COVER STORY

PART 2

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# Architect of a New Model for U.S. Foreign Policy

**SUMMARY:** During his tenure in charge of U.S. foreign policy, Henry Kissinger sought to teach the American people to live with loss of power. But in pursuing policy goals, he avoided ideology and idealism and focused instead on long-term national interests, clashing with American values and reducing his effectiveness.

From the very beginning in 1969, when Henry A. Kissinger took office as national security adviser, he stuck out by a mile among the public relations types of the Nixon White House. And unlike many of his predecessors in the field of foreign policy, Kissinger was not a lawyer but a historian, specializing in 19th century European diplomacy. His interests were men like Metternich and Talleyrand, who had patched up Europe after the Napoleonic Wars; and particularly the German statesman Otto von Bismarck, who with his brilliant cunning succeeded where others had failed for centuries, achieving the unification of Germany.

Kissinger came into power at a particularly difficult time in U.S. history, when the country's endless possibilities seemed to have shrunk. The Vietnam War was tearing the country apart. Relations with America's allies were increasingly strained. A new world of multiple power centers was emerging. Though still the most powerful country, the United States no longer had military and economic supremacy — a condition Kissinger saw as potentially leading to self-contempt and isolationism.

Accordingly, Kissinger saw it as his diplomatic task to teach the United States to live with its limitations, to mature its political thought. The United States could no longer just overwhelm problems by throwing unlimited resources at them. The loss in power and resources had to be compensated for in terms of political cunning. His intention as stated in his memoirs was to free American foreign policy from its traditional oscillations between the extremes of enthusiasm and panic, between exaggerated idealism and exaggerated isolationism, and to base foreign policy instead on a more sober evaluation of the nation's long-term interests.

In other words, U.S. foreign policy was to be moored in a set of general principles of national interest, transcending the particular ideas and concerns of any given administration, and hence likely to be continued irrespective of who is at the helm. This again involves seeing world problems not as conflicts among individuals or ideologies but more as the result of countries following their own interests as they best perceive them.

Kissinger sought to achieve the political framework for a new international order, and hence the necessary room for the United States to maneuver, with his much touted triangular diplomacy. The United States would open relations with the People's Republic of China while simultaneously seeking a relaxation of tension with the Soviet Union. In 1971, Kissinger undertook his now-famous secret trip to China, paving the way for President Richard Nixon's official visit to Beijing early the following year. At the same time, the administration was seeking detente with the Soviet Union. Here the idea was to stabilize relations and to try to restrain the Soviets by enmeshing them in a net of contacts that would limit irresponsible behavior through the use of sticks and carrots.

It was a delicate balancing act that, if successful, would leave the United States with a larger set of options toward each of its opponents than they would have toward each other. Thus he would exploit Chinese fears of the Soviets (1969 had seen border clashes along the Ussuri River between Soviet and Chinese troops), while making the Soviets nervous about Sino-American improvements, thus encouraging them to be more willing to compromise.

Kissinger himself has compared his indirect techniques to those applied in judo, in which the opponent's own weight is used to propel him in the desired direction. It is a tricky enough matter in its own right. But it is especially complicated to sell on the home front. "The American people," warns Kissinger in his memoirs, "have to learn to reconcile themselves to imperfect choices, partial fulfillment — the unsatisfactory tasks of balance and maneuver, given confidence by their moral values but recognizing that these can be translated onto the world scene only in stages and over a long period of time."

This was harsh medicine for a country like the United States, with its tradition of cultural optimism and American exceptionalism and where concepts such as "balance of power" and "spheres of influence" have always been regarded as immoral, something exclusively belonging to the Old World. Thus Kissinger managed to collide head-on with some of the main features of traditional American foreign policy. On the one hand was the highly idealistic and moralistic tradition that embraces great causes,

Kissinger, Hanoi's Le Duc Tho (right)

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UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL; BEITIMANN NEWS/PHOTOS

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> "There is a lack of connection between Kissinger's brilliant sense of opportunity on the one hand and the kind of country he was serving on the other."

such as making the world safe for democracy or human rights — the proponents of which found Kissinger far too cynical and cunning. Thus the left complained that he ignored human rights and propped up dictators, such as Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran. The right, for its part, was less than keen on the prospect of suddenly being chummy with the communist rulers of the People's Republic of China.

On the other hand, Kissinger upset the tradition of lawyers making foreign policy, of what he has called the more pragmatic "problem solvers" who mistrust any kind of philosophical structure and tend to look at the issues as separate and unconnected. Americans have, according to Kissinger, always treated foreign policy as a rather

This explains why he often found himself bypassing the huge and unwieldy State Department machinery. By its nature, in Kissinger's analysis, it is unsuited for a strategy-forming role, strictly divided as it is into narrow sections without mutual communication, each pursuing its own pet projects with stubborn determination, and prone to losing sight of the larger picture, the all-important linkage of events.

Kissinger's memoirs abound with examples of rivalry among bureaucrats, each interpreting orders differently and sometimes even acting in opposition, thus endangering delicate negotiations. At the same time, observers note, Kissinger spent more time trying to educate the press than any other recent secretary of state.

the Cold War, that detente was a way to keep the Soviets in what could be broadly called an American orbit. It was a Bismarckian idea with America as the spider at the center of the web, and I think the Soviets never had the slightest intention of fitting into his scheme."

Consequently, the detente period of the 1970s saw the largest military buildup in Soviet history, combined with an aggressive and expansionist policy. At the same time, the policy led to inhibitions on the part of the West and on the United States in particular, in order that negotiations not be endangered. All of a sudden, President Ford could not meet exiled writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the White House for fear of offending the Soviets.

Also controversial was the so-called Sonnenfeldt Doctrine, named after Kissinger aide Helmut Sonnenfeldt, which expressed hope that Eastern Europe would develop a more organic relationship with the Soviet Union, based less on military compulsion. Critics interpreted this as conceding Eastern Europe to the Soviets.

Kissinger supporters have argued that because he played from an increasingly weak hand, his policy never got a chance to work. According to Sonnenfeldt, known at the time as Kissinger's Kissinger, congressional liberals took away the sticks — the ability to help threatened allies — while the conservatives took away the carrots — for example by linking Soviet trade status to Jewish immigration.

"While much can be explained and even excused in terms of the weak hand he had to play from, I think it also suggested weaknesses in his own position," says Owen Harries, coeditor of The National Interest. More particularly, one weakness of the Kissinger approach, according to Richard Haass of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, is that his foreign policy of maneuver involves subtle gestures, trade-offs and the ability to manipulate rewards and punishments, all of which require a degree of control over the instruments of foreign policy that tends not to be available in a democracy.

"Given the divisions within the executive branch, the strength of Congress, the strength of the media, and all sorts of special interest groups, it is very hard to orchestrate a foreign policy of maneuver like Kissinger tried," says Haass.

The other weakness of the Kissinger view, according to Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine, is that it does not correspond to the fabric of the nation and the American character, down-

DENNIS BRICK/BLACK STAR

Support for the shah (center, with Kissinger and his wife, Nancy) drew criticism.

episodic affair, and their efforts have often assumed the character of fire fighting.

But to ignore the connection between events, to fail to see them in a larger perspective, in Kissinger's opinion amounts to depriving oneself of the possibility of shaping events, allowing oneself to become their prisoner. Above all else, his kind of diplomacy demands flexibility; it almost presupposes circumventing traditional channels.

As national security adviser, Kissinger was accused of concentrating all the power in the White House and of running U.S. foreign policy as a one-man show through secret channels and contacts. To these charges, he has responded that without a common focus, foreign policy would invariably deteriorate into a series of unconnected and uncoordinated decisions, panticky and spur-of-the-moment.

In theory, his ideas of triangular diplomacy, linkage and the balance of forces are ingenious. In practice, however, they turned out to be difficult to implement. Says Charles Fairbanks, a Soviet studies expert at Johns Hopkins University, "There is a lack of connection between Kissinger's brilliant sense of opportunity on the one hand and the kind of country he was serving on the other."

Part of the failure can be explained by the state of the United States at the time. As the presidency became weaker under Nixon during Watergate, it became clear that the Soviets were not going to stay within the limits assigned to them. Says Stanley Hoffmann of Harvard University's Center for European Studies, "He misinterpreted the Soviet position. He thought the Soviets were essentially going to accept what was in effect an American victory in

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UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL, RETOUCHING THE 1960S

The secretary of state, instrumental in bringing U.S. recognition, and Chou En-lai drink, a toast to Sino-U.S. relations.

playing as it does the role of ideology.

"Kissinger tends, like all members of the realpolitik school, to downplay the role of ideology, and I tend to think of it as an essential component," says Podhoretz. "The American people need to think that something is at stake beyond the national interest in the traditional sense. They have to think they are for some larger cause: freedom, democracy, human rights."

Similarly, argue his critics on the right, Kissinger in practice has tended to regard the Soviet Union as simply another power to be dealt with, dangerous and adversarial, but not different in kind. Says Podhoretz, "The danger is that it misjudges the nature of the Soviet Union. Until it clearly changes, you cannot treat the Soviet Union as though it was just any other country. I think the Soviet Union is not a normal actor in international affairs. To treat it as one is inevitably to make serious mistakes."

According to Fairbanks, European realpolitik grew out of a system of states with comparable domestic structures that clearly understood that while they had opposing interests, these differences could be worked out. It would be done through bargaining among elites who came from the same social classes and shared the same vision of the world.

For one thing, the Soviets are unlikely to share the Western vision. And the problem with the United States, according to Fairbanks, is that it is very unclear what the American national interest is. There is no class in the United States comparable to the class in the old Europe that articulated the concept of national interest. What really holds the country together are the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

freedom and human rights, rather than language, history and tradition.

Therefore, argues Fairbanks, the principles of 1776 are the only true foundation in the long run, and only ideology tempered by a sensible awareness of the national interest, where it is clearly demonstrable, can provide a solid basis for foreign policy. This can be done in two ways. Either one can try to rally support behind a policy of principle, the way Jimmy Carter or his ideal Woodrow Wilson did. Or, if one thinks these policies reflect too optimistic a view of the world, one can seek to unite realism with a sense of purpose by emphasizing that the cause of freedom is embattled in the fight against totalitarianism.

In response to these charges, Kissinger acknowledges the problem of translating the coldly analytic and highly relativistic Bismarck into an American context. As he contends in his memoirs, Americans are the only people who have ever ascribed the safety of their country to the purity of their beliefs rather than to a strong defense and a fortunate geographic position, protected as they are by two oceans. Most other nations have had to realize that their political power roughly corresponds to their military power and decisiveness.

Kissinger does believe that moral convictions are necessary to give statesmen the strength to make the difficult foreign policy choices, but he concedes Podhoretz's point that Americans do not think in terms of national interest and need something more. How precisely to translate this into practical policy remains the unsolved problem

of U.S. foreign policy. As to the charge that he is a European pessimist, a defeatist who just adapts to events, Kissinger still bristles at the idea. He points to the terrible political climate in America of the early 1970s.

On this point, some have contrasted Kissinger with Yale historian Paul Kennedy, whose best-selling "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" Kissinger himself has labeled a "dangerous book," representing a possible cop-out for neo-isolationists.

Kennedy's pessimism, according to Haass, represents a degree of economic determinism, which can be dangerous because it links American foreign and defense policy with the country's economic difficulties. His pessimism, Haass believes, is a remediable pessimism, based on certain policies and certain patterns he purports to show. At least in principle, if one could avoid what the Yale historian calls "imperial overstretch," then his pessimism could be ameliorated.

Kissinger's pessimism, by comparison, is of a more fundamental kind. It represents the view of a man who came out of Germany in 1938 highly skeptical about the ability of men to order their lives effectively: a more fundamental philosophical questioning of the human ability to maintain order, not simply in terms of the constant struggle of the human predicament but in terms of international relations as well. As Kissinger sees it, says Haass, the world is a place of "centrifugal tendencies that constantly have to be resisted. In that sense it is a more Hobbesian view.

"In Kissinger's view, this is not something you can ever solve."

— Henrik Bering-Jensen

INSIGHT / AUGUST 15, 1988

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