China as Vice
President of the United States is that you cannot say that you
cannot have a toast at a banquet. That's the same sort of
insult as not shaking hands.

MR. COHEN: Jerry Cohen, counsel on .... Is there
any way to adjust the U.S./Japan security treaty to make China
feel more comfortable?

DR. KISSINGER: This is one of those issues which
even somebody like me - who follows these matters - didn't pay
attention to. The U.S./Japanese security treaty was supposed
to have been extended in November '95. Then Clinton cancelled
the trip to Asia because he was involved in the budget debate
with Gingrich. Whereupon it was extended in April '96, right
after the blow up in the Taiwan Straits.

In the process of extending it, a number of clauses
in the treaty were changed, so that it now reads as if it is a
joint agreement to defend all of Asia rather than northeast
Asia; as if the role of the Japanese defense forces were
extended. It was totally unnecessary and I don't believe
there was any serious consideration in the United States of
the impact of this upon China. It seems to have been done at
one of these Pentagon things so that they could charge some of
the costs of patrolling Southeast Asia to the Japanese.

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April 2, 1997

Tape Side B

I myself did not pay the slightest attention to it,
I thought it was a good idea to extend the treaty, but I paid
no attention until I went to China and, as Jerry knows, they
felt so passionately about this that they made very long
analyses of the various provisions of the treaty which, if you
look at them from a legal point of view, have quite a few
possible interpretations.

I wouldn't adjust the treaty now because that would
look too much like backing down. But we have to make
absolutely clear that we view the security treaty with Japan
as a means of defending Japan and not as a means of protecting
Japanese power across other parts of Asia. I think that's
important also so that the Japanese understand it, more
important than adjusting particular clauses.

MR. LEUKBERGER(?): (Name) Leukberger from
[inaudible] but right now I'm busy in Shanghai with
telecommunications. The footnote is your critique on the
stage of U.S./Chinese relations is the same in the, let's say
in the Chinese media and in the Chinese foreign affairs
circle, i.e., they blame the American journalists, and they
blame them by name, they blame them by background and say they
don't even study Chinese history, they just come up with
funny, silly stories.

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April 2, 1997

Tape Side B

Second my question, your book, *Diplomacy*, you end the (French), the view on the world by saying, This political environment now is such that you have to develop the strategy by walking. You quote a Spanish proverb saying the way the goal develops by walking. Now the question is, how does the world look like in the 21st century, is it going to be a tri-polar, a multi-polar order, or where do we start to go? How do we develop this way by walking? Thank you.

DR. KISSINGER: There are two ways it could go. One is towards American hegemony, which would ruin us in the long run though it might be temporarily successful. And the other way is in the direction of multi-polarity, provided of course we understand what we mean by multi-polarity.

Our security advisor, Tony Lake, has said that it is America's role to intervene wherever peace is being threatened, but only for a limited period of time.

I totally disagree with both of his prophecies. We don't have an obligation to intervene wherever the peace is threatened because we haven't got that capacity. But once we intervene and engage ourselves, and I don't mean just militarily, we have to see it through. But this requires a lot of thinking.

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Tape Side B

Now the relationship between the media and government officials is such that getting elected in America is an all consuming enterprise requiring so much money and going over such an extended period of time that our political leaders lose their relationship with the substance.

First, it leads to the selection of a certain type of individual so that you almost have to be a rich, unemployed egomaniac to run. Nobody who has a responsible job can spend three years of his life debasing himself in getting thousand dollar contributions from people. Traditionally, great statesmen have devoted themselves to periods of reflection in which they come to grips with themselves and the difficult aspects of policy. What is policy after all but the projection of a vision from where we are to where we are supposed to be? It requires moral strength to go up that road.

But if you judge yourself by the evening news and if you panic every time a focus group or the evening news doesn't support you, you cannot become a Churchill or a Franklin Roosevelt or a DeGaulle - or even a Harry Truman. Yet this has become a congenital problem.

Just track what these people in China did last week. You can tell exactly what they were trying to do.

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April 2, 1997

Tape Side B

Gingrich's problem was with the right; Gore's problem was with the left. The two really sort of converge as each of them tries to create the image they have been told they must create by their media advisors. Only within that context do they even consider encompassing what people like me try to tell them. But if they have to sacrifice anything, it will be what their policy and media advisors tell them. If that keeps up, we are going to turn into a loose canon. There are many people here from around the world and you know yourselves how seriously the United States is taken in ways other than through the brute strength we represent. Nor do I think it is on the decline. We are powerful enough that we can afford a lot of things, and we won't have to pay any immediate price for them.

MALE VOICE: Okay, next question. Trying to get geographic spread here.

MR. VACHER(?): Hi, Ajoy Vacher. You may feel that you've already answered my question.

DR. KISSINGER: Can you tell me who you are?

MR. VACHER: Ajoy Vacher.

DR. KISSINGER: From where?

MR. VACHER: Well I'm in finance, but nowhere right now frankly.

DR. KISSINGER: Go ahead, please.

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April 2, 1997

Tape Side B

MR. VACHER: My question is related to India. I agree with your point that there is not necessarily sufficient dialogue between the U.S. and India. What do you think that America might or should be doing differently, and what do you think that we can do to get American policy makers, while as you point out, they work to make the world more democratic, to realize there's no need to devote perhaps as little attention as they do to the billion people living in south Asia in democracy right now.

DR. KISSINGER: It isn't really only America's fault. Until very recently India has been self contained and appallingly self righteous about the conditions that were largely produced by its geography. About ten years ago I helped, or tried to help, in creating something like the Bilderberg meetings that exist between Europe and the United States at which leading Europeans and Americans meet once a year to discuss common problems. We actually got an Indian group together and I asked them to send an agenda of what they wanted to discuss. There was only one agenda item: America's arms aid to Pakistan. So I asked the chairman, what are we going to do after the first five minutes of this meeting? After all, it's not exactly a subject you can debate for two days.

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Tape Side B

A lot of the problem was on the Indian side. As you
probably know, the Indian foreign minister was supposed to
come over in the next two weeks, but now they've got a cabinet
crisis so this dialogue will be deferred for months. Again,
it should not be too hard to establish it. And we should stop
talking about Kashmir and let them settle their problems with
Pakistan. We should talk about a more general evolution of
policies. I do think we can move it in that direction.
Luckily, there hasn't been any great damage caused by either
side, or we could start from scratch.

On the whole, I'm fairly optimistic about what
could be done with India.

MALE VOICE: We have time for one more question.
The lady in green.

MS. MINH(?): My name is Di Minh, I'm a producer and representative of the Chinese [inaudible] outside of China, outside of Asia. Dr. Henry Kissinger, my question is how would you foresee in the future in long range that Hong Kong would ideologically influence China?

DR. KISSINGER: How do I view the future of Hong Kong?

MS. MINH: Ideologically ...

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April 2, 1997

Tape Side B

DR. KISSINGER: I think that in China a lot of things are now up for grabs. This is the first generation of Chinese leaders with no revolutionary past. Anyone who travelled in China 10-15 years ago or dealt with the Chinese remembers that they always had a visiting card with their party affiliation and their party rank on it. I never meet Chinese today who give you visiting cards with their party rank on it.

When I meet the mayors, not yet the high officials but the mayors of Chinese cities, they strike me as extraordinarily pragmatic and non-ideological.

In such a context, provided relations stay relatively calm and don't become too formal an issue, they are bound to contribute to and even accelerate their impact on Hong Kong. On the other hand, if everybody keeps yelling 'watch Hong Kong' and people become terribly self conscious, the process may be impeded.

I think the people of Hong Kong are very realistic, as are most Chinese, and I think the people of Beijing would like to be realistic. The impact of Hong Kong will be beneficial in the direction that I have described, provided it does not become too symbolic an issue so that dividing lines have to be drawn.

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Tape Side B

But in the course of normal trends, one should be optimistic about it.

MALE VOICE: We thank you for sharing with us your views. They were not inchoate, they were choate.

As a token of our esteem let me give you the Asia Circle membership directory. This was designed by the Asia Circle, it has everybody listed in terms of their occupations, and the languages they speak, which range from Burmese to Farsi to Mandarin to Hungarian. So this is for you.

DR. KISSINGER: Thank you.

MALE VOICE: Join us for another cup of coffee if you have time.

[OFF THE RECORD]