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THIS CAUSES GREAT CONCERN TO SINGAPORE WHICH WOULD BE IN DANGER IF MALAYSIA FELL. WE ARE CONCERNED BECAUSE IT WOULD BRING THE COMMUNISTS RIGHT TO OUR THRESHMOLE.

37. FORD-IS THAILAND THREATENED BY VEITNAM?

38. SUHARTO-YES. THERE IS A LONG HATRED BETWEEN THAILAND AND VIETNAM.

39. I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK TO YOU, MR PRESIDENT, ABOUT ANOTHER PRBelM, TIMOR. WHEN IT LOOKED AS IF THE PORTUGUESE RULE WOULD END IN TIMOR WE SOUGHT TO ENCOURAGE THE PORTUGUESE TO AN ORDERLY DECOLONIZATION PROCESS. WE HAD AGREEMENT WITH THEM ON SUCH A PROCESS AND WE RECOGNIZED THE AUTHORITY OF PORTUGAL IN THE CARRYING OUT OF DECOLONIZATION AND IN GIVING PEOPLE THE RIGHT TO EXPRESS THEIR WISHES. INDONESIA HAS NO TERRITORIAL AMBITIONS. WE ARE CONCERNED ONLY ABOUT THE SECURITY, TRANQUILITY AND PEACE OF ASIA AND THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE. IN THE LATEST ROME AGREEMENT THE PORTUGUESE GOVERNMENT WANTED TO INVITE ALL PARTIES TO NEGOTIATE. SIMILAR EFFORTS WERE MADE BEFORE BUT FRETELIN DID NOT ATTEND. AFTER THE

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FRETELIN FORCES OCCUPIED CERTAIN POINTS AND OTHER FORCES WERE UNABLE TO CONSOLIDATE, FRETELIN HAS DELARED ITS INDEPENDENCE UNILATERALLY. IN CONSEQUENCE OTHER PARTIES DELARED THEIR INTENTION OF INTEGRATING WITH INDONESIA. PORTUGAL REPORTED THE SITUATION TO THE UNITED NATIONS BUT DID NOT EXTEND RECOGNITION TO FRETELIN. PORTUGAL, HOWEVER, IS UNABLE TO CONTROL THE SITUATION. IF THIS CONTINUES IT WILL PROLONG THE SUFFERING OF THE REFUGEES AND INCREASE THE INSTABILITY IN THE AREA.

40. FORD-THE FOUR OTHER PARTIES HAVE ASKED FOR INTEGRATION?

41. SUARTO-YES. AFTER THE UDT, INDONESIA FOUND ITSELF FACING A FATE ACCOMPLI. IT IS NOW IMPORTANT TO DE termine what we can do to establish peace and order for the present and the future in the interest of the security of the area and Indonesia. These are some of the considerations we are now contemplating. We want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action.

42. FORD-WE WILL UNDERSTAND AND WILL NOT PRESS YOU ON THE ISSUE. WE UNDERSTAND THE PROBLEM YOU HAVE AND THE INTENTIONS YOU HAVE.

43. KISSINGER-YOU APPRECIATE THAT THE USE OF US-MADE ARMS COULD CREATE PROBLEMS.

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RRM FORD-WE COULD HAVE TECHNICAL AND LEGAL PROBLEMS, YOU ARE FAMILIAR, MR PRESIDENT, WITH THE PROBLEMS WE HAD ON CYPRUS ALTHOUGH THIS SITUATION IS DIFFERENT.

45. KISSINGER-IT DEPENDS ON HOW WE CONSTRUE IT, WHETHER IT IS IN SELF DEFENSE OR IS A FOREIGN OPERATION. IT IS IMPORTANT THAT WHATEVER YOU DO SUCCEEDS QUICKLY, WE WOULD BE ABLE TO INFLUENCE THE REACTION IN AMERICA IF WHATEVER HAPPENS HAPPENS AFTER WE RETURN. THIS WAY THERE WOULD BE LESS CHANCE OF PEOPLE TALKING IN AN UN-AUTHORIZED WAY. THE PRESIDENT WILL BE BACK ON MONDAY AT 2:00 PM JAKARTA TIME. WE UNDERSTAND YOUR PROBLEM AND THE NEED TO MOVE QUICKLY BUT I AM ONLY SAYING THAT IT WOULD BE BETTER IF IT WERE DONE AFTER WE RETURNED.

46. FORD-IT WOULD BE MORE AUTHORITATIVE IF WE CAN DO IT IN PERSON.

47. KISSINGER-WHATEVER YOU DO, HOWEVER, WE WILL TRY TO HANDLE IN THE BEST WAY POSSIBLE.

48. FORD-WE RECOGNIZE THAT YOU HAVE A TIME FACTOR. WE HAVE MERELY EXPRESSED OUR VIEW FROM OUR PARTICULAR POINT OF VIEW.

49. KISSINGER-IF YOU HAVE MADE PLANS, WE WILL DO OUR BEST TO KEEP EVERYONE QUIET UNTIL THE PRESIDENT RETURNS HOME.

50. DO YOU ANTICIPATE A LONG GUERILLA WAR THERE?

51. SUHARTO-THERE WILL PROBABLY BE A SMALL GUERILLA WAR. THE LOCAL KINGS ARE IMPORTANT, HOWEVER, ADN THEY ARE ON OUR SIDE. THE UDT REPRESENTS FORMER GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS AND FRETELIN REPRESENTS FORMER SOLDIERS. THEY ARE INFECTED THE SAME AS IS THE PORTUGUESE ARMY WITH COMMUNISM.

52. I WOULD LIKE TO SAY A WORD ABOUT TRADE RELATIONS. THERE ARE SEVERE ECONOMIC PRESSURES ON OUR COUNTRIES.

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WE MUST DO ALL WE CAN TO MAXIMIZE OUR INCOME. IN THIS CONNECTION THERE IS AN INBALANCE OF PROFITS BETWEEN THE OIL COMPANIES OPERATING IN INDONESIA AND TOSE OPERATING IN THE MIDDLE EAST. INDOINESIAN COMPANIES MAKE AS MUCH AS $2.50 A BAREL WHEREAS THE PROFITS IN THE MIDDLE EAST ARE UNDER $1.00 A BARREL.

53. FORD-ARE' THEY REINVESTING AND EXPANDING OPERATIONS?

54. SUHARTO-YES, WE DON'T WANT TO INTERFERE WITH THAT BUT WE BELIEVE THEY CAN STRETCH OUT THEIR PROFITS. WHAT WE DO SHOULD NOT BE INTERPRETED AS NATIONALIZATION. WE ARE SEEKING AN UNDERSTADING AND NEGOTIATIONS ARE UNDER WAY. PROSPECTS ARE ENCOURAGING. WE ALSO WANT THE UNDERSTADING OF THE USG HOWEVER.

55. FORD-THEY SHOULD BE GRATEFUL THAT THEY ARE TREATED WELL HERE IN INDONESIA, MUCH BETTER THAN IN SOME OTHER COUNTRIES. I HOPE THAT YOUR NEGOTIATIONS WITH THEM WILL BE BENEFICIAL AND THAT THEY WILL SUPPORT YOUR EFFORT.

56. KISSINGER-OUR MAIN CONCERN IS THAT WHATEVER YOU DO DOES NOT CREATE A CLIMATE THAT DISCOURAGES INVESTMENT. BASICALLY THE MATTER IS BETWEEN YOU AND THE COMPANIES. WE ARE NOT INVOLVED IN SUCH PROBLEMS.

57. SUHARTO-WE HAVE TAKEN THESE VIEWS INTO ACCOUNT AND EVERYTHING THAT WE DO WILL BE BASED ON EXISTING LAWS. WE WANT TO FIND WAY OF OBTAINING REVENUE WHICH WILL NOT JEOPARDIZE FAIR PROFITS FOR THE COMPANIES.

58. KISSINGER- WE APPRECIATE YOUR CLARIFICATION OF THIS MATTER.

59. FORD-LET ME ASSURE YOU THAT WE UNDERSTAND YOUR SITUATION. WE HAVE NO PARTICULAR RECOMMENDATIONS.

60. SUHARTO-ONCE MORE, I THANK YOU FOR THIS VISIT. WE ARE A COUNTRY THAT HAS MANY NEEDS AND WE CONTINUE TO LOOK TO THE UNITED STATES TO HELP US.

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YOM FORD-WE WILL DO WHAT WE CAN. OUR PROBLEM IS TO CONVICE CONGRESS WHERE WE HAVE GREAT DIFFICULTIES. ALTHOUGH PROSPECTS MAY BE A LITTLE BETTER THAN WE HAD THOUGHT EARLIER. ON THE ECONOMIC SIDE, WE ARE SEEKING TO OBTAIN THE MAXIMUM AMOUNT WHICH IS IN THE VICINITY OF $80 MILLION THIS YEAR. WE WILL ALSO TRY TO GET CONGRESS TO MODIFY THE TRADE ACT WHICH EXCLUDES OPEC COUNTRIES FROM GENERALIZED PREFERENCES. WE REALIZE THAT INDONESIA DIO NOT PARTICIPATE IN THE OIL EMBARGO. CONGRESS HAS, UNFORTUNATELY TREATED ALL OPEC COUNTRIES IN THE SAME FASHION.

62. I WOULD LIKE TO MENTION ALSO, MR PRESIDENT, THAT I WANT TO MAINTAIN A DIRECT RELATIONSHIP. IF YOU HAVE ANYTHING SPECIAL, I HOPE YOU WILL COMMUNICATE WITH ME DIRECTLY BY WHATEVER MEANS SEEMS APPROPRIATE. NEWSON

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Authority NND 999505
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SEC-

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19

MR. LEIGH: It's out of the question to say we're studying assistance.

MR. SHLAUDEMAN: That too. A loan is a loan in the Central Bank for Industrialization.

MR. ROBINSON: They're small businesses. It creates employment.

MR. ROGERS: This is a loan to the needy and it's no loan to us.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, will it be defeated if we vote against it?

MR. SHLAUDEMAN: Yes, I think it will.

MR. ROGERS: I'd like to call Collins and tell him about this. I think he's been getting the full signals from his Charge here with respect to Parsky, but I think I'll call Collins and Harry Greenwood.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: O.K. Anything else, Harry?

MR. SHLAUDEMAN: No, sir.

MR. MILLER: Mr. Secretary, we have a troublesome, little problem on which we're seeking your decision on whether to accept an invitation to send a diplomatic representative at a Political Officer level with a diplomatic-observer group to accompany an

SECRET

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By NARARA Date 6/1/61

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20

Indoensian Parliamentary Delegation to East Timor.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Who's going?

MR. MILLER: We.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: I mean which countries have accepted?

MR. MILLER: Well, as of now, practically no countries have accepted. All the EC 9 have turned it down. The UN Security Council President is going to turn it down; the Secretary-General of the UN will turn it down.

There will probably be a couple of ASEAN countries that will accept. Japan will probably accept if we accepted. Australia's position is not yet known. The last time, when it was a Provisional Government of East Timor invitation, the Australians decided at the last minute not to accept.

I think our general feeling here -- EUR, IO, and EA have sent you a memo to continue with L and H --

SECRETARY KISSINGER: You're against it.

(Laughter.)

MR. MILLER: I think the common recommendation, sir, is that we -- since we would be quite isolated and since our participation would be rather high profile,

SECF

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Authority NND 989505
By MR? NARA Date 6/1/91

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21

that we would recommend against accepting -- explaining to the Indonesians that we think we can obtain a broader base of support here in this country for, let's say, our broader objectives with respect to Indonesia -- including overall support to Timor, if we don't have high-profile participation.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, how about low-profile participation?

MR. MILLER: Well, we would intend, at the most, to send only the Political Counselor. We would not send an Ambassador. On the other hand, it now looks like there will be very few countries that do participate. So I think that regardless of what level of officer we send, it will be fairly high.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Am I wrong in assuming if we don't send somebody there will be some story out of it showing its disapproval of the United States action in regard to Timor?

MR. HABIB: Some of the countries won't be going.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Like who?

MR. HABIB: Singapore won't attend -- probably Thailand.

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DECLASSIFIED

Authority NND 989505

By MAB NARA Date 6.1.1961

SECRET

22

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Why is it in our interest to? I'm just trying to understand the rationale.

MR. MILLER: Well, I don't think, sir, we think in terms of it weakening the Indonesians in Timor; but it's trying to keep, let's say, Congressional sentiment with regard to Indonesia from being rekindled -- which we think now is a fairly satisfactory condition.

MR. HABIB: There's no need to take this action. The Indonesians are trying to get an international -- and especially U. S. and other blessing -- before they've done it. Let them go ahead and do what they've been doing. We have no objection. We've not objected in UN Security Council debates. They're quite happy with the position we've taken. We've resumed, as you know, all of our normal relations with them; and there isn't any problem involved.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Not very willingly-

MR. HABIB: Sir?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Not very willingly. Illegally and beautifully.

MR. MILLER: There's no question that the Indonesians will participate. This will undoubtedly be mentioned in Malik's conversations with you.

SECRET

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By NAD NARA Date 6/1/60

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Reproduced at: the National Archive

23

MR. HABIB: If we were to go pell-mell
in the absence of really anybody else, I think that that
could reopen the question of whether the Indonesians are
acceptable.

MR. HABIB: The Japanese didn't go last time
and they're hesitant to say who's going. The Australians,
I'm fairly sure, are not going to go, on the basis of
what we know.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Why don't we ask the
Australians?

MR. HABIB: They'll tell us it's under
consideration.

MR. MILLER: The Australians asked either the
Security Council or Waldheim to send a representative,
and that hasn't succeeded. So I think I would agree with
Phil that they're not likely. They dropped out at the last
minute the last time, and they're likely to drop out
this time.

MR. HABIB: It's a political problem.

MR. MILLER: We can ask them directly.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, why don't you
ask them?

MR. HABIB: We will.

SECRET

East Timor Revisited

Page 1 of 12

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The Kissinger
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by William Burr (New
York: The New Press,
515 pp.)

East Timor Revisited

FORD, KISSINGER AND THE INDONESIAN INVASION, 1975.

Ford and Kissinger Gave Green Light to
Indonesia's Invasion of East Timor, 1975:
New Documents Detail Conversations with Suharto

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 62
Edited by William Burr and Michael L. Evans

December 6, 2001

Read the press release

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The New Evidence

The Indonesian invasion of East Timor in December 1975 set the stage for the long, bloody, and disastrous occupation of the territory that ended only after an international peacekeeping force was introduced in 1999. President Bill Clinton cut off military aid to Indonesia in September 1999—reversing a longstanding policy of military cooperation—but questions persist about U.S. responsibility for the 1975 invasion; in particular, the degree to which Washington actually condoned or supported the bloody military offense. Most recently, journalist Christopher Hitchens raised questions about the role of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in giving a green light to the invasion that has left perhaps 200,000 dead in the years since. Two newly declassified documents from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library released to the National Security Archive, shed light on the Ford administration's relationship with President Suharto of Indonesia during 1975. Of special importance is the record of Ford's and Kissinger's meeting with Suharto in early December 1975. The document shows that Suharto began the invasion knowing that he had the full approval of the White House. Both of these documents had been released in heavily excised form some years ago, but with Suharto now out of power, and following the collapse of Indonesian control over East Timor, the situation has changed enough that both documents have been released in their entirety.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/

12/13/01

East Timor Revisited

Other documents found among State Department records at the National Archives elucidate the inner workings of U.S. policy toward the Indonesian crisis during 1975 and 1976. Besides confirming that Henry Kissinger was top advisers expected an eventual Indonesian takeover of East Timor, archival material shows that the Secretary of State fully understood that invasion of East Timor involved the "illegal" use of U.S.-supplied military equipment because it was not used in self-defense as required by law.

Although Indonesia was a major site of U.S. energy and raw materials investment, an important petroleum exporter, strategically located near shipping lanes, and a significant recipient of U.S. military assistance, the country—much less the East Timor question—barely figures into Henry Kissinger's memoirs of the Nixon and Ford administrations. Gerald Ford memoir briefly discusses the December 1975 visit to Jakarta but does not mention the discussion of East Timor with Suharto. Indeed, as important the bilateral relationship was, Jakarta's brutal suppression of the independence movement in East Timor was a development that neither nor Kissinger wanted people to remember about their time in power. Thus the two decided on a course of action of dubious legality and that resulted in the slaughter of thousands of Timorese may well have also discouraged further reflection, at least in public. No doubt the omissions from Ford's Kissinger's memoirs also reflect the low priority that East Timor had during the Ford administration. For senior officials, the fate of a post-colonial East Timor paled in comparison to the strategic relationship with the anti-communist Suharto regime, especially in the wake of the communist victory in Vietnam, when Ford and Kissinger wanted to strengthen relations with anti-communists and check left-wing movements in the region.(1) But it is not simply a matter of omission; on several occasions Kissinger has explicitly denied that he ever had substantive discussions of East Timor with Suharto, much less having consented to Indonesian plans.(2) The new evidence contradicts Kissinger's statements: Indonesian plans for the invasion of East Timor were indeed discussed with Suharto, and Ford at Kissinger gave them the green light. As Kissinger advised Suharto on the eve of the invasion: "it is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly but that "it would be better if it were done after we returned" to the United States.

Although these new documents shed important light on U.S. policy toward the East Timor question in 1975, much more needs to be learned about U.S. policymaking during 1975 and 1976. Unfortunately, most of the relevant sources are classified. The large collection of Kissinger-Scowcroft office files at the Ford Library remains unavailable, as are the records of the State Department's Indonesia desk and the Bureau of East Asian Affairs for the 1970s. The State Department's recent acquisition of Henry Kissinger's telephone conversation transcripts might include important material, although they will probably reflect the relatively low priority that the policymakers gave to the East Timor question.

## Background

The leftist military revolt that overthrew Portugal's authoritarian regime

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East Timor Revisited

April 1974 encouraged nationalist movements in the Portuguese colony East Timor calling for gradual independence from Lisbon—a position already favored by the new Portuguese government. One of these groups, the Timorese Democratic Union (UTD), had greater support among Timorese elites and senior Portuguese colonial administrators, while the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin), with its leading, social democratic program, had the support of younger Timores and lower-level colonial officials. In January 1975 the two groups form an uneasy coalition. Increasingly, Fretilin enjoyed the greatest public support and led the push for rapid independence.(3)

Early signals from the Indonesian government indicated that it was prep to support East Timorese independence,(4) but Jakarta soon became interested in turning the region into the country's twenty-seventh provin Fears that an independent East Timor could be used as a base by unfrien governments or spur other secessionist movements in Indonesia had convinced hardliners in the military to press for annexation of the territo In February 1975 the Indonesian military conducted a mock invasion of Timor in South Sumatra.(5) Military hardliners also backed the pro-integration Timorese Popular Democratic Association (Apodeti) with financial assistance and launched a propaganda campaign against the pro-independence groups.(6) Apodeti, however, never had the popular supp enjoyed by Fretilin or UDT.

The new regime in Lisbon was preoccupied with its own internal politic controversies and could do little to ensure a steady transition toward independence. During 1974 and 1975 Indonesian authorities hoped that Portuguese would acquiesce in Jakarta's plans to acquire East Timor. A first the Portuguese seemed responsive, but by mid-1975 it had become evident that Lisbon supported self-determination for the people of East Timor. In July 1975 Lisbon rebuffed Jakarta with the issuance of Constitutional Law 7/75, setting forth a timetable for home-rule, includi the election of a popular assembly that would determine East Timor's fu with Portuguese sovereignty ending no later than October 1978.(7)

Events in East Timor, however, did not proceed in accordance with Lisb schedule. The delicate UDT-Fretilin alliance had fallen apart in May, in part due to a propaganda campaign launched by the Indonesian govern to inflame UTD concerns about Fretilin's alleged communist tendencies UDT's fears were bolstered in June when Fretilin refused to attend an al party conference on decolonization hosted by Portuguese officials on M due to the presence of Apodeti representatives.(9) To Fretilin the issue of independence was not up for discussion, least of all with Jakarta. The e of Fretilin's popularity—and thus popular sentiment for independence f Indonesia—became evident in July when the party won 55 percent of the vote in local elections.(10) Convinced by Indonesian intelligence that Fretilin was planning a coup, UDT staged its own in August 1975 in the Timorese capital Dili in an effort to drive out Fretilin supporters. A Fre counterattack pushed UDT forces out of the city, however, and by September Fretilin controlled nearly all of East Timor, the Portuguese administrators having fled to the island of Ataúro.(11) Despite having

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gained de facto control of the territory, Fretilin ended its call for immediate independence and now supported a plan similar to the gradual independent program proposed in June by the Portuguese.(12)

The Indonesian government did not seize the opportunity to move troops into Dili on the premise of restoring order. Suharto was still concerned about the reaction from the West and needed more time to get the UDT: other anti-Fretilin groups to support integration.(13) The UDT, now refugees on the Indonesian side of Timor and in need of food and shelter, had no choice but to sign a pro-integration petition drawn up by Indones. Meanwhile, in October Indonesian special forces began to infiltrate secret into East Timor in an effort to provoke clashes that would provide the pretext for a full-scale invasion. When these incursions—including the murder by Indonesian forces of five journalists employed by Australian TV—failed to elicit any noticeable reaction from the West, Indonesia stepped-up its attacks across the border.(14)

While Indonesian airborne troops—outfitted with American equipment—prepared to take Dili, Fretilin petitioned the United Nations to call for the withdrawal of the invading forces. Four days later, on November 28, Fretilin declared East Timor's independence—apparently in the belief that the sovereign state would have greater success appealing to the UN, but also thinking that Timorese soldiers would be more likely to fight for an independent state. Indonesia countered the next day with a “declaration integration” signed by Apodeti and UDT representatives and coordinate Indonesia's military intelligence service.(15) The invasion, originally scheduled for early December, was apparently delayed by the visit of Fc and Kissinger to Jakarta on December 6.

Operation Komodo, a general invasion of East Timor, commenced the next day. In the following weeks a series of United Nations resolutions—supported by the U.S.—called for the withdrawal of the Indonesian troops (16) An estimated 20,000 Indonesian troops were deployed to the region the end of the month. While casualty estimates vary, anywhere from 60,000-100,000 Timorese were probably killed in the first year after the violence began in 1975.(17) In 1979 the U.S. Agency for International Development estimated that 300,000 East Timorese—nearly half the population—had been uprooted and moved into camps controlled by Indonesian armed forces. By 1980 the occupation had left more than 100,000 dead from military action, starvation or disease, with some estimates running as high as 230,000.(18)

Note: The following documents are in PDF format.
You will need to download and install the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view.

## Document 1

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East Timor Revisited

Memorandum of Conversation between Presidents Ford and Suharto, 5
July 1975, 12:40 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.

Source: Gerald R. Ford Library, National Security Adviser Memoranda of Conversations
Box 13, July 5, 1965 - Ford, Kissinger, Indonesian President Suharto

This document records a conversation between Suharto and Ford at Can
David on July 5, 1975, five months before the invasion of East Timor.
Speaking only a few months after the collapse of the Thieu regime in Sc
Vietnam, the two presidents shared a tour d'horizon of East Asian politi
issues, U.S. military assistance to Indonesia, international investment, an
Portuguese decolonization. Fearing greater political and ideological feri
in the region following the Communist victory in Vietnam, Suharto saw
ideological concoction "Pancasila" (possibly misspelled "Pantechistita"
the document) as useful, no doubt because its emphasis on consensus
excluded any oppositional political activity.(19) Not taking "consensus'
granted, Suharto wanted U.S. help in building up his military machine to
increase its mobility for dealing with insurgent elements, noting that,
"Especially at this moment, intelligence and territorial operations are ve
important." Ford proposed setting up a joint commission to scrutinize
Suharto's military request but wanted Kissinger to settle the details.

Suharto brought up the question of Portuguese decolonization in East Ti
proclaiming his support for "self-determination" but also dismissing
independence as unviable: "So the only way is to integrate [East Timor]
Indonesia." Without mentioning Fretilin by name, Suharto misleadingly
characterized it as "almost Communist" and criticized the group for
boycotting the decolonization meeting in Macao. Suharto claimed that
Indonesia did not want to interfere with East Timor's self-determination
implied that it might have to because "those who want independence are
those who are Communist-influenced."

While Lisbon still had legal sovereignty over East Timor, apparently nei
Ford nor Suharto discussed the implications for Indonesian policy.
Although Washington had worked closely with the Salazar dictatorship
ruled Portugal for decades, it was now deeply suspicious of the new soc-
democratic regime in Lisbon; with its exaggerated concerns about a
Communist coup, the Ford administration considered the possibility of
expelling Portugal from NATO and supporting an independence movem
in the Azores (where the U.S. had important military facilities). Thus, 1
Ford's and Kissinger's perspective in 1975, Portugal's role in the region
was of little interest and did not pose an important obstacle to Indonesia
action. That some left-leaning Portuguese officers had contacts with Fre
undoubtedly made the White House even less inclined to concern itself
Portugal's response to Indonesian action in East Timor.(20)

Document 2

The Secretary's 8:00 a.m. Staff Meeting, Tuesday, August 12, 1975, Sec
[excerpt], with cover memorandum on highlights of meeting attached

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Page 6 of 12

Source: National Archives, Record Group 59, Department of State Records, Transcripts of Staff Meetings of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, 1973-77, box 8

Apparently encouraged by his meeting with President Ford, Suharto returned from Washington on July 8 and made his first public statement suggesting that an independent East Timor was not viable. Only days later UDT leaders launched their coup with the hope that they could suppress Fretilin. During an August 12 discussion of the coup, Henry Kissinger, a close adviser, was not altogether sure what was happening, but did disagree with Assistant Secretary Philip Habib's statement that the Indonesians would not let a "communist-dominated group," i.e., Fretilin take over. Kissinger, in particular, assumed that an Indonesian takeover would take place "sooner or later." Believing that Australia, a key region ally, would feel "impelled" to support self-determination for the Timorese Kissinger and his advisers wanted to avoid controversy over the issue. They quickly agreed that the State Department should make no comment on the coup or related events.

A few days later, the Australian ambassador in Jakarta relayed a statement by U.S. ambassador John Newsom that summarized Washington's approach but alluded to a problem that Kissinger and his advisers had not specific discussed on August 12. The message noted Newsom's August 16 comment that if Indonesia were to invade East Timor, it [should] do so "effectively, quickly, and not use our equipment."(21) The U.S. ambassador recognized that there was a congressional prohibition on Indonesia's use of military gear financed by U.S. aid for anything but defensive operations. Kissinger would come to understand the problem. he did not already, but as document four suggests, he was not willing to it tie Jakarta's hands.

Document 3

Memorandum to President Ford from Henry A. Kissinger, "Your Visit to Indonesia," ca. 21 November 1975

Document 3A

Enclosure to Document 3, State Department Briefing Paper, "Indonesia East Timor," ca. 21 November 1975

Source: National Archives, Record Group 59, Department of State Records, Executive Secretariat Briefing Books, 1958-1976, Box 227, President Ford's Visit to the Far East Indonesia Nov-Dec. 1975

This Kissinger memorandum, prepared for President Ford some two weeks before the two were to visit to Jakarta, indicates that the administration's larger strategic interests in Indonesia made it unlikely that Washington would make a fuss over East Timor. The eventual fate of East Timor was

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evidently a relatively low priority for Kissinger and his staff—it was the twelfth and final item mentioned in the memo.(22) While Kissinger, in memo, acknowledged that the Indonesians have been “maneuvering to absorb the colony” through negotiations with Portugal and “covert military operations in the colony itself,” he apparently did not expect an overt invasion using U.S.-supplied military equipment. Indeed, his memo and briefing paper on “Indonesia and Portuguese Timor” both indicate that there would violate U.S. law, suggesting that this consideration had induced “restraint” on the part of Jakarta. Moreover, and in contrast to Habib’s v.(23) that Fretelin was “Communist-dominated,” the author of the briefing paper more accurately characterized the Front as “vaguely left-wing.”

## Document 4

Embassy Jakarta Telegram 1579 to Secretary State, 6 December 1975
[Text of Ford-Kissinger-Suharto Discussion], Secret/Nodis(24)

Source: Gerald R. Ford Library, Kissinger-Scowcroft Temporary Parallel File, Box A, Country File, Far East-Indonesia, State Department Telegrams 4/1/75-9/22/76

On the eve of Indonesia's full-scale invasion of East Timor, President Ford and Secretary Kissinger stopped in Jakarta en route from China where they had just met with Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. During his meeting with Suharto, Ford emphasized America's continuing commitment to American affairs despite the "severe setback of Vietnam." Discussion then turned to the problem of Communist influence in the Non-Aligned Movement and insurgency movements in Thailand and Malaysia. Ford told Suharto that he would be "enthusiastic" about building an M-16 plant in Indonesia to provide small arms to help Southeast Asian governments counter region insurgency movements. Kissinger also approved of the proposed arrangement "because of its indication of wider cooperation."

On 4 or 5 December, while still in Beijing, Kissinger received a cable from the State Department suggesting that the Indonesians had "plans" to invade East Timor.(25) Thus, Ford or Kissinger could not have been too surprised, when, in the middle of a discussion of guerrilla movements in Thailand, Malaysia, Suharto suddenly brought up East Timor. Suharto noted that while Indonesia "has no territorial ambitions," Fretelin has not cooperated with negotiations and has "declared its independence unilaterally." The current situation, he said, "will prolong the suffering of the refugees and increase instability in the area." Suharto then assured the Americans that "the four other parties" favor integration, with the apparent implication that a mere majority among the "parties" to the conflict—absent a popular referendum—alone constituted an act of self-determination. "We want understanding," Suharto continued, "if we deem it necessary to take rapid action."

Ford and Kissinger took great pains to assure Suharto that they would not oppose the invasion. Ford was unambiguous: "We will understand and not press you on the issue. We understand the problem and the intention you have." Kissinger did indeed stress that "the use of US-made arms could

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create problems," but then added that, "It depends on how we construe it whether it is in self defense or is a foreign operation." Thus, Kissinger's concern was not about whether U.S. arms would be used offensively—although illegally—but whether the act would actually be interpreted as such—a process he clearly intended to manipulate.(26) In any case, Kissinger added: "It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly

Indeed, timing and damage control were very important to the American Kissinger told Suharto: "We would be able to influence the reaction if America if whatever happens happens after we return. . . If you have plans, we will do our best to keep everyone quiet until the President returns home." Kissinger also asked Suharto if he anticipated a "long guerilla war" and apparently aware that a quick military success would be easier to spin than the long campaign. Suharto acknowledged that there "will probably be a short guerilla war" but he was cagey enough not to predict its duration. Nevertheless, his military colleagues were optimistic; as one of the architects of Indonesian policy, General Ali Murtopo explained to a U.S. scholar some months before the invasion, "the whole business will be seen in three weeks."(27)

With the U.S. position on the East Timor "business" settled, Suharto turned to economic problems, especially petroleum investments. With the receivables of the state oil company, the regime needed more revenue and Suharto wanted to get it from the oil companies that invested in Indonesia. Noting that the oil companies were sharing larger shares of their profits in the Middle Eastern states than they were with Indonesia, Suharto told Ford: "Kissinger that he wanted to negotiate an "understanding" with them. But Americans were sympathetic and said that he would have their support. Kissinger, however, noted carefully that whatever Suharto did he should "not create a climate that discourages investment." The possibility that East Timor affair could prove to be a disaster for Indonesia and someday impair the "climate for investment" never seems to have occurred to either Kissinger or Ford.

## Document 5

### Secretary of State Kissinger's Daily Schedule, 5 and 6 December 1975

Source: National Archives, Record Group 59, Department of State Records, Executive Secretariat Briefing Books, 1958-1976, Box 227, President Ford's Trip to the Far East (Follow-Up) Nov-Dec. 1975

This brief schedule details Secretary Kissinger's two-day visit to Indonesia with President Ford. So far, no record of Kissinger's meeting with Adar Malik has been found.

## Document 6

### Transcript of Staff Meeting, Tuesday, June 17, 1976, Secret [excerpt]

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Source: National Archives, Record Group 59, Department of State Records, Transcript
Staff Meetings of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, 1973-77, box 9

Washington's initial response to the invasion was to delay new arms sales to Indonesia pending an administrative review by the State Department, ostensibly to determine whether Indonesia had actually violated the bilateral agreement stipulating that U.S.-supplied arms could only be used for defensive purposes. Military equipment already in the pipeline continued to flow, however, and during the six-month review period the U.S. made four new offers of military equipment sales to Indonesia including maintenance and spare parts for the Rockwell OV-10 Bronco aircraft, designed specifically for counterinsurgency operations and employed during the invasion of East Timor.(28) The administrative delay and the subsequent offers were the subject of a December 18, 1975, meeting between Secretary Kissinger and his advisers in which he chastised his staff for writing a memo recommending that arms sales to Indonesia be cut off for violating the end-use agreement. While the memo was not widely distributed, Kissinger was angry that word might leak about how "Kissinger overruled his pristine bureaucrats and violated the law." The secretary told his staff that he "took care of it with the administrative thing by ordering Carlyle not to make any new sales." If Congress asked about the policy, Kissinger said, "We cut it off while we are studying it. We intend to start again in January."(30)

Six months later, and exactly one month before the formal annexation of East Timor by Indonesia, the subject of East Timor again came up during staff meeting between Secretary Kissinger and his State Department burkers. The question was raised as to whether or not the U.S. should send representative to accompany an Indonesian parliamentary delegation to Timor—an invitation declined by most other countries. Robert H. Mille, an adviser from the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, recommerdesed against accepting the invitation, suggesting that "broader objectives with respect to Indonesia — including overall support to Timor," would be better served "if we don't have high-profile participation." Miller hoped to prevent "Congressional [sic] sentiment with regard to Indonesia from being rekindled." Philip Habib, under secretary of state for political affairs, agreed: "There's no need to take this action . . . Let them go ahead and do what they've been doing. We have no objection . . . They're quite happy with the position we've taken. We've resumed, as you know, all of our normal relations with them; and there isn't any problem involved." In apparent reference to the continuing arms sales, his deception of Congress or possibly to Indonesia's bloody invasion and occupation, Kissinger responded: "Not very willingly. Illegally and beautifully."

## Notes

1. Benedict R. Andersen, "East Timor and Indonesia: Some Implications in Peter Carey and G. Carter Bentley, eds., *East Timor at the Crossroads. The Forging of a Nation* (Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1995),

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40.

2. At a 1995 press conference Kissinger told former East Timorese resistance leader Constancio Pinto, "Timor was never discussed with us when we were in Indonesia" and then qualified this remark by stating that we learned about the invasion plans at the airport as the presidential party was about to leave. See "Ask Kissinger about East Timor: Confronting Kissinger," East Timor Action Network, August 1995
<http://etan.org/news/kissinger/ask.htm>. During a radio interview in 1995 Kissinger continued to treat the discussion with Suharto on East Timor as incidental and nonsubstantive: "We were told at the airport as we left Jakarta that either that day or the next day they intended to take East Timor." See

<http://www.etan.org/_vti_bin/shtml.exe/news/kissinger/radio.htm/map>

3. Adam Schwarz, *A Nation in Waiting: Indonesia's Search for Stability* (Boulder: Westview Press, 2000) 198-204, for a fine overview of the East Timor issue.

4. Indonesian foreign minister Adam Malik said in June 1974 that "the independence of every country is the right of every nation, with no exception for the people in Timor." See Center for International Policy, *Human Rights and the U.S. Foreign Assistance Program, Fiscal Year 1974, Part 2 - East Asia* (Washington, D.C., Center for International Policy, 1978), 18.

5. John G. Taylor, "East Timor: Contemporary History, A Chronology of the Main Events since 1974," Carey and Bentley, eds., *East Timor at the Crossroads*, 239.

6. Hamish McDonald, *Suharto's Indonesia* (Blackburn, Australia: Fontana Trade, 1980), 202-203.

7. Ibid. 204.

8. Ibid., 203.

9. Schwarz, *A Nation*, 202.

10. Taylor, "East Timor: Contemporary History," Carey and Bentley, eds., *East Timor at the Crossroads*, 239.

11. John G. Taylor, "Emergence of a Nationalist Movement," Carey and Bentley, eds., *East Timor at the Crossroads*, 35; James Dunn, "Timor in International Perspective," ibid., 63-64.

12. Center for International Policy, *Human Rights and the U.S. Foreign Assistance Program, Fiscal Year 1978, Part 2*, 19.

13. McDonald, *Suharto's Indonesia*, 207.

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14. Ibid., 210-11.

15. Ibid., 211.

16. Center for International Policy, *Human Rights and the U.S. Foreign Assistance Program, Fiscal Year 1978, Part 2, 19.*

17. James Dunn cites a study by the Catholic Church suggesting that as many as 60,000 Timorese had been killed by the end of 1976. This figure does not appear to include those killed in the period between the start of civil war in August 1975 and the invasion on December 7. See James D. “The Timor Affair in International Perspective,” in Carey and Bentley, *East Timor at the Crossroads*, 66; The 100,000 figure is cited in McDorl 215, and also in Taylor’s chronology, “East Timor: Contemporary History in Carey and Bentley, *East Timor at the Crossroads*, 239. McDonald’s figure includes the pre-invasion period while Taylor’s does not.

18. Schwarz, 205; Estimates vary widely. On November 12, 1979, Indonesia's foreign minister, Mochtar Kusumaatmadja, estimated that 120,000 people had died in East Timor since 1975. See Taylor's chronology, "East Timor: Contemporary History," in Carey and Bentley *East Timor at the Crossroads*, 240; Amnesty International estimates that 200,000 died from military action, starvation or disease from 1975-1999. See Amnesty International, "200,000 Dead. Enough is Enough." *New York Times* (advertisement), September 23, 1999.

19. For "pancasila," see Schwarz, *A Nation*, 10, 24, 41-42, 45-46, 292-9.

20. Andersen, "East Timor and Indonesia: Some Implications," Carey and Bentley, eds., *East Timor at the Crossroads*, 138-39.

21. The comment is cited in a telegram written by Australian Ambassador Richard Woolcott on August 17, 1975 (Cited in Munster, G.J. and Wals, *Documents on Australian Defence and Foreign Policy*, 1968-75 (Sydney, 1980), 200.

22. The memo was drafted by Edward C. Ingraham, director of the Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore office at the State Department's Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

23. See *Document 2*.

24. "Nodis" means "no distribution" without the permission of the State Department's Executive Secretary.

25. The cable, entitled "Plans for Indonesian Invasion of East Timor," remains classified but is cited by title and cable number in a list of cable that Kissinger received while traveling in East Asia. The list may be found in National Archives, Record Group 59, Executive Secretariat Briefing Books, 1958-1976, Box 227, President Ford's Trip to the Far East (Follow

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Up) Nov.Dec. 1975. The National Security Archive has submitted a req
to the State Department for declassification of this and other cables on E
Timor cited on the list.

26. Indeed, later that month Kissinger asked his advisers whether "We can
construe a Communist government in the middle of Indonesia as self-
defense?" See Mark Hertsgaard, "The Secret Life of Henry Kissinger;
minutes of a 1975 meeting with Lawrence Eagleburger," *The Nation*,
October 29, 1990, at
<http://etan.org/_vti_bin/shtml.exe/news/kissinger/secret.htm>.

27. Andersen, "East Timor and Indonesia: Some Implications," Carey ar
Bentley, eds., *East Timor at the Crossroads*, 137.

28. Center for International Policy, *Human Rights and the U.S. Foreign Assistance Program, Fiscal Year 1978, Part 2, 19-20*. Max Holland, who co-wrote the Center's report, discovered the State Department's administrative delay and the continued offers of security assistance. The editors thank him for bringing this report to our attention.

29. Carlyle Maw, Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance.

30. Mark Hertsgaard, "The Secret Life of Henry Kissinger; minutes of a 1975 meeting with Lawrence Eagleburger," *The Nation*, October 29, 1990.
<http://etan.org/_vti_bin/shtml.exe/news/kissinger/secret.htm>.

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12/13/01

HENRY A. KISSINGER

The White Revolutionary: Reflections on Bismarck

FEW STATESMEN have altered the history of their society so profoundly as Otto von Bismarck. Before he came to power, Prussia—and the rest of Germany—seemed to be undergoing the “normal” evolution toward parliamentary, constitutional rule. Indeed, the crisis that brought him to office in 1862 was the familiar issue of parliamentary control over the budget, which in every other West European country had been resolved in favor of parliament. Five years afterwards, Bismarck had changed the domestic orientation of Germany and the pattern of international relations by solving the issue of German unification which had baffled two generations. His solution had not occurred previously to any significant group or to any major political leader. Too democratic for conservatives, too authoritarian for liberals, too power-oriented for legitimists, the new order was tailored to a genius who proposed to restrain the contending forces, both domestic and foreign, by manipulating their antagonisms.

"People are born as revolutionaries," the German liberal Bamberger wrote during his Parisian exile in 1862, as he attempted to explain the enigma of Bismarck's personality. "The accident of life decides whether one becomes a Red or a White revolutionary."¹ Many years later Bismarck said that Bamberger was one of the few authors who had understood him.

What is a revolutionary? If the answer to this question were not ambiguous, few revolutionaries could succeed; the aims of revolutionaries seem self-evident only to posterity. This is sometimes due to deliberate deception. More frequently, it reflects a psychological failure: the inability of the "establishment" to come to grips with a fundamental challenge. The refusal to believe in irreconcilable antagonism is the reverse side of a state of mind to which basic

transformations have become inconceivable. Hence, revolutionaries are often given the benefit of every doubt. Even when they lay down a fundamental theoretical challenge, they are thought to be overstating their case for bargaining purposes; they are believed to remain subject to the "normal" preferences for compromise. A long period of stability creates the illusion that change must necessarily take the form of a modification of the existing framework and cannot involve its overthrow. Revolutionaries always start from a position of inferior physical strength; their victories are primarily triumphs of conception or of will.

This is especially true when the challenge occurs not in the name of change, but by exposing institutions to strains for which they were not designed. Even the most avowedly conservative position can erode the political or social framework if it smashes its restraints; for institutions are designed for an average standard of performance—a high average in fortunate societies, but still a standard reducible to approximate norms. They are rarely able to accommodate genius or demoniac power. A society that must produce a great man in each generation to maintain its domestic or international position will doom itself; for the appearance and, even more, the recognition of a great man are to a large extent fortuitous.

The impact of genius on institutions is bound to be unsettling, of course. The bureaucrat will consider originality as unsafe, and genius will resent the constrictions of routine. In fortunate societies, a compromise occurs. Extraordinary performance may not be understood, but it is at least believed in (consider, for example, the British respect for eccentricity). Genius in turn will not seek fulfillment in rebellion. Stable societies have, therefore, managed to clothe greatness in the forms of mediocrity; revolutionary structures have attempted to institutionalize an attitude of exaltation. To force genius to respect norms may be chafing, but to encourage mediocrity to imitate greatness may produce institutionalized hysteria or complete irresponsibility.

This was the legacy of Bismarck. His was a strange revolution. It appeared in the guise of conservatism, yet the scale of its conception proved incompatible with the prevailing international order. It triumphed domestically through the vastness of its successes abroad. With a few brusque strokes Bismarck swept away the dilemmas that had baffled the German quest for unity. In the process, he recast the map of Europe and the pattern of inter-

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national relations. Like the mythological figures Solon or Lycurgus, he created a society in his image and a community of nations animated by his maxims in their dealings with one another.

Everything about Bismarck was out of scale: his bulk and his appetite; his loves and even more his hatreds. The paradox of his accomplishments seemed embodied in his personality. The man of "blood and iron" wrote prose of extraordinary simplicity, plasticity, and power. The apostle of the claims of power was subject to fits of weeping in a crisis. The "Iron Chancellor" loved Shakespeare and copied pages of Byron in his notebook. The statesman who never ceased extolling reason of state possessed an agility of conception and a sense of proportion which, while he lived, turned power into an instrument of self-restraint.

But the gods sometimes punish pride by fulfilling man's wishes too completely. Statesmen who build lastingly transform the personal act of creation into institutions that can be maintained by an average standard of performance. This Bismarck proved incapable of doing. His very success committed Germany to a permanent tour de force. It created conditions that could be dealt with only by extraordinary leaders. Their emergence in turn was thwarted by the colossus who dominated his country for nearly a generation. Bismarck's tragedy was that he left a heritage of unassimilated greatness.

## The Making of a Revolutionary

On May 17, 1847 a tall, powerfully built man mounted the speakers' rostrum of the Prussian Parliament, which had been assembled in fulfillment of a promise made by the Prussian king during the Napoleonic Wars a generation before. A reddish-blond beard lined a face marked by many duels of student days. Proud in bearing, self-confident in expression, the speaker represented the *beau-ideal* of the Junkers, the large landholders who had built up Prussia.

The occasion was trivial. In the course of a debate about agricultural relief, one of the speakers had pointed out that the national enthusiasm of what in Prussia was called the War of Liberation had been due to the bonds forged in 1807 between the Prussian people and its government by a series of reforms. As soon as Bismarck began his maiden speech, an incongruity became apparent. Despite his size, Bismarck's voice was weak and somewhat high-pitched. His

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sentences emerged hesitantly as if each phrase had to tear itself loose from his large hulk. The prosaic words therefore conveyed an impression of immense, barely controlled passion:

> I must contradict the proposition that the uprising of the people in 1813 required other motives than the shame of having outsiders command in our country. Our national honor is ill-served by the implication that the degradation suffered at the hands of a foreign autocrat was not enough to subsume all other sentiments in the common hatred of the foreigner.²

Faced with a wave of liberal indignation, Bismarck had great difficulty finishing this passage. (The stenographic report lists loud murmurs after almost every sentence.) One of the most moderate rejoinders denied Bismarck the right to judge a period which he had not experienced. Quickly Bismarck returned to the rostrum. While the enraged liberals hooted and the president vainly called for order, Bismarck turned his back on his colleagues and began to read a newspaper. When order had been somewhat restored, he began again in his irritating, rasping, and yet compelling voice:

> I cannot deny of course that I did not live then, and I have always deeply regretted that it was not given to me to participate in this movement. That sentiment is ameliorated, however, by the information which I have just received. I had always assumed that the slavery against which we fought came from abroad. I have just learned that it was domestic and I am not very obliged for being enlightened.

Nobody then in the room in Berlin would have believed it possible that this man, standing so nearly alone, would solve the problem of German unity which had eluded the efforts of two generations. Nor could any have imagined that his ideas—seemingly so incongruous in a century of liberalism and nationalism—would eventually shape the destiny of their country. But not every revolution begins with a march on the Bastille.

A revolutionary must possess at least two qualities: a conception incompatible with the existing order and a will to impose his vision. Bismarck's colleagues in the Parliament could not have been aware of his ideas. Had they understood the road which he had traversed, however, they would have known that they were dealing with an elemental, perhaps even a demoniac, personality.

Otto von Bismarck was born on April 2, 1815, the year of Napoleon's banishment to St. Helena. His parents represented the two pillars of the Prussian state: the aristocracy and the bureaucracy. His family, Bismarck remarked once, were already Junkers when the Hohenzollerns (Prussia's kings) were still an insignificant

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South German dynasty. Bismarck's father had served briefly in the army, but neither the disaster of Jena nor the War of Liberation could induce him to leave his ancestral estate again. He had preferred independence to service even when the king took away his commission and he lost favor at the court.

Independence had not proved sufficient for his bride. The daughter of a Privy Councillor, risen from the bourgeoisie, she insisted that her sons live according to the maxims of the Enlightenment and justify themselves by intellectual attainment. "I had always thought," she wrote, "that my greatest happiness would be to have a grown-up son ... whose calling would permit him to penetrate much deeper into the realm of the spirit than was possible for a woman."a

To penetrate the realm of the spirit meant leaving the ancestral estate in Pomerania and the discipline of the Max Planman Institute in Berlin. Bismarck never lost his nostalgia for nature or the illusion that his real happiness lay in a bucolic existence. He always spoke of his stay at the Gymnasium with distaste and of the relations with his mother with bitterness.

"I left the Gymnasium," wrote Bismarck sarcastically in his memoirs, "the normal product of our educational system, as a Pantheist and if not a Republican at least with the conviction that a republic was the most reasonable form of government." Republican or not, all roads were open to the aristocrat. Bismarck planned to enter the bureaucracy because he thought that it would demand a less stringent discipline than the army. Thus the first Bismarck who proposed to serve his king with the pen enrolled at the University of Goettingen. But formal study proved unbearably confining. In rebellion, Bismarck turned himself into the "mad Junker," extravagantly dressed, proud of the ability to drink anyone under the table, always ready to duel, distinguished by linguistic ability and sarcastic wit. Heavily in debt, physically run down, Bismarck left Goettingen after one year, at the insistence of his parents, for the University of Berlin.

Berlin wrought no fundamental change, however: "I live here like a gentleman," he wrote to a friend in Goettingen, "and gradually adopt an affected behavior. I speak a good deal of French, spend much time getting dressed, the remainder making visits and with my old friend the bottle. In the evening I sit in the first tier of the opera and behave as rowdily as possible."b

Only once was his nihilism interrupted by three aphorisms trac-

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Reflections on Bismarck

ing Bismarck's future: "Constitution inevitable; in this manner to outward glory; but is it necessary to be inwardly pious besides?"a

The first two thoughts were reasonable predictions. The third outlines a dilemma that Bismarck never solved. He always understood the requirements of success, but was less clear about whether to approach his task with a certain sense of reverence for the finiteness of the human scale. A statesman who leaves no room for the unforeseeable in history may, however, mortgage the future of his country.

Advised to leave the University of Berlin, Bismarck prepared for the state examinations with the aid of a private tutor. At last he was ready for his first governmental post with the President of the Province of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle). Appropriately enough, this official was a friend of Bismarck's mother.

But the routine of a civil servant proved intolerable. So Aachen grew to know the "mad Junker" who preferred foreigners to his stodgy compatriots, a splendid conversationalist whose love affairs and gambling debts soon became notorious. One year later he left Aachen without leave. Nothing is known of the sudden decision except Bismarck's cryptic account:

> I had every prospect for what is called a brilliant career ... had not an extraordinarily beautiful Briton induced me to change course and sail in her wake for six months without the slightest leave. I forced her to come aside; she lowered the flag, but after possession of two months I lost the booty to a one-armed colonel fifty years of age with four horses and 15000 dollar revenue.†

The deeper reason for giving up his governmental career was not to be found in Bismarck's love affair, however. Bismarck gave the best explanation in a letter to a friend who had questioned his decision by appealing to his patriotism:

> That my ambition is directed more towards not having to obey than towards giving orders is a fact for which I can give no reason save my taste. ... The Prussian official is like an individual in an orchestra. Whether he plays the first violin or the triangle he must play his part as it is set down whether he thinks well of it or ill. I however want to make music as I consider proper or none at all [emphasis added].

Besides patriotism was probably the motive force of but a few of the famous statesmen particularly in absolutist states; much more frequently [it was] ambition, the desire to command, to be admired and to become famous. I must confess that I am not free of this passion and many distinctions ... of statesmen with free constitutions, such as Peel, O'Connell, Mirabeau (etc.), won as a participant in energetic political

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movements, would exert on me an attraction beyond any abstract consideration. . . . I am less allured however by the successes to be attained on the well-worn path through examinations, connections, or seniority and the good will of my superiors.⁸

This self-portrait was only deepened by a lifetime of public service. It was extraordinary for a member of the aristocracy of a state built on the notion of duty and service to assert that the chance to command was a more compelling motive than patriotism.⁹ The insistence on identifying his will with the meaning of events would forever mark Bismarck's revolutionary quality. Neither the sense of reverence for traditional forms of the conservative nor the respect for intellectual doctrines of the liberals was part of Bismarck's nature. He could appeal to either if necessary, but aloofly, appraisingly, and with a cool eye for their limits. It was no accident that the three statesmen whom the letter described as worthy of emulation represented either rebellion or a break with the past: O'Connell, the Irish revolutionary using the rules of the House of Commons to paralyze it; Peel pushing through the Corn Law against his own party and splitting it in the process; Mirabeau presiding over an attempt at legal revolution.

Bismarck was back on the ancestral estate now. Restless, he read voraciously: Shakespeare and Byron, Louis Blanc and Voltaire, and always Spinoza. His escapades multiplied. After another broken engagement, Bismarck left on a journey through England, France, and Switzerland. He even made tentative plans to serve with the British army in India. But "my father wrote me a letter moist with tears which spoke of lonely old age (seventy-three years, widower, deaf), of death and meeting again. He ordered me to return. I obeyed. He did not die."¹⁰

At this point in his life, Bismarck received a provisional answer to the question about the need for piety. Though the solution was more in the nature of a diplomatic pact with God than the mastering of a spiritual dilemma, it sufficed to bring about the measure of balance that enabled Bismarck to give direction to his elemental energies.

In a personality that reduces everything to a manifestation of the will, the spiritual and the sensual are never far apart. Thus Bismarck came to a degree of belief through two women.

Marie von Thadden came from a family of "Pietists," a fundamentalist sect believing in the most literal interpretation of the Bible. This group was significant because it contained many of the

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most influential members of the aristocracy, including Leopold von Gerlach, later the adjutant of the king and Bismarck's principal sponsor at court. They combined rigid orthodoxy in religion with inflexible conservatism in politics. No group less likely to appeal to Bismarck could be imagined. "Of Cromwell's famous phrase 'Pray and keep your powder dry,'" he mocked, "they forget the second and most important half."¹⁰

Marie von Thadden was beautiful and passionate. When in 1843 she became engaged to his friend Moritz von Blankenburg, Bismarck stopped at her estate to make her acquaintance. Marie von Thadden was attracted to Bismarck who seemed to her "a great and interesting man of the world with a brilliant appearance." She decided to save the soul of this "Pommeranian Phoenix known as the epitome of wildness and arrogance."¹¹

Two days later Bismarck returned to Marie von Thadden's estate. Once more they discussed religion. After he left, Marie von Thadden invoked her fiancé's assistance. But three letters from Moritz von Blankenburg full of maudlin exhortation remained unanswered. A direct confrontation proved equally unsuccessful.

Married now, Marie von Thadden continued her efforts. She introduced Bismarck to her closest friend and fellow Pietist Johanna von Puttkammer, who also attempted to convert him. But pressure was not the way to reconcile Bismarck with his Maker. It took an event of elemental power to teach Bismarck the meaning of finality, if not a sense of limits. For on November 10, 1846, Marie von Thadden died.

Marie von Thadden was the victim of an influenza epidemic that had already claimed her younger brother and her mother. From the deathbed of her mother, Marie had written to Bismarck asking him to come to see her as quickly as possible. When he arrived, she had fallen ill herself. Even now she was still concerned with the salvation of his soul and sent him a message pleading "with the utmost earnestness" that now was the moment for conversion. This caused Bismarck to pray for the first time since his sixteenth year not to a God, much less to a theology, but for a person. For once he confronted a situation, however, which was beyond his power: "This is the first time," he wrote to his sister, "that I have lost someone . . . close to me and whose parting created a profound and unexpected void." To his widowed friend, he said: "This is the first heart that I lose of which I truly knew that it beat for me. . . . Now I believe in eternity—or God has not

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created the world.” Otto von Bismarck came to God on the basis of strict diplomatic reciprocity whereby God in return for faith guaranteed the permanence of a profound passion.

Marie von Thadden's death had another and more immediate consequence: Bismarck's engagement with Johanna von Puttkammer. Two months before he had written to Moritz von Blankenburg that he did not yet trust his feelings. But four weeks after Marie's death, Bismarck spoke to Johanna von Puttkammer about marriage. She encouraged him to ask her father's permission. To convince the forbidding, dour, intensely religious, old Heinrich von Puttkammer that the "mad Junker" was a fit husband for his daughter would have discouraged a man less bold.

• The result was Bismarck's first major diplomatic document, a letter asking for permission to visit the Puttkammer estate to put his case in person. As he was to do so often, Bismarck confounded his opposite number by complete frankness and with a sweep unknown in the unimaginative circle of Bible Readers. Bismarck's letter began:

> It may appear presumptuous that I whom you have met but recently ... ask of you the strongest proof of confidence which it is in your power to grant. I also know that I ... will never be able to give you in my own person those guarantees for the future which would justify the pledge of so dear a collateral on your part, unless you make up through confidence in God what cannot be supplied by confidence in man. •

Here was the case against Bismarck stated more powerfully than Heinrich von Puttkammer would ever have been able to, only to be transformed into an appeal to the Pietist's deepest conviction. Bismarck did not ask for Johanna's hand because he was worthy of God—this would have seemed presumptuous to a Pietist in someone far more religious—but because only God could make him worthy. To reject him would have indicated not lack of faith in the suitor, but an absence of trust in God. On this plane, the subsequent account of Bismarck's fall from grace accentuated the merit of his redemption:

At the time of my sixteenth birthday I had no other faith than a naked deism which did not remain long without Pantheist overtones. About this time, I stopped praying, not out of indifference but as the consequence of ripe reflection. . . . I told myself that either God produced everything, including my own thoughts—in which case He was praying to Himself; or that my will was independent of God's—in which case it would be presumptuous and indicate a doubt . . . in the perfection of the

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Divine decrees, to believe that one could influence Him by human entreaties.

To the pious von Puttkammer, this could have seemed as nothing short of the voice of the devil, but it only served to heighten the power of the moment of conversion:

> About four years ago . . . I came into closer contact with Moritz von Blankenburg and I found in him what I had never had in life: a friend. . . . Through Moritz I also became acquainted with the [Thad dens] and their circle. . . . That hope and peace were with them did not surprise me, for I had never doubted that they accompanied faith. But faith cannot be given nor taken away and I was of the opinion that I would have to wait resignedly until it was vouchsafed to me. . . . What had stirred within me became real when at the news of the fatal illness of our deceased friend . . . the first fervent prayer tore itself from my heart, without any concern about, its reasonableness, together with a stinging sense of my unworthiness to pray and with tears as had been unknown to me since childhood. God did not grant my prayer then, but he also did not reject it, for I did not lose again the capacity to appeal to Him and I feel if not peace, at least a confidence I never knew before. . . . Daily I entreat God to be merciful to me . . . and to awaken and to strengthen my faith.¹²

What could a pious man reply? Bismarck was demanding of Hein- rich von Puttkammer no more than what by his own description he was daily asking from God. And because this was the letter of a man who had made his peace with his Maker, there was in it nothing of an apology to mortals, so that even Bismarck's catalogue of sin became a manifestation of his defiant pride. •

Having won the moral terrain, Bismarck followed the letter with one of the lightning moves which were always to accompany his careful preparation. He reported to his brother:

> Around Christmas I wrote to the father who was extraordinarily hor- rified because the idea that his daughter might marry frightened him in any case, but in particular in connection with a man of whom he had heard a great deal of ill and little good. Upon my return home I re- ceived a letter from him which contained in essence nothing but a few quotations from the Bible with which he had consoled himself in his sorrow and a dubiously phrased invitation to Rheinfeld [the Puttkammer estate]. There I found . . . a disposition for prolonged negotiations, of doubtful issue, had I not moved the whole affair to a different plane by a decisive embrace of my bride, immediately upon first seeing her, to the greatest astonishment of the parents.¹³

To the moral conquest was thus added a *fait accompli*; many a

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later opponent of Bismarck might have been less astonished by his tactics had he known of his courtship.

The episode achieves an additional dimension through the conclusion of Bismarck's letter to his brother:

> I have had a great and no longer expected stroke of fortune because I am marrying, speaking quite cold-bloodedly, a woman of rare spirit and nobility. ... In matters of faith we differ, somewhat more to her sorrow than to mine, if not as much as you may think ... for events ... have produced certain transformations in me. ... Moreover I love Pietism in women.

> Ever since these letters became public, German historians have debated the degree of Bismarck's sincerity. But if Bismarck was sincere, it did not necessarily have to be in the letter to his future father-in-law. In any event, sincerity has meaning only in reference to a standard of truth of conduct. The root fact of Bismarck's personality, however, was his incapacity to comprehend any such standard outside his will. For this reason, he could never accept the good faith of any opponent; it accounts, too, for his mastery in adapting to the requirements of the moment. It was not that Bismarck lied—this is much too self-conscious an act—but that he was finely attuned to the subtlest currents of any environment and produced measures precisely adjusted to the need to prevail. The key to Bismarck's success was that he was always sincere.

Bismarck's new-found relationship to God played the crucial role in the formation of his public personality. Until his introduction into the Thadden circle, Bismarck's naturalism had led to virulent skepticism.¹⁰ In a world characterized by struggle, death was the most recurrent phenomenon and nihilism the most adequate reaction. This had produced the restless wandering of Bismarck's early years, the seeming indolence, and caustic sarcasm.

God provided the mechanism to transcend the transitoriness of the human scale: "I am a soldier of God," he wrote now, "and I must go where He sends me. I believe He will mould my life as He needs it."¹⁴ "God has put me at the place where I must be serious and pay my debt to the country," he wrote to his wife upon receiving his first diplomatic appointment in 1852. "I am firmly decided to do His will and if I lack wisdom I shall ask it of Him; He gives plentifully and never presents accounts."¹⁵

Bismarck's faith thus represented a means to achieve a theological justification of the struggle for power; its distinguishing characteristic was not acceptance, but activity—Darwinism sanctified

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by God. God became an ally by being subjected to Bismarck's dialectic; for would He permit what had not found favor in His eyes? Bismarck's fatalism, erstwhile so hopeless, now found a sense of direction. "With confidence in God," he wrote to his bride, "put on the spurs and let the wild horse of life fly with you over stones and hedges, prepared to break your neck but above all without fear because one day you will in any case have to part from everything dear to you on earth, though not for eternity."¹⁶

After his introduction to the Thadden circle, there was about Bismarck a new sense of purpose and a calculation of the main chance. Following his father's death in 1845, he even left the Kniephof and moved to the other ancestral estate, Schoenhausen on the Lower Elbe. The reason was eminently practical: There existed a good prospect of a vacancy in the position of Deichhauptmann, the officer in charge of building and repairing the dikes. When the incumbent failed to resign as expected, Bismarck saw to it that he was relieved by bringing charges of unauthorized absences. Deichhauptmann was a position of great prestige since the welfare of the predominantly agricultural region depended on it. It was not surprising, therefore, that the Estates nominated Bismarck as an alternate to the Parliament in Berlin. It only increased his sense of mission that the regular deputy fell ill and he was elected as his replacement.

This, then, was the man who stepped to the rostrum on May 17, 1847. He had sown his wild oats. He had spent nine years in the solitude of his ancestral estates and had emerged hardened, extremely well read, and infinitely more imaginative than his fellow Junkers. Once embarked on a public career, he lived for little else. Though he appeared as the defender of traditional Prussia, he needed only the opportunity to demonstrate that he gave this conviction an application which would revolutionize the map and politics of Europe.

## The Nature of the Challenged International Order

The stability of any international system depends on at least two factors: the degree to which its components feel secure and the extent to which they agree on the "justice" or "fairness" of existing arrangements. Security presupposes a balance of power that makes it difficult for any state or group of states to impose its will on the remainder. Too great a disproportion of strength undermines self-

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restraint in the powerful and induces irresponsibility in the weak. Considerations of power are not enough, however, since they turn every disagreement into a test of strength. Equilibrium is needed for stability; moral consensus is essential for spontaneity. In the absence of agreement as to what constitutes a "just" or "reasonable" claim, no basis for negotiation exists. Emphasis will be on the subversion of loyalties rather than on the settlement of disputes. Peaceful change is possible only if the members of the international order value it beyond any dispute that may arise.

The statesmen who met at Vienna in 1815 to end the Napoleonic Wars had been taught this lesson through twenty-five years of nearly uninterrupted struggle. They had learned that the peace of Europe depended on a balance of power that removed the temptation of easy conquest, especially by France. They tried to create "great masses," to use Pitt's phrase, in Central Europe to remedy a state of affairs which had enabled four generations of French rulers to exploit Germany's dissensions for purposes of conquest. Russia, in turn, had used each conflict to advance farther into Europe.

Conditions in Germany, therefore, were the key to European equilibrium. If Germany was too centralized or too powerful, it would bring about a combination of expansionist France and Russia to counterbalance it.¹ If Germany was too divided, it would tempt constant pressure. The peace of Europe depended on three factors: (a) an over-all balance of power in which the states of Central Europe—primarily in Germany—would be sufficiently strong to resist pressures from East and West; (b) a special equilibrium within Germany that would create among the German states a structure strong enough to resist attacks from both East and West, but not so powerful as to disquiet Germany's neighbors, sufficiently unified to be able to mobilize for defense, but not so centralized as to become an offensive threat; (c) a moral consensus which caused most disputes to be settled by recourse to a superior principle rather than to force. The balance of power was to be a last recourse, not the sole arbiter. This is what came to be known as the "Metternich system" after the Austrian Foreign Minister who was instrumental in devising it and who was its principal manipulator until he was overthrown in 1848.

No element of the Metternich system was more intricate than the arrangements for Germany. The constitution of the German Confederation was as subtle as the membership was complex: Austria belonged to the Confederation only with its German third, and

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the Confederation did not include the Polish provinces of Prussia. On the other hand, the Netherlands was represented because of its possession of Luxembourg, and Denmark was included because its king was also ruler of Schleswig-Holstein. Prussia, the largest purely German state, had only one vote out of seventeen. It was theoretically possible that a grouping of states comprising less than a quarter of the population or resources of Germany could outvote the major powers, Austria and Prussia.

Usually, however, the interests of Austria ran parallel with those of the minor states. Austria and the minor states were interested in maintaining the *status quo*: They were concerned with preventing Prussian hegemony, but wanted to achieve this goal without open conflict. The Assembly of the Confederation meeting in Frankfurt was therefore designed to inhibit decisive action except in case of overwhelming foreign danger.² The very complexity of its procedures was well suited to delay, to ameliorate, to evade. Moreover, Austria controlled its proceedings to a considerable extent. The Austrian representative was *ex officio* president of the Assembly of the Confederation. The Assembly met in the Austrian Legation at Frankfurt; its secretariat was under Austrian control; and until 1848, the seal of the Confederation was the Austrian seal. In these circumstances, it was not too difficult to transform the Assembly of the Confederation into a diplomatic congress bound by the instructions of its member governments.

Nevertheless, the Confederation was not simply a diplomatic congress. To begin with, it owned directly five fortresses facing France. It could receive as well as accredit ambassadors. It had the power to declare war. It was possible, therefore, for a German state to pursue two contradictory policies at the same time: one as an independent power, the other in its capacity as a member of the Confederation.³ As happened during the Crimean War and again during the Schleswig-Holstein crisis, it was even possible for three different foreign policies to be pursued concurrently in Germany: that of Austria, that of Prussia, and that of the minor states. Such a structure could act in union only when confronted by an overwhelming common danger—a threat sufficient to menace the European equilibrium. It was not likely to be able to generate consensus on positive aims; it would not itself be able to threaten the European balance.

Had the Metternich system been maintained only by considerations of power, it would not have lasted fifty years.⁴ Prussia ac-

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cepted a subordinate role—far smaller than its power would have justified—because its rulers became convinced that they had more to fear from liberalism domestically than they could gain by relying on Prussia's strength abroad. They therefore placed an alliance with Austria above their political and strategic opportunities within Germany. Similarly, Russia was restrained from expanding into the Balkans at least in part by the doctrine of the unity of conservative interests. For a generation, the Holy Alliance of Russia, Austria, and Prussia acted as a brake on domestic upheaval. It also restrained two expansionist powers—Prussia and Russia—by appealing to their moral inhibitions.

The unity of conservative monarchs survived even the Revolution of 1848. The Prussian king refused the crown of a united Germany when it was offered by the National Assembly in Frankfurt, because he believed that only Austria had a historical claim to it. Russian troops assisted Austria in suppressing a rebellion in Hungary, and Russian threats helped Austria to re-establish her dominance in Germany. When another Napoleon came to power in France, the revolutionary threat of the previous generation seemed to reappear, and the three Eastern courts drew closer still. In the early 1850's, the Metternich system appeared destined to dominate European politics for the indefinite future.

## The Challenge: The Postulate of Prussian Uniqueness and Invulnerability

At this precise moment, a theoretical challenge developed that unexpectedly came not from the liberals, but from a man who owed his public career to the Prussian conservatives' conviction that he epitomized their values. Appointed Prussian Ambassador to the German Confederation in 1852, Otto von Bismarck almost immediately attacked the Metternich system. Bismarck did not accept the fundamental axiom that Prussia's domestic structure was so vulnerable that it could be protected only by rigid adherence to the unity of conservative monarchs. On the contrary, Bismarck insisted intransigently on the postulate of Prussia's uniqueness and invulnerability.

This conviction was not without foundation, for Prussia was not simply another German state. Its rigid domestic policy could not eradicate the consciousness of nationalism brought to Germany by the French occupation nor eliminate the prestige acquired by Prus-

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## Reflections on Bismarck

sia through its tremendous efforts during the Napoleonic Wars. To be sure, for a generation after the Vienna settlement, Prussia's policy of repression was even more effective than that of Austria because it was not leavened by Austrian inefficiency. The very shape of Prussia—athwart Germany from the partly Polish East to the Catholic and somewhat Latinized Rhineland—made it the symbol of the quest for German unity. Even liberals looked to it for the attainment of their objectives. Prussia, which in the seventeenth century was an idea before it became a reality, accomplished the even more extraordinary tour de force in the nineteenth century of becoming an idea *contrary* to its reality.

For over a generation after the Congress of Vienna, however, Prussia seemed paralyzed by the vastness of its challenge. As long as nationalism was identified with liberalism, Prussia was able to realize its German mission only by giving up its historic essence. It remained for Bismarck to challenge this identification. He insisted that nationalism and liberalism need not be parallel phenomena. They could be separated, and traditional Prussia could play a national role:

> If someone, in the name of German unity, presses for a parliamentary union I should like to warn him not to confuse two concepts: German unity and the right to deliver parliamentary speeches from a German rostrum. For me the two concepts are far apart.¹⁷ ... There exists nothing more German than the development of rightly conceived Prussian interests.¹⁸

If this was true, Prussia could perform its German mission only if it preserved its historic essence. Far from adapting to the liberal trend, Prussia had to overcome it—all the more so as parliamentary institutions were not required to guarantee Prussian liberties: •

Prussia has become great not through liberalism and free-thinking but through a succession of powerful, decisive and wise regents who carefully husbanded the military and financial resources of the state and kept them together in their own hands in order to throw them with ruthless courage into the scale of European politics as soon as a favorable opportunity presented itself. ... It is undoubtedly just that every Prussian should enjoy that degree of liberty which is consistent with the public welfare and with Prussia's career in European politics but no more. This degree of liberty is possible even without parliaments and at the present stage of Prussia's intellectual development, the abuse of royal power belongs to the most improbable contingencies.¹⁹

Bismarck saw no point in political constructions that destroyed Prussia's identity. In 1848, he resisted the attempt of the liberals

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to achieve German unity through a democratic constitution. “[Our] people has no desire to see its kingship dissolved in a ferment of South German indiscipline. Its loyalty is not to the paper head of an Empire . . . but to a living and free king of Prussia. . . . I hope to God that we shall long remain Prussians when this piece of paper [the German constitution] will be forgotten like a dried-up autumn leaf.” Bismarck wanted to preserve the existing order in Prussia so that Prussia could overthrow the Metternich system within Germany. Thus, he opposed even the liberals’ offer of the Imperial Crown to the king of Prussia.

* I would prefer that Prussia remain Prussia. As such it will always be in a position to prescribe its laws to Germany and not to receive them from others. I therefore feel duty-bound to oppose a motion designed to undermine the edifice cemented by the blood of our fathers. The crown of Frankfort may seem very brilliant but its luster is to be obtained by smelting it with that of Prussia and I do not think that this will succeed.²¹⁰

Theories of popular sovereignty could only weaken Prussia's international role: "The Prussian army will always be the army of the king and seek its honor in obedience. . . . Prussia's honor does not consist of playing the Don Quixote for vexed parliamentary celebrities all over Germany. I seek Prussia's honor in that Prussia never admit that anything occur in Germany without its permission."²²

* German unity, in short, was to be justified by the facts of Prussian power. It was made necessary not by doctrines of liberalism, but by the security requirements of a state whose very shape inhibited equilibrium. Prussia, spread across the North German plain in a series of enclaves with frontiers following no natural boundaries, needed the resources of Germany for its own defense. Prussia should absorb Germany, rather than the opposite. This conception seemed so incredible to both liberals and nationalists that the stenographic report notes "hilarity" at the end of this passage. It was not the first time that revolutionaries succeeded because their opponents could not believe in the reality of their objectives.

*Had the Prussian conservatives who admired Bismarck listened closely, they would have realized that he was separated from them by a gulf scarcely less wide. Bismarck's aphoristic phrases, like the statements of French President Charles de Gaulle—the leader who most resembles him in our century—had meanings not understood by his supporters. Bismarck was defending not a principle, but a fact; not a doctrine, but a reality. "I do not consider the Prussian

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constitution the best of which history informs us,” he said on one occasion; “its chief advantage is that it exists.”²³ Bismarck attacked liberalism not because it violated universal history, but because it ran counter to Prussian traditions. He sought to rescue Prussia’s uniqueness from, dissolution; the conservatives were interested in defending general principles. Bismarck fought domestic upheaval because he wanted Prussia to focus on foreign policy; his allies wanted to defend legitimate rule as such.²⁴

As a result, the postulate of Prussia's domestic invulnerability proved the prelude to a proposition unimaginable to the conservatives: that Prussia could afford to adapt its domestic institutions to the requirements of foreign policy. Once the royal authority had survived the Revolution of 1848, Prussia not only had nothing to fear from liberalism, but could even use it as an instrument of foreign policy. Bismarck reported during the Crimean War:

* Towards my colleagues I use privately the following language: Prussia has adopted a policy of peace on behalf of Germany in the process risking the enmity of half of Europe. . . . Should the other German states desert Prussia, however, it must think of its own security. . . . No choice will be left to us but to join the enemies of Russia. But such a shift toward the West can win the confidence of Britain and France only if implemented by a more liberal government which, carried by the Westwind of public opinion, would soon outdistance Austria.²⁴

Once in office, Bismarck carried out these prescriptions. During the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, he attempted to foment a revolution in Hungary; only the rapid victory kept his plans from being carried out. Under his stewardship, Germany was the first continental country with universal suffrage, albeit with a constitution that sharply limited the powers of Parliament.⁵

For four decades Prussian policy had been stymied by the paradox that it could achieve hegemony in Germany only by allying itself with forces believed to be contrary to its domestic structure. Bismarck showed that the paradox was only apparent. Prussia's sense of cohesion was sufficiently strong for it to combine a repressive policy at home with revolutionary activity abroad. Even liberal institutions could be used to strengthen the king's authority:

> The sense of security that the King remains master in his country even if the whole army is abroad is not shared with Prussia by any other continental state and above all by no other German power. It provides the opportunity to accept a development of public affairs much more in conformity with present requirements. . . . The royal authority in Prussia

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is so firmly based that the government can without risk encourage a
much more lively parliamentary activity and thereby exert pressure on
conditions in Germany.²⁵

Just as de Gaulle's brutal cynicism has depended on an almost
lyrical conception of France's historic mission, so Bismarck's mat-
ter-of-fact Machiavellianism assumed that Prussia's unique sense
of cohesion enabled it to impose its dominance on Germany. Like
de Gaulle, Bismarck believed that the road to political integration
was not through concentrating on legal formulae, but emphasizing the pride and integrity of the historic states.

There is one important difference, however. In the contempo-
rary world, France is only one of several medium-sized states
of roughly equal strength. Within nineteenth-century Germany,
Prussia was by far the strongest purely German state. Bismarck
did not, therefore, depend entirely on the persuasiveness of his
arguments and would have been doomed to failure had he done so.
Unlike de Gaulle, he could impose his convictions on the other
contenders by force—provided international conditions were favorable. Thus, a great deal depended on Bismarck's conception of international affairs.

The Art of the Possible

It is fortunate for posterity that Bismarck was in the relatively subordinate position of ambassador for ten years. Appointed Ambassador to the Assembly of the Confederation in 1852 and to St. Petersburg in 1858, Bismarck's principal means of influencing public policy was through reports to his superiors. The result was a flood of memoranda passionate, brilliantly written, remarkably consistent—the outline of Bismarck's later policy. Increasingly Bismarck urged that foreign policy had to be based not on sentiment but on an assessment of strength. Prussia had to abandon the self-restraint that had characterized its policy since 1815.

We live in a wondrous time in which the strong is weak because of his
moral scruples and the weak grows strong because of his audacity.²⁶...
A sentimental policy knows no reciprocity. It is an exclusively Prussian
peculiarity. Every other government seeks the criteria for its actions
solely in its interests, however it may cloak them with legal deduc-
tions.²⁷... For heaven's sake no sentimental alliances in which the
consciousness of having performed a good deed furnishes the sole reward

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for our sacrifice.²⁸ ... The only healthy basis of policy for a great
power ... is egotism and not romanticism.²⁹ ... Gratitude and confidence
will not bring a single man into the field on our side; only fear will do
that, if we use it cautiously and skillfully.³⁰ ... Policy is the art of the
possible, the science of the relative.³¹

Policy depended on calculation, not emotion. The interests of
states provided objective imperatives transcending individual pref-
erences. "Not even the King has the right to subordinate the inter-
ests of the state to his personal sympathies or antipathies."³² When,
early in Bismarck's career, his Austrian colleague in Frankfurt
made a personal appeal to stop his harassing tactics in the Assem-
bly of the Confederation, he replied:

It is my task to conduct Prussian policy just as it is yours to vindicate that of Austria. That these do not aim for the same results is a necessity produced by history and it cannot be eliminated either by ourselves or our Cabinets. If you constantly keep this in mind I am inclined to believe that our relationship can be freed of the painful impressions you describe even in the face of more substantial divergencies.³³

• The Metternich system had insisted on the closest ties between Prussia and Austria in order to defeat the revolution in Germany and, if necessary, in the rest of Europe. Bismarck, however, not only argued that Austria was not needed to control the domestic situation within Prussia, but contended that it was an obstacle to Prussia's real vocation. It was not a fraternal but a foreign country: "Our policy has no other parade ground than Germany and this is precisely the one which Austria believes it badly requires for itself. . . . We deprive each other of the air we need to breathe. . . . This is a fact which cannot be ignored however unwelcome it may be."³⁴

The idea that Prussia should separate itself from Austria gave
way in short order to the proposition that a wise Prussian policy
would seek to evict Austria from Germany—a proposition which
would have been inconceivable even five years previously when
the Prussian king believed that only the Austrian emperor was "en-
titled" to the crown of a united Germany. Moreover, the German
Confederation, far from being a natural forum for Prussian policy,
was an obstacle to it: -

The secondary states . . . find in the Assembly of the Confederation a
pedestal from which they can discourse about the affairs of Germany
and Prussia, indeed even about European policy, more loudly than
would be permissible were they in immediate contact with world af-

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fairs. ... It is not surprising that they are interested in developing an institution in which with a minimum of effort they obtain not only security but an accretion of influence. Thus in case of war, Hesse-Darmstadt has the right to claim the assistance of the Prussian army and in return assists Prussia with 6,200 men.⁸⁵

If Prussia wished to remain a great power, it could not submit to an illusory consensus of the German states. It should seek instead to utilize the resources of the secondary German states for its own ends. The justification for German unity was not nationalism, but Prussia's requirements as a great power: "A great power desirous of conducting its own foreign policy based on its intrinsic strength can agree to a greater centralization of the Confederation only if it assumes its leadership and insists on the adoption of its own program."⁸⁶

Since Austria would never accept Prussian hegemony in Germany, Bismarck argued, Prussia had to seize every opportunity to weaken her. Within three years of being sent to Frankfurt as the best guardian of the unity of conservative interests, Bismarck selected that Prussia use Austria's embarrassments during the Crimean War to attack her: "Could we succeed in getting Vienna to the point where it does not consider an attack by Prussia on Austria as something outside of all possibility we would soon hear more sensible things from there. ... We should march into Austria, quickly and unexpectedly, while Bohemia is still without troops."⁹⁷ During Austria's war with France and Sardinia, Bismarck wrote: "The present situation once more presents us with the great prize if we let the war between Austria and France become well established and then move south with our army taking the border posts in our field packs not to impale them again until we reach Lake Constance or at least the limits where the Protestant confession ceases to pre dominate."⁹⁸

Nothing illustrates Bismarck's revolutionary quality more dramatically than his advocacy of a Prussian attack on Austria for no other reason than the auspicious moment. Even in the heyday of the Metternich system, it was not unusual for a state to seek to improve its position; but every effort was made to endow change with the legitimacy of a European consensus. Pressures for change without even lip service to existing treaty relationships or to the Concert of Europe involved a revolution in prevailing diplomatic method. Heretofore the major outlines of the Vienna settlement had been treated as inviolate; its legitimacy was a key aspect of its stability.

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Reflections on Bismarck

Bismarck proposed to base the Concert of Europe on precise calculations of power; when they conflicted with the existing order, the latter had to give way or be forcibly overthrown.

To be sure, the difference was one of degree. The Metternich system did not ignore considerations of power even while seeking adjustments through European congresses. Bismarck, in turn, would have been the last person to reject the efficacy of moral consensus: He would have treated it as an important attribute of power, as one factor among the many to be considered. But the stability of the international order depended on this precise nuance.

The Metternich system had been inspired by the eighteenth-century notion of the universe as a great clockwork: Its parts were intricately intermeshed, and a disturbance of one upset the equilibrium of the others. Bismarck represented a new age. Equilibrium was seen not as harmony and mechanical balance, but as a statistical balance of forces in flux. Its appropriate philosophy was Darwin's concept of the survival of the fittest. Bismarck marked the change from the rationalist to the empiricist conception of politics.

### The Empiricist Assessment of the International Order

In 1854, during the Crimean War, Bismarck wrote:

> We have three threats available: (1) An alliance with Russia; and it is nonsense always to swear at once that we will never go with Russia. Even if it were true we should retain the option to use it as a threat. (2) A policy in which we throw ourselves into Austria's arms and compensate ourselves at the expense of perfidious confederates. (3) A change of cabinets to the left whereby we would soon become so "Western" as to outmaneuver Austria completely.⁹⁹

Here was the distillation of the new diplomacy. The same report listed as equally possible an alliance with Russia against France, an arrangement with Austria directed against the secondary German states and presumably against Russia, and an understanding with France (the purpose of the "Western" course domestically) directed against Austria and Russia. The ultimate choice depended strictly on considerations of utility. Hence the apparent Russophile was discussing an arrangement with France, then at war with Russia. The seeming reactionary found it possible to envisage a shift to the left. Domestic policy was manipulated for the purposes of foreign policy.

This cynicism as to method has given rise to the argument that

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Bismarck was above all an opportunist. The charge of opportunism, however, begs the key issue of statesmanship. Anyone wishing to affect events must be opportunist to some extent. The real distinction is between those who adapt their purposes to reality and those who seek to mold reality in the light of their purposes.

→ Bismarck—as all revolutionaries—belonged to the latter group. To be sure, his policy had a streak of opportunism. Yet pure opportunism tends to be sterile; it absorbs more energy in an analysis of where one is than of where one is going. A policy that awaits events is likely to become their prisoner. The flexibility of Bismarck's tactics was the result of a well-developed conceptual framework. It grew out of the conviction that the "Metternich system" stifled Prussia's natural role; it was animated by a clear picture of the new international order that Bismarck wanted to bring about. Bismarck sought his opportunities in the present; he drew his inspiration from a vision of the future.

Obviously, Bismarck's conception could not be put to the test so long as the key pillar of the Metternich system—the unity of the conservative courts of Prussia, Austria, and Russia—remained unshaken. Unexpectedly, the Holy Alliance disintegrated, because Austria, unable to comprehend its peril, lost the masterly touch with which Metternich had conducted its affairs until 1848. Except for Schwarzenberg, who died prematurely in 1852, Austrian policy was in the hands of mediocrities. Like many men of limited vision, Metternich's successors confused maneuver with conception and sought to hide their timidity by restless activity. As a result, Austria abandoned the anonymity that was one of the tactics which enabled Metternich to deflect major crises from his rickety state. Henceforth, Austria found itself increasingly at the center of European disputes. Its vacillations made the Crimean War inevitable. Its confusion caused Russia to see it as a principal obstacle to St. Petersburg's designs in the Balkans. During the Crimean War and after, Austrian policy suffered from the inability to define priorities. Its measures took so long to conceive that they were irrelevant by the time they were executed; the Imperial Cabinet was so afraid of recklessness that it left itself no room for maneuver, save in sudden fits of panic which had the same effect as recklessness. As its position grew more desperate, its measures became more fitful. The Austrian government sought to compensate for each lost opportunity by redoubling its energies when it finally brought itself to act—which was usually at the wrong moment. "Austria wants to garner

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all the fruits across which it stumbles on the road which fear forces it to take," Bismarck wrote sarcastically. "I doubt that Buol [Austrian Foreign Minister] has a clear goal unless it is that Austria pocket everything it can obtain by sleight of hand."⁴⁰

The Prussian calculator in Frankfurt understood that the significance of the Crimean War resided not in the terms by which it was settled, but in the diplomatic revolution it brought about: "The day of reckoning is sure to come even if a few years pass. . . . Austria has put itself as a barrier in Russia's way. The latter's policy will henceforth be directed against this barrier. . . . Through this transformation of the constellation of the powers we can only gain in freedom of action."⁴¹

Thus the most important document of the Crimean War was a report that found its way into the file of the Foreign Ministry of Berlin with marginalia indicating that its author had not succeeded in convincing his superior. Shortly after the conclusion of the Crimean War, Bismarck set down his analysis of the new situation in a memorandum that assumed the perfect flexibility of international relationships limited only by the requirements of national interest. German historiography has justly called it the "Prachtbericht"—the master report—for here in one memorandum was assembled the essence of the new diplomacy, although its novelty robbed it of immediate impact.

The report began with an exposition of the brilliant position of France upon the conclusion of the Crimean War. All the states of Europe were seeking Napoleon's friendship, but none with greater prospect of success than Russia. "An alliance between France and Russia is too natural that it should not come to pass. . . . Up to now the firmness of the Holy Alliance . . . has kept the two states apart; but with Tsar Nicholas dead and the Holy Alliance dissolved by Austria, nothing remains to arrest the natural reapproach-ment of two states with nary a conflicting interest."⁴² Nor could Austria escape its dilemma by anticipating Russia in establishing closer relations with France. In order to maintain the support of his army, Napoleon required an issue capable of supplying at any time "a not too arbitrary and unjust pretext for intervention. Italy is ideally suited for this role. The ambitions of Sardinia, the memories of Bonaparte and Murat, furnish sufficient excuses and the hatred of Austria will smooth its way."

This acute prognosis of the immediate future was preliminary to a discussion of Prussia's position.¹ If a Franco-Russian alliance

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was inevitable and a Franco-Austria conflict probable, where lay Prussia's safety? According to the Metternich system, Prussia should have tightened its alliance with Austria, relied on the German Confederation, and established the closest relationships with Great Britain.

Bismarck demolished each of these elements in turn. Britain would have difficulty maintaining control of the seas against a resurgent French navy aided, perhaps, by the United States. In any event, Britain's land forces were so negligible that the central powers would have to bear the brunt of the conflict. The German Confederation would add no real strength:

> Aided by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, the German Confederation would probably hold together, because it would believe in victory even without its support; but in the case of a two-front war toward East and West, those princes who are not under the control of our bayonets would attempt to save themselves through declarations of neutrality, if they did not appear in the field against us. . . . With a million troops of the Holy Alliance behind it, the German Confederation may seem durable, in the present situation it is unable to resist a foreign danger.

> What about the alliance with Austria, for over a generation the cardinal postulate of Prussian policy? Not only was Austria a weak ally, Bismarck replied, but an incongruous one. "If we remained victorious against a Franco-Russian alliance for what would we have fought? For the continuation of Austria's predominance in Germany and the miserable constitution of the Confederation . . . for that we cannot possibly risk our existence or bleed to death victoriously." On the contrary, Austria was the chief obstacle to Prussia's growth:

> Germany is too small for the two of us . . . , as long as we plough the same furrow, Austria is the only state against which we can make a permanent gain and to which we can suffer a permanent loss. . . . For the past thousand years the German dualism has regulated its internal relationships through a war every 100 years and in this century too, no other means will be able to make the clock of history tell the proper time.

Thus Bismarck resolved whatever contingency he considered into an argument that Prussia break its confederate bond to Austria.

How then could a power survive in the center of the Continent? After 1815, Prussia's answer had been adherence to the Holy Alliance almost at any price. Bismarck's solution was aloofness. He proposed to manipulate the commitments of the other powers so that Prussia would always be closer to any of the contending parties

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than they were to each other. If Prussia managed to create a maximum of options for itself, it would be able to utilize its artificial isolation to sell its cooperation to the highest bidder:—

> The present situation forces us not to commit ourselves in advance of the other powers. We are not able to shape the relations of the great powers to each other as we wish, but we can maintain the freedom to utilize to our advantage those relationships which do come about. . . . Our relations to Austria, Britain and Russia do not furnish an obstacle to a rapprochement with any of these powers. Only our relations with France require careful attention—so that we keep open the option of going with France as easily as with the other powers. . . . I believe that our position loses weight to the degree that the chance of an alliance with France is eliminated from the range of possible options for Prussia. . . . This may be regrettable, but facts cannot be changed, they can only be used.

> Facts can only be used—this was the motto of the new diplomacy which sought to keep the situation fluid through the dexterity of its manipulations until a constellation emerged reflecting the realities of power rather than the canons of legitimacy. Such a policy required cool nerves because it sought its objectives by the calm acceptance of great risks, of isolation, or of a sudden settlement at Prussia's expense. Its rewards were equally great—the emergence of a united Germany led by Prussia.

A call to greatness, however, is often not understood by contemporaries. Prussian hegemony in Germany meant little to the Prussian legitimists if it was obtained through an alliance with Napoleon. A unified Germany was unacceptable to the liberals if it occurred in the name of Prussia's greatness. It was inevitable, therefore, that Bismarck should stand alone and that his most bitter battle should be fought against his former allies, the conservatives, who reacted with incredulous horror at the policy he unfolded. They may have had a premonition that Prussia would lose its essence even while it increased its power. Whether their motive was a limited horizon or instinctive wisdom, the conservatives were met with ever-increasing sharpness by Bismarck's eloquent denial that any state had the right to sacrifice its opportunities to its principles.

## The Relativity of Legitimacy

Nobody in the states which had experienced French occupation could see in the emergence of a new Napoleon anything but a threat. The nationalists feared foreign bondage, and the conservatives, as always, dreaded domestic upheaval.

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Yet the basic postulate of Bismarck's policy was that the fear of a possible Franco-Prussian alliance would be a far better tool for increasing Prussia's influence than reliance on Austrian good will. It took considerable daring to suggest that the state which in 1860 had nearly shared the fate of Poland should use its erstwhile conqueror to bring pressure on its closest allies. Thus the conflict between Bismarck and the conservatives turned on ultimate principles. Bismarck asserted that power supplied its own legitimacy; the conservatives argued that legitimacy represented a value transcending the claims of power. Bismarck believed that a correct evaluation of power would yield a doctrine of self-limitation; the conservatives insisted that force could be restrained only by superior principle.

This conflict found expression in a poignant exchange of letters between Bismarck and his old mentor, Leopold von Gerlach, the military adjutant of the Prussian king. Leopold von Gerlach had grown up during the wars of the French Revolution and had experienced Napoleon's occupation of Prussia. Bismarck was born in the year of Napoleon's banishment to St. Helena; to him Napoleon and the French Revolution were personally distasteful, but not beyond sober calculation. Throughout their exchange, Gerlach appears stodgy and at a distinct disadvantage intellectually. Yet his very unimaginativeness lends pathos to their correspondence, for Bismarck owed everything to Gerlach: his first appointment and his access to the court. The extent of Gerlach's misunderstanding is also the measure of Bismarck's revolutionary quality.

It was only natural that the exchange between Gerlach and Bismarck should have its origin in the "master report" with its recommendation that Prussia develop an option toward France. Bismarck sent this report to Gerlach with a covering letter which placed the principle of utility above that of legitimacy: "I cannot escape the mathematical logic of the fact that present-day Austria cannot be our friend. As long as Austria does not agree to a limitation of spheres of influence in Germany, we must anticipate a contest with it, by means of diplomacy and lies in peace time, with the utilization of every opportunity to give a coup de grace."⁴³ Gerlach, however, would not accept the proposition that Prussia's future justified its seeking support across the Rhine. On the contrary, he argued that Prussia should bring Austria and Russia closer together and restore the Holy Alliance which had enforced France's isolation.⁴⁴

914

Reflections on Bismarck

The spring of 1855 found Bismarck in Paris. He had gone there to divine the character of the statesman who most fascinated him among his contemporaries, Napoleon III. The French Emperor was a symbol of the revolt against the treaties of 1815, the cardinal principle of Bismarck's policy. Since Bismarck wanted to use Napoleon to demonstrate Prussia's superior maneuverability, he proposed to Gerlach that Napoleon be invited to attend the maneuvers of a Prussian army corps: "This proof of good relations with France... would increase our influence in all diplomatic relations."⁴⁵

The suggestion that a Napoleon participate in Prussian maneuvers produced an outburst by Gerlach: "How can a man of your intelligence sacrifice his principles to such an individual as Napoleon—Napoleon is our natural enemy."⁴⁶ Had Gerlach seen Bismarck's cynical marginalia—"What of it?"—he might have saved himself another letter in which he repeated the principles that had animated the Holy Alliance for over a generation:

> My political principle is and remains the war against revolution. Bonaparte is a revolutionary because his absolutism, just as that of the first Napoleon, is based on popular sovereignty and he understands this as well as his predecessor. Prussia's policy must be anti-revolutionary not only in principle but in practice so that at the proper time the vacillating powers such as perhaps Austria and Britain will know what to expect of it. For only he is reliable who acts according to principle and not according to changing concepts of national interest.⁴⁷

It is difficult to escape the pathos of Gerlach, being forced, at the end of his life, into a theoretical defense of his values by the protégé whom he sponsored as the best defender of the very principles now at issue. Gerlach's frustration was compounded because Bismarck, with his marvelous diplomatic skill, immediately transferred the dispute to a plane on which Gerlach was at a distinct disadvantage both intellectually and morally.

Bismarck began by denying that his proposal was motivated by a personal weakness for Napoleon: "The man does not impress me at all. The ability to admire men is in any case only moderately developed in me and it is a fault of my eye that it is more receptive to the weakness of others than to their strengths." On the other hand, Gerlach's insistence on the unity of conservative interests was incompatible with Prussian patriotism. The interests of states transcended abstract principles of legitimacy:—

> As for the principle I am alleged to have sacrificed, if you mean a principle applicable to France and its legitimacy, I admit that I sub-

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ordinate this completely to Prussian patriotism. France interests me only insofar as it affects the situation of my country and we can make policy only with the France which exists. . . . As a romantic I can shed a tear for the fate of Henry V (the Bourbon pretender); as a diplomat I would be his servant if I were French, but as things stand, France, irrespective of the accident who leads it, is for me an unavoidable pawn on the chess-board of diplomacy, where I have no other duty than to serve my king and my country [Bismarck's emphasis]. I cannot reconcile personal sympathies and antipathies toward foreign powers with my sense of duty in foreign affairs; indeed I see in them the embryo of disloyalty toward the Sovereign and the country I serve.⁴⁸

What could a traditional Prussian reply to the charge that the principle of legitimacy was inconsistent with Prussian patriotism, that upholding traditional rule involved the possibility of disloyalty toward the legitimate king of Prussia? Lest Gerlach should seek refuge in asserting the identity of the claims of legitimacy and of national interest, Bismarck anticipated his argument:

> Or perhaps you find the principle I violated in the fact that Prussia must always be an enemy of France. . . . I could deny this—but even if you were right I would not consider it politically wise to let other states know of our fears in peace time. Until the break you predict occurs I would think it useful to encourage the belief that a war between us and France is not imminent . . . that the tension with France is not an organic fault of our nature on which everyone can count with certainty. . . . Alliances are the expression of common interests and goals. . . . But we have indicated our willingness for an alliance precisely to those whose interests are most contrary to ours: Austria and the other German states. . . . If we consider this the last word of our foreign policy . . . we must get used to the idea that in case of war we shall stand alone in the palace of the Assembly of the Confederation holding in one hand the German Constitution. . . . I want nothing else than to take away the belief of others that they can ally themselves with whom- ever they please while we would rather lose our skin piecemeal than to defend it with the aid of France. When I advocate this . . . I expect that I am shown that these advantages are illusory or else that I am given a better plan into the combinations of which the semblance of good relations with France does not fit.

Gerlach had no better plan. What was at issue between him and Bismarck was not a policy, but a philosophy. To Gerlach an alliance with Napoleon was contrary to the maxims of morality and the lessons of Prussian history; to Bismarck it depended entirely on political utility unencumbered by moral scruples. Gerlach tested policy by an absolute moral standard; Bismarck considered success the only acceptable criterion. Gerlach sought fulfillment in

916

Reflections on Bismarck

commitment; Bismarck sought it in dexterity. Because he was of a generation which had known disaster, Gerlach was obsessed by the risks of a power in the center of a continent. Because disaster indicated to Bismarck only a false assessment of forces, he saw primarily the opportunities of the central position.

Thus the exchange between Bismarck and Gerlach had reached an impasse, even though Gerlach was reluctant to admit it. Gerlach invoked Bismarck's great days as the spokesman of the conservatives and repeated his maxim that Prussia would be the weaker partner in a Franco-Prussian alliance. Prussia would lose the confidence of the other German states and therefore Bismarck's policy lacked principle and objective.⁴⁹

Bismarck understood that their disagreement reflected not "misunderstanding," but incompatible values. He therefore proceeded to demonstrate that the maxims of legitimacy, so self-evident to Gerlach, were themselves only relative.

> How many governments exist in the contemporary world which do not grow on revolutionary soil? Take Spain, Portugal, Brazil . . . Sweden or England which still prides itself on the Glorious Revolution of 1688. . . . Before the French Revolution not even the most Christian and conscientious statesman ever conceived the idea to subordinate all his political efforts . . . to the fight against the Revolution . . . and this despite the fact that the American as well as the British Revolution represented the same principles which brought about an interruption of legal continuity in France. I cannot believe that there should not have existed before 1789 a few statesmen equally Christian and similarly conservative as we and just as capable of recognizing evil.⁵⁰

This cynical paragraph demonstrates both Bismarck's strengths and weaknesses. To be sure, foreign policy in the eighteenth century had been cold-blooded and seemingly indifferent to domestic upheaval. But neither the British nor the American Revolution had claimed universal applicability. As long as European governments felt secure at home, they were able to ignore internal upheavals abroad. When these conditions no longer existed, Europe learned the "truth" of the postulate which Bismarck derided—that opposing systems of legitimacy are likely to clash if one of them claims general validity.

The debate was resumed two years later by Gerlach. By then he was in retirement and Bismarck had become Ambassador to St. Petersburg. Gerlach's letter has been lost and a page is missing in Bismarck's reply which heightens its abruptness. Impatiently em-

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DÆDALUS

phasizing the gulf between them, Bismarck proclaimed that the inhibitions of the generation of 1815 had become irrelevant:

Who rules in France or Sardinia is a matter of indifference to me once the government is recognized and only a question of fact, not of right. I stand or fall with my own Sovereign, even if in my opinion he ruins himself stupidly, but for me France will remain France, whether it is governed by Napoleon or by St. Louis and Austria is for me a foreign country. . . . I know that you will reply that fact and right cannot be separated, that a properly conceived Prussian policy requires chastity in foreign affairs even from the point of view of utility. I am prepared to discuss the point of utility with you; but if you pose antinomies between right and revolution; Christianity and infidelity; God and the devil; I can argue no longer and can merely say "I am not of your opinion and you judge in me what is not yours to judge."

Even this bitter declaration of faith paled before a wounding reminder of Gerlach's role in Bismarck's career couched in the religious categories of Gerlach's Pietism:

> I did not seek the service of the King. . . . The God who unexpectedly placed me into it will probably rather show me the way out than let my soul perish. I would overestimate the value of this life strangely . . . should I not be convinced that after thirty years it will be irrelevant to me what political successes I or my country have achieved in Europe. I can even think out the idea that someday "unbelieving Jesuits" will rule over the Mark Brandenburg together with a Bonapartist absolutism. . . . I am a child of different times than you, but as honest a one of mine as you of yours.⁸¹

This was the last letter exchanged between Bismarck and Gerlach.

## The Revolutionary Tragedy

With the exchange with Gerlach, the main lines of Bismarck's thought were established. One by one, he had attacked the assumptions on which the "Metternich system" was based. He had declared the German Confederation a fetter to the development of Prussia's power. He had seen in the Holy Alliance a means to perpetuate an unjustified subordination of Prussia to Austria. Austria, the traditional ally, had been asserted to be Prussia's antagonist and France, the "hereditary" enemy, was considered a potential ally. The unity of conservative interests, the truism of policy for over a generation, had been described as subordinate to the requirement of national interest. The state transcended its fleeting embodiments in various forms of government.

918

Reflections on Bismarck

The significance of Bismarck's criticism did not, of course, reside in the fact that it was made—the tenuousness of the Metternich system was a shibboleth of the mid-nineteenth century—but in the manner by which it was justified. Heretofore the attacks on the principle of legitimacy had occurred in the name of other principles of presumably greater validity, such as nationalism or liberalism. Bismarck declared the relativity of all beliefs; he translated them into forces to be evaluated in terms of the power they could generate.

However hard-boiled Bismarck's philosophy appeared, it was also built on an article of faith no more demonstrable than the principle of legitimacy—the belief that decisions based on power would be constant, that a proper analysis of a given set of circumstances would necessarily yield the same conclusions for everybody.⁹ It was inconceivable to Gerlach that the principle of legitimacy was capable of various interpretations.¹⁰ It was beyond the comprehension of Bismarck that statesmen might differ in understanding the requirements of national interest. Because of his magnificent grasp of the nuances of power relationships, Bismarck saw in his philosophy a doctrine of self-limitation. Because these nuances were not apparent to his successors and imitators, the application of Bismarck's lessons led to an armament race and a world war.¹¹

The bane of stable societies or of stable international systems is the inability to conceive of a mortal challenge. The blind spot of revolutionaries is the belief that the world for which they are striving will combine all the benefits of the new conception with the good points of the overthrown structure. But any upheaval involves costs. The forces unleashed by revolution have their own logic which is not to be deduced from the intentions of their advocates.¹²

So it was with Bismarck. Within five years of coming to power in 1862, he had solved the problem of German unity along the lines of the memoranda he had written during the previous decade. He first induced Austria to separate herself from the secondary German states and to undertake a joint expedition with Prussia against Denmark over the status of Schleswig-Holstein. With Austria isolated from its traditional supporters, Bismarck brought ever increasing pressure on her until in exasperation she declared war. A rapid Prussian victory led to the expulsion of Austria from Germany. Prussia was now free to organize North Germany on a hege-monic basis.

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Shortly after taking office, Bismarck had obtained Russian good will by adopting a benevolent attitude during the Polish rebellion of 1862. Napoleon was kept quiet by the lure of gains now in the Rhineland, now in Belgium, now in Luxembourg—prospects that always proved elusive when Napoleon sought to implement them. When Napoleon sought compensation for his miscalculation that Austria would win the Austro-Prussian war, he found himself outmaneuvered. When his mounting frustrations led to the Franco-Prussian war, German unification became a reality at last in 1871.

This united Germany was far from the ideals of those who had urged it for nearly two generations. It was a federation of the historical states and came into being not through the expression of popular will, but through a diplomatic compact among sovereigns.

The very magnitude of Bismarck's achievement mortgaged the future. To be sure, he was as moderate in concluding his wars as he had been ruthless in preparing them. The chief advocate of reason of state had the wisdom to turn his philosophy into a doctrine of self-limitation once Germany had achieved the magnitude and power he considered compatible with the requirements of security. For nearly a generation, Bismarck helped to preserve the peace of Europe by manipulating the commitments and interests of other powers in a masterly fashion.

But the spirits once called forth refused to be banished by a tour de force, however great. The manner in which Germany was unified deprived the international system of flexibility even though it was based on maxims that presupposed the infinite adaptability of the principal actors. For one thing, there were now fewer participants in the international system. The subtle combinations of the secondary German states in the old Confederation had made possible marginal adjustments which were precluded among the weightier components of the modern era.

Moreover, once the resources of Germany became subject to central direction, pressures toward rigid coalitions increased. In trying to deal with its worst nightmare—an alliance between France and Russia—Germany made this alliance inevitable. As German defense policy was geared to coping with a two-front war, it presented an increasing threat to all its neighbors. A Germany strong enough to deal with its two great neighbors jointly would surely be able to defeat them singly. Thus Germany tended to bring on what it feared most. During the period of the German Confederation, joint action was only possible in the face of overwhelming danger.

920

Reflections on Bismarck

The uncertainty of these arrangements was one of the reasons why Bismarck had insisted on German unification under Prussian leadership. But he paid a price. What had been a remote contingency became at first a nightmare and then a reality.

These tendencies were reinforced because, with the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany, France disappeared from the list of potential German allies. The irreconcilable hostility of France meant the elimination of the French option, which in the 1850's Bismarck had considered essential. Henceforth French enmity was the "organic fault of our nature" against which Bismarck had warned in the 1850's. This precluded the policy outlined in the "master report"—of remaining aloof until the other powers were committed. With France available as a potential ally to an opponent of Germany, Bismarck had to attempt to forestall isolation by superior adaptability. But only four great powers remained available for Bismarck's subtle combinations, of which one—Great Britain—was tending toward isolation. Obviously the fewer the factors to be manipulated, the greater is the tendency toward rigidity.

To be sure, while Bismarck governed, these dilemmas were obscured by a diplomatic tour de force based on a complicated system of pacts with Germany at their center. But the very complexity of these arrangements doomed them. A system which requires a great man in each generation sets itself an almost insurmountable challenge, if only because a great man tends to stunt the emergence of strong personalities. When the novelty of Bismarck's tactics had worn off and the originality of his conception came to be taken for granted, lesser men strove to operate his system while lacking his sure touch and almost artistic sensitivity. As a result, what had been the manipulation of factors in a fluid situation eventually led to the petrification of the international system which produced World War I.

Bismarck's less imaginative successors failed even when they strove for "calculability" or "reliability." These qualities seemed more easily attainable by rigid commitments than by the delicate, constantly shifting balancing of Bismarck's policy. Thus Germany wound up with the unconditional commitment to the "worm eaten hulk" of Austria which it had been the whole thrust of Bismarck's policy to avoid.

In this manner it became apparent that the requirements of the national interest were highly ambiguous after all. Bismarck could

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base self-restraint on a philosophy of self-interest. In the hands of others lacking his subtle touch, his methods led to the collapse of the nineteenth-century state system. The nemesis of power is that, except in the hands of a master, reliance on it is more likely to produce a contest at arms than self-restraint. ♀

Domestically, too, the very qualities that had made Bismarck a solitary figure in his lifetime caused his compatriots to misunderstand him when he had become a myth. They remembered the three wars that had achieved their unity. They forgot the patient preparation that had made them possible and the moderation that had secured their fruits. The constitution designed by Bismarck magnified this trend: The Parliament was based on universal suffrage, but had no control over the government; the government was appointed by the Emperor and was removable by him. Such a system encouraged the emergence of courtiers and lobbyists, but not statesmen. Nationalism unleavened by liberalism turned chauvinistic, and liberalism without responsibility grew sterile. ♀

Thus Germany's greatest modern figure may well have sown the seeds of its twentieth-century tragedies. "No one eats with impunity from the tree of immortality,"⁵² wrote Bismarck's friend von Roon, the reorganizer of the Prussian army, about him. The meaning of his life was perhaps best expressed by Bismarck himself in a letter to his wife: "That which is imposing here on earth ... has always something of the quality of the fallen angel who is beautiful but without peace, great in his conceptions and exertions but without success, proud and lonely."⁵³

## REFERENCES

1. Quoted in Erich Eyck, *Bismarck: Leben und Werk*, Vol. 2 (Erlenbach-Zurich, 1943), pp. 316-17.

2. Horst Kohl (ed.), *Die politischen Reden des Fursten Bismarck, Historische-kritische Gesamtausgabe*, Vol. 1 (Stuttgart, 1892), p. 9. Hereafter referred to as "Kohl." Refers also to subsequent quotation.

3. Eyck, *Bismarck: Leben und Werk*, Vol. 1, p. 14.

4. *Gedanken und Erinnerungen*, Vol. 1, p. 1.

5. Otto von Bismarck, *Die gesammelten Werke*, Vol. 14, No. 1 (3d ed.; Berlin, 1924), November 14, 1833, p. 3. Hereafter referred to as G. W.

6. Eyck, *Bismarck: Leben und Werk*, Vol. 1, p. 26.

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Reflections on Bismarck

7. G. W., Vol. 14, No. 1 (January 30, 1845), p. 30.

8. *Ibid.*, Vol. 14, No. 1 (September 29, 1838), pp. 14-15.

9. *Ibid.*, Vol. 14, No. 1 (January 9, 1845), p. 31.

10. Eyck, *Bismarck: Leben und Werk*, Vol. 1, p. 40.

11. Emil Ludwig, *Bismarck: Geschichte eines Kämpfers* (Berlin, 1926), p. 67.

12. G. W., Vol. 14, No. 1, p. 46.

13. G. W., Vol. 14, No. 1 (January 31, 1847), p. 50.

14. *Ibid.*, Vol. 14, No. 1 (May 3, 1851), p. 208.

15. *Ibid.* (May 12, 1851), p. 210.

16. *Ibid.* (March 7, 1847), p. 76.

17. "Kohl," Vol. 1, p. 273.

18. G. W., Vol. 2 (the "little book"; March 1858), p. 302.

19. *Ibid.*, Vol. 1 (September 1853), p. 375.

20. "Kohl," Vol. 1 (June 9, 1849), p. 113.

21. *Ibid.* (April 4, 1849), pp. 93-94.

22. *Ibid.* (December 12, 1850), pp. 267-68.

23. *Ibid.* (April 21, 1849), p. 88.

24. G. W., Vol. 1 (October 20, 1854), p. 505.

25. G. W., Vol. 2 (March 1858), p. 320.

26. "Kohl," p. 110.

27. *Briefwechsel des Generals Leopold von Gerlach mit dem Bundestags-Gesandten Otto von Bismarck* (Berlin, 1893), p. 334. Hereafter referred to as *Briefwechsel*.

28. *Ibid.* (February 20, 1854), p. 130.

29. "Kohl," p. 264.

30. G. W., Vol. 2 (June 2, 1857), p. 230.

31. *Ibid.*, Vol. 1 (September 29, 1851), p. 62.

32. *Briefwechsel* (May 2, 1857), p. 334.

33. G. W., Vol. 1 (January 19, 1852), p. 128.

34. *Briefwechsel* (December 19, 1853), p. 128.

35. G. W., Vol. 2 (March 1858), p. 310.

36. *Ibid.*, Vol. 2, p. 311.

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37. *Briefwechsel* (October 13, 1854), p. 194.

38. G. W., Vol. 14, No. 1, p. 517.

39. *Briefwechsel* (October 19, 1854), p. 199.

40. G. W., Vol. 2 (June 17, 1855), p. 55.

41. *Ibid.* (December 8-9, 1859), p. 516.

42. *Ibid.* (April 26, 1856), p. 139. Subsequent quotations in these pages refer to the same source.

43. *Briefwechsel* (April 28, 1856), p. 315.

44. Otto Kohl (ed.), *Briefe des Generals Leopold von Gerlach an Otto von Bismarck* (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1912), pp. 192-93 (May 5, 1856). Hereafter referred to as "Kohl-Gerlach."

45. *Briefwechsel* (April 28, 1856), p. 315.

46. "Kohl-Gerlach" (April 29, 1857), p. 206.

47. *Ibid.* (May 6, 1857), p. 211.

48. *Briefwechsel* (May 2, 1857), pp. 333-34.

49. "Kohl-Gerlach" (May 21, 1857), pp. 213-16.

50. *Briefwechsel* (May 30, 1857), pp. 337-39.

51. *Ibid.* (May 2-4, 1860), p. 353.

52. Quoted in Ludwig, *Bismarck: Geschichte eines Kämpfers*, p. 494.

53. G. W., Vol. 14, No. 1, p. 61.

924

## ALBERT O. HIRSCHMAN

### Underdevelopment, Obstacles to the Perception of Change, and Leadership

DURING a recent visit to a Latin American capital, I wished to resume contact with X, an economic historian who had returned there some time ago after spending several years in Europe. I had been invited for dinner by a sociologist whom I asked whether he knew X; he did indeed, quite well, but did not have X's telephone number; no doubt, however, he could find it by calling a common friend. Unfortunately the friend was not home. I asked whether there might be a chance that X would be listed in the telephone directory; this suggestion was shrugged off with the remark that the directory makes a point of listing only people who have either emigrated or died. After a while, the other dinner guests, an economist and his wife, appeared. They were asked about X's telephone number. The economist said that X must be both much in demand and hard to reach, as several people had inquired about how to get in touch with him within the past few days. The subject was dropped as hopeless, and everybody spent a pleasant evening.

Upon waking up the next morning in my hotel room, I noticed the telephone directory on the night table. I could not resist opening it to look for a listing under X's name. I found it immediately and dialed the number, still sure that it must be the one he owned five years ago before leaving for Europe. But the familiar voice answered my call from the other end of the line.

#### I. Special Obstacles to the Perception of Change in Underdeveloped Countries

It so happens that X is Claudio Véliz, at present the director of a new Institute of International Studies in Santiago and editor of the

925

8

EAST TIMOR

ANOTHER SMALL BUT significant territory has the distinction of being omitted – entirely omitted – from Henry Kissinger's memoirs. And since East Timor is left out of the third and final volume (Years of Renewal) it cannot hope, like Cyprus, for a hasty later emendation. It has, in short, been airbrushed. And it is reasonably easy to see why Kissinger hopes to avoid discussion of a country whose destiny he so much affected.

Let me state matters briefly. After the collapse of the Portuguese fascist regime in Lisbon in April 1974, that country's colonial empire deliquesced with extraordinary speed. The metropolitan power retained control only in the enclave of Macau, on the coast of China, and later remitted this territory to Beijing under treaty in 2000. In Africa, after many vicissitudes, power was inherited by the socialist-leaning liberation movements which had, by their tactic of guerrilla warfare, brought about the Portuguese revolution in the first place and established warm relations with its first generation of activists.

In East Timor, situated in the Indonesian archipelago, the postcolonial vacuum was at first also filled by a leftist movement, known as FRETILIN or the Front for the Liberation of East Timor. The popular base of this movement extended from the Catholic Church to the Westernized and sometimes Leninized students who had brought back revolutionary

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS 91

opinions from the "motherland." FRETILIN and its allies were able to form
a government but were at once subjected to exorbitant pressure from their
gigantic Indonesian neighbor, then led by the dictator (since deposed and
disgraced by his own people) General Suharto. Portugal, which had and
which retains legal responsibility, was too unstable and too distant to pre-
vent the infiltration of Indonesian regular units into East Timor and the
beginning of an obviously expansionist policy of attrition and subversion.
This tactic was pursued by the generals in Jakarta for a few months, under
the transparent pretext of "aiding" anti-FRETILIN forces which were, in
point of fact, deliberately inserted Indonesian ones. All pretense of this sort
was abandoned on 7 December 1975, when the armed forces of Indonesia
crossed the border of East Timor in strength, eventually proclaiming it (in
an act no less lawless than Iraq's proclamation of Kuwait as "our nine-
teenth province") a full part of Indonesia proper.

Timorese resistance to this claim was so widespread, and the violence
required to impose it was so ruthless and generalized, that the figure of
100,000 deaths in the first wave – perhaps one-sixth of the entire popula-
tion – is reckoned an understatement.

The date of the Indonesian invasion – 7 December 1975 – is of importance
and also of significance. On that date, President Gerald Ford and his secretary
of state, Henry Kissinger, concluded an official visit to Jakarta and flew to
Hawaii. Since they had come fresh from a meeting with Indonesia's military
junta, and since the United States was Indonesia's principal supplier of mili-
tary hardware (and since Portugal, a NATO ally, broke diplomatic relations
with Indonesia on the point), it seemed reasonable to inquire whether the two
leaders had given the invaders any impression amounting to a "green light."
Thus when Ford and Kissinger landed at Hawaii, reporters asked Mr Ford for
comment on the invasion of Timor. The President was evasive.

He smiled and said: "We'll talk about that later." But press secretary Ron
Nessen later gave reporters a statement saying: "The United States is always
concerned about the use of violence. The President hopes it can be resolved
peacefully."

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THE TRIAL OF HENRY KISSINGER

The literal incoherence of this official utterance – the idea of a peaceful resolution to a unilateral use of violence – may perhaps have possessed an inner coherence: the hope of a speedy victory for overwhelming force. Kissinger moved this suspicion a shade nearer to actualization in his own more candid comment, which was offered while he was still on Indonesian soil and “told newsmen in Jakarta that the United States would not recognize the FRETILIN-declared republic and that ‘the United States understands Indonesia’s position on the question.’”

So gruesome were the subsequent reports of mass slaughter, rape, and deliberate use of starvation that such bluntness fell somewhat out of fashion. The killing of several Australian journalists who had witnessed Indonesia's atrocities, the devastation in the capital city of Dili, and the stubbornness of FRETILIN's hugely outgunned rural resistance made East Timor an embarrassment rather than an advertisement for Jakarta's new order. Kissinger generally attempted to avoid any discussion of his involvement in the extirpation of the Timorese – an ongoing involvement, since he authorized back-door shipments of weapons to those doing the extirpating – and was ably seconded in this by his ambassador to the United Nations, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who later confided in his memoir *A Dangerous Place* that, in relative terms, the death toll in East Timor during the initial days of the invasion was “almost the toll of casualties experienced by the Soviet Union during the Second World War.” Moynihan continued:

> The United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.

The terms “United States” and “Department of State” are here foully tituted, by this supposed prose-master, since they are used as synonyms for Henry Kissinger.

Twenty years later, on 11 August 1995, Kissinger was confronted with direct questions on the subject. Publicizing and promoting his then-latest

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS 93

book *Diplomacy*, at an event sponsored by the Learning Exchange at the Park Central Hotel in New York, he perhaps (having omitted Timor from his book and from his talk) did not anticipate the first line of questioning that arose from the floor. Constancio Pinto, a former resistance leader in Timor who had been captured and tortured and had escaped to the United States, was first on his feet:

Pinto: I am Timorese. My name is Constancio Pinto. And I followed your speech today and it's really interesting. One thing that I know you didn't mention is this place invaded by Indonesia in 1975. It is in Southeast Asia. As a result of the invasion 200,000 people of the Timorese were killed. As far as I know Dr Kissinger was in Indonesia the day before the invasion of East Timor. The United States actually supported Indonesia in East Timor. So I would like to know what you were doing at that time.

Kissinger: What was I doing at that time? The whole time or just about Timor? First of all, I want to thank the gentleman for asking the question in a very polite way. The last time somebody from Timor came after me was at the Oxford Union and they practically tore the place apart before they asked the question.

What most people who deal with government don't understand is one of the most overwhelming experiences of being in high office. That there are always more problems than you can possibly address at any one period. And when you're in global policy and you're a global power, there are so many issues.

Now the Timor issue. First of all you have to understand what Timor, what Timor, what the issue of Timor is. Every island that was occupied by the Dutch in the colonial period was constituted as the Republic of Indonesia. In the middle of their archipelago was an island called Timor. Or is an island called Timor. Half of it was Indonesian and the other half of it was Portuguese. This was the situation.

Now I don't want to offend the gentleman who asked the question.

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THE TRIAL OF HENRY KISSINGER

We had so many problems to deal with. We had at that time, there was a war going on in Angola. We had just been driven out of Vietnam. We were conducting negotiations in the Middle East, and Lebanon had blown up. We were on a trip to China. Maybe regrettably we weren't even thinking about Timor. I'm telling you what the truth of the matter is. The reason we were in Indonesia was actually accidental. We had originally intended to go to China, we meaning President Ford and myself and some others. We had originally intended to go to China for five days. This was the period when Mao was very sick and there had been an upheaval in China. The so-called Gang of Four was becoming dominant and we had a terrible time agreeing with the Chinese, where to go, what to say. So we cut our trip to China short. We went for two days to China and then we went for a day and a half to the Philippines and a day and a half to Indonesia. That's how we got to Indonesia in the first place. So this was really at that time to tell the Chinese we were not dependent on them. So that's how we got to Indonesia.

Timor was never discussed with us when we were in Indonesia. At the airport as we were leaving, the Indonesians told us that they were going to occupy the Portuguese colony of Timor. To us that did not look like a very significant event because the Indians had occupied the Portuguese colony of Goa ten years earlier and to us it looked like another process of decolonization. Nobody had the foggiest idea of what would happen afterwards, and nobody asked our opinion, and I don't know what we could have said if someone had asked our opinion. It was literally told to us as we were leaving.

Now there's been a terrible human tragedy in Timor afterwards. The population of East Timor has resisted and I don't know whether the casualty figures are correct. I just don't know, but they're certainly significant and there's no question that it's a huge tragedy. All I'm telling you is what we knew in 1975. This was not a big thing on our radar screen. Nobody has ever heard again of Goa after the Indians occupied it. And to us, Timor, look at a map, it's a little speck of an island in a

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS 95

huge archipelago, half of which was Portuguese. We had no reason to say the Portuguese should stay there. And so when the Indonesians informed us, we neither said yes or no. We were literally at the airport. So that was our connection with it, but I grant the questioner the fact that it's been a great tragedy.

*Allan Nairn:* Mr Kissinger, my name is Allan Nairn. I’m a journalist in the United States. I’m one of the Americans who survived the massacre in East Timor on November 12, 1991, a massacre during which Indonesian troops armed with American M-16s gunned down at least 271 Timorese civilians in front of the Santa Cruz Catholic cemetery as they were gathered in the act of peaceful mourning and protest. Now you just said that in your meeting with Suharto on the afternoon of December 6, 1975, you did not discuss Timor, you did not discuss it until you came to the airport. Well, I have here the official State Department transcript of your and President Ford’s conversation with General Suharto, the dictator of Indonesia. It was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. It has been edited under the Freedom of Information Act so the whole text isn’t there. It’s clear from the portion of the text that is here, that in fact you did discuss the impending invasion of Timor with Suharto, a fact which was confirmed to me by President Ford himself in an interview I had with him. President Ford told me that in fact you discussed the impending invasion of Timor with Suharto and that you gave the US...

*Kissinger:* Who? I or he?

*Nairn:* That you and President Ford together gave US approval for the invasion of East Timor. There is another internal State Department memo which is printed in an extensive excerpt here which I'll give to anyone in your audience that's interested. This is a memo of a December 18, 1975, meeting held at the State Department. This was held right after your return from that trip and you were berating your staff for having put on paper a finding by the State Department legal advisor Mr Leigh that the Indonesian invasion was illegal, that it not

THE TRIAL OF HENRY KISSINGER

only violated international law, it violated a treaty with the US because
US weapons were used and it's clear from this transcript which I invite
anyone in the audience to peruse that you were angry at them first
because you feared this memo would leak, and second because you
were supporting the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, and you did not
want it known that you were doing this contrary to the advice of your
own people in the State Department. If one looks at the public actions,
sixteen hours after you left that meeting with Suharto the Indonesian
troops began parachuting over Dili, the capital of East Timor. They
came ashore and began the massacres that culminated in a third of the
Timorese population. You announced an immediate doubling of US
military aid to Indonesia at the time, and in the meantime at the United
Nations, the instruction given to Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
as he wrote in his memoirs, was to, as he put it, see to it that the UN be
highly ineffective in any actions it might undertake on East Timor...
[shouts from the audience]

Kissinger: Look, I think we all got the point now...

Nairn: My question, Mr Kissinger, my question, Dr Kissinger, is twofold. First will you give a waiver under the Privacy Act to support full declas-sification of this memo so we can see exactly what you and President Ford said to Suharto? Secondly, would you support the convening of an international war crimes tribunal under UN supervision on the subject of East Timor and would you agree to abide by its verdict in regard to your own conduct?

Kissinger: I mean, uh, really, this sort of comment is one of the reasons why the conduct of foreign policy is becoming nearly impossible under these conditions. Here is a fellow who's got one obsession, he's got one problem, he collects a bunch of documents, you don't know what is in these documents...

Nairn: I invite your audience to read them.

Kissinger: Well, read them. Uh, the fact is essentially as I described them [thumps podium]. Timor was not a significant American policy

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS 97

problem. If Suharto raised it, if Ford said something that sounded encouraging, it was not a significant American foreign policy problem. It seemed to us to be an anti-colonial problem in which the Indonesians were taking over Timor and we had absolutely no reason at that time to pay any huge attention to it.

Secondly you have to understand these things in the context of the period. Vietnam had just collapsed. Nobody yet knew what effect the domino theory would have. Indonesia was ... is a country of a population of 160 million and the key, a key country in Southeast Asia. We were not looking for trouble with Indonesia and the reason I objected in the State Department to putting this thing on paper; it wasn't that it was put on paper. It was that it was circulated to embassies because it was guaranteed to leak out. It was guaranteed then to lead to some public confrontation and for better or worse our fundamental position on these human rights issues was always to try to see if we could discuss them first, quietly, before they turned into a public confrontation. This was our policy with respect to emigration from Russia, in which we turned out to be right, and this was the policy which we tried to pursue in respect to Indonesia and anybody can go and find some document and take out one sentence and try to prove something fundamental and now I think we've heard enough about Timor. Let's have some questions on some other subject. [applause from audience]

Amy Goodman: Dr Kissinger, you said that the United States has won everything it wanted in the Cold War up to this point. I wanted to go back to the issue of Indonesia and before there's a booing in the audience, just to say as you talk about China and India, Indonesia is the fourth largest country in the world. And so I wanted to ask the question in a current way about East Timor. And that is, given what has happened in the twenty years, the 200,000 people who have been killed, according to Amnesty, according to Asia Watch, even according to the Indonesian military. ... Do you see that as a success of the United States?

98

THE TRIAL OF HENRY KISSINGER

**Kissinger:** No, but I don't think it's an American policy. We cannot be, we're not responsible for everything that happens in every place in the world. [applause from audience]

**Goodman:** Except that 90 percent of the weapons used during the invasion were from the US and it continues to this day. So in that way we are intimately connected to Indonesia, unfortunately. Given that, I was wondering if you think it's a success and whether too, with you on the board of Freeport McMoRan, which has the largest gold-mining operation in the world in Indonesia, in Irian Jaya, are you putting pressure, since Freeport is such a major lobbyist in Congress on behalf of Indonesia, to change that policy and to support self-determination for the people of East Timor?

**Kissinger:** The, uh, the United States as a general proposition cannot fix every problem on the use of American weapons in purely civil conflicts. We should do our best to prevent this. As a private American corporation engaged in private business in an area far removed from Timor but in Indonesia, I do not believe it is their job to get itself involved in that issue because if they do, then no American private enterprise will be welcome there anymore.

**Goodman:** But they do every day, and lobby Congress.

It is interesting to notice, in that final answer, the final decomposition of Kissinger's normally efficient if robotic syntax. (For more material on his involvement with Freeport McMoRan, and his other holdings in a privatized military-political-commercial complex, see Chapter 10.) It's also fascinating to see, once again, the operations of his denial mechanism. If Kissinger and his patron Nixon were identified with any one core belief, it was that the United States should never be, or even appear to be, a "pitiful, helpless giant." Kissinger's own writings and speeches are heavily larded with rhetoric about "credibility" and the need to impress friend and foe with the mettle of American resolve. Yet, in response to any inquiry that might implicate him in crime and fiasco, he rushes to humiliate his own

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS 99

country and its professional servants, suggesting that they know little, care less, are poorly informed and easily rattled by the pace of events. He also resorts to a demagogic isolationism. In "signaling" terms, this is as much as to claim that the United States is a pushover for any ambitious or irredentist banana republic.

This semi-conscious reversal of rhetoric also leads to renewed episodes of hysterical and improvised lying. (Recall his claim to the Chinese that it was the Soviet Union that had instigated the Turkish invasion of Cyprus.) The idea that Indonesia's annexation of Timor may be compared to India's occupation of Goa is too absurd to have been cited in any apologia before or since. What Kissinger seems to like about the comparison is the rapidity with which Goa was forgotten. What he overlooks is that it was forgotten because (1) it was not a bloodbath and (2) it completed the decolonization of India. The Timor bloodbath represented the *cementing* of colonization by Indonesia. And clearly, an Indonesian invasion that began a few hours after Kissinger had stepped off the tarmac at Jakarta airport must have been planned and readied several days before he arrived. Such plans would have been known by any embassy military attaché worth the name, and certainly by any visiting secretary of state. We have the word of C. Philip Liechty, a former CIA operations officer in Indonesia, that:

> Suharto was given the green light to do what he did. There was discussion in the Embassy and in traffic with the State Department about the problems that would be created for us if the public and Congress became aware of the level and type of military assistance that was going to Indonesia at that time. Without continued heavy US military support the Indonesians might not have been able to pull it off.

Given that legal and international responsibility for East Timor rested with Portugal, a long-term NATO ally of the United States, the decision to disregard this, and at the admitted minimum to say nothing to the Indonesians about it, must have been deliberate. Given Kissinger's acute preoccupation with the fate of the Portuguese empire – as we will see – it

100 THE TRIAL OF HENRY KISSINGER

may have been even more than that. It certainly cannot have been the
result of inattention, or of the pressure of other distracting world events in
(to take Kissinger's own cited instance) the other Portuguese colony of
Angola.

The desire to appear to have been uninvolved may – if we are charita-
ble – have arisen in part from the fact that even Indonesia’s Foreign
Minister, Adam Malik, conceded in public a death toll of between 50,000
and 80,000 Timorese civilians in the first eighteen months of Indonesia’s
war of subjugation (in other words on Kissinger’s watch) and inflicted
with weapons that he bent American laws to furnish to the killers. Now that
a form of democracy has returned to Indonesia, which in its first post-
dictatorial act renounced the annexation and – after a bloody last pogrom
by its auxiliaries – withdrew from the territory, we may be able to learn
more exactly the extent of the genocide.

Kissinger's surreptitious conduct is made very plain by the State
Department cable of December 1975, and the subsequent memorandum
concerning it. In point of fact, the essential decisions about Portugal's ex-
colonies had been made during the preceding July, when Kissinger had
secured presidential permission for a covert program of military interven-
tion, coordinated with the South Africans and General Mobutu, to impose
a tribalist regime upon Angola. The following month, as a matter of record,
he informed the Indonesian generals that he would not oppose their inter-
vention in East Timor. The only bargaining in December involved a request
that Indonesia delay the start of its own colonial adventure until after Air
Force One, carrying Ford and Kissinger, had left Indonesian airspace.

This "deniable" pattern did not dispose of two matters of legality, both of
them in the province of the State Department. The first was the violation of
international law by Indonesia, in a case where jurisdiction clearly rested
with a Portuguese and NATO government of which Kissinger (partly as a
result of its support for "decolonization") did not approve. The second was
the violation of American law, which stipulated that weapons supplied to
Indonesia were to be employed only for self-defense. State Department

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS 101

officials, bound by law, were likewise bound to conclude that United States aid to the generals in Jakarta would have to be cut off. Their memo summarizing this case was the cause of the tremendous internal row that is minuted below, in a declassified State Department transcript:

SECRET/SENSITIVE
MEMORANDUM OF CONVERSATION

Participants: The Secretary [Henry Kissinger]
Deputy Secretary [Robert] Ingersoll
Under Secretary [for Political Affairs Joseph] Sisco
Under Secretary [Carlyle] Maw
Deputy Under Secretary [Lawrence] Eagleburger
Assistant Secretary [Philip] Habib
Monroe Leigh, Legal Advisor
Jerry Bremer, Notetaker
Date: December 18, 1975
Subject: Department Policy

*The Secretary [Kissinger]*: I want to raise a little bit of hell about the Department's conduct in my absence. Until last week I thought we had a disciplined group; now we've gone to pieces completely. Take this cable on [East]Timor. You know my mind and attitude and anyone who knows my position as you do must know that I would not have approved it. The only consequence is to put yourself on record. It is a disgrace to treat the Secretary of State this way....

What possible explanation is there for it? I had told you to stop it quietly. What is your place doing, Phil, to let this happen? It is incomprehensible. It is wrong in substance and procedure. It is a disgrace. Were you here?

Habib: No.

...

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THE TRIAL OF HENRY KISSINGER

**Habib:** Our assessment was that if it was going to be trouble, it would come up before your return. And I was told they decided it was desirable to go ahead with the cable.

[Kissinger]: Nonsense. I said do it for a few weeks and then open up again.

Habib: The cable will not leak.

[Kissinger]: Yes it will and it will go to Congress too and then we will have hearings on it.

Habib: I was away. I was told by cable that it had come up.

[Kissinger]: That means that there are two cables! And that means twenty guys have seen it.

Habib: No, I got it back-channel - it was just one paragraph double talk and cryptic so I knew what it was talking about. I was told that Leigh thought that there was a legal requirement to do it.

Leigh: No, I said it could be done administratively. It was not in our interest to do it on legal grounds.

Sisco: We were told that you had decided we had to stop.

[Kissinger]: Just a minute, just a minute. You all know my view on this. You must have an FSO-8 [Foreign Service Officer, Class Eight] who knows it well: It will have a devastating impact on Indonesia. There's this masochism in the extreme here. No one has complained that it was aggression.

Leigh: The Indonesians were violating an agreement with us.

[Kissinger]: The Israelis when they go into Lebanon - when was the last time we protested that?

Leigh: That's a different situation.

Maw: It is self-defense.

[Kissinger]: And we can't construe a Communist government in the middle of Indonesia as self-defense?

Leigh: Well...

[Kissinger]: Then you're saying that arms can't be used for defense?

Habib: No, they can be used for the defense of Indonesia.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS 103

[Kissinger]: Now take a look at this basic theme that is coming out on Angola. These SOBs are leaking all of this stuff to [New York Times reporter] Les Gelb.

Sisco: I can tell you who.

[Kissinger]: Who?

Sisco: [National Security Council member William] Hyland spoke to him.

[Kissinger]: Wait a minute - Hyland said...

Sisco: He said he briefed Gelb.

[Kissinger]: I want these people to know that our concern in Angola is not the economic wealth or a naval base. It has to do with the USSR operating 8,000 miles from home when all the surrounding states are asking for our help. This will affect the Europeans, the Soviets, and China.

On the Timor thing, that will leak in three months, and it will come
out that Kissinger overruled his pristine bureaucrats and violated the law.
How many people in L [the legal advisor's office] know about this?
[italics added]

Leigh: Three.

Habib: There are at least two in my office.

[Kissinger]: Plus everybody in the meeting so you're talking about not less than 15 or 20. You have a responsibility to recognize that we are living in a revolutionary situation. Everything on paper will be used against me.

Habib: We do that and take account of that all the time.

...

[Kissinger]: Every day some SOB in the Department is carrying on about Angola but no one is defending Angola. Find me one quote in the Gelb article defending our policy in Angola.

Habib: I think the leaks and dissent are the burden you have to bear.

[Kissinger]: But the people in charge of this Department could have lacerated AF [Bureau for African Affairs].

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THE TRIAL OF HENRY KISSINGER

*Ingersoll*: I was told it came from up the river.

*Eagleburger*: No way.

*[Kissinger]*: Don't be ridiculous. It's quoted there. Read Gelb. Was [Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs William] Schaufele called in and told to get his house under control? This is not minor league stuff. We are going to lose big. The President says to the Chinese that we're going to stand firm in Angola and two weeks later we get out. I go to a NATO meeting and meanwhile the Department leaks that we're worried about a naval base and says it's an exaggeration or aberration of Kissinger's. I don't care about the oil or the base but I do care about the African reaction when they see the Soviets pull it off and we don't do anything. If the Europeans then say to themselves if they can't hold Luanda, how can they defend Europe? The Chinese will say we're a country that was run out of Indochina for 50,000 men and is now being run out of Angola for less than $50m. Where were the meetings here yesterday. Were there any?

*[Kissinger]*: It cannot be that our agreement with Indonesia says that the arms are for internal purposes only. I think you will find that it says that they are legitimately used for self-defense.

There are two problems. The merits of the case which you had a duty to raise with me. The second is how to put these to me. But to put it into a cable 30 hours before I return, knowing how cables are handled in this building, guarantees that it will be a national disaster and that transcends whatever [Deputy Legal Advisor George] Aldrich has in his feverish mind.

I took care of it with the administrative thing by ordering Carlyle [Maw] not to make any new sales. How will the situation get better in six weeks?

*Habib*: They may get it cleaned up by then.

*[Kissinger]*: The Department is falling apart and has reached the point where it disobeys clear-cut orders.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS 105

**Habib:** We sent the cable because we thought it was needed and we thought it needed your attention. This was ten days ago.

[Kissinger]: Nonsense. When did I get the cable, Jerry?

Bremer: Not before the weekend. I think perhaps on Sunday.

[Kissinger]: You had to know what my view on this was. *No one who has worked with me in the last two years could not know what my view would be on Timor.* [italics added]

Habib: Well, let us look at it – talk to Leigh. There are still some legal requirements. I can't understand why it went out if it was not legally required.

[Kissinger]: Am I wrong in assuming that the Indonesians will go up in smoke if they hear about this?

Habib: Well, it's better than a cutoff. It could be done at a low level.

[Kissinger]: We have four weeks before Congress comes back. That's plenty of time.

Leigh: The way to handle the administrative cutoff would be that we are studying the situation.

[Kissinger]: And 36 hours was going to be a major problem?

Leigh: We had a meeting in Sisco's office and decided to send the message.

[Kissinger]: I know what the law is but how can it be in the US national interest for us to give up on Angola and kick the Indonesians in the teeth? Once it is on paper, there will be a lot of FSO-6s who can make themselves feel good who can write for the Open Forum Panel on the thing even though I will turn out to be right in the end.

Habib: The second problem on leaking of cables is different.

[Kissinger]: No it's an empirical fact.

**Eagleburger:** Phil, it's a fact. You can't say that any NODIS ["No Distribution": most restricted level of classification] cable will leak but you can't count on three to six months later someone asking for it [sic] in Congress. If it's part of the written record, it will be dragged out eventually.

106

THE TRIAL OF HENRY KISSINGER

[Kissinger]: You have an obligation to the national interest. I don't care if we sell equipment to Indonesia or not. I get nothing from it, I get no rakeoff. But you have an obligation to figure out how to serve your country. The Foreign Service is not to serve itself. The Service stands for service to the United States and not service to the Foreign Service.

Habib: I understand that that's what this cable would do.

[Kissinger]: The minute you put this into the system you cannot resolve it without a finding.

Leigh: There's only one question. What do we say to Congress if we're asked?

[Kissinger]: We cut it off while we are studying it. We intend to start again in January.

The delivery of heavy weapons for use against civilian objectives did indeed resume in January 1976, after a short interval in which Congress was misled as advertised. Nobody, it must be said, comes especially well out of this meeting; the Secretary's civil servants were anything but "pristine." Still it can be noted of Kissinger that, in complete contrast to his public statements, he:

1. Forebore from any mention of Goa.

2. Did not trouble to conceal his long-held views on the matter, berating his underlings for being so dense as not to know them.

3. Did not affect to be taken by surprise by events in East Timor.

4. Admitted that he was breaking the law.

5. Felt it necessary to deny that he could profit personally from the arms shipments, a denial for which nobody had asked him.

Evidently, there was a dialectic in Kissinger's mind between Angola and East Timor, both of them many miles from US or Russian borders but both seen as tests of his own dignity. (The "surrounding states" to which he alludes in the Angolan case were apartheid South Africa and General

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS 107

Mobutu's Zaire: the majority of African states, as a matter of record, opposed his intervention on the side of the tribalist and pro-South Africa militias in Angola. His favored regimes have long since collapsed in ignominy; the United States now recognizes the MPLA, with all its deformities, as the legitimate government of Angola. And of course, no European ever felt that the fate of the West hinged on Kissinger's gamble in Luanda.)

That Kissinger understood Portugal's continuing legal sovereignty in East Timor is shown by a NODIS memorandum of a Camp David meeting between himself, General Suharto and President Ford on the preceding 5 July 1975. Almost every line of the text has been deleted by official redaction, and much of the discussion is unilluminating except about the eagerness of the administration to supply naval, air and military equipment to the junta, but at one point, just before Kissinger makes his entrance, President Ford asks his guest, "Have the Portuguese set a date yet for allowing the Timor people to make their choice?" The entire answer is obliterated by deletion, but let it never be said that Kissinger's State Department did not know that Portugal was entitled, indeed mandated, to hold a free election for the Timorese. It is improbable that Suharto, in the excised answer, was assuring his hosts that such an open election would be won by candidates favoring annexation by Indonesia.

On 9 November 1979, Jack Anderson's column in the *Washington Post* published an interview on East Timor with ex-President Ford, and a number of classified US intelligence documents relating to the 1975 aggression. One of the latter papers describes how Indonesia's generals were pressing Suharto "to authorize direct military intervention," while another informs Messrs Ford and Kissinger that Suharto would raise the East Timor issue at their December 1975 meeting and would "try and elicit a sympathetic attitude." The relatively guileless Ford was happy to tell Anderson that the United States national interest "had to be on the side of Indonesia." He may or may not have been aware that he was thereby giving the lie to everything ever said by Kissinger on the subject.