Cf Graham

[Y]

HENRY A. KISSINGER

July 24, 1995

Dear Don:

Vietnam mythology gets repeated so often that, like epic
poetry, it achieves the status of truth regardless of its
factual content. A good example is an article by Keith
Richburg in the July 17 *Washington Post*. I raise it
precisely because the article seeks to be painstakingly
factual and is totally non-malicious. But for that very
reason it may provide an occasion to fine-tune your research
files. Mr. Richburg refers to an "offer" of reparations
"first made by President Richard M. Nixon in a 1973 secret
letter to the North Vietnamese Prime Minister, Pham Van Dong,
during the Paris peace talks" in 1973.

Almost every word in that sentence is erroneous. First,
the United States never agreed to the concept of reparations
but to a reconstruction program *throughout* Indo-China - as a
settled U.S. policy since 1965. Second, the commitment was
not secret but public, being embodied in Article 21 of the
Final Agreement dealing with American efforts to "heal the
wounds of war" *throughout* Vietnam. What was temporarily
secret was the amount put to Pham Van Dong by President
Nixon prior to a trip by me to Vietnam to discuss postwar
relations *after* the agreement was signed and the peace
negotiations were concluded. The letter added that the
program would be put before the Congress in accordance with
American constitutional procedures and hence would be made
public - as indeed it was shortly after. Third, the concept
of economic aid to Indo-China was not originated by
President Nixon but publicly put forward by President
Johnson in April 1965. It was reaffirmed by President Nixon
in a speech to the General Assembly of September 18, 1969.
President Nixon repeated the general offer in a speech of
January 25, 1972. In his annual report to the Congress on
February 9, 1972, President Nixon set a target of $7.5
billion reconstruction aid for all of Vietnam, of which $2.5
billion would be made available to North Vietnam. This
general intention was repeated by me in a press conference
of October 26, 1972 and by President Nixon on January 31,
1973.

TWENTY-SIXTH FLOOR • 350 PARK AVENUE • NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10022 • (212) 759-7919

page 2

So what we have is a Presidential letter exploring an aid
program with a recipient, subject to the caveat of
Congressional approval and appropriation, not some
mysterious, arcane "secret deal".

Perhaps you could correct your files accordingly.

Mr. Donald Graham
President, Chief Executive Officer
and Publisher
The Washington Post
1150 15th Street NW
Washington, DC 20071

# Vietnam's 'Peace Generation' [L.C]
## Ready to Make Up for Lost Time

By Keith B. Richburg

Washington Post Foreign Service

HANOI

**C**all Duong Nguyen Huong a member of Vietnam's "peace generation."

At 21, Huong has no memory of the Vietnam War—he was just a year old when a North Vietnamese tank smashed through the gates of Saigon's Presidential Palace and war-torn North and South Vietnam were unified under Communist rule. "My parents always mention the war," he said. "They always talk about the hardships during wartime. . . . I think it's a custom for them to remind us of the past."

And what does Huong think today? "The war is the war," he said. "The two sides both made an effort to win. But that's the past."

His friend and business partner, Ngo Quoc Anh, agreed. "My parents talk about the war," said Anh, 20, who was born three months before the fall of Saigon. "I just listen. I don't care much about it. The war is the war."

The voices of young people like these are becoming the dominant ones in today's Vietnam. According to most statistical estimates, about three-fifths of the country's population of 73 million are younger than 25, meaning they would have little or no personal knowledge of the Vietnam War. For them, the United States is known more as the source of the best rock music and soft drinks than for bombing raids and "strategic hamlets."

Accordingly, newly restored relations with their country's bitter enemy evokes hopes that have little to do with politics and everything to do with economics.
Normalized ties mean more U.S. firms will locate here—and more foreign investment means increased jobs. "Many people are interested in Vietnam now," Huong said. "That creates more opportunities."

Huong and Anh are students at Hanoi's economics college, and together with a third friend they own a popular new student cafe called the Station, in a rented building at the edge of the railway line that leads to Ho Chi Minh City. The attire of choice here is blue jeans, the music is American grunge rock, the preferred foreign language is English. The conversational topics suggest preoccupations with the more universal, if mundane, concerns of peacetime: upcoming exams, the difficulty in finding a job after graduation, the latest CDs and the trauma of young love.

"I said I loved you, but I lied," says the English graffiti etched by some

hard-hearted poet into the back of one of the cafe's hard wooden chairs. "I don't care about you." Cold practicality, not politics or sentimentality, is the order of the day at the Station.

"Students are very, very interested in the normalization of relations between the United States and Vietnam," Huong said. For these students, war and confrontation are part of history. "Students now are interested in cooperation," he said.

The desire for closer cooperation is not just limited to the "peace generation." Even those who fought in the war, those whose lives the conflict more directly touched, express an eagerness to move on, to build new relations with the old enemy and to get on with rebuilding the country. "Making up for lost time" has become a popular mantra here.

"About 10 years ago, it was still very difficult for the Vietnamese people to accept the Americans," said Do Duc Dinh,

> "The war is the war. The two sides both made an effort to win. But that's the past."

— Duong Nguyen Huong, college student

an economist and vice editor of the Vietnam Economic Review. During the past decade, he said, any lingering anti-Americanism has "calmed down."

"We are a people who always look to the future," said Nguyen Xuan Phong, director of the Americas department in Vietnam's Foreign Ministry. "Before, we fought the war for independence, for freedom, for the reunification of the country. Now our battle is for the development of the country, to modernize the country, to industrialize the country. For that, we know we need relations with the world, to get financial resources, to get technology."

"In the case of the United States, we have other reasons, too, to leave behind the past," Phong said. "Since the war left behind a lot of consequences for both people, the only way to heal the wounds is to have relations between the two countries. There is no other way."

Phong might be called a member of the "wartime generation," that group of Vietnamese still with firsthand knowledge of the suffering and sacrifice—and who are now in positions of power in the Communist government. Phong's father

was killed in Vietnam's war for independence from French colonial rule, and three of his uncles were killed fighting U.S. troops in the Vietnam War. One uncle is listed as missing, his remains never recovered, Phong said, a subtle reminder that despite U.S. concern for 2,202 missing service members in Indochina, Vietnam has about 300,000 of its own MIAs.

Despite his personal suffering, Phong said, "I am now working on building the new relationship between the United States and Vietnam." Among other things, he is helping prepare for the August visit of Secretary of State Warren Christopher, when the two sides meet formally to discuss the framework for the new relationship.

Forming a diplomatic partnership between these former enemies will not be easy. Even though the war ended two decades ago—and the peace generation now forms the majority—the legacy of war remains and seems likely to define the relationship for some time. The United States continues to insist on a full accounting for MIAs, and the topic will be on the agenda for Christopher's historic visit. But the Vietnamese like to remind visitors that they, too, have "humanitarian issues" left over from the war.

When Vietnamese leaders speak of humanitarian issues, they are usually talking about war reparations, although the term is rarely explicitly used. It was Hanoi's demands for $3.25 million in reparations—an offer first made by President Richard M. Nixon in a 1973 secret letter to the North Vietnamese prime minister, Pham Van Dong, during the Paris peace talks—that torpedoed a chance for normalized relations during the first year of the Carter administration. The Vietnamese wrongly miscalculated the mood in the United States at the time and made reparations a prerequisite for normalization.

This time, Vietnamese leaders are cautious to say that normalized relations come with "no preconditions." But when asked whether Hanoi had dropped its insistence on U.S. reconstruction aid, Phong replied: "We believe the American people know well the extent of damage suffered by Vietnamese people during the war. They must find a way to cooperate with Vietnam to overcome in some measure the consequences of the war."

"We have our MIAs too," Phong said. "The consequences of the war include material destruction, handicapped people, the consequences of chemicals spread by the United States Air Force in Vietnam during the war." He said the U.S.

BY KEITH B. RICHBURG—THE WASHINGTON POST

Like most Vietnamese, Ngo Quoc Anh, left, and Duong Nguyen Huong—shown in front of their new Hanoi pub, the Station—are too young to remember war with the United States.

government and some private relief agencies had been actively helping to solve some of these lingering problems, "but what the American side has done in this regard is still very limited, in relation to the huge consequences, the immense suffering of the Vietnamese people, and compared to the huge resources the United States has."

There are likely to be other sticking points in building a new relationship. The Clinton administration has, among other things, mentioned its concern for human rights in Vietnam and has vowed to use the new diplomatic relations to continue pressing Hanoi on that issue. But Phong said: "We are ready to discuss [human rights] with the United States as well as any country in the world. But we will discuss it as a world concern. Not as a problem or an issue in the relations between the United States and Vietnam."

Another possibly thorny issue is the status of overseas Vietnamese, including

Vietnamese Americans, who travel here. Under Vietnamese law, any Vietnamese are considered local citizens and treated as such, no matter what passport they hold or where they were born.

Phong said Vietnam would make trade relations, and achieving most-favored-nation status, its top priority for discussion during Christopher's visit. He also said Vietnam was ready to cooperate with the United States on curbing Vietnam's booming narcotics trafficking. He said Hanoi needs U.S. expertise to help draft new anti-narcotics laws.

But echoing Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet, he also made clear that while Vietnam welcomes its new relationship with Washington, the Communist leaders in Hanoi will not tolerate any challenges to the party's rule or what they consider "outside interference" in their internal affairs.

TO: Henry A. Kissinger

FROM: Herbert Levin

SUBJECT: ACS - Jim Grant - Letter of Condolence

DATE: February 2, 1995

UNICEF Executive Director Jim Grant's lifelong concern with China was widely known and appreciated. A letter from you to his UNICEF colleagues and family expressing respect and sympathy would undoubtedly be received with appreciation.

ACTION REQUESTED:

That you sign the attached condolence letter.

THE NEW YORK TIMES OF ITUA

James P. Grant, Unicef Chief
And Aid Expert, Is Dead at 72

By BARBARA CROSSETTE
Special to The New York Times

James P. Grant, the American foreign aid expert who in 1980 became executive director of Unicef and made it into a major force for helping children, died on Saturday in Northern Westchester Hospital Center in Mount Kisco, N. Y. He was 72 and lived in Croton, N. Y.

The cause of death was cancer, Unicef officials said. Mr. Grant resigned from the United Nations Children's Fund last week.

The direction and urgency he gave to Unicef have widely been credited with helping to save millions of children's lives. Mr. Grant, who had also been an Under Secretary General of the United Nations, was still traveling and promoting his "child survival revolution" until late last year.

His message was simple: low-cost, practical methods for saving young lives and curtailing the spread of easily preventable diseases can quickly make a difference. He advocated treating diarrhea, a leading killer of children, with doses of water, sugar and salt that village people

later incorporated into national planning in more than 100 countries.

In a statement after Mr. Grant's death, Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said: "Very few men or women ever have the opportunity to do as much good in the world as James Grant. And very few have ever grasped that opportunity with such complete and dedicated commitment."

In 1994, Mr. Grant received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Clinton, who cited him for his "compassion and courage in his crusade for the world's children."

Mr. Grant was born in Beijing on May 12, 1922, the son of a public health expert working in Asia. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and earned a law degree at Harvard.

He began a lifelong career in international service in the 1940's, working with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in China.

In 1962 he became Deputy Assistant

Giacomo Pirozzi, Unicef

James P. Grant holding a child at a community center last year in Grand-Bassam, Ivory Coast.

Development Council and became its president and chief executive officer. He remained there until moving to Unicef in 1980.

[lc]

Review Essays

Oh Henry! Kissinger and His Critics

By Walter A. McDougall

*Diplomacy*. By Henry Kissinger. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. 912 pp.
$35.00.)

"The cunning writer will choose an indefinable subject," wrote William Sydney Porter—*nom d'plume* O. Henry—"for he can then set down his theory of what it is; and next, at length, his conception of what it is not." But Dr. Henry Kissinger, whose cunning no one disputes, lacks the freedom to define his own subject and expect his theories to be received dispassionately. It is not because Dr. Kissinger cannot write a normal book, but because he cannot be a normal author.

We all seem to *care* about Kissinger whether or not (as Walter Russell Mead has it) we all love or loathe him.² And there is no denying the grip that Kissinger still exerts, two decades after leaving government, on all Americans concerned with foreign policy. If you doubt that, consider the rapt attention accorded his testimony by Congressional committees, the presidential requests for consultations, the networks' open invitations for airtime, and the liverish reception his books unfailingly receive from the academic establishment to which he once belonged.

¹ O. Henry, "The Country of Elusion," in *Selected Stories*, ed. Guy Davenport (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), p. 58.

² Walter Russell Mead, "Peace Keepers and Power Brokers," *The Washington Post Book World*, Apr. 3, 1994, pp. 3, 14.

Fall 1994 | 1

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## Review Essays

Perhaps Kissinger's notoriety is born of the fact that he is the only secretary of state to achieve not only fame, but "glamour."³ Perhaps it is because he offered us hope that America could cope during an era when everything, home and abroad, seemed to be spinning out of control. Perhaps it is because the man radiates an aura of secrecy and brilliance to some and Strangelovian devilry to others. But, no one suggests that Henry is passé. No one passé writes books that split the reviewers like a maul splits fresh oak.

That is why one cannot do justice to an event such as the publication of *Diplomacy*, except by reviewing the reviewers (predictably, the most distinguished lot of dons and pundits of international relations) as well as the book itself. A quarterly journal such as *Orbis* affords the chance to do just that. To be sure, reviewing the reviewers risks offending half a dozen senior colleagues in my own profession. But I take courage in the advice of Helmuth von Moltke, who instructed his Prussian lieutenants: First reckon, then risk.

## Henry's History

Some 5 percent of Kissinger's 835-page *Diplomacy* is devoted to current world affairs. Like Paul Kennedy in *The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers*,⁴ Kissinger obliges readers to wade through a long historical narrative before arriving at the contemporary payoff. Otherwise, the Kennedy and Kissinger books could not be more different. Whereas Kennedy explained the rise and fall of powers in terms of economic forces and an almost mechanical tendency of empires to overextend themselves, Kissinger accounts for the twists of time in terms of statesmen's personalities, ideas, and skills. So it is that Kissinger credits Cardinal Richelieu for discarding a European politics of universalism and religiosity in favor of *raison d'etat*, William III for promoting the concept of the balance of power, and Klemens Fürst von Metternich for understanding the need for a community of values to underpin (or overlay) the balance.

And so it is that Ernest R. May, Charles Warren Professor of History at Harvard, has reviewed *Diplomacy* under the title "The 'Great Man' Theory of Foreign Policy." Not to put too fine a point on it, May tries to bury Kissinger. He begins by describing *Diplomacy* as "a book of maxims disguised as a history of statecraft. The maxims are often splendid. The history is not." He ends by expressing his disappointment that Kissinger, who once wrote "good professional history," has "little or no sense of how diplomacy and

³ Robert W. Tucker, "Masterwork," *The National Interest*, Summer 1994, pp. 78-87; "[Glamour's] one common denominator is the ability to evoke fascination. This Kissinger has done in abundance" (p. 78).

⁴ Paul Kennedy, *The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000* (New York: Random House, 1987).

2 | Orbis

## Review Essays

statecraft evolved." As a result, Kissinger's *Diplomacy* (if not his diplomacy) is "amateurish."⁵

May is right that Kissinger ignores long-range forces in international affairs, but he does not suggest what those economic, technological, ideological, or social forces might be. Instead, he wastes valuable inches of ink in two vain pursuits. The first is to indict Kissinger for admiring every statesman who eschewed vain moralizing in favor of realpolitik, be they authoritarians like Metternich and Otto von Bismarck, or tyrants like Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler. May's second pursuit is to tick off alleged factual errors, the sort, he says, "for which students fail to get pass degrees in history." But all that May offers are three allegations regarding who coined a campaign slogan from Britain's "khaki election" of 1918, which generals attended Hitler's harangue recounted in the Hossbach Memorandum, and whether or not Wilsonian self-determination put Europeans on "unfamiliar terrain."

Kissinger must have fumed at having to check such trivial points, but his letter of rebuttal to the *Times* not only parries May's "nitpicking," but exposes an embarrassing error on May's part. On the larger issue, Kissinger quotes himself to the effect that Stalin was a "monster" and Hitler's advent to power "one of the greatest calamities in world history," by way of refuting the charge that "I never met a dictator I did not like." Kissinger concludes in withering fashion: "Professor May has done significant historical research in the past; it is therefore not possible to consider his comments as inadvertent."⁶

May in turn dismisses the charge that his review was motivated by "personal animus" and lunges at Henry's open flank: his reputation for amoral diplomacy. What his review really stressed, writes May, is Kissinger's "new insistence that political leaders must respect values as well as power." And with this, we have leaped out of the pages of the book and into history. While this dig may be lost on youngsters, those who faced the Nixon administration from the other side of the barricades will say "touché." May then tries to turn Kissinger's prominence against him. Even minor errors are significant in a Kissinger book because, May argues, his name on the cover is equivalent to "a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval." How sad, therefore, that "Thousands of readers may think 'Diplomacy' an authoritative history...."⁷

What are we to make of this fur-fight in the pages of *The New York Times*? Is May one of Mead's Kissinger-loathers? Were they rivals years ago at Harvard? Or have certain of Kissinger's old colleagues never forgiven him for "selling out": for grasping power and glory beyond the dreams of any professor, siding with the likes of Nixon, approving of the invasion of Cambodia and the Christmas bombing of Hanoi, ordering the wiretapping of

⁵ *The New York Times Book Review*, Apr. 3, 1994, pp. 3, 24. Newspapers today, led by the *The New York Times* and *The Washington Post*, shamelessly ignore official publication dates in an effort to scoop competitors with the first notice of major new releases. In this case, the *Times* and *Post* ran a dead heat.

⁶ Henry A. Kissinger, Letter to the Editor, *The New York Times Book Review*, Apr. 24, 1994, p. 31. May had faulted Kissinger for failing to mention Harold Nicolson's excellent book, also titled *Diplomacy*, whereas, in fact, Kissinger cites Nicolson in a footnote and on the copyright page.

⁷ Ernest R. May, Letter to the Editor, *The New York Times Book Review*, May 1, 1994, p. 35. Emphasis added.

Fall 1994 | 3

[LL]

## Review Essays

associates—and then cashing in on his infamy through a private consultancy that yields him an income estimated at $7.5 million per year?

Walter Isaacson's recent biography of Kissinger records that in May 1970, after the Cambodian incursion, a distinguished Harvard delegation visited Henry in Washington. May was among them; as dean of the college, he was a target of protesters. Nixon's policies were "tearing the country apart domestically," said May. Kissinger replied that Cambodia was a tactical, not a moral question; that, in effect, the administration had bigger fish to fry and a larger moral purpose in mind. "The meeting completed my transition from the academic world," said Kissinger; May and the others "left embittered."⁸

Whatever May's motives for panning *Diplomacy*, he missed the chance to make a constructive critique of Kissinger's history. Stanford University professor emeritus Gordon Craig missed his chance, too, but because he was too kind. Craig's main contention is that Kissinger's title is a misnomer. The book is not really about the practice of diplomacy as it evolved from fifteenth-century Venice to the present. Echoing the post-World War I generation of statesmen, he laments the decline of Europe's tradition of professional statecraft and decries "that worst of all diplomatic inventions, the summit conference." But, having unburdened himself, Craig forgives Kissinger for ignoring institutional history in order "to concentrate on the search for international order and upon the statesmen who, like himself, sought to establish systems that would preserve it, and he has accomplished this with great skill and shrewdness." Granting Henry the right to this delimited province, Craig concludes that "Kissinger's account leaves nothing to be desired...."⁹

At one level, therefore, professional judgments of Kissinger's history turn on the "great man" assumption that undergirds it. Simon Schama likes the assumption, but is bothered by its implementation. *Diplomacy* "is an unrepentantly old-fashioned book," he writes, "a narrative of great men and events, studded with epigrams and lapidary utterances on the practice of power."¹⁰ Such an approach "needs no apology" because peoples and ideas do matter, and politics is the stuff of irony, unintended consequences, and contingency. Moreover, history is the best school for contemporary statesmen, who would do well to recognize that realism without a moral compass, and moralizing in the absence of calculus, are equally vain.

The trouble, according to Schama, is that Kissinger doesn't always know his great men well enough. For instance, Richelieu, far from jettisoning Catholicism for an amoral *raison d'etat* (as Kissinger has it), believed that "what is done for the state is done for God." To be sure, he made alliances with Protestant princes and fought to maintain France against Catholic Hapsburg "hegemony," but Richelieu never stopped thinking of Protestants as

⁸ Walter Isaacson, *Kissinger. A Biography* (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), pp. 280–81.

⁹ Gordon Craig, "Looking for Order," *The New York Review of Books*, May 12, 1994, pp. 8–14.

¹⁰ Simon Schama, "The Games of Great Men," *The New Yorker*, May 2, 1994, pp. 92–97. See also Timothy Garton Ash, "The Rules of the Game," *The New Republic*, July 18, 1994, pp. 41–43.

4 | Orbis

[LC]

## Review Essays

heretics, and he fashioned policy partly to enable the Bourbons to stamp out the Huguenots at home.

> Diplomacy tells us much not only about the past, but about history as a craft, about Kissinger himself, and (through our reactions to it) about ourselves.

Kissinger also errs, according to Schama, by contrasting Europe's power-political tradition to an idealistic American one. America, after all, was a creation of early modern Europe, and the notions we associate with American exclusivism trace their roots back to Europe's own quest for an alternative to balance of power—from the just war theory of the medieval church to Hugo Grotius's invention of international law in seventeenth-century Netherlands to the British promoters of a League to Enforce Peace. Michael Howard, the retired Robert A. Lovett Professor at Yale, also wonders how Kissinger can be so "curiously blind to what was happening in Britain in the nineteenth century. . . . Gladstone was the voice of the future . . . the true avatar of Woodrow Wilson."¹¹ But Kissinger says exactly that on page 161, and, as we shall see below, his sense of what is European by tradition and what is truly American is subtler than either Schama or Howard suggest.

So, is *Diplomacy* "good history" or not? That depends not on a few errors of fact—which any nine-hundred-page book is bound to contain—but on the strength of its interpretations in light of the facts. And there are at least some questionable interpretations.

I do not agree, for example, with Kissinger's twice-stated remark that the United States did not consider its westward expansion to be "foreign policy" at all. Manifest Destiny publicists may have believed as much, but Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, James Polk, and William Henry Seward knew better. I think Kissinger claims too much for *raison d'etat* as a cause for the Bourbon ascendancy, exaggerates the self-consciousness of Britain's balance-of-power policy, and ignores popular nationalism and the Zollverein (customs union) in his explanation of German unification.

Moving to the twentieth century, Kissinger's portrait of Stalin strikes me as too confident, given the mysteries that still surround that era, and he is too ready to believe that Stalin was "the supreme realist—patient, shrewd, and implacable" (p. 333). One can argue from the same evidence that Stalin was weak, paranoid, too clever by half, and lucky. After all, he botched Soviet policy in China, gave away Manchuria to Japan, helped fascists into power through his Comintern activities, turned too late to the Popular Front strategy, misread Hitler and became the greatest appeaser of all, and provoked the cold war with his needless, heedless impositions in occupied Europe.

¹¹ Michael Howard, "The World According to Henry. From Metternich to Me," *Foreign Affairs*, May/June 1994, pp. 132-40.

Fall 1994 | 5

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## Review Essays

Kissinger is also too kind to Franklin Roosevelt, in my judgment. He says nothing about U.S. policy toward the Chinese Civil War, and his account of the origins of the Korean War relies on the dubious old saw about Dean Acheson's oversight in a speech.

On the other hand, much else in Kissinger's book, especially his summary of the First World War era—from origins to peacemaking—is superb. So, too, is his insightful account of the origins and execution of the containment doctrine.¹²

So, with much justification, Robert Tucker finds *Diplomacy* "brilliant though thoroughly idiosyncratic,"¹³ and Schama "an oddly engaging Cracker Jack assortment of gems and howlers." He thinks (as do I) that the narrative improves mightily in style and insight as it reaches the nineteenth century, the pages sparkling "with intelligence and insight." Schama's real disappointment lies in the fact that Henry chose to write history at all instead of "an anatomy of the methods and stratagems of the [diplomatic] craft, written with the sharp analytical intelligence of a former Secretary of State who has been both an insider and an outsider and whose sensitivity to the nuances of diplomatic language is unmatched."¹⁴ Peter Grier put the same complaint pithily: "Cut out all the Metternich; leave in the tips."¹⁵

Good advice—for Kissinger's next book. But *Diplomacy* is like an oriental carpet, as interesting for its flaws as its brilliant patterns. For it tells us much not only about the past, but about history as a craft, about Kissinger himself, and (through our reactions to it) about ourselves. You can't ask much more of a history book.

## History's Henry

The reception given *Diplomacy* reveals as much about the historical construction of Henry Kissinger as it does about Kissinger's construction of history. For Henry, it seems, is a stranger in our midst. Or so the reviewers would have it.

"For more than 900 pages," writes Robert A. Divine, the George A. Littlefield Professor at the University of Texas and a dean of American diplomatic history, "Kissinger reveals a profound knowledge of world diplomacy and a nearly total ignorance of American culture." In Divine's view, "Kissinger preaches a sophisticated sermon on the virtues of realpolitik without ever acknowledging that the success of the United States in world affairs stems directly from a repudiation of this Old World concept." Kissinger

12 See also, Henry Kissinger, "Reflections on Containment," *Foreign Affairs*, May/June 1994, pp. 113-30, which is adapted from Kissinger's *Diplomacy*.

13 Tucker, "Masterwork," p. 78.

14 Schama, "The Games of Great Men," p. 96.

15 Peter Grier, "Kissinger's Top Diplomatic Tips," *The Christian Science Monitor*, Apr. 27, 1994.

6 | Orbis

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## Review Essays

remains a stranger in his adopted land; he "knows all the words, but never learned the music."¹⁶

This is as neat a statement as one may ever find of the hoary supposition that Kissinger is a nineteenth-century Central European plunked down in the middle of twentieth-century America. Kissinger is indeed of German origin and education (especially if one counts the reputed influence of Fritz Kraemer, his "discoverer" and mentor). He appreciates balance, order, and predictability of behavior, without which no ideals of any kind can be advanced in domestic or international society. Some of his relatives died in the Holocaust; he knows the danger of unrestrained ideology. And he knows from experience the price paid by American soldiers to redeem the folly of democratic politicians. His early writings explain, and to some extent extol, the efforts of hard-headed "realists" like Metternich and Lord Castlereagh, who built the most successful international system of modern times. Once in office, he spoke of "a generation of peace," not peace for all time, and "an era of negotiation," not a new world order. And he practiced what Divine says he "preached" (a strange verb to choose under the circumstances).

But as we know, Kissinger was attacked from the American Left and Right alike, each of which spied something alien in Nixon and Kissinger's realpolitik. Now, Divine criticizes Kissinger for believing that a balance-of-power approach might have won over the public were it not for Watergate. In fact, writes Divine, it was not a president versed in geopolitical manipulation but a confessed Wilsonian and critic of détente—Ronald Reagan—who "finally achieved the long-sought goal of ending Soviet tyranny." Kissinger, blind to the fact that "American idealism has been a powerful force," could neither appease it at home nor wield it abroad, and so he was forced to explain the end of the cold war as a matter of irony and timing. Divine asserts that Wilsonianism, not realpolitik, won the cold war, and that our goal today should be "based on fulfilling Jefferson's dream of an empire of liberty, not on Richelieu's balance of power."¹⁷

Schama makes a similar point. According to Kissinger's argument, Reagan's "addiction to demonizing rhetoric coupled with impulsive negotiation ought to have represented a unique foreign policy nightmare," whereas in fact the progress he made in relations with Moscow would have been beyond the means of either a liberal or a realpolitiker. Schama is even impelled to ask: "Is an American realpolitik a contradiction in terms?"¹⁸

Paul Johnson's review of *Diplomacy* is decidedly favorable, but he, too, interprets Kissinger's instincts as those of "a civilized European."¹⁹ Tucker says, "We are urged to heed the lessons of the [European] past in order to meet the challenges of the [American] future."²⁰ According to Mead,

¹⁶ Robert A. Divine, "Diplomacy According to Kissinger," *The Philadelphia Inquirer*, Apr. 24, 1994.

¹⁷ Ibid.

¹⁸ Schama, "The Games of Great Men," p. 92.

¹⁹ Paul Johnson, "The World Stage," *Commentary*, Apr. 1994, pp. 55-56.

²⁰ Tucker, "Masterwork," p. 81.

Fall 1994 | 7

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## Review Essays

"Kissinger believes that American diplomats and public opinion need to absorb European ideas about realism and balance of power politics.²¹ *The Economist* sees Kissinger trying "to reconcile his advocacy of the European approach of *Realpolitik*" with American exceptionalism.²² Howard suggests that Kissinger employs the neutral euphemism "geopolitics" so as not to offend his American audience with his real subject, "power politics." Howard points with irony to the fact that the American people, in the heat of Vietnam, elected a president "who, much as he admired Woodrow Wilson, shared few of his ideals, and Nixon selected as his adviser Henry Kissinger, who shared none of them."²³

> *The supposed dichotomy between a "realistic" European approach to foreign policy and an "idealistic" American one is simply false—and Henry knows it.*

Are we to accept as given this "European" Kissinger whose lifelong calling has been to educate naïve Americans about the realities of power? If so, what are we to make of the fact that *Diplomacy* contains high praise for Woodrow Wilson? (Craig read the book closely enough to see that "Kissinger's admiration of Wilson is undisguised" for he "grasped the mainsprings of American motivation."²⁴) What all this suggests to me is that the supposed dichotomy between a "realistic" European approach to foreign policy and an "idealistic" American one is simply false—and that Henry knows it. Certainly, Americans have always wanted to *believe* that they were more idealistic than other nations—which is not surprising since the *novo ordo seclorum* was a major plank in our revolutionary and national propaganda. But we have never fully lived our ideals—ask any foreigner—and in any case, our ideals were themselves inspired by Europeans. Thus, the brilliant contrarian Conor Cruise O'Brien suggests that it would be "nearer to the truth to say that the *rhetoric* of American foreign policy has been shaped by Wilsonian rhetoric, while the substance has been shaped mostly by considerations of national interest." Indeed, O'Brien (a biographer of Edmund Burke) faults Kissinger for making too *deep* a bow at the altar of American moralism.²⁵

So here we are again, hung up on the old dialectic of American idealism versus European realism. The argument always runs the same: nations must pursue ideals lest they succumb to Ozymandian pride and their majesty prove ephemeral; no, statesmen must be realistic lest they do more harm than

21 Mead, "Peace Keepers and Power Brokers," p. 3.

22 "Henry Kissinger Weighs In," *The Economist*, May 14, 1994, p. 93.

23 Howard, "The World According to Henry," pp. 136-37.

24 Craig, "Looking for Order," p. 10.

25 Conor Cruise O'Brien, "Realpolitik or Moral Values," *Insight*, May 16, 1994, p. 31. See also Conor Cruise O'Brien, "Kissinger Best on Diplomacy of Predecessors," *The Washington Times* (National Weekly Edition), June 6-12, 1994.

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## Review Essays

good with their moralizing; no, history proves that idealism is in fact a higher realism—look at the fall of the Soviet empire; no, realism is really a higher idealism—even our victories in two, now three, world wars have not sufficed to fashion a new world order. And so to the synthesis: we must be idealistic as to our goals, and realistic as to our means, keeping always in mind the ethical principles governing the use of force. Choice cannot be avoided, balances must be struck. Does any serious observer disagree with any of this?

If not, then the critics all agree with Kissinger, and it is not a European or American thing at all but a function of geopolitical circumstance. The United States was blessed with advantages that allowed it to emphasize its idealism, making it seem more millenarian; Europeans rarely had such a luxury and generally suffered when they tried to claim it anyway.

This is neither more nor less than what Kissinger argues in *Diplomacy*. Of course one ought to serve values in one's foreign policy to the extent that circumstances permit. The statesman's essential task is to create circumstances propitious to the flowering of one's values—if he can. Kissinger admires Metternich not because he thought in terms of balance of power (Craig, a German historian, caught this), but because his Vienna system rested on "a sense of shared values. . . . There was not only a physical equilibrium, but a moral one. Power and justice were in substantial harmony." Tell that to the Poles, or Italians, Hungarians, or Irish, an idealist might reply. Metternich's system may have been "just" as dynasts or local hegemons defined justice, but it was a prison of peoples no less than the Soviet empire. Ah, but there were no holocausts under the Vienna system, and the forces of democracy and nationalism were largely satisfied without cataclysmic eruptions thanks to the stability of the Vienna architecture. What Kissinger means when he deploys the word "balance" is not only balance of power, but balance between ends and means, aspirations and limits, ideals and realities, risks and rewards. It is another word for wisdom, and it has nothing to do with "European" or "American" states of mind.²⁶

To be sure, Kissinger is comfortable at the chessboard of world politics and manifestly uneasy in the arena of American politics. A Daniel Patrick Moynihan might have been a Kissinger, but Kissinger could never have been a Moynihan. Perhaps that is a function of his status as an "outsider," or simply his temperament. He may even envy the "great communicators" who can reach out and strum American heartstrings. But—pace Robert Divine—a lack of talent for the piano does not make one contemptuous of music.

²⁶ A late reviewer came to the same conclusion as I, and cites a 1968 article, "Central Issues in American Foreign Policy," in which Kissinger argued that the United States had to strike a balance between American idealism and European realism. In effect, therefore, Kissinger "has done what immigrants to this country have always done: taken the best in their own tradition and blended it with the best in the American tradition to produce something . . . at once authentically American and genuinely cosmopolitan." See Joseph Strattan, "Diplomacy," *The American Spectator*, July 1994, pp. 68-70.

Fall 1994 | 9

## Review Essays

There is another way to approach "history's Kissinger": the Kissinger created by his flight from Nazi Germany, by World War II, Harvard, Rockefeller, Nixon, Washington, and rarified consultancy. Kissinger says nothing of his own intellectual formation in *Diplomacy* (perhaps saving it for an autobiography) and almost nothing of ideology (perhaps because *A World Restored*, his classic on the Congress of Vienna, deals with little else). And since his mask is opaque, perhaps the American reader cannot quite believe that Kissinger has emotions to manage, or wrestles with moral dilemmas. If reviewing *Diplomacy* means (for most) reviewing Kissinger himself, then much vexation stems from the fact that Henry doesn't tell us about Henry in *Diplomacy*.

> What Kissinger means when he deploys the word "balance" is not only balance of power, but balance between ends and means, aspirations and limits, ideals and realities, risks and rewards.

More important, Kissinger's silence on ideology invites misunderstanding. That is because the *raison d'etat* approach identified with him commanded the historical stage only until the modern secular ideologies leapt from the Pandora's Box of the French Revolution: liberalism, socialism, nationalism. (Conservatism, by contrast, is an anti-ideology, a rejection of any ideological impress upon institutions.) Since Kissinger does not deal explicitly with the ideologization of world politics, certain questions persist about Kissinger's true beliefs, acts in office, personality, and comfort with America itself. Are Americans themselves ideological, and Kissinger a conservative, in which case a philosophical divide may well exist between him and our political culture? Or does Kissinger accept liberalism for purposes of domestic politics, but remain skeptical of attempts to promote it abroad? Or does he in fact believe that the United States ought positively to strive to "enlarge" the global realm in which popular sovereignty and free markets thrive?

One would expect a "European" Kissinger to eschew ideologies and values in his current policy prescriptions. And sure enough, his final chapter, "The New World Order Revisited," has much to say about geopolitics and little to say about values. The United States, he reminds us in terms reminiscent of Halford Mackinder and Nicholas Spykman, is "an island off the shores of the large landmass of Eurasia" (p. 813), hence the prevention of any one power from dominating Europe or Asia remains the first task of American strategy.

In other words, the United States must play the role of the balancer, but not in the aloof manner of Britain, which tended to intervene on the continent only after a hegemonic threat arose and risk of war was the only recourse. Kissinger recommends to America the policy of constant engagement

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## Review Essays

practiced by Bismarck: prophylactic diplomacy designed to stabilize Europe and Asia and nip potential conflicts in the bud. Thus, he urges the United States to retain close ties to Germany and Russia, lest those old rivals for hegemony either come to blows or join forces, and extend NATO's security umbrella to the new democracies of middle Europe?²⁷ The same goes for East Asia, where the United States must continue its military presence and never allow disputes over trade or human rights to interfere with constructive security relations.

Kissinger's realism also makes him impatient with talk of "new world orders." The end of the cold war, he writes, "has made it far more difficult to implement the Wilsonian dream of universal collective security. . . . The world community is willing enough to cooperate in 'peacekeeping'—that is, in policing an existing agreement not challenged by any of the parties—but it has been skittish about peacemaking—the suppression of actual challenges to world order" (p. 809). What is more, the major players today—the United States, united Europe, Russia, China, Japan, and India—have little in common except their lack of experience in cooperative, multipolar international systems. "Never before has a new world order had to be assembled from so many different perceptions, or on so global a scale" (p. 26). He grants that American policy must "take into account" the core values of a nation forged in the name of liberty, but if it ignores contemporary realities, then our "foreign policy will turn into righteous posturing." In sum, whatever new order emerges will be decades in gestation, and the best the United States can hope for is "the patient accumulation of partial successes" (p. 835).

Most reviewers do not deny the wisdom of Kissinger's advice, but few are wholly comfortable with the notion that a "Bismarckian" diplomacy paying lip service to Wilsonianism should define America's role in the twenty-first century. Divine believes that Kissinger misses the lesson of the cold war. Mead slams him for his apparent failure to understand the importance of economics in "our homegrown American foreign policy tradition."²⁸ Howard objects to Kissinger's counsel because the spread of democracy and economic interdependence around the world make it "questionable whether the concept of a purely 'national' interest makes sense any longer."²⁹ Enoch Powell thinks that Kissinger's vocabulary is inadequate to the post-cold war world, "that just at this point his lights become dimmed."³⁰ The cleverest comment on Kissinger's tour d'horizon is Craig's: "He does not say that a prerequisite of success would be a negotiator as inventive, and as tireless as he was himself, but we are perhaps justified in believing that this is assumed."³¹

27 *The Economist* spies a problem with Kissinger's program that all other reviewers (including myself) missed. If the United States must resist domination of Europe by a single power, "cold war or no cold war," then what U.S. policy would he suggest "towards development of an enlarged European Union capable of acting as a single unit? Or towards a potential entente between the European Union and Russia?" Good question.

28 Mead, "Peace Keepers and Power Brokers," p. 14.

29 Howard, "The World According to Henry," pp. 139-40.

30 Enoch Powell, "How Nixon's Metternich Sees the World," *The Wall Street Journal*, Apr. 27, 1994.

31 Craig, "Looking for Order," p. 14.

Fall 1994 | 11

[il]

Review Essays

Kissinger's aversion to "taking a pledge" on issues of morality, political philosophy, trendy new subjects of international relations such as poverty, population, resources, and the environment, or indeed anything having to do with the ordering of domestic societies does not surprise anyone familiar with his past writings and career. But his reticence leaves room for the suspicion that Kissinger is an elitist preoccupied with power and impatient with the irrational play of mass politics. Schama gets off a nasty crack when he writes that "Kissinger has a peculiar way of averting his gaze from the ideological content of the regimes served by the diplomatic virtuosi he most admires. . . . G. Gordon Liddy and the rest of the gang would have felt right at home working for Richelieu or Metternich."³² Howard refers to "that *ancien regime* from which [Kissinger] derived his values and to which he now looks back with such understandable nostalgia."³³ And Timothy Garton Ash doubts that Kissinger's bows to Wilsonianism "will actually make his peace with America."³⁴

So even if Henry's alleged "European-ness" is a myth, as I suspect, it will apparently die hard, if only because Americans seem unable to live in an unideological world, a world with too much power and not enough virtue. But a far more important question is simply whether Kissinger is right when he concludes (as Margaret Thatcher's private secretary puts it) "that America will have to learn to operate in a balance-of-power system not a million miles removed from that of nineteenth-century Europe."³⁵

Henry's Heresy

As Kissinger stood with his parents upon being named secretary of state, he observed with emotion that such a thing could only happen in America. Schama sees in this a "poignant irony. For all his sense that American democratic ideals have placed an unbearable burden on the free agency of our foreign policy, Kissinger would be the last to dispute their essential nobility."³⁶ The episode calls to mind Gustav Stresemann, who reconciled himself to the Weimar Republic only upon being made chancellor. Commoners like himself could never have achieved such rank in the Kaiser's day, and so they were called *Vernunftrepublikaner*: republicans of the head if not of the heart.

I cannot help but wonder how much of the angst expressed about Kissinger is born of wonderment over the contents of his heart. Is it in fact the apparent "heartlessness" of Kissinger's writings and doings that makes hearty Americans uneasy? Is his "heresy" a matter of sentiment as much as doctrine? I do not know the answer, but I know that the inquiry must begin with

³² Schama, "The Games of Great Men," p. 95.

³³ Howard, "The World According to Henry," p. 140.

³⁴ Ash, "The Rules of the Game," p. 43.

³⁵ Charles Powell, "No Diplomat," *National Review*, June 13, 1994, pp. 63-65 (quote on p. 63).

³⁶ Schama, "The Games of Great Men," p. 96.

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Kissinger's reading of the Vietnam War. For, as we have stressed, Kissinger's views do not separate well from his career, and the critics rarely try to keep them apart. Nowhere do theory and practice collide with a bigger bang than in Vietnam.

According to *Diplomacy*, the American debacle in Vietnam was implicit in the universalization of containment, itself a dubious imposition of American moralism on what was otherwise a sound geopolitical response to Stalinism. As early as 1950, the United States decided that Southeast Asia had to be defended, and the Domino Theory became conventional wisdom. But how could containment, which was meant to shelter democracies, be extended to the Mandarin polities emerging from colonialism? It could not be, but, says Kissinger, something about Vietnam "consistently blighted the reasoning power of foreigners who ventured into it" (p. 630). Hence, the U.S. military believed it could win where the French had lost, the Kennedy administration forgot what Korea had done to Truman just nine years before, and McNamara's whiz kids, far from believing that military might could solve a political problem, convinced themselves that political "nation-building" could solve what was really a military problem.

According to Kissinger, Eisenhower understood that Southeast Asia was a military problem and that its key was Laos. But the Kennedy people shrank from "so cold-blooded a strategic analysis" and deemed it "inappropriate for a conflict still perceived largely in ideological terms" (p. 647). So it bargained away Laos in 1961, providing Hanoi with a sanctuary and supply route to South Vietnam. Finally, in hopes of bringing the commitment to Saigon in line with American rhetoric, John F. Kennedy jettisoned the authoritarian Diem and Lyndon Johnson pronounced the real danger in Indochina to be hunger, ignorance, poverty, and disease. "Ultimately, every revolutionary war is about governmental legitimacy; undermining it is the guerilla's principal aim. Diem's overthrow handed that objective to Hanoi for free" (p. 655). The U.S. military, barred from cutting the Ho Chi Minh trail, then proceeded to adopt the hopeless strategy of suppressing the insurgency throughout the entire length of South Vietnam, thereby ensuring a stalemate that could only benefit the enemy.

Critics soon blamed Johnson for an unwillingness to negotiate. In fact, says Kissinger, "Johnson's eagerness to start negotiations was so palpable as to be self-defeating" (p. 663). As the costs in Vietnam grew out of proportion to the geopolitical stakes, critics came to equate the North and South Vietnamese governments, obviating the American need to defend "democracy," and then concluded that the war must reflect a moral rot in the *American* government, in which case the North Vietnamese were the real good guys. Kissinger points more than once to poll data showing that the majority of Americans remained "hawks" on the war throughout, but the group that "lost its nerve represented the very Establishment figures who had backed intervention all along" (p. 671). Hence, Johnson threw away his chance to crush the enemy after its disastrous Tet Offensive of 1968, and took himself off the stage. That,

Fall 1994 | 13

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## Review Essays

Kissinger writes, was unconscionable. Johnson could have stood for re-election, thus creating a popular mandate either for winning or getting out. Or he could have stood down, but exerted maximum pressure on North Vietnam in order to expand the options for his successor. Instead, "by simultaneously de-escalating, renouncing his candidacy, and offering negotiations, Johnson combined every disadvantage" (p. 672).

Nixon and Kissinger were left to pick their way toward "peace with honor." Unilateral withdrawal was not an option: it would take fifteen months or more to extricate five hundred thousand men, might precipitate a rout, and could turn into "geopolitical disaster" if America's friends and enemies concluded that it no longer stood tall. But "the leaders of the Peace Movement considered the war so repugnant that an honorable extrication from Vietnam had come to sound like an absurdity" (p. 675). Indeed, having "transmuted the war into a domestic conflict between good and evil at home, the Peace Movement preferred—for reasons it viewed as highly moral—America's collapse in Vietnam to an outcome which, precisely because it might be considered 'honorable', might also whet its government's appetite for further foreign adventures" (p. 688). American idealism, far from getting lost during Vietnam, was never so in evidence. But the idealistic tradition had split, precipitating civil war in the streets, and was thus of no use to Nixon even if the president had had the charisma to invoke it.³⁷

Meanwhile, Nixon pursued détente with the Communist powers and Kissinger hammered out peace in Paris. He hoped "that it would enable America to start the process of national healing" (p. 692). But Congress refused to enforce the peace, Nixon became mired in Watergate, and the critics of the war refused to be reconciled. Kissinger holds to the view that the Paris Accords might have worked, and reserves the ultimate blame for America itself. "The test of a society is whether it can submerge its differences in pursuit of common objectives, and whether it can keep in mind that societies thrive on their reconciliations, not on their conflicts. America failed that test in Indochina" (p. 694).

Think for a moment about this account. It is objective, lucid, and devastating. No wonder Divine says that Kissinger remains a stranger in American hearts, for you simply cannot tell all factions in a country that suffered so much that all of them failed—even if they did. First, Kissinger indicts the "idealistic" cold war liberals for the misapprehensions and hubris that got us into Vietnam, then he blames the "idealistic" Vietnam protesters for contributing to the agony rather than a resolution, then he castigates the

³⁷ This decisive point was implicit in Diplomacy. But Kissinger was obliged to make it explicit as a result of the flap following publication of the Haldeman diaries. First, Albert Hunt (The Wall Street Journal, May 26, 1994), then Anthony Lewis (The New York Times, May 30, 1994) charged that Kissinger and Nixon made Vietnam policy on the basis of domestic political considerations, implying that they sacrificed the lives of thousands of soldiers in the interest of Nixon's re-election. Kissinger rebukes Lewis for levelling such a heinous accusation on the strength of "a single entry in 600 pages of the H.R. Haldeman diaries" ("Hanoi, Not Nixon, Set Pace of Vietnam Peace," The New York Times, June 3, 1994), and—in reply to Hunt—writes, "Vietnam was a tragedy because the commitment . . . grew out of America's idealistic tradition and the extrication became a nightmare because that idealism turned on itself" ("I Stand by My Eulogy to Nixon," The Wall Street Journal, June 3, 1994).

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whole country for cracking up when it needed to pull together. He may be right to indict all Americans for letting their moralism lead them astray. But it is heresy to say so.

### Heresy's Henry

How dare Kissinger criticize our moral tradition? Has it not been our badge of honor since 1776 *and* our best weapon in world affairs? Isn't the world today turning more and more to our ideals and institutions? Isn't it America's calling to lead the world into habits and institutions that will *liberate* nations from thralldom to geopolitics? If we believe that the answers are "Yes," whether or not we believe that America has always lived up to its calling, then we *must* ostracize Kissinger in our hearts, if not in print.

But what if Kissinger is orthodox and the Wilsonians are the real heretics? He surely bases his politics on the orthodox doctrine of human imperfectability, hence on the contingency of all human creations. Aristotle and the Greeks, and the Jewish and Christian scriptures all said the same. So did our own Founding Fathers, who designed their "more" perfect union on the principle that checks and balances are needed to contain the play of human corruption. The City on a Hill notwithstanding, no sensible American believed that his country would be free of vice or faction. From these first principles, the Founding Fathers deduced a foreign policy meant to shelter America, to the degree possible, from the dangers inherent in a wicked world: isolationism when possible, power politics when necessary, and balance of power once U.S. interests reached the coasts of Europe and Asia. What we now think of as hard-boiled "realism" is not some import carried to America by the likes of Hans Morgenthau or Henry Kissinger. It was fundamental to the classical wisdom on which the country was founded.

But gradually, over the course of the nineteenth century, Anglo-American Protestants reacted to the ills they perceived in the industrial, imperialist world by overestimating the power of law and good works to change human behavior, then transferred their private calling to public life, then exported it. So it was that an otherwise devout Christian like Woodrow Wilson began to sound like that old Enlightenment radical Tom Paine, blaming governments for the corruption of men instead of men for the corruption of governments. Wilson seduced Americans into believing that whole nations could be converted and that wars were just only if crusades. That millenarian heresy inspired everything from the botched peace at Versailles to the smug isolationism of the thirties to the "bear any burden" mentality that landed us in Vietnam. Could it be, therefore, that Kissinger more truly reflects the philosophical sobriety of our nation's founders? That Kissinger is more American than Wilson?

There is at least one undeniably un-American thing about Kissinger, and that is his pessimism. Americans may have been traditionally suspicious of men and of governments, but they were always bullish on America. Reagan

Fall 1994 | 15

HENRY A. KISSINGER

Response by Henry Kissinger to Richard Schifter Essay

Mr. Schifter's reply of May 25 to my Op-Ed piece in the _Washington Post_ has, significantly, omitted my central point: that the more appropriate locale for a Presidential visit during the VE Day celebrations was London, not Moscow, and that the occasion was an opportunity missed for putting forward a new political initiative such as the North Atlantic Free Trade Area. Instead, Mr. Schifter's focus is all on a single paragraph in which I stated that realistic NATO expansion is incompatible with the premises of the Partnership for Peace; and that the Administration's approach to the issue shows an excessive deference to Moscow. But in arguing that the Partnership for Peace is a way station into NATO and raising all kinds of procedural doubts, Mr. Schifter tends to prove my basic point.

For the rest of this century, realistic NATO expansion must concentrate on the Visegrad countries - Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. Any wider goal both puts expansion into a future too distant for policy analysis and envisages a structure which is more similar to the UN than to a security alliance. It is no accident that Mr. Schifter resolutely refuses to mention any specific candidates for expansion, making it sound like some club membership dependent on worthiness unrelated to security which is in the end the raison d'etre of an alliance.

Trying to pull the teeth of pressure for expansion, the Administration is paying lip service to the objective while defining it in a way which produces two undesirable outcomes: either expansion will never happen because the proposed process is so cumbersome (in which case NATO will atrophy); or, if the conditions are met, NATO will turn into a vague collective security institution.

1

The Administration's own statements are the best witness to these propositions:

In announcing the Partnership for Peace on January 10, 1994 President Clinton said: "Why should we now draw a line through Europe a little further east? Why should we now do something which could foreclose the best possible future for Europe?" This best future President Clinton defined as a Russia committed to the security of its neighbors - in other words, a situation which makes alliances unnecessary.

The availability of NATO membership to all the former republics of the Soviet Union was made explicit by Secretary Christopher at Almaty in Kazakhstan: "This [Partnership for Peace] would permit Kazakhstan, as well as other members of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, to become part of a partnership which would engage in joint exercises, joint planning - and there could be, one day, NATO expansion."

National Security Adviser Tony Lake made the same point on President Clinton's recent trip to Ukraine: "The President emphasized that we do not want to see a new division of Europe because that could leave, potentially, Ukraine in a grey area..."

But the only way expansion can avoid creating a new dividing line is to include Russia (and the other former Soviet republics) together with all the former satellites. Nor can reassuring noises avoid the obvious - that Russia's neighbors are so desperate to join NATO precisely because they are afraid. It is also the case that an alliance which refuses to define the area that it protects is no longer an alliance. In short, if all members of the so-called Commonwealth of Independent States plus all former satellites are eligible to join, NATO would no longer be a military alliance (unless it were aimed at China or Japan). It would lack a definition of the threat, common forces, and agreed strategies. That approach is incompatible with a stable Europe in the long run.

Even the half-way house in which the current NATO exists side by side with a Partnership for Peace including Russia portends nearly unmanageable difficulties. Aside from the difficulty of what serious military planning Kazakhstan and NATO can possibly undertake jointly, the coexistence of NATO and the Partnership in the same locus and containing the same personnel is likely to follow Gresham's Law:

2

bad money will drive out the good. Or are we to assume
that the same officers can plan protection of the NATO
area in the morning and cooperation with what is, at
least in Eastern Europe, considered the potential
threat in the afternoon? Or that the Russian
representative will not use his membership in the
North Atlantic Cooperation Council to pressure his
colleagues who, on the same occasion, meet as the
original NATO Council? This is why, unlike Mr.
Schifter, I do not consider Yeltsin's agreement to
Russian membership in the Partnership a great success.

The spreading of democracy eastward is desirable
but NATO, a defensive alliance, is not the appropriate
instrument. The proper forum for it is the European
Security Conference. I have great sympathy for the
Administration's desire to avoid expansion until after
the Russian election. But by trying to carry water on
both shoulders - avowing expansion but defining it in
a way which defeats its purpose - it will weaken NATO
without enhancing the US position in Moscow.

3

The Gregorian University Foundation

106 West 56th Street, New York, NY 10019

(212) 582-5433 FAX (212) 956-2921

APR 19 1995

April 18, 1995

Hon. & Mrs. Henry Kissinger
350 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10022

Dear Dr. & Mrs. Kissinger:

Please permit me to extend a personal invitation for you to join us in a visit to Rome. The occasion is the Gregorian University Foundation's 1995 Colloquium, scheduled for October 6th to 13th. Once again we have planned a week of challenging dialogues at our Jesuit university in Rome, as well as visits to major Roman sites with the Jesuit community as our hosts.

Some of the events that we have planned include:

1. The opening of the Gregorian University's academic year at St. Ignatius Church, during which we will join the faculty and students for the magnificent Mass of the Holy Spirit.

2. Mass in the rooms where St. Ignatius of Loyola worked as Superior General of the Society of Jesus in the 16th Century and where he died in 1556. The Mass will be celebrated by Father Joseph Pittau, S.J., president of the Gregorian University. Father Pittau also serves as Father General Peter-Hans Kolvenbach's General Counselor for Governance and after Mass he will greet us at a formal dinner.

3. An audience with His Holiness John Paul II. As presently planned, the audience will follow Mass in his private chapel.

4. Seminars conducted by some of the most distinguished Jesuit scholars in the world, faculty members of the Gregorian. The content of the seminars will be derived from the suggestions of the participants, with ample opportunities for dialogue.

5. Meetings with students from "The Greg," who come from 125 countries around the world. These seminars and meetings will provide insights into a dimension of the Church which most American Catholics seldom experience first-hand.

6. The opportunity for special private tours of several papal sites, e.g. the restored Sistine Chapel, the Papal Gardens, the excavations under St. Peter's Basilica, the tomb of St. Peter, the astronomical observatory at Castel Gandolfo.

7. Tours and receptions with the faculties of each of the three Gregorian Consortium institutions: the Gregorian University, the Biblical Institute and the Oriental Institute.

For the benefit of the Pontifical Gregorian University, The Pontifical Biblical Institute and The Pontifical Oriental Institute -- Rome, Italy

We will fly to Rome on Friday, October 6th, 1995, arriving on Saturday
October 7th. Our group will stay at the Crowne Plaza Minerva in the heart of
ancient Rome, a few steps from the historic Pantheon and a few short blocks
from the Gregorian University. Our return trip to the United States is slated
for Friday, October 13th.

Based on early projections, I expect the cost of the trip, exclusive of
airfare, to be between $4,500 and $4,800 per couple ($2,500 to $2,800 single)
for hotel, meals, ground transportation, fees, gratuities and administrative
costs.

I hope this preliminary outline whets your appetite for our visit to the
heart of the Church. To date, almost 200 of our friends have experienced this
opportunity for warm camaraderie between the participants and the Jesuits, and
have grown in their awareness of The Gregorian's profound effect on tomorrow's
Church.

To facilitate your response, I am enclosing a reply form. Along with
letting us know that you are interested in our trip, the form will advise us on
areas you would like to see discussed in the seminars. Please also use this
form to let us know about other friends who might be interested in
participating in the Colloquium.

I look forward to sharing this extraordinary experience with you and I
hope it will lead to your further participation in our work and support of it.

Sincerely,

Rev. Eugene J. O'Brien, S.J.
President

-2-

ROME COLLOQUIUM OCTOBER 6 - 13, 1995

Name Hon. Henry A. Kissinger Spouse Nancy

Street 350 Park Ave. City New York State NY Zip 10022

Telephone (Home) _______________ (Business) 212/759-7919

1. I wish to attend the 1995 Fall trip to Rome. Please reserve ____ spaces for me.

2. Here are my suggestions for the Colloquium topics:

3. I have not yet decided. Please insure that I receive the next mailing. I will decide at that time.

4. x I will not be able to attend this Colloquium but would like to be informed about future Colloquia.

Other Possible Participants for Fall 1995 Trip:

1. Name

Street _______________ City _______________ State _______________ Zip _______________

Telephone (Home) _______________ (Business) _______________

2. Name

MAY-25-1995 10:34

KISSINGER ASSOC.

212 759 0042 P.01/02

PACSIMILE COVER SHEET

MAY 22 1995

TO MR HENRY A. KISSINGER

FAX NO 001 212 759 0042 DATE May 22 1995

FROM SIR RONALD GRIERSON TOTAL PAGES 2

With
Sir Ronald Grierson's
Compliments

Sir Ronald asked me to forward this to you

If transmission is incomplete or unclear please
telephone 0171 581 9099 or fax 0171 581 9049

MAY-22-1995 10:14

0715819049

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THE GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY, p.l.c.

1 STANHOPE GATE · LONDON W1A 1EH

011-005 0004

18 April 1995

Dear Mr. Gingrich,

Please forgive me for launching this invitation out of the blue but it occurred to me that I might conceivably persuade you to be this year's speaker at an annual event in London which in spite of its recent origin has acquired considerable prestige.

This event takes the form of an informal but well attended breakfast at Simpson's-in-the-Strand where it was "inaugurated" in November 1993 with Henry Kissinger as its first speaker. The occasion brings together an important cross-section of politicians, media personalities, businessmen and others and although informal and private in style it has become very prestigious.

The speaker following Henry Kissinger, i.e. in 1994, was P.W. de Klerk, Deputy President of South Africa. We are very anxious to maintain the high level set by these two guests; hence my approach to you. The actual date of the breakfast could be chosen to suit your convenience, ideally between mid-October and mid-December, and the organisers will be happy to defray any expenses incurred by you.

We would feel enormously honoured if you could accept this invitation and give us the benefit of your views on the current political scene in the United States.

Sir Robin Renwick, Ambassador in Washington, tells me that if you are able to accept this invitation he would be glad to arrange an official programme for you, including calls on senior members of the Government.

The Hon. Newt Gingrich

RECEIVED IN ENGLAND NO. 1017-REGISTERED OFFICE: 1 STANHOPE GATE, LONDON

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JACK GROSS

[lc]

July 16, 1995

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
350 Fifth Avenue - 26th Floor
New York, NY 10022

JUL 16 1995

Dear Dr. Kissinger:

To remind somewhat apologetically I had sent you several
original political cartoons of yourself and later you were
kind enough to inscribe Diplomacy which I now re-read with
interest.

I've just finished your review of Norman Rose's Churchill
the unruly giant in today's Times Book Review. A very long
time admirer of the unforgettable Winston, compliments on
your analytical retrospective, more to the point than the
book itself which I confess I shall not buy.

Years ago, the Air Force Secretary requested a friend and me
to fly to London on a quick mission. We put on blue suits
and went to McGuire AFB for a morning flight, dining the
night before at Philadelphia's Bookbinders. When told where
we were headed, the manager asked if we'd take along a case
of their famous clam chowder for Mr. Churchill which he
loved. We quickly agreed.

The first thing I did in London was phone No. 10 Downing to
advise we had the chowder but instead of inviting me to bring
it over they sent an aide to pick it up. Close but, as they
say, no cigar - which I'd have given anyway to my friend
Curt LeMay. Perhaps.

I have books of Churchillian wit, sayings, etc. and enclose
one which flows like a stream in describing life and mankind.

With best wishes.

1919-20 TOWNE HOUSE APARTMENTS • HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA 17102 • (717) 232-5841