[L]

## AIG-TATA TIE-UP FOR INSURANCE SERVICES

A Memorandum of Understanding was recently signed by the Tata Group with the American International Group, Inc. (AIG), U.S.A., which envisages the formation of separate joint venture insurance companies as soon as the insurance sector is opened up for private and foreign investment by the Government. Mr. Syamal Gupta, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director Tata Exports, exchanging the protocol with Mr. J. Allen, General Manager for India, AIG. Seen from l. to r. are Mr. R. N. Tata, Chairman, Tata Industries Limited, Mr. R. Brown, US Commerce Secretary and Mr. M. R. Greenberg, Chairman, AIG.

## RS. 840 MILLION CONTRACT AWARDED TO TATA PROJECTS IN ABU DHABI

A contract agreement, valued at Rs. 840 million, was recently signed by Tata Projects Limited (TPL) with the Water and Electricity Department of Abu Dhabi. The project involves the construction of eight new 33 kv sub-stations and modification of 17 existing sub-stations. Mr. Vijaya Singh, Managing Director of Tata Projects signed the agreement with Sheikh Surour bin Mohammed al Nahyan, the Chamberlain of the Presidential Court and Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Department.

21

NATIONAL SOCIETY OF THE FRIENDS OF THE TREES

Thirty-Sixth Annual Vegetable, Fruit and Flower Show

Inauguration by Municipal Commissioner Sharad Kale
on February 18, 1995

This unique annual horticultural
show was inaugurated by Municipal
Commissioner Sharad Kale on
February 18, 1995. On display were

over 5,000 exhibits of vegetables,
fruits, flowers, plants, including
medicinal and aromatic plants, cactii
and succulents, bonsai and orchids.

Commissioner Sharad Kale
congratulated Mr. J. J. Bhabha on
completing twenty-five successful
years as the President of the Society.

22

MAY 08 1995

SIR DORABJI TATA TRUST

(Founded 1932)

JAMSHED J. BHABHA
Vice-Chairman and
Managing Trustee

BOMBAY HOUSE,
24, HOMI MODY STREET,
BOMBAY 400 001.

Telephone: 2049131
Telegrams: TATADOR

3rd May 1995.

On my return from New Delhi where I have been last month attending meetings of the Sangeet Natak Akademi the National Academy of Music, Dance and Drama) I hasten to send herewith the following material -

(a) An uncorrected typescript of your Dorab Tata Memorial Lecture

(b) A "floppy" to facilitate editing of the text on a computer (The text has been programmed on a Wordstar 7.0 Version)

(c) "The Human Settlements That We Need" by Dr. C.A. Doxiadis, representing his Dorab Tata Memorial Lecture in the form of a book published by the Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Ltd. Dr. Doxiadis happened to be a personal friend of Jeh who contributed to the book a Preface under his signature. The text of the book is notably different from the actual lecture which was delivered extempore, and without notes, but with an enthusiasm which held the attention of the audience. The Trust has, at no time, followed the meaningless practice of reproducing a lecture verbatim and has welcomed a redraft when necessary. Thus, Dr. Doxiadis has introduced into the book an amplified text with charts and graphs.

I am glad the carpet selected for you by Ratan and me has reached you safely.

With kind regards,

(J.J. Bhabha)

Dr. Henry Kissinger,
NEW YORK

Encls:

ELEVENTH DORAB TATA MEMORIAL LECTURE

Lecture delivered by Mr. Henry Kissinger

at the Tata Theatre on Monday, March 20, 1995 at 6.15 p.m.

------------------------------------------

Mr. Ratan N. Tata :

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure to welcome you this evening to the Sir
Dorab Tata Memorial Lecture. These lectures were initiated in
1960 by Mr. J. R. D. Tata with a view to invite distinguished
persons who were leaders in their own field with a view to
constructively contribute to the audiences in India and to create
Interest in areas of mutual or common concerns. It, therefore,
gives me great pleasure, and it is a great privilege for us, to
welcome Dr. Henry Kissinger in our midst today. I can see from
the response that Dr. Kissinger does not need any introduction.

We all know him for many things. Just to highlight some of his
several great achievements - He was the Professor on the
Faculty at Harvard, he then was the Assistant to the President of
the United States for National Security and the Secretary of
State in President Nixon's administration. What Dr. Kissinger,
perhaps, is most noted for is the fact that he rewrote the
American foreign policy in opening up China and also for having
brought the Vietnam War to a peaceful end through negotiations.

go ahead and _engage in all sorts of transitory
concerns in the meantime. For me, it is really hard to get _
used to the idea that he is no longer physically present. But on the _
other hand, all of us who knew him know that he is still here
with us. (Indeed, he is _said to have told his associates that he
would be watching them - _which was a slight threat and a major promise.)

I would like _as well to thank Ratan Tata, whose friendship
now carries us on into another _
generation, for his introduction and for giving me this opportunity _
to see and learn something about India at this dramatic stage of _
its history. _

In reflecting on what I should talk about to this audience, it seemed _
to me most appropriate that I not tailor my remarks specifically
to India but to present my analysis of the _
International situation, in particular vis-a-vis the position of _
my own country, the United States, and how that situation
affects India. I see the American Consul-_
General in the front row and, for the sake of his inner peace, I _
want to make it clear that I do not always reflect the official _
view of the United States. He speaks for the American foreign policy _
of the present and what we may see next year, but when I speak
it is of the _American foreign policy of the future.
And he will still, being a professional, remain our distinguished _
spokesman, whether here or elsewhere. _

The world today is undergoing an extraordinary and unique

period of _transition_. Every major country is confronting an _
environment without precedent. In a book I recently published, I listed among
the major players of this world the
United States, Europe, Russia, China, _
Japan and, possibly India. I have been urged, _
to strike the word "possibly" from later _
editions of the book, which I intend to do.
Now each of these countries, or regions, _
faces an unprecedented situation. _

In the 19th century, the countries of Europe had the optimum _
scale for achieving a balance between the then existing technology and _
the capability of its governments to organise their societies. _
Having a head start in technology, Europe gained a huge advantage over _
the rest of the world. But the scale of the European countries has _
grown too small for contemporary realities. On the other hand, in trying _
to form a united Europe, they have come up against the realities of _
their history, which has taught them to be competitors, and of _
their cultures, which are not necessarily homogeneous. So Europe, whatever
its future, will be absorbed for a considerable period _
In organising itself internally, torn between the necessity of _
cohesion and the reality that, as it expands, its diverse elements _
will become greater and greater. Thus the outcome of the _
cumulative role which Europe is likely to play is yet to be determined._

Russia was dominant for nearly a century and for
some 80 years through communism. It is now trying
to deal with the collapse of two of its _

traditions: the communist tradition and the imperial tradition.
Russia has been expanding for 400 years in all directions. It
has never been able to remain within
its borders. For the first
Time since Peter the Great, Russia must decide whether to
become a national state or to resume its traditional
pattern of expansionism.

China has never previously conducted a global foreign policy. It
never really believed in a society of sovereign states and
conceived of itself as a middle kingdom. When the first
British Ambassador appeared in China at the end of the 18th
century, he was treated as a tributary vassal who had come
to pay homage to the Emperor. It was, therefore, extraordinarily
shocking to China to find itself under assault throughout the
19th and a good part of the 20th century from those it had
always considered as vassal/barbarians, and to have to choose
between preserving its culture and modernising.
Though China has now made astounding progress, it nevertheless
has to adjust emotionally to living in an international society of
equals on the basis of sovereign respect.

Japan has also had a complex history which does not always
prepare it for the present. For four hundred years it had cut
Itself off entirely from the rest of the world. When it re-
entered the world, it decided to imitate the imperialism of the

European powers. The special characteristics of Japanese society are: to think of itself as unique, as a family with its own particular characteristics in a potentially hostile world; as a society immune by design and moving at its own pace, strengthened rather than weakened by its modern history. At the end of World War II, Japan became an economic superpower while staying out of international politics under the protection of the United States.

Now all these countries must change their ways in face of a uniquely new world. (I shall deal with the United States separately.) It is a world of economic interdependence and instant communications yet, at the same time, of significant cultural divisions. The loyalties of people are not yet as wide as the scope of their technologies. We have the paradox that at one and the same time it is possible to watch events in the most distant parts of the globe on television and yet some of these events can produce unspeakable suffering without the perpetrators having the slightest sense of responsibility for the reactions of the spectators or for the long-term consequences of their actions.

During the cold war, the two superpowers, more or less kept in check the most extreme forces of national self-assertion within their respective areas of control. These restraints are falling away. And so while American presidents speak of a new world order as if it has already arrived, we are in fact witnessing the first pangs of an international system yet to be constructed.

The United States is militarily the most powerful country in the world today. And for the foreseeable future there is no country on the horizon likely to be able to match it. At the same time, the issues to which military force is relevant are diminishing. There are fewer and fewer problems concerning the United States about which one could say that the use of American military force would provide the solution. So one should not confuse superpower status of the United States militarily with hegemony politically. On security matters, the United States is important, maybe central, to the peace of the world. But the issues that affect security militarily are diminishing. And the use of modern weapons makes them more and more problematic.

Thus the United States must reassess its traditional approaches. When I came to India during the cold war, I was usually asked about the role of the United States in that conflict. The conviction of some of my interlocutors seemed to be that that was a comfortable role for the United States. The fact of the matter is, if you read what Franklin Roosevelt was saying during World War II, we really would have liked to play the role that Pundit Nehru played. We would have liked to be non-aligned between Britain and the Soviet Union. And much of what was written in America during World War II described the British on the one end as having their usual concern for the balance of power, the Soviets on the other end, and America at the side acting as mediator. But that did not happen and soon the United States found itself propelled into the cold war.

[Y]

To understand America one has to look at it as a historic phenomenon. America is the only major country of the world whose history can be dated from a precise moment. It is the only major country that is populated almost entirely by Immigrants who turned their backs on their mother countries. It is the only major country that has never been Invaded, indeed has never had a powerful neighbour. It is the only major country that did not have a foreign policy for some 150 years and prided itself on its isolationism. When America became involved in foreign affairs, it was always on behalf of what was perceived to be some huge cause. Precisely because America had been populated by peoples who had turned their backs on their mother countries, it had the characteristic of always looking down on the European style of diplomacy.

I have sometimes argued that, until fairly recently, the American approach to foreign policy oscillated between treating foreign policy as a sub-division of psychiatry or a sub-division of theology. The psychiatric approach perceived relations amongst States as if they were relations amongst people, personalizing them to an enormous degree. The theological approach tended to view international politics as a struggle between good and evil. And in the face of evil there were only two possibilities. One was to destroy it totally and the second was to convert it to goodness. Both these approaches usually operated simultaneously. For example, President Reagan called the Soviet Empire publicly an Evil

Empire built on lies. In the same month, he wrote a letter to ___ Brezhnev proposing that if the two of them could only get ___ together, they could settle all the issues. This dual tendency has produced the tension so often present in American foreign policy. ___

When America entered World War I, it declared that the German ___ Emperor was an obstacle to world peace. The German Emperor had ___ been in office for 39 years at that point and it had never occurred ___ to anyone that he was personally a problem. The European approach was altogether different. When, during World War II, Russia supported Britain, Winston Churchill said: "If Hitler invaded hell, I would find something good to ___ say about the devil" - which was not exactly a vote of confidence ___ In Stalin. Now the American attitude at that point was to transform Stalin into a humane, well-meaning and jovial ally through whom peace would be preserved. Thus Franklin Roosevelt believed in ___ the Big Four - the United States, Britain, China, and the Soviet Union, which would together police the world and ___ enforce the peace around the globe - without American troops, incidentally, ___ a job left for the British. Such was the American ___ attitude in 1945. ___

Then came the cold war in the wake of American ___ disillusionment with Soviet conduct. America adopted the ___ characteristic attitude that it was facing evil incarnate and that it ___ had to be resisted, occasionally attacked and ultimately eradicated. ___ In America, a small opposition group believed that the Communist scourge could be converted. If you read the

articles of the period on the policy of containment, they all have one

curious aspect: all say that if the Soviet Union were contained and prevented from expanding, the overall bargaining situation would also change. Then, on some magic day, negotiations between the two superpowers could take place.

Yet none of the articles ever described what the negotiations would be about. What would we do on the magic day when the Soviet Union came to us and said, "We have seen the light. We want to negotiate".

There was always a certain amount of

disagreement between the Americans and the British, who never took such a high moral position having lived too long in a complex world on a day-to-day basis without feeling the least bit astounded by the vagaries of human motivation. Indeed, there were several attempts by Britain to start the negotiations earlier than the Americans believed was advisable. Yet when all is said and done, the containment policy did achieve its objectives and almost everything that was predicted more or less came to pass. Some of it came to pass in the administration of President Reagan, who everybody said could not possibly succeed in foreign policy.

Today, the United States' situation is that we do not have a clear-cut ideological enemy or a clear-cut strategic threat. We are militarily the most secure country in the world and probably the single strongest economically.

But in relation to most of the issues that concern the world, we
are not the only superpower. In a world in which a crisis in
Mexico can produce or contribute to a crisis of
government among nations coming into being
In other parts of the world, adjustments have to
be found.

Nor does America as yet have a clear-out operating philosophy. We are still torn between the idea that we are here to tell the whole world how it should organise itself internally and publishing an annual report, which we have now carried to the extreme, in which we comment about ourselves, not always favourably. On the other hand, there is the ever-present temptation to return to our traditional isolationism. But this is now a world in which a financial trader in Singapore can bring down a British Bank and in which democratic systems are full of political leaders who have every incentive to maximise for their own publics the unilateral benefits of their individual actions.

You should not assume that the United States has some master plan on the basis of which it organises the world. The United States is in fact undergoing a serious domestic debate. Recently, there was some dispute between Senator Dole and President Clinton at a conference I attended about unilateralism versus multilateralism. The issue was whether the UN should tell us what our objectives are or whether we should define our own

national interests. But in the real world, it never happens in so
_ clear-cut a way because no nation can act completely _
_ Independently. Nor can one make one's actions totally dependent _
_ on international consensus. But, for the next few years, the
United States will have to navigate these issues internally.
The whole thing is further
complicated by the fact that, _

when I started my career in international politics, the leading _
group in America was the so-called Northeastern establishment - New York and _
Boston, and to some extent Washington. It contained people who were _
to some extent emotionally linked to Europe. Today, the political power
in the United States is in the West and _
the Southwest - parts of the United States with no _
particular emotional tie to any other part of the world. In the far _
West, they may look to Asia but not to this part of Asia, rather to _
Northeast Asia, Japan and China. At the moment, a kind of educational _
process is going on in their minds. I can give you an example of _
the kind of isolationalism prevalent in these regions of America.
During the cold war, I once spoke in _

Omaha, Nebraska about the cold war. In the question/answer period, _
somebody got up and said: "This is all very interesting. You _
speak of a danger to the United States. That may be true in _
Washington but what would anyone want from us here in Omaha?" _
The headquarters of the strategic air command is in Omaha, only _
five miles down the road from where we were. The first city
in the United States that would have been _
attacked in a war would certainly have been Omaha. But that fact had not _

penetrated the consciousness of these people. And that is where _
America is today._

What should America want? How should it organise itself? The _
generation of the 1960s, of the Vietnam War, is now in power
and it thinks in terms of multilateral _solutions_. Yet the
realities of American politics inevitably drive it _
towards more national approaches. You see the resulting
problem in our relations with Russia, for example. The
generation of the late 1960s and early 1970s _
looks at the issue as a case for conversion. They think it _
is within our power to make Russian leaders democratic.
As a result, enormous emphasis is placed on the personality
of Yeltsin and much American policy is shaped by
the effort to help Yeltsin. The opposite view,
which I share, is that the problem of the survival _
of a foreign leader is his own problem. If he cannot remain in _
office without our help, then he is already in great difficulty. I _
also believe that, when dealing with foreign policy, it is best to _
address the foreign actions of a society and to leave its internal _
evolution as much as possible to its own decision-making. From that _
point of view, my approach and the approach of all those who agree _
with me is simply this: What we want from Russia has
nothing to do with a particular leader but whether Russia can
stay within its national borders, _
something it has not done for 400 years. And since St. _
Petersbury is closer to New York than it is
to Vladivostok and Vladivostok is closer to Seattle than

[Y]

it is to Moscow, my friends and I _

Believe that the Russians should not feel claustrophobic if they _
are asked to stay within the borders of their own country, a country
with eleven _time zones. Thus I see no need for
any conflict between the _

United States and Russia unless Russia attempts to re-acquire _
the republics it has recently been obliged to _

Liberate. If it does, the fatality of Russian history _
- which is overextension - will repeat itself.

Traditionally, once Russia has acquired a territory _
occupied by a foreign people, it begins to feel less rather than more _
secure and tries to acquire even more new territory to protect the last _
conquest. In that context, the Chechnyan conflict becomes a _
colonial war, the crucial difference between it and
the colonies of the European powers of the 19th century being that Chechnya is
at the very border of Russia.

Still, on the whole I believe that American-Russian
relations will prosper if _Russia_ can adapt itself to its new
geographic conditions. Its _

previous policies are somewhat understandable if one considers _
the flatness of the territory and the invasions Russia has suffered
historically. But with _

20,000 nuclear weapons on its soil, Russia
should not have to worry about _

people marching into its territory. _And that, in sum,
is the challenge of the American-Russian relationship._

I have mentioned China, which has made extraordinary economic progress and without whose cooperation it is difficult to conceive of stability in Asia, certainly in Northeast Asia. China will be preoccupied with its economic progression for the next twenty years or so. But if it continues at its present rate, it will certainly emerge as an extraordinary superpower.

In terms of their relations to each other, the Asian nations of Japan, China, Russia, and Korea (I leave India aside for the moment) bear greater resemblance to the relations of nations in 19th century Europe than in 20th century Europe. They deal with each other competitively, not just economically but strategically. And if one asks their leaders who poses the greatest threat to them, they almost always name each other rather than some distant country. So in terms of that part of the world, the United States is in a position very similar to that of Britain vis-a-vis Europe in the 19th century - except that we have never conducted such a foreign policy and would have to learn it as we go along. And that is becoming ever more complex because it is unlikely that Japan will continue to nestle under an American security umbrella in the decades ahead. Under the shock of defeat, that had been one way for it to achieve economic recovery. But with the end of the cold war, it is not likely that Japan will view its national interests identically with those of the United States. For America, Korea is a friendly but distant country; for Japan, it is a direct and decisive neighbour. America

16

does not have to worry on its own account about two or three nuclear weapons in North Korea and it can afford to make an agreement which freezes their development at that point. For Japan, this is a totally different issue, due in equal parts to the proximity and the question of status. Japan, therefore, will, first, develop its military forces - indeed it already has the third largest military budget in the world - and, secondly, conduct a more autonomous though not unfriendly foreign policy.

Having gone through all of this, I have not yet addressed India. But I did that because I want you to understand how I approach foreign policy. In the period that is ahead of us, where there is no over-arching tension, the only way nations can cooperate is by developing a concept of their national interest which takes into account the national interest of other countries. During the period of the cold war, it obviously served India's interest to be non-aligned. When I started out in Government as an Advisor to President Kennedy, I recall that during the Berlin crisis of 1961 he had hoped that India would support America's position. But I said that it was not possible for India to run a major risk on behalf of a European capital with which it had never had any connection, when the Soviet Union was so close by. In fact, India - from my point of view, quite correctly - took a non-aligned position on that issue even though it made some of our people unhappy.

I always had considerable understanding for India's non-alignment so long as you did not ask us to practise it. But during the cold war it was, of course, always the situation that India and the United States had different perspectives on many of the issues.

Then too, American relations with some of your neighbours truly
aggravated the situation. In the present world, India will continue
along the road on which it is now if it can sustain its growth rate
(in terms of which the official statistics may actually be low because
of the difficulty of acquiring statistics in many parts of the
agricultural economy). Then, without any question, India will become
one of the major players in the world.

But the question is: what will it play? What will be the policy it
pursues? I tend to look at policy issues as
history. And the Indian tradition in the modern period is
different from that of other colonial countries. I
would argue that British foreign policy east of Suez was not made
In London but in New Delhi, and that the officials in New Delhi
defined the strategy of the British Empire from the point of view
of Indian security. The various lines - the Durand Line, the
MacMohan Line, the various outposts, Singapore, the Gulf States
were really conceived by the strategists of that
period with the protection of India in mind. In terms of immediate
British interests as a European power, these were secondary and they
were executed by the local civil service. Thus Indian foreign
policy did not begin in a vacuum.

I envision no clashes with the United States, especially if
India does not head in an imperialist direction, which is practically
Inconceivable to me. And on many issues I see the possibility of
parallel interests, for instance in terms of the Middle East.
The Arab-Israeli conflict seems to be decreasing in its ability

to produce international crises. It can still generate huge local suffering but it is no longer the central factor in the way that the conflict between fundamentalism and moderate secularism is in the Islamic world. The United States, Europe, Russia and India all have a stake in this, India because of its geographic proximity. Of course, it is absurd to argue that we shall always look at things Identically. But we can look at them with understanding. I am struck by the ease of communications between Indians and Americans and yet few organisations exist that promote Intellectual and political dialogue between our two countries. Between Europe and the United States, between Japan and the United States, there are groups that meet regularly. While contacts In the business world are increasing, in terms of the sorts of Issues I have discussed here, there is too little contact. And there are not enough Americans who really follow events in India. But India may well help to answer the question of what it needs first - economic development or political development. When you try to do both simultaneously, things usually turn unmanagable. But if India continues along the route of progress it has been on, it will be clear that, as a functioning democracy which has absorbed several trenches of government nationally and in its states and with all the tensions that exist in a society of so many communities, it Is in the end the political cohesion of India that contributes to Its economic and therefore its foreign policy prospects. I am not in favour of making periodic

[Y]

pronouncements about the domestic affairs of other _
countries as a vehicle of American foreign policy. Rather,
we should work at harmonising our purposes and pursuing
as many _of them as we can jointly.

This is the challenge before the nations of the world _
today. It is one to which we are all condemned to contribute and _
towards which I believe the United States and India can march a _
long way together._

Thank you very much._

Mr. Ratan Tata, Dr. Kissinger and friends._

I have attended every single Sir Dorab Tata Memorial Lecture but _
I have never seen the hall so overflowing as it is today. And it _
Is the first time that we have to put not only loudspeakers but _
hearing facilities outside this hall so that people who are not _
In the hall can still listen to the lecture._

Your speech, Dr. Kissinger, has been studded with witicisms which _
we rightly expected all the time, and perhaps the audience would _
like me to recall two or three other witicisms which are to the _
credit of the speaker and which have already passed into history._

At the time when the Israel problem was in the forefront, Dr. _
Kissinger, who himself is a Jew, as you know, spoke about Mrs. _
Golda Meir. And he said 'Golda Meir and I are agreed upon _
everything including the fact that we do not see eye to eye'. On _

Dr. Henry Kissinger :

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen,

It is a great honour for me to speak on this occasion and my only
regret is that Jeh Tata could not be here. I have met many
remarkable men in my life. I have never met anyone more
distinguished, and more remarkable than Jeh Tata.

And perhaps deep down one of the reasons why my visit was always
delayed was the conviction all of us carried with us was that he
was indestructible. He'd always be there and one could always do
something that was more transitory and it is really hard to get
used to the idea that he is not physically present. But on the
other hand all of us who knew him know that he is here and he is
said to have told his associates that he will be watching them
which was a slight threat and a major promise. So I would like
to thank Ratan Tata, whose friendship now carries on in another
generation, for his introduction and for this opportunity for me
to see and learn something about India at this dramatic stage of
its history.

In reflecting about what I should talk to this audience it seems
to me that it would be most appropriate if I talk to you not with
remarks tailored for India but with my analysis of the
international situation as I see it, especially the position of
my own country, the United States. And then fit India into that

mosaic to describe the pattern. I see the American Consul-General in the front row and, for the sake of his inward peace, I want to make it clear that I do not always reflect the official view of the United States. He speaks for American foreign policy of the present and and we may see next year, if I speak of the American foreign policy of the future In which case he will still be, however being a professional, our distinguished spokesman either here or elsewhere.

The world right now is undergoing an unprecedented period of transition. Every major country is facing an unprecedented environment. In a book I recently published, I listed among the major players United States, Europe, or Germany, Russia, China, Japan and, I think I said possibly India, I have been urged, which I will follow, to strike the word possibly from later editions of the book. But each of these countries or regions faces an unprecedented situation.

In the 19th century, the countries of Europe had the optimum scale for the balance between the then existing technology, and the capabilities of Governments to organise their societies. Having a head start in technology it gained a huge advantage over the rest of the world. But the scale of European countries now is too small for current realities. On the other hand, in trying to form a united Europe, they come up against the realities of their history which has taught them to be competitors, and of their cultures which are not necessarily homogenous. So Europe,

whatever its future, will be absorbed for a considerable period
in organising itself internally torn between the necessity of
cohesion and the reality that as it expands the diverse elements
will become greater and greater. So that the outcome of the
cumulative role that Europe may play is yet to be determined.

Russia dominated for nearly a century, for some 80 years by
communism, is trying to deal with a collapse of two of its
traditions. The communist tradition and the imperial tradition.
Russia has been expanding for 400 years in all directions. It
has never been within its contemporary borders. For the first
time since Peter the Great, Russia having been obliged to
traditionalism its various republics has now to decide whether to
become a national state or whether to resume its traditional
pattern.

China has never previously conducted global foreign policy. It
never really believed in a society of sovereign states. China
was conceived of itself as a middle kingdom and, when the first
British Ambassador appeared in China at the end of the 18th
century, he was treated as a tributary, as a vassal who had come
to pay homage to the Emperor. It was, therefore, extraordinarily
shocking to China to find itself under assault throughout the
19th and a good part of the 20th century from those whom he had
always considered as vassals/barbarians and to have to choose
between preserving its culture and perhaps remaining with and
modernising. Though China has now made astounding progress, it

nevertheless has to adjust emotionally to living in a society of
equals on the basis of sovereign respect.

Japan has also had a complex history which does not always
prepare it for the present. For four hundred years it had cut
itself off entirely from the rest of the world. When it re-
entered the world, it decided to imitate the imperialism of the
European powers and this special characteristics of Japanese
society, which is to think of itself as unique, as a family with
special characteristics in a potentially hostile world, a
society immune by design almost to the persuasion of others
moving at its own pace was strengthened rather than weakened by
its modern history. At the end of World War II Japan became an
economic superpower. But it stayed out of international politics
under the protection of the United States.

So all countries have had to change their, had to face a unique
world. And I will deal with the United States of America in a
minute. It is a world of economic interdependence, instant
communication and yet, at the same time, of significant cultural
divisions. The loyalties of people are not yet as wide as the
scope of their technology. We have the paradox that at one and
the same time it is possible to watch events in the most distant
parts of the globe on television and yet some of these events can
produce unspeakable suffering without the perpetrators having the
slightest sense of responsibility for the reactions of the
spectators or for the long term consequences of their actions.

[L]

During the cold war, the two superpowers, more or less, kept in check the most extreme force of national self-assertion within their respective areas of control. These restraints are falling away. And so while some American Presidents have spoken of a new world order, as if it had already arrived, we are in fact witnessing the first pangs of an international system yet to be constructed. The United States is militarily the most powerful country in the world today. And for the foreseeable future there is no country on the horizon likely to be able to match it. At the same time the issues to which military force is relevant are diminishing. There are fewer and fewer problems that concern the United States where one can say the use of American military force offers a road to their solution. So one should not confuse superpower status of the United States militarily, with hedgemony politically. On security matters, the United States is important, may be central, to the peace of the world. But the issues that affect security militarily are diminishing. And the use of modern weapons makes them more and more problematic. So the United States faces a need to reassess its traditional approaches.

When I came to India during the cold war, I was usually asked about the role of the United States in that conflict and the conviction of some of my inter-locutors seemed to be that this was a comfortable role for the United States. The fact of the matter is, if you read what Franklin Roosevelt was saying during World War II, we really would have liked to play the role that

[L.C.]

Pundit Nehru played. He would have liked to be non-aligned between Britain and the Soviet Union. And much of what was written in America during World War II described the British with their usual concern for balance of power and the Soviets, with America at the sides, acting as a mediator. Now it did not happen. And the United States found itself propelled into the Cold War. And one has to look at America as a historic phenomena. America is the only major country of the world whose history can be dated from a very precise day. It is the only major country in the world that is populated almost entirely by immigrants who have turned their backs on their mother countries. It is the only major country in the world that has never been invaded. Indeed has never had a powerful neighbour. It is the only major country of the world that didn't have a foreign policy for a 150 years. It prided itself on isolationism. When America became involved in foreign affairs, it was always on behalf of some huge cause, perceived to be a huge cause, and precisely because it was populated by people who had turned their backs on their mother country. There was a way of looking down on the European style of diplomacy.

I have sometimes argued that until fairly recently the American approach to foreign policy isolated between dealing with it as a sub-division of psychiatry or as a sub-division of theology. The psychiatrists thought relations amongst States were like relations amongst people. And that one could personalise it and one could need it to establish the fundamentals of human

8

[L]

relationships.

The theologians tended to believe that all of international politics was a struggle between good and evil. And when you faced evil there were two possibilities. One to destroy it totally and the second to convert it. And so you had both tendencies usually going on simultaneously. For example, President Reagan called the Soviet Empire publicly, an evil empire, built on lies. In the same month he wrote a letter to Brezhnev based on the proposition that if the two could only get together they would be able to settle all the issues. So this has been a basic tension and seen in American foreign policy. When America entered World War I, it declared that the German Emperor was an obstacle to world peace. The German Emperor had been in office for 39 years at that point. It had never occurred to anyone that he was personally a problem. When he was considered a little strange, Winston Churchill said about him, he wanted nothing out of life except the victories of Napoleon without having to fight his battles. But that was different from the American approach. The same was true in World War II with better reasons. But what was also interesting in World War II is that when Russia supported Britain, Winston Churchill said: "If Hitler invaded hell, I would find something good to say about the devil" which was not exactly a vote of confidence in Stalin. But the American attitude was to make of Stalin and control the humane well meaning, jovial ally, on the basis of whom peace could be preserved and what Franklin Roosevelt had in mind was the big four. The United States, Britain, China, and

the Soviet Union, who would police the world and would together enforce peace everywhere, without American troops incidentally, that job was left for the British. So this was the American attitude in 1945.

Then the cold war came about because of the American disillusionment with Soviet conduct. And then America adopted the characteristic attitude namely that it was facing evil, that it had to be extricated, and to be resisted, attacked occasionally in America by a small opposition that said they now had to be converted. But if you read, for example, the articles on containment that were written in that period they have one curious aspect. They say that if the Soviet Union is contained and prevented from expanding, the bargaining situation will change. And on some magic day, negotiations could take place. Yet none of these articles ever described what the negotiations would be about. What would we do on the magic day that the Soviet Union came to us and said "We have seen the light, We would now want to negotiate". Now there was always some disagreement between us and the British who never took such a high moral position having lived in a complex world on a day to day basis and not being astounded by the vagaries of human motivation. And there were several attempts by Britain to see whether negotiations could be started earlier than we thought advisable. And yet when all is said and done, the containment policy they did achieve its objectives. And almost everything that was predicted more or less came to pass. That is also true. And some of it came to pass in the administration of President

[L.C.]

[L]

Now the United States faces this situation. We don't have a clearcut ideological enemy. We don't face a clearcut strategic threat. We are militarily certainly the most secure country in the world. We probably the single strongest economic country. But in relation to most of the issues that concern the world, we are not the only superpower. In a world in which a crisis in Mexico can produce a crisis or can contribute to the crisis of the Government in which new nations are coming into being everywhere, in many parts of the world. And adjustments have to be found for all the situations that I have described. America does not yet have a clearcut operating philosophy. We are still torn between the idea that we have arrived, to tell the whole world how it should organise itself internally and we publish an annual report which we have now carried to the extreme that we comment even think about ourselves. And not always favourably. And on the other hand the fact that there is a temptation to return to traditional isolationism. On the one hand there is a world in which trader in Singapore who can bring down a British Bank on the other hand we live in democratic systems in which every political leader has an incentive to maximise for his own public, the unilateral benefits to its own society of individual actions. And so you should not assume that the United States has some master plan on the basis of which it organises the world. The United States is undergoing a serious domestic debate. Recently there was some dispute between Senator Dove and

11

[L]

President Clinton at one conference that I attended, about unilateralism against multilateralism on the issue, should the UN tells us what our objectives are or should we define our own national interests. In the real world it does not happen in such a clearcut way because no nation can act completely independently. Nor can one make one's action totally dependent on an international consensus. But we have to navigate internally in the United States and we will for the next few years on these issues. It is more complicated by the fact that, when I started my career in international politics, the leading group in America was the north-east establishment - New York and Boston, and to some extent Washington - people who were emotionally linked at least to Europe had played a certain international role.

Now the political power in the United States is in the west and in the south-west - The parts of the United States have no particular emotional tie to any part of the world. In the far west they may look to Asia but not to this part of Asia, but to north-east Asia, in Japan and in China. And so an educational process is going on in their minds. To give you an example of this kind of isolationalism, during the Cold War I once spoke in Omaha, Nebraska, about the Cold War, and in the question period somebody got up and said: "This is all very interesting and you speak of a danger to the United States. This may be true in Washington but what would anyone want from us here in Omaha". The headquarters of this strategic air command is in Omaha was five miles down the road. The first city that would have been

12

attacked in a War was certainly Omaha. But that fact had not
penetrated the consciousness of these people. So this is where
America is today.

What should it want? How should it organise itself? The
generation of the 60s, of the Vietnam War, talk of multilateral
solutions. The realities of the American politics drive it
towards more national approaches. If you see for example the
problem, in relations, with Russia. The late 60s and early 70s
generation looks at it as a problem of conversion. They think it
is within our power to make Russian leaders democratic. I have
an American acquaintance who believes that there is no such thing
as an English actor. He thinks the English put this on to
intimidate the American. And if you can only catch an Englishman
unawares like waking him up at four in the morning, he will talk
like a normal human being. This is very much the American
attitude towards Russia - of some Americans. And therefore a
great emphasis is placed on the personality of Yeltsin and many
policies are shaped by an attempt to accord help to Yeltsin.

The opposite view which I share is that the problem of survival
of a foreign leader is his problem. If can stand and stay in
office without our help he is already in great difficulty. I
also believe that in dealing with foreign policy it is best to
deal with the foreign actions of a society and leave its internal
evolution as much as possible to its own decision. So from that
point of view my approach and the approach of those who agree
with me is this. What we want from Russia is not a particular

[L.C.]

leader but that they stay within their national borders, something that they have not done for 400 years. And since St. Petersbury is closer to New York than to Vladivostok, and since Vladivostok is closer to Seattle than to Moscow, my friends and I believe that the Russians should not feel claustrophobic if they are asked to stay within the borders of a country that has eleven times zones. So I see no need for any conflict between the United States and Russia if Russia does not attempt to re-acquire all the republics that they have recently been obliged to liberate. If they do, I think the fatality of Russian history will repeat itself. The fatality of Russian history has been over-extentions. It has been that once they acquire a territory occupied by foreign people they felt less secure rather than more secure and felt they needed new territory to protect the last conquest. And from that point of view I look at Chechnya as a colonial war, the only difference being that that colony is at the border of Russia and not the gross disease as was the case in Europe. But I don't want to get into every individual issue.

I believe that American-Russian relations will prosper. If Russia can adapt itself to its new geographic conditions. Its previous policies are somewhat understandable, if one considers the flat territory and the invasions it suffered. But with 20,000 nuclear weapons, Russia does not have to worry about people marching into its territory.

So this is the challenge of American-Russian relationship.

14

I have mentioned China which has made extraordinary economic progress and without whose co-operation it is difficult to conceive of stability in Asia and certainly in North East Asia. It will be occupied with its economic progression for the next twenty years. But if it continues at its present rate it will certainly emerge as an extraordinary superpower.

And the relations of Asian nations to each other, I put India in a separate one for the moment - Japan, China, Russia, Korea is more similar to the relations of the 19th century Europe to each other than of 20th century Europe. They deal with each other competitively - not just economically but strategically. And if one asks their leaders who the greatest threat to them is they would almost certainly always name each other and not some distant country. So in relation to that part of the world the United States is in a position very similar to that of Britain towards Europe in the 19th century except we have never conducted such a foreign policy. And we would have to learn it as we go along and this will become even more complex because it is unlikely that Japan will continue to nestle under an American security umbrella in the decades ahead. Under the shock of defeat this was one way to achieve economic recovery. But with the end of the cold war, it is not likely that Japan will view its national interests always identically with those of the United States. For America, Korea is a friendly but distant country. For Japan, it is a direct decisive neighbour. America does not have to worry for itself about two or three nuclear

15

weapons in North Korea and can afford to make an agreement which freezes the development at that point. For Japan, this is a totally different issue, both because of the proximity and because of status. Therefore I expect Japan first to develop its military forces, as it already is having the third largest military budget in the world and secondly conducting a more autonomous, not unfriendly, foreign policy.

Now I have come through all of this and I haven't yet mentioned India. And I did this because I wanted you to understand how I approach foreign policy. In the period that is ahead of us, where there is no over-arching tension, the only way nations can co-operate is by developing a concept of their national interest that takes into account the national interest of other countries. During the period of the cold war it obviously served India's interest to be non-aligned. When I started out in Government as an Advisor to President Kennedy and during the Berlin crisis of 1961, he always hoped that India would support our position and I always said, it cannot possibly be that India runs a major risk for a European capital with which it never had any connection when the Soviet Union is so close by and India, from my point of view, quite correctly took a non-aligned position on that issue even though it made some of our people unhappy.

So I always had considerable understanding for non-alignment so long as you did not ask us to practise it. But during the cold war it was, of course, always the situation that India and the United States had different perspectives on many of the issues.

And the American relations with some of your neighbours truly aggravated it. Now in the present day world, India continues the road on which it is now, if it can sustain the growth rate it has in which the official statistics may actually be low because of the difficulty of acquiring statistics on many parts of the agricultural economy, then without any question it will become one of the major players in the world.

The question is what will it play? What will be the policy it will pursue? I tend to look at things, at policy issues, as history. And the Indian tradition in the modern period is different from that of other colonial countries in this end. I would argue that British foreign policy east of Suez was not made in London but in New Delhi and that the officials in New Delhi defined the strategy of the British Empire from the point of view of Indian security. The various lines, the Durand Line, the MacMohan Line, the various outposts, Singapore, the Gulf States were really conceived in the view of the strategists of that period for the protection of India. In terms of immediate British interests as European power, they were secondary and they were executed by a local civil service so that Indian Foreign Policy does not begin in a vacuum and the Indian concern about security in the Indian ocean, more in the Bay of Bengal. I see no possibility of clashes with the United States, especially if it does not take an imperialist direction which is practically inconceivable to me. So on many issues I can see that there may be many similarities if we look at the Middle East for example. The Arab-Israeli conflict I think is decreasing in its ability

17

to produce international crisis. It can still produce huge local
suffering but it is no longer the central factor I believe the
central factor from Algiers to Iran is the conflict between the
fundamentalists and moderate secularism in the Islamic world. In
this the United States has a stake, Europe has a stake, Russia
has a stake, and India because of its geographic proximity,
undoubtedly has a view and the view that in the long run does
not need to be hostile to the United States. Of course it would
be absurd to argue that we shall always look at things
identically. But we can look at it understandingly. I am struck
by the fact of the ease of communications between Indians and
Americans and yet how few organisations exist that promote
intellectual and political dialogue between our two countries.
Between Europe and the United States, between Japan and the
United States, there are groups that meet regularly. While in
the business world the contacts are increasing. On this sort of
issues that I have discussed here there is too little context.
There are too few Americans who really follow events in India and
its all the more remarkable because India it may turn out will
help answer this question of what you need first - economic
development or political development. When you try to do both
simultaneously, it usually becomes unmanagable. But if India
continues on the progress that it is making, it will be clear
that as a functioning democracy that has absorbed several
trenches of Government, nationally and in its States, with all
the tensions that exist in a society of so many communities, it
is in the end the political cohesion of India that contributes to
its economic and therefore its foreign policy prospects. So I

18

[L.C.]

do not believe that we need ideological conformity. I do not favour periodic pronouncement on the domestic affairs of other countries as a vehicle of American foreign policy. I do believe that we can work on harmonising our purposes and pursuing many of them jointly. The Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Huan Yew, once told me of what he claims to be a Chinese proverb I say claims to be because it is possible that there are not as many Chinese proverbs as they tell us and that they invented as the occasion arises. But he said it goes like this:

"When there is turmoil under the heavens, little problems are dealt with as if they were big problems and big problems are not dealt with at all. When there is order under the heavens, big problems are reduced to little problems and little problems need not obsess us." This is the challenge that is before the world today. It is one to which we are all condemned to contribute and in which I believe that the United States and India can march a long way together.

Thank you very much.

## ELEVENTH DORAB TATA MEMORIAL LECTURE

### Lecture delivered by Mr. Henry Kissinger

!

Mr. Ratan N. Tata :

It is a great pleasure to welcome you this evening to the Sir Dorab Tata Memorial Lecture. These lectures were initiated in 1960 by Mr. J. R. D. Tata with a view to invite distinguished persons who were leaders in their own field with a view to constructively contribute to the audiences in India and to create interest in areas of mutual or common concerns. It, therefore, gives me great pleasure, and it is a great privilege for us, to welcome Dr. Henry Kissinger in our midst today. I can see from the response that Dr. Kissinger does not need any introduction.

[LC]

Shē received the Nobel Prize for Peace and he has also received _
the highest civil honour in the United States which was the Medal _
of Liberty._

Dr. Kissinger had for many years been requested by Mr. J. R. D. _
Tata to come here to Bombay to deliver this Lecture and for a _
variety of reasons, most of which related to his busy schedule, _
he was unable to do so. It therefore gives us great pleasure _
that finally his schedule and his willingness to keep a promise _
that he made to Mr. J. R. D. Tata brings him here today and to be _
with us and to share with us what I hope will be a very, very _
interesting lecture this evening. All of you are not here to _
listen to me so with that I would like to welcome Dr. Kissinger _
and to request him to deliver his address._

.pa__
P__3__

Dr. Henry Kissinger :

It is a great honour for me to speak on this occasion. My only _
regret is that Jeh Tata could not be here. I have met many _
remarkable men in my life but I have never met anyone more _
distinguished or more remarkable than Jeh Tata._

Perhaps one of the reasons why my visit was always _
postponed was due to the conviction which I think all of us carried with us -
that Jeh Tata _was somehow indestructible_. His immutability
made it seem as if he would always be there, therefore one could

3

[LC]

4

[LC]

[L.C.]

---
time since Peter the Great, Russia must decide whether to
become a national state or to resume its traditional
pattern of expansionism.

[LC]

[LC]

The United States is militarily the most powerful __
country in the world today. And for the foreseeable future __
there is no country on the horizon likely to be able to match it. __
At the same time, the issues to which military force is relevant __
are diminishing. There are fewer and fewer problems concerning __
the United States about which one could say that the use of American military __
force would provide the solution. So one should not confuse __
superpower status of the United States militarily with hegemony __
politically. On security matters, the United States is important, __
maybe central, to the peace of the world. But the issues that __
affect security militarily are diminishing. And the use of __
modern weapons makes them more and more problematic.

Thus the United States must reassess its traditional approaches. __
When I came to India during the cold war, I was usually asked __
about the role of the United States in that conflict. The __
conviction of some of my interlocutors seemed to be that that __
was a comfortable role for the United States. The fact of the __
matter is, if you read what Franklin Roosevelt was saying during __
World War II, we really would have liked to play the role that
Pundit Nehru played. We would have liked to be non-aligned __
between Britain and the Soviet Union. And much of what was __
written in America during World War II described the British on the one
end as having their usual concern for the balance of power,
the Soviets on the other end, and merica at the side acting as mediator.
But that did not happen and soon the United States found itself
propelled into the cold war.

[L.C.]

8

To understand America one has to look at it as a historic _ phenomenon. America is the only major country of the world whose _ history can be dated from a precise moment. It is the only _ major country that is populated almost entirely by _ immigrants who turned their backs on their mother countries. _ It is the only major country that has never been _ invaded, indeed has never had a powerful neighbour. It is the _ only major country that did not have a foreign policy _ for some 150 years and prided itself on its isolationism. When _ America became involved in foreign affairs, it was always on _ behalf of what was perceived to be some huge cause. _ Precisely because America had been populated by peoples who had turned their _ backs on their mother countries, it had the characteristic of always looking down on the European style of diplomacy. _

I have sometimes argued that, until fairly recently, the American _ approach to foreign policy oscillated between treating foreign policy as a _ sub-division of psychiatry or a sub-division of theology. The _ psychiatric approach perceived relations amongst States as if _ they were relations amongst people, personalizing them to an enormous degree. The theological approach tended to view international politics as a struggle between good and evil. And in the face of evil there were only two possibilities. One was to destroy it _totally_ and the second was to convert it to goodness. Both these _ approaches usually operated simultaneously. For example, _ President Reagan called the Soviet Empire publicly an Evil _

[L.C.]

9

Empire built on lies. In the same month, he wrote a letter to ________ Brezhnev proposing that if the two of them could only get ________ together, they could settle all the issues. This dual tendency has produced the tension so often present in American foreign policy. ________

When America entered World War I, it declared that the German Emperor was an obstacle to world peace. The German Emperor had been in office for 39 years at that point and it had never occurred to anyone that he was personally a problem. The European approach was altogether different. When, during World War II, Russia supported Britain, Winston Churchill said: "If Hitler invaded hell, I would find something good to say about the devil" - which was not exactly a vote of confidence in Stalin. Now the American attitude at that point was to transform Stalin into a humane, well-meaning and jovial ally through whom peace would be preserved. Thus Franklin Roosevelt believed in the Big Four - the United States, Britain, China, and the Soviet Union, which would together police the world and enforce the peace around the globe - without American troops, incidentally, a job left for the British. Such was the American attitude in 1945.

Then came the cold war in the wake of American disillusionment with Soviet conduct. America adopted the characteristic attitude that it was facing evil incarnate and that it had to be resisted, occasionally attacked and ultimately eradicated.

[L.C.]

10

articles of the period on the policy of containment, they all have one _

curious aspect: all say that if the Soviet Union were contained _ and prevented from expanding, the overall bargaining situation would also change. Then, on some magic day, negotiations between the two superpowers could take place. _

Yet none of the articles ever described what the negotiations _ would be about. What would we do on the magic day when the _ Soviet Union came to us and said, "We have seen the light. We _ want to negotiate".

There was always a certain amount of _

disagreement between the Americans and the British, who never took such a _ high moral position having lived too long in a complex world on a day-to-day basis without feeling the least bit astounded by the vagaries of human _ motivation. Indeed, there were several attempts by Britain to start the negotiations earlier than the Americans believed _ was advisable. Yet when all is said and done, the containment _ policy did achieve its objectives and almost everything _ that was predicted more or less came to pass. _ Some of it came to pass in the administration of President _ Reagan, who everybody said could not possibly succeed in foreign _ policy.

Today, the United States's situation is that we do not have a clear-cut ideological enemy or a clear-cut strategic _ threat. We are militarily the most secure country in _ the world and probably the single strongest economically. _

11

[LC]

national interests. But in the real world, it never happens in so
-
clear-cut a way because no nation can act completely
-
- independently. Nor can one make one's actions totally dependent
-
on international consensus. But, for the next few years, the
United States will have to navigate these issues internally.
The whole thing is further

when I started my career in international politics, the leading
-
group in America was the so-called Northeastern establishment - New York and
-
Boston, and to some extent Washington. It contained people who were
-
to some extent emotionally linked to Europe. Today, the political power
in the United States is in the West and _

the Southwest - parts of the United States with no
-
particular emotional tie to any other part of the world. In the far
-
West, they may look to Asia but not to this part of Asia, rather to
-
Northeast Asia, Japan and China. At the moment, a kind of educational
-
process is going on in their minds. I can give you an example of
-
the kind of isolationalism prevalent in these regions of America.

Omaha, Nebraska about the cold war. In the question/answer period,
somebody got up and said: "This is all very interesting. You
speak of a danger to the United States. That may be true in
Washington but what would anyone want from us here in Omaha?"
The headquarters of the strategic air command is in Omaha, only
five miles down the road from where we were. The first city
in the United States that would have been _

[L.C]

13

What should America want? How should it organise itself? The _
generation of the 1960s, of the Vietnam War, is now in power
and it thinks in terms of multilateral _solutions._ Yet the
realities of American politics inevitably drive it _
towards more national approaches. You see the resulting
problem in our relations with Russia, for example. The
generation of the late 1960s and early 1970s _
looks at the issue as a case for conversion. They think it _
is within our power to make Russian leaders democratic.
As a result, enormous emphasis is placed on the personality
of Yeltsin and much American policy is shaped by
the effort to help Yeltsin. The opposite view,
which I share, is that the problem of the survival _
of a foreign leader is his own problem. If he cannot remain in _
office without our help, then he is already in great difficulty. I _
also believe that, when dealing with foreign policy, it is best to _
address the foreign actions of a society and to leave its internal _
evolution as much as possible to its own decision-making. From that _
point of view, my approach and the approach of all those who agree _
with me is simply this: What we want from Russia has
nothing to do with a particular leader but whether Russia can
stay within its national borders, _
something it has not done for 400 years. And since St. _
Petersbury is closer to New York than it is
to Vladivostok and Vladivostok is closer to Seattle than

14

[L]

believe that the Russians should not feel claustrophobic if they
are asked to stay within the borders of their own country, a country
with eleven time zones. Thus I see no need for
any conflict between the

United States and Russia unless Russia attempts to re-acquire
the republics it has recently been obliged to
liberate. If it does, the fatality of Russian history
- which is overextension - will repeat itself.

occupied by a foreign people, it begins to feel less rather than more
secure and tries to acquire even more new territory to protect the last
conquest. In that context, the Chechnyan conflict becomes a
colonial war, the crucial difference between it and
the colonies of the European powers of the 19th century being that Chechnya is
at the very border of Russia.

Still, on the whole I believe that American-Russian
relations will prosper if Russia can adapt itself to its new
geographic conditions. Its

previous policies are somewhat understandable if one considers
the flatness of the territory and the invasions Russia has suffered
historically. But with

people marching into its territory. And that, in sum,
is the challenge of the American-Russian relationship.

[LC]

15

[LC]

16

does not have to worry on its own account about two or three nuclear
-weapons in North Korea and it can afford to make an agreement which
-freezes their development at that point. For Japan, this is a
-totally different issue, due in equal parts to the proximity and
-the question of status. Japan, therefore, will, first, develop its
-military forces - indeed it already has the third largest
-military budget in the world - and, secondly, conduct a more
-autonomous though not unfriendly foreign policy.

Having gone through all of this, I have not yet addressed
-India. But I did that because I want you to understand how I
-approach foreign policy. In the period that is ahead of us,
-where there is no over-arching tension, the only way nations can
-cooperate is by developing a concept of their national interest-
-which takes into account the national interest of other countries.
-During the period of the cold war, it obviously served India's
-Interest to be non-aligned. When I started out in Government as
-an Advisor to President Kennedy, I recall that during the Berlin crisis of
-1961 he had hoped that India would support America's position. But
-I said that it was not possible for India to run a major risk
-on behalf of a European capital with which it had never had any connection,
-when the Soviet Union was so close by. In fact, India - from my point of
-view, quite correctly - took a non-aligned position on that issue
-even though it made some of our people unhappy.

I always had considerable understanding for India's non-alignment so
-long as you did not ask us to practise it. But during the cold
-war it was, of course, always the situation that India and the
-United States had different perspectives on many of the issues.

[L]

17

[LC]

18

to produce international crises. It can still generate huge local suffering but it is no longer the central factor in the way that the conflict between fundamentalism and moderate secularism is in the Islamic world. The United States, Europe, Russia and India all have a stake in this, India because of its geographic proximity. Of course, it is absurd to argue that we shall always look at things identically. But we can look at them with understanding. I am struck by the ease of communications between Indians and Americans and yet few organisations exist that promote intellectual and political dialogue between our two countries. Between Europe and the United States, between Japan and the United States, there are groups that meet regularly. While contacts in the business world are increasing, in terms of the sorts of issues I have discussed here, there is too little contact. And there are not enough Americans who really follow events in India. But India may well help to answer the question of what it needs first - economic development or political development. When you try to do both simultaneously, things usually turn unmanagable. But if India continues along the route of progress it has been on, it will be clear that, as a functioning democracy which has absorbed several trenches of government nationally and in its states and with all the tensions that exist in a society of so many communities, it is in the end the political cohesion of India that contributes to its economic and therefore its foreign policy prospects.

19

[2C]

Thank you very much._

I have attended every single Sir Dorab Tata Memorial Lecture but _
I have never seen the hall so overflowing as it is today. And it _
is the first time that we have to put not only loudspeakers but _
hearing facilities outside this hall so that people who are not _
in the hall can still listen to the lecture._

Your speech, Dr. Kissinger, has been studded with witicisms which _
we rightly expected all the time, and perhaps the audience would _
I like to recall two or three other witicisms which are to the _
credit of the speaker and which have already passed into history._

20

[LC]

Watergate, you remember that famous incident, when the whole of America was convulsed, Dr. Kissinger said, 'The illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional will take a little longer'. He was asked recently what it is like to be famous. He said, "The advantage of being famous is that today I can bore people at a cocktail party and the people will think that it is their fault'.

For want of time, I will add just one more. Years ago when Dr. Kissinger had open heart surgery he was medically advised to reduce his weight. He did reduce the weight and had to subsist. δ 7 3 ſt sandwich and muffin. And when somebody asked him whether you think this kind of diet is alright with you, He said 'well, it is demanding enough to be disagreeable. But it is not swift enough to produce dramatic results'. But when I was listening to his talk about diplomacy, it struck me that diplomacy is like that diet which he had. It is demanding enough to be disagreeable but not swift enough to provide dramatic results.

Dr. Kissinger, I hope that the very, very warm response you had by this audience will pursuade you to come back sooner and occasionally visit us. We may not be, shall I say, on the same wavelength as the USA, but there is a certain basic sense about our people of which I would give just one example. I don't want to make a speech but this I cannot help saying. In the presence of a person who is a world authority on international relations.

You referred to Europe. Europe is today one and that is what is called the European Union. Only one man foresaw that and that.

[L.C.]

21

was Sri Aurobindo in the year 1916 when the first World War was raging. He wrote an essay called the United States of Europe and I would be delighted if you can have a look at it while you are still here. This is in 1916 and when later, Winston Churchill, used the phrase the United States of Europe, the world applauded him that he was evolving a concept which had never touched anybody else. Exactly this very concept was talked about and written about by Sri Aurobindo in the year 1916 - The United States of Europe. And it is heartening, and this is what keeps me in heart, that while we have this kind of problem today with ö_7 3 __________

ö_7 3 __________ Pakistan when Sri Aurobindo was a clairvoyant, who saw the future, he said that India and Pakistan are bound to come together. He said in what form they are coming together is not relevant. It can be a federation, a loose confederation, but whatever form it takes, these people are bound to come together because they are culturally akin, racially close, historically related, geographically close, and the culture is just one of the two countries. And I do hope Dr. Kissinger when the time comes with your assistance we shall be able to forge a kind of a confederation which will bring these two countries together.

Let me on behalf of all of us here extend to Dr. Kissinger our most sincere gratitude for having enriched, though briefly, the Intellectual life of India.

Thank you.

20.3.95/fjg