4

exuberant American statements concluding the conference and afterward overshot the mark. Instead, the NATO allies need to ask themselves whether to conduct their relationship with Russia competitively or as a common project.

This is all the more important because the fundamental challenge of Putin's Russia will not be missile defense but rather how to encourage the emerging Russia into the global and European system and how to discourage it from returning to the historic Russian policy of absorbing neighbors or turning them into satellites. In this process, the future genuine independence of such countries as Georgia, Azerbaijan and, above all, Ukraine is crucial. Russia must be brought to understand that its actions to date in these countries give rise to serious concern.

A good start toward a new approach to all these issues was made by the president's trip -- especially in his seminal speech in Warsaw, which raised the challenge of the expansion of NATO including the Baltic states. The agenda is clear; giving it meaning is the next task.

*The writer, a former secretary of state, is president of Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm.*

© 2001, Los Angeles Times Syndicate
International

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

# Brazil's 'Destiny': An Obstacle to Free Trade?

by Henry Kissinger

The Washington Post

Tuesday, May 15, 2001

President Bush's first immersion in multilateral head-of-state diplomacy at the meeting of Western Hemisphere heads of state in Quebec was a marked success. He forcefully advocated the earliest possible achievement of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) designed to dismantle trade barriers from Alaska to Patagonia. Moreover, he disarmed, or at least surprised, the noisy demonstrators outside the meeting hall by acknowledging a commitment to environmental and labor standards, though not in a way that vitiates liberalized free trade.

To reinforce his leadership role, Bush separately urged Congress to reenact the fast-track authority (now called trade promotion authority) granted to presidents between 1962 and 1994 to negotiate trade agreements and submit them to Congress for approval or rejection without the possibility of amendment. As a result, the meeting reaffirmed the decision of the first such summit in Miami in 1994 to conclude FTAA negotiations by 2005.

But the achievements of Quebec represent only a first step on what is certain to be a tortuous journey. Extending trade promotion authority will be far from easy. The demonstrators at Quebec, incoherent and strident as their protest was, represent important constituencies -- especially among environmentalists and the labor movement.

Even with new legislative authority, the Bush administration faces a daunting task.

Its support for accelerated negotiations is not shared by all the nations of Latin America. Mexico, reluctant to dilute its preferential access to the American market under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), showed no enthusiasm for the earlier deadline of 2003 suggested by the United States. But the principal opponent of rapid progress toward FTAA -- and probably toward FTAA altogether -- has been Brazil, partly on economic grounds but, much more important, on political ones, growing out of Brazil's historic aspiration for a leading role in the Southern Hemisphere. In that spirit, it has sought to turn Mercosur -- the free-trading area composed of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay (with Bolivia and Chile as associate members) -- into a rival to NAFTA rather than a partner, as foreseen in FTAA.

Fernando Enrique Cardoso, Brazil's thoughtful and charismatic president, refused to share the optimism of the U.S. delegation at Quebec. For him, the acid test for a hemispheric scheme would be the degree to which it reduced North American trade barriers to Brazilian exports. Otherwise, "it will be an irrelevant agreement or, in the worst, a hypothetical and undesirable agreement. If we wish to move toward effective integration in the hemisphere, the task should be to eliminate the differences between nations, which are unjust; and the profound inequality of income and the quality of life within nations as well as between nations."

2

These noble goals are clearly unachievable by the 2005 deadline for the FTAA negotiation, or by any foreseeable trade agreement. They would require a common commitment by the nations of the Western Hemisphere to a major social revolution extending over decades. And Cardoso left no doubt about his strategic objectives when, at Quebec, he described Mercosur as Brazil's "absolute" priority, transcending regional-schemes such as FTAA.
"Mercosur," Cardoso likes to say, "is destiny for us, while the FTAA is an option."

The difference goes beyond the play of words in an epigram. The FTAA is conceived as a free-trade area for all the Americas. Mercosur is a trading bloc that, whatever its nondiscriminatory rhetoric, poses higher barriers toward the outside world than among its member states. And the outside world includes the Americas beyond Mercosur. Thus, it is hard to see how Mercosur can be merged into a larger arrangement with NAFTA to promote general growth throughout the hemisphere. Rather, it is more likely to affirm Latin America's identity as separate from and, if necessary, opposed to the United States and NAFTA.

Brazil's history encourages such a conception. Prior to its national independence, Brazil was not so much a colony as the largest single part of the kingdom of Portugal. For nearly a generation, while Napoleon occupied Portugal and for some time afterward, Rio de Janeiro was the capital of the Portuguese empire. And the continental scale of a country with a population of 150 million, coupled with vast resources, magnifies Brazilian self-confidence. All this has spawned Latin America's most effective foreign service -- well trained, multilingual,

pursuing the Brazilian national interest with a combination of charm, persistence and a sophisticated assessment of international realities.

For a long time, Brazil had seen itself as organizing Latin America while the United States performed the same task in North America, the two enterprises to work in harmony through frequent exchanges aimed at articulating common purposes. The theoretical sovereign equality of each Latin American nation postulated by the inter-American system was not part of Brazil's foreign policy vocabulary.

A "special relationship" between the United States and Brazil emerged in the Americas, not unlike that practiced by the United States with Britain in Europe after World War II. A Brazilian division fought in Italy at our side in World War II; Brazilian troops joined U.S. forces in the Dominican Republic in 1965. As late as the presidency of Gerald Ford, the United States formally accorded Brazil a special consultative status.

The relationship began to atrophy soon afterward. In the United States, there was concern about the authoritarian military government then ruling Brazil; in Brazil, irritation mounted regarding U.S. trade legislation considered protectionist. While the concerns about Brazil's domestic circumstances evaporated with the restoration of democracy in the 1980s, the economic disagreements intensified as Brazil's economy gathered momentum. Brazilian exports have been hard hit by U.S. anti-dumping actions. In addition, Brazilian officials frequently emphasize that FTAA will provide relatively few benefits to Brazil's agricultural sector so long as U.S. farm-support programs confer undue advantages to U.S. producers. Finally, the FTAA would imply the dismantling or, at a

3

minimum, significant reduction of tariff barriers that Brazil has set up to nurture manufacturing and high-tech industries.

The FTAA is perceived by many in Brazil as designed for the unilateral benefit of the United States; concerns about environmental conditions are interpreted as a subterfuge for diminishing Brazilian sovereignty, while U.S. anti-dumping policies and labor standards are castigated as pretexts for protectionism.

Therefore, Brazil has apparently decided that the vagaries of U.S. domestic and international politics prohibit, and Brazil's growing strength no longer requires, a special status in essence bestowed by the United States. Brazil henceforth seeks to rely on the vibrancy of its economy, the size of its population and the partners it is able to enlist in Mercosur to forge a dominant position in Latin America.

And beyond the Atlantic, Europe beckons with a comparable seduction. On a visit to Latin America in March 1997, French President Jacques Chirac identified the future of Latin America not with the "north," meaning NAFTA and the United States, but with Europe. And in an interview in December 2000, the then president of the Council for the European Union, the Portuguese Antonio Guerres, defended an agricultural agreement with Mercosur as "building a new multipolar world order that can limit the United States' natural hegemony."

If such tendencies were pursued to their conclusion, Mercosur would orient itself as a distinct entity toward Europe and in institutional rivalry with NAFTA and the United States. This would not be simply a setback to U.S. economic prospects in a market of 400 million people, accounting for

20 percent of its overseas trade. Above all, it would challenge the United States' historic position in the hemisphere and its aspiration for a world order based on a growing community of democracies in the Americas.

Both sides should work to avoid this looming contest. The United States should make it a priority to restore the traditional intimacy between the two countries. It needs to move its dealings with Brazil to the highest levels of its government and to display greater sensitivity to the pride and dignity of a society on the verge of becoming a major power. This implies restraint on hortatory rhetoric and on the attempt to impose every U.S. preference via sanctions. It also requires a commitment to resolve the bitter trade disputes over Brazilian sugar, citrus and steel exports.

For its part, Brazil should remember that the historical style of consultations of Western Hemisphere diplomacy is at variance with the confrontational style of European balance-of-power diplomacy. Moreover, a confrontational course is likely to threaten the cohesion of Mercosur, none of whose members is prepared to give up direct access to the United States on behalf of Mercosur.

Meanwhile, the United States always retains the option to accelerate its bilateral negotiations with the vast majority of the nations of the hemisphere seeking association with NAFTA or with the United States.

This country has no reason to oppose Mercosur so long as it functions as a partner to NAFTA in the process of creating a Free Trade Area of the Americas. But it is another matter if Mercosur, even before it is fully formed, is turned into an effort to exclude the United States from bilateral dealings with traditional friends, or if it were

4

to pursue practices similar to some of the
unilateralism emerging in the European
Union.

Our goal should not be confrontation with
Brazil but a strategy in which bilateral and
regional negotiations merge. In pursuit of
such a concept, the United States would
place no obstacle in the way of a Mercosur
compatible with FTAA, and Brazil would
cooperate in the formation of FTAA. In this
new special relationship, Brazil would
inevitably play the eminent role to which its
importance and talents entitle it.

COLLISION WITH CHINA

The former secretary of State on the complex task of bridging the cultural gap to negotiate with the heirs of the Middle Kingdom. BY HENRY A. KISSINGER

# Face to Face With China

AT THIS WRITING NEGOTIATIONS BETWEEN AMERICAN and Chinese officials are said to be moving toward a climax. The formal obstacle is whether China will continue to insist on an apology or whether it will settle for the expressions of regret of both Secretary of State Colin Powell and President George W. Bush. Yet the body language on both sides suggests that neither nation wants a prolonged confrontation. Chinese statements are calibrated to make what the Chinese leadership likes to call its "principled stand" clear to a domestic audience.

But the rhetoric does not foreclose an outcome respecting the American view that what occurred was an accident, not a provocation. Since the factual basis for the dispute depends on whether the American plane was over Chinese territory and which plane made the final turn leading to the collision, a reasonable outcome would be the release of the crew and a joint statement reiterating each side's version of events and establishing some fact-finding mechanism.

This follows the precedent of the Shanghai Communiqué, which was the basis for the re-establishment of diplomatic contacts in 1972 after an interruption of more than 20 years. In that document the United States and China stated opposing views on a whole series of issues but came together on some agreed principles. The most notable ones were common resistance to hegemony—a code word for Soviet expansionism—and an American acknowledgment that it was not challenging the view of the

Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait that there was but one China (the then official positions of both Beijing and Taipei).

A comparable outcome is likely this time because the leaders in Beijing surely understand that there is a point—and not many days away—at which American public opinion would begin to regard the detained crew members as hostages. After that point, the issue would turn into a confrontation undermining future relations no matter how it was ultimately settled. And it must also be evident that the Bush administration's deft handling of the crisis is giving concrete content to what it has called a "competitive relationship" by including in it significant elements of cooperation.

Precisely because the incident of the reconnaissance plane is likely to mark the beginning of an extended dialogue, it is important to understand the cultural gap existing between the two sides on the way to approach diplomacy.

American leaders are brought up in a society that over its little more than two centuries of history has regarded peace and progress as normal. Hence they emphasize personal good will and personal relationships as important elements in resolving international disputes. In its continuous history spanning five millennia, China has witnessed too many upheavals and tragedies to rely on the good will of individuals who, in the context of history, are by definition transient. The United States has been able to overcome its challenges by a combination of idealism, willpower,

organization and a benign geography. China has many great achievements to its credit, but it has also come up against its limits, encountering problems that could be overcome only by endurance. China's approach to policy is skeptical and prudent, America's optimistic and missionary. China's sense of time beats to an altogether different rhythm from America's. When an American is asked to date a historical event, he refers to a specific day on the calendar; when a Chinese describes his history, he places it within a dynasty. And of the 14 imperial dynasties, at least eight have each lasted longer than the entire history of the United States.

Americans think in terms of concrete solutions to specific problems. The Chinese think in terms of a process that has no precise culmination. Americans believe that international disputes result either from misunderstandings or ill will; the remedy for the former is persuasion—occasionally quite insist-

ent—and, for the latter, defeat or destruction of the evildoer. The Chinese approach is impersonal, patient and aloof; the Middle Kingdom has a horror of appearing to be a supplicant. Where Washington looks to good faith and good will as the lubricant of international relations, Beijing assumes that statesmen have done their homework and will understand subtle indirections. This is why in the current dispute the Chinese have insisted that the United States "should"—not "must"—apologize, indicating a strong preference, not a condition. To Americans, Chinese leaders seem polite but aloof and condescending. To the Chinese, Americans appear erratic and somewhat frivolous.

Chinese negotiating tactics also reflect China's historical experience, which in the last three centuries moved it from being dominant in its region to being the humiliated subject of colonialism. Thus Chinese diplomacy exhibits two styles simultane-

HARVEY

CONTRASTING STYLES: Mao with Nixon in 1972

> **China's approach to policy is skeptical and prudent; America's, on the other hand, is optimistic and missionary**

36 NEWSWEEK APRIL 16, 2001

ously. As heirs of the Middle Kingdom, Chinese diplomats can be
ingratiating. The other side is flattered by being admitted to the
Chinese "club" as an "old friend," a posture which makes dis-
agreement humanly more complicated. When they conduct Mid-
dle Kingdom diplomacy, the Chinese maneuver to induce their
opposite numbers to propose the Chinese preference so that Chi-
nese acquiescence can appear as the granting of a boon to the in-
terlocutor. Thus on my secret visit to China in 1971, Zhou Enlai
sought to get me to ask for an invitation for President Nixon to
come to Beijing. We settled on a formula that made a reference to
a general Nixon desire to visit China expressed sometime before
he was elected president and coupled it with a specific invitation
by the Chinese leaders.

But when faced with what it considers a legacy of colonialism, China is prone to bully in order to demonstrate its imperviousness to pressure. Any hint of condescension or sign that Chinese territorial integrity is not being taken seriously evokes strong-and to Americans, seemingly excessive-reaction. Hence the prolonged demonstrations of outrage about the bombing of the embassy in Belgrade and the initial intransigence over the reconnaissance plane.

The contrasting styles of diplomacy produced a confrontational atmosphere in the early stages of the recent crisis. The administration said the American airplane at a Chinese military airport was protected by sovereign immunity and demanded its immediate release. Whatever the legal positions, this implication that the reconnaissance plane enjoyed a protected legal status was bound to produce a strong Chinese response. But once Secretary Powell and President Bush moved the issue to a level of human compassion and practical resolution, the way to a constructive outcome was open.

When that is reached, the crisis
may turn out to lay the basis for a
new, mature and above all stable
relationship. Partly because of the
difficulty the two sides have had in
understanding each other's culture
and code of conduct, they have
rarely succeeded in getting Sino-
American relationships on a steady

course for any extended period of time. In the early 1900s, Ameri-
ca's approach to China was heavily influenced by missionaries and
traders, both largely oblivious to the humiliation Chinese society
felt when subjected to the colonialist pressures of the European
powers. In the 1930s and during the Second World War, China was
idealized as a victim of Japanese aggression and as a heroic demo-
cratic ally. After the communist victory in the civil war, China was
transformed in the American public mind into the incarnation of
ideological and strategic hostility. A combination of Maoist mili-
tant ideology, China's intervention in the Korean War, American
distaste for Beijing's domestic institutions and the interposition of
the American Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait produced a period
of nearly a quarter century in which the two countries had no
diplomatic relations and very little contact of any kind, except mu-
tual vituperation.

Now we are in yet a different era, one that requires stability for
long-term strategic and economic reasons. The Chinese landscape is
a complicated one. The original Chinese leaders we dealt with in the
1970s were, in their conduct, more in the tradition of the Middle
Kingdom than the present leaders, who are running a country whose
economy is largely shaped by the market and by modern technology.
The next leaders will be more modern still. China faces a number of
long-term problems. First, the economic success requires constant
political adaptation. Secondly, by 2003 almost all current leaders are
required to leave office, which would be the first constitutional
change in a communist country. Thirdly, the PLA, which will surely
play a major role in the succession debate, is more assertively nation-
alistic than the other Chinese leaders.

In America, two schools of thought dominate contemporary de-
bate. The view of the Clinton administration was summed up in
the slogans "engagement" and "strategic partnership." Based on
the Wilsonian premise that a world composed of democracies can
hold no enemies—at least none prepared to vindicate their views
with force—the multiplication of contacts on trade, environment,
science and technology is believed to strengthen the forces favor-

ing international cooperation and
internal pluralism.

The opposing point of view re-
gards China as a morally flawed,
inevitable adversary—at the mo-
ment with respect to Taiwan,
eventually the Western Pacific,
and, in time, the global equilibri-
um. According to this school of
thought, the United States should
therefore deal with China not as a
strategic partner but as it did with
the Soviet Union during the cold
war: as a rival and a challenge, re-
ducing trade wherever possible to
nonstrategic items, creating an al-
liance of Asian states to help
America share the burden for the
defense of Asia and to contain
China. Advocates of this point of
view would treat Taiwan as an in-
dependent country and a military
outpost and, in practice, scrap the
"one-China" policy on which
Sino-American relations have
been based since the early 1970s.

The fundamental question for
President Bush is whether either
of these approaches really meets

America's needs. It is one thing to reject a strategic partnership that never functioned; it is another to adopt the cold-war containment policy as it had been applied to the Soviet Union and to act as if China were a permanent adversary. Such a policy would isolate America in Asia and in the world. America will resist attempts by any power to achieve hegemony, as it proved in three wars in the last century. The challenge is to devise a policy open to cooperation but decisive in resisting aggression. Confrontation with China should be a last resort, not the strategic choice. The Bush administration's handling of the crisis over the reconnaissance plane is a good first step in that direction.

The challenge for the new
administration is to devise a
policy open to cooperation but
decisive in resisting aggression

The image does not contain any text. It appears to be a blurry depiction of a person on a horse.

KISSINGER's latest book, "Does America Need a Foreign Policy? Toward a Diplomacy for the 21st Century," will be published by Simon & Schuster in June.

APRIL 16, 2001 NEWSWEEK

# A Road Through Seoul

by Henry Kissinger

The Washington Post
Tuesday, March 6, 2001

The visit of South Korea's President Kim Dae Jung to Washington this week occurs at an opportune moment. For his country, the focal point of Asian crises for a century, may now prove pivotal in the emergence of a new and more stable Asian order.

Korea's history has been violent. In 1904-5, the Russo-Japanese War was fought over its future. Occupied by Japan in 1908, liberated in 1945, partitioned in the same year along the 38th parallel, invaded by North Korea in 1950 and by Chinese armies in 1951, saved by its own exertions and American forces, South Korea has faced since then what is arguably the most repressive Communist regime anywhere across one of the most absolute dividing lines in the world.

In the last months of the Clinton presidency, a sudden thaw occurred. South Korea's president was invited to visit the capital of North Korea. The second-highest-ranking military officer of North Korea, Vice Marshal Jo Myong Rok, was received in Washington by President Clinton and hosted at an official dinner by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who followed up with a return visit to Pyongyang. And in his last weeks in office, Bill Clinton was eagerly trying to arrange a presidential trip to Pyongyang, thwarted only because North Korea would not accept his condition to stop the export of missiles.

Did all this herald a fundamental change, or was it primarily a new set of tactics to achieve familiar goals, which include undermining the case for a U.S. missile

defense? It is important that we get the answer straight, for on it may depend the future not only of South Korea but of our entire position in the western Pacific.

Over 50 years, North Korea has turned into a caricature of Stalinist tyranny, while South Korea has evolved into a genuine democracy and has reached the threshold of being an advanced industrial country. Even in the age of the Internet, the North has sealed off its population from the rest of the world. Its economy is a shambles. Agriculture has collapsed to the point of producing widespread starvation and malnutrition.

Nevertheless, by devoting an unprecedented proportion of its gross national product to military purposes, North Korea has created large forces of tanks and artillery, many of them deployed within range of South Korea's capital of Seoul. North Korea obtains foreign exchange through the sale of missiles to countries hostile to the United States and by blackmailing the United States, Japan and South Korea into giving it modern technology by threatening to build nuclear weapons.

The long-term objective has not been war, which North Korea could not sustain, but to demoralize South Korea and undermine its relations with the United States by discussing the future of the Korean peninsula directly with the United States. If North Korea succeeds in establishing itself as the legitimate representative of the Korean national interest, Seoul will be marginalized as an American auxiliary. For

2

a while, this policy was not without success. In 1994 the United States conducted separate negotiations with North Korea on the basis of which Japan and South Korea agreed to build two heavy-water reactors for North Korea and the United States agreed to supply heavy oil for North Korea's power plants in return for a suspension (but not abandonment) of its nuclear program. Though the deal was put forward as a contribution to nonproliferation, it probably had the opposite effect. For it may have encouraged other rogue states to initiate nuclear weapons programs to generate a comparable buyout.

It may also have accelerated other aspects of the North Korean proliferation problem. For shortly afterward, North Korea tested a long-range missile that flew over Japan under the pretext of space exploration. This set off another negotiation that brought Albright to Pyongyang to explore the price of stopping that program. The aborted visit of President Clinton in his last month in office would have been part of that political price.

Negotiations with North Korea did achieve a suspension of North Korean plutonium production, but at the price of implying that the future of Korea might be settled directly between Washington and Pyongyang, excluding Seoul. Two events arrested the trend. The first was the death in 1994 of North Korea's dictator, Kim Il Sung, which limited Pyongyang's maneuvering room. The second was the election of Kim Dae Jung to the South Korean presidency, which increased Seoul's diplomatic scope. Kim Dae Jung's so-called "sunshine policy" of encouraging economic cooperation, family reunification and other exchanges reestablished the balance with the United States in contacts with the North.

The key issue, however, is the content of that diplomacy. If it is confined to a changed tone and economic support for the North Korean economy, it will perpetuate the very regime whose threat has been one of the justifications for the U.S. national missile defense program. In fact, the various reciprocal visits seemed to open the floodgates for a policy of reciprocal psychological gestures more than specific agreements. Though Kim Dae Jung received little more than promises of a return visit by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to Seoul and a very limited opportunity for family reunification, the outside world reacted euphorically. Exchanges of visits culminated in the attendance of Albright at a mass rally celebrating the 55th anniversary of the North Korean Communist Party. Other nations eager not to be left behind were straining to beat a path to Pyongyang.

The collective rush to Pyongyang may have the ironic consequence of tempting Kim Jong Il to return to the previous policy of isolating Seoul, because he could draw the conclusion that he no longer needs direct talks with South Korea to solve his internal problems.

Kim Dae Jung's visit to Washington provides the opportunity to coordinate American and South Korean strategies. Neither America nor South Korea can want to preserve Pyongyang's control system or to perpetuate its military capacities simply on the basis of a gentler tone. Progress in relations with Pyongyang must be based on clear standards by which progress can be measured. At the same time, Seoul and Washington must be receptive if North Korea's actions provide evidence that it is seeking to graduate from the status of a rogue state.

Two principles should govern any common

3

strategy: that the American alliance with South Korea and not the rapprochement with North Korea is the key to stability on the peninsula; and that South Korea should play the leading role in inter-Korean negotiations. Pyongyang must be convinced that the road to Washington leads through Seoul and not the other way around. If these priorities are reversed -- if America upstages Seoul with dramatic gestures -- North Korea may restore at least some of its economy, not from or via South Korea but through outside countries jockeying for a preferred position in Pyongyang.

But Korea is also where the interests of several major powers intersect. Neither China nor Japan is eager for a rapid, if any, unification of Korea. Both consider a unified Korea a potential danger to their security -- especially were it to inherit North Korea's nuclear and missile technology.

China entered the Korean War to prevent unification, and Japan has permitted American bases on its soil in large part to defend the status quo in Korea. China is concerned about the impact of a united Korea on the Korean minorities in Manchuria, while Japan fears that the foreign policy of a unified Korea will rally its public by appealing to long-standing Korean antipathies.

For all these reasons, the evolution of the Korean peninsula must be thoroughly discussed with Kim Dae Jung, and it must provide as well for consultation with all the interested parties, especially Japan, but also with China and Russia. They are aware of the volatility and recklessness of Pyongyang's rulers and of their possession of nuclear weapons. No neighbor of Korea can benefit from military turmoil on the peninsula, even if there are differences about the nature and pace of a desirable evolution.

An important beginning would be coordination to end Pyongyang's blackmailing tactics with respect to weapons of mass destruction. For, whatever their differences, none of the interested powers can wish to be drawn into a conflict by proliferation measures that could have been avoided by joint action.

Consultation is necessary also because other outcomes are possible than the continuation of the repressive Pyongyang regime or its collapse. Countries uneasy about Korean unification may well be prepared to encourage a more benign government in Pyongyang while favoring its remaining separate from Seoul. But in the real world, such options are limited. Any democratic government in North Korea will seek unification. Any authoritarian government will repeat the existing dilemmas. In the end, it will be no more possible to keep Korea divided by the actions of outside powers than proved to be the case in Germany.

Of course, the North Korean regime may collapse, as East Germany did, because Kim Jong Il loses control over events. In many respects, this is probably Seoul's nightmare. A rapid unification process for Korea would dwarf the monumental problems Germany faced for a decade. The ratio of the populations of West to East Germany was about three to one; in Korea it is closer to two to one. The ratio of the per capita GDP in Germany was approximately two to one; the ratio in Korea is closer to 10 to one -- meaning that the economic challenge of unifying Korea is even more daunting than in Germany.

At that point, the four outside powers -- the United States, Russia, Japan and China -- would have to discuss the international status of Korea, while the two Koreas settle

4

the internal arrangements, a procedure
similar to the one preceding German
unification.

As for the United States, it has no reason to
oppose Korean unification and every motive
to support it. But far more is at stake for
America than the future of Korea, for the
future of Asia will importantly depend on
what happens to American forces now
stationed along the 38th parallel.

While Kim Jong Il has been quoted by Kim
Dae Jung as favoring the continued presence
of American troops, regardless of what
happens in the intra-Korean talks, this is not
an assurance on which long-range policy can
be built. Nor will the future of American
troops in Korea depend entirely on the
leaders of the two Koreas. Were tensions to
ease dramatically, the presence of American
troops could become highly controversial
within South Korea. In turn, if these forces
were removed, the future of American bases
in Japan would become problematic. And if
American troops left the rim of Asia, an
entirely new security and, above all, political
situation would arise all over the continent.
Were this to happen, even a positive
evolution on the Korean peninsula could
lead to a quest for autonomous defense
policies in Seoul and Tokyo and to a growth
of nationalism in Japan, China and Korea.

The United States may not be able to arrest
such trends, but it should not slide into them
through preoccupation with the tactics and
headlines of the moment.

*The writer, a former secretary of state, is president of Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm that has clients with business interests in many countries abroad.*

would the Americans encounter colleagues who have already
reached a collective EU decision, imposing procedures on NATO
that are inconsistent with its entire history? European leaders
who question missile defense because it might lead to the de-
coupling of American security from that of Europe should take
care not to adopt institutions that drift inevitably toward political
decoupling.

The key test is the ability to reestablish political coherence in
transatlantic relations. Absent that, the Euroforce could produce
the worst of all worlds: disruption of NATO procedures and im-
pairment of allied cooperation without enhanced allied military
capability or meaningful European autonomy.

The transatlantic relationship faces as well major geopolitical
and economic challenges. To the east of NATO and the EU, the
domestic arrangements that followed the demise of the Soviet
Union are ending, if only because the generation that inherited
power is passing from the scene. Chaos (or Russian domination)
beckons unless the nations bordering the North Atlantic define it
as a common problem and deal with it as a common policy. It is
particularly important to improve the coherence of efforts to
bring Russia into the international community. Though every ally
proclaims that it serves the common cause, a consensus on what
constitutes the common cause has so far remained elusive.

The future of the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East
pose comparable challenges. There, the pressures of globalization
and of demographic growth could usher in a period of adjustment
and turmoil that makes the post-Communist dislocations in the
Balkans seem like child's play. Promoting stability in the Persian
Gulf remains essential to allow both sides of the Atlantic access to
reasonably priced energy.

Finally, the threat of economic recession brings home the
need for cooperative measures by the nations re-
presenting well over half the world's productive capac-
ities. For Europe, this involves a demographic problem as
well. In almost all European countries, the birthrate will not sus-
tain even the present population, which is already inadequate to
meet the demand for labor. The percentage of those having to be
supported by a shrinking labor force will rise dramatically; the
overall population of most European states will decline precipi-
tously—adding to the pressures to expand immigration, with all
its political, social and cultural implications.

All these tasks could provide a rich agenda for a transatlantic di-
logue. Yet the European Union, by its procedures and much of its
motivation, seeks to keep the United States at arm's length. When
American officials encounter spokesmen for the supranational Eu-
rope, they discover that their interlocutors have very little flexibil-
ity because decisions already taken by the EU Council of Min-
isters (in which the United States does not participate even as an
observer) can be altered only by going through the entire internal
European process again. Traditional channels of U.S.-European
cooperation are drying up with respect to economic matters.
Analogous procedures are now being proposed as well for foreign
and security policy. A balance must be found between the United
States acting as if it were a member of European institutions, and
being so marginalized as not to be able to participate in dis-
cussions affecting major American interests.

In short, what the alliance needs is not continuity so much as a
sense of direction. Are the challenges described here growing
pains of Europe's integration, or do they represent a conscious (or
subconscious) European decision to forge a separate, compet-
itive, future? On the answer to this question may depend the fu-
ture of freedom and peace.

*The writer, a former secretary of state, is president of*
*Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm that*
*has clients with business interests in many countries*
*abroad.*

# The Peace Paradox

By

Henry Kissinger

The Washington Post

Monday, December 4, 2000

Prime Minister Ehud Barak, in calling for new elections for the Israeli Parliament, also has indicated that he will use the interval to resume the so-called peace process. Since the last Israeli-Palestinian negotiations four months ago turned first into stalemate, then into intifada, it is important to deal with two questions: What went wrong? How can another debacle be avoided?

The realities that produced the peace process in the first place have not changed. Neither side can defeat the other. The Palestinians cannot win because Israel is too strong militarily, and Israel cannot win because the Palestinians are too strong politically. Both sides are therefore condemned to coexistence, the chief issue being whether this comes about as a military stalemate or from some sort of agreement.

Failure to keep these fundamentals in mind was a principal cause of the breakdown of negotiations. President Clinton and Prime Minister Barak had convinced themselves that the peace process resulted from nothing less than a Palestinian conversion to peace in the abstract rather than from the pursuit of historical Palestinian objectives by less violent means. This is why both ignored Yassar Arafat's repeated warning that the

time was not yet ripe for a summit. Whatever one's judgment of Arafat's motives, it is important to understand the philosophical gulf between the way Israel and America define peace and the way the Palestinians do.

Israel regards peace as a culmination of the struggle for a homeland and defines it as a normality that ends claims and determines a permanent legal status. Israeli and American leaders were applying the concepts of the 20th-century liberal democracy; but the Palestinians--or at least many of them--live by convictions more comparable to those of Europe during the 17th-century religious conflicts. To them--and to many Arabs--Israel is an intrusion in "holy" Arab territory. The territorial compromises proposed by Israel and American mediators are viewed as amputations of their cultural and theological patrimony.

When Barak opened the Camp David summit by offering Arafat something like 92 percent of the pre-1967 West Bank territory, he was going far beyond any previous Israeli prime minister. But to the Palestinians, the 1967 borders represent a concession in themselves, fully acceptable, if at all, only to the most dovish among them--always cited by Israeli and Western intellectuals as the genuine expression of Palestinian

2

convictions, though recent events have produced little evidence to that effect. The majority of Palestinians treat territorial compromise the way France accepted Germany's annexation of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871--as an imposition to be reversed at the first opportunity. And a significant minority--surely larger than the doves--do not accept the state of Israel and favor all-out confrontation.

Thus what Barak considered a huge concession was, to Arafat, a minimum offering that he would not be able to present to his constituency as a significant achievement. If he risked accepting it at all, he was bound to treat it as a stage in a process of the ultimate fulfillment of Palestinian demands that he has been careful not to make explicit. In addressing Palestinian audiences, Arafat never strays far from the vocabulary of Jihad and the recovery of Jerusalem, however ambiguous his language to Westerners.

It is also why the Israeli demand at Camp David that the quid pro quo be a formal renunciation of all future claims--the essence of reasonableness to Americans and Israelis--proved impossible for Arafat. In the face of 3 million Palestinian refugees, he could give no such assurance without losing the support of a significant segment of his constituency.

Arafat no doubt was reinforced in his stonewalling by the precipitate Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, which he was more likely to interpret as weakness than generosity, and by Clinton's eagerness for an agreement. In any event, when Israeli territorial concessions were made conditional on Palestinian

"compromises" regarding the holy places, the looming stalemate headed for a blowup.

Paradoxically, the focus on finality proved the principal obstacle to agreement. The linkage of the holy places to the territorial disputes expanded the negotiation from a Palestinian to a pan-Arab, even a pan-Islamic, issue, simultaneously extending Arafat's influence and limiting his flexibility. So long as the controversy concerned territory, moderate Arab leaders could treat it as a Palestinian problem and even urge some compromises. But once that religious issue was on the table, no Arab leader could ignore the looming fundamentalist threat to his own rule. Therefore, Clinton's appeals to Egyptian and Saudi leaders, urging them to intervene with Arafat, were doomed to frustration.

Camp David failed because American and Israeli policymakers had deluded themselves about the nature of the peace process. The emotional outpouring that followed Yitzhak Rabin's handshake with Arafat on the White House lawn in 1993 caused a growing segment of Israeli opinion to treat the peace process as a mutual psychological adjustment--an attitude encouraged by an American administration prone to treat international schisms as misunderstandings.

All this obscured how deep-seated the conflict really was. Until then, both sides had acted as if they could wear down the other: the Palestinians by intifada and the mobilization of global political pressure on the model of so-called wars of liberation; Israel by refusing any

3

dialogue and enlisting American support
in that course.

The Oslo agreement was, however, less
a conversion than a recognition by both
sides of objective necessities. The
Palestinians, having backed Saddam
Hussein in the Gulf War, had isolated
themselves from most of the Arab states,
which were looking to Washington as
the most influential outside power. The
Oslo agreement provided recognition,
maneuvering room and an end to some
of the most onerous aspects of Israeli
occupation.

Israel under Yitzhak Shamir, on the
other hand, had clashed repeatedly with
the Bush administration over American
pressures for progress toward peace even
before the Palestinians had come to the
table with Israel. The new government
of Rabin wanted to put its relations with
Washington on a stable basis and saw in
the Oslo process a means to achieve a
greater control over its destiny. And it
was driven by a mystical, almost
eschatological, desire for peace by an
ever greater part of the Israeli
population, which had moved from the
pioneer spirit of the early generations to
an accommodating business ethic.

In the process, it was forgotten that the
important operational aspect of Oslo was
a tacit bargain, which deferred the most
difficult issues--final borders, Jerusalem,
demilitarization--to some final
negotiation down the road. It was hoped
that, in the interval, a process of
reciprocal moves would build
confidence between the parties. The
opposite happened. Israel was supposed
to give up incrementally control over
additional territory prior to the final
negotiation. In return, the Palestinians

were to make additional moves toward a
more peaceful atmosphere between the
two peoples. But the quid pro quo for
Israeli territorial concessions proved
hard to define. As a result, in Israel, the
process began to appear like a series of
unilateral concessions just to keep the
process going, while the Clinton
administration grew increasingly
impatient with what it considered
the foot-dragging of Israeli Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Barak took office in the aftermath--and
partly as a result of an American-Israeli
diplomatic controversy. He was
determined to avoid a clash with the one
ally on whose support Israel depended,
and he wanted to make sure that Israel
would not be blamed for any failure of
negotiations. Moreover, he was in a
hurry lest Arafat declare a Palestinian
state unilaterally, weakening Israel's
bargaining position even further.

But the emergence of a Palestinian state
is no longer an Israeli bargaining card.
Statehood had been inherent in Israeli
Prime Minister Menachem Begin's offer
of Palestinian autonomy at the first
Camp David summit in 1978. It was
implicit in the Oslo accords. Even today,
Arafat is treated as a head of state when
he travels. Within a measurable time, a
Palestinian state will be recognized by
most nations, including Europe, even
were America to hold back for a while.
Israeli ambivalence on this subject
gives Arafat a permanent means of
pressure. Once the state has been
declared, the challenge will be
coexistence with Israel--which, intifada
or not, remains the option neither party
will be able to avoid indefinitely.

4

Barak, a former commando, sought to resolve all these issues in one fell swoop, encouraged by an American president with great confidence in his persuasive ability and little experience with the tragic in history. Between them, they convinced themselves that the ultimate problem was psychological and that Arab distrust could be overcome by unprecedented Israeli territorial concessions. The effort was bold but bound to self-destruct, either before or after an agreement--as I repeatedly emphasized at that time. It now becomes crucial to draw the right lessons from the experience. These are:

First, negotiations must not start where the last ones left off. The parties are not ready for a final settlement--at least not on terms both sides can accept. At this stage, rather than a peace agreement, the formula of the second Sinai accord of 1975—that the agreement stands until superseded by another agreement-- would serve the purpose.

Second, the challenge of coexistence remains. Any new negotiation should seek to achieve a definition of coexistence between two societies sharing a territory only 50 miles wide. It should attempt to reduce friction between the two societies by separating them to the greatest extent possible.

Third, the territorial issue should be settled separately from other issues. But the resolution can no longer be--indeed, in my view, should never have been--the 1967 borders, in which Israel's major cities are linked by a corridor only nine miles wide. This does not provide an adequate buffer against the sort of guerrilla war that has characterized the conflict.

Fourth, in defining these borders, major consideration should be given to Palestinians' concerns for their ability to lead a life of dignity within an economically viable entity. Palestinian territory should be made more contiguous and Israeli checkpoints significantly reduced. It is also time for Israel to review its settlement policy, especially with respect to those settlements that are most exposed and a constant invitation to new outbursts of violence. They should be consolidated now, with or without an agreement.

Fifth, the next U.S. administration should seek to redefine the purpose and direction of a new "coexistence approach" before launching its own diplomacy. It should not bow to international pressures to plunge in immediately and "do something." In recent years, the United States has been too involved in the minutiae of the negotiations and not sufficiently attentive to overall purposes. It has used up credibility by involving itself in detail and personalities or in seeking to shape outcomes by influencing Israel's domestic politics.

Sixth, thoughtfulness will be more important than speed.

(c)2000, Los Angeles Times Syndicate
International

© 2000 The Washington Post

BEST FOR MEXICO'S FOX IF WE MUTE U.S. TRIUMPHALISM

By
Henry A. Kissinger

The Houston Chronicle

Sunday, October 1, 2000

When President-elect Vicente Fox visited the United States recently, he met a number of senior Americans at a dinner party that seemed to me a metaphor for Mexican-American relations.

As the first Mexican president in 60 years to come to office after a contested free election, Fox was greeted with the greatest respect, even emotion. The president-elect had every reason to return home convinced that his dinner partners were truly committed to his nation's success. But neither could he have missed the touch of American triumphalism - the attitude that the purpose of the occasion was to educate the new Mexican leader because the United States had the answers to the problems of contemporary governance, and that these were universally applicable regardless of a nation's history or social and cultural evolution. At one point, Fox gently reminded his interlocutors that he would be obliged to govern with some compromises, perhaps as a hint that he was taking over a complex country, not an academic seminar.

Mexican-American relations depend importantly on the ability of each side to grasp the intangibles and subtle uniqueness of the other's political and social values. Fox has laid out an aggressive agenda of domestic reform, including a dramatic modification of his country's relationship with the United States. For its part, the single most important contribution the United States can make to the new political structure in Mexico is to help

Fox make a smooth start and not overload him with its own well-intentioned agenda.

Fox is taking over at a moment when the old Mexico is in the midst of vast upheaval. The old Mexico looked northward with a mixture of envy and fear, seeing problems rather than opportunities and being congenitally opposed to whatever the United States advocated on international issues. Today's Mexico is aggressively reinventing itself. Competition has replaced monopoly in almost every aspect of life, and most Mexicans appear eager to embrace change.

In part, this reflects the enormous historical, economic, technological and cultural forces that are reshaping societies everywhere. But to a considerable extent, the transformation reflects experiences unique to Mexico. President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, elected in 1988 in a tainted election, fostered economic liberalization that gave freer play to competitive forces and tempered the state's domination of the economy. This in turn made possible the negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. But Salinas and his technocrats ultimately suffered a shipwreck because they failed to adapt the political system to the economic changes they had wrought. President Ernesto Zedillo - an emergency substitute candidate in 1994 after Luis Donaldo Colosio was assassinated - installed an electoral system that guaranteed a fair and free election. When Fox takes office on Dec. 1, he will be the first modern

Mexican president with an authentic democratic mandate to modernize his country.

Fox inherits massive problems as well: The monarchical style of government prevalent before the July 2 election must be adapted to a separation of powers and a legislative branch in which the president lacks a majority. Fox will be the first Mexican president in seven decades not to have at his disposal the apparatus of a governing party. And one of the positive contributions of the previous governing party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known by the acronym PRI, had been its skill in absorbing and mitigating the extremes of the right and left. Moreover, many Mexicans supported Fox not necessarily because they agreed with his moderate center-right positions, but because they wanted to break the PRI's monopoly on government. As the new Mexican system settles down, they are likely to drift toward their standard preferences, and Mexico may well be heading toward a right-left alignment similar to Europe's parliamentary systems.

Many tasks await Fox. Wealth is still badly skewed in favor of the relatively few. Real wages are too low to provide much of the population with decent incomes. Drug money corrupts the police and judicial system. The country's physical infrastructure has not kept up with the new economic opportunities. And the Mexican educational system is inadequate for the needs of the 21st century.

At the same time, Mexico is uniquely positioned to benefit from its ties with the United States. No other country with such a large population shares such a long border with such a rich neighbor. But if geography were enough, Mexico would long since have been an economic success. Three changes have brought about a new window of opportunity: NAFTA, globalization and the growing Latinization of the United States.

NAFTA has generated trade and investment exceeding the most optimistic forecasts. In part, this is because of the record rate of growth of the United States. But it is also because Mexico is well positioned to take advantage of globalization. For the tools of the new globalized economy arrive in Mexico nearly simultaneously and almost at the same cost as they do in the industrial countries. When technology is the key to growth, any country prepared to learn to use the new information technology can succeed, especially when, as in Mexico, there is a preponderance of young people who have grown up with computers and the Internet. With 65 percent of the Mexican population under 30 years of age, Mexico could emerge as a major factor in the world economy - provided it radically transforms its educational system, a goal Fox has made a prime priority.

But globalization poses risks as well. Mexican companies are under enormous pressure to become more competitive. Yet they will only find the massive amounts of capital required by joining multinationals or by becoming multinationals themselves. As a result, most of the productive assets in the country are likely, sooner or later, to be owned by foreigners. Economists will undoubtedly react with enthusiasm to this demonstration of the efficacy of the market, but Mexican political leaders will have a hard time handling what much of the public may treat as a de facto erosion of national sovereignty.

Globalization also runs the risk of fashioning a two-tiered Mexican economy. Perhaps 20 percent of it will be part of the international system, typically as part of large multinationals. The rest - and perhaps the majority of Mexicans - could be left behind, without access to the income, jobs and opportunities generated by globalization. This dichotomy holds a potential for resentment,

2

3

backlash against the United States and social unrest, especially if - or rather when - another recession occurs.

Finally, although economists are notorious for disagreeing among themselves, very few can imagine that the current U.S. boom, which has been stretching labor markets beyond their historical breaking points, would have lasted this long without the availability of labor from Mexico.

For all these reasons, Fox is well aware that his presidency requires close ties with the United States. As a candidate, he probably spent more time in the United States than any other active Mexican politician. His electoral strategy was to convey the notion that, since U.S. politicians, academics, journalists and businessmen were taking him seriously, so, too, should Mexicans. This American network will now stand him in good stead as he seeks to develop a new approach to Mexican-American relations.

Publicly, Fox has so far focused on two causes of friction between Mexico and the United States: migration and drugs. With regard to migration, Fox has proposed, first, that Mexico attempt to stem the flow of illegal migrants provided the United States allows an increase in the number of legal migrants; and, second, that Mexico grow its economy and raise wages to make it more attractive for Mexicans to stay home.

With regard to drugs, Fox has urged that American unilateral pressures be replaced by a hemisphere, or at least a North American, program. In his view, the demand for drugs in the United States is at the heart of the problem at least as much as supply from Colombia and transit through Mexico. Fox has also rejected the proposition that the drug traffickers corrupt only his country.

Thus when the two new presidents, the American and Mexican, meet shortly after our election, they will have much to talk about.

Their dialogue will no doubt be eased by the growing Latinization of the United States. The current U.S. Hispanic population is 32.5 million, of which 65 percent are Mexican. The U.S. Census Bureau predicts that, by 2050, there will be 98 million Hispanics, or 24 percent of the population. Like the great migrations of the past, the Hispanics are concentrating in our largest cities and, in the process, transforming their political, economic and cultural landscape. Spanish is already America's second language; the food, music, literature, art and films of Mexico cease being exotic.

This leads to the following conclusions:

The United States needs to recognize that a healthy, creative and productive relationship with Mexico is a national-security necessity, expressed in the quality of the people charged with addressing it, as well as in the priority given to developing a forward-looking policy.

NAFTA needs to be deepened. The initial results have been spectacular, but capital markets need greater harmonization. Border infrastructure must be improved and more effective binational political and economic institutions need to be created - especially as the two countries work together with Canada to integrate NAFTA into a Hemisphere Free Trade Area by 2005.

Nothing could more derail the hopeful prospect for NAFTA and Mexico than a recession in the United States. If growth slows in America, the consequences will be much more severe in Mexico. Many of the now inchoate forces opposed to globalization in the United States, and even more in Mexico, could then coalesce into an assault on the entire North American system. Thus a soft landing for the high-flying American economy is a vital common interest for both countries.

Fox's proposals have not been welcomed in the United States, especially during an

3

electoral season. But once our election is over
and it is possible to look at American-
Mexican relations from a long-range
perspective, Fox's approach to both migration
and drugs should be studied carefully and
receive a thoughtful response.

At the same time, while Mexicans have a
point when they claim that it is impossible for
the drug money corrupting Mexico not to
have a counterpart in the United States, they
should understand that the consequences of
corruption caused by drug trafficking are
manifested differently in the two societies. In
a highly centralized system like Mexico's,
corruption associated with the drug trade
inevitably infects high government officials.
In a decentralized system like the United
States, corruption focuses on the local level.
In Mexico, the trade in illegal drugs is
politically destabilizing; in the United States,
it is a political embarrassment and a social
crisis. But both countries will pay an
enormous price - not the least of which will
be the corrosive influence on the bilateral
relationship - if the problem is not dealt with
cooperatively.

One way to reduce the political pressure
on Mexican-American relations would be for
the new U.S. president to appoint a bipartisan
commission charged with proposing a
response to Fox. It would seek advice from a
wide variety of professional and popular
sources, holding public hearings to broaden
its reach.

In the end, there is no substitute for
leadership. The victors after Nov. 7 will have
the opportunity - and responsibility - to
transform the historic change brought about in
Mexico with a historic change for all of North
America.

02/07/01 16:27

☎202 833 5296

WORLDWIDE ASSOC. →→→ NIXON CENTER

☑002/005

Sylvanus Thayer Award Speech, Kissinger, 2000

association of
**AOG**
GRADUATES
usma * west point

Thayer Award

Henry A.
Kissinger

**Thayer Award Speech**

**Dr. Henry A. Kissinger**

**September 13, 2000**

Photo Essay

Paul Werner '83 has also created digital audio and video recordings of the speech. You may download the file from his personal homepage.

General Christman, Distinguished Guests, Members of the Corps:

I came to this country as a refugee from totalitarian oppression. When I was drafted into the United States Army, where I served for over three years before I was transferred to military Intelligence, I served in the 84th Infantry Division. (And my brother, who was here as well, served in the 24th Infantry Division on Okinawa.) I always say that I landed on Omaha Beach, but I don't tell people that it was six weeks after the contested landing. Later on I was transferred into the division headquarters, in fact, in the regimental intelligence, and so I have experience at least at the fringes of combat and a little bit of combat. I served there in the Battle of the Bulge, and the advance across Germany.

More important than that, the 84th Infantry Division was composed of soldiers from Wisconsin and Illinois. It was the Rail Splitter Division, and it was my introduction to the heart of America. I served for two years with these people, without whom I would never have understood what America really represents. So I owe much of what came later to the extraordinary opportunity I had of serving with an infantry division in World War II.

I must also say how much it means to me that my family can be here with me — my wife and my brother, my brother-in-law and their families, and so many of my friends who have sustained our lives. But I'd like to say a special word about two West Point graduates, for whenever people list achievements ascribed to me, their names should always be listed together with mine.

When I eventually went to Washington as National Security Advisor, we had 550,000 troops in Viet Nam. Some of those who had put them there had by then joined the peace movement. We had to extricate those troops with honor in an atmosphere of public demonstrations and civil disobedience, and with almost all of the media violently opposed to the war. I mention all of this because at that time I said, "I need a combat officer on my staff, somebody who has been to Viet Nam; somebody who can explain the meaning of the various recommendations that we may or may not receive because I have then to pass on to the President an

http://www.aogusma.org/aog/awards/TA/00speech.htm

2/7/01

02/07/01 18:28

☎️ 202 833 5296

☑ 003/005

analysis of what those recommendations imply."

I had the good luck that someone recommended Al Haig, who has gone on to great things on his own. But he wasn't even my deputy. He was a kind of military assistant at first, responsible for relations with the Pentagon, though he soon became my deputy, and we could not have gotten through that period without his fortitude, without his courage, and without his patriotism. Then he went off and became Vice Chief of Staff of the Army and, when Watergate descended upon us, he became Chief of Staff to President Nixon. Thereafter we had another period of the closest collaboration, which is now sometimes viciously misrepresented in books that have appeared. So I would say again, our country would not have gotten through the Watergate period if Al Haig had not been there to keep the ship of state steady and to help manage the crisis.

And then, when Al left me to do great services for the country as NATO commander and then as Secretary of State, I was unbelievably fortunate in getting to know another West Point graduate, Brent Scowcroft. Brent Scowcroft was at that point, military assistant to President Nixon. It was never fully clear to me what exactly a military assistant to the President does, except to carry the war plans around in case there is an emergency. He and I had the opportunity on presidential trips to have long conversations, which showed me that he was a man of extraordinary knowledge and truly sterling character and, shall I say, having the dedication which I believe is characteristic of the men and women in the Corps of Cadets. He became my deputy, then my successor, and went on to serve as security advisor in a subsequent administration.

After Watergate, we had to manage a transition of presidencies under truly tragic circumstances. Here was Gerald Ford at the helm, an unelected president at the end of a Middle East War, at the beginning of our relationship with China, at the height of the Cold War, and meanwhile, the entire administration had to be reconstituted.

Again, Brent Scowcroft's wisdom and loyalty and dedication have meant an enormous amount to our country, and have meant an enormous amount to me as his friend. I want to thank the United States Military Academy for the great national servants it has trained, men who have sustained me, from whom I have learned so much, and who have supplied a basic aspect of the structure of my life. I want to thank them both, together with my other friends here, for coming and sharing in this honor.

I have had the privilege of serving in the Army and then, as fate would have it, I was in Korea for six weeks during the Korean War in 1951. There, I visited the units and was at the front, north of Seoul. I also visited every corps area or military region in Vietnam before I became National Security Advisor, and then, of course, I visited it several times as Security Advisor. As a student of foreign policy, I have had many opportunities to reflect about the relationship of a nation's power to its objectives.

We, as a country, have had a terrible time, not so much in winning our wars, but in ending our wars. Having always lived securely between two great oceans, with never a powerful neighbor, we have developed the idea that conflict is unusual. We tend to think that wars are caused by evil men or by some violation of some recognized international law, and we are embarrassed to affirm that our national interest is an objective. President Woodrow Wilson said, "we don't want a rivalry of power, but a community of power."

» next page

2/7/01

02/07/01 16:29

☎️202 833 5296

☑ 004/005

association of
GRADUATES
AOG
usma * west point

Thayer Award

Henry A.
Kissinger

Photo Essay

We won in Europe in World War II, but we could not convince ourselves that the location of the front lines at the end of the war would determine the political structure of Europe for a long time to come. And when Winston Churchill called attention to that reality, we claimed that we had overcome history, that history held no lessons for America because we were going to change all the previous patterns. In World War I, we fought a war for self-determination and to make the world safe for democracy, but we wound up with a Europe that was structurally more vulnerable than the one that had begun the war; and, actually, Germany was better off strategically as a result of World War I than it had been. Before the war it had had powerful neighbors. As a result of our ideas of the peace, it became surrounded by weak neighbors, and it was only a question of time until Germany threw off the shackles of disarmament that had been imposed upon it — after which it was strategically stronger than before.

And this pattern can be traced through all our subsequent enterprises. In the Korean War we had similar difficulty defining our objective. We began by wanting to repel aggression. Then, when we achieved victory, we decided to unify Korea; and then, when the Chinese intervened, we retreated to stalemate. But I think it ought to be a fundamental principle of American national strategy that countries that tackle us militarily must be worse off as a result of their aggression than they were before. Therefore, I believe that whatever mistakes may have been made in the aftermath of the Inchon landing, once China entered the war, MacArthur's basic judgment was correct. I remember when I visited Korea in 1951, that all our military leaders on the ground were quite convinced that if they could pursue the offensive they could have achieved a success. Instead, we stopped military operations when the negotiations started and as a result found ourselves in a stalemate.

Now what does one mean by success? How far should the offensive have been pushed? Many of you know that I am a strong advocate today of cooperative relations with China, but not when we are in the middle of a war with it.

And now I want to say a few words about Vietnam. At the reception, a number of you graduates were kind enough to come up to me and make some friendly remarks about my role or my contribution to bringing about an end to the Vietnam War. I do not look back to the Vietnam period with great satisfaction. We extricated our forces without a debacle, but that is not a war aim that is worthy of America. The administration in which I served inherited a large American commitment in Vietnam. We did not place the forces there, but I believe that those Presidents who did place the forces there, did so for reasons of which we have every cause to be proud. They wanted to prevent the spread of communism at a formative period in Asia. They were dedicated to building democratic institutions in a new country. They were too American to understand that you could not do all these things simultaneously, that, in the middle of a guerilla war, you cannot implement all the maxims of the American constitutional system, and that you get no awards for losing with moderation. I believe that as calm returns to reflection, the time will come when we will remember that the people who were on the moral side of that issue were those who

http://www.aogusma.org/aog/awards/TA/00speech2.htm

2/7/01

02/07/01 16:29

☎202 833 5296

005/005

maintained that we should not sacrifice tens of millions of people who, in reliance on the American word, had thrown in their lot with us; and that we had an obligation to previous administrations, whose political views we did not share in other ways, to assert a continuity of American policy.

So we did the best we could, but I'm not happy with the outcome. And we must never permit a situation like this to arise again, or enter a conflict whose successful end we cannot describe. We have had this problem in almost every administration. In the Gulf, we performed a great service in preventing the success of the Iraqi aggression, but when we had cleared Kuwait, we began to lose focus on the purpose of the exercise and had difficulty once again in defining what we should be attempting to achieve. I believe that it would have been better not to go to Baghdad, but to destroy as many Iraqi Republican Guard divisions as we could, until they either overthrew Saddam or were forced to seek a political outcome that demonstrated that, when you fight America, you cannot end with the status quo. I give great credit to the people who organized the Gulf War, who built an alliance, and who won it; and I mention it primarily because, whenever we confront a crisis, we are better at defining the moral cause than at giving it a political expression.

One thing that is happening in our present period is that our country is going through an overlap of three generations. There is the generation, for which I speak, that remembers what we stood for at the end of World War II, and for some decades after. We believe in the importance of American power, and we are not ashamed of the role America performed in creating a new international system. But then, there is a generation whose formative experience took place during the Viet Nam War. They were not in the military regions of Vietnam, but in the protest movement. And they have always felt embarrassed about American power, preferring universal values which they would like to apply all over the world, provided only that they involve no casualties. That generation stresses the so-called soft issues, and they have wound up now with world-wide commitments but no willingness to carry them out.

Now they are followed by yet another generation. I was at an Ivy League school the other day. And the faculty was having a great old time harassing me about Vietnam, which bored the students absolutely to tears — and by the way, I also had the impression that not all the students knew whether the Vietnam conflict had been before or after the Spanish-American War. But this next generation, brought up on the computer, is one that considers service on Wall Street more important than service in the government. It has at its disposal an extraordinary range of knowledge unheard of in any previous period, but that knowledge is not always coupled with understanding and perspective. The great things in history have occurred because leaders bridged the gap between what people had experienced and the vision of which they were capable.

At the moment we are oscillating in between these various generations. When I look at Kosovo, I see that we had a good cause there, but we don't know how to end it. I had been opposed to the war because I thought we had few national interests there. But I supported it strongly once we were in it, because defeat would have weakened NATO. Now I feel that, if we stay there indefinitely, we will become the targets of the liberation movements in whose name we fought the war to begin with. But if we leave, there will be a blow-up in all the surrounding countries, and it is a dilemma which we have created for ourselves.

But the major point that I want to leave with you as you go out from here and are someday leading young men and women into danger is this: it will depend on your courage and inspiration whether the traditions and the service that has epitomized our country's international role will continue. A favorite academic debate, and a favorite intellectual debate, is the argument between idealists and realists. The Idealists are supposed to be

2/7/01

noble and inspirational while the realists are supposed to be trudging
around in the muck, thinking of the immediate practical solutions. But
ideals for which you are not willing to sacrifice are just rhetoric, and when
you advocate military engagements for which you are not willing to
sacrifice, you are just pursuing the fads of the moment. We are in danger
of drifting into this position. You, of the Corps of Cadets, by the mere fact
of being here, testify to a sense of our values because if you wanted an
easy life, you would be at other universities; and if you simply wanted a
career, you would be on Wall Street. You know what your country is going
to ask of you. You know that the world has never been more complex.

The people with the great ideas claim that there is one universal recipe
which, if you pronounce it often enough, will implement itself without any
effort on our side. But in the real world, where we live, we see parts of the
world that have democratic traditions and other parts of the world, like
Asia, which are practicing the balance of power. And you have yet other
parts of the world, like the Middle East, which are more similar to the era
of the religious wars of the 16th century than to our period. And there are
other parts of the world, which you can't even begin to compare, that are
at the very beginning of formation. In all of these, in one form or another,
we on the political side will have to decide what constitutes a vital
American interest. And we mustn't be ashamed to have an interest. Our
interests should be broad, they should be elevated, they should be
democratic, but they should also be feasible. And none of these objectives
has any meaning but for men and women like you of the Corps of Cadets
who have dedicated your lives to service.

One of the most moving addresses I have ever read is the one of General MacArthur when he was here in 1962. It is because that spirit continues. There was a Roman saying that went like this: "The republic has been great because of its virtues and because of its heroes." That was true then, that is true now, and that is why I thank you for the honor of speaking to you tonight. Thank you.

previous page «

Distinguished Graduate Award | aog home

2/7/01

IN THE MIDDLE EAST, CLASHING CONCEPTS OF PEACE

By Henry A. Kissinger

The Washington Post

Monday, June 26, 2000

The death of Syrian President Hafez Assad has brought the spotlight back on the Middle East peace process. President Bill Clinton has reaffirmed his confidence in Assad's statement to him in 1993, embracing a strategy for peace, and expressed the hope that Assad's son and successor, Bashar, will complete the process. The impact on the Palestinian negotiation is widely assessed as positive. Visits to the area by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Dennis Ross, the State Department's permanent mediator, portend another American push for a final agreement.

But, as before, one piece of the puzzle was not discussed: the clashing concepts of peace held in America and Israel on the one hand, and among the Syrian and Palestinian leaders on the other. The Clinton administration - and indeed most Americans - consider a peace treaty a terminal point that defines not only an end of hostilities but a change of heart. Tensions are expected to dissolve into coexistence and animosities of a century into a pattern of cooperation.

This vision is even more strongly held in Israel. Living for most of its history within borders not recognized by the outside world, beset by terrorists and bled in three major wars and innumerable small-scale clashes, Israel confronts a paradox: On the one hand, it towers over its neighbors militarily; on the other, it is exhausted by its sacrifices and ambiguous status. Seeking surcease, many Israelis, probably a majority, have endowed

peace with the mythic attributes of a blissful state of harmony.

It is as if the Jewish messianic tradition has prevailed over the experience of centuries of persecution and the lesson that few peace settlements have ever brought about such an emotional reversal. Israel, in Assad's view - and that of most Palestinian leaders - was an illegitimate creation inspired, as he said to me once, "by imperialists in compensation for crimes committed in another continent, by another religion." He was, in the end, prepared to acquiesce in Israel's existence for want of a better alternative. Perhaps the new technology and global economics will, in time, turn grudging acceptance into long-term harmony. But nothing in Assad's attitude, or of many Palestinian leaders, justifies this expectation for the immediate future.

As for Assad, anyone who dominated Syria for 30 years - when, in the previous decade and a half, no Syrian leader had managed to stay in office for as long as a year - must have done so by understanding Syria's current realities. As a member of the Alawite minority, representing less than 13 percent of the Syrian population, Assad learned to combine caution and enormous tactical skill with great ruthlessness.

Assad's nationalism appealed to the Sunni majority, which felt betrayed by the Western powers after having led a rebellion against Turkey during World War I and then again, even more grievously, with the establishment of Israel after World War II. Unlike his great

contemporary, Anwar Sadat of Egypt, Assad did not see himself as the representative of a society harking back over millennia and therefore capable of transcending transient hatreds by a grand gesture. Instead, Assad's nationalism was defined by a militancy asserted every hour of every day. As the aggrieved party, he saw no need for generous gestures. His negotiating style emphasized recalcitrance and tough bargaining rather than currying favor with America. Syrian nationalism was put forward not on behalf of Syria as a nation, but of Pan-Arabism, enabling Assad to resist Egyptian (or Iraqi) claims to regional leadership and assert his own.

In executing his design, Assad, ever conscious of his narrow base, rarely moved ahead of his domestic consensus or, when he did, shaped it so indirectly that he could not be isolated in the aftermath. When I negotiated with him for 35 consecutive days in 1974 over the only Syrian-Israeli agreement now in existence, the daily ritual was unvarying: first, a lengthy private meeting with Assad, followed by a briefing of the leading generals and concluding with yet another briefing including civilian ministers - the process frequently extending over eight hours and skillfully steered by Assad toward his preferred outcome.

When Assad finally announced his commitment to "peace," it reflected a new reality, not conversion to the American, much less the Israeli, definition of that term. The Soviet Union, Syria's principal arms supplier, had disintegrated. America, after the Gulf War, bestrode the Middle East. Israel had made peace with Egypt and was negotiating with Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Assad had no reliable Arab allies. Remembering that Israel had wiped out most of the Syrian air force in one day in 1982, Assad had every incentive to avoid a pretext for another pre-emptive strike. An

agreement that might restore territories Syria had no means of reconquering in the foreseeable future presented the most practical way to preserve Syria's options, reduce its risks and maintain its prestige.

A profound difference in perspective shaped the subsequent negotiations. America and Israel were looking for a dramatic culmination celebrating a turning point, preferably at a colorful summit chaired by the American president. Assad would go no further than a reluctant evolution. He recoiled from an outcome that appeared to result from a personal decision, which might leave him vulnerable at home -- or was too much like what he disdained as Sadat's kowtowing to the West. (This was one of the reasons for the failure of his three meetings with Clinton.)

Still, I believe that, toward the end, Assad was creating the circumstances from which he could move in one relatively short step to a conclusion, but that he deferred that step until he was sure he had regulated the succession at home.

Assad's death has not altered the circumstances that convinced him to join the peace process; confrontation has not become a better option for Syria. But neither have the domestic constraints impelling Assad's caution eased. Bashar's chief objective must be to consolidate his power. The factions so skillfully and ruthlessly balanced by Assad will, after the period of mourning, maneuver against each other. But there is one new element never fully faced by Assad: The Syrian economy is a shambles. Syria cannot modernize without foreign investment, and that requires some semblance of peace. On the other hand, modernizing means taking on the embedded fiefdoms and constituencies that were the backbone of Assad's rule.

Therefore, the prospects for an Israeli-Syrian agreement depend far less on American diplomacy than on Syrian internal

2

dynamics. The differences between the two sides are so narrow that a compromise could be constructed in a matter of days. What is at issue is a small sliver of territory never demarcated as Syrian on international maps but occupied by it between 1949 and 1967, in the aftermath of the first Arab-Israeli war. Israel seems willing to concede even that point, provided Syria does not use it to claim riparian rights on the Sea of Galilee and interfere with Israeli fishing.

When the issue is so clear-cut, its solution is unlikely to be hastened by American exertions that may simply create an opportunity to raise the ante. America - and the Clinton administration - deserve much credit for having moved matters to this point. The time has come when, paradoxically, the best impetus America can give is to stand aside. Too hasty an American embrace of Bashar may, in fact, undermine him.

In this manner, the Syrian negotiation has become a metaphor for the entire peace process. As a negotiating challenge, the Palestinian-Israeli issue is even more complex than the Syrian. Once the dividing lines are drawn on the Syrian front, Syria should have no national claim on Israel. Tensions, if any, would be caused by Syria's support of the Arab national cause, and that will be largely defined by the Palestinian leadership.

But between Palestinians and Israelis, genuine reconciliation will be even more elusive. In fitting two groups with incompatible views of their historical patrimony into a territory 50 miles wide, no real reference points exist. The 1949 armistice lines, which were Israel's pre-June 1967 borders, were never accepted by any Arab state and were rejected by the PLO. These borders left Israel's two major cities connected by a corridor only nine miles wide and almost all Israeli population centers within mortar range. Although the PLO's rejection of the Jewish state has recently been

abandoned (in an ambiguous formulation), significant groups within the PLO still advocate the 1947 partition lines, which would reduce pre-1967 Israel by half. Then there is Jerusalem, which Israel insists on retaining as its undivided capital, while the Palestinians claim part of it as theirs. Finally, return of Arab refugees, not just to the emerging Palestinian state but to Israel itself, remains open.

In recent negotiations, Israel seems to have gone further in returning West Bank territory than was thought possible (or safe) even a year ago. Therefore, some now argue that Jerusalem and the refugee issue should be set aside while boundaries and the sovereignty of the Palestinian state are settled. This would be a grave error. The option of a more benign relationship is unlikely to survive if such disputes as Jerusalem and refugees are kept open, providing a permanent pretext for radicals to vitiate the permanence of the territorial settlement - already precarious because of the unchallenged presence of 40,000 Syrian troops in Lebanon shielding the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which is sure to reject the agreement.

Despite all these qualifications, it is likely that agreements will be reached partly because the alternatives will, in the end, seem more dangerous. But when this happens, we must avoid euphoria based on the most favorable assumptions about the future. Whatever one's hopes for a new Middle East, at this point an agreement will represent a strategic interlude for the Syrians and most of the Palestinians, not a commitment to a new world order - at least not yet. They must not be tempted by strategic opportunities opened up by a change in the political or military balance of forces. The obligation to preserve and strengthen the conditions that sustained the peace process will be an imperative for both Israel and the United States if, after an agreement is reached, the peace is to last.

3

Kissinger warns against 'crusade'

Human rights process
is gradual, he cautions

By Charles A. Radin
GLOBE STAFF

Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger warned media executives from around the world yesterday that while advancing human rights is a “totally appropriate” goal for democracies, such crusades have the potential to cause massive upheaval without achieving the desired results.

He predicted that the world is headed “into a period of great turmoil. . . . As a result of globalization and technology, there will be huge adjustments.”

Speaking to 300 members of the Inter-
national Press Institute meeting at Bos-
ton's World Trade Center, Kissinger re-
jected the idea that human-rights stan-
dards and practical foreign policy consider-
ations would necessarily conflict, but he
said that the problems confronting West-
ern countries in the Balkans illustrate the
dangers of fuzzy thinking about rights.

"We have maneuvered ourselves into a situation where we have not really identified what objective we are serving" in Kosovo, he said, and are "forcing three reluctant nationalities to live together... in Bosnia, when that multiculturalism had failed in Yugoslavia" before the West became involved.

Kissinger later told faculty and stu-
dents at Tufts University's Fletcher School
of Law and Diplomacy that "statesmen
have to approach their objectives in stages;
prophets try to achieve them immediately."

"Only problem is," he said, his voice
more gravelly than ever as he approaches

his 77th birthday, “prophets have caused a
lot more suffering than statesmen because
they produced crusades, and declared all
their opponents as evil.”

Trade relations between the United
States and China, currently one of the hot-
test topics in US foreign policy, surfaced
repeatedly in the press institute discussion
following Kissinger's speech.

Christopher Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, who clashed frequently with China over human rights issues in the closing years of Britain's 150-year rule there, agreed with Kissinger that human rights and trade issues ought to be separated – a position initially disdained and now embraced by President Clinton.

"Whether China becomes a member of the World Trade Organization should be decided on trade and commercial grounds," Patten said. Kissinger stressed that it took 400 years to develop democracy in the West and said China should get some credit for evolving, rather than being continually confronted with absolutist demands.

Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore's rep-
resentative to the United Nations, chal-
lenged what he called the easy assumption
that Western societies engage in human
rights campaigns to benefit others, and
urged that "you at least consider the possi-
bility that there is another point of view -
[that the human-rights issue] is a cynical,
self-serving instrument of foreign policy."

The comment was directed at foes of
normalizing US trade relations with China.

"If China enters the WTO, it will be transformed in the same way as other East Asian nations" that were helped into the world economic order by Western countries building alliances against Cold War communism, Mahbubani said.

For all his emphasis on gradualism and
practicality, Kissinger said leaders and for-

eign policy makers should recognize and
react to the recent demonstrations against
globalization in Washington, Seattle, and
foreign cities.

"I don't like these demonstrations, be-
cause I lived through them in the Vietnam
period and their ultimate objective is usual-
ly to undermine the credibility of govern-
ment," he said.

"Many of the demonstrators don't know
... what they want."

But, he added, "they have called atten-
tion to an important problem which should
be taken very seriously. . . . The globalized
world is only a small percentage of the glo-
bal economy. In many countries, we have a
globalized upper level, a national middle
level, and an underclass level. All of these
are going to express themselves political-
ly."

"The anti-globalizers are calling atten-
tion to a real problem," he said, "and if that
problem is not met, we will find more and
more resentments around the world."

Henry Kissinger said the world is head-
ing "into a period of great turmoil."

GLOBE PHOTO / JOE TABACCA

ed to a ward for the mentally disturbed.

## What haunt things a hospitalization order

Inside the ambulance, confused, Denning had asked what was going on. A paramedic showed him printouts of some e-mail, with certain passages highlighted:

"I want to go out and shoot as many people as I can and then shoot myself to even the number...

"Most things these days make me want to slit my own throat and count the number of people I can bleed on before I die...

"Maybe I should stop showing people my new gun, but I'm so proud of it. Makes me feel like a real New Yorker."

Denning recognized these words. He had written them. But he hadn't meant them. They were bits of dark humor, addressed to a friend back home in Iowa City who would understand their in-PRIVACY, Page A14

crat, told Cohen and General H. Hugh Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to stop "whistling 'Dixie.'"

"We ought to stop kidding each

ing his final months in office, and possibly not during the time of his successor.

But Sanchez's comments went KOSOVO, Page A9

## Russia's reforms slow flow of US adoptions

By Adam Pertman
GLOBE STAFF

All over the country, people like Alison Doane of Malden are growing more nervous by the day. Some have waited weeks, others months, for the Russian child whose picture they gaze at incessantly, and who they have been promised will soon become their own. Now, suddenly, adoption agencies are telling them that they can't be sure when they'll get their children.

"I would say that we, as a group, are scared," Doane, a musician, said yesterday. "We're optimistic the adoptions will eventually go through ... but the uncertainty makes people agitated, and the ones in line the

longest are up in arms."

The anxiety among prospective parents - and among adoption practitioners throughout the United States - stems from a series of new laws in Russia that promise to radically alter adoption practices within that country and, as a result, possibly change the face of international adoption.

The impact of Russia's actions is potentially huge because Russia now provides more children for adoption abroad than any other country, and the vast majority of those adoptees go to the United States. Significantly, at a time when most children adopted abroad by white Americans are of a different race, Rus-ADOPTION, Page A11

## In death as in life, father and son together

By Joanna Weiss
GLOBE STAFF

POCASSET - If there were no answers yesterday, there were no questions, either. No pleas for understanding, no searches for meaning.

Only sad acceptance of what seemed a man's desperate gesture of love for his child - a final, tragic

which boy who came to symbolize the hope and risks experimental treatment holds for the seriously ill, lost a two-year bout with cancer Friday. William Stewart, 43, who helped nurse his son through sickness and stayed beside him until death, hanged himself the same day.

At a joint funeral service near the Cape Cod town where David Stewart and his father lived, a

the Evangelist Church.

In a ceremony marked more by somber ritual than by vocal outpourings of grief, family and friends remembered the son as a fierce, determined boy who brought out compassion in others. And they remembered the father as a man who fought so hard to save his child that he had no strength left for himself.

THE LONG SHADOW OF VIETNAM

vailed, and Ford's staunch support enabled 130,000 Vietnamese to flee the catastrophe. Now that debate was overwhelmed by events. We had become spectators of a drama we were no longer able to influence, suspended between a pain we could not still and a future we were not yet in a position to shape.

For those who lived through the final day, any account must appear as fragmentary, dominated by the perspective from each protagonist's vantage point as chaos consumed two decades of sacrifice. For those who were spared the anguish, the passions will seem incomprehensible. And historians are no help, since their accounts generally replicate bitter schisms of the period. Radical critics conjure up bloodthirsty American leaders pursuing a war to satisfy their twisted psychologies. The right either ignores the war as a liberal aberration or blames the defeat on lack of ideological zeal (the mantra of "neoconservative" converts who, in reality, were on the antiwar side while the war was going on and have their own reasons for avoiding its memory).

Reluctant to come to grips with the most traumatic experience of the past half century, Americans find it difficult to draw the real lessons from what was done to this country—and what we did to ourselves—during that sad period.

That will be my subject here. For one of the most important casualties of the Vietnam tragedy was the tradition of American "exceptionalism." The once near-universal faith in the uniqueness of our values—and their relevance around the world—gave way to intense divisions over the very validity of those values and the lengths we

should go to promote and defend them. And those schisms have had a profound impact on the conduct of U.S. foreign policy ever since.

ENTERING INDOCHINA & LEAVING IT

IT WAS THE SO-CALLED GREATEST GENERATION THAT ENTERED Indochina in the heyday of American exceptionalism. It did so in pursuit of the strategy that had already stabilized the post-World War II world, rebuilt Europe, restored Germany and Japan to the community of nations and arrested the Soviet advance into Europe and in Korea. A mixture of the experiences of World War II and a philosophy drawn from the New Deal, this strategy concentrated on stopping Soviet aggression and removing communist opportunities for internal upheavals by promoting economic and social progress in regions under U.S. protection.

Though the American conduct of the cold war is often presented as reflecting a nearly unanimous consensus, there was always significant dissent during this period, especially in the intellectual and academic communities. They argued either that the communist threat was exaggerated or that the United States was associating with too many questionable regimes to sustain its claim as a defender of liberty. But their critique was confined to the wisdom of specific policies, not to the validity of the values on which it was based.

With the advent of the Kennedy administration, this policy

was given its most sweeping formulation in the new president's Inaugural Address—his promise that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to ensure the survival and success of liberty." At the time there was virtually no opposition to this opened commitment, or to the conventional wisdom that Indochina was an essential outpost in the defense of liberty.

As Kennedy was preparing to take office, President Eisenhower recommended that America give military support to Laos if North Vietnamese intervention there continued. Within two months of his Inauguration, Kennedy sent Marines to Thailand, adjoining Laos. He recoiled from intervening directly (though the CIA undertook covert measures). But by December 1961, when Hanoi opened a supply line to South Vietnam through Laotian territory and intensified the guerrilla war, Kennedy sent U.S. military "advisers" to South Vietnam, whose number rose to 16,000 by the end of 1963. President Lyndon Johnson

escatated this commitment until it reached more than 500,000 combat troops by the time he left office. Once again, there was no significant opposition, either within or outside the administration, to that massive deployment. Though the decision was blamed on Johnson later on, it was in fact Kennedy's closest advisers—McGeorge Bundy, Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk— who urged the escalation.

By the end of the Johnson administration, frustration had set in. The strategy that had worked in every previous American war—of wearing down the

adversary by attrition—could not succeed against guerrillas defending no specific territory and who were therefore in a position to choose when and where to fight. Nor did the non-communist countries of Indochina live up to the standards of democracy of our European allies, throwing into question the moral purpose of the war. For those who had made the decision to send American troops, growing self-doubt compounded despair triggered by Kennedy's assassination.

While America's leaders were seized by emotional turmoil, their critics challenged the very essence of American foreign involvement. The argument that the war was unwinnable and that its cost exceeded its benefits escalated as rapidly as the U.S. deployment. At first the doubters dwelled on how to find an honorable way out. But within months, American exceptionalism itself was called into question. The protesters increasingly argued that the ultimate cause of the crisis was not errors in judgment but moral rot at the core of American life. The victory of the communists in Indochina, which administrations of both parties had sought to prevent for nearly two decades, became for the radical protesters a desirable national catharsis. Critics moved from questioning the worthiness of America's allies to challenging the worthiness of America itself, and of its conduct not only in Vietnam but around the world. Vietnam became the first war in which prominent Americans paid highly publicized visits to the enemy capital to oppose their own country.

By the time Richard Nixon became president, the battle lines

THE LONELINESS OF COMMAND

After ordering the evacuation of the last Americans, Ford reflects on his decision in the White House family quarters with his wife, Betty

48 NEWSWEEK MAY 1, 2000

DAVID HUME KENNERLY—FORD PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY

had been drawn. The demoralized establishment, which had launched us into the quagmire, abdicated from the task of extrication. They left the field to the protesters or joined them in attacks on the alleged shortsightedness and warped mentality of the Nixon administration. The radical protesters, certain of their moral superiority, saw no need for restraint in the methods they used to pursue their ends. Through street demonstrations and deliberate subversion of all authority, from universities to the U.S. government, they sought to wreck any policy designed to vindicate the values on which America's post-World War II policy had been based.

Nixon, who inherited this impasse, lacked the human qualities to transcend it, if indeed it was possible to do so. Still, for all his railing against the establishment, he, too, was a product of the "greatest generation." And he sought to implement what he understood to be the demand of moderate critics for an honorable withdrawal. Starting with the first negotiations with Vietnam-

ese Politburo member Le Duc Tho, Nixon offered a timetable for American withdrawal and a variety of formulas to permit the people of South Vietnam a genuine choice. What Nixon would not accept— and what, until the end, Hanoi never ceased demanding—was the forcible imposition of a communist regime on the millions who, relying on the words of our predecessors, had thrown in their lot with the United States.

When a negotiated solution proved unattainable, Nixon proceeded unilaterally to implement his campaign promise to extricate

America from Vietnam. In the process, he reduced U.S. casualties from 1,200 a month at the end of the Johnson administration to 30 a month at the end of Nixon's first term. And he unilaterally reduced American troops from 550,000 to 30,000.

Many of the stages in this process were highly controversial, and they deserve fuller treatment than this article permits. But it is symptomatic of the schism Vietnam created that so much of the literature focuses on the charge that Nixon needlessly prolonged the war and sacrificed American lives, implying that there was some honorable way out that he refused to take.

The political divide was sharpened by a similar split in the intellectual community. When I was in graduate school, intellectuals rarely achieved high positions in government. If they wanted to affect policy, they had to write lengthy papers on longer-range issues. The Kennedy administration awakened their taste for political power, and they sought to shape immediate policy discussions first within the government and after Kennedy's assassination from the sidelines. In the process they divided into two groups—job applicants and revolutionaries. The job applicants replicated the debates of policymakers; the revolutionaries, the arguments of the protest movement. In either case, they accentuated America's schisms rather than help overcome them. A balanced judgment on Vietnam remains our challenge—not as a question of historical justice toward individual presidents, but of historical truth about a national tragedy.

VIETNAM'S LEGACY

VIETNAM BROKE THE FUSION OF IDEOLOGY AND strategy that underlay American exceptionalism. Though its principles continue to be affirmed by all sides, its application is now subject to profound dispute. Since the Vietnam War, there have been three main schools among American foreign-policy makers:

* Advocates of adapting the cold-war strategy of the 1950s and 1960s to new circumstances.

* Members of the Vietnam protest movement, who came to high office in the Clinton administration.

* And a new generation that does not remember the Vietnam schism and now faces a world radically different from the one that formed either the cold warriors or the Vietnam protesters.

Shaken by the Vietnam experience, many liberals and intellectuals retreated from the field of strategy and redefined expe-

tionalism in terms of "soft issues" which could be achieved without the use of military power. As a result, traditional American strategy became largely the provenance of conservatives and neoconservatives. Always uncomfortable with commitments on distant battlefields, the American right concentrated on rigorous anti-communism and vigilance in maintaining the strategic balance, especially with respect to arms-control negotiations. And during the Reagan administration, against a Soviet adversary weakened by decades of over-

extension, this group achieved great successes.

Yet with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the need for a national strategy adapted to the post-cold-war world has baffled many conservatives. In the aftermath of Reagan, some of his disciples continue to emphasize his rhetoric while neglecting the hardheaded strategy with which he pursued the 1980s equivalent of containment. They seem torn (especially in the neoconservative group) between searching for a new danger to replace the Soviet Union, in opposition to which all foreign policy can be organized, and the redefinition of American exceptionalism as a global crusade for democracy. China is the target for much of this effort. But it is as yet too weak, its ideology too national and its potential danger too distant to allow foreign policy to be organized around it, especially if we wish to bring allies along with us. To be true to itself, America must always stand for democracy; but to shape the world, it also needs to understand both its interests and their limits, and not recoil from defining either.

The conclusions that many in the Clinton administration—and in the liberal community—have drawn from the Vietnam War present a profound challenge to traditional American foreign policy. They treat the cold war as a misunderstanding, if not an American creation. They recoil before the concept of national interest and distrust the use of power unless it can be presented as in the service of some "unselfish" cause—that is to say, as reflecting no specific American national interest. On many occa-

THE EXITS CLOSE DOWN

The day before Saigon's fall, Kissinger tells Ford that Ton Son Nhut Airport has become unusable. Now helicopters are the only way out.

MAY 1, 2000 NEWSWEEK 49

THE LONG SHADOW OF VIETNAM

sions and many continents, President Clinton has apologized for actions of his predecessors that stemmed from what he derogatorily describes as cold-war attitudes. But the cold war was not imaginary; profound issues of survival and national purpose were involved. And this denigration—generally quite inaccurate—of the actions of U.S. presidents from Eisenhower to Bush must raise doubts about American constancy, even on the part of the administration offering the apology.

Apologies for 50 years of U.S. history are matched by uneasiness with the use of American power. In Kosovo, for example, the idea that NATO's actions elevated traditional national interest into universal humanitarian principles was invoked by all leaders as the distinguishing feature of the enterprise. But six months later the same leaders recoiled from applying the Kosovo principles to Chechnya—where civilian casualties were far greater—for fear of Russian power. The foreign policy of the self-proclaimed moralists had returned full circle (and with a touch

of hypocrisy) to the famous maxim that foreign policy is the art of the possible and the science of the relative.

Or consider the difference between the Clinton administration's attitude toward Iraq and toward Kosovo. In December 1998, Iraq inflicted a strategic defeat on us by expelling U.N. inspectors placed there as a condition for ending the gulf war. The administration responded by bombing for four nights. But three months later it bombed Yugoslavia nonstop for 78 days in pursuit of what was perceived as a humanitarian interest. In each case,

the conduct of operations was undertaken with a reluctance to accept casualties that ultimately conveyed to the American public, and to our adversaries, the absence of any vital interest. Yet paradoxically, the fear of domestic convulsions and ambivalence about the decisive use of American power end up making crises more frequent and more difficult to resolve. That is perhaps why the Clinton administration has been drawn into more inconclusive military operations than any previous administration.

IN THE GLOBALIZED ECONOMIC WORLD, THE POST-cold-war generation looks to Wall Street as mine did to Washington. This reflects not only a difference in financial remuneration but, in part, a reluctance to enter a calling more and more marked by vicious personal attacks and the prospect of political disputes that all too often end in criminal investigations.

Vietnam bequeathed a new generation divided into two camps: one in search of riskless applications of our values, another in an erratic quest for a focal point for our national strategy. It is not that this generation is obsessed by the debates over the war in Indochina, with which it is largely unfamiliar. Nor does it have feelings of guilt about a doctrine of self-interest, which it pursues strenuously in its economic activities. But it has little knowledge of history or of national policy and hence lacks a sense of direction in the international political arena. It is tempted by the Clin-

tonian concept of riskless global gratification and the belief that the hardheaded pursuit of economic self-interest will ultimately produce global reconciliation.

Such an approach is possible only because our world has been freed to a large extent from the dangers of general war. In such a world, the post-cold-war generation of American leaders (whether graduated from the protest movements or business schools) finds it possible to imagine that foreign policy consists merely of instructing the rest of the world. This turns our diplomacy into nothing more than demands for compliance with an American agenda. When vast economic and military power is coupled with condescension and righteousness, dominance grows grating and leadership comes to be perceived as hegemony. But hegemonic empires almost automatically elicit universal resistance, which is why all such claimants have sooner or later exhausted themselves.

Economics will not provide a substitute for a national strategy.

The globalized world will emerge only through dislocations and tensions, both within and among societies. The nation-state, which remains the unit of political accountability for solving these crises, is itself in a process of transition. In many regions of the world, it is breaking down, either into hitherto ethnic entities or by joining larger regional groupings. And the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction represents a political challenge faced by no previous society.

If our new generation of national leaders is embarrassed to elaborate a con-

cept of national interest in dealing with these problems, or to invoke the unapologetic use of power as a last resort, it will achieve not moral elevation but progressive paralysis. Certainly any concept of national interest would not be American if it did not flow from our democratic tradition or concern with collective security. But we must also be prepared to face up to some hard questions imposed by reality. What, for our survival, must we seek to prevent no matter how painful the means? What, to be true to ourselves, must we try to accomplish no matter how small the attainable consensus, or, if necessary, on our own? What wrongs is it essential that we right? Which are beyond our capacity or not consistent with the national interest?

We will not have overcome the shadow of Vietnam—or be able to meet our new challenges—until we can achieve a national consensus on these issues. And this requires mutual respect among the disputants and a conviction, nearly lost in the Vietnam period, that we are engaged in a common enterprise rather than a fight to the finish. Our political leaders may skirt these issues during the presidential campaign that is about to begin. But the winner will not be able to escape them once he enters the Oval Office.

FOR A GALLERY OF PHOTOS BY DAVID HUME KENNERLY OF THE FORD WHITE HOUSE DURING THE EVACUATION OF SAIGON, LOG ON TO NEWSWEEK.COM

A FEW GOOD MEN
At the White House, Kissinger checks on the status of U.S. Marines who are serving as a rear guard during the evacuation of Saigon

50 NEWSWEEK MAY 1, 2000

ALUMNI
---
The Long View

from the Pacific and

rushing through a teachers' college refresher course to prepare for Harvard's entrance examinations. Kissinger recalled his appreciation to Harvard for admitting him even though he had not applied until May 1946—in contrast to the “snotty letters” he got from other colleagues. He remembered bunking in the gym for four weeks, until he was assigned to a room in Claverly Hall, and a run-in over the dog he had brought with him: which was, perhaps, an early lesson in diplomacy—the dean, he noted, “said they would start disciplinary proceedings, which he thought would take to the end of the academic year,” unless the dog were sighted again.

The echoes were doubly amplified as the evening's serious business began: the issues in play arose with the first tensions of the Cold War; and the discussion could well have taken place in a Harvard seminar led by particularly forceful professors.

The United States, Scowcroft said, is now the world power—perhaps the most dominant one since imperial Rome.

Absent the Soviet Union, “we have the cleanest slate ever to write on,” so the question becomes, how are we doing?

Not very well, said Schlesinger: “The good news is that no one out there can challenge us militarily. The bad news is that no one can challenge us politically,” so the

United States has lost focus. “We change our mind on what are the important issues on a daily basis,” and so are “driven by external forces”—the images on television, the momentary passions of domestic politics.

Saying that “Jim and I represent every point of view from A to B,” Kissinger painted a similarly broad canvas. During the Cold War, he said, “There was no fundamental debate about the national interest of the United States.” After Vietnam, American policy focused on managing the relations among America, China, the Soviet Union, Europe, and Japan to effect moderate behavior at the outset of arms-control negotiations and against a background of recurrent conflict in the Middle East. Within the government, he said, there was no disagreement on this strategy although—alluding to the cool relations he has since had with Cambridge—“there were huge disagreements between us and 98 percent of the Harvard faculty.” The result, he said, was that the United

FROM its very first day, the Harvard College class of 1950 has been remarkable. Its ranks swollen by the tide of returning veterans, the 2,000 members who registered in September 1946 were the largest entering group in College history. Connoisseurs of class reports relish the 1950 cohort's twentieth-fifth anniversary edition, where the occupations of fellow summas and Harvard Ph.D.'s (1954 and 1956, respectively) Henry A. Kissinger and James R. Schlesinger then appeared as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense. So it seemed fitting that this year, preparing for its fiftieth reunion at the 2000 Commencement, the class has showcased members' expertise at symposiums around the country—none more remarkable than a discussion of international affairs featuring Kissinger and Schlesinger. The panel was “mediated” (as he put it) by their former national-security colleague Brent Scowcroft (B.S., West Point; Ph.D., Columbia).

The event, held February 4 in the great hall of the Harvard Club of New York, attracted some 150 listeners, primarily members of the class with spouses or companions. Before the panelists began, one could overhear reminiscences from another era—for instance, returning

Illustration by Tim Foley

HARVARD MAGAZINE 83

JOHN HARVARD'S JOURNAL

States "demonstrated its superior resilience and strength," and the Soviet Union disintegrated, "which none of us expected."

Taking an even longer view (albeit not all the way back to Scowcroft's Roman imperium), Kissinger discerned two contending strains in American policy. The first, tracing to Theodore Roosevelt, he described in terms of pursuing the national interest. The second, a Wilsonian theme, he defined as driven by the sense of the United States as a morally superior

Read All About It

Beyond its reunion symposiums, the class of 1950 has elicited reviews of the state of knowledge—and the state of the world—from a baker’s dozen of its members. The resulting essays—ranging from the global economy (George C. Lodge) and public education (Robert Coles) to information systems (Robert L. Ashenhurst), integration and Harvard admissions (John Dwight Ingram, Frank S. Jones), and investments (John Train)—have been collected in a 272-page volume entitled *Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow*. Edited by George S. Mumford and privately published—in hard covers with a suitably crimson dust jacket— the book will be available for sale at re-union registration for $20, or in advance for $24 postpaid (make the check out to Harvard Class of 1950) from G. Mumford, P.O. Box 267, Dover, Massachusetts 02030.

George S. Mumford, editor

nation, bent on improving other nations. Of the latter, Kissinger the realpolitiker said, "It's not as simple as was thought in those days, and is thought in many circles again" today.

As an example, he pointed to "the trend in both political parties" to confront China. "To what end?" he asked acidly, maintaining that a more prudent approach would be to manage the inevitable strains arising from China's emergence as a world power. He portrayed that confrontation as emblematic of another belief current in American politics, "that we have the capacity to spread democracy by some kind of dispensation," and alluded to the difficulty of doing so in Russia and Indonesia, for example. Americans naively wish for instant democracy abroad, Kissinger said, even though "it took 400 years in the West, with an Enlightenment, religions separate from the state, and a whole series of other things."

The curious result is that Americans behave as "isolationists who are seen as imperialists" in their zeal to export U.S. norms, he continued. "I am frankly, and perhaps a little hysterically, more worried about our foreign policy than I was when we were in office," amid the traumas of Watergate and Vietnam.

Saying that he and Kissinger actually spanned the spectrum of opinion only "from A to A," Schlesinger denounced inconsistencies in American behavior: demanding democracy in one situation but not in another (Saudi Arabia, for example), or reversing course on intervening in the Balkans, based on contradictory interpretations of when nations' rights of self-determination were at stake. "We make pronouncements about what is going on in other countries, including China," he said, and then demand quick changes in behavior, and promptly "demonize" those who do not respond. That "hubris," he said, would come to haunt the United States in the future, when the country's military superiority ebbs. He and Scowcroft suggested that the state-centered structure of international relations, in place since the seventeenth century, was under attack by the President, the United Nations, and NATO.

Anticipating questions from the audi-

ence, Kissinger said that "humanitarian intervention" in another nation's affairs, though sometimes justifiable, was not always "benign." In early modern Europe, he argued, such interventions were based on religious grounds, not on the claims of democratic governance or political ideologies—and the results were "catastrophic" crusades that cost millions of lives. Accordingly, like the other panelists, he was particularly skeptical about the prospects for success in the Balkans, and about the precedent set by NATO in Kosovo but not applied in Chechnya.

Summarizing the sense of drift the panelists perceived with the passing of the Cold War, Scowcroft said, "We think the U.S. is in danger of losing its way, and as the only leader in the world, that could be a catastrophe."

And then came the questions, with a force and confidence that might rouse current undergraduates. Should the United States and the European Union impose sanctions on the new government in Austria? Absolutely not, the panelists thought—it was democratically elected, and had not committed any proscribed behaviors. Should Augusto Pinochet have been arrested in Europe? Again, no—that way lay chaos in international affairs. Should there be arms inspectors in Iraq? Yes: oil was a national interest, and Sadam Hussein *had* behaved unacceptably, in invading Kuwait. What about Taiwan? A perfect example, Kissinger said, of the cases where an attempt to achieve "a clear-cut solution will produce an explosion." Here the challenge to statecraft is to "navigate" toward a workable formula like the present one, where Taiwan will not declare independence unless attacked, and the People's Republic will not attack unless Taiwan declares independence.

And so the discussion went, passionate and informed—an intellectually challenging seminar returning to global issues at the century’s end, consistent with the class’s origins in a world-transforming war. Far from typical reunion fare, it seemed wholly in keeping with who the class members were, what they had learned, the service they had rendered, and their youthful determination to remain engaged.

84 MAY - JUNE 2000

Making a Go of Globalization

Henry A. Kissinger

Washington Post

Monday, December 20, 1999

The collapse of the World Trade
Organization conference in Seattle amid
chaos in the streets was worse than a
diplomatic fiasco; it spelled a missed
opportunity. President Clinton could have
used the occasion to put forward a farsighted
program for dealing with what portends to
be one of the gravest challenges of the new
century: the huge gap between the
sophistication of the dominant economic
model, called globalization, and
traditional political thinking still based on
the nation-state.

But instead of assuming the mantle of
President Truman's leadership role in
inspiring the structure of the post-World
War II world, Clinton decided to play to the
gallery. In advance of the conference, he
welcomed the prospect of demonstrations,
thereby encouraging tactics of intimidation
toward a group of ministers who were
America's guests. And even after violence
occurred, he justified the demonstrations
with the argument that, previously,
"decisions were largely the province of trade
ministers, heads of governments and
business interests. But what all those people
in the street are telling us is that they would
also like to be heard." But why had they not
been heard before in the seventh year of the
administration? Why convene the trade
ministers if the American government now
claimed that there was something
illegitimate about their principal sphere of
authority?

What was in fact needed at Seattle was a
road map for the next phase of globalization,
designed to preserve its economic benefits
while broadening its political scope.
Globalization has encouraged an explosion
of wealth and technology never
approximated in any historical epoch. Such
rapid change challenges prevailing social
and cultural patterns. Markets generate
growth but also dislocations. While these
dislocations are arguably the engine of
ultimately greater well-being, political
leaders are obliged to deal with their
consequences here and now. A sense of
political unease is inevitable, especially in
the developing world -- a feeling of being at
the mercy of forces neither the individual
nor the government can influence any
longer.

A new approach must begin with the
realization that, by any objective
measurement, globalization has been a huge
success -- especially for the United States.
During the past two decades, the United
States has generated unprecedented wealth;
broadened and deepened the availability
of capital; funded the development and
broad distribution of a variety of new
technologies; and created markets for a huge
array of goods and services, all the while
improving its distribution of income. So far
as the U.S. economy is concerned, these are
"the good old days."

To be sure, even in the United States,
globalization has left some individuals and

groups behind. Jobs are lost in some sectors even as they multiply in others. Yet the protectionist argument that globalization generically produces unemployment is, in the United States, belied by the reality of full employment coupled with rising wages. The world's puzzlement at protectionist pressures in advanced industrial countries has been well-expressed by Joseph Stiglitz, soon to retire as chief economist of the World Bank: "What are developing countries to make of the rhetoric in favor of capital liberalization when rich countries -- with full employment and strong safety nets -- argue that they need to impose protective measures to help those of their own citizens adversely affected by globalization?"

While the benefits of globalization have been dramatic in the United States, the effect on the rest of the world has been more ambiguous, at least in the short run. Europe, the next largest beneficiary, reacts warily to foreign takeovers, even from other European countries, though these reflect the free movement of capital that is one of the chief tenets of globalization, as well as of the European Union. And Europe has found it difficult to dismantle the traditional dominant role of its governments. Similarly, Japan's economy and politics have stagnated partly because of the reluctance to open up to keep pace with globalization.

But the economic and political consequences of globalization have been most severe for the developing countries. In a world where capital can move freely, investments will flow toward the highest return. This mobility of capital presents considerable risks as well as great opportunities for the host countries, for foreign capital will leave if better opportunities open up elsewhere, or if the host country's economy suffers a perhaps

cyclical decline. Large, diverse economies, such as those of the United States and Europe, with highly developed capital markets and a body of commercial law, can cope with these fluctuating movements. The fragile, brittle economies and social structures of most developing countries are disproportionately vulnerable, at least in the short and medium term.

These problems are compounded because urbanization, which is inherent in industrialization, inevitably brings with it the weakening of traditional political and social support systems. Even when their material conditions improve in absolute terms, the migrants become increasingly conscious of the gap between rich and poor that, in almost all developing countries, the early stages of globalization seem to magnify. Therefore, political and economic indices frequently swing wildly out of phase with each other.

Moreover, capital flows are not necessarily determined by the economic performance of the host country. Speculative capital moves to take advantage of short-term trends; it can benefit from downturns as well as from booms. During downturns, domestic capital flees while foreign financial institutions protect themselves by reducing exposure even in healthier economies, to offset losses incurred elsewhere. All this turns national or regional difficulties into global crises.

The way the international system manages its periodic crises compounds the political challenge. The standard remedy of international institutions -- especially of the International Monetary Fund -- has been to restore creditworthiness by imposing drastic austerity on the affected countries. But these exactions are perceived as a form of neocolonialism in which the concerns

2

foreign lenders are given priority over the
well-being of the affected.

During the first 20 years of the post-colonial
period, public moneys financed most
investments in the developing world. When,
in the 1980s, Western taxpayers revolted
against these grants, many developing
countries were striving to attract private
Western capital. And until the mid-1990s,
private investment seemed to enable
emerging countries to build up their
industrial capacity. Since then, the American
-- and more recently the Japanese and
European -- financial markets have been
such powerful magnets as to discourage
capital flows into areas where the political
risk is greater and the regulatory system less
predictable, as in Latin America or non-
Japanese Asia. But since domestic capital is
more expensive, companies that are obliged
to depend on it are at a grave competitive
disadvantage.

This dynamic coincides with a drive toward
bigness almost for its own sake that has
become the key corollary, almost the
synonym, for globalization. As local
enterprises feel obliged to merge with
multinationals with better access to global
capital markets, the typical developing
country's business sector bifurcates: One set
of enterprises is integrated into the global
economy and owned by large international
corporations; the rest, cut off from
globalization, employ most of the labor
force at the lowest wages and with the
bleakest prospects.

Both sets of companies raise political issues:
the multinationals because they seem to
withdraw key decisions affecting the public
welfare from domestic political control; the
local companies because they generate
political pressures on behalf of
protectionism and against the globalization

model. Moreover, to the extent the hitherto
local economy becomes integrated globally,
it grows more vulnerable to a prolonged
recession in the United States. This is the
dark cloud hanging over globalization: If -
or when -- the U.S. economy turns down,
the global consequences could be
catastrophic.

Some argue that the answer to these dangers
is even freer trade more rapidly. And in a
long-term sense, this may well be true. But
because globalization in essence involves
global adoption of the American model, it
is important to remember that the flexible
labor markets of America, the deregulated
financial institutions, the relatively cheap
capital and the bias toward lowering costs
took decades to evolve. This model cannot
be replicated rapidly in the developing world
and not, in any event, fast enough to prevent
a growing political backlash against
globalization.

The key challenge is that very few people
anywhere view themselves primarily as
components of a global economic
mechanism. They identify political
accountability with the nation-state and
demand that governments cushion them
against excessive suffering or dislocation.
Leaders -- especially in democracies -- are
overturned when they are perceived to
have failed in this task. Protectionism
beckons, together with attacks on America
as the leading industrial power.

The industrialized countries have avoided
many of these consequences largely because
they have not left their citizens naked in the
face of market changes. Restraints on
monopoly and a social safety net have been
fundamental to the policies of the industrial
democracies for nearly a century. By
contrast, the developing world has few

3

safety nets except a crude form of protectionism.

If these conditions persist or grow worse, the world could evolve into a two-tiered system in which globalized elites are linked by shared values and technologies while the populations at large, feeling excluded, seek refuge in nationalism and ethnicity and in attempts to become free of what they perceive as American hegemony. In such an atmosphere, attacks on globalization can evolve into a radical chic, especially where the governing elites are small, and the gap between rich and poor is vast and growing.

No economic system can be sustained without a political base. The challenge for those who believe in free trade is to match economic growth with political imagination; to navigate between those who see the world in only technical economic terms and their critics who yearn to return to some quasi-socialist model of government control. The challenge is to foster an international sense of social responsibility without strangling a successful economic system in regulations imposed by international bureaucrats.

The historical antitrust policies of the United States have yet to find a global expression. The international financial system needs to reduce its volatility and learn to cushion the impact of crises. The role of speculative capital remains a challenge. In dealing with economic crises, a better balance needs to be established between the claims of lenders and the social needs of affected societies. The concerns of our society for labor standards and the environment must be met without choking off free trade and without giving developing countries the impression that our real goal is to throttle their competition.

I do not pretend to have the answers to these questions. But I know that pandering to demonstrators is not one of them.

© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company

4

The Washington Post
Tuesday, November 23, 1999

Henry Kissinger

# Playing Politics With the Test Ban Treaty

The Clinton administration's reaction to the Senate's refusal to ratify the comprehensive test ban treaty threatens to erode the bipartisan approach that has sustained American foreign policy even in the Clinton administration (witness NAFTA, NATO expansion and Bosnia). The president condemned the Senate vote as a symptom of militant isolationism, and the State Department has notified foreign governments that it still considers itself legally bound by the treaty—as if a negative vote of a majority of the Senate were an aberration when a two-thirds positive majority was needed for ratification. All this has tempted some foreign leaders to question the credibility of America's international role.

It is high time to put an end to this name-
calling. Our allies have a stake in our credibil-
ity; they should not be encouraged to chal-
lenge it by entering our domestic debate. The
Clinton administration will need bipartisan
support for the remainder of its term—
especially in managing China's entry into the
World Trade Organization. And a successor
administration should be able to develop its
own approach free of bitter controversy.

What makes a respite all the more neces-
sary is that the treaty failed above all because
the end of the Cold War has basically trans-
formed global strategic conditions and the na-
ture of arms control as heretofore conceived.
No doubt isolationists—in different guises—
exist on the extremes of both our political
parties. But it is absurd to blame the Senate
vote on an isolationist cabal when six former
secretaries of defense, four former national
security advisers and four former CIA direc-
tors (including two appointed by President
Clinton) opposed ratification, while four for-
mer secretaries of state—myself included—
refused to endorse it.

All of us had served at one time or another
as stewards of America's involvement in a
global policy and had supported previous
treaties to limit the risks of nuclear conflagra-
tion. But we balked at a permanent test ban in
the face of severe and unresolved doubts. Our
concerns embraced verification, since low-
yield tests by common agreement cannot be
detected, reliability of our nuclear stockpile in
the absence of testing and lack of meaningful
sanctions.

Some of us urged a delay in the vote, dur-
ing which a bipartisan commission could
have examined our concerns on the basis of a
set of agreed questions. This proved impos-
sible to arrange because of the Senate leader-

ship's distrust of the White House and be-
cause the administration, while hinting at its
readiness for delay, put forward no proposal
on how to deal with the concerns of responsi-
ble critics. Instead, the administration im-
plied strongly that it would resubmit an un-
modified treaty at the first opportunity and
would make the treaty a campaign issue.

This deadlock between administration self-
righteousness and the senators' lack of confi-
dence in administration security policy has
led to a revival of the most acrimonious con-
troversies over arms control of the early
1970s. In the process, the key issue—the
transformation of the nature of arms control
with the end of the Cold War—has been al-
most totally submerged.

During the Cold War, as nuclear stockpiles
reached tens of thousands of deliverable
weapons and war threatened the extinction of
humanity, concerned individuals in and out of
government began to advocate the then-
unprecedented proposition that the holders
of these vast arsenals might negotiate to miti-
gate the nuclear dangers by limiting their nu-
clear buildups and establishing some rules for
deployment. The purpose was to reduce the
dangers of surprise attack, accidental war or
war by momentum, such as caused World
War I.

Proponents of this school of thought—
myself included—argued that, at a
minimum, negotiations on such sub-
jects might educate both superpow-
ers to the dangers of their new capacities and
reduce the danger of war by inadvertence.
The result was two agreements in the 1970s
limiting the number of delivery vehicles for
both sides—agreements that, however con-
troversial, were maintained throughout the
Cold War by the administrations of both par-
ties, including the Reagan administration.

This "strategic" approach to arms con-
trol—which always insisted on retaining the
option of modernization and never took risks
with verifiability—was nearly overwhelmed
by assaults from two opposite directions. One
came from a "radical" approach which argued
that "strategic" arms control did not go far
enough. These theologians of the so-called
Mutual Assured Destruction concept insisted
on leaving civilian populations totally vul-
nerable to nuclear attack. Hence they opposed
any kind of defense against nuclear missiles
and tried to thwart any modernization as de-
stabilizing. Their goal was to prevent war by
imposing strategic passivity on the United
States where nuclear weapons were con-

cerned.

On the other side, opponents of arms con-
trol in the 1970s lumped the "radical" and
"strategic" schools together and attacked any
effort to stabilize military relations between
the superpowers as a mirage or a deliberate
deception. The radical arms controllers never
encountered a new technology they could ap-
prove; their critics never confronted an arms
control agreement that they could counte-
nance.

The difference between the strategic and
radical schools of arms control was shown

It is absurd to blame the
Senate vote on an
isolationist cabal.

by the respective attitudes toward nuclear
testing. True, the "strategic" arms controllers
negotiated on an underground test ban. But
unlike the current version of the Comprehen-
sive Test Ban Treaty, the ban was confined to
tests above a specific threshold that was veri-
fiable, and provided for a limited number of
proof-tests of existing stockpiles to deter-
mine their reliability.

With the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,
Clinton's became the first administration to
throw its weight behind the radical arms con-
trollers, and it did so without involving either
key senators or former senior officials in a
process of consultation. The administration
ignored the experience of the 1970s with the
Threshold Test Ban and pursued a compre-
hensive and permanent ban, despite the
knowledge that it was not verifiable at low
levels. It overrode concerns about verification
by asserting that what could be tested at un-
verifiable levels was not "significant"—an un-
persuasive argument in the light of the rap-
idly changing technology and the indefinite
duration of the treaty.

The administration answered concerns re-
garding the continued reliability of the nucle-
ar stockpile by claiming that computer tests
could do the job, even though the relevant
computers would not be available for a dec-
ade and the directors of the weapons lab-
oratories, who were supposed to administer
these tests, were highly ambivalent in their
testimony before the Senate Armed Services
Committee.

Finally, the administration claimed that the
United States would be able to withdraw

(over)

from the treaty if the "supreme national interest" was involved. But how does one determine the supreme national interest in the absence of testing? And in the light of the eagerness of some members of the U.N. Security Council to lift sanctions even while Iraq is in undisputed violation of the U.N. inspections system, what international sanctions would be agreed or enforceable?

Finally, the difficulty of modifying a bilateral treaty such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty would be vastly compounded by a multilateral treaty including more than 100 nations.

The Senate vote should thus be interpreted as a wake-up call to face the revolutionary change in the nature of our strategic problem and in the role (and limits) of arms control. The "strategic" arms control of the 1970s sought to regulate a bilateral U.S.-Soviet relationship. Each of the parties could be assumed to have a parallel interest in reducing the risks of surprise attack or accidental war. Though this premise was questioned on ideological grounds, it was plausible to argue that the fear of nuclear holocaust might override ideology.

But the conflict between two nuclear superpowers is no longer the overwhelming threat to peace. That threat is, rather, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to countries that reject any common norms and seek nuclear weapons to blackmail the rest of the world. The premise of the complete test ban was that cessation of tests by the nuclear powers would set an example for other countries to stay out of the nuclear weapons field. But the countries about which we are most concerned have neither signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty nor would they be constrained by it if they did sign. After all, North Korea, Iran and Iraq had all signed the 1968 Non-Proliferation treaty and accepted its inspections. Yet each is actively pursuing clandestine nuclear capabilities in violation of agreements it had signed.

The oft-repeated argument that a complete test ban, if observed, would freeze our nuclear advantage is not relevant to the rudimentary nuclear capabilities of the rogue states. And industrialized proliferators may sign the complete test ban with its weak verification and toothless sanctions for exactly the opposite reason: to achieve a pause to enable them to narrow the gap with our technology.

Among the nations of the world, the United States has a special responsibility for international security, especially involving nu-

clear weapons. For the sake of all those who, whether they like it or not, depend on our protection, we cannot afford to subordinate national security to doubtful, speculative benefits. We are the ultimate guarantors against the scourge of biological and chemical warfare. We need a capacity to resist with discrimination—that is, in a way that will minimize catastrophe and not stake everything on the nihilism of the theory of Mutual Assured Destruction. Therefore, for us to give up technological options is a far graver decision than for countries relying on far more rudimentary capabilities. One would think our European allies would show some understanding of these realities and resist being drawn into a domestic political campaign here.

Unlike some of the critics of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, I do not oppose the concept of arms control. On the contrary, I believe that democratic governments have an obligation to their publics to demonstrate serious efforts to reduce the dangers of a nuclear holocaust and nuclear proliferation. Existing nonproliferation agreements should be preserved, including the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the suppliers' restraints of the more recent period, such as the Missile Technology Control Regime and the Canberra Group restricting chemical exports. A verifiable test ban might have a place in such a strategy if it included a time limit that permitted reassessment in the light of experience, quotas for proof-testing and agreement on sanctions against violators.

But traditional arms control agreements—especially of the toothless variety—may have come to the end of the road. New nuclear states such as India and Pakistan are reachable by traditional instruments and norms of diplomacy. Their friends can assist them in achieving a stable mutual deterrence and give stabilizing reassurances about their conventional security. What is really needed is a new common nonproliferation policy by nations already possessing nuclear arsenals. They must agree on controls over the export of their technologies and devise precise and tough sanctions against states acquiring weapons of mass destruction and those nations that supply them.

© 1999, Los Angeles Times Syndicate

# Test-Ban Treaty: Let's Wait Awhile

By

John Deutch, Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft

Wednesday, October 6, 1999

The Washington Post

The Senate is scheduled to vote Oct. 12 on whether to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The treaty has many strong supporters and equally vociferous opponents who are committed to its defeat next week. We believe, however, that the treaty's supporters and opponents are both wrong.

While we are no fans of the CTBT, our purpose here is not to argue its merits and defects. Our point is more straightforward. The simple fact is that it is premature for the Senate to vote on the CTBT -- at least during the life of the present Congress -- because the treaty is not coming into force any time soon, whether or not the United States ratifies it. This means that few if any of the benefits envisaged by the treaty's advocates could be realized by such action. But if we act now, there could be real costs and risks to our security interests, including our non-proliferation objectives.

Supporters of the CTBT claim that it will make a major contribution to limiting the spread of nuclear weapons. But even the treaty's advocates concede that for this objective to be achieved, at least the key countries that are of proliferation concern must agree to accede to the treaty. Indeed, the treaty wisely requires that each of 44 specific countries sign and ratify the document before it enters into force.

But only 23 of those countries have done so thus far. For example, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, Iraq and Syria have not yet acted. Many of these countries may never join the CTBT regime, and U.S. Senate ratification, early or late, is unlikely to have any significant impact on their decisions. For example, no serious person should believe that rogue nations such as Iran or Iraq will give up their efforts to acquire nuclear weapons if only the United States ratifies the CTBT.

The United States should take advantage of this situation to delay a vote on ratification, without prejudice to eventual action on the treaty. This would provide the opportunity to learn more about such issues as movement on the ratification process by the required 44 countries, technical progress in the Department of Energy's Stockpile Stewardship Program, the political consequences of the India/Pakistan detonations, changing Russian doctrine toward greater reliance on nuclear weapons, and continued Chinese development of a nuclear arsenal.

We do not minimize the threat posed by the spread of nuclear weapons. On the contrary, U.S. efforts to combat proliferation of weapons of mass destruction not only deserve but are receiving the highest national security priority. It is clear to any fair-minded observer that the United States has substantially reduced its reliance on nuclear

weapons. The United States has also made or committed to dramatic reductions in the level of deployed nuclear force.

Nevertheless, for the foreseeable future, the United States must continue to rely on nuclear weapons to help deter certain kinds of attacks on this country and its friends and allies. In addition, several countries depend on the U.S. nuclear deterrent for their security. Their lack of confidence in that deterrent might lead to the further spread of weapons of mass destruction by increasing incentives for them to acquire their own nuclear or other weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities.

As a consequence, the United States must continue to be certain that its nuclear weapons remain safe, secure and reliable. But the fact is that the scientific case simply has not been made that over the long term the United States can ensure the nuclear stockpile without nuclear testing. The

United States is seeking to do so by means of an ambitious effort called the Stockpile Stewardship Program. This program attempts to maintain adequate knowledge of nuclear weapons physics indirectly by computer modeling, simulation and other experiments. We support the kind of scientific and analytical effort that is reflected in the Stockpile Stewardship Program. At this point, however, success is far from ensured.

In light of the uncertainty, and in the absence of any compelling reasons for early ratification, it is unwise to take actions now that constrain this or future presidents' choices about how best to pursue our non-proliferation and other national security goals while maintaining the effectiveness and credibility of our nuclear deterrent. Accordingly, we urge the Senate leadership to reach an understanding with the president to suspend action on the CTBT, at least for the duration of the 106th Congress.

> John Deutch was undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology, deputy secretary of defense and Director of Central Intelligence in the first Clinton administration. Henry Kissinger was secretary of state to Presidents Nixon and Ford. Brent Scowcroft was national security adviser to Presidents Ford and Bush.

Storm Clouds Gathering

The unnecessary rush toward confrontation must be reversed
by both China and the United States.

By Henry A. Kissinger

The Washington Post

Tuesday, September 7, 1999; Page A19

When, within a few days, Bill Clinton
meets with his Chinese counterpart, Jiang
Zemin, at an international forum in New
Zealand, it will be amid the greatest strain in
Sino-American relations since diplomatic
contact was reestablished in 1971.

Many in Washington perceive Beijing's
reaction to the American attack on the Chi-
nese Embassy in Belgrade as deliberate fos-
tering of anti-American sentiments, and the
Chinese military buildup and human rights
practices as challenges to basic American
interests and values. The view from Beijing
is that the bombing of its Belgrade embassy
was deliberate and that denial of World
Trade Organization membership, human-
rights accusations and charges of espionage
are symptoms of America's unwillingness to
allow China to play a role on the world stage.

In this atmosphere, Taiwan's sudden and
unilateral challenge to the existing political
understandings in the Taiwan Strait -- at a
time when a senior Beijing representative
was preparing to visit Taipei for the first time
-- is interpreted in Beijing as the culmination
of an American plot to divide China. Chinese
warnings of a possible military response have
taken on a severity reminiscent of the prelude
to the Chinese intervention in the Korean
War in 1950. In turn, many in Washington
consider these Chinese expressions of con-
cern as pretexts for executing long-held de-
signs. Amid such mutual incomprehension,
conflict, even military conflict, could sud-
denly erupt.

Three high-level visits -- of Jiang to
Washington, of Clinton to China and of
Prime Minister Zhu Rongji to Washington --
have accomplished little more than to as-
suage these trends. In each, atmospherics
took precedence over substance, and in the
Zhu visit American domestic politics blocked
the conclusion of the WTO agreement that
Zhu had been given reason to expect.

Some are fatalistic about this drift to-
ward confrontation. Others compare the
emergence of China to the rise of Germany
before the First World War, the implication
being that since a showdown is foreordained,
better now, when China is still relatively
weak. They forget that, in the eyes of history,
the sin of the statesmen of that period was
their failure to arrest the catastrophe that
nearly destroyed European civilization.

A Sino-American conflict would be
similarly avoidable and damaging to both
sides. Both sides need a respite from the feb-
rile mood of the moment. The atmosphere for
this is not favorable in either country. Anti-
American nationalism seems to be gaining
momentum in Beijing. In America, a grow-
ing consensus in which China replaces the
Soviet Union as our main enemy stultifies a
necessary debate. Doubters of the dominant
trend are accused of appeasement or of acting
for their own economic benefit -- a charge to
which I have been subjected because I am
chairman of an international consulting com-
pany. Anybody believing this charge should
stop reading here.

-2-

No single component of American foreign policy can be an end in itself. We have security, political and economic interests and commitments in Asia that we will not sacrifice to our interest in constructive relations with China, however important we judge these to be. But the prospects of world peace, stability and progress will be hazarded if the current unnecessary rush toward confrontation is not reversed by both sides.

The case against China boils down to three propositions:

That China, like the Soviet Union, is ideologically bent on regional, if not world, domination. Coexistence being impossible, we must maintain pressures on this last major totalitarian state until it transforms itself into a peaceful and cooperative democratic society.

That China's military buildup coupled with the growth of its economy inevitably challenges the U.S. position in Asia and should be stifled before it takes on unmanageable proportions.

That a military showdown over Taiwan is sufficiently probable that we must take all measures in defense of Taiwan, even if these measures make such a conflict inevitable.

But is China really comparable to the Soviet threat to the United States? Soviet ideology claimed universal applicability, and Soviet leaders as late as the '70s proclaimed the goal of the worldwide triumph of communism. Moscow avowed its determination to maintain communist parties in power, by force if necessary, intervening in Hungary and Czechoslovakia and threatening to do so in Poland and even in China. The Chinese communist leadership makes no such claims; it exploits no international network of com-

munist parties or radical forces to undermine Western positions. While many repressive aspects of a one-party state continue, there has been a vast improvement since Mao and the Cultural Revolution.

The debate over whether human rights should play a role in the conduct of our foreign policy has been won by the activists. But when the stakes are so high, these concerns need to be brought into some relationship with other objectives of American foreign policy. And the experiences of Haiti, Somalia and today in Kosovo should inspire some caution about how easy it is to impose our values.

Even greater perspective is needed with respect to Chinese military power. The Soviet Union possessed some 2,500 strategic delivery vehicles, most with multiple warheads and many with high accuracy. An attack on the United States was technically feasible and strategically not inconceivable. The Chinese strategic force of some 25 liquid-fueled missiles with single warheads requiring hours to get ready is not an instrument for offensive operations. And when, in perhaps 10 years, the Chinese acquire multiple warheads for a larger number of missiles, an American missile defense -- which I have always favored -- should substantially preserve the strategic balance.

As for Chinese ground forces, they are at a level of the technology of the 1960s, capable of defending the home country but not suitable for offensive operations against a major opponent -- including Taiwan. And around its periphery, China must cope with a strategic situation far more problematic than was the Soviet Union's in Europe. The Soviet Union threatened weak neighbors unable, either alone or in combination, to resist Soviet ground forces. But, from India to Japan

-3-

to Russia, China faces militarily significant neighbors.

As for the Chinese economy, though China has grown at the average rate of 10 percent a year for much of the past 20 years, no country has ever maintained such a rate indefinitely. Nor is China doing so today. Its current growth of about 6 percent barely keeps pace with the growth of the Chinese labor force, leaving little room for a major increase in the percentage of the gross domestic product devoted to defense spending without risking a shipwreck like the Soviet Union's.

To be sure, as China develops what it calls its "comprehensive national strength," its military power will grow. But for the foreseeable future, the United States possesses diplomatic, economic and military advantages to enable us to shape the future confidently. Should China threaten the regional balance of power or our vital interests, we are bound to resist. But on proliferation, Asian economic progress and on stabilizing potential trouble spots such as South Asia and Korea, there are enough points of congruence to render a permanent geopolitical dialogue between China and the United States indispensable. For us to imagine that we can prevent China's natural growth and emergence as a major power is to commit us to an unprecedentedly domineering role. Over time, this would drain our physical and psychological resources, be opposed by the rest of the world and, in the end, by the American people.

Taiwan is the most explosive issue. Taiwan was part of China until 1895, when Japan annexed it, its first step toward conquest on the mainland. Starting with World War II, American presidents have affirmed Taiwan to be a part of China in one form or another: Franklin Roosevelt in 1943; Harry Truman in

1945; Richard Nixon in 1972; Jimmy Carter in 1979; and Ronald Reagan in 1982. The Reagan communique moreover stated that the United States had no intention of "pursuing a policy of two Chinas, or one China, on Taiwan" -- a formula repeated 16 years later by Clinton in Shanghai. Since 1971, each president has also firmly stated America's abiding concern for a peaceful resolution of the issue -- a euphemism for opposition to the use of force -- as did the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, which adopted the principle as American law.

Within this framework, Taiwan has prospered, become democratic and increasingly participated in international forums that did not require formal state-to-state relations. At the same time, the United States, like the vast majority of the world's governments, was recognizing Beijing as the legitimate government of all of China. But, unlike most other countries, we were supplying the vast majority of the weapons for what was being treated officially as part of another country. For 30 years, China, while insisting on ultimate unification, nevertheless on several occasions expressed its willingness to defer a final resolution in the interest of its relationship with other countries, especially the United States. It did so provided Taiwan did not stake a formal claim to sovereignty. The United States, while repeatedly reaffirming its opposition to the use of force, did so invariably within the framework of a "one-China" policy.

This complex framework should not be trifled with. Indeed, it is very much in Taiwan's own interest. For the key constraint on China's Taiwan policy has been China's stake in its relationship with the United States. Were Taiwan to achieve formal American recognition of a separate status, as its president now seems to seek, this would surely lead to some kind of military clash that,

-4-

whatever its outcome, would permanently rupture Sino-American relations and isolate America in Asia and probably the world. Taiwan would be less, not more, secure in such an environment.

Thus, when President Clinton and Jiang meet, they must try to defuse the immediate crisis and begin to place Sino-American relations on a solid basis. Slogans such as "strategic partnership" without content cannot substitute for a careful examination of where interests are congruent and where they need to be reassessed or managed.

With respect to Taiwan, three steps are needed: (1) to leave no ambiguity about America's opposition to the use of force; (2) to make clear that there is no change in America's longstanding acceptance of the principle of one China; (3) to insist on Taiwanese restraint in challenging a framework that, in fact, ensures their autonomy and without which events may well run out of control.

A cold war would leave both sides in a classic no-win situation. China's economic progress would be stifled. Historically covetous neighbors might resurrect past ambitions. And, given the present disproportion of

power, a military conflict would have grave consequences for China.

At the same time, Beijing would have many political cards to play. The Soviet Union, in the end, stood substantially isolated facing a coalition of all the industrial democracies plus China. But China has traversed its 5,000 years of recorded history by careful calculations of its necessities and great patience. No Asian nation will go along with a confrontational course unless provoked by Chinese pressures. Our European allies will distinguish their policies from ours and blame tensions on American highhandedness. Every crisis point, from Korea to the Middle East, would be exacerbated by a Sino-American cold -- or hot -- war.

Escape from this rush toward self-fulfilling prophecies requires a degree of bipartisanship not in great supply at this moment. Once the die is cast for confrontation, there will be no easy way back from the precipice. Which of the statesmen who so exuberantly went to war in 1914 would not have jumped at a chance to review their decision when they looked back at the damage done to the civilization of Europe and the long-term peace of the world?

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

NATO: Not Behind the Times

Henry Kissinger argues that “the timing of [the] sudden [European] quest for autonomy” from NATO “is puzzling, even jarring” [“The End of NATO as We Know It?” op-ed, Aug. 15]. This statement is puzzling. Throughout this decade, the Europeans have sought the ability to act militarily without necessarily calling upon the United States—and hence NATO. The European Security and Defense Identity is to be built within NATO, in order to avoid duplication of resources, and will be “separable but not separate” from the Atlantic Alliance.

Last December, the British and French proposed that the European Union be the executive agent for the European Security and Defense Identity, and this was blessed by the rest of the European Union well before the Kosovo conflict. At last April's Washington summit, NATO as a whole—including the United States—ratified the arrangements that Mr. Kissinger sees as somehow undercutting transatlantic cohesion and NATO's sense of purpose.

The Europeans fully and formally agree that NATO must be the primary instrument of transatlantic security. In developing a security identity, they are working to complete European integration, which was given major impetus this year by the introduction of the euro. They also are responding to U.S. demands over many years that they shoulder a larger share of the burden of providing security in their own back yard. Thus this supposedly “sudden” European goal of having “the capacity for autonomous action backed up by

credible military forces” has long been welcomed by the United States.

Mr. Kissinger also neglects NATO's core functions, to which all the allies are committed. Acting militarily in Bosnia and Kosovo was important to demonstrate that NATO could halt conflict in Europe. But the alliance's broader roles are to ensure America's necessary strategic engagement on the continent; to modernize NATO's military capabilities to meet tomorrow's challenges; to provide lasting security and stability in Central Europe; and to design a place for Russia in an encompassing European security system. These are consequential and coherent purposes. Coupled with steps taken to achieve them, they already meet Mr. Kissinger's appeal that NATO be “a living institution systematically adapting itself to new realities.”

ROBERT E. HUNTER
Washington

The writer was U.S. ambassador to NATO from 1993 to 1998.

Henry Kissinger raises important issues about the justification for NATO to go to war. He is entitled to his view that national interest is separable from humanitarian concern and that it alone should motivate military action, even though this will strike many as overly simplistic. More surprising is that Mr. Kissinger characterizes Europe's center-left leaders as throwbacks to the 1970s, motivated by the sort of anti-American sentiment for which that period is famous. This view apparently lies behind his judgment that Europe's

political leaders want “independence” from America, want to opt out of NATO and drive their foreign policy by reference to television footage of world events rather than rational strategic objectives.

If any of this were true—and Mr. Kissinger offers no evidence for his assertions—this extraordinary lurch in European thinking would, indeed, be “puzzling, even jarring.” But plentiful statements from England's Tony Blair, Germany's Gerhard Schroeder, France's Lionel Jospin and others indicate their firm commitment to NATO and their belief that a stronger, more effective Europe in foreign policy and security will strengthen NATO and therefore benefit America. All that is being proposed is that “Europe needs to develop the ability to act alone in circumstances where, for whatever reason, the U.S. is not able or does not wish to participate,” as Tony Blair said long before Kosovo.

As Kosovo demonstrated, American involvement is badly needed to win any serious war. But should U.S. taxpayers and U.S. troops always have to resolve any problems that exist on Europe's doorstep? I can think of no better way than this, to alienate America from Europe, and that is the last thing European leaders want or need.

PETER MANDELSON
London

The writer is a member of Britain's House of Commons.

INTELLIGENCE, From B1

Expatriate Osama bin Laden. U.S. officials believed that bin Laden was using the El Shifa plant to produce VX, a nerve gas agent. Less than two weeks after the embassy bombings, 13 Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired at the plant. According to news reports, U.S. officials later told congressional committees that intercepted communications and financial transactions linked bin Laden to the plant, and that a soil sample secretly collected outside the plant by U.S. intelligence contained traces of EMPTA (a precursor chemical for VX).

The strike on El Shifa was unusual. The United States has carried out half-a-dozen similar airstrikes since the Clinton administration took office (not counting the past year's ongoing operations over Iraq). In each of the other cases, though, the operation was part of a larger war, or was direct retaliation against someone who had attacked the United States or its citizens. This time, U.S. forces struck a country simply because a facility in its territory was linked to a terrorist group. The attack could set a precedent for how we deal with terrorist organizations in the future—but it is a dangerous precedent.

The trouble, as we have since discovered, is that the link between bin Laden and El Shifa was not as close as officials first suggested. Critics (including the owner of the plant, Saudi businessman Saleh al-Dris, who is suing the U.S. government for damages) have presented a substantial case of their own. It turns out that many people—including several U.S. citizens from religious organizations and the business community—were familiar with the plant. Some had even been inside and found nothing other than the activities one would normally expect at a medicine factory. Also, the financial links between bin Laden and the owners of El Shifa, it turns out, were open to dispute at best. In other words, there were many key areas that required judgment, and, in this case, judgment seems to have failed.

Such judgments were not so crucial during the Cold War. Military planners might keep a factotum

know.” Trying to settle public controversies by citing intelligence data will inevitably make collecting intelligence more difficult in the future.

With each round of disclosure in the Sudan incident, more U.S. intelligence sources have been exposed. Now, for example, our adversaries have a greater awareness that U.S. intelligence tracks electronic financial transactions to identify supporters of chemical and biological weapons proliferation, and chemically analyzes soil samples covertly collected near suspected facilities. One can be sure that future, would-be proliferators will protect their banking records better and be more careful not to spill stuff.

Officials need to use intelligence, make their best judgments—and then accept the public consequences. This really isn't a new issue. For example, it was U.S. intelligence that originally fingered Julius Rosenberg in 1950 as a Soviet spy. But U.S. Justice Department officials never revealed that the real source of their information was intercepted and deciphered cable traffic—a fact that the intelligence community confirmed just a few years ago. Instead, they took the time to build a legal case, independent of the intelligence—and took the heat when critics pointed to the gaps in the evidence.

Even when intelligence has been pivotal to major policy decisions, in the past U.S. officials understood that they should reveal as little as possible—even in the face of public pressure. Take for example, the event that triggered the U.S. entry into World War I, the Zimmermann Telegram, an intercepted message that exposed a German plot against the United States. (The Germans promised Mexico the land it lost in the mid-1800s in exchange for Mexico's assistance if the United States stepped up aid to the Allies.) U.S. officials released the telegram to the press without revealing that it had been intercepted by British intelligence and secretly supplied to the Americans. Even so, the resulting public reaction, combined with political leadership, was enough for a declaration of war.

> Bombing to preempt a terrorist attack should usually require evidence of a clear and present danger.

# The End of NATO as We Know It?

By Henry Kissinger

The Washington Post
Los Angeles Times Syndicate

Sunday, August 15, 1999

Less than three months after NATO's triumph in Kosovo, a paradoxical but nagging question has become inescapable. Did Kosovo mark the end of NATO, at least as we have known it?

For America, the Atlantic Alliance -- our sole institutional link to Europe -- has epitomized the twin pillars of sound American policy: the buttressing of both security and democratic values. For our European allies, NATO has given Britain the framework for its "special relationship" with America; to Germany a safe haven from European suspicions and Eastern dangers; to France, a safety net against changes in the geopolitical balance it cannot handle by itself; and to Italy, an anchor for the emotional Atlantic commitments of its population.

Yet, unexpectedly, the first joint military operation of the Atlantic Alliance, carried out with extraordinary political cohesion and blessed both with apparent success and involving no allied casualties, has evoked calls for greater European independence, expressed with a vehemence and at a level never heard before. The ink on the agreement ending warfare in Kosovo had hardly dried when, in Cologne on June 15, the 15 leaders of the European Union affirmed the urgency of creating a separate military force capable of acting without the United States and without the approval of NATO: "The [European] Union must have the capacity for autonomous action backed up by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them and a readiness to do so without prejudice to actions by NATO." Carried to its logical conclusion, this implies a revolution in the structure of the West: an all-European chain of command capable of bypassing NATO.

The timing of this sudden quest for autonomy is puzzling, even jarring. The European reaction

would make sense if our European allies felt they had been dragged into what, in retrospect, they consider an aberration, or if the NATO allies were squabbling about the consequences.

Neither of these conditions applies. Far from feeling imposed upon, all allied leaders insist that henceforth the pattern of humanitarian intervention displayed in Kosovo is to be the rule, not the exception. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has proclaimed Kosovo a victory for the "progressive" approach to foreign policy, replacing outdated traditional concepts, adding: "This war ... was fought for a fundamental principle necessary for humanity's progress: that every human being regardless of race, religion or birth has an inalienable right to live free from persecution."

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany said the same more operationally: "The Alliance had to demonstrate ... that the weak have in NATO a strong friend and ally ready and willing to defend their human rights." President Clinton adopted the most sweeping formulation: ". . . If somebody comes after innocent civilians and tries to kill them en masse because of their race, their ethnic background or their religion, and it is within our power to stop it, we will stop it."

When all the allied leaders agree on the significance of their actions, the sole remaining European motive for developing a capacity to act autonomously is to escape American tutelage and increase European bargaining power. If these goals reflected a desire to make a greater contribution to joint action, or to give weight to occasional European warnings against American impetuosity, they would contribute to the effectiveness of the Alliance. To be meaningful, this would require a vast increase in military spending (some experts estimate as much as threefold),

or at the very least a major effort of defense modernization and restructuring.

If, however, Europe fails to make a real defense effort, resentments against American dominance will only increase. And if the quest for independence is driven largely by anti-American motives, it will saddle the Alliance with all the compulsive competitiveness that nearly destroyed Europe before the Atlantic Alliance was founded in 1949.

The new European eagerness for autonomy is partly a function of the end of the Cold War and of America's emergence as the sole superpower. But it also reflects and compounds the key Alliance challenge: the growing confusion about what NATO is supposed to accomplish in the first place.

The various allied leaders are correct in treating Kosovo as a watershed. The Alliance abandoned its historical definition of itself as a strictly defensive coalition and insisted on the right to occupy a province of a state with which it was not at war. And it reinforced this unprecedented ultimatum by coupling it with a demand for the right of free movement of NATO troops throughout Yugoslavia.

This abrupt abandonment of the concept of national sovereignty coupled with a truculent diplomacy marked the advent of a new style of foreign policy driven by domestic politics and the invocation of universal moralistic slogans. But to implement such a policy on a permanent basis will not be nearly so simple as the self-congratulatory rhetoric implies. Those who sneer at history obviously do not recall that the legal doctrine of national sovereignty and the principle of noninterference -- enshrined, by the way, in the U.N. Charter -- emerged at the end of the devastating Thirty Years War, to inhibit a repetition of the depredations of the 17th century, during which perhaps 40 percent of the population of Central Europe perished in the name of competing versions of universal truth. Once the doctrine of universal intervention spreads and competing truths contest, we risk entering a world in which, in G. K. Chesterton's phrase, virtue runs amok.

In the Clinton/Blair version of allied policy, NATO must act because it is the only posse in town and because its motives are pure. This is not only incompatible with the notion of a defensive alliance but probably with the notion of alliance altogether. Traditionally, alliances have expressed the aggregate national interests of the member states. They define a special, not universal, obligation. The casus belli is generally the crossing of the national borders of the alliance, or those of a country considered vital to the alliance.

Once borders lose their sacrosanct quality, how is one to define the casus belli for the humanitarian wars of intervention of the new dispensation? Since they reflect a universal, not a special, obligation, they should -- logically -- be implemented by a global consensus. But if NATO is subordinated to the United Nations, its high aspirations will almost certainly be stymied by the Russian/Chinese veto. On the other hand, if NATO insists on defining a universal legitimacy on its own, it will face the opposition of most of the rest of the world.

In the end, the dirty little secret of the allied leaders may be that their sweeping assertions reflect no operating policy. Shaped by protest movements of the 1970s suspicious of alliances and assertions of the national interest, and by the experience of the 1990s, which witnessed the disappearance of the Soviet threat, they treat foreign policy as an aspect of domestic politics and ideological goals rather than as a pursuit of long-range strategic objectives. They undertook the Kosovo operation, at least in part, in reaction to public repugnance at television footage of refugees; but a similar fear of the pictures of allied casualties caused them to adopt a military strategy that, perversely, magnified the suffering of the populations on whose behalf the war was ostensibly being fought.

In the aftermath of the war, the Alliance has learned that even just wars cannot avoid ambiguity and can have political consequences. A war to vindicate the inadmissibility of ethnic cleansing has concluded with replacing one ethnic cleansing with another. It has also projected the Alliance into a political dilemma: whether to carry out the U.N. resolution, in effect making Kosovo

a NATO protectorate, or allow it to become in-
dependent. The former course guarantees clashes
with the local population on the model of Soma-
lia; the latter course will produce a long-term
Balkan crisis when the quest for a greater Alba-
nia threatens the stability of Macedonia and per-
haps of other states.

No more important task confronts the Atlantic Alliance than to bring the rhetoric of its leaders in line with realistic choices. Various declarations and "spins" since Kosovo have stated, or implied, that humanitarian military intervention is not contemplated against major powers (China, Russia, India), against allies, against allies of major powers or countries far distant from Europe. Then what is left? It would be an odd revolution that proclaimed new universal maxims but could find no concrete application except against a single Balkan thug.

To be sure, concern for human rights has be-
come a major component of the foreign policies
of the democracies, and it is supported by power-
ful domestic constituencies. Undemocratic gov-
ernments court trouble when they ignore this re-
ality. But the leaders of the Alliance need to keep
in mind that they have obligations not only to the
emotions of the moment but to the judgments of
the future.

Joseph Nye Jr., in a thoughtful article in For-
eign Affairs, has put forward four principles for
humanitarian intervention with which I generally
agree: having a just cause in the eyes of others;
proportionality of means to ends; high probability
of success; and, wherever possible, reinforcement
of the humanitarian cause by the existence of
other strong national interests.

Thus more narrowly defined, the rhetorical
distinction between humanitarian and national

interests erodes. But the task of NATO's leaders
is to be even more concrete and to supply an-
swers to questions such as these: Where and for
what humanitarian causes will NATO project its
military power? What risks is it prepared to run?
What price is it prepared to pay?

Even more important is to reverse the hol-
lowing out of the traditional purposes of the Alli-
ance. Some of this has occurred because, with the
collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cold War
threats have largely disappeared. But allied lead-
ers, systematically deprecating historical notions
of national interest, bear a heavy responsibility as
well.

No wonder that NATO headquarters is in-
creasingly preoccupied with peripheral, essen-
tially psychological, activities such as the Part-
nership for Peace program and a plethora of ac-
tivities far removed from the basic NATO mis-
sion which water down the functions of the Alli-
ance. Meetings of NATO heads of government
are turning more and more into preludes to G-8
summits or to public spectacles of all the various
associates, numbering some 50 nations.

If the Atlantic Alliance is to continue as more
than a relic of a fading period, it must answer
these questions: How do we define strategic
threats to world order? What political changes
will we resist for security reasons? Above all,
and especially in light of the sweeping political
goals recently enunciated, the political structure
of NATO must be broadened and strengthened.

But this cannot happen unless there is a reaf-
firmation of the centrality of the Alliance, not for
liturgical purposes at periodic formal meetings
but as a living institution systematically adapting
itself to new realities.

(C)1999, The Los Angeles Times Syndicate