2/26/64

GOVERNMENT #180

Henry A. Kissinger

Today we will start a series of case histories in International Affairs
starting in the 19th century and working up into the contemporary period.
The point of which (what have we got here). The point is not to make historians
out of you and I must say that, whatever this course has succeeded in doing
I am sure that this is always been proved on final examinations. We have
not made historians out of you. The point is to try to show some similarities
and differences and some of the considerations that had to go into the making
of policies at different times in terms of the problems that we face.
Today, I will first make some observations about the general problems that
have to be met and then begin the discussion of the peace settlements of the
early 19th century. Then I will go on from there.

All of policy-making involves as I pointed out before the interaction
of the policy-maker and his advice, involves an element of purpose and an element
of objective condition. No statesman can invent a policy just because it
appears expedient. This is a perogative that only the Crimson has. The
margin for creativity is in part determined by the conditions which he faces.
Now there are four essential patterns that any statesman has to consider.
The first is that he has to understand what kind of an environment he faces.
These patterns confronts, what the relation of forces is, what the historical
tendencies are. In this task which in retrospect may appear as objective
as scientific. He faces the dilemma that, as I pointed out in my first lecture,
he must make a conjecture about likely developments. No one can tell today
what the trend of history will be. Historical conjectures are being
against each other. It is easy for us to say that as history evolves states

will become more and more democratic. It is just as easy to say for the
Soviets that as history continues they will become more and more Communistic.
No one can prove today what it means what the likely trend is. No one knows
at any given period what the actual relationship of forces is and the
superior statesmen are those whose intuition is that this
colleagues in other countries. If policy could be made with the certainty
of mathematics IBM machines could conduct it. If policy were a purely scientific
process then each statesmen will come to the same conclusion. Then you would
have at worse the theoretical confrontations of Chinese strategy and you would
never have actual confrontation. However, our policy is not that objective
and therefore the first requirement is to make an assessment of the relative
relation of forces, the historical trends, and the general conditions which
of survival in a given environment. A second condition that hxxkx has to be
met is to devise a means for obtaining whatever objective has been set.

This requires an answer to two questions: The first question is What knowledge is relevant? Is it historical knowledge? Is it analytical knowledge? Is it empirical knowledge? In much of our debates with Europeans today, for example, one of the difficulties is that we are really talking about a different realm of discourse. Our people have great faith in analytical knowledge. We believe that theories once developed are likely to be universally valid and that they are not likely to be psychological obstacles to anything we consider desirable.

The Europeans are more weighted down with historical tradition. In the Fall
for example, there were in *Time Magazine* and in a number of other journals
articles which described a certain set of French maneuvers and with the
sensitivity for which *Time* is noted they ridicule the scenario in which both
armies were advancing on the French quarters, all of France's allies had fallen

apart and France alone confronted the hostile invasion. And *Time Magazine* pointed out that, at that point France would have only four divisions to act and 50 atom bombs and that this was not as many as 100 Russian divisions that would be marching on the French border. It was gratefully noted in France heretofore sufficiently studied.

But, the issue the problem that France faces is this. The scenario is in a little ridiculous. On the other hand, it happens to correspond to the French drama of both 1914 and 1940. Both times foreign armies attacked. In 1945 in particular all allies did in fact collapse. Except Great Britain, and Great Britain did not make the only effective fighting force therefore available for the defensive Britain.

I think *XXX* was right but this was no consultation to France. *XXX* To France the trauma of 1940 happens to be more significant than the that is carried out at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica. And to prove to them that only the complicated theories that we have devised which treat a collection of some foreign states as if it were a unit and as if no difference with the nationalistics could arise will never be psychologically meaningful to the Europeans. This doesn't mean they are right. It means that the relevant facts to them are different to us. And any policy that doesn't *XXX* answer their particular trauma is not likely to be a very persuasive policy. Again, I am not going to argue now *XXX* we will get into that in April. Perception is more correct in the contemporary situation.

I am simply trying to point out that *XXX* in devising the means for carrying out these objectives has first of all to find out what knowledge is relevant to it. And there are certain realities that cannot be *XXX*.

[Y]

encountered by computers and that may be all the more powerful perhaps
with a certain irrational element. And secondly, of course, in devising
the means there has to be some relationship not only the psychological
reality but to specifically again anyone who thinks that this is a simple
matter should see the different interpretations that exist. That in each
government in the contemporary x period or in any historical period
about what the most effective policy might be. It isn't the case, either
historically as we will see or that it simply isn't the case
that there is only one policy that magically commences us to all interested
parties. The third task the statesman has is to get the achievement of
other powers to whatever policy he has devised. And there again there is
a certain incommensurability between a nation's domestic experience
and its international experience. Domestically, the policy once it is
adopted becomes lost. This is what makes domestic policy. Domestically
a nation must justify itself by a standard objective. But internationally
what is defined as justice domestically becomes a subject for negotiation.
As a result, one of the striking facts is that in the folklore of any nation
no nation think of themselves as soluable, well-meaning, unsophisticated
being taken in by the sharp authority. It is always the foreigner
who is immoral, and it is always one's own country that is conducting its
policy on a high moral plane. Only you and I know that this applies to only
one country. But there is this problem in finding the support of other countries
and the tool for that is diplomacy in which a statesman has to attempt to balance
risks and opportunities in such a way that it seems more attractive to the other
countries to pursue the line that he considers most advantageous than on the
other hand.

5

negotiations
As I pointed out before I do not believe that international settlements are not
conducted purely from on the basis of pure reason. There is today no purely reasonable
solution of the Kashmir dispute, of the Cyprus issue. The problem almost
invariably is not simply to find a negotiating point; the problem is rather
to arrange p the pressures, which may include moral pressures, in such
a way that there is a desire for a negotiation formula, and only if such a desire
exists can one then get a settlement. And finally, a statesmen has to get domestic
agreement for this policy and this again involves two aspects.

He has to get the agreement first of his bureaucracy and, under contemporary
conditions, the agreement of his people. If you look at history, on e of the
arguments whenever we get into trouble, one reads in the newspapers
that
that if one recently gets into trouble it is the experts have been sufficiently
listened to. If somebody has, for example, taken foreign policy away from the
State Department, now this maybe true; on the other hand if you look at foreign
policy historically you will find that the real great things in history have
very rarely been done by professional diplomats. Almost all great statesmen have
been opposed by the experts in their foreign offices. And the reason for that
is one to which I alluded before. An expert is a man who is at the high highest
level, what is commonly understood. And w one does not become an expert by breaking
new grounds. The great changes in history have occured, have been carried on by
people who have had a vision of the future which was not acceptable to everybody.
The great men, of or the great statesmen in history, have known before their
visions became common experience/ The trouble is the experts, or perhaps the
people at large, know only when it is too late to act that by the time events
have overtaken the possibility of effectiveness. Bureaucracy generally operates
by a standard of average perfomance. They are more conscious of risks than they
are of opportunities. No one has ever been fired from the government department
for not having foreseen a great opportunity for the very simple reason that no one