KISSINGER TALK -- ELLSWORTH BUNKER MEMORIAL LECTURE -- FEBRUARY 10, 1986

Mr. Chairman, Carol, Rudy, Ladies and Gentlemen

The introduction and what the mayor so kindly said about me leaves me in
the position in which I found myself at a cocktail party, where a lady came up
to me and said, "I understand you're a fascinating man." She said, "Facinate me."
It was one of the less successful conversations that I've had.

Now, I am fully cognizant of the importance of this occasion, but I must
tell you how I got here. I received a phone call six months ago from Phil Habib
who said the Trustees of The Asia Foundation are having a little dinner for
themselves and a few friends, and Carol thought that it might be nice if you
said a few words about Ellsworth and few reflections about American diplomacy.
Now I should have known that Ellsworth would have 1500 friends in San Francisco,
and so I blissfully went along until I realized the enormity of what I was facing
about 10 days ago.

It is, however, indeed a great honor for me to be the inaugural lecturer
for a series named after one of the great human beings and great diplomats I
know, a man I respected and loved. I have been threatening audiences to read
them from my memoirs for a long time, and the limitation is that usually the
room is required before I could get through one volume which takes about three
days. Even if I dropped the word "I", which shortens it considerably. But I
think I can do no better than to read two passages from my memoirs about
Ellsworth in which he, of course, checked me in dropping the word "I," because
I think they sum up what is friends and associates felt about him and what he
meant to them. The first was when I arrived in Saigon with the peace plan that
had been discussed with the North Vietnamese. The second concerns two years
later -- an episode in Jerusalem when Ellsworth was special negotiator to the

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Geneva conference. Let me just read first a paragraph or two about the arrival in Saigon.

Ellsworth Bunker always had a soothing effect in a crisis. When one saw at the foot of the lamp that tall, erect, thin figure, immaculately dressed, as if no suit would dare rumple, even in the tropical heat of Saigon, one knew there was no risk of failure either from excess of impetuosity or from lack of dedication. Ellsworth was one of our great diplomats. He game to government service relatively late in life after a distinguished business period. He had no need to prove anything to himself or to others. His ambition was to make a contribution to the foreign policy of his country, whose well being he identified with a security and hope of all free peoples. His values were reflected not in rhetoric, but in matter of fact performance of the high standard of duty.

He was a quintessential American in the optimism that made him appear youthful even then, in his late seventies. For five years he had been in Saigon, serving two presidents of different parties and earning their unqualified trust and admiration. Through the worst of our domestic travail, he never flinched. He supported his government on television, and in print when others, with far greater responsibility for our involvement, were running for cover. He had stood by the government to which he was accredited, defending it with an official councils and in public, against the charge that it was the principle obstacle to peace. He had nursed matters to this point. Like all of us, he yearned for peace with honor. No one who knew him could doubt that he would interpret the requirements of honor with the utmost strictness.

The second was two years later in 1974 in Jerusalem.

May 11th was Ellsworth Bunker's eightieth birthday. He had defended (this is from a different volume so there is a little overlap). He had defended American honor and interest nobly and unselfishly in Saigon for

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five years during the most searing period of the Vietnam war. He had served in the face of public calumny, governmental hesitations and ungrateful allies, reporting the facts as he saw them, living strictly by the maxims of duty and service that inspired his career. Bunker knew that when the passions were spent, the country would be left, and that we would be judged not by how well we registered the emotions of the moment, but how steadfastly we upheld the lasting principles of the United States. In *Lankley taciturn* New England, he would have been embarrassed at such grandiloquent interpretations, but, in fact, *incaricate*. He even commented, he was given controversial assignments like the Panama negotiations because he was unafraid of defending his beliefs and because critics could challenge his conclusions, but it was impossible to question his integrity and he had an instinct for fundamentals.

Now in the midst of tensions, discouragements and beginning doubts of the shuttle (this was during the Syrian shuttle), he united us all at a surprise party that Ambassador Keating gave him at the King David Hotel. Israeli and American negotiators and staff made an array of display of *humanity* to play tribute to our colleague. I proposed a toast to the effect that Bunker represented what was best and most permanent in America. He epitomized where we stand as a people and as a society. It was an attempt to give us all courage for the *excursions* ~~to end~~ and to remind ourselves that we were, with all our frustrations, privileged to be on a mission of hope and peace. This is what Ellsworth Bunker meant to all of us who had the privilege of working with him.

When I see descriptions of foreign policy in the new criticism, that *avert* exerts that only petty and selfish motives motivate the policy maker, or when I see movie renditions of great crises, then I do not recognize such figures as McCloy, *or* *Acherson* or Ellsworth Bunker. In the movies and on television, in crisis busy people run around, rip up the telephone, flow memoranda, talk at the top of their voice and compete for attention. I have news for the movies

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and television and the critics. In great crises, most people are in the fox holes. And only a few are out there, willing to take responsibility and they do so quietly, matter of factly, and usually unasked, and they have very little competition. Ellsworth Bunker was one of those on whom any president or secretary of state could always count, but who would never obtrude himself. He understood that it is the nature of a crisis that the pros and cons are fairly evenly divided, or else it would have been dealt with by some subordinate. The stakes are likely to be quite high or else there would be no need for great folly. There are bound to be risks and the risks should be little knowledge.

In fact, there is an in birth relationship between the ability to effect events and the knowledge on which to act. When the scope for action is greatest, the knowledge is at a minimum. When the knowledge is great, the scope for action has frequently disappeared. In crisis, and in policy making, the challenge is to act on the basis of assumptions that cannot be proved when they are made. All of high policy involves, therefore, a moral act. Not the smart morality taught in some academic disciplines that seems to imply that there is some sort of a cook book or recipe for every crisis, but the more difficult one of taking the responsibility for a conviction that can have profound consequences without asking for a demonstration of its consequences or finding the certainty for these consequences within the diplomat or the statesman, because by the time one can be sure, it is frequently either too late to effect events or the penalty will have increased.

I am not suggesting for a moment that action is always better than inaction, or that one should act recklessly simply on the basis of intuition. Allied with character and courage must be judgment, and Ellsworth belongs to a small group of senior people like Acheson or David Burt or John McCloy and, of course, he, they were a comfort to any president, to any secretary of state, because they did not seek anything for themselves. And one, frankly, of our national problems, is that I do not believe that we quite breach in our education or in our formative

experiences quite a degree of certainty, quite that confidence in America, and
quite that spirit of public service that he represented. I will get back to
that in my conclusions, but your distinguished chairman assigned to myself a
slightly different topic, as you can see. But being of Germanic background, I
am extremely disciplined and so I will try to apply some of what I have said,
not to Asia as such, which is a geographic concept and between its various parts
as different from itself as it is from the United States, but to some issues in
relations between the United States and Japan, and the United States and China
before I return to my original topic.

One of the biggest challenges of American foreign policy in the post-war
topic was being the lack of any real foreign policy experience for our society.
Until the end of World War II, the United States was, as it's well known, isolated
from world affairs. Even after that, we had such a preponderance of military
and economic power that policy-making really consisted of the establishment of
priorities and the identification of problems which we could then overwhelm with
resources. It is really in the last 20 years that we have become aware of the
fact that foreign policy, for us, must be an unending process, that there will
never be a terminal place at which we can say that our efforts can cease. And
we will have great difficulty understanding that not every other society is a
miniature America and the cultural, historical and political differences that
separate us from other countries. I think it's true in many parts of the world,
but it is certainly true when we deal with a society like Japan that lived in
isolation for over a thousand years, and has a culture so peculiar to itself
that it believes it can adapt to any change in circumstance without losing its
identity. Or with a country like China, where one is always awed by the fact
that many of its dynasties, most of its dynasties in the 3000 years of its
history has lasted longer than the whole history of the United States, and
where most of the provinces one visits have a population larger than the largest
European country.

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Now it seems to me that for much of the post-war period Japan has been so preoccupied with rebuilding its economy and reasserting a political identity, that it has been overlooked. That the fundamental issue in relations between Japan and the United States has to do not with whether Japan lifts this or that restriction on this or that American import, but really how one conceives the world economy under present circumstances. Now our honorary chairman would be mortified if he heard me declaim on the political economy of the world, but since he has horne in on my field, I feel entitled to step in, especially as surviving in the private sector has obliged me to learn things I didn't know as Secretary of State.

We all live in a world in which we talk about free trade, but in the nineteenth century, when the free trade theory developed, there was only one country that was technologically advanced and which, moreover, possessed a monopoly on energy which was then largely coal. In time other countries developed behind the walls, but even at the turn of the century, there were only three or four industrialized countries of similar cultures, similar wages, and similar approaches to the word "economy." There was a coal standard that imposed domestic discipline and which forced governments, whether they liked to or not, to conform to, social spending, social employment, and other domestic policies to some criteria that had automatic consequences. None of this is true today. We have 30 plus countries all seeking to maximize their exports simultaneously, and under the debt rescheduling programs, there is another group of countries that is being asked to cut their imports simultaneously. Those countries have vastly different cultures, wage scales, and rules for their government. There is no coal standard, but a rotating system which creates at least a temptation for manipulation to the national advantage. That is a different world from the one in which free trade developed. Somebody is bound to get hurt. Somebody is bound to benefit and somebody is bound to suffer, and when that happens in countries with democratic forms of government,

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or even in autocratic governments sensitive to public opinion, as many autocratic governments are, ~~It is inevitable that there will be demands to prevent these penalties from being felt. Protectionism is, therefore, inherent -- if you will an inherent danger or if you will an inherent necessity, depending on how governments react to the present situation.~~

I mention all of this because in our relations with Japan, it is senseless to concentrate on one or two items and to attempt to bring about a change in a balance of trade. Through specific negotiations of individual issues -- (1) because, on the American side, it means that the industries asking for help are usually the weakest and the least competitive, the ones that least lend themselves to a far side of policy. And on the Japanese side, because the fact seems to me to be that the Japanese are operating the existing system with the greatest sense of strategic purpose, and that we are not dealing with a series of isolated acts but with a national strategy, and that can be dealt with only within the context of some global arrangement. And that gets us to a cultural problem. A global arrangement with Japan is inhibited for a variety of reasons, among which the most important seems to me to be a big cultural gap.

When I became Security Advisor, I was saddled with negotiating a subject for which my qualification was total ignorance, namely, and I was saddled with it because President Nixon had promised to deal with it in the campaign. It was to establish textile quotas for the protection of our textile industry. I will not go into the details of this except to make one point. My ignorance was compounded by the fact that I thought all I had to do was to find the appropriate Japanese minister and come to some understanding with him to determine what compromises needed to be made. It took me many years to discover that there is no appropriate Japanese minister who can make a decision. Unless they want to. There is a huge difference in the Japanese culture and in ours.

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In our culture, a minister is somebody who is authorized to decide. In the Japanese culture, a minister, even a prime minister, represents a consensus. He cannot announce it unilaterally. The Japanese system works more slowly and more subtly than ours. But Japanese negotiators have no authority to settle without the approval of the various factions represented in the liberal democratic party. And a Japanese prime minister confronting an importuning American president has a real dilemma between Japanese courtesy and Japanese reality. He may, therefore, promise something that only represents the intention of working within the consensus that we interpret as meaning that he will go home and order it done, which is beyond the capacity of any Japanese prime minister. So to conduct a negotiation is culturally difficult. It seems to me, however, that there can be no solution to the so-called Japanese trade problem by engaging in sector-by-sector negotiations which make it impossible to create a consensus in Japan, and which will only create the temptation to liquidate the sector under discussion and go into some other sector. There has to be some global approach to the nature of the monetary system and exchange *it* to the level of acceptable deficit for the United States. It is wrong to insist *that* there has to be an exact balance. There cannot be an exact balance between us and Japan. We have to show understanding for the need of Japan to export. They have to show an understanding for the impossibility of permitting ourselves to be industrialized. However the process operates. And, therefore, some comprehensive trade negotiation, setting some overall targets as part of a global detailed negotiation must take place *fairly* soon. *Otherwise* *negotiations* will become a big issue and in that case, it will not be guided by some philosophy of world order, but by the demands of injured industries and every sector will want *it* share.

The second point in relations with Japan will be the certainty that within the next 20 years, Japan will play a political role, somewhat commensurate with its economic strength. In a country with a history like Japan's, it is naive to believe that that role will be inevitably or even probably as an

auxiliary of American forces in the far east. The next 20 years will almost surely see the emergence of specific Japanese purposes. The issue of whether Japan should develop armed forces of its own, larger than now exist, is, of course, a decision that the Japanese will make. What we as Americans must not do is turn it into an American pressure. Whatever forces Japan develops will surely develop for reasons of Japanese security, defined by the Japanese and not by the pentagon. And, while I repeat that we are in no position to impede it, I see no compelling American interest to accelerate it. I do see a compelling American interest to begin early on discussions of how we see our roles in Asia and in the world when Japan begins to pursue a more active foreign policy.

Let me say a few words about China in the same two categories. That is to say, in the economic field and in the foreign policy. China has always had a history peculiar to itself. The size of its territory, the scale of its efforts have always given it a unique not always a global significance. At this moment, it is engaged in an enterprise for which there is no precedent in history. The European countries developed in packages of 25 million people at a time, which was roughly the population of Britain and Germany and France when they started on industrialization. And those packages were separated by intervals of a generation. China is attempting to move forward a billion people in a fifth of the time from a less promising technological beginning than Europe. Nobody has ever undertaken such an effort. Secondly, for China, modernization represents a traumatic event. Through all of its history, China has been culturally unique. Modernization seeks to make it like all other states. That is a spiritual adventure that goes against the grain of many. Third, no communist society has ever shifted from central planning to a more-or-less incentive-based system. That, incidentally, in my view, has much less to do with capitalism than with decentralization. But when you shift like this, and that is still the Soviet Union's dilemma, you attack an unenclosed beaucracy whose purposes

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depended on the central planning mechanism and you attack managers that have a
totally different cast of mind than incentive for western-style-based managers.
In a centrally planned economy, the managers have no significant interest in
causes because the ministry supplies their material and there are rewards for
employing a large number of workers, since it solves political problems. They
have no conception of markets because some other ministry picks up the product
and distributes it. All they're interested in is shoddy quantity.

In an incentive based economy, they have to change their whole pattern
of thinking. So you have the paradox in China, that
Then you have, in a way, a
coalition between traditionalists who want to keep China unique and Maoists
who want to keep China under central planning. You have a society in which the
contrary of the usual revolution occurs where
the status quo,
are restless and the top ranks that like to stay unchanged.

In China, exactly the opposite is true. It's the top echelon that pushes
the changes and many vested interests further down whose resistance is being
overcome. It is, therefore, a vast adventure in which one cannot expect a
straight-line progress and in which it is important to understand the destination
and the complexities. I meet many American businessmen who think all they need
to do is to find the right person to brief in China to get their pet project
accepted. The issue is more complicated, because the Chinese leaders are
simultaneously engaged in introducing modern technology, modern ways of thinking,
handling their political problems, identifying the resistance, and when they
don't make a decision, it is not lack of understanding, but either lack of time,
lack of priorities, or the necessity of pacing the effort. And yet, I think, it
is a heroic effort. It needs our support and on the future of which a great
deal depends.

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Let me make two or three comments on Chinese. One is always asked, will China go back to the Soviet Union. I can tell you one thing from my personal experience. The most sophisticated analysts of international affairs that I have met, the most unsentimental, the most cold-blooded, the steadiest, sit not on our policy planning staff, but in Beijing. China did not survive for three thousand years as an independent entity without having developed the art of an extraordinary analysis of the international scene. Therefore, there are, in my view, theoretically two dangers in line with Soviet relations. One, that the Chinese and Soviets become too friendly with each other and confront us with a united bloc. I do not spend sleepless nights on that prospect because the Chinese know that the frontier of four thousand miles will not get shorter no matter how many toasts they drink with the Soviets, and you will notice it is we who drink the toasts, not the Chinese.

The Chinese say there are three obstacles with Sino-Soviet relations -- Soviet troops in the Chinese border, Soviet troops in Afghanistan, and Vietnamese troops in Cambodia. One of those must be solved, they say, before relations improve. In other words, they deal with facts, not sentiment. The second danger is that relations will become extremely tense between the Soviet Union and China. That is a danger because while people, like myself, who are in a minority, but for political reasons believe that the United States cannot permit China to be militarily overrun by the Soviet Union, whether or not we have an alliance with China. And I believe that because the world balance of power would fundamentally change if that happened. You know and I know that many Americans would ask where there is a legal document that obliges us to do this. And it would start a searing debate in this country.

But I do not believe there is any immediate danger of a Soviet attack on China. The real danger will come ten to fifteen years down the road when Chinese modernization has succeeded and when the Soviet Union has to decide

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whether it can permit it to go on and face a permanently strong China on its border. I don't know what the Soviet Union will decide at that moment. I'm not predicting that they will do anything. I am predicting that it is a problem and we and the Chinese must think about it. And that means that the intervening years must be spent on something other than economic questions and cultural exchange, but on some common strategic discussions. Not on military issues, but on views of the world and what we consider essential. A political dialogue not only an economic dialogue. Now it is fair to say that this dialogue is impeded in part because of the collapse in this country of the bipartisan consensus. And the discussion with Japan is made equally difficult because the idea of an American national interest has fallen into disrepute. Every new administration that comes into office promises a reassessment of existing policies. Put yourself in the position of others who have to deal with us and who keep confronting new American presidents and secretary of state who proudly announce that their predecessors did it all wrong. How can one have a stability of expectation? How can one build an assured policy? How can one avoid that countries conduct their foreign policies in an attempt to become free of us? So nothing is more important than this restoration of a bipartisan consensus. I don't mean by this a compromise between extreme points of view, but a genuine analysis of a vision of the future.

When I was a young professor, we use to have seminars on arms control at Harvard and MIT. None of us ever thought we'd wind up in government and we, therefore, addressed the middle term future. Since under the impact of many events, including the Vietnam War, those who should chart our middle term future have, in my view, been divided between job applicants who are no different from any other political aspirant and who write position papers for candidates for short term purposes, and professional protestors who spend all their ingenuity trying to prove that whatever any government does of whichever party is forever rotten and second rate. And some of these

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divisions go into non-intellectual circles as well. This seems to me to be a
fundamental challenge and this brings me back to the man in whose name honors
this series.

That generation which grew up before World War I knew a serenity of life
and a certainty of values which gave them the inward security to retain their
faith in their country and in the future of freedom in the face of many short-
comings and many difficulties. They supplied a nucleus for presidents of both
parties, a reserve overdrawn and the issue of partisanship quite literally could
never cross one's mind when one dealt with Ellsworth Bunker. As I said, it was
my great privilege to serve with him. And I think what he stood for is perhaps
best expressed, at least to me, in a quote by a great German statesman who is
usually in this country pictured wearing a steel helmet, but who, in fact, was
probably the subtlest and most complex statesman of the second half of the
nineteenth century. And he said the following, "The great events of history
do not descend upon us with a regularity of a railroad schedule. No, history
advances in spurts but with a resistible force. Only those paralyzed by their
own cleaverness identifies statemanship with fishing in troubled waters. All
that is given to the statesman is to listen prayerfully, whether he can discern
the footsteps of God amidst the flux of history, and grasp a tiny corner of
God's mantle as he goes by, and walk along with it for a few steps." When one
dealt with Ellsworth Bunker, one had defense, though he would be the last to
claim it, that he had discerned the footsteps of God and yet got out of the
mantle for a few steps along the way.

Thank you very much.

The Asia Foundation
Ellsworth Bunker Memorial Lecture

by Henry A. Kissinger
San Francisco

February 10, 1986

It is a great honor for me to be the inaugural lecturer for The Asia Foundation's series named after one of the great human beings and great diplomats I have known, a man I respected and loved. I have been threatening audiences to read to them from my memoirs for a long time, and I think I can do no better than to read two passages about Ellsworth because I think they sum up what his friends and associates felt about him and what he meant to them.

The first concerns the time in 1972 when I arrived in Saigon with the peace plan that had been discussed with the North Vietnamese. The second concerns two years later -- an episode in Jerusalem when Ellsworth was special negotiator at the Geneva conference. Let me first read a paragraph or two from the part about my arrival in Saigon.

"Ellsworth Bunker always had a soothing effect in a crisis. When one saw at the foot of the ramp that tall, erect, thin figure, immaculately dressed, as if no suit of his would dare rumple even in the tropical heat of Saigon, one knew there was no risk of failure from either excess of impetuosity or lack of dedication. Ellsworth was one of our great diplomats. He came

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to government service relatively late in life after a
distinguished business career; he had no need to prove anything
to himself or to others. His ambition was to make a
contribution to the foreign policy of his country, whose
well-being he identified with the security and hope of all free
peoples. His values were reflected not in self-serving
rhetoric but in the matter-of-fact performance of a high
standard of duty.

"He was a quintessential American in the optimism that made him appear youthful even then, in his late seventies. For five years he had been in Saigon, serving two presidents of different parties and earning their unqualified trust and admiration. Through the worst of our domestic travails, he never flinched. He supported his government on television and in print when others, with far greater responsibility for our involvement, were running for cover. --- He had stood by the government to which he was accredited, defending it within official councils and in public against the charge that it was the principal obstacle to peace. --- He had nurses matters to this point; like all of us, he yearned for peace with honor. No one who knew him could doubt that he would interpret the requirements of honor strictly."

The second was two years later, in 1974, in Jerusalem. (There
is some overlap because this passage is from the second volume.)

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"May 11th was Ellsworth Bunker's eightieth birthday. He had defended American honor and interest nobly and unselfishly in Saigon for five years during the most searing period of the Vietnam war. He had served in the face of public calumny, governmental hesitations and ungrateful allies, reporting the facts as he saw them, living strictly by the maxims of duty and service that inspired his career. Bunker knew that when the passions were spent, the country would be left, and that we would be judged not by how well we registered the emotions of the moment, but how steadfastly we upheld the lasting principles of the United States. A lanky, taciturn New Englander, he would have been embarrassed at such grandiloquent interpretations, but, in fact, he incarnated them. He was given controversial assignments like the Panama negotiations because he was unafraid of defending his beliefs and because critics could challenge his conclusions, but it was impossible to question his integrity, and he had an instinct for fundamentals.

"Now in the midst of tensions, discouragements and beginning doubts of the (Syrian) shuttle, he united us all at a surprise part that Ambassador Keating gave him at the King David Hotel. Israeli and American negotiators and staff made a display of unanimity to pay tribute to our colleague. I proposed a toast to the effect that Bunker represented what was best and most permanent in America. He epitomized where we stand as a people and as a society. It was an attempt to give us all courage for

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the exertions still ahead and to remind ourselves that we were,
with all our frustrations, privileged to be on a mission of
hope and peace."

When I see current descriptions of foreign policy that assert
that only pettiness and selfishness motivate the policy maker,
or when I see movie renditions of great crises, then I do not
recognize such figures as McCloy or Acheson or Ellsworth
Bunker. In the crises in the movies and on television, busy
people run around, rip up the telephone, throw memoranda, talk
at the top of their voice and compete for attention.

I have news for the movies and television and the critics. In
great crises, most people are in the foxholes. And only a few
are out there willing to take responsibility, and they do so
quietly, matter of factly, and usually unasked, and they have
very little competition. Ellsworth Bunker was one of those on
whom any president or secretary of state could always count,
but who would never obtrude. He understood that it is the
nature of a crisis that the pros and cons are fairly evenly
divided, or else it would have been dealt with by some
subordinate. The stakes are likely to be quite high or else
there would be no need for great worry. There are bound to be
risks and the risks stem in part from the lack of information.

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In fact, there is an inverse relationship between the ability to affect events and the information on which to act. When the scope for action is greatest, information is at a minimum.

When knowledge is greatest, the scope for action has frequently disappeared. In crises, as in policy making generally, the challenge is to act on the basis of assumptions that cannot be proved when they are made. All of high policy involves, therefore, a moral act: not the smart morality taught in some academic disciplines that seems to imply that there is some sort of cook-book recipe for every crisis, but the more difficult one of taking the responsibility for a conviction that can have profound consequences without asking for a demonstration of its consequences or finding the certainty for these consequences. By the time one can be sure, it is frequently either too late to affect events or the potential penalty will have increased.

I am not suggesting for a moment that action is always better than inaction, or that one should act recklessly simply on the basis of intuition. Allied with character and courage must be judgment, and Ellsworth belongs to a small group of senior people like Acheson or David Bruce or John McCloy. They were a comfort to any president, to any secretary of state, because they did not seek anything for themselves. And one of our national problems, --- frankly --- is that I do not believe that we breed in our education or in our formative experiences quite that degree of certainty, quite that confidence in

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America, and quite that spirit of public service that he represented. I will get back to that theme in my conclusions. But now I will try to apply some of what I have said, not to Asia as such, which is a geographic concept whose various parts are as different from each other as it is from the United States, but to some issues in relations between the United States and Japan and between the United States and China.

One of the biggest challenges of American foreign policy in the post-war period has been the lack of any real foreign policy experience for our society. Until the end of World War II, the United States was, as is well known, isolated from world affairs. Even after that, we had such a preponderance of military and economic power that policy making really consisted of the establishment of priorities and the identification of problems which we could then overwhelm with resources. It is really only in the last 20 years that we have become aware of the fact that foreign policy, for us, must be an unending process, that there will never be a terminal point at which we can say that our efforts can cease. And we still have great difficulty understanding that not every other society is a miniature America and that there are significant cultural, historical and political differences that separate us from other countries. These differences exist in many parts of the world, but certainly in the case of a society like Japan that lived in isolation for over a thousand years and has a culture so peculiar to itself that it believes it can adapt to any

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change in circumstance without losing its identity. And they
exist in the case of China, where one is always awed by the
fact that most of its dynasties in the 3000 years of its
history have lasted longer than the whole history of the United
States and where most of the provinces one visits have a
population larger than the largest European country.

It seems to me that, for most of the post-war period Japan has
been so preoccupied with rebuilding its economy and reasserting
a political identity, the fundamental issue in relations
between Japan and the United States has been overlooked. It
has to do not with whether Japan lifts this or that restriction
on this or that American import, but how we conceive the world
economy under present circumstances.

We all live in a world in which we talk about free trade, but
in the nineteenth century, when the free-trade theory
developed, there was only one country that was technologically
advanced and which, moreover, possessed a monopoly on energy
which was then largely coal. In time other countries developed
behind tariff walls, but even at the turn of the century, there
were only three or four industrialized countries, all of which
had similar cultures, similar wage rates and similar approaches
to the world economy. There was a gold standard that imposed
domestic discipline and which forced governments, whether they
liked it or not, to conform tax, social spending, employment,

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None of this is true today. We have 30 or more countries all
seeking to maximize their exports simultaneously, and under the
debt rescheduling programs, there is another group of countries
that is being asked to cut its imports simultaneously. These
countries have vastly different cultures, wage scales, and
roles for their governments. There is no gold standard, but a
floating system which creates at least a temptation for
manipulation to the national advantage. That is a different
world from the world in which free trade developed. Somebody
is bound to get hurt. Somebody is bound to benefit and
somebody is bound to suffer, and when that happens in countries
with democratic forms of government or even in autocratic
governments sensitive to public opinion, as many autocratic
governments are, it is inevitable that there will be demands to
prevent these hardships from being felt. Protectionism is,
therefore inherent -- if you will, an inherent danger or an
inherent necessity, depending how governments react to the
present situation.

I mention all of this because in our relations with Japan, it
is senseless to concentrate on one or two items and to attempt
to bring about a change in a balance of trade through specific
negotiations on individual issues. In the first place, on the
American side, the industries asking for help are usually the

weakest and the least competitive, the ones that least lend
themselves to a farsighted policy. And on the Japanese side,
it seems to me that they are operating the existing system with
the greatest sense of strategic purpose, and that we are not
dealing with a series of isolated acts but with a national
strategy which can be dealt with only within the context of
some global arrangement. And that gets us to a cultural
problem. A global arrangement with Japan is inhibited for a
variety of reasons, among which the most important seems to me
to be the cultural gap.

When I became National Security Adviser, I was saddled with
negotiating a matter because President Nixon had promised to
deal with it in the campaign and for which my qualification was
total ignorance. It was to establish import quotas for the
protection of our textile industry. I will not go into the
details of this except to make one point. My ignorance was
compounded by the fact that I thought all I had to do was to
find the appropriate Japanese minister and come to some
understanding with him to determine what compromises needed to
be made. It took me many years to discover that there is no
appropriate Japanese minister who can make a decision. Unless
they want to.

There is a huge difference in the Japanese culture and in
ours. In our culture, a minister is somebody who is authorized
to decide. In Japanese culture, a minister, even a prime

-10-

minister, represents a consensus. He cannot decide unilaterally. The Japanese system works more slowly and subtly than ours. Japanese negotiators have no authority to settle without the approval of the various factions represented in the Liberal Democratic Party. And a Japanese prime minister confronting an importuning American president has a real dilemma between Japanese courtesy and Japanese reality. He may, therefore, promise something that only represents the intention of working within the consensus. Yet we interpret his promise as meaning that he will go home and order it done, which is beyond the capacity of any Japanese prime minister. So to conduct a negotiation is culturally difficult.

It seems to me, however, that there can be no solution to the so-called Japanese trade problem by engaging in sector-by-sector negotiations which make it impossible to create a consensus in Japan and which will only create the temptation for them to shift resources from the sector under discussion to some other sector. There has to be a global approach to the nature of the monetary system and exchange rates and to establishing an acceptable level for the American trade deficit. It is wrong to insist that there has to be an exact balance. There cannot be an exact balance between us and Japan. They have to show understanding for the impossibility of our permitting ourselves to be de-industrialized. Some comprehensive trade negotiation, establishing some overall goals must take place fairly soon. Otherwise protectionism

CYJ

-11-

will become a major issue and will not be guided by some
philosophy of world order, but by the demands of injured
industries, and every sector will want its share.

The second point I want to make about our relations with Japan
is the certainty that within the next 20 years, Japan will play
a political role somewhat commensurate with its economic
strength. In a country with a history like Japan's, it is
naive to believe that that role will be inevitably or even
probably as an auxiliary of American purposes. The next 20
years will almost surely see the emergence of specific Japanese
purposes. The issue of whether Japan should develop large
armed forces of its own is, of course, a decision that the
Japanese will make. What we as Americans must not do is
pressure them. Whatever forces Japan develops will surely be
for reasons of Japanese security, defined by the Japanese and
not by the Pentagon. And while I repeat that we are in no
position to impede the Japanese policy process, I see no
compelling American interest in accelerating it. I do see,
however, a compelling American interest to begin discussion
with Japan on how we see our roles in Asia and in the world
when Japan begins to pursue a more active foreign policy.

Let me say a few words about China in the same two categories,
that is, in the economic and foreign policy fields.

[Y]

-12-

China has always had a history peculiar to itself. The size of its territory and the scale of its efforts have always given it a unique if not always a global significance. At this moment, it is engaged in an enterprise for which there is no precedent in history. The European countries developed in packages of 25 million people at a time, which was roughly the population of Britain and Germany and France when they started industrialization. And those packages were separated by intervals of a generation. China is attempting to move forward a billion people in a fifth of the time from a less promising technological beginning than Europe. No nation has ever undertaken such an effort.

Secondly, for China, modernization represents a traumatic event. Through all of its history, China has been culturally unique. Modernization seeks to make it like all other states, that is, a spiritual adventure that goes against the grain of many Chinese.

Third, no communist society has ever shifted from central planning to a more-or-less incentive-based system. That, incidentally, in my view, has much less to do with capitalism than with decentralization. But when you shift like this, and that is still the Soviet Union's dilemma, you attack an entrenched bureaucracy whose prerequisites depend on the central planning mechanism. Moreover you attack managers who have a totally different cast of mind than western managers.

-13-

In a centrally planned economy, managers have no significant interest in costs because the ministry supplies their materiel, and there are rewards for employing a large number of workers because doing so solves political problems. They have no conception of markets because some other ministry picks up the product and distributes it. All they're interested in is shoddy quantity. In an incentive based economy, on the other hand, they would have to change their whole pattern of thinking.

So there is a paradox in China that there exists, in a way, a coalition between traditionalists who want to keep China unique and Maoists who want to keep China under central planning. It is a society experiencing the contrary of the usual revolution when it's usually the lower ranks that are restless and the top ranks that like to stay unchanged. In China, it's the top echelon that is forcing the changes and it is the many vested interests down in the power structure whose resistance is being overcome. It is, therefore, a vast adventure in which one cannot expect progress in a straight line and in which it is important to understand both the destination and the complexities.

I meet many American businessmen who think all they need to do is to find the right person to brief in China to get their pet project accepted. The issue is more complicated, because the Chinese leaders are simultaneously engaged in introducing modern technology and modern ways of thinking, in handling

-14-

their political problems, and in identifying the resistance.
When they don't make a decision, it is not lack of
understanding, but either lack of time, lack of priorities, or
the necessity of pacing the effort. And yet, I think it is a
heroic effort on the future of which a great deal depends. It
needs our support.

Let me make two or three comments on Chinese foreign policy.
One is always asked whether China will go back to the Soviet
Union. I can tell you one thing from my personal experience.
The most sophisticated analysts of international affairs that I
have met, the most unsentimental, the most cold-blooded, the
steadiest, sit not on our policy planning staffs, but in
Beijing. China did not survive for three thousand years as an
independent entity without having developed the art of an
extraordinary analysis of the international scene.

There are, in my view, theoretically two dangers in Sino-Soviet
relations. One is that the Chinese and Soviets become too
friendly with each other and confront us with a united bloc. I
do not spend sleepless nights on that prospect because the
Chinese know that the frontier of four thousand miles will not
get shorter no matter how many toasts they drink with the
Soviets. The Chinese say there are three obstacles to
Sino-Soviet relations -- Soviet troops at the Chinese border,
Soviet troops in Afghanistan, and Vietnamese troops in

CYD

-15-

Cambodia. These must be solved, they say, before relations improve. In other words, they deal with facts, not sentiment.

The second danger is that relations will become extremely tense between the Soviet Union and China. That is a danger perceived by people, like myself, who are in a minority but for geopolitical reasons believe that the United States cannot permit China to be overrun militarily by the Soviet Union, whether or not we have an alliance with China. And I believe that because the world balance of power would fundamentally change if that happened. You know and I know that many Americans would ask where there is a legal document that obliges us to do this. And it would start a searing debate in this country. I do not believe there is any immediate danger of a Soviet attack on China.

The real danger will come ten to fifteen years down the road when Chinese modernization has succeeded and when the Soviet Union has to decide whether it can permit it to go on and whether it will to face a permanently strong China on its border. I don't know what the Soviet Union will decide at that moment. I'm not predicting that they will do anything. I am predicting that it is a problem we and the Chinese must think about. And that means that the intervening years must be spent on something other than economic questions and cultural exchange, but on some common strategic discussions; not just on military issues, but on global issues and on what we both

-16-

consider vital interests; a political dialogue, not just an
economic dialogue.

It is fair to say that this dialogue is impeded in part because
of the collapse in this country of the bipartisan consensus.
And the discussion with Japan is made equally difficult because
the idea of an American national interest has fallen into
disrepute. Every new administration that comes into office
promises a reassessment of existing policies. Put your self in
the position of others who have to deal with us and who keep
confronting new American presidents and secretaries of state
who proudly announce that their predecessors did it all wrong.
How can one have a stability of expectation? How can one build
an assured policy? How can one avoid that countries conduct
their foreign policies in an attempt to become free of us? So
nothing is more important than this restoration of a bipartisan
consensus. I don't mean by this a compromise between extreme
points of view, but a genuine analysis of a vision of the
future.

When I was a young professor, we used to have seminars on arms
control at Harvard and MIT. None of us ever thought we'd wind
up in government and we therefore addressed the middle-term
future. Under the impact of many events, including the Vietnam
war, those who should chart our middle-term future have, in my
view, been divided between job applicants who are no different
from any other political aspirant and who write position papers

[Y]

-17-

for candidates for short term purposes, and professional
protestors who spend all their ingenuity trying to prove that
whatever any government of whichever party does is forever
rotten and second rate. And some of these divisions go into
non-intellectual circles as well. This seems to me to be a
fundamental challenge, and this brings me back to the man whose
name honors this series.

That generation which grew up before World War I knew a
serenity of life and a certainty of values which gave them the
inward security to retain their faith in their country and in
the future of freedom in the face of many shortcomings and many
difficulties. They supplied a nucleus for presidents of both
parties and a reservoir for them to draw on. The issue of
partisanship quite literally could never cross one's mind when
one dealt with Ellsworth Bunker.

As I said earlier, it was my great privilege to serve with
him. And I think what he stood for is perhaps best expressed,
at least to me, in a quote from a great German statesman,
Bismarck, who is usually in this country pictured wearing a
steel helmet, but who, in fact, was probably the subtlest and
most complex statesman of the second half of the nineteenth
century. And he said the following: "The great events of
history do not descend upon us with the regularity of a
railroad schedule. No. History advances in spurts but with a
nearly irresistible force. Only those paralyzed by their own

-18-

cleverness identify statemanship with fishing in troubled waters. All that is given to the statesman is to listen prayerfully whether he can discern the footsteps of God amidst the flux of history and grasp a tiny corner of God's mantle as He goes by and walk along with it for a few steps."

When one dealt with Ellsworth Bunker, one had the sense, though he would be the last to claim it, that he had discerned the footsteps of God and he had gotten hold of the mantle for a few steps along the way.

MAR 21 1986.

THE ASIA FOUNDATION

550 Kearny Street, San Francisco, CA 94108

March 17, 1986

Ms. Chris Vick
Kissinger Associates
350 Park Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10022

Dear Chris:

Enclosed are:

1. The transcript of Henry's February 10 speech here. The secretary who did the transcript had some trouble getting it right. The handwritten changes result from my listening to the tape.

2. The transcript showing my editing.

3. A clean version of the edited transcript. This is the version which I hope Henry will approve for publication. I am sending you the other two merely so you (and he if he wishes) can see how I got there.

We have had many requests for the text. I hope he will soon have a chance to go over it so that we can get it out.

It was a grand occasion, a wonderful tribute to Ellsworth Bunker, and -- especially on second or third reading -- an excellent speech. It is in my view entirely worthy of publication, and I hope the orator agrees.

Thanks again for all your help. It is always a pleasure to work with you.

Enclosure: 3

Telephone: (415) 982-4640
Mail: P.O. Box 3223
San Francisco, CA 94119-3223
Cable: ASIAF SAN FRANCISCO
Telex: 278726
ASIAF SANFRANCISCO

KISSINGER TALK ELLSWORTH BUNKER MEMORIAL LECTURE FEBRUARY 10, 1986

by Henry A. Kissinger
San Francisco
February 10, 1986
Mr. Chairman, Carol, Rudy, Ladies and Gentlemen

It is, however, indeed a great honor for me to be the inaugural lecturer
for a series named after one of the great human beings and great diplomats I have
known a man I respected and loved. I have been threatening audiences to read to
them from my memoirs for a long time, and the limitation is that usually the
room is required before I could get through one volume which takes about three
days. Even if I dropped the word "I", which shortens it considerably. But I
think I can do no better than to read two passages from my memoirs about
Ellsworth in which he, of course, checked me in dropping the word "I", because
I think they sum up what is friends and associates felt about him and what he
meant to them. The first was when I arrived in Saigon with the peace plan that
had been discussed with the North Vietnamese. The second concerns two years
later -- an episode in Jerusalem when Ellsworth was special negotiator to the

-2-

[L.C]

"Ellsworth Bunker always had a soothing effect in a crisis. When one saw at the foot of the ramp that tall, erect, thin figure, immaculately dressed, as if no suit would dare rumple even in the tropical heat of Saigon, one knew there was no risk of failure [either from] excess of impetuosity or from lack of dedication. Ellsworth was one of our great diplomats. He came to government service relatively late in life after a distinguished business career. He had no need to prove anything to himself or to others. His ambition was to make a contribution to the foreign policy of his country, whose well-being he identified with the security and hope of all free peoples. His values were reflected not in rhetoric but in the matter-of-fact performance of a high standard of duty.

"He was a quintessential American in the optimism that made him appear youthful even then, in his late seventies. For five years he had been in Saigon, serving two presidents of different parties and earning their unqualified trust and admiration. Through the worst of our domestic travails he never flinched. He supported his government on television, and in print when others, with far greater responsibility for our involvement, were running for cover. He had stood by the government to which he was accredited, defending it with an official councils and in public against the charge that it was the principle obstacle to peace. He had nurses to this point; Like all of us, he yearned for peace with honor. No one who knew him could doubt that he would interpret the requirements of honor with the utmost strictness."

The second was two years later in 1974 in Jerusalem. There is some overlap because the conference was part of the second conference.

"May 11th was Ellsworth Bunker's eightieth birthday. He had defended (this is from a different volume so there is a little overlap). He had defended American honor and interest nobly and unselfishly in Saigon for

-3-

[LC]

five years during the most searing period of the Vietnam war. He had served in the face of public calumny, governmental hesitations and ungrateful allies, reporting the facts as he saw them, living strictly by the maxims of duty and service that inspired his career. Bunker knew that when the passions were spent, the country would be left, and that we would be judged not by how well we registered the emotions of the moment, but how steadfastly we upheld the lasting principles of the United States. In Lanley, a New Englandman, he would have been embarrassed at such grandiloquent interpretations, but, in fact, he, even commented, was given controversial assignments like the Panama negotiations because he was unafraid of defending his beliefs and because critics could challenge his conclusions, but it was impossible to question his integrity, and he had an instinct for fundamentals.

"Now in the midst of tensions, discouragements and beginning doubts of the (Syrian) shuttle, this was during the Syrian shuttle, he united us all at a surprise party that Ambassador Keating gave him at the King David Hotel. Israeli and American negotiators and staff made an array of display of unanimity to play tribute to our colleague. I proposed a toast to the effect that Bunker represented what was best and most permanent in America. He epitomized where we stand as a people and as a society. It was an attempt to give us all courage for the excursions to end and to remind ourselves that we were with all our frustrations, privileged to be on a mission of hope and peace." This is what Ellsworth Bunker meant to all of us who had the privilege of working with him.

When I see descriptions of foreign policy in the new criticism, that exerts that only petty, inessence, and selfishness motivate the policy maker, or when I see movie renditions of great crises, then I do not recognize such figures as McCloy, Acheson, or Ellsworth Bunker. In the movies and on television, in crisis, busy people run around, rip up the telephone, flow, throw memoranda, talk at the top of their voice and compete for attention. I have news for the movies

-4-

[LC]

and television and the critics. In great crises, most people are in the fox-holes. And only a few are out there willing to take responsibility, and they do so quietly, matter of factly, and usually unasked, and they have very little competition. Ellsworth Bunker was one of those on whom any president or secretary of state could always count, but who would never obtrude himself. He understood that it is the nature of a crisis that the pros and cons are fairly evenly divided, or else it would have been dealt with by some subordinate.

The stakes are likely to be quite high or else there would be no need for great worry. There are bound to be risks and the risks should be little knowledge.

In fact, there is an inborn relationship between the ability to effect events and the knowledge on which to act. When the scope for action is greatest, the knowledge is at a minimum. When the knowledge is great, the scope for action has frequently disappeared. In crisis, and in policy making, the challenge is to act on the basis of assumptions that cannot be proved when they are made. All of high policy involves, therefore, a moral act: Not the smart morality taught in some academic disciplines that seems to imply that there is some sort of cook-book recipe for every crisis, but the more difficult one of taking the responsibility for a conviction that can have profound consequences without asking for a demonstration of its consequences or finding the certainty for these consequences, within the diplomat or the statesman, because by the time one can be sure, it is frequently either too late to effect events or the penalty will have increased.

I am not suggesting for a moment that action is always better than inaction, or that one should act recklessly simply on the basis of intuition. Allied with character and courage must be judgment, and Ellsworth belongs to a small group of senior people likeACHISON or David Bruce or John McCloy, and, of course, he, they were a comfort to any president, to any secretary of state, because they did not seek anything for themselves. And one, frankly, of our national problems, is that I do not believe that we quitebreach in our education or in our formative

-5-

[LC]

that experiences quite a degree of certainty, quite that confidence in America, and quite that spirit of public service that he represented. I will get back to that in my conclusions, but your distinguished chairman assigned to myself a slightly different topic, as you can see. But being of Germanic background, I am extremely disciplined and so I will try to apply some of what I have said, not to Asia as such, which is a geographic concept and between its various parts are from each other as different from itself as it is from the United States, but to some issues in relations between the United States and Japan and the United States and China, before I return to my original topic.

One of the biggest challenges of American foreign policy in the post-war period has been the lack of any real foreign policy experience for our society. Until the end of World War II, the United States was, as far as we well know, isolated from world affairs. Even after that, we had such a preponderance of military and economic power that policy making really consisted of the establishment of priorities and the identification of problems which we could then overwhelm with resources. It is really in the last 20 years that we have become aware of the fact that foreign policy, for us, must be an unending process, that there will never be a terminal point at which we can say that our efforts can cease. And we will have great difficulty understanding that not every other society is a miniature America and the cultural, historical and political differences that separate us from other countries. I think it is true in many parts of the world, but it is certainly true when we deal with a society like Japan that lived in isolation for over a thousand years, and has a culture so peculiar to itself that it believes it can adapt to any change in circumstance without losing its identity. Or with a country like China, where one is always awed by the fact that many of its dynasties, most of its dynasties in the 3000 years of its history have lasted longer than the whole history of the United States, and where most of the provinces one visits have a population larger than the largest European country.

-6-

[L.C]

Now It seems to me that, for much of the post-war period Japan has been so preoccupied with rebuilding its economy and reasserting a political identity, that it has been overlooked. That fundamental issue in relations between Japan and the United States has to do not with whether Japan lifts this or that restriction on this or that American import, but really how one conceives the world economy under present circumstances. Now our honorary chairman should be mortified if he heard me declare on the political economy of the world, but since he has come in on my field, I feel entitled to step in especially as surviving in the private sector has obliged me to learn things I didn't know as Secretary of State.

We all live in a world in which we talk about free trade, but in the nineteenth century, when the free-trade theory developed, there was only one country that was technologically advanced and which, moreover, possessed a monopoly on energy which was then largely coal. In time other countries developed behind tariff walls, but even at the turn of the century, there were only three or four industrialized countries of similar cultures, similar wage rates and similar approaches to the word 'economy.' There was a need for a standard that imposed domestic discipline, and which forced governments, whether they liked it or not, to conform tax, social spending, social employment, and other domestic policies to some criteria that had automatic consequences. None of this is true today. We have 30 or more countries all seeking to maximize their exports simultaneously, and under the debt rescheduling programs, there is another group of countries that is being asked to cut their imports simultaneously. These countries have vastly different cultures, wage scales, and rules for their governments. There is no gold standard, but of a floating system which creates at least a temptation for manipulation to the national advantage. That is a different world from the world in which free trade developed. Somebody is bound to get hurt. Somebody is bound to benefit and somebody is bound to suffer, and when that happens in countries with democratic forms of government,

-7-

[L.C]

or even in autocratic governments sensitive to public opinion, as many autocratic governments are, it is inevitable that there will be demands to prevent these hardships penalties from being felt. Protectionism is, therefore inherent -- if you will, an inherent danger or if you will inherent necessity, depending how governments react to the present situation.

I mention all of this because in our relations with Japan, it is senseless to concentrate on one or two items and to attempt to bring about a change in a balance of trade. Through specific negotiations on individual issues, it is usually the weakest and the least competitive, the ones that least lend themselves to a far side of policy. And on the Japanese side, because the fact seems to me to be that they are operating the existing system with the greatest sense of strategic purpose, and that we are not, dealing with a series of isolated acts but with a national strategy, which can be dealt with only within the context of some global arrangement. And that gets us to a cultural problem. A global arrangement with Japan is inhibited for a variety of reasons, among which the most important seems to me to be a big cultural gap.

When I became Security Adviser, I was saddled with negotiating a subject and for which my qualification was total ignorance, namely, and I was saddled with it because President Nixon had promised to deal with it in the campaign. It was to establish export quotas for the protection of our textile industry. I will not go into the details of this except to make one point. My ignorance was compounded by the fact that I thought all I had to do was to find the appropriate Japanese minister and come to some understanding with him to determine what compromises needed to be made. It took me many years to discover that there is no appropriate Japanese minister who can make a decision. Unless they want to. There is a huge difference in the Japanese culture and in ours.

-8-

[L]

In our culture, a minister is somebody who is authorized to decide. In the Japanese culture, a minister, even a prime minister, represents a consensus. He cannot decide unilaterally. The Japanese system works more slowly and more subtly than ours. But Japanese negotiators have no authority to settle without the approval of the various factions represented in the liberal democratic party. And a Japanese prime minister confronting an importuning American president has a real dilemma between Japanese courtesy and Japanese reality. He may, therefore, promise something that only represents the intention of working within the consensus. Yet his promise means that he will go home and order it done, which is beyond the capacity of any Japanese prime minister. So to conduct a negotiation is culturally difficult. It seems to me, however, that there can be no solution to the so-called Japanese trade problem by engaging in sector-by-sector negotiations which make it impossible to create a consensus in Japan, and which will only create the temptation to liquidate the sector under discussion and go into some other sector. There has to be a global approach to the nature of the monetary system and exchange rates and to establishing an acceptable level for the American trade deficit for the United States. It is wrong to insist that there has to be an exact balance. There cannot be an exact balance between us and Japan. We have to show understanding for the need of Japan to export. They have to show an understanding for the impossibility of permitting ourselves to be industrialized. However the process operates, and, therefore, some comprehensive trade negotiation, setting some overall targets as part of a global detailed negotiation must take place fairly soon. Otherwise protectionism will become a big issue and in that case, it will not be guided by some philosophy of world order, but by the demands of injured industries, and every sector will want a share.

I want to make a point about our relations with Japan. The second point, in my opinion, will be the certainty that within the next 20 years, Japan will play a political role somewhat commensurate with its economic strength. In a country with a history like Japan's, it is naive to believe that that role will be inevitably or even probably as an

-9-

[LC]

auxiliary of American forces in the far east. The next 20 years will almost surely see the emergence of specific Japanese purposes. The issue of whether Japan should develop its armed forces of its own is, of course, a decision that the Japanese will make. What we as Americans must do is pressure them to turn it into an American pressure. Whatever forces Japan develops will surely develop for reasons of Japanese security, defined by the Japanese and not by the pentagon. And while I repeat that we are in no position to impede it, I see no compelling American interest in accelerating it. I do see, however, a compelling American interest to begin early on discussions with Japan on how we see our roles in Asia and in the world when Japan begins to pursue a more active foreign policy.

Let me say a few words about China in the same two categories. That is, in the economic field and in the foreign policy. China has always had a history peculiar to itself. The size of its territory and the scale of its efforts have always given it a unique not always a global significance. At this moment, it is engaged in an enterprise for which there is no precedent in history. The European countries developed in packages of 25 million people at a time, which was roughly the population of Britain and Germany and France when they started on industrialization. And those packages were separated by intervals of a generation. China is attempting to move forward a billion people in a fifth of the time from a less promising technological beginning than Europe. Nation has ever undertaken such an effort. Secondly, for China, modernization represents a traumatic event. Through all of its history, China has been culturally unique. Modernization seeks to make it like all other states. That is a spiritual adventure that goes against the grain of many. Third, no communist society has ever shifted from central planning to a more-or-less incentive-based system. That, incidentally, in my view, has much less to do with capitalism than with decentralization. But when you shift like this, and that is still the Soviet Union's dilemma, you attack an unclenched bureaucracy whose purposes

-11-

[L.C]

Let me make two or three comments on Chinese. One is always asked whether will China go back to the Soviet Union. I can tell you one thing from my personal experience. The most sophisticated analysts of international affairs that I have met, the most unsentimental, the most cold-blooded, the steadiest, sit not on our policy planning staff, but in Beijing. China did not survive for three thousand years as an independent entity without having developed the art of an extraordinary analysis of the international scene. Therefore, there are, in my view, theoretically two dangers in line with Soviet relations. One, that the Chinese and Soviets become too friendly with each other and confront us with a united bloc. I do not spend sleepless nights on that prospect because the Chinese know that the frontier of four thousand miles will not get shorter no matter how many toasts they drink with the Soviets, and you will notice it is we who drink the toasts, not the Chinese.

The Chinese say there are three obstacles with Sino-Soviet relations -- Soviet troops in the Chinese border, Soviet troops in Afghanistan, and Vietnamese troops in Cambodia. One of these must be solved, they say, before relations improve. In other words, they deal with facts, not sentiment. The second danger is that relations will become extremely tense between the Soviet Union and China. That is a danger because, while people, like myself, who are in a minority, but for political reasons believe that the United States cannot permit China to be [militarily overrun] by the Soviet Union, whether or not we have an alliance with China. And I believe that because the world balance of power would fundamentally change if that happened. You know and I know that many Americans would ask where there is a legal document that obliges us to do this. And it would start a searing debate in this country.

-12-

[LC]

whether it can permit it to go on and face a permanently strong China on its border. I don't know what the Soviet Union will decide at that moment. I'm not predicting that they will do anything. I am predicting that it is a problem and we and the Chinese must think about it. And that means that the intervening years must be spent on something other than economic questions and cultural exchange, but on some common strategic discussions: not just on military issues, but on views of the world and what we consider essential; political dialogue, not just an economic dialogue. Now it is fair to say that this dialogue is impeded in part because of the collapse in this country of the bipartisan consensus. And the discussion with Japan is made equally difficult because the idea of an American national interest has fallen into disrepute. Every new administration that comes into office promises a reassessment of existing policies. Put yourself in the position of others who have to deal with us and who keep confronting new American presidents and secretary of state who proudly announce that their predecessors did it all wrong. How can one have a stability of expectation? How can one build an assured policy? How can one avoid that countries conduct their foreign policies in an attempt to become free of us? So nothing is more important than this restoration of a bipartisan consensus. I don't mean by this a compromise between extreme points of view, but a genuine analysis of a vision of the future.

When I was a young professor, we use to have seminars on arms control at Harvard and MIT. None of us ever thought we'd wind up in government and we therefore addressed the middle-term future. Since under the impact of many events, including the Vietnam War, those who should chart our middle-term future have, in my view, been divided between job applicants who are no different from any other political aspirant and who write position papers for candidates for short term purposes, and professional protestors who spend all their ingenuity trying to prove that whatever any government does of whichever party is forever rotten and second rate. And some of these

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divisions go into non-intellectual circles as well. This seems to me to be a
fundamental challenge, and this brings me back to the man in whose name honors
this series.

That generation which grew up before World War I knew a serenity of life
and a certainty of values which gave them the inward security to retain their
faith in their country and in the future of freedom in the face of many short-
comings and many difficulties. They supplied a nucleus for presidents of both
parties, a reserve overdrawn on, and for them drawn on.
never cross one's mind when one dealt with Ellsworth Bunker. As I said, it was
my great privilege to serve with him. And I think what he stood for is perhaps
best expressed, at least to me, in a quote from a great German statesman who is
usually in this country pictured wearing a steel helmet, but who, in fact, was
probably the subtlest and most complex statesman of the second half of the
nineteenth century. And he said the following: "The great events of history
do not descend upon us with a regularity of a railroad schedule. No history
advances in spurts but with a resistible force. Only those paralyzed by their
own clearness identifies a statesmanship with fishing in troubled waters. All
that is given to the statesman is to listen prayerfully, whether he can discern
the footsteps of God amidst the flux of history, and grasp a tiny corner of
God's mantle as he goes by and walk along with it for a few steps." When one
dealt with Ellsworth Bunker, one had to have, though he would be the last to
claim it, that he had discerned the footsteps of God and yet got out of the
mantle for a few steps along the way.

Thank you very much.

February 10, 1986

[L.C.]

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Let me make two or three comments on Chinese foreign policy.
One is always asked whether China will go back to the Soviet
Union. I can tell you one thing from my personal experience.
The most sophisticated analysts of international affairs that I
have met, the most unsentimental, the most cold-blooded, the
steadiest, sit not on our policy planning staffs, but in
Beijing. China did not survive for three thousand years as an
independent entity without having developed the art of an
extraordinary analysis of of the international scene.

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by Henry A. Kissinger

San Francisco

February 10, 1986

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"He was a quintessential American in the optimism that made him appear youthful even then, in his late seventies. For five years he had been in Saigon, serving two presidents of different parties and earning their unqualified trust and admiration. Through the worst of our domestic travails, he never flinched. He supported his government on television and in print when others, with far greater responsibility for our involvement, were running for cover. --- He had stood by the government to which he was accredited, defending it within official councils and in public against the charge that it was the principal obstacle to peace. --- He had nurses to this point; like all of us, he yearned for peace with honor. No one who knew him could doubt that he would interpret the requirements of honor strictly."

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[Y]

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The real danger will come ten to fifteen years down the road when Chinese modernization has succeeded and when the Soviet Union has to decide whether it can permit it to go on and whether it is will to face a permanently strong China on its border. I don't know what the Soviet Union will decide at that moment. I'm not predicting that they will do anything. I am predicting that it is a problem we and the Chinese must think about. And that means that the intervening years must be spent on something other than economic questions and cultural exchange, but on some common strategic discussions; not just on military issues, but on global issues and on what we both

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