TREET JOURNAL THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 1999

A21

# Détente Defended

By JOSEF JOFFE

"Why so short?" quipped a reporter, when Henry Kissinger introduced "Diplomacy" in 1994, a brilliant disquisition on the nature and history of statecraft. How could he squeeze four centuries into 900 pages when "Years of Upheaval," his book covering Richard Nixon's last 18 months in office, had ballooned to almost 1,300? "Easy," Henry replied, "I took out all the I's."

The I's are back—in the third and last volume of his memoirs, "Years of Renewal" (Simon & Schuster, $35), which spans the 2 1/5 years of the Ford presidency and weighs in at 1,151 pages. Why should we read it now, almost a quarter-century after the facts?

First, because this transplant from Bavaria (with a little help from Harvard) writes so well. Not "hip" or "breezy" well; indeed, the prose can become quite professional when Mr. Kissinger delivers one of his many obiter dicta, like: "A nation's for-

who keeps haunting the rest of the book like a revenant.

How these two needed and disdained, attracted and repelled, each other is an almost Shakespearian plot, and Mr. Kissinger renders it with compassion for Nixon and insight into himself. "As an erstwhile refugee who was for decades self-conscious about my German accent," Mr. Kissinger confesses, "I had some understanding of Nixon's fear of rejection." The most moving part of Mr. Kissinger's eulogy (Nixon died in 1994) is reprinted here: "I felt a deep loss and a profound void.... He stood on pinnacles that dissolved into precipices. He achieved greatly and suffered deeply."

How much has Mr. Kissinger achieved? May the historians decide after yet another quarter-century. It is at least clear that he wanted to teach America a version of Realpolitik appropriate for this greatest of powers. "American policymakers," he proclaims, "oscillate between the pragmatic and the missionary, between the practical and the idealistic." And, we might add, between Wilsonianism and power politics, isolationism and interventionism.

Mr. Kissinger wanted something more stable and predictable for the world's anchor power. It is captured in his 1974 Senate testimony. While the neoclass were pushing for an ideological crusade, and the liberals for more arms control, Mr. Kissinger preached a nicely balanced realism: "We seek, regardless of Soviet intentions, to serve peace through a systematic resistance to pressure and conciliatory responses to moderate behavior."

An obvious combination, isn't it? But not to Americans, whose founding faith is not balance and containment but the theory of transcendence, a story of evil overcome and salvation gained. Kissinger has no place in that teleology, and this is why Harvard's liberals hated him with as much passion as New York's neoclass. (The latter have made peace with Henry, but his former colleagues on the Charles are still doing their worst to deny him an honorary degree.)

The endless struggle to find a policy befitting an America that is No. 1 but not an empire is the leitmotiv of these memoirs. Mr. Kissinger's is a compelling argument. Has he actually brought a bit of Talleyrand and Bismarck to the land of Jefferson and Madison? Not really, but there is an ironical twist. As Europe has become more democratic, it has become more like America. The Continent that invented Realpolitik now debates human rights, international tribunals, humanitarian intervention—remaking rather than restraining the world—with the same passionate intensity as America has done ever since the Federalists. The problem, it turns out, is not America but democracy.

Mr. Joffe is editorial-page editor of the Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich and associate of the Olin Center for Strategic Studies at Harvard.

## Bookshelf

"Years of Renewal"
By Henry Kissinger

eign policy inevitably reflects an amalgam of the convictions of its leaders and the pressures of the environment."

"Well" attaches to a style that simply outclasses the normal fare served up by former people of power. With Mr. Kissinger, we return to an almost dead tradition, to Churchill, Disraeli and Bismarck, who wrote on a broad canvas of learnedness—and with a literary sensibility for the drama of men and nations.

With a few economical strokes, Mr. Kissinger paints people, policies andstellations—Brezhnev, Zhou, Rabin, Husein, Giscard, Schmidt. Sometimes, a single sentence can say it all, as after an encounter with Mao: "He would fix upon me a smile both penetrating and mocking as if to warn that it would be futile to attempt to deceive this specialist in human duplicity."

"Years of Renewal" is an engrossing book, truly hard to put down, at least for aficionados of U.S. foreign policy. That is one excellent reason for reading it. The second is precisely the 25-year hiatus. Time has improved the product in subtle ways. Mr. Kissinger has resisted settling scores, especially with his neoprogressive tormentors, who hounded him relentlessly for being too soft on the Soviets. At worst, he waxes ironical or tart when he reconstructs the 1970s battles over détente or arms control.

Maybe all memoirs ought to obey a 25-year rule. For time makes the heart grow wiser. Undoubtedly, Richard Nixon was a major preoccupation for Mr. Kissinger. And though the book is about the Ford presidency, a whole chapter belongs to Nixon,

# 's Footsteps

bler of life from the t. Compared, how-um runs in theaters inlin Center, the triumphant return. y small and having vce has an eccentric that is far wider . The 20 dances of-surroundings came made during the ear-m's career. Works ugh to the late '40s recent dances, in-d meandering pre-usan Stroman and a modernism's Lucinda led by Mr. Protas, t.)

aham performers fessionally by this ang recently named repertory that they t, a number of the tage with easy au-teries," a 1931 mod-loric ritual from the throbbled with the-y in the pulse of the ' starkly angled arm nan ensemble. The works as "Heretic" (1935) also bodied power befitting the marvelously weird, s artful designs in

space. To watch such groups arrange, shift, and rearrange themselves with the ease and inevitability of a clockwork mechanism, is to see choreographic art writ large and sublimely confident.

Like "Primitive Mysteries," "Heretic" features a central role once danced by Graham, and a framing female ensemble. Unlike "Primitive Mysteries," however, which had pale portrayals of its leading figure in these outings, "Heretic" had the great benefit of a performance by Fang Yi Sheu, the company's singular new star. The Taiwanese dancer is blessed with a remarkable physique, strikingly theatrical coloring and a face as beautifully detailed and rivetingly masklike as Graham's own. Indeed, the company has had nothing quite like her in the decades since its founder left the stage. Ms. Sheu danced "Heretic" with chilling invulnerability. Elsewhere, in "Satryc Festival Song," a pastiche of an early Graham solo, she performed with unalloyed sass; as the Bride in "Appalachian Spring," she was a woman penetrating the dark by her own inner light.

Almost as impressive was Katherine Crockett, another fairly new leading dancer. Statuesque and supple, Ms. Crockett made every appearance seem both personal to her and particular to the Graham legacy she played a part in. Of the veteran women, Christine Dakin managed best to evoke a presence and power worthy of the Graham lineage. The severe Terese Capucilli, however, continued to give one-note performances; Denise Vale, lumpish ones. With most of the men now fairly green, few made much impact, though Gary Galbraith gave reliable performances as the demonic preacher in "Appalachian Spring." Another newcomer, Daniel Cardoso, made a remarkably strong impression since he was hardly featured at all. Handsome of face, proportions and coloring, strong of posture and sure of step, the young dancer stood out in the smallest of roles.

In the end, the skinny Joyce stage made the Graham repertory appear like specimens on a microscope's slide. Some of the sights framed there were typical of the murk lately passed off as legitimate Graham theater. But there were also signs of fresh animation. I hesitate to hope, however, that the most positive of these examples will rule the day and secure the future for the Graham Company. Yuriko, for instance, is back in a consulting position for a second time; her first stay didn't last, so one can't assume this one will. While Ms. Sheu is without equal among the new dancers, variously talented women have preceded her, but few remained long enough to make their marks. If Ms. Sheu is given an opportunity to mature as a Graham dancer, she could well be a legitimate heir to Graham herself. But, if she doesn't remain in place, no one should be shocked.

## Them

al Best Western and y. Terry Tobin, a environmental inter-, was conducting a we could have taken horseback riding in us, we opted for the it would be the best out them. Sporting inocuments as well as joined the tour and A designated eagle sits across from the eltered viewing ar-our arrival, Mr. Tob-in a single cotton-at alone, 284

overhead, Mr. Tobin ' they control their sting their primary and using their liders. He also noted the just overhead and juvenile, because it tic white head, yel-et. At the end of the ined that the birds in those trees for the heading to a nearby

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL THURSDAY, AUGUST 3, 1995

# How North Vietnam Won the War

**What did the North Vietnamese leadership think of the American antiwar movement? What was the purpose of the Tet Offensive? How could the U.S. have been more successful in fighting the Vietnam War?** Bui Tin, a former colonel in the North Vietnamese army, answers these questions in the following excerpts from an interview conducted by Stephen Young, a Minnesota attorney and human-rights activist. Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of North Vietnam's army, received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. He later became editor of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of Vietnam. He now lives in Paris, where he immigrated after becoming disillusioned with the fruits of Vietnamese communism.

**Question:** How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?

**Answer:** By fighting a long war which would break their will to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said, "We don't need to win military victories, we only need to hit them until they give up and get out."

**Q:** Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's victory?

**A:** It was essential to our strategy. Support for the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.

**Q:** Did the Politburo pay attention to these visits?

**A:** Keenly

**Q:** Why?

**A:** Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.

**Q:** How could the Americans have won the war?

**A:** Cut the Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos. If Johnson had granted [Gen. William] Westmoreland's requests to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the war.

**Q:** Anything else?

**A:** Train South Vietnam's generals. The junior South Vietnamese officers were good, competent and courageous, but the

commanding general officers were inept.

**Q:** Did Hanoi expect that the National Liberation Front would win power in South Vietnam?

**A:** No. Gen. [Vo Nguyen] Giap (commander of the North Vietnamese army) believed that guerrilla warfare was important but not sufficient for victory. Regular military divisions with artillery and armor would be needed. The Chinese believed in fighting only with guerrillas, but we had a different approach.

The Chinese were reluctant to help us. Soviet aid made the war possible. Le Duan (secretary general of the Vietnamese Communist Party) once told Mao Tse-tung that if you help us, we are sure to win; if you don't, we will still win, but we will have to sacrifice one or two million more soldiers to do so.

**Q:** Was the National Liberation Front an independent political movement of South Vietnamese?

**A:** No. It was set up by our Communist Party to implement a decision of the Third Party Congress of September 1960. We always said there was only one party, only one army in the war to liberate the South

and unify the nation. At all times there was only one party commissar in command of the South.

**Q:** Why was the Ho Chi Minh trail so important?

**A:** It was the only way to bring sufficient military power to bear on the fighting in the South. Building and maintaining the trail was a huge effort, involving tens of thousands of soldiers, drivers, repair teams, medical stations, communication units.

**Q:** What of American bombing of the Ho Chi Minh trail?

**A:** Not very effective. Our operations were never compromised by attacks on the trail. At times, accurate B-52 strikes would cause real damage, but we put so much in at the top of the trail that enough men and weapons to prolong the war always came

out the bottom. Bombing by smaller planes rarely hit significant targets.

**Q:** What of American bombing of North Vietnam?

**A:** If all the bombing had been concentrated at one time, it would have hurt our efforts. But the bombing was expanded in slow stages under Johnson and it didn't worry us. We had plenty of time to prepare alternative routes and facilities. We always had stockpiles of rice ready to feed

the people for months if a harvest were damaged. The Soviets bought rice from Thailand for us.

**Q:** What was the purpose of the 1968 Tet Offensive?

**A:** To relieve the pressure Gen. Westmoreland was putting on us in late 1966 and 1967 and to weaken American resolve during a presidential election year.

**Q:** What about Gen. Westmoreland's strategy and tactics caused you concern?

**A:** Our senior commander in the South, Gen. Nguyen Chi Thanh, knew that we were losing base areas, control of the rural population and that his main forces were being pushed out to the borders of South

Vietnam. He also worried that Westmoreland might receive permission to enter Laos and cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

In January 1967, after discussions with Le Duan, Gen. Thanh proposed the Tet Offensive. Thanh was the senior member of the Politburo in South Vietnam. He supervised the entire war effort. Thanh's struggle philosophy was that "America is wealthy but not resolute," and "squeeze tight to the American chest and attack." He was invited up to Hanoi for further discussions. He went on commercial flights with a false passport from Cambodia to Hong Kong and then to Hanoi. Only in July was his plan adopted by the leadership. Then Johnson had rejected Westmoreland's request for 200,000 more troops. We realized that America had made its maximum military

> 'Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses.'

SHOWS WE WISH YOU HAD NEVER SEEN

125

Kaplan was running the show from a makeshift control panel situated at the other end of the same large room where Le Duc Tho and his interpreter sat. During the commercial, Kaplan shouted over to the interpreter, "Will you please make Le Duc Tho shut up?"

"You make him shut up," the interpreter hissed back.

By now producers in the New York control room who could see Kissinger on a monitor were placing bets as to whether or not he would leave.

It got worse. After a commercial, Le Duc Tho finally agreed to move off the Paris talks and on to the current issues of MIAs and Vietnam's relations with its neighbors. It hardly mattered by then. He complained about sanctions, and about Chinese expansionists in Kampuchea, and whatever else he wanted to talk about.

**LE DUC THO:** *(voice of interpreter)* We are demanding equal treatment. . . . Every year there are hundreds of Americans coming into Vietnam . . . even our famous pianist, Dang Thai Son, who'd already signed a contract . . . and there should be facilitating conditions about the U.S. . . .

**KOPPEL:** Let me just—

After what seemed an eternity on the issue of relations with Kampuchea, Le Duc Tho paused just long enough to give Koppel the chance to say the interview was over. Le Duc Tho started up again. He had a word for the "American people."

**LE DUC THO:** On the occasion of the celebration of ten years of liberation of the south, we wish to profess gratitude to the American people for their support and contribution to our present victory. We hope that all the American wives and mother will never again allow their husbands and sons to go to die in another Vietnam War anywhere in this world. We hope that the friendship relations between our two peoples will grow ever more, and we hope that the normalization of relations between our two countries will come soon so as to pave the way for the growth of relations of friendship and cooperation be-

posed to advance the real-exploder, Tho Koppel, Vietnamese, to Le

foreign until "was he did, there was the re-

Tho. ues),

ues;

Mr. eath. I'm alive. I'm alive. I'm alive.

to

126

NIGHTLINE

tween our two peoples. May the American people live
in peace and happiness. Thank you.

Then this:

I'm Charles Gibson in Washington, and what you are
seeing is the uncertainty of live television in many of its
facets. And because of technical problems we have lost
our satellite contact with Ted Koppel in Vietnam for a
moment and we're trying to reestablish contact. But
with us now is former secretary of state Henry Kissinger.

That's what viewers got. What Koppel got was: "Ted? This is
Rick. Our satellite is down. The States can't see us."

Charles Gibson, who had been asked to stand by in Washington
for precisely this contingency but who, as he watched the program,
had begun to pray that none of it would fall to him, was fated never-
theless to bear the brunt of Kissinger's wrath:

**KISSINGER:** I think what we saw is a defeat which we inflicted upon
ourselves. And it is quite significant that Le Duc Tho
thanked his American supporters at the end of his re-
marks . . . And I must say that the difficult portion in
this program between the American point of view and
the Vietnam point of view and the absolutely one-sided
account of the correspondents is one of the explanations
of how we got to where we are. And I don't see any
point in engaging in a long debate in the two minutes
that are left.

**GIBSON:** Well, we have more than two minutes, and I don't want
to engage in a debate at all. . . .

**KISSINGER:** But I won't repeat—I hate to do this on the air. I said be-
fore I went on the air that I saw no point on the tenth
anniversary of the withdrawal from Saigon for an Amer-
ican to debate the Vietnam War, and I'm not going
to do it.

**GIBSON:**

**KISSINGER:**

**GIBSON:**

**KISSINGER:**

Now Gibson
even my short

**GIBSON:**

**KISSINGER:**

For Koppel
working again
of tense excl-
aries and abo-
the pain and

When the
informed th:
set. Kaplan
couldn't hur

**ANYTIME**
a Nightline
there was an
the moment
remembered
The interpre-
from the cor-


After Kc
the translator

Gerald R. Ford Foundation *Newsletter*

Summer/Fall 1995

Ford's Boyhood Remembered

President and Mrs. Ford had a
full day when they visited Grand
Rapids on April 20. After taking
part in the ribbon cutting ceremony
for the Frederik Meijer Gardens,
President Ford gave the keynote
address at a luncheon for Dis-
tinguished Eagle Scout Award
recipient Louis Padnos. President
Ford was also honored at the lun-
cheon when it was announced that
the local Boy Scout chapter was
renamed the Gerald R. Ford
Council.

"The home...was the Ford's
family residence from 1921
to 1930."

Following lunch **President and Mrs. Ford** attended the dedication of a Michigan Historical Marker and National Historic Register Plaque at the Ford boyhood home at 649 Union SE in Grand Rapids. **Mayor John Logie** and **Governor John Engler** were present. The home, restored by Timothy England and Robert Kent, was the Ford family residence from 1921 to 1930.

The house had plenty of boyhood
memories. In *A Time to Heal*,

INSIDE...

<table>
   <tr>
    <td>
     Journalism Prizes
    </td>
    <td>
     2
    </td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
    <td>
     Colloquium
    </td>
    <td>
     2
    </td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
    <td>
     Collection Development
    </td>
    <td>
     7
    </td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
    <td>
     Audiovisual Research
    </td>
    <td>
     10
    </td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
    <td>
     Exhibits
    </td>
    <td>
     12
    </td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
    <td>
     Director Resigns
    </td>
    <td>
     14
    </td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
    <td>
     Annual Meeting
    </td>
    <td>
     15
    </td>
   </tr>
  </table>

*Ford's boyhood home receives historical recognition.* [l-r: home owners Timothy England and Robert Kent, Michigan Secretary of State Candice S. Miller, Michigan Governor John Engler, President and Mrs. Ford, and Grand Rapids Mayor John Logie]

**President Ford** recalled the garage
at the rear of the home: "There, a
group of us established a social club.
We learned to play penny-ante
poker and other games. It was a
great hideaway because my parents

"The house had plenty of
childhood memories."

wouldn't climb the ladder to the sec-
ond floor—or so I thought."

Journalism Prizes

President Ford with award winner Michael Duffy, and members of the judging panel for the Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency. [l-r: Jacqueline Thomas, Jim Pfiffner, Roger Davidson, President Ford, panel chair James M. Cannon, and Michael Duffy]

The eighth annual *Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prizes for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency and on National Defense* were presented by **President Ford** at the National Press Club in Washington on June 5th.
**Michael Duffy** of *Time* magazine won the Presidency Prize;
**Genevieve Anton** of the Colorado Springs *Gazette Telegraph* won the Defense Prize. The $5,000 awards,

sponsored by the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, were instituted to recognize exceptional accuracy, insight, and analysis in reporting.

In presenting the award to Duffy, **President Ford** noted that the judges cited Duffy for "commendable enterprise in getting the story and the ability to write in a way that engages and informs the reader. He demonstrates an understanding of the

complex forces that influence a President. Duffy best portrays the nature of the man who is President; thereby he better conveys to a mass audience how and why President Clinton governs as he does."

Duffy thanked the Foundation for giving him the award and also for "setting up a program that recognizes and rewards serious reporting." Duffy was cheered by a large group from *Time's* Washington office. Over

"He (Duffy) demonstrates and understanding of the complex forces that influence a President."

thirty people gave him a big round of applause and a standing ovation when he accepted the award from the former President.

**President Ford** also quoted the judges when he presented the Prize for Reporting on National Defense to **Genevieve Anton**. He said the judges cited her for "showing great foresight last year in researching and reporting on what would be occurring under the Base Realignment and

20th Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon

[Courtesy The Associated Press]

Excerpts from papers at Gerald R. Ford Library dealing with last days of Saigon:

*The resiliency of the Vietnamese is beginning to emerge.*

- U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, April 13, 1975, rejecting the view that South Vietnam would soon collapse

*If I have to take these Vietnamese and their families, I intend to do it and answer for it later.*

- Martin telling Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft on April 16 he plans to use crack elements of South Vietnam's army to provide security for the evacuation and then help them escape

On March 31, 1975, Danang had just fallen, signalling the beginning of the end of the U.S. presence in Vietnam. On March 31, 1995, members of the University of Michigan Military Studies Group and others interested in the history of the Vietnam War met at the Gerald R. Ford Library to hear four scholars discuss the insights they had gained from their extensive research in Ford Library holdings.

The Gerald R. Ford Foundation sponsored the colloquium, called *The Bitter End: A Conference on the 20th Anniversary of the Conclusion of American Involvement in Vietnam*. The

panelists addressed such topics as the impact of the war on American politics and culture; the role of **President Ford**, **Henry Kissinger**, and **Graham Martin** in the unfolding story of disengagement; and the possibilities of other outcomes. Included were **Larry Berman**, University of California-Davis; **T. Christopher Jespersen**, Clark-Atlanta University; **Robert D. Schulzinger**, University of Colorado; and **Charles J. Tull**, Indiana University. Declassification archivist Karen Holzhausen spoke about recently opened material from Graham Martin's embassy files and the Library's declassification program.

2

Vietnam Colloquium Receives Media Coverage

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gets the latest information on the situation in South Vietnam. April 29, 1975.

'As far as the military pressures on the President are concerned, you might care to inform him that the reports of the SA-2s (missiles), which so panicked one of your WSAG (Washington Special Action Group) meetings, and which resulted in the closing of the Saigon airport to American commercial airlines, turns out to be incorrect. What was sighted was several logging trucks full of logs.'

- Martin to Kissinger on April 26

Atlanta, said his review of Martin's materials show the ambassador was in denial.

'I kept wondering what he would have said if he would have been on the Titanic. He would have been a great steward on the ship even as it's going down because he is a believer up until the last day," Jespersen said.

Cables from Washington starting April 14 show Kissinger pressuring Martin to evacuate Americans. Martin warned repeatedly that would panic the South Vietnamese, bring about a premature collapse of the nation and possibly trigger violence against the remaining Americans.

In an April 15 message, Martin told Kissinger his family was making no plans to leave.

"The most calming influence in

'While I will not predict with the complete and total assurance of your intelligence community that there will not be an attack on Saigon for a while, I simply note that all the various deadlines which have been presented to you and the president by which time total evacuation of Americans must be completed without our facing complete disaster have been passed one by one and will probably continue to do so.'

- Martin to Kissinger on April 27

Saigon is my wife who goes about her regular way, makes appointments for weeks in advance, and who has refused to pack anything at all although we would hate like hell to lose our most valued possessions," he wrote.

In another April 15 message, Martin urged Kissinger not to push the panic button about the evacuations. He vowed to stay until the bitter end and seek refuge through a secret door connecting the American Embassy to the French, if need be.

"It is not an act of particular bravery

LIKE BEING THERE

by Judy Daubenmier
Excerpts reprinted with permission
of The Associated Press

Even after 20 years, the words are urgent, the message raw.

'If the airport is unusable for fixed-wing aircraft or becomes so during the day as a result of enemy fire, you are immediately to resort to helicopter evacuation of all, repeat, all Americans, both from the DAO (Defense Attache's Office) compound and from the embassy compound.'

That was the order from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to American diplomats caught up in the frenzied swirl of the last days before Saigon was overrun by the North Vietnamese Army.

After travelling from the rooftop of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon to the trunk of a car, Kissinger's message is now open to scholars in Ann Arbor.

The message is among the 2,000 pages of mostly "back channel" communes between Saigon and Washington that were squeezed onto the helicopters plucking desperate Vietnamese and Americans off the U.S. Embassy's roof.

Many sensitive files were lost in the scramble out of Saigon on April 30, 1975. But Graham Martin, U.S. ambas-

sador to Saigon, shepherded out these and other papers dating to Henry Cabot Lodge's tenure as ambassador in 1963.

Instead of turning them over to the U.S. State Department, Martin stored them in the trunk of his daughter's car, where they were discovered after it was stolen in 1978. North Carolina State Police turned the documents over to the federal government.

An Indiana University history professor writing a book on Martin said the papers reveal more of Martin's thinking and personality.

'My ass isn't covered. I can assure you I will be hanging several yards higher than you when this is all over.'

- Kissinger to Martin on April 19

'I am sorry to be late in responding to some of your recent requests. But the tardiness is really your fault. Several times I have suggested you have Brent Scowcroft send me a day-stretcher. He does such a marvelous job working for you he simply has to have several. I'll settle for a used one.'

- Martin to Kissinger on April 25

"You really get these candid analyses that get so filtered by the time you read a history book," said Charles Tull of South Bend.

Tull, whose sister worked in the embassy with Martin, thinks Martin kept the papers so he could write his own version of the end of the Vietnam War should Kissinger ever publish an account critical of him. Martin died in 1980.

"Martin was very much afraid they were going to make him the fall guy," he said.

The cables are sprinkled with Martin's colorful language. In one note, he showed his disdain for bureaucrats in the State Department by calling them "mattress mice."

But they also confirm Martin's belief up until the very end that South Vietnam could be saved if the United States would provide more aid.

In an April 14 cable, Martin called South Vietnam economically viable.

"In other words, the GVN (government of Vietnam) is still a good bet. It needs help to survive until the American people begin to get the whole truth and make the right decisions," he said.

T. Christopher Jespersen, assistant professor in the School of International Affairs at Clark Atlanta University in

4

Closure process (BRAC95). Although the BRAC process directly affects communities around the country, it takes place to a large degree in Washington. Ms. Anton's stories provided readers with an understanding of the critical Washington part of the process. Her stories tell it the way it is rather than the way readers might want it to be. Ms. Anton found the

> "Her stories tell it the way it is rather than the way readers might want it to be."

right sources, and made good use of them."

Ms. Anton thanked **President Ford** and the Foundation for the award and also thanked the judges "for recognizing that a reporter working for a general-interest community newspaper outside Washington can report effectively on an important issue relating to national defense."

**President Ford**, keeping with tradition, used the National Press Club forum to express his views on the responsibilities of the press. He said

that he had a growing concern that responsible reporting sometimes gave way to the desire to be first to disclose a scandal. "Hurried reporting or oversimplification of events can cast doubts or even destroy unblemished careers of dedicated leaders," he noted. The former President urged all reporters to resist the trend

toward simplification and sensation-alism: "Do the work, get the story right, accept the responsibility that the First Amendment gives you." He also answered questions from the audience relating to the economy, the balanced budget amendment, and next year's presidential elections.

President Ford with award winner Genevieve Anton, and members of the judging panel for the Prize for Reporting on National Defense. [l-r: Colonel John D. Macartney, Genevieve Anton, President Ford, panel chair Ronald O'Rourke, and Neil Singer]

Frank Mackaman moderated the program. Transcripts are available from the program coordinator, Richard Holzhausen.

The colloquium was one of several ways in which the Ford Library staff contributed to commemorations of the 20th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. A photographic exhibit mounted in the Library lobby showed behind the scenes shots of activities at the White House as the final evacuation of Saigon took place. Staff members also provided background research materials and audiovisual support for a *Time* magazine special edition, a television

documentary, and two lengthy Associated Press articles (see next page), as well as more routine inquiries.

*The only one whose ass isn't covered is me. That has been true all along. There is no way I can come out of this without criticism no matter how unjustified it may be.*

- Martin to Kissinger on April 19 about evacuation

"The Bitter End: A Conference on the 20th Anniversary of the Conclusion of American Involvement in Vietnam" took place at the Library on March 31, sponsored by the Foundation.

3

on my part," Martin said.

"I will simply slip through the wall
next door to the French embassy and
ask my colleague if I can use the bed-
room of his wife, wishing all the while
that she were there and not in Paris."

Other times, Martin revealed just
how distasteful parts of his job were.
On April 20, he told Kissinger about a
meeting at which he urged South
Vietnamese President Nguyen Van
Thieu to resign.

"I went home, read the daily news digests from Washington, took a shower, scrubbed very hard with the strongest soap I could find. It didn't help very much," he wrote.

On April 29, the tone of the messages became more urgent as the North Vietnamese army massed at the city's outskirts.

White House staffer Don Rumsfeld
frantically messages Martin that day as
evacuation plans crumbled under the
crush of panicked Vietnamese mobbing
evacuation points.

"I understand that 154 IBM employ-
ees including their families are still
awaiting removal from Saigon. I further

'Why should they now" They never hit
anything before.'

- Kissinger on April 28 after hear-
ing some renegade South
Vietnamese pilots command-
deered planes and flew over the
Presidential Palace but did not
bomb it

understand that they are now standing
in front of the IBM Building awaiting
instructions where they should go for
evacuation. I ask that you do your
utmost to see that they are evacuated
with the current helicopter lift," he
wrote.

Minutes of a Kissinger meeting that
morning in the White House situation
room show the mounting tension.
Military officials complain that the num-
ber of people to be evacuated keeps
going up and Kissinger demands:

"Where are all these extra people
coming from?...Can someone explain to

me what the hell is going on! The
orders are that only Americans are to be
evacuated. Now, what the hell is going
on?"

On April 30, military authorities told
Martin only 19 more helicopters would
be sent in.

"The president expects Ambassador Martin to be on the last helicopter," said the order.

Finally, a weary Martin climbed the
steps to the embassy roof to take one of
the last helicopters out of Saigon. A
reporter, realizing Martin was about to
leave his toy poodle, Nit Noy, behind,
grabbed the dog and carried it aboard
the USS Blue Ridge on his lap.

Ford messaged Martin aboard ship to
praise him for his courage and steadi-
ness during the crisis.

"I want to express my deep apprecia-
tion to you and your entire staff for the
successful evacuation of Americans and
Vietnamese from Saigon," cabled Ford.

"The tireless dedication of your mis-
sion and its skilled performance under
the most severe pressure was vital to the
accomplishment of this most difficult
and delicate operation."

'If I were an Annenberg I would contin-
ue to pay it out of my own pocket, but I
just damn well ain't. All I have is my
government salary.'

- Martin to Lt. Gen. Brent
Scowcroft, on April 21, asking for
release of $20,000 to pay bribes
to South Vietnamese police and
immigration officials.

'Obviously, this airlift cannot go on for-
ever....I think we can simmer it down
after a while and keep the airlift run-
ning for quite a while.'

- Martin to Kissinger on April 28,
two days before the airlift ended

Kissinger added a postscript that
summed up the turmoil of Martin's
departure: "Would appreciate informa-
tion about your onward travel plans to
pass to members of your family."

FORD SAYS HE DIDN'T SOFT-PEDAL ON VIETNAM

President Ford watched from the
White House as pictures flashed around
the world of American diplomats
scurrying into helicopters atop the U.S.
Embassy in Saigon while desperate
Vietnamese mobbed the compound
gates.

"I can only say that sitting in the
Oval Office and watching the last
Americans being kicked out of the
embassy compound was not a happy
day for a U.S. president," he said recent-
ly.

Ford said his anguished thoughts on
April 30, 1975, were "how unfortunate
it was that we had not been successful
and we were being defeated." But ...he
still believes the war's goals were justi-
fied.

"I had reservations about military
strategy, but I believe then and still
believe our country's aims were prop-
er."

Historians who have studied recently
declassified documents from the Ford
administration pertaining to the end of
the war have questioned Ford's commit-
ment to continued support of South
Vietnam.

Robert D. Schulzinger, professor of
history at the University of Colorado,

President Ford takes a final phone call from Henry Kissinger, after a late night meeting on the situation in Vietnam with the Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft. April 28, 1975.

5

said Ford made only a token effort to
secure continuing American support for
South Vietnam as the army of the
Communist North closed in on Saigon.

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
and U.S. Ambassador to Saigon Graham
Martin wanted an all-out effort by Ford
to obtain $722 million in military aid for
South Vietnam in April 1975, Schulzinger
said.

But Schulzinger said at the advice of
aides concerned about his 1976 election
chances, Ford wanted to soft-pedal the
conflict.

'He made the request. He knew that
Congress would turn it down. He
thought that that would end the matter,
and he would have established a record
of having asked for it,' he said.

Ford disagreed. "That's an unjustified
conclusion," he said.

"The North Vietnamese were violating
terms of the 1973 Paris peace accords,
but the military aid would have been
enough to stop those breaches and bring

peace, not just stave off collapse tem-
porarily," he said.

"I felt an obligation to our longstanding commitment as a nation and our commitment to our allies that this had to be done.

"Congress, of course, lost its courage
or judgement or whatever and gave us
virtually nothing," he said.

But Ford did admit "there were some
in the administration who were in the
minority who had reservations" about
the aid.

Although American diplomats were
evacuated from Saigon, thousands of
South Vietnamese who had worked for
the United States or were loyal to it were
left behind. Ford defended the evacua-
tion effort.

"We did the very best we could," he
said.

"We stayed until the last practical,
possible point. Unfortunately, there were
some who had been loyal and supportive
who didn't make it, but we got a lot more

out than some people like (Secretary of
Defense James) Schlesinger wanted to."

When it became obvious Saigon
would fall, Ford said, he and Kissinger
found themselves between two extremes
in the administration.

"Schlesinger was among those who
thought we should have left more quick-
ly than we actually did," he said.

"On the other hand, we had people
like Graham Martin who wanted to stay
in perpetuity. Kissinger and myself were
the ones who wanted to stay as long as
we could practically."

Ford declined to go as far as former
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara
in calling the war a mistake.

"It was tragic," he said.

"For various reasons, it turned out to
be a very sad event in the history of a
country, but I don't fault people for what
I think they thought was in the best
interests of the United States. I'm not
going to second-guess them 30 years
later."

There is no reason for Americans to
still be there. He has been ordered by
the President of the United States to get
the hell out of there. My impression
was that you said that it would take
one and one-half hours for the evacua-
tion and that it would be only
Americans. At four o'clock this morn-
ing I find out that nobody is off the
ground yet. Now what the hell is going
on? Yes, I'll instruct the ambassador
to get those people out, but he's been
ordered to get those people out a hun-
dred times.

- Kissinger during April 29 White
House meeting after being told
400 Americans still awaiting
evacuation at embassy

Flanked by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, President Ford discusses the situa-
tion in Vietnam with bipartisan congressional leaders. April 29, 1975.

6

WHEN COMMERCE SECRETARY RON
BROWN

Brown was killed in a plane crash in Dubrovnik, Croatia, last April, I took the occasion to write a column about the way public officials are now treated in the world's greatest democracy, saying, "The press, talk shows, the politicians themselves and their consultants, the guys around the corner —we have all raised trash talk to the American dialogue."

He was dead at the age of fifty-four, an extraordinarily talented man who probably could have made $100,000 in a good week as a well-connected Washington lawyer. But in a society where the first questions

are usually about what you do and how much you're paid for it, Brown was risking life and limb on another American fool's mission. Like millions of his countrymen before him, he was trying to make the world a better place for people he did not know and probably misunderstood. For this he was being paid $99,500 a year.

He was praised and honored, posthumously. But on the day before he died he was being widely scorned as some kind of lowlife, a status bestowed on him twice over—as “a bureaucrat” and before that as “a politician,” the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

I, of course, am part of the problem. I have found myself thinking more and more about the trashing of American politicians. Most particularly I have thought about a book I wrote twenty-one years ago called *A Ford, Not a Lincoln*, about the thirty-eighth President of the United States, Gerald Ford. So it was no accident that on a late-night television show when the host, Tom Snyder, quoted something funny he remembered from that work, I mumbled, in passing, “I was too tough on him in that book.”

Maybe I figured no one was watching or listening at that hour. But the editor of this magazine, Richard Snow, wrote to me the next day and said someone on his staff had heard what I said. Exactly what did I mean?

I meant, in general, that Jerry Ford, perhaps the most accidental of American Presidents, had done a better job than I had predicted or imagined. I know better now than I did then that Presidents should be judged on the one, two, or five big things they do. The day-to-day politics and stumbling fade in memory, as it should, though poor Jerry Ford has had to live with endless returns of the comedian Chevy Chase imitating his clumsiness week after week on “Saturday Night Live!”

Presidents are not paid by the hour. The job is essentially to react, and we pay them for their judgment—

a word Ford routinely mispronounced as "judge-a-ment." In retrospect Ford's judgment turned out to be better than his pronunciation. His big job, as defined in a transition plan written by a group of young Nixon staffers working without the knowledge or permission of either Nixon or Ford, was simply: "Restoration of the confidence and trust of the American people in their political leadership, institution and processes."

On balance he did that, producing more trust than confidence—or at least he checked or slowed the slide toward today's foul public cynicism. To do so, Ford decided he had to pardon Nixon. I thought that was wrong then, and so did most Americans. I also had no doubt, as I documented to my satisfaction in the book, nor do I have doubt now, that the pardon was part of a deal, spoken or unspoken, brokered by Nixon's chief of staff, Alexander Haig.

More specifically, I mean that Ford understood (or guessed at, it doesn't matter which) something that I now realize was true. He told me something in 1974, or not too much later, that I can only paraphrase because I did not take it seriously enough: that it would have been impossible to govern the country if there had been open charges against Nixon, that the television-focused attention of the nation would have followed the disgraced President from courtroom to courtroom.

He was right. Whatever his failings as a leader, and they were many, he was right about the big one. We have turned out to be a television nation that has trouble focusing on anything else for months when we can watch a stone-faced old football player accused of murdering his wife.

As the years passed, I concluded that Ford's pardon and the disassembling in which it was packaged for public consumption were not so different from a critical (and fundamentally cynical) decision by a leader of true greatness, Charles de Gaulle. It was de Gaulle, in

DENNIS BRACK/BLACK STAR

DECEMBER 1996 · AMERICAN HERITAGE 53

1944, who had to decide how France would purge the collaboration that had been common during the German occupation that began in 1940. Well, to simplify the story, the new leader of France executed Pierre Laval, the collaborationist prime minister, exiled Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, the aged hero turned Nazi puppet, and threw some other notable collaborators in jail. *C'est tout*. He thus created and sanctified a national myth that everyone else had served in the resistance.

*Vive la France!* He did what he had to do, and if he hadn't, the French would still be chasing one another through village streets over things that happened more than fifty years ago. Ford did what he had to do too. "Close the book on Watergate" were the words he used in a taped television

FORD HAD THE GUTS to take the hit.
I did not have the sense to get beyond the
obvious into what he'd been thinking.

announcement on September 8, 1974, a Sunday, his thirtieth day as President. He was playing golf when the television networks ran the tape. He took a tremendous political hit. Not only did his approval ratings drop, but he lost the 1976 election because of his actions and words on that day.

He also ended, almost violently, a thirty-day honeymoon with the press. Mel Elfin, the Washington bureau chief of *Newsweek*, later said: "I stood on my balcony and watched that chopper taking Nixon away after he resigned, and it was like I was coming out of Buchenwald. In that mood even a thirty-five-cent hamburger tastes like steak."

We had suddenly dared to trust—and felt betrayed again. Ford's press secretary, Jerald terHorst, who had been a columnist for the *Detroit News*, quit when the pardon was announced. A newspaperman for more than twenty-five years and a press secretary for only thirty days, terHorst could not break the habits of a lifetime. None of us could, and one consequence was a lost opportunity to break a long and continuing cycle of press-politician hostility.

Ford had the guts to take the hit. I, for one, did not have the sense to calm down and get beyond the obvious and into what he might have been thinking. That was part of what was on my mind as I talked with Tom Snyder twenty-one years later.

I do not mean to say that President Ford was an innocent. When he was confirmed by Congress as Vice President, in December 1973—replacing Spiro Agnew, who had turned out to be a crook—he was asked about a pardon for Nixon and answered, "I do not think the public would stand for it." He reiterated that sentiment, through the White House press office, on his first day as President, August 9, 1974.

I have been troubled not only by my shortsightedness but also by the impact of my own reportage in those days, its impact not on one President but on political journalism or the political dialogue of the country. I don't want to exaggerate. *A Ford, Not a Lincoln* was no world-changing book. It was well reviewed and hung around the middle of bestseller lists for a few weeks, especially in Washington. Actually, my memory of impact relates more to a *New York* magazine article that included part of the book. The cover was a faked photo of Bozo the Clown in the Oval Office; the headline was *LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES*.

I also remember something very important about the book's promotion tour in the fall of 1975. I did a lot of radio call-in shows around the country, which were mostly late-night affairs in those days. I was stunned by the hatred of Washington I heard and by repeated conspiracy theories I considered wacko. It was nothing compared with what goes on around the clock and around the dial today, but coming back home then, I thought and wrote that Ford was probably finished because he was seen as a Washington candidate. I said then that the men to watch were the anti-Washington candidates, Jimmy Carter of Georgia and Ronald Reagan of California.

DRIING ACROSS THE COUNTRY NOW, YOU HEAR far worse than the diffused grumbling of 1975. A very hard-minded journalist, Robert Sam Anson, who drove back and forth between Los Angeles and New York in early 1996, listening to local talk radio—to the Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy wannabes in local markets—came back a frightened American. "What they are really saying day after day is that we must do something or anything necessary to get rid of the Clintons," he told me. "Kill them! It is what Israel was like before the talk about the 'treason' of Rabin got to someone who did assassinate him. It only takes one of 250 million prospects."

*Frightening* was a word that had appeared again in the reviews of *A Ford, Not a Lincoln*. *Newsweek* said: "Frightening and provocative in its demystification of a President." In England the *Sunday Express* said, "A totally amusing and frightening read." The *Times* of London added: "Not the kind of book you could imagine a British political correspondent writing about Harold Wilson."

Those words have a different meaning to me now than they did then. Were they and the book part of the buildup to acid-in-your-face "character" politics?

The new savagery peaked for me one fine day in August 1994 as I walked out of the Capitol of the United States. There was a gleaming black bus with a Star Wars look parked on Independence Avenue. Painted along the side of it was the legend "Impeach Clinton Tour '94." Below that line ran this list of real or feverishly imagined presidential transgressions: "Womanizing ... Troopergate ... Deception ...

54 AMERICAN HERITAGE · DECEMBER 1996

Abortion . . . Adultery . . . Bribery . . . Sodomy . . . Fraud . . .
ADFA . . . Abuse of U.S. Constitution . . . Obstruction of
Justice . . . Document-Shredding . . . Drug Abuse . . . Tax
Evasion . . . Gennifer Flowers . . . Paula Jones.”

Some list. At the same time I saw advertisements for a
$19.95 video, produced quite professionally in California
and promoted by Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Major-
ity, that explicitly accuses President Clinton and his wife of
bigtime drug dealing and murder.

So it had come to that. Was I responsible?

Yes, partly.

I reread the Ford book written by a young man using my
name. It was the first time I had ever done that with any of
my books. It was pretty good, perceptive and better written
than I had expected, if I do say so myself. Witty. "Sprightly"
was a word William F. Buckley had used in the *New York*
*Times* review. It was not wrong or stupid. It offered a coher-
ent explanation of why politics and Washington were the way
they were—and still are, only more so.

But it was also cruel, unnecessarily so. As a national
leader President Ford was a man with many flaws and more
inadequacies. But he had become President by accident, done
the best he knew how, and, we now know, muddled through
a very dangerous time.

This was my rationale in the introduction: "Jerry Ford is
a pretty nice guy and a professional politician. This book
is about the latter. . . . I do have a bias about politicians.
I don't feel any great obligation to recount their many and
varied personal and professional virtues. That is what they,
or the taxpayers, are paying for in salaries and fees of press
secretaries, media advisers and advertising agencies. Believe

me, there is nothing good about Jerry Ford, Nelson Rocke-
feller, or any of the Kennedys that the American people have
not been told—these politicians and all the others have staffs
that make sure we know they love their country, wives, chil-
dren, dogs and fellow man.”

GOD, IT WAS EASY TO MAKE FUN OF HIM. ON A
plane trip back from California, where he had
extracted a good deal of money for the Repub-
lican party from bankers and such at a series
of receptions, I asked him whether he had thought about
meeting with some less prosperous Americans. "Oh, yes,"
he answered. "Tomorrow I'm going to have a private meeting
with another nonpartisan group, the directors of the Hearst
Corporation."

I could go on—and I did, back then. Today politicians and
their media consultants say worse things about one another
than I ever did, not realizing or not caring that the public
does not keep careful score of charge and countercharge. If
the candidates all call one another knaves and fools, we take
their word for it and judge them all to be bums.

So they, and we, continue to poison the wells of demo-
cratic faith and our political dialogue. I wish I had not been
part of the problem, and perhaps I will find a way to be part
of the solution. I'll begin by saying to Gerald Ford that I
know he did his best and did what he thought he had to do:
You have my respect and thanks, Mr. President.

Richard Reeves is the author of eight other books in addi-
tion to A Ford, Not a Lincoln. His nationally syndicated col-
umn appears twice-weekly in 160 newspapers.

“A Ford, Not a Lincoln”

ONE PLEASURE IN A
rather uncomfortable
rereading of my book
on Gerald Ford and
the events of 1974 and 1975 was a
kind of “Where Were They Then.”
A few examples:

■ One of President Ford's early problems was getting Nixon's men out of the White House. The most tenacious of them was a junior speechwriter who for nine long

weeks ignored requests and demands to leave. He was
Father John McLaughlin, a Jesuit priest, who is now
among the greatest of television's political stars.

■ "He's the smartest guy in Congress, but he insists on voting his conscience instead of party," said Ford in rejecting John Anderson of Illinois as his successor as House Republican leader. Six years later Anderson rejected the party and ran for President as an independent.

Ford at his desk in the Oval Office, 1976.

■ "No politicians know anything about economics," a Republican congressman told me in an interview, emphasizing the first word of that sentence. That was Barber Conable, named president of the World Bank in 1986.

■ "Campaigning gives them the chance to seek and receive attention—all in a worthy cause," said a Georgetown professor I interviewed about politicians.

Her specialty was women in state legislatures, and her
name was Jeane J. Kirkpatrick. She became a politician
herself for a time.

■ Much of the secret Nixon-Ford transition papers was written by a young staffer, a Democrat, in the White House Office of Telecommunications. His name was Brian Lamb; he went on to more or less invent C-SPAN cable television and become its president.
—R.R.

GERALD R. FORD LIBRARY, ANN ARBOR, MICH.

DECEMBER 1996 · AMERICAN HERITAGE 55

WHEN COMMERCE SECRETARY RON
Brown was killed in a plane crash in Dubrovnik, Croatia, last April,

I meant, in general, that Jerry Ford, perhaps the most accidental of American Presidents, had done a better job than I had predicted or imagined. I know better now than I did then that Presidents should be judged on the one, two, or five big things they do. The day-to-day politics and stumbling fade in memory, as it should, though poor Jerry Ford has had to live with endless runs of the comedian Chevy Chase imitating his clumsiness week after week on "Saturday Night Live!"

As the years passed, I concluded that Ford's pardon and the dissembling in which it was packaged for public consumption were not so different from a critical (and fundamentally cynical) decision by a leader of true greatness, Charles de Gaulle. It was de Gaulle, in

DENNIS BRACK/BLACK STAR

DARING ACROSS THE COUNTRY NOW, YOU HEAR far worse than the diffused grumbling of 1975. A very hard-minded journalist, Robert Sam Anson, who drove back and forth between Los Angeles and New York in early 1996, listening to local talk radio—to the Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy wannabes in local markets—came back a frightened American. “What they are really saying day after day is that we must do something or anything necessary to get rid of the Republicans,” he told me. “Kill them! It is what Israel was like before the talk about the ‘treason’ of Rabin got to someone who did assassinate him. It only takes one of 250 million prospects.”

*Frightening* was a word that had appeared again in the reviews of *A Ford, Not a Lincoln*. *Newsweek* said: “Frightening and provocative in its demystification of a President.” In England the *Sunday Express* said, “A totally amusing and frightening read.” The *Times* of London added: “Not the kind of book you could imagine a British political correspondent writing about Harold Wilson.”

Those words have a different meaning to me now than they did then. Were they and the book part of the buildup to acid-in-your-face “character” politics?

The new savagery peaked for me one fine day in August 1994 as I walked out of the Capitol of the United States. There was a gleaming black bus with a Star Wars look parked on Independence Avenue. Painted along the side of it was the legend “Impeach Clinton Tour ’94.” Below that line ran this list of real or feverishly imagined presidential transgressions: “Womanizing . . . Trooper gate . . . Deception . . .

54 AMERICAN HERITAGE • DECEMBER 1996

Abortion... Adultery... Bribery... Sodomy... Fraud... ADFA... Abuse of U.S. Constitution... Obstruction of Justice... Document-Shredding... Drug Abuse... Tax Evasion... Gennifer Flowers... Paula Jones."

Some list. At the same time I saw advertisements for a $19.95 video, produced quite professionally in California and promoted by Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, that explicitly accuses President Clinton and his wife of bigtime drug dealing and murder.

Yes, partly.

I reread the Ford book written by a young man using my name. It was the first time I had ever done that with any of my books. It was pretty good, perceptive and better written than I had expected, if I do say so myself. Witty. "Sprightly" was a word William F. Buckley had used in the *New York Times* review. It was not wrong or stupid. It offered a coherent explanation of why politics and Washington were the way they were—and still are, only more so.

This was my rationale in the introduction: "Jerry Ford is a pretty nice guy and a professional politician. This book is about the latter. ... I do have a bias about politicians. I don't feel any great obligation to recount their many and varied personal and professional virtues. That is what they, or the taxpayers, are paying for in salaries and fees of press secretaries, media advisers and advertising agencies. Believe

me, there is nothing good about Jerry Ford, Nelson Rockefeller, or any of the Kennedys that the American people have not been told—these politicians and all the others have staffs that make sure we know they love their country, wives, children, dogs and fellow man."

GOD, IT WAS EASY TO MAKE FUN OF HIM. ON A plane trip back from California, where he had extracted a good deal of money for the Republican party from bankers and such at a series of receptions, I asked him whether he had thought about meeting with some less prosperous Americans. "Oh, yes," he answered. "Tomorrow I'm going to have a private meeting with another nonpartisan group, the directors of the Hearst Corporation."

So they, and we, continue to poison the wells of democratic faith and our political dialogue. I wish I had not been part of the problem, and perhaps I will find a way to be part of the solution. I'll begin by saying to Gerald Ford that I know he did his best and did what he thought he had to do: You have my respect and thanks, Mr. President.

*Richard Reeves is the author of eight other books in addition to A Ford, Not a Lincoln. His nationally syndicated column appears twice-weekly in 160 newspapers.*

## "A Ford, Not a Lincoln"

ONE PLEASURE IN A rather uncomfortable rereading of my book on Gerald Ford and the events of 1974 and 1975 was a kind of "Where Were They Then."

A few examples:

ment is that it is hilariously witty. Advanced seriously, it
does not come close to passing what lawyers call the “red-
face test.” To utter it should be to stammer and blush.
That is why the commentators and the White House strat-
egy are wrong. Should a prosecutor choose to indict
Clinton after he leaves office (or perhaps file a sealed

indictment now to be opened later), the Kendall defense
will be no shield; it will be swept aside with the contempt
it merits. There is thus absolutely no reason to continue
absorbing the political damage this jesuittical argument
deserves and receives. The President should state that he
lied under oath, think of such extenuating considerations as

Overrating Watergate

'C
LINTON'S sex scandal is not
on the same level as Richard
Nixon's abuse of office," Carl
Bernstein recently told college students
in Helena, Montana. Bob Woodward,
Bernstein's partner in the *Washington
Post* investigation of Watergate, agreed,
telling Tim Russert on August 15, "no
matter how some people are gonna try
to elevate this to a grand constitutional
issue, it's unfortunately about sex."

There are several fallacies in this argu-
ment, advanced by most surviving
members of the Watergate Establish-
ment (a select group that includes John
Dean, Sam Dash, and Richard Ben-
Veniste, among other old victors). The
Big Difference, supposedly, is sex. Pres-
ident Clinton's sexual relationship with
a barely adult intern working in the
government office he supervises is a
"private matter" in no way comparable
to the malfeasance known as Watergate.

But what, exactly, was Watergate? Did Watergate really rise to the level of seriousness now attributed to it? Of course, "Watergate" refers to much more than the original surveillance of a lone Democratic National Committee telephone and the subsequent cover-up. It has come to encompass, among many other things, all the activities of the Plumbers; the ITT anti-trust pay-off scandal (on which Watergate special prosecutors ultimately credited the Nixon Administration's conduct); and President Nixon's repayment of back taxes.

But perhaps the "Whitewater" entry
in tomorrow's encyclopedias will en-
compass Travelgate and Filegate? the
Lincoln Bedroom and the Buddhist
temple? Paula and Mena?

Woodward's own definition of Wa-

tergate shows that he has lost precise fa-
miliarity with the fable he helped au-
thor. He told Russert on CNBC: "Wa-
tergate was about a pervasive and vast
abuse of power by a criminal President
[Nixon was an "unindicted co-conspira-
tor" never tried or convicted of any-
thing] who ordered break-ins [Nixon
ordered neither the Watergate nor the
Ellsberg's-psychiatrist break-in], fire-
bombings . . . [a Nixon whim while
blowing off steam that was never acted
on], wiretapping illegally [Nixon or-
dered fewer wiretaps, legal or other-
wise, than Robert F. Kennedy, and the
question of their validity occupied com-
plex civil proceedings for years after he
left office], who hired a goon squad to
thwart the electoral process [dirty trick-
ster Donald Segretti's collegiate pranks
hardly constituted a "goon squad"]
[and] who ordered the payment of hun-
dreds of thousands of dollars to bur-
glars who worked for the White House
[Nixon's tapes clearly show he waffled
on the payment of hush money]."

The Plumbers and the "smoking gun"
tape are frequently cited by those deter-
mined to preserve Nixon's place as the
only disgraced ex-President. But few
seem to recall the perilous times that
gave birth to Watergate. The Plumbers
were a special investigative unit (em-
ploying Watergate plotter Howard
Hunt) created out of a genuine concern
for national-security secrets at a time
when we were engaged in wars hot and
cold. Indeed, contrary to the reputation
they have achieved, the Plumbers en-
gaged in some vital national-security
work, including the uncovering of a
spying operation mounted against
Nixon's national-security aides by the
Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Even the break-in at the office of
Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist might be
viewed as an extreme measure that orig-

inated from wholly legitimate national-
security concerns. It is difficult to dis-
cern what similarly weighty concerns
might have provoked President Clin-
ton's wrongdoing.

Similarly, Nixon's directive ordering
the CIA to tell the FBI to "stay the hell
out of" the Watergate affair is more sus-
ceptible to differing interpretation than
is generally acknowledged.

For starters, Nixon speechwriter Ray-
mond K. Price Jr. has long argued that
the order was wholly legal on its face.
Others, including NATIONAL REVIEW,
have published compelling evidence
showing that Nixon did not conceive
the CIA-FBI plan; he was tricked into
approving it by being falsely told that it
had been endorsed by his confidant,
John Mitchell. In addition, Nixon may
have been right in believing that the
value in prosecuting the Watergate bur-
glars did not outweigh the (inter)na-
tional damage done by exposing How-
ard Hunt's past clandestine work.

Finally, Watergate, the actual surveil-
lance operation, may well have been
about—sex. Since the early 1970s, there
has been speculation (and, later, sub-
stantive scholarship) asserting that the
Watergate burglars targeted a specific
DNC telephone that was allegedly be-
ing used to run a call-girl ring.

In fact, most of Nixon's recent biog-
raphers accept the call-girl theory of the
Watergate break-in. And a recent legal
ruling marked an impressive victory for
its adherents. In an opinion filed in
April, Maryland Judge J. Frederick
Motz cited reporting for NATIONAL
REVIEW and elsewhere in his opinion
concluding that the call-girl theory,
tested in libel litigation before him, was
supported by "corroborating evidence."
This evidence "arguably confirmed . . .
a revisionist view of the break-in."

Given their new standard for presi-
dential conduct—any abuse is okay as
long at it's connected to sex—perhaps
Woodward and Bernstein need to
reconsider the case of Richard Nixon.
Let the healing begin.

—JAMES S. ROSEN

Mr. Rosen, who first wrote for NR in
1992, is at work on a biography of John
Mitchell.

30 NATIONAL REVIEW / OCTOBER 12, 1998

9/7/94

# The Craft of Statesmanship

## Institutions

* The President and his Secretary of State

* Bureaucracy: the interagency process

* The Foreign Service and the role of the Ambassador

* Congress and democratic accountability

* The impact and role of the media

* The changing technology of diplomacy

* Intelligence

## Negotiations

* Backchannels and frontchannels

* Secrecy and openness

* The shuttle: the Secretary of State as negotiator

* Summitry

* Relations with allies vs. relations with adversaries

* Mediation and its discontents

## The Age of Global Diplomacy

* The UNGA and its rituals

* The new nations and their leaders

* Human rights vs. nonintervention

"Diplomacy" is at its best, though, when Kissinger takes off his statesman's pinstripes and provides informal insights into the operational techniques of the profession. He shrewdly notes, for example, the symbolic significance of Roosevelt's response to Stalin's offer of Soviet lodgings at the Teheran Conference in 1943, which was accepted because of anxiety about a possible bomb attack on the crippled President. A seemingly minor detail of accommodation played directly into Stalin's determination to put the Western Allies on the defensive by making Roosevelt physically beholden to his host. And Kissinger understands how Roosevelt's amiable characterization of "Uncle Joe" had an effect on American public perception, turning a sinister and murderous dictator into a character from Main Street.

In these observant asides one can glimpse quite a different book that might also have borne the title "Diplomacy": an anatomy of the methods and stratagems of the craft, written with the sharp analytical intelligence of a former

Secretary of State who has been both an insider and an outsider and whose sensitivity to the nuances of diplomatic language is unmatched. The chapters of this other book would not have been about Bismarck and Wilson and Truman but about the coded language of diplomatic instructions; the rituals of state protocol; the psychology of the banquet; the relationship of statesmen to the press; the quotidian routines of the embassy. It would, in effect, have been an anthropology of diplomacy—a successor to Mattingly's wonderful account of how the profession originally evolved out of the thankless task of the royal herald and the papal nuncio—and it would have lived up to the publisher's promise on the flap copy that here, at last, we have a book that reveals exactly what diplomacy is.

Perhaps to produce such a book would be beneath the dignity of the retired statesman who wants to put his diplomatic philosophy on record. But in some ways—for I am still hoping that Kissinger may one day write it—it would serve his own cause even better than the book he has written.

KISSINGER, METTERNICH,
AND REALISM

by ROBERT D. KAPLAN

Henry Kissinger's first book, on the Napoleonic Wars, explains Kissinger's foreign policy better than any of his memoirs, and is striking as an early display of brilliance and authority

TIME changes reputations. The current favorable reconsideration of Henry Kissinger may have less to do with the recent publication of his final volume of memoirs than with the lackluster quality of his successors at the State Department. Cyrus Vance, Edmund Muskie, Alexander Haig, Lawrence Eagleburger, and Warren Christopher are footnotes to history. George Shultz and James Baker were more substantial presences, but their substance had much more to do with their common sense than with their intellectual creativity (of which Shultz had some and Baker less). Then there is Madeleine Albright, who was hailed at first as having the perfect combination of gutsiness, idealism, and policy savvy, but who is turning out to be ineffectual. In fact, as Albright's star has waned, Kissinger's has risen.

Two years ago, still optimistic about Secretary of State Albright, one journalist wrote in *The Economist*, "Unlike Henry Kissinger (a refugee whose thinking owes more to the Napoleonic wars than to the 20th century), Mrs. Albright has a geopolitical view still shaped by that searing time" of the West's appeasement of Hitler at Munich. Nonsense. If there is any diplomat whose ideas were shaped early, immutably, and meticulously by the experience of Nazism and Munich, it is Kissinger. The problem is that many intellectuals are uncomfortable with what Kissinger seems to have learned as a Jewish teenager in Hitler's Germany. For a long time they believed that he learned little.

Kissinger's first book, *A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace 1812-1822* (1957), covers not the Nazi era but the latter part of the Napoleonic Wars and the efforts of European statesmen to build a durable peace afterward. The book's principal character, the Aust

trian diplomat Prince Clemens von Metternich—secretive, manipulative, and tragic in his world view—is often seen as the figure Kissinger took as a model, though Kissinger has denied it. Nevertheless, Munich and the Holocaust are ever-present in *A World Restored*. Kissinger, who fled Nazi Germany in 1938, was in the early 1950s trying to claw his way into the stuffy, Protestant-dominated sanctums of the East Coast foreign-policy establishment. He was not about to wear his trauma and his Jewishness on his sleeve, as it is fashionable to do now. Rather, he elegantly camouflaged them. In *A World Restored*, Napoleon plays the Hitlerite role, and Kissinger's answer to the problem of mass evil is contrary to the instincts of liberal humanists. His argument is thus subtle, original, and, I believe, brave.

KISSINGER first achieved fame as a political scientist with the publication of *Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy* (1957), in which he opposed Secretary of State John Foster Dulles's policy of massive nuclear retaliation against a Soviet attack, arguing instead for a flexible response of conventional forces and smaller, tactical nuclear weapons. *A World Restored*—Kissinger's doctoral thesis, which he completed in 1954—is evidence of how the Holocaust, along with the larger record of modern European history, made Kissinger a “realist.” The meaning of the term is less clear than it seems.

The very subject of Kissinger's doctoral thesis raised eyebrows at Harvard, as one biographer, Walter Isaacson, has observed. At a time when the threat of thermonuclear extinction obsessed political scientists, the court diplomacy of early-nineteenth-century Europe seemed quaint and irrelevant.

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

73

Policy is not made in an emotional vacuum by “objective” people. The religious and social backgrounds of officials are inseparable from their opinions.

Even if the technology of war had changed, Kissinger implied, the task of statesmen remained the same: to construct a balance of fear among great powers as part of the maintenance of an orderly international system—a system that, while not necessarily just or fair, was accepted by the principal players as legitimate. As long as the system was maintained, no one would challenge it through revolution—the way Hitler in the 1930s, categorized by the thirty-year-old Kissinger as a “revolutionary chieftain,” did.

It seemed to Kissinger that a world threatened by nuclear disaster could learn much from Metternich. With the British Foreign Secretary, Viscount Robert Stewart Castlereagh, Metternich built an order so ingenious that from 1815, the year of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, to the outbreak of the First World War, a hundred years later, Europe knew no major conflicts, with the exception of the ten-month-long Franco-Prussian War, in 1870-1871. Thanks in significant measure to Metternich, who did everything in his power to forestall the advent of democracy and freedom in the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires, Europe in 1914 saw peace and steady economic growth as natural and permanent conditions. Europe had thus lost that vital, tragic sensibility without which disaster is hard to avoid, and troops rushed onto the battlefields of Flanders in a fit of romanticism.

When Kissinger wrote, nuclear weapons had altered statesmanship less than we thought—just as new threats such as disease, terrorism, and the breakdown of unstable governments change world politics less than we think. The challenge for diplomats will always be how to maintain a semblance of order through a balance of fear, cooperation, and defensive mechanisms, whether diplomatic, military, or, as in the case of disease, scientific. In an age when borders are weakening and a messier, more cosmopolitan (that is, medieval) world is re-emerging, the story of how Metternich, born in the Rhineland and more comfortable in French than in German, sought security for a still-feudal Austrian-administered polyglot empire through alliances based on philosophical values rather than ethnic identification is a relevant medicinal.

In the first pages of *A World Restored*, Kissinger confronted abstractly the 1938 debacle at Munich, in which the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, a progressive reformer who sought peace in order to concentrate on Britain's domestic problems, allowed Hitler to occupy the Bohemian borderlands of Czechoslovakia.

Those ages which in retrospect seem most peaceful were least in search of peace. . . . Whenever peace—conceived as the avoidance of war—has been the primary objective of a power or a group of powers, the international system has been at the mercy of the most ruthless member of the international community.

Kissinger declared, “It is a mistake to assume that diplomacy can always settle international disputes if there is ‘good faith’ and ‘willingness to come to an agreement’”; in a revolutionary situation “each power will seem to its opponent to lack precisely these qualities.” In such circumstances many will see the early demands of a revolutionary power as “merely tactical” and will delude themselves that the revolutionary power would actually accept the status quo with a few modifications. Meanwhile, “Those who warn against the danger in time are considered alarmists.”

“‘Appeasement,’” Kissinger concluded, “is the result of an inability to come to grips with a policy of unlimited objectives.” A few pages later, for good measure, he added,

> Coalitions against revolutions have usually come about only at the end of a long series of betrayals . . . for the powers which represent legitimacy . . . cannot “know” that their antagonist is not amenable to “reason” until he has demonstrated [that he is not]. . . . And he will not have demonstrated it until the international system is already overturned.

That, of course, is a pitch-perfect description of the late 1930s in Europe. Thus begins a book about how Metternich confronted and undermined the unlimited objectives of Napoleon. In 354 pages there are only three exceedingly brief passing references to Hitler, even as the diplomatic challenge he presented is comprehensively explored.

Kissinger has always been influenced by Munich, if not always directly or humanely. His and President Richard Nixon's opening to China in order to undermine the Soviet Union while they sought détente with Moscow; their unwillingness to quit Vietnam without first wreaking havoc and spilling blood; their support of odious yet pro-American regimes in Greece and Chile; and their brilliantly executed face-off with Syria and the Soviet Union in 1970, at the time of the terrorist challenge to Jordan's pro-Western regime—all flowed to a significant extent from Kissinger's determination to avoid the slightest show of weakness, for which read “appeasement.” Kissinger regularly mixed violence and the threat of it with diplomacy, so that the diplomacy had credibility. He preserved what he saw as the legitimate order,

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in which the Soviet Union was both contained and accepted, so that revolutionary chaos was confined to the edges of the superpower battlefield, in the Third World. (In perceiving the Soviet Union as permanent, orderly, and legitimate, Kissinger shared a failure of analysis with the rest of the foreign-policy elite—notably excepting the scholar and former head of the State Department's policy-planning staff George Kennan, the Harvard historian Richard Pipes, the British scholar and journalist Bernard Levin, and the Eureka College graduate Ronald Reagan.) When, in 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, Kissinger argued for military force against Saddam Hussein. The legitimate order in the Gulf had been disrupted by a revolutionary chieftain; to react merely with sanctions would constitute appeasement, and Kissinger said as much.

Kissinger's response to Munich and Nazism in *A World Restored* is pellucid. The key word is "revolution," something that Kissinger's experience as a youth, augmented by scholarship, taught him to fear. Rapid social and political transformation leads to violence, whether throughout the Europe of the early 1800s, owing to Napoleon's aggression—itself a direct result of the French Revolution—or in

## TO THE ANIMAL
IN THE HOLE

I've come back a few times,
seen you hurrying away
and, once, seen your eyes,
the green of night.
Hope for this, hope for that—
who is free from such nonsense?
The small changes in the dirt
at your entrance,
the disappearance of grass:
I note these in your absence.

You should just stay where you are.
You and your dark house
will grow together.
You'll reach the walls,
they'll welcome your fur.
I'll know you're in there somewhere,
foraging invisibly.
Good for you, then.
Keep home.

—ERICA FUNKHOUSER

the Germany of the 1930s. Although the word "revolution" is applied to the America of the 1770s and sometimes to the Zionist movement, the cultural and philosophical awakenings among English settlers in America and Jewish settlers in Palestine took place over decades and were, in truth, evolutions. Iran did experience a revolution in the late 1970s, as did Cambodia in 1975, China in the late 1940s, and Russia in 1917. From his dread of revolutions Kissinger extracted the following principles, which I summarize:

* Disorder is worse than injustice. Injustice merely means the world is imperfect, but disorder implies that there is no justice for anyone, since it makes even the mundane details of daily existence (walking to school, for instance) risky. Obviously, great injustice is worse than a little disorder. In the 1980s Iraq was orderly, so much so that it was like a vast prison, while Iran was in revolutionary chaos. Yet I always felt safer in Iran than in Iraq. I suspect that in Kissinger's fear of disorder there is something deeply personal. In the 1930s he saw Nazism, often in the form of thuggery, overwhelm his seemingly secure physical surroundings. The Nazi thugs he observed were the rifffaff cast up first by the civil violence resulting from Germany's defeat in the First World War, and then by the Depression. Kissinger's experience was thus different from that of the humanist Elie Wiesel. Wiesel, who grew up in a secluded Hasidic community in Romania in the 1930s and is five years younger than Kissinger, experienced the Holocaust itself: he spent 1944 and 1945 in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. By then Kissinger was already in the U. S. Army.

* The "most fundamental problem of politics... is not the control of wickedness but the limitation of righteousness." The Nazis, the Jacobins, the ayatollahs, and the others who have made revolutions have all been self-righteous. Kissinger suggested that nothing is more dangerous than people convinced of their moral superiority, since they deny their political opponents that very attribute. Tyranny, a form of disorder posing as order, is the result. This was one of Edward Gibbon's arguments against early Christianity. Gibbon represented the Enlightenment in full flower, just as Metternich, Kissinger reminded us, represented its dying breath before the onset of modernism, with its righteous causes. In any event, Kissinger observed wryly, punishing the wicked is "a relatively easy matter, because it is a simple expression" of public decency, and thus not a crucial task of statesmanship.

* Because the real task of statesmen is to forestall revolutions, the real heroes of history are enlightened conservatives such as Metternich and the eighteenth-century Briton Edmund Burke, who fought discrimination against Catholics and opposed the French Revolution for its immoderation. Burke hated revolutions, Kissinger explained, because they violate the average person's sense of morality and well-being; Metternich saw them as contrary to reason. "The true

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conservative,” Kissinger wrote, “is not at home in social
struggle. He will attempt to avoid unbridgeable schism, be-
cause he knows that a stable social structure thrives not on tri-
umphs but on reconciliations.” (The Republican majority in
Congress and the “religious right” are thus not true conserv-
atives.) A true conservative is in fact a hesitant progressive:
he or she seeks to slow change when society is reforming
too fast and to instigate moderate change when society is not
reforming at all. Burke’s writings are the epitome of this
search for pacing. I imagine that Kissinger’s tolerance of the
late Chinese ruler Deng Xiaoping and his successor, Jiang
Zemin, can be explained by the fact that the two Chinese
dictators represented enlightened conservatism within their
own cultural and historical limits. Both fostered gradual but
unmistakable reform that has bettered the material lives of
tens of millions of people. At the same time, they averted the
kind of revolutionary upheaval that might result from in-
stituting democracy across a vast and geographically riven
landscape in which less than 10 percent of the population is
middle-class. The Chinese leadership is attempting to treat
the dour effects of its decades-old revolution just as Metter-
nich treated Europe after Napoleon’s—by doling out moder-
ate doses of change.

The dangers inherent in fast social transformation are
so great, Kissinger wrote, that demands for universal justice
are ill informed.

Every statesman must attempt to reconcile what is consid-
ered just with what is considered possible. What is consid-
ered just depends on the domestic structure of his state;
what is possible depends on its resources, geographic po-
sition and determination, and on the resources, determina-
tion and domestic structure of other states.

THE young Kissinger here allied himself with other foreign-policy realists of the time, including Kennan, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hans Morgenthau. All of them doubted that America, however overarching its power, would ever be able to affect the internal evolution of many other societies at once: the world is too vast, and the expense and stamina required are prohibitive, at least with regard to winning public acceptance. Morgenthau wrote in *Vietnam and the United States* (1965) that because the resources of even a superpower are limited, morality alone can never be a basis for foreign policy. These men saw the missionary idealism of America's ruling elite as naive. Kissinger believed that idealism had clearly failed throughout America's diplomatic history—that it led to an inefficient cycle of intense hope and activity abroad followed by morose withdrawal once it became apparent that hope and activity were unlikely to remake the world. The clearest example is President Woodrow Wilson's failed attempt to advance democracy and self-determination in the Muslim Middle East after

the First World War, and the isolationism that followed.

Kissinger identified the foundations of such idealism when he took up Castlereagh's position on the Greek struggle for independence in 1821, which Metternich opposed. Castlereagh's open-mindedness, Kissinger wrote, reflected not "a superior morality" but rather "the consciousness of safety conferred by an insular position." Because Castlereagh's England was surrounded by seas, it did not have to consider the implications of the breakup of Turkish rule in the Balkans—implications that a Continental power like Metternich's Austria had no choice but to consider. Without America's insular position, guarded by two oceans and reinforced by plentiful natural resources, idealism might never have taken root here. Realism is in part the ability to see the truth behind moral pretensions. Our insular position also explains our failure to see war for what it is: an extension of politics.

I suspect, however, that our much-vaunted foreign-policy idealism is mainly confined to the media and academia, and particularly to the intellectual journals of opinion. Those who sit behind the important desks at the National Security Council, the Departments of Defense and State, and the Pentagon are usually realists. (This is a broad definition, given how often realists disagree: witness Morgenthau's and Kissinger's differing positions over Vietnam.) Even the rare Administrations that were associated with foreign-policy idealism converted to realism sooner or later. It was President Jimmy Carter who began what would later be called the "Reagan arms buildup." Traditional Republicans like George Shultz and Caspar Weinberger, and the bipartisan realist Frank Carlucci, became far more influential in the Reagan White House than neoconservative idealists like Elliott Abrams and Jeane Kirkpatrick. For her part, Albright has followed Kissinger's playbook in not overemphasizing human rights in China and in tolerating dictatorships that serve our interests. Realists almost always run foreign policy; idealists, I have found, attend academic conferences and write books and articles from the sidelines.

Take Bosnia. I supported intervention in Bosnia, for strategic and moral reasons. Andrew Kohut, the former president of the Gallup Organization, who is now the director of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, told me recently that the polls on Bosnia have, however, been firm and undeniable: at no point in the 1990s, despite all the emotional media coverage and revelations of war crimes, have more than half of the American people thought that U.S. intervention there was warranted. Interventions in Vietnam, Korea, Panama, Grenada, and Iraq were all more popular than our limited and belated one in Bosnia, in late 1995; only the intervention in Haiti, supported mainly by liberal Democrats, was less popular. A former British diplomat, Jonathan Clarke, wrote in his essay "Searching for the Soul of American Foreign Policy" (1995), for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, that Americans "have in fact . . . a rather consistent, well-developed, and finely-calibrated feeling for what does

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

77

not make sense for their nation's foreign engagements," which in Clarke's view only the illuminati mistake for isolationism. Despite his grave German accent, his dire view of humanity, and his preoccupation with European history, Kissinger—who negotiated with rather than confronted the Soviet Union, who helped Nixon to withdraw from Vietnam 550,000 soldiers in three years under combat conditions, and who generally supported interventions that were popular while expressing skepticism about those that weren't—may have understood his adopted nation better than most people think he did. Indeed, before the March bombing campaign Kissinger implied in an article that forcing Serbia to implement the Kosovo peace agreement might precipitate what the Clinton Administration sought to avert: the destabilization of the southern Balkans. Even those of us who believe that the Administration had no choice but to use force must admit that Kissinger's analysis was shrewd.

Robert Musil, the Austrian writer, defined realism in *The Man Without Qualities*, his seminal twentieth-century novel, as a political sensibility driven by needs rather than by ideas. Kissinger's description of Metternich's diplomatic achievement in controlling Napoleon adds another layer: "It had not produced any great conceptions; nor had it used the noble dreams of an impatient [revolutionary] generation. Its skill did not lie in creativity but in proportion, in its ability to combine elements it treated as given." Realism is thus about deftly playing the hand that has been dealt you. It is not exciting or inspiring. Journalistic careers are rarely built on embracing realism, though policymaking careers often are.

Metternich, Kissinger wrote, "represented eternal principles not a system." By that Kissinger meant that Metternich was subtle enough to know that systems like autocracy and democracy are indifferent elements; their worth depends on the circumstances under which they operate. Metternich opposed the democratic revolutions in Europe in 1848 not because they were democratic but because they were provoked by ethnic nationalism. Metternich's ultimate achievement was to help postpone (until 1866) the eclipse of a semi-feudal, polyglot Austria by the fiercely modernizing, ethnically nationalist German state to the north. In defending Metternich, Kissinger was at odds with the conventional view of historians, who regard modernism and the independence struggles of 1848 as progressive. Since the end of the Cold War and the unleashing of ethnic nationalism in the former Soviet Union and the Balkans, the Hapsburg monarchy that Metternich served has appeared in a better light.

KISSINGER'S real achievement in *A World Restored* is his writing: a seamless blending of portraiture, philosophy, and international relations. Metternich, Kissinger wrote, was a Rococo figure, complex, finely carved, all surface, like an intricately cut prism. His face was delicate but without depth, his conversation brilliant but without ultimate

seriousness. Equally at home in the salon and in the Cabinet . . . he was the *beau-ideal* of the eighteenth-century aristocracy which justified itself not by its truth but by its existence. And if he never came to terms with the new age it was not because he failed to understand its seriousness but because he disdained it. . . . Had Metternich been born fifty years earlier, he would still have been a conservative, but there would have been no need to write pedantic disquisitions about the nature of conservatism. He would have . . . conduct[ed] his diplomacy with the circuitousness which is a symbol of certainty, of a world in which everybody understands intangibles in the same manner. He would still have played at philosophy, for this was the vogue of the eighteenth century, but he would not have considered it a tool of policy. But, in a century of seemingly permanent revolution, philosophy was the only means of rescuing universality from contingent claims.

It is such elegance, thickness of meaning, and narrative ability that puts *A World Restored* into a higher category of literature than the mere policy writings of the rest of the foreign-affairs community. By concentrating on personalities—Metternich, Castlereagh, Talleyrand—Kissinger demonstrated that policy is not made in an emotional vacuum by "objective" people. The religious and social backgrounds of officials are inseparable from their opinions. Policymaking, like lovemaking, is an intensely human activity.

The young Kissinger also realized that a determined policymaker must be in a state of constant tension with the bureaucracy. "Profound policy thrives on perpetual creation. . . . Good administration thrives on routine," he wrote. Foreign Service officers tend to support those policies that do not threaten their jobs and chances for promotion. I have found that many of them just want to get through the day. A Secretary of State who follows these instincts, rather than manipulating and coopting them, is a failed Secretary of State.

This brings me to Kissinger himself, whose personal history caused him to be obsessed with appeasement—sometimes with ironic results. His ideas for maintaining America's share of world power at a time of military debacle abroad and civic disorder at home led him to conduct policy in secret and to battle with the bureaucracy. Like many who seek power in order to do something with it rather than merely to enhance their résumés and self-esteem, he thrived on enemies. Though he has been gone from office for more than two decades, Kissinger hovers over many foreign-policy discussions to a degree that more likable and recent Secretaries of State, such as Shultz and Cyrus Vance, do not.

Both the frequency and the nature of the attacks against Kissinger avouch his centrality. Criticism of him has often been obsessive and compartmental—and devastating. There are those who despise Kissinger the wiretapper, those who despise him for betraying Cyprus, those who, like me, have faulted him for bombing Cambodia. But when it comes to Kissinger's use of realpolitik as a counter to America's mis-

78

JUNE 1999

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A serious bent, serious critics have respectfully argued with him more often than denounced him.

A grimly convincing view of the human condition may be all that Kissinger ever had to offer. Despite his historical acumen, he has not always been clairvoyant: for example, he saw the Cold War as continuing indefinitely. Kissinger seems to have lacked the piercing momentary insight that George Ball displayed when he warned the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations against further involvement in Vietnam and that Kennan displayed when he suggested that if the West held fast, the Soviet Union would eventually explode. Loy Henderson, a U.S. diplomat, showed that insight time and time again: in the 1930s he was among the first to warn against Stalin; in the late 1940s he was the first to warn against the Soviet threat to the Caucasus and the Aegean; in the early 1950s he was the first to see that the Iranians would one day come to despise us and the first to see through Nehru's idealism and vanity to the anti-Americanism beneath the surface.

Kissinger's perceptiveness has been limited to the present and the past. Although he did not foresee the sudden end of communism, from his study of Castlereagh's dealings with Czar Alexander I he knew how to approach Moscow: because Russians are so sensitive to unfavorable comparisons with Europeans, try to give them the form if not the substance of what they want. Thus Kissinger wrested Egypt and Syria from the Soviet orbit while inviting Moscow to be a co-host of the late-1973 Middle East peace conference that helped to formalize the new American regional order.

VIETNAM is the crucible in which Kissinger's realism reached a pitiless extreme, and the one by which he will be judged.

My only approach toward Kissinger himself came in 1991, when I requested an interview with him for a book I was writing about Middle East specialists in the State Department. Kissinger was one of a handful of people, out of the hundreds I asked, who refused to see or even speak to me. Many people I know professionally in the journalistic and policy communities, and whom I respect, despise Kissinger. It is not easy for me to put forward this argument.

Scholars and journalists assert that Nixon and Kissinger might have ended the war in 1969, on terms similar to the ones they settled for in 1973, and prevented the deaths of 22,000 more U.S. combatants; that the two men bombed North Vietnamese cities indiscriminately with B-52s for a

negotiating advantage so slight that it was forgotten a few months afterward; and that they waged war in Cambodia illegally and with limited results, except to precipitate the Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975, however unwittingly (a point I made in my book *The Ends of the Earth*).

Kissinger's critics also note that many of these actions were taken not only for policy reasons but also for sometimes sleazy political motives. The secret invasion of Cambodia, William Shawcross asserted in his meticulously researched book *Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia* (1979), was, among other things, the vehicle Kissinger used to help him consolidate his power within the bureaucracy.

All this I accept. But I believe that other issues should be raised. In the overwhelming majority of foreign-policy crises sordid domestic political motives and interagency infighting play a significant role. So the real questions are What were Kissinger's (and Nixon's) primary rather than secondary motives in continuing the war? and Did their actions have any result beyond the tragic loss of thousands of American and Southeast Asian lives?

Even the harshest journalistic accounts make clear that Kissinger and Nixon genuinely felt, despite the public outcry, that continuing the war was necessary for America to sustain its strategic position worldwide. Shawcross wrote that the two men were influenced by both the "Munich mentality" and the memory of how President Eisenhower ended the Korean War—by threatening the Chinese and the North Koreans. To Kissinger and Nixon, playing tough was not a surrealistic abstraction but something necessary and definable. However wrong the stance they took may appear in hindsight, Kissinger and Nixon did what they thought was right for the country's interests, knowing they would be reviled—especially among the intellectual elite, who usually have the last word in writing history.

Now, isn't that exactly how we want—or at least how we say we want—our leaders to act? Isn't what angers so many people about President Bill Clinton and other current politicians the fact that they make policy according to the results of public-opinion polls rather than to their own conviction? It may be the case that polling is unfairly criticized—that for a leader to base his or her decisions on public opinion is not so bad after all, especially if one has in mind the case of Kissinger and Nixon. It is also likely that in prolonging the war for the reasons they did, Kissinger and Nixon demonstrated more real character than do many of our present leaders.

80

JUNE 1999

For the Nixon Administration, Vietnam was only one aspect of a larger foreign policy—a policy that brought about significant achievements. To insist that those achievements would have taken place had the Administration withdrawn from Vietnam in 1969—and that such an early withdrawal would have gone smoothly—is rash.

To understand the context of those achievements, it is useful to consult the "U.S. History" section of *The World Almanac*. The almanac says that in April of 1969 U.S. forces in Vietnam "peaked at 543,400" and "withdrawal started July 8th," six months into Nixon's first term. In 1971 U.S. forces in Vietnam "were down to 140,000" and the "last U.S. combat troops left August 11," 1972. The almanac reports some other facts. During the three years it took the Nixon Administration to withdraw combat troops—a year less than it took Charles de Gaulle to end French involvement in the Algerian war, capping his heroic reputation—"Nixon arrived in Beijing Feb. 21 [1972] for an 8-day visit to China. . . . The unprecedented visit ended with a joint communiqué pledging that both powers would work for 'a normalization of relations.'" And "In the first visit of a U.S. president to Moscow, Nixon arrived May 22 for a week of summit talks with Kremlin leaders that culminated in a landmark strategic arms pact." The almanac might also have noted that in September of 1970—soon after Nixon made it clear that he was withdrawing slowly, and bloodily, from Vietnam—threats by Nixon to Moscow helped to stop Syrian tanks from crossing farther into Jordan and toppling King Hussein's pro-Western government. One could also note that in 1973 and 1974 Kissinger, serving Nixon and then Gerald Ford, manipulated the Yom Kippur War toward a stalemate that was convenient for American interests, and then brokered agreements between Israel and its Arab adversaries for a separation of forces. These deals allowed Washington to re-establish diplomatic relations with Egypt and Syria for the first time since their rupture following the Six-Day War, in 1967. The agreements also set the context for the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979 and helped stabilize relations between Israel and Syria to this day.

The point is not that Nixon and Kissinger withdrew methodically from Vietnam instead of continuing to fight the war that Johnson had escalated by using ground troops, or that elsewhere in the world they performed impressively. Rather, the point is that in the course of conducting the first large-scale American troop withdrawal in our history, under openly humiliating circumstances (more than half a million soldiers of an industrial army were running away from a Third World guerrilla force), the two men actually improved America's geopolitical position vis-à-vis China, the Soviet Union, and the Arab world. This did not occur because of the withdrawal. A typical response I receive when I mention to the political-science community the Nixon Administration's withdrawal from Vietnam is "What do you mean, 'withdrawal'? They

prolonged the war unnecessarily! And what about the Christmas bombings [against North Vietnam in December of 1972] and the attacks on Cambodia [which didn't end until August of 1973]?” Indeed, some of Nixon's and Kissinger's actions were so spectacularly brutal, and unnecessary, that they almost obscure the fact of the withdrawal itself. How much more convincing, and nihilistic, can realism get?

Nixon's diplomatic success in China came nearly two months after a heavy air bombardment of North Vietnam, which may have figured in how the Chinese leaders—the hardest of men, whose hands were freshly bloodied by the Great Cultural Revolution—sized up their American visitors. Hans Morgenthau wrote,

> The prestige of a nation is its reputation for power. That reputation, the reflection of the reality of power in the mind of the observers, can be as important as the reality of power itself. What others think about us is as important as what we actually are.

In effect, Nixon and Kissinger caused copious bloodshed in Vietnam for the sake of our reputation among our Cold War adversaries: the Chinese and Soviet leaderships and their many clients, including the Syrians. Worse, as Walter Isaacson has written in his biography, Kissinger was suspicious of the whole notion of troop withdrawals that were not tied to improvement in North Vietnamese behavior: that was appeasement. Of course, there is no way to prove or disprove connections between the Nixon Administration's cold-bloodedness in Indochina and its ability to project power elsewhere, to America's obvious benefit. Many in the journalistic and policy communities take for granted that there is no connection. Nothing the Nixon Administration did in Indochina, therefore, is justified; a Democratic Administration would just as easily have faced down the Soviet Union and Syria without firing a shot, and would have orchestrated a rapprochement with China after withdrawing quickly from Vietnam in 1969. Might such reasoning be naive? Previous behavior is all we have to go on when we respond to others. The suggestion that leaders in China, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere would respond to Kissinger and Nixon based on their recent behavior in Vietnam is eminently reasonable. What strains credulity is the idea that our Cold War adversaries would not take into consideration Kissinger's and Nixon's bloodthirstiness in Indochina in the face of fierce criticism from the American public.

*In Decade of Decisions: American Policy Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1967-1976* (1977), William B. Quandt wrote that Nixon told a group of newspaper editors at the height of the Jordan crisis that "it would not be such a bad thing if the Soviets believed he was capable of irrational action." The strategy worked—it kept the peace in the Middle East that year without U.S. military involvement, and it kept a civilized regime in power in Jordan—perhaps in part because

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

81

Nixon had already proved his capacity for what many would call “irrational” action. Perceptions are often everything in crises, and Nixon’s and Kissinger’s record in foreign policy may have been more of a piece than we like to admit.

Was an unproved benefit to our international position worth the loss of so many American and other lives? No. But we will never know for certain what a weaker position in the Middle East and elsewhere might have cost us and others. In 1982, for example, the Israelis invaded Lebanon and bombed Beirut, killing thousands of innocent people. The bombing also drove Yasser Arafat out of Lebanon. From that moment on Arafat’s prestige and power plummeted, until a centrist Israeli politician like the late Yitzhak Rabin could afford to recognize him without risking Israel’s security. If Arafat were still running his veritable state-within-a-state in Lebanon, the peace process of the 1990s and Jordan’s recognition of Israel would be unimaginable. Yet many Israelis, not to mention Arabs, still criticize the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin for bombing Beirut. Was Begin right? It depends.

“TRUTH is the successful effort to think impersonally and inhumanly,” Musil wrote. Perhaps Kissinger achieved that awful level of truth in Vietnam, to judge by what he and Nixon accomplished coincident with their bloody retreat. If one feels that it is un-American to think of truth in the way that a world-weary Austrian like Musil did, then why does Kissinger’s shadowy presence continue to intrude upon our most fundamental foreign-policy questions? Kissinger, seventy-five, can be judged one of our most notable and interesting modern Secretaries of State, along with Dean Acheson, George Marshall, and Henry Stimson—realists all. Americans champion idealism while employing realists, perhaps because we need to have a high opinion of ourselves while pursuing our own interests. Kissinger challenged us with a degree of realism whose origins lay partly in a youthful experience that most Americans can barely imagine.

To say that he has challenged us, of course, is not to say that he has improved us. The final judgment on both Kissinger and Nixon may be that they were not sufficiently realistic. True, they were not swayed by opinion polls, as present politicians so often are. But they did not comprehend that even if the public mood should not dictate policy, policy must nevertheless take account of it. By continuing the war after 1969, they badly misjudged the public’s appetite for the conflict. Kissinger thus did not live up to the realism of his literary ideal, Metternich. The result of his brand of realism was a foreign policy that some critics call Roman in its cruelty—and in the non-realist supposition that every corner of the known world is of vital interest to the United States and must be violently defended if necessary. The fact that we have moved away from that policy shows how different

our destiny might be from that of Rome’s fallen empire.

As regards Musil’s inhuman truth, Kissinger’s description in *A World Restored* of the peace that followed the Napoleonic Wars bears repeating, for what we may have to expect in the post-Cold War era.

> When peace finally came to Europe . . . it was greeted not only with relief but with a feeling of disillusion as well. The suffering of a period of revolutionary war can be sustained only by millennial hopes, by the vision of a world free of problems. . . . Yet the greater these expectations, the more severe the inevitable disenchantment. There must come a point when it is realized that the exaltation of war is not transferable to the problems of peace, that harmony is an attribute of [wartime] coalitions but not of “legitimate” orders, that stability is not equivalent to the consciousness of universal reconciliation. . . . “Everything that occurred after 1815 [following the defeat of Napoleon],” Metternich wrote in 1819, “belongs to the course of ordinary history. Since 1815, our period is left to its own devices; it advances because it cannot stop, but it is no longer guided.”

We are back to “ordinary history,” with the difference between Metternich’s and our own time being one of scale—demographic, environmental, technological, and military. Peaceful times are also superficial times, in which we concentrate on social imperfections because the political order appears secure, and judge Cabinet members not on how they perform but on how they perform at press conferences. Such times never last. The end of the Cold War merely set the parameters for the next struggle for survival.

As we seek perfection in our officials through an increasingly intense legal scrutiny, and reap an increasingly sallow form of mediocrity instead, there will come times—perhaps dangerous and violent times—when we will be more forgiving toward those who were supremely imperfect in their character yet unafraid to challenge the public mood. The waging of the decades-long Cold War, which rarely seemed heroic at the time (unless one had the useful corrective, as I and others did, of experiencing firsthand the subjugation of Eastern Europe), is already acquiring a valorous cast. The Soviet Union really did run an “evil empire,” and during those years it was absolutely essential for us to maintain a reputation for unflinching firmness. The fact that a few leaders would go to cruel extremes might have been anticipated. Because history is by nature tragic, and because awful choices are certainly part of our future, I suspect that Kissinger—and Nixon, too—will ultimately be judged more charitably. As for Albright, she has yet to be tested nearly to the degree that Kissinger was in Vietnam. She has yet to move emotionally beyond Munich toward Kissinger’s ability to turn historical debacle into strategy. ❧

82

JUNE 1999

UNDER STRECKET

Lade Kissinger
grunden till
segern i kalla
kriget?

Med sina omfångsrika memoerar vill
Henry Kissinger visa att hans livsverk
förberedde och möjliggjorde den seger i
kalla kriget som Reagan fått äran av.
Den tredje delen, "Years of renewal",
föreligger nu, ett slags till bok.
Kissinger är i sitt esse inte minst när han
tecknar porträtt av samtida statsmän.

AV
INGEMAR DÖRFER

Sedan han lämnade posten amerikansk utrikesminister 1977 har Henry Kissinger inte legat på latsdan. Under tjuktøra han har skrivit 3 900 sidor memoerar plus klassiskern "Diplomacy" på 900 sidor, dvs en dragt 200 sidors bårligen, en production som är åtskilöst lösre än de flesta kollegior i statsvetarbranche. I likhet med Winston Churchill vill Kissinger att historien ska behända honom välvilligt och gör därför denna herkukska ansträngning att själv skriva den. Ingen annan amerikansk utrikesminister har som har sprat snart sagt allmataksupptackningar och arbetspapper från sin ämbetid. Hans memoerar står därför i en klass för sig.

Nu föreligger alltså den tredje delen, Years of renewal (İngs s, Simon & Schuster). Det har gått sjutton i sedan Kissinger publicerade den två, "Years of upheaval". Att han vätkaat så länge beror på att han vill som läsaren kan kunna bevarat resultatet med distans till vill och Watergårens passioner. Resultatet måste betecknens som ett slagskepp till bok, Resultatet tänkte anhängande, några transportsträckor (skyttdiplomatin) till trots.

Inte bara i förmånigan att strukturera problemen utan än mer i skisserna av samtida statsmän och politiker är Kissinger i sitt esse. "What makes them tick?" Mao, Zhou Enlai, Breznev, Gromyko, Brändt, Schmidt, Genscher, Pompidou, Gis-card d'Estaing, Harold Brown, Cailaghan, Sadat, Rabin, för att inte tala om den "brillante och charmerande" Julius Nyerere? Allra bäst förklarar han Richard Milhouse Nixon förhållande till live och politiken, en oändigt mer komplicerad man än svenska kličkeer om honom medger. Kissinger betonar att de arbetade bra tillsammans och kompletterar varandra. Han förkastar naturligtvis idén att han själv bara var en nickedocka som utförd systemets ordern men han anser heller inte att Nixon bara togn ätan åt sig för Kissingers diplomaer när den var framgångsrik. Det var Nixon som som besluten och ofta också formulerade idéerna eller förbättrade den entitled derma generäa bedömning.

President Ford fåt boken rollen som den store läkaren av nationsmör. Han får mycket beröm för sin råttfrahmet,

integritet och begåvning. Andra regeringskolleger och amerikansk politiker får det utrymme som författaren anser att de väljer. Sjuttioåttaängren har blivit mycket välgävlig med åren utan det för den skall bli menlös. Jim Schlesinger är begåvad men sparkas för sitt övermängd sått mot presidens. Hubert Humphrey är lika intelligens som han är påpratssam. Senator Scoop Jackson han e världig motståndare i trots alla problem han orsakar utrikesminister in i drustningsförhandlingarna. Sina härdaste epitet spårar han för Ford som från Michigan, som beforedats över sin kompetens. Nu vet att "leva i obemärktthåt i Washington" ett öde som növ Kissinger finner värre än döden. Motsvarande öppenhjärtighet med skarpa personporträt har vi inte sett i Sverige sedan Herbert Tingsstens memoer.

Skälet till att Kissinger så envist vill förtälja om sin roll i den amerikansk efterkrigshistorien är emellertid främst att han allt som 1977 hattan i skuggen av Ronald Reagan och dennes anhängare som vann den kalla kriga. Kissinger menar att hans livsverk förberedde och möjliggjorde denna segar men att dessa insatser ofta ses över axeln. Détente eller avsnåning blev ett skållsord när han angreps från vänster och sedan också från höger. Från 1972 attackeras han inte bara av dem som ville se en seger for Hanoi i Vietnam utan också av dem som ville ha mer kontakt, drustningsförhandlingar och handel med Sovjetunionen. Intellektuell mer integranta var de neokonservativas som makten till sammans om Ronald Reagan 1989. Avlar av de måste förändrade var de vänsterman och hade behällit sin avsmak för Kissinger, som de nu attackeras från höger. Nixon och Kissinger, som delade de neokonservativas syn på Sovjetunionen, förhandlade med Moskva av taktiska skäl och för att gä välsteropposition till mötes. De neokonservativa genomskädade detta och säg Kissingers pragmatismatik som omorralar.

Kissingers agerande betingades av att han rädd för att Moskva skulle utnyttja USA:s svaghet efter Vietnam och Watergåret och destabilisera Västeuropa. Hans détente innebarte att der Amerika ut ur Vietnam, kontrollera det kalla kri-

get genom rustningskontroll, stärka USA:s allianser i Europa och Östasien och öppna förbindelserna med Kina som en motiv till Sovjetunionen. Genom détente skulle man vinna en långsamt arbetsseger över huvudmotståndaren. Reagans neokonservativa village vilre av knockout. Där Nixon hade betonat säkerhetspolitiska strukturer lade Reagan tonviktten vid ideologi och demokratiska värden. Kissinger hävär i "Years of renewal" att ontskälning och optimistisk när det gällde USA:s överlägsenhet gentemot. Sovjetunionen, fakta visar att han ofta var pessimistisk. Irgör abtade han om att vinna taktiska segrar i Latinamerika och Afrika medan Reagans lärjungare hade sundare strategiska insikter. Man skall dock inte glömma att när Reagan kom till makten hade sex till förflutit sedan Vietnam och Watergåret och Sovjetunionen hade spenderat ytterligare sex försvarsbudgetar på väg mot bankreitter.

Det är påfallande hur hurkost av denna détentédiplomati som bestod av rustningskontrollförhandlingar. Toppmötet mellan Breznevj and Ford i Vladivostok ägnades helt diskussioner om hur många strategiska kärnvapen och av vilken typ som de två supermakterna fick innehä. Eftersom dessa vapensystem var under ständig utveckling blev förhandlingarna ofta esoteriska. "Vi skulle byta 200 robotar som vi aldrig tänkte tillveroka mot 2 200 stridsspetar som Sovjetunionen ärdrig tänkte förbandssätta", sägs en om förhandlingsmång.

En halv generation efterat kan detta reförealta som var tio sifferexerciser, men under dessa kan ansågs kärnvapen som det bästa mättd på staternens stryka. Det ik var i själva verket Sovjetunionen förmåga att rsta ik appark Amerika på kärnavapenar som gav dem uppade gänger vid möten med Nixon och för Föreskott att Sovjetunionen och Förenta staterna skulle bilda ett slags kärnvapenpakt. Varje annat land som innehade kärnvapen skulle motarbätta, ja till och med gemensamt angrips om de kom till användning. Eftersom två av Amerikas viktigaste allierade, Storbritannien och Frankrike, hade sådana vapen och eftersom Amerika eftersträvade närmare relationer med Kina

Oltaliga är den patienter som kommer från läs- nes allra höst. Trots de allmert pätagjala- pro- blemen att åka kollektivt kommer man med smärran från Söders höjder, från Nacka, från Spånga, från Sigtuna etc. Att ligga i centrum gör oss mer lättillgängliga för alla, inte tvär-

Orimligt med bidrag
för att flytta hemifrån

I sommaren nyhetsflöde notar jag att en ung办公室 på 21 år utroper att hon inte på råd att flytta hemifrån. Hon anger som skall att kommen inte till stå för hennes försörjning via socialbidrag. Hon läser på komvux och inte skaffat sig arbete av första som och studiebidrag inte utbetala.

Dock visar det som att den unga kivanner trots allt kommer att ha råd att flytta till eget men hon uppges grimasera när hon mätbaratt att hon "tvingas" läna pengar, "vilket kan ta mig är att betala tillbaka". När väl terminen börjar anser hon att hon "kan klara sig själv" gen studie- och bostadsbidrag. När låg jå- ser artikeln kan jag inte låta bli att undra. Vad det som gör är att en ung till synes frisk människar ta givet att skattebetalarna ska hennes hennes arbetsreiser sommar och flytt? Varför har ingen talat om för henne att vill hon flytta hemifrån måste hon försörj sig inkomster? Jag är råd att hennes reaktion och inställning är i nånget mening logisk för den som växer upp i ett bidragssamhälle. I stället för att lita till den enega förmågan är det i ett sådant samhälle naturligt att förvänta sig, och kräva, att staten garande ens västlåt.

Rickard Wendel, Timbro Syd

och måste det allra den som har anför- tjtuscort förvaltningen på höstkraften när de njer ut den nattliga gemenskapen på Astrid Lind- gren, Huddinge och Södersjukdon.

Ian Modin, barnläkare Stockholm

Den som satt i skuld
är inte fri

Ovanstående rubrik har statsminister Persson myntar. Han använde den fil- tigt ett tag i retoriken mot borgarna. Men skinnivlar går i den. 8oo personer har nu skulder till Apoteket.

2000 av dessa som föremål för kronofogde- myndighetern. Ett osannoligt antal människor som förutom sin skuld även är drabbade av- sjukdomar. 8oo människor är inte fri om man citerar Persson.

Ja, så ser det ut i vårt land i dag år 1999. Ofattbart att det ändå finns så många som stöder den rödgröna röran. Vart tog folk- hemstanken vägen? Omsorgen om de svaga?

"Jag har sett det med egn ågon", säde Persson. Nu det är det. Nu är det han själv som är orsaken. Schyman och Schlauhänders hängarhandare som, med maktber- rusningsskänslan uppfylld, bidrar till utsug- ningen för egnadre greppas som, med kryssnings- tos inledande angreppsskatt. Detta har den moderna flygkrigets villkor. Jugoslavien hade inte denna fjärrslagsförmåga, och Gripen hade inte avhälpt inrese.

Stig-Åke Bengtsson, Kopparberg

och problemet. Och det är att det är ett för- det är? För tio år sedan skedde och tydligt om- svängning om narkotikapolitiken. Sverige erffter en tuff debatt, en sänar enig syn på narkotikabillt. Det blev inom ett mör- bruka narkotika vilket är den kraftigaste mar- kertagstifaren kan att tolererar inte att ungdomar slösar bort ena liv och vi inte är allvar med ett narkotikafritt samhälle.

Lagstiftarna har sagt sitt, vad bådel se- dan? Sverige har en än nastan båcktande nark- otikalagstiftning, från mycket långa fängel- straffar för narkotikasmuggel och för narkot- ikatillverkare, till sex månaders tvåvårdsvärk för missbrukare som är påvät, för förstora sina liv.

Fåran är hur lagstiftningen följs av de myndigheter som är satta att tillämpa den.

Det är mycket lätt för en organisation som ob-

stark gatulangningsgrupp som splittrades upp på en spanningslot. Följden blev att man inte rapporterade enda narkotikabrott under flera månader på Södermål. Socialtjänsten i Stockholm har nästan med avskrävs handl- gare som arbetar utan med missbrukare. Antal LVM (lagen enligt av vårdet) anmälningsar som ledert till en omhänderta- rande han minkat med mer än 50 procent de senate fem åren. Nästan alla är överens om att narkotikaproblemet är en mycket omsam- hälssfråga. Vad är det som gör att man vill att den skall sköts av generalist? Svaret är kanske att det inte är så mycket illvilja som ligger ukom utan att det endast saknalla.

Tomas Berg, direktör
European cities against drugs

Gripen hade inte hjälpt

Svar till Folke P Sandahl (11/7)

Sandahl påstår som Gripen i Jugoslavi- anens luftforsvar "hade Nato inte kunnat tillvörga lika ogerentad som nu". Det är inget svar på frågan. Om det disser Gripen hade det endast påverkat längden av Na- tos inledande angreppsskatt, som maktber- rusningsskänslan uppfylld, bidrar till utsug- ningen för egnadre greppas som, med kryssnings- tos i syfte att lämala försvarvararnas jakt- flyg.

Längden av denna inledande fas hade givet- vis påverkats av antal Gripenar, men även i, för jugoslavien, bästa fall hade det borta rör att sig om någrå dager innan Nato utan risk för för- luster i dueller med Gripen hade kunnat sätta in bennanmad attackplan (på hög jörd hänsl) till jugoslaviskt luftvärn). Det räcker

nämigen inte att Gripen har egen spa- ningsförmåga (i luften) samt att den kan stan- ta och landa på vägstumpar. Resten av den kallade och känsliga flygmilitära infrastruktur måste också fungera.

Det fanns borta ett tänkbarst sätt för Jugoslavien att förhindra Natos flygkampanj: att egnna och bundsföranters kryssningsmesser- ier bekämpa Natos baser i Italien. Sådana är det moderna flygkrigets villkor. Jugoslavien hade inte denna fjärrslagsförmåga, och Gripen hade inte avhälpt inrese.

I verige bör vi snarast inrese att ett luftfors- värk baserat på, och dominerat av, Gripen blir otillräckligt

Helge Gard, generalmajor, Tyresö

sök hos påven i Rom så kan du och jag avstå från att köpa de sladdrige shoppingkassan- na när vi bär hemjölkens i kvarterbutiken eller las- bilen vid stormarknaden.

Per-Inge Planefors, direktör,
Stiftelsen Samtidskultur

Piteå kommunskall bygga ett nytt idrottsskompex för 100 miljoner kronor. Pengarna kommar från det kommunala skatteutjäm- ningssystemet. Det hela gör ett exempel på hur kom- muner och bortgåt skatter och relativt välsköta verksamhe- tvarje är tvingså föra över pengar till kommuner med betydligt sämre soll på ekonomin. Detta system, där sta- ten flyttar mynten från de fickor som tillhör medborga- rane i välsköta kommuner till fickor med hål i, motiveras med så kallade fördelnings- argument. Eftersom genom- snittsinkomsterna är högre i Stockholm än i exempelvis Norrland kommun Stockholm- na dela med sig av sitt över- lösning.

Felet med detta argument att det sätts allt absolut, men inte något relativt över- lösning bland stockholmarna. Hela den "extrainkomst" som stockholmarna tjäner att nämigen upp av betydligt

blemornråden som Hjultå eller Rinkeby. Detta är djupt eller oravtörligt. som såväl på cort sikt innan byggandet tagit fart, att på i city, på det sinnbildt billigare i förorterna.

Marknadshyror skulle rät- ta till det problemet. Visst skulle det antagligen bli dy- andminstone på kort sikt innan byggandet tagit fart, att på i city, på det sinnbildt billigare i förorterna.

Det största fördörden skulle dock vara att köerna, som i dag är bortåt 15 år, så skulle försvinna. De stora vinnarna på ett införande av marknads- hyror är folk med låga inkomster.

Johan Bergman, Upplands Väsky

Veganerna anser det va- ra mord att förtära kött. De kräver att vi alla helt ska övergå till vegetarisk föda. Tydligt inte så mycket för att vegetarisk föda skulle va- rera mer hälsosom för en män- niska, om det för att "rädda" djuren.

De tycks dock helt för borbisett att det även här i Sveri- gden köttet äventä vätère, vars föda är stackars djur som råkat komma för nära.

Hur gör veganerna själva när myggen och getingarna kommer? Eller är det skillnad på djur och djur?

Tommy Asklund, Stockholm

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SEBAGO - MEØL - HELLY HANSEN - HENRI LLOYD - MURPHY & NYE - MERRELL - OXBOX - MUSTO

Källa: British Medical Journal 1997-314

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Så här skriver hans hälso-
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## Fattigdom ger dålig hälsa

“Sambandet mellan fattigdom och dålig hälsa är tydlig. Ju fat- tigare, desto större risk att bli sjuk och dö ung”, konstaterar regeringen utan försökande omskrivningar och exempli- fieringen är mycket talande:

* Den förväntade livslängden är fem år kortare för en pojke i de understa socialgrupperna än i de översta, 70 år respekti- ve 75.

* Män mellan 20 och 64 år från den nedersta socialgruppen löper tre gånger större risk att dö i hjärtjärtfart eller stroke än den i höst till den översta.

* Barn i arbetarhem drabba ofta av kroniska sjukdomar och dålig tandhälsa än barn i tjänstemannahem.

Detta måste motverkas, för den som mår bra har också större möjlighet att klara livets motgångar, betonas i "Our Healthier Nation", som för öv- ligt är skriven i en ovälton för att vara ett regeringsdoku- ment. Där finns till exempel en tiopunktstampa med ganska välväntt formulermade råd för bättre hälsa (se runt intill). Övert kommer rökningen – "den största enskilda orsaken till sjukdom och död som går att undvikla".

Av 1 000 rökande 20-åring- ar i Storbritannien kommer en

källa: British Medical Journal 1997-314

## Fattigdom ger dålig hälsa

6. Skydda dig mot so-
len och låt inte barn
bränna sig.
7. Tillämpa säkrare
sex.

8. Utnyttja erbjudan-
den om cancerunder-
sökningar.

9. Kör försiktigt.
10. Lår dig Första Hjäl-
pen.

att mördas och sex avlida i bil-
olyckor, under det till 250 för-
väntas dö av rökning redan i
medeläldern, och ytterligare
250 i högre ålder.

Med tanke på Socialdemo-
kraternas majoritet i parla-
mentet blir under inga problem
for Tony Blair att få igenom
"Our Healthier Nation" - och
därmed göra britterna till ett
något hälsosammare och mindre
stressat folk.

LARS RYDING

## Nättpås:

Hela lagförlagset "Our Health-
ier Nation" finns att läsa på
nätet: http://www.official-do-
cuments.co.uk/document/cm4
3/4386/4386.htm

## Hannar som kämpar

► Sommervällden väcker de kämpande hannarna. In-
te vet jag om värme på nä-
got sätt påverkar mäns tes-
tosterhalt; men kärna nån
vad detävlar och joggar och
sportar och fläsar innan
natten faller på!

► På minsta parkplätt spe-
las brännboll och vanlig
boule och tennis och fot-
boll och allt vad man nu kan
göra med en boll. På cykel-
banorna trängs rullskrid-
skomaffian och den som
bara äger ett par gamla
gymnastikkron springer
andan ur sig längs trottoa-
rer och kajer.

Efteråt står klasar av
män och stretchar mot nä-
maste trädstam för att de-
ras muskler ska få spänst.

Då har deras picknic-
kande kvinnor redan
druckit upp vinet, samlat
ihop filtar och ungar och
gätt hem.

KARIN THUNBERG

AMERICAN INTERESTS SHOW NO. 948

1

NARRATOR: In the waters of the Persian Gulf, and in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, war is in the air. The American-led build-up of Western and Arab military forces nears completion, while Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein holds tightly on to Kuwait behind a desert shield of his own. Western hostages he's moved to potential military targets to discourage attacks.

As the Mideast crisis enters its fourth week, analysts are asking just what is the American mission in the Gulf? Could George Bush declare victory if, feeling the pinch of the economic blockade, Iraq withdraws from Kuwait under diplomatic covers, and restores, in some form, Kuwait's former government? That scenario would leave Saddam Hussein in control of Iraq with an arsenal of chemical weapons and ballistic missiles ready to strike again at the next opportunity.

Must Saddam Hussein be destroyed for America's Gulf intervention to be a success? From Washington, this is AMERICAN INTERESTS.

Major funding for AMERICAN INTERESTS is provided by Maytag Corporation, a family of companies continuing the quality tradition in home appliances and vending products throughout the world. Additional funding is provided by these foundations.

(Funders shown)

NARRATOR: Joining us is Henry Kissinger, former national security adviser and secretary of state. Dr. Kissinger has come out in favor of a U.S. military strike to destroy Saddam Hussein's military machine.

MORTON KONDRACKE: Welcome to AMERICAN INTERESTS. I'm Morton Kondracke. Dr. Kissinger, The New York Times said that you were a hasty hawk because you seemed in a Op Ed piece to want to bomb Iraq soon. Aren't you being hasty in not giving diplomacy a chance?

HENRY KISSINGER: My point was not that we should bomb Iraq soon. I said the scale of our deployment requires us now to succeed. I also agree with the scale of our deployment, so this is not meant as a criticism of the Administration. I don't know whether sanctions can work fast enough, or whether we can hold the requisite number of countries together during the sanctions.

2

If there is any chance that the sanctions should not work, then I would prefer to take other measures. The thing we cannot afford is that the Iraqi army stays in Kuwait, the U.S. forces stay in Saudi Arabia for an indefinite period of time. We cannot afford a long stalemate. It will overthrow the Arab countries that are associated with us. It will be difficult to hold our allies together when the oil—if an oil shortage should occur. And I don't know whether we can hold American public support through a long hostage crisis and through a prolonged stalemate. So in that case, I would prefer to use other measures—to bomb, if necessary.

There's a second problem. I do not think it would be a brilliant outcome if Saddam Hussein comes out of this crisis with a status quo ante. And I would think it would be better for his neighbors and for the peace of the area, if, at the end of this crisis, the military capacity of Saddam Hussein and of Iraq were reduced.

So it's for these reasons that I think that option should be considered. But I'm not saying it should be done quickly.

MR. KONDRACKE: The president is in favor of the status quo ante. He's set the terms for American involvement there as being—

DR. KISSINGER: That's right. The president has stated that Iraq has to withdraw from Kuwait, and that the legitimate government of Kuwait should be restored. And if that should be offered to us, I believe we probably have no choice except to accept it, and to hope that the humiliation will be so great for Iraq that it would bring about a change in the attitudes.

I don't think the president can ask for more than he has. But still, I do not believe it would be a brilliant outcome, but it would be, nevertheless, a great achievement for the administration.

MR. KONDRACKE: Wouldn't we be better off if we struck early, and on our terms, rather than responding, say, to a Scud missile attack on our forces?

DR. KISSINGER: But the danger of waiting too long is that sooner or later pressures will develop to keep us from doing what, in my view, we will have to do, unless Iraq begins to withdraw soon, and

NEWS TRANSCRIPTS, INC. - (202) 682-9050

3

I think this is the major consideration. If Iraq were foolish enough to launch a Scud attack, then all bets
would be off and we could even raise our political terms very easily, and I don't think they'd be foolish
enough to do that. And I wouldn't mind waiting for that. But there is a limit beyond which we cannot
wait. There is a limit beyond which the normal inquisition by the media of what the purpose is--the endless
reassurances that are required, the nervousness that will develop if an oil shortage should occur, and all
the attendant excitement when you see ships following tankers through the Gulf--all of this can, in my
view, not be sustained for many months without beginning an erosion of international, and to, some extent,
domestic support, and this is what the president really has to weigh.

And I think what he probably has in mind--and I can speak, not knowing what he has in mind--he
must have in mind that he wants to get enough forces into Saudi Arabia to prevent an Iraqi attack, in case
he should do--in case we should start attacking their military installations. And I think that's reasonable.
He just has to balance psychological against military factors.

MR. KONDRACKE: You think he does have in mind to launch an air attack against the Iraqi
military machine?

DR. KISSINGER: I would say one has to make a big distinction between Iraq and Vietnam.
Vietnam was a guerilla war. This is a normal war. Vietnam had a powerful, adjoining neighbor that had
supply lines open. Vietnam had a superpower as a military supplier. None of this exists in Iraq. There's
no jungle. There's no powerful neighbor. All the neighbors of Iraq are hostile to it, with the possible
exception of Jordan.

And if Iraq should be on the verge of losing its military capacity, it would be another oil rich
desert country surrounded by hostile neighbors, and in a country that depends for domestic control on its
military machine, I do not believe the leadership will--the Iraqi leadership will risk that.

MR. KONDRACKE: You are making a strong case for an attack to destroy his military, are you
not?

4

DR. KISSINGER: I think there is a strong military argument for destroying his military. There is, however, a good reason why--there's (inaudible) military reason to wait until we have what is necessary in place, and I understand that the president will want to balance the requirements of the international consensus against the local situation.

MR. KONDRACKE: But if the phone rang right now and it were George Bush at the other end of the line and he said, what should I do, what would you tell him?

DR. KISSINGER: I would tell him what I told you. I would tell him that these are the elements you have to weigh. Now you have to tell me whether you think the sanctions can work. If he were to tell me the sanctions can work, I would tell him wait. If he tells me it's 50-50, I would tell him you better think of the military options.

MR. KONDRACKE: Do you think the sanction can work?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't know enough of what supplies they have. What will make the sanctions work is not the inability of Iraq to export oil but the inability of Iraq to import food and other essentials and whether the United States is the ideal country to watch starvation develop under its aegis. I do not know.

MR. KONDRACKE: How long do you think we should persist in the diplomatic and economic squeeze that's going on before we decide that this is not working, and we've got to do something militarily?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, I would count it in weeks rather than in months.

MR. KONDRACKE: So, six weeks from now? Three weeks from now?

DR. KISSINGER: It really would depend on an answer to the questions I put before, about how we think the blockade is working. I would think weeks. I would not like this crisis to be in its present shape by the end of this year.

MR. KONDRACKE: It would seem that one of the arguments in favor of taking military action

5

soon, that you've made, is that a long, drawn-out stalemate would gradually deteriorate in the United
States--support for the operation would deteriorate. Now, is this a sound judgment? I know that it's based
probably on your experience with Vietnam, but the United States did spend five years in Vietnam before
the Nixon administration even arrived on the scene, and then four years thereafter. We've spent 45 years
in NATO sitting in Europe with troops and spending lots of money. I mean, don't you underestimate the
tenacity of the American people?

DR. KISSINGER: I think the European situation is not comparable at all, because there were no
risks involved. There was a long tradition, at least a tradition established in two world wars, of the vital
importance of Europe. I don't believe it is just the American people that will—that will fall away. In fact
the American people, as you pointed out, even in Vietnam, was very sturdy. But if you watch the talk
shows every Sunday, and the questions that people like you must ask, all of which have to be probing, and
all of which will elicit answers that will appear inconclusive the longer the stalemate lasts, that must—and
then when congressional investigations start, that will mean that there will be very— increasingly few
arguments for success, and increasingly strong arguments that indicate at least a stalemate, which indeed
will have happened.

Secondly, it's one thing—in Europe you had stable governments. In the Middle East, to build a
wall like in Europe around a minor country like Iraq and then just sit there is a demonstration of weakness,
not a demonstration of determination, and it will lead to it some time over an extended period there will
be severe crises in the countries where we are now stationed.

DR. KISSINGER: People keep saying give diplomacy a chance. I have great difficulty visualizing
what the diplomacy could be, unless they withdraw unconditionally from Kuwait and permit a restoration
of the previous government. Those are the absolute minimum conditions for which we can settle.
Containment of Iraq now is an American defeat, and we should not kid ourselves about this.

MR. KONDRACKE: Okay. So that's another argument in favor of destroying his military

6

machine in some way?

DR. KISSINGER: Mort, you're maneuvering me into the position where this whole program is an advocacy by me of a specific course of action. What I feel is necessary is that the administration faces not just the opening game, which was brilliantly done, but the end game, and they will get no awards for losing with moderation. If they can win with moderation it would be terrific.

MR. KONDRACKE: If it comes to a military attack by the United States, what about the hostage situation now? Saddam Hussein shortly will have Western hostages distributed around his various military targets.

Can an American president afford to bomb under those circumstances?

DR. KISSINGER: It's easy to sit here and say yes. It is the most painful decision he has to take. But I would rephrase it, your question, this way: Can an American president refuse to do what he considers to be in the vital national interest, because some outlaw has captured innocent Americans and threatened their lives? Because whether he threatens them directly, or threatens them by putting them in a position where somebody else endangers them, the effect is the same.

At any one moment, there are tens of thousands of Americans around the world, all of whom in my view would be in jeopardy, if an American president backed off from what he considers to be in the vital interest.

I assume he wouldn't risk the soldiers whose lives would be involved unless he thought vital American concerns were involved. If he has come to that decision, then with a bleeding heart, he would probably have to take the other decision as well.

I personally believe that the Iraqis will not risk the lives of that many Americans in a hostage situation, when push comes to shove, because they know that if any Americans get killed, that they have deliberately put in harm's way, that the American public would be implacable, that this would then end the way World War II ended, and that none of them--none of the leaders would get away with that.

7

MR. KONDRACKE: Do you think that the argument that the Arab masses would rise up and that Arab unity would be directed against the United States is all hogwash?

DR. KISSINGER: No, it's not hogwash. It's a serious argument, and I certainly am no expert on the Arab masses. I'm convinced that in a prolonged stalemate, that by definition shows the inability of the United States to achieve its objectives, that the Arab masses will gradually surely turn against us. That we will then see acts of terrorism, acts of hostage-taking in various Arab countries, and a general deterioration of our situation. So weighing the risks, I think that we are in a maximum position to do it for the next month or two, and I really don't want to add to the pressure on the president now. That is not my point. My point is to make clear that there is no exit from this except success, which of course should be achieved with a minimum of suffering, and if we can do it by a blockade, I would far prefer that.

MR. KONDRACKE: What do you understand the Soviet role in all of this Iraq business to be? Now, there are these reports of Soviet advisers that were still participating--

DR. KISSINGER: Very ambivalent. Iraq was a valued client of the Soviet Union for a long time, then a good friend. After all, there are 8,000 civilians there, plus several hundred military advisers who are servicing the equipment, plus the fact that the general who has the greatest combat experience, who was in Afghanistan, was assigned there now partly in order to get him out of the Soviet Union where he was criticizing the conduct of the war in Afghanistan, but also partly because Iraq is considered a very important post.

The Soviet Union has not yet progressed to the point where it welcomes great American victories. It still inhabits the territory of imperial Russia. But, I think they're torn, but they will not risk lightly the improved relations with the West which they absolutely must have if their economic program has to have even the slightest chance of success.

MR. KONDRACKE: Do you think that the administration has been forceful enough in moving

8

MR. KONDRACKE: Do you think that the administration has been forceful enough in moving the Soviet Union into line?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't know what is being said to the Soviet Union privately. I think what we need from the Soviet Union is a vote on this U.N. stoppage of ships. I think we're going to do it anyway from what the president said yesterday. I think that's a tactical question, whether it should be done visibly, or quietly. If the Soviet Union takes an ambivalent position, they must know that sooner or later it will be noted, and probably be noted publicly.

MR. KONDRACKE: Has the president set the wrong symbolism by being on vacation? You've been in this kind of situation, crisis before. Where should a president be at a moment of crisis?

DR. KISSINGER: If he were trying to head it into a quick action, then he should be in Washington. If he has the idea that it will take him another X weeks to get enough force in there so that Iraq cannot retaliate by occupying parts of or all of its neighbors, then he's better off in--or, at any rate, it doesn't do any damage to be in Kennebunkport. I think this is really a decision I would leave up to him.

I have no doubt that he's on top of it, and again he'll be judged by how it comes out. If he succeeds, nobody will remember that he was on vacation, and if he fails, nobody will care if he spent the time in Washington.

MR. KONDRACKE: Does it make any difference that the secretary of state goes on vacation during a crisis like this?

DR. KISSINGER: It really depends on the president-- which advisers he feels he must have--he must have close by. And there has to be a working quorum close by so that if he has to make a key decision, he can discuss it. But I would say the same about the secretary of state.

MR. KONDRACKE: Dr. Kissinger, thanks very much for being with us. For American Interests, I'm Morton Kondracke.

INTERNATIONAL

territories, and they said it would be paid for by non-American funds. Although it was not technically a violation of their agreement, U.S. officials interpreted that maneuver as "Shamir's thumb in our eye," as one American put it.

Washington is not about to abandon Israel; it is not even likely to threaten extreme measures, such as cutting off U.S. aid. But pressure is building on Shamir. The latest Security Council resolution is stinging; it "condemns especially the acts of violence

committed by the Israeli security forces.” A side letter from the president of the council, currently Britain’s Sir David Hannay, says U.N. Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar will send a fact-finding mission to Israel to suggest “ways and means for ensuring the safety and protection of the Palestinian civilians under Israeli occupation.” The U.S. delegate, Thomas Pickerling, insisted that the resolution “does not address in any way the status of the Middle East peace process, nor does it change in

any way the role of the United Nations in that regard.” But something important had changed, whether Washington cared to acknowledge it or not. Expectations had been raised among America’s allies, and among the Palestinians, that any settlement of the gulf crisis will contain at least the seed of a solution to the Israeli problem.

RUSSELL WATSON with MARGARET GARRARD WARNER in Washington, THEODORE STANGER in Jerusalem, MELINDA LIU in Baghdad and ANNE UNDERWOOD at the United Nations

Kissinger: 'We Have to Find an Exit'

"The statesman must weigh the rewards of success against the penalties of failure," Henry Kissinger once wrote of an earlier Mideast crisis in which he played a central role. "And he is permitted only one guess." That is no less true today. In a conversation with NEWSWEEK'S Margaret Gardner Warner, the former secretary of State reflected on the current perils:

No one should be surprised by the violence on the Temple Mount. And whether the initial confrontation was planned by the Palestine Liberation Organization or the Iraqis or not, it is clear that both have an interest in pushing the Mideast focus back to the Arab-Israeli issue. For the PLO, the issue of the West Bank and Jerusalem is a much higher priority than Kuwait. For the Iraqis, of course, it helps them link their aggression against Kuwait with Israeli control of the occupied territories.

But above all, what the incident shows is that the idea of constructing a permanent coalition in this part of the world, focused on a single immediate problem, is unsustainable. There are too many other problems existing simultaneously, and too many people with their own priorities, for the United States to be able to sustain a focus on one problem in such a wide coalition for an extended period. It isn't just the Arab-Israeli conflict. There are many

other problems within the Arab world: the Syria-Iraq conflict; the Lebanese civil war; terrorism, as in last week's assassination in Cairo of the speaker of the Egyptian Parliament. Such problems can generate their own momentum, independent of American priorities and essentially unaffected by them.

**Shifting sands:** Practically speaking, what does this mean for the United States and the coalition it now leads in the Persian Gulf? It means the Iraq issue has to be brought to a conclusion within the next few months. I am not beating the drums for war here. I do not want to put the issue in terms of war versus peace. I would prefer for the sanctions to work but I doubt

that they can in the time available. And if our enterprise in the desert fails, ultimately a more calamitous, regionwide war would be highly probable. After the United States deploys 200,000 troops, it cannot run the risk of being forced to leave as it left Lebanon after the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in 1983. We are sitting on the shifting political sands of Arabia with 200,000 men in the face of conflicts we cannot control.

We have to find an exit: it would be very dangerous to tie ourselves to a policy assuming the status quo is sustainable over the long term, or that containment is realistic.

There is another sense in which the status quo is unsustainable. Even before the

invasion of Kuwait, Israel faced increasing pressure to resolve the Palestinian issue. The gulf crisis appeared to buy Israel a little time, but when it ends the pressure will be even heavier. U.S. support for the U.N. resolution condemning Israel over the Temple Mount incident only accentuates the point. Of course if the gulf crisis is resolved constructively, it would be entirely appropriate for the United States to demonstrate to the moderate Arabs that cooperation with us brings progress on Arab concerns. If we fail, we lose any ability to play a constructive role. On the assumption of a favorable outcome, the United States should pursue a major initiative after the crisis. This will probably require, however, a concept of "progress" more limited than the ones pursued recently, which have exhausted us in procedural debate with both Israel and the PLO. Perhaps the trade of peace for final frontiers tempts both sides to exaggerate their terms. It might be better to seek an interim agreement that returns Arab populations to Arab control in rapid return for security arrangements for a fixed period. If those are successful, then it will be possible to move to a more comprehensive formula for peace. Even then, we have to be realistic: Israel is in a complex and even tragic situation that transcends any particular government. It will be searing to reconcile Israel's security requirements with Arab self-respect.

DOMINIQUE AUBERT-SYGMA

Women grieve at bloody handprints on the Temple Mount

40 NEWSWEEK : OCTOBER 22, 1990

My brother-in-law built this place from scratch. It's part log cabin, part experiment in alternative energy. My favorite part is the way it smells. He's got a wood stove going all the time, so we spend hours chopping wood. It's hard work, but that ache in the muscles I never use is a one-of-a-kind feeling. I wonder sometimes if I could live like this. Someday, maybe. For now, though, I wouldn't miss my weekend visits to this corner of the world.

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Henry A. Kissinger

Thatcher Still Leads the Way

The Washington Post

Sunday, December 2,

1990

I have been an unabashed admirer of Margaret Thatcher-er since our first meeting shortly after she became leader of the British Conservative opposition in 1975. Never one to waste time on social amenities, Mrs. Thatcher advanced the then startling thesis that the politics of the '70s was all wrong, indeed underdemocratic.

The conventional wisdom of the time was that aspirants for office had to contend over some sort of middle way. Mrs. Thatcher would have none of it. If all leaders appeal to the center, she insisted, politics will turn vacuous and, in time, demagogic. The public, not having an effective choice, would make its decision on a basis irrelevant to the real issues. Is it not much better, she argued, to pursue a politics of conviction even if that appears to be extreme? Opponents would then be obliged either to state an alternative or to appear wishy-washy. That way, whatever happened, the public would have a democratic choice.

Dramatic statements by newly elected leaders of the opposition are not unusual. But seeing them put into literal practice is truly uncommon. As Mrs. Thatcher's policy as prime minister evolved, even her most severe critics had to admit that she was driven not by yesterday's public opinion polls but by a passionate desire to shape the public opinion polls of tomorrow. She paid her opponents the ultimate compliment of forcing them into a passionate debate on issues.

It was a mixture of conviction, naivete and strength that enabled Mrs. Thatcher to shape her period as has no other prime minister in this century save the wartime Churchill. She brought about a revolution in British attitudes toward the management of the economy while giving Britain an international voice out of proportion to its economic strength. The measure of her success is shown by the fact that the British Labor Party's official position today is not far from what she inherited as the Conservative position of 1975.

But in the end, Margaret Thatcher's seminal contribution centered on two challenges still to be finally resolved: the future of Western democracy and the nature of the transatlantic relationship.

It is ironic that at the moment of its triumph over Communism, Western democracy should face a crisis of its own, which is much what Mrs. Thatcher described a decade and a half ago. With domestic and international upheavals going far beyond the day-to-day experiences of either citizens or leaders, a nearly irresistible temptation toward demagoguery develops. The search for magic formulae by the electorate is too often encouraged by leaders seeking reassurance in public opinion polls and media reactions.

As a result, the qualities required for reaching office no longer bear a necessary relationship to the qualities needed for governing. Any democratic leader must have sensitive antennae for the public mood. But in the end, a leader will be judged by how well he performs his ultimate role of taking his society from where it is to where it has never been. This is why the public does not forgive its leaders for debacles, even if they are caused by following conventional wisdom.

The art of democratic leadership resides in judging correctly how far ahead of the conventional wisdom it is safe to be. If a leader confines himself to what is generally understood, he dooms his society to stagnation and himself to eventual irrelevance. But if he gets too far ahead, he will suffer shipwreck.

This is a process with its built-in terminal point. Even when a remarkable leader navigates this passage—as Mrs. Thatcher did for an unprecedented three elections—a point of exhaustion is reached by both the bureaucracies and the public. For the bureaucracies because they are, after all, run by experts relying on their knowledge of the familiar, growing increasingly restless as their conventional wisdom is under assault. And even the most tolerant electorate sooner or later runs out of patience with being jolted into new effort, especially if reform moves into ever more esoteric fields.

Not surprisingly, Mrs. Thatcher's successors have pledged a consensus style of government. But I hope this reflects no more than the desire for a respite. If democracy is to thrive, Mrs. Thatcher's faith in the power of reason and the importance of a clash of ideas must be key elements. Within a measurable time the issues that led to Mrs. Thatcher's downfall will be forgotten or appear inconsequential. What is left will be the memory of her commitment to a major role for her country and her faith in its adaptability to the challenge of modernity—qualities needed if Britain is to continue to master its future.

Americans have a special reason to remember Mrs. Thatcher with affection and gratitude. For she was a great exponent of the special relationship between Britain and the United States that has been so crucial in shaping the postwar world. Some on both sides of the Atlantic sneer at these ties as relics of a wartime partnership long since overtaken by events. Periodically—as at the beginning of the Bush administration—the argument is heard that America should shift its emphasis from Britain to more powerful members of the Atlantic alliance.

But an alliance is more than a set of statistics. It requires strength, to be sure, but it must be coupled with the intangibles of reliability, character and historical experience. Were Britain to abandon its historic identity, America would lose one of the stabilizing elements in its own policy. For as the Atlantic alliance is declining in the security field, the challenge for both Europe and the United States becomes how to develop transatlantic relationships relevant to the post-Cold War period.

During the entire postwar period, America has applied its missionary zeal and its problem-solving energy to promoting European integration almost as an end in itself. The commitment was idealistic. But the assumption on which it was based—that an integrated Europe would automatically cooperate with the United States—flew in the face of historical experience. America grew too accustomed to the devastated, temporarily impotent Europe of the postwar period. It forgot—if it ever knew—the Europe that had launched the industrial revolution, invented the concept of national sovereignty and operated a complex balance of power based on shifting alliances for three centuries. It was naive to take for granted that a unified Europe would automatically help carry American burdens and that it would continue to follow American global prescriptions as it had in the early postwar years of European dependency. A Europe reasserting its traditional personality was bound to seek to redress its balance of influence with the United States.

The virtue of the special Anglo-American relationship was that it helped bridge this gap between American moral absolutes, which equated foreign policy with universal principles, and Europe's ethical egoism, which assumed that what was good for the nation was best for the rest of the world. In Britain's case there was some merit to this belief. For Britain at the height of her power practiced it with an innate moderation that frequently justified the presumption. In the 19th century, British policy was perhaps the principal factor in a European system that kept the peace for 99 years without a major war.

The key issue in Atlantic relations is not whether Britain will join Europe—that is substantially settled, except for details. The challenge is to avoid both American isolationism and a European nationalism that defines its identity by way of confrontation with America. A creative solution is crucial for both sides of the Atlantic. A narrowly conceived Europe would sooner or later consume itself in its own divisions or overreach in its own ambitions. An open Europe is in the self-interest of America, for it is beyond America's psychological or physical capacity to be the sole center of initiative and responsibility in the non-Communist world.

The solution is not to sacrifice the special intimacy of the Anglo-American relationship on the altar of the European idea, but rather to replicate it on a wider plane of America's relations with all its European allies. The European nations must decide what precise structure is appropriate for the European Community. But the special frankness that originally served as compensation for a disparity of power is even more essential in the new partnership of equals. A new definition of Atlantic relations is needed as Europe edges toward identity and America toward a foreign policy with which Europeans have always been familiar: as one country among many, unable either to dominate the world or escape from it, sensitive to shifts in the balance of power.

Mrs. Thatcher instinctively grasped the importance of this transition. She might hector the United States, but she asked the right questions even when one disagreed with some of her answers. She did not want a Europe run by bureaucrats; she feared a resurgence of the statism that had been overcome by recent market revolution. In her mind, the slogans of a Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals threatened to wind up excluding the United States and Canada, while reawakening a Central European nationalism seemingly transcended after two world wars. She sought to anchor Europe with North America before she irrevocably committed Brit-

(cont'd)

WAR IN THE GULF

# A Postwar Agenda

## A new balance of power could create prospects for progress in the Arab-Israeli conflict

BY HENRY A. KISSINGER

When I first heard that the war had begun, I thought of President Bush. In a movie, people run around during a crisis, picking up telephones and yelling instructions. In a real crisis, the top people are very much alone. Many officials head for the foxholes, occasionally throwing out memoranda designed to absolve them of responsibility for their actions. Usually there are only two or three people willing to make tough decisions. President Bush has earned the nation's gratitude for his fortitude in holding the coalition together during the months of buildup, gaining Congressional backing and steering the country to the point where allied and domestic support coincided. But even in the best-planned operation, there are hours in which a leader in his position must wonder why he ever expended so much time and effort trying to get elected.

I also thought of the challenges the President will have to face once the war is over. After all, the purpose of victory is to ensure a lasting peace. To that end, the United States should move to implement a number of measures in the immediate aftermath of the war:

* An arms-control policy for the gulf to prevent a recurrence of the weapons race that contributed to this conflict.

* Some kind of agreement on economic and social development under the auspices of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which embraces the nations of the gulf. Other Arab allies of the U.S. could join this effort, which would be designed to defuse the argument that this is a conflict of rich against poor.

* A process to address the original Iraqi-Kuwaiti dispute. Direct negotiations between the two countries would be inherently unbalanced, because of the disparity in

their size, which has only been compounded by Iraq's invasion and pillaging of its neighbor. But some issues are susceptible to legal determination, such as drilling rights or the location of the boundaries. These could be put to the International Court of Justice, while remaining issues are handled within the framework of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

* An international program for imposing tough sanctions against terrorism. The world must not again stand impotently transfixed by thousands of hostages. Countries harboring terrorist groups must be confronted with severe reprisals, including military measures if other pressures fail.

Over the long run, our biggest challenge will be to preserve the new balance of power that will emerge from this conflict. And

that will not prove easy, given conventional American thinking about foreign policy. Today, it translates into the notion of "a new world order," which would emerge from a set of legal arrangements and be safeguarded by collective security. The problem with such an approach is that it assumes that every nation perceives every challenge to the international order in the same way, and is prepared to run the same risks to preserve it. In fact, the new international order will see many centers of power, both within regions and between them. These power centers reflect different histories and perceptions. In such a world, peace can be maintained in only one of two ways: by domination or by equilibrium. The United States neither wants to dominate, nor is it any longer able to do so. Therefore, we need to rely on a balance of power, globally as well as regionally. We must prevent situations where the radical countries are tempted by some vacuum every few years, forcing us to replay the same crises over and over again, albeit with different actors.

This is why, in the final analysis, all of

the so-called diplomatic options would have made matters worse. Each would have left Iraq in a militarily dominant position. None addressed the root problem of the gulf's lack of security, which drew 415,000 Americans into the region in the first place—a deployment that certified the gap in military capability between Iraq and the moderate Arab countries. Any diplomatic solution that did not produce a dramatic reduction of Iraq's military power would have been a victory for Saddam Hussein. From then on, he would not have needed to engage in actual physical aggression. He could have let Iraq's demonstrated superiority speak for itself, progressively undermining the governments that supported the United States. He would have

An Israeli soldier with Hawk anti-aircraft missiles near the Jordan Valley

THE WAR
LOOKING
AHEAD

44 NEWSWEEK: JANUARY 28, 1991

BAITEL-HIRES—GAMMA-LIAISON

been able to exploit his position within OPEC to achieve an increase in oil prices, as well as a greater share of production. These two steps would have given Iraq vast additional resources to increase its already huge military buildup, including nuclear and missile programs. The United States would have been left with the choice of keeping major ground forces in the gulf, or of destabilizing the region by withdrawal. The practical result of the military operations now in motion will be to bring into balance the military capability of Iraq against its neighbors in the gulf.

Yet ironically, maintaining equilibrium in the region requires us to navigate between a solution that leaves Iraq too strong and an outcome that would leave Iraq too weak. After all, one of the causes of the present crisis is the one-sided way the Western nations rushed to the

A revived peace
process should
begin by redefining
the objectives

defense of Iraq in its war against Iran, forgetting that if Iran was excessively weakened Iraq might become the next aggressor. It would be ironic if another bout of tunnel vision produced an Iraq so weak that its neighbors, especially Iran, seek to refill the vacuum.

Ideally, one military goal should be to
pull the teeth of Iraq's offensive capability

without destroying its capacity to resist invasion from covetous neighbors. We should take care that Scud missiles are not reintroduced. We should prevent Iraq from importing high-technology equipment, including high-performance aircraft with long ranges, and from reacquiring the means to manufacture biological and nuclear weapons. However, Iraq's capacity to defend itself with conventional weapons against ground attack from its neighbors would in the long run not be a threat to stability but a contribution to it.

The new balance of power in the region cannot be based on the permanent presence of American ground forces. This was the weakness of diplomatic solutions that would have kept Iraq's military preponderance intact. A major Western ground force in the area would inevitably become the target of radical and nationalist agita-

NEWSWEEK: JANUARY 28, 1991 45

WAR IN THE GULF

tion. The cultural gap between even the best-behaved American troops and the local population is unbridgeable. After a brief period, American ground forces would be considered foreign intruders. There would be a repetition of our experiences in Lebanon, including terrorism and sabotage. American ground forces in the area should be withdrawn after victory; residual forces should be stationed beyond the horizon—at sea or perhaps at a few remote air bases. Any monitoring of Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait should be done by Arab members of the coalition.

The difficulty of stationing Western ground forces in the area for an extended period was one reason why sanctions almost surely could not have achieved our objective. It would have been impossible to keep over 400,000 troops in the area for the 12 to 18 months that even optimists thought were needed for sanctions to succeed. But if we started to withdraw any American forces during that time—or to rotate them, as the term of art had it—it would have set off a panic among our Arab allies.

Military equilibrium, however, cannot be the sole aim of American policy in the gulf. It is essential that America learn to become less dependent on oil and generate a viable energy program. We cannot suffer through an energy crisis every decade. We should stress conservation and develop alternative sources of energy, avoiding the self-indulgent attitudes of the 1980s, when plentiful oil caused the search for alternative energy sources to be largely abandoned.

We must also remember the possibility of renewed Soviet designs on the region. For the time being, domestic problems keep the Soviets from running any significant foreign risks. But 200 years of Russian expansionism toward the gulf indicate a certain proclivity. And this drive may be compounded as Moscow's preoccupation with its more than 50 million Muslim citizens grows. After some domestic equilibrium is restored, the Kremlin may become more active in the Middle East—especially in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Turkey, which border the Soviet Union. The intensity of that thrust will depend on internal developments within the Soviet Union. If the Muslim republics remain Soviet, Moscow will be wary of Muslim radicalism lest it inflame its own Muslim population. But if the Muslim republics break off and become independent, Moscow may seek favor in the breakaway states by embracing Islamic radicalism—especially if the Muslim world turns more extremist.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, a new balance of power will revive prospects for progress on the Arab-Israeli conflict. A peace process dominated by Saddam Hussein, or heavily influenced by him, would have been a debacle. For it would have taught the lesson that radicalism, terrorism and force are the road to diplomatic progress in the Middle East. This is why President Bush was right in resisting the linkage of the Kuwait and Palestinian problems.

But with Saddam defeated, moderate Arab leaders will gain in stature, America's credibility will be enhanced and Is-

grave doubts about every one of these propositions.

First, I am very skeptical about an international conference. For the United States would be totally isolated at such a forum. The behavior of France just prior to the gulf war is a small foretaste of what would happen. Instead of being a mediator, America would be maneuvered into the role of Israel's lawyer, while Israel would regard any independent position we took as a betrayal of its interests. No sensible nation would voluntarily throw itself into such a maelstrom. Since everything depends on our influence with

Israel anyway, I would much prefer a diplomatic process in which the United States, the moderate Arab countries and Israel are the principal participants.

Second, for Israel a return to pre-1967 borders and the creation of a Palestinian state are not negotiating issues but matters of life and death. The distance from the Jordan River to the sea is less than 50 miles; the corridor between Tel Aviv and Haifa in terms of the 1967 frontiers is about 10 miles wide. It would be difficult to squeeze two states into such a limited area in the best of circumstances. But the PLO has been in mortal conflict with Israel during the entire existence of both groups. How can such an

arrangement possibly be compatible with security?

Moreover, a return to pre-1967 borders would still leave almost as many Arabs under Israeli control as live on the West Bank minus Gaza. How is one going to justify that one group of Arabs must live under Israeli rule while other Arabs are entitled to self-determination? Thus a restoration of pre-1967 borders, coupled with the formation of a Palestinian state, could easily turn into the first step to the further reduction of Israel, if not its ultimate destruction.

Third, acceptance of Israel is not only a legal but above all a psychological challenge. And I find it hard to believe that any legal formula can by itself provide for Israeli security. After all, Kuwait lived in a state of legal peace with Iraq without being able to prevent Iraqi aggression. And Saddam attacked Israel in a war from which Israel had kept totally aloof because it calculated that many Arabs would support Iraq against Israeli retaliation, no matter how justified. American leaders understandably felt this danger real enough to advise against retaliation. But when reaction to an unprovoked attack becomes an international issue, Israel is still certified

ERIC BOUVET—ODYSSEY-MATRIX

Iranians parading in Teheran before Friday prayers

## If Iraq is left too weak, Iran may seek to fill the vacuum

rael will have a breathing space. This new equation should be translated into a major diplomatic effort within a few months of victory. Far from amounting to linkage and a submission to black-mail, such a move, after Saddam has been defeated, should be viewed as an opportunity resulting from the success of the moderate forces.

Progress will depend on a proper perception of the issues involved. The Arab-Israeli problem is usually stated as a negotiating issue: how to convene an international conference that returns Israel to the 1967 frontiers, defines a new status for Jerusalem, induces the Arabs to "accept" Israel and provides international guarantees for the resulting arrangements. I have

46 NEWSWEEK: JANUARY 28, 1991

as a pariah and is held hostage for the actions of others.

Fourth, how does one define "credible guarantees"? After all, even in the case of Kuwait, where there was unanimous international support for the victim (something that would be inconceivable with Israel), it took six months to organize resistance while the country was looted and pillaged and the population expelled.

For all these reasons, the peace process as currently conceived is likely to lead to a dead end. It forces each side to accept something they find unbearably difficult: for the Israelis, it is a Palestinian state; and for the Arabs, it is the Israeli state. I know of no conflict between Arab nations—let alone between the Arabs and Israel—that has ever been resolved by the method suggested for the Palestinian issue: namely, with one conclusive negotiation resulting in a legal document intended to last for all time.

A revived peace process should begin by redefining the objectives. A final settlement at this moment seems a legalistic mirage. On the other hand, the status quo will sooner or later sound the death knell for moderates on all sides. As it is, too many Israelis consider the peace process a one-sided means to gain acceptance without sacrifice. They are unwilling to give up any occupied territory, or will do so only if de facto Israeli control is maintained. Too many Arabs, especially in the PLO, see in the Middle East a replay of Vietnam, where peace talks were used to soften up the opponent for escalating pressures leading to his ultimate collapse.

An interim solution might seek to introduce the moderate Arab governments, fresh from the victory over Iraq, as a buffer between Israel and the PLO. It might reduce the amount of territory Israel is asked to give up in return for something less than formal peace. A possible approach, mediated by the United States, might unfold like this:

* A conference would be assembled, under the aegis of the U.N. secretary-general, composed of the United States, Israel and the Arab states allied with America in the gulf crisis.

* The moderate Arab countries would agree to act as trustees for territories that are returned to Arab control for a specified amount of time, say five to 10 years.

* The moderate Arab states would also commit themselves to demilitarizing these areas under U.N. supervision.

* Israel would give up all of Gaza and the most heavily populated areas of the West

Bank, retaining only territories essential to its security. It would be allowed to participate in verifying the demilitarization of any territory it evacuates.

* Precise government arrangements would be established by agreement, but would not for the interim period lead to a separate state. As a practical matter, the trustee powers would undoubtedly establish an administration containing individuals acceptable to the PLO.

If this particular scenario turned out to be impractical, some other interim approach must be sought to break the deadlock. The aftermath of an allied victory over Iraq will

gradually squeezed to the point of obliteration. For its own sake, Israel must find a middle way. And there is no better moment to do that than when its most dangerous enemy has been defeated.

I do not envy the American negotiator assigned the task of distilling an interim settlement from the confusing passions of the Middle East. Still, with Iraq's military capacity reduced, the moderate Arab leaders, as well as Israel, should be able to turn to the peace process with authority and confidence. President Mubarak of Egypt, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia—and even King Hussein of Jordan, whatever the maneuvers

imposed by his vulnerability—are unusually intelligent and prudent. Even President Assad of Syria, by no means a moderate, signed an interim agreement with respect to the Golan Heights which has been in force for 17 years and has been meticulously observed. All these leaders might in the end go along with an intermediate approach as the only way to break an even more dangerous deadlock. And there are surely Israeli leaders who recognize that a gradual approach will provide their best prospect for a satisfactory outcome—especially when the moderate Arabs are triumphant and radical Arabs are in retreat.

America should act as a mediator in this effort, having earned the trust of both sides. Our initial challenge may well be philosophical. The best way to produce a successful negotiation is to advance a new concept, to convince both sides that the proposed new course serves their common interest. If that demonstration cannot be made, no negotiating gimmick can serve as a substitute.

In several thousand years of recorded history, the Middle East has produced more conflicts than any other region. As the source of three great religions, it has always inspired great passions. It is therefore unlikely that any one negotiation can bring permanent tranquility to this turbulent area. An Arab-Israeli negotiation will not end all the turmoil, because many Middle East problems are quite independent of that conflict. Fundamentalism in Iran has next to nothing to do with the Palestinian issue, though Teheran has exploited it. And Saddam Hussein would have tried to dominate his neighbors even if the Palestinian problem did not exist. But what the Arab-Israeli conflict has done is to make it difficult for the voices of moderation in the Arab world to cooperate with their supporters in the West. Victory in the gulf will create a historic opportunity to alter that particular equation—and it should be seized.

ALJAWAD-SIPA

Syrian troops driving a tank from Damascus to Lebanon

## Even Assad, hardly a moderate, might go along with an interim approach

offer a perhaps never-to-recur opportunity. Moderate Arab states are disillusioned with the PLO, which in effect has backed Iraq. They are also dismayed by the fact that the PLO has never unambiguously dissociated itself even from terrorism aimed at the moderate Arabs. As a result, these governments may no longer be prepared to give the PLO a veto over their actions.

As for Israel, it must avoid two possible nightmares. If it insists on holding onto every square inch of occupied territory, it could suffer the fate of South Africa and find itself ostracized, and even ultimately under U.N. sanctions. On the other hand, if it follows the maxims of conventional wisdom and gives up all the occupied territories, it runs the risk of winding up like Lebanon,

NEWSWEEK: JANUARY 28, 1991 47

WAR IN THE GULF

# Caught in a Cross-fire

## As usual, Palestinians will be among the losers

Fate put Yasir Arafat at a funeral when the war started. As Desert Storm thundered over Baghdad, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization was far away in Tunis, laying to rest a murdered comrade. Before a PLO bodyguard killed him, Salah Khalaf had warned that all Palestinians “are really in the cross-fire.” He appreciated Saddam Hussein’s efforts to dedicate the war to the Palestinian cause, Khalaf told a French newspaper. “But at the same time, I don’t want my own cause to be associated with the destruction of the Arab region.” The PLO could only watch Khalaf’s worst fears take shape. As in the past, chaos and conflict threatened to leave the Palestinians helpless and alone.

Arafat, all his disclaimers and double-talk aside, has bound the fate of the Palestinians to Saddam Hussein. In the sprawling refugee camps of the Middle East, among the embattled youths of the *intifada*, Saddam stands tall as the one leader in the Arab world with the guts and the guns to challenge Israel. “Everyone has closed the door to us,” said a doctor in Gaza. “There’s just one light coming through, and it’s coming from Saddam Hussein. Can you blame us for wanting to follow that light to the end?”

The Iraq war left Palestinians torn between humiliation and rage, alternately filled with wild hopes and numbed by fear. “Do you have shelters in Jerusalem?” a 19-year-old boy on the West Bank asked when the shooting started. “We don’t have shelters or gas masks. If there’s an attack, we’ll die in flocks. If we make any problems, [Israeli soldiers] will flatten the whole area.” News of Saddam’s misile attacks on Israel brought a fatalistic elation. “For the first time in Arab history we have a man who does what he says he’s going to do,” said a young Palestinian in Amman. “With these flimsy rockets he put the whole of Israel in the bunker.” There were even faint hopes that Saddam’s strikes against Tel Aviv might somehow balance the scales of pride enough to allow a settlement. “Of course lots of

people are getting killed,” said economist Riad Khouri in Amman. “But what this amounts to is a diplomatic seesaw. What one hopes is that they can reach the same level and jump off and reach a solution.”

Such hopes were slim, at best. Many Palestinians expect the war to produce only regional apocalypse. They envision the fall of regimes in Syria, the gulf, Egypt, even Algeria. Jordan could become first a battlefield, then a dumping ground for Israel’s Palestinians—perhaps, by Palestinian lights, a second-rate substitute homeland. At the very least, defeat for Saddam will mean a new surge of Islamic fundamentalism. “In every setback, our religious conviction has been strengthened,” said a 64-year-old Nablus man who has lived with war and defeat since 1948. Assurances from America and Europe—that the Palestinian issue will

do, they cut it off.”

The Palestinians fear that Israel's strategy is to force each of its neighbors to make a separate peace. With Egypt it succeeded in 1979. After the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, only Syrian-backed terrorism stopped Israel from garnering a Lebanese treaty. Saboteurs killed the Lebanese president who was to sign it, and suicide bombers helped drive out the U.S. Marines who defended it. Jordan and Syria have held out for an international conference that includes all the parties to the conflict. In any other framework they would be too weak to deal with the Israelis on equal terms. Jordan also came to depend on Iraq for military and financial backup in the region's delicate, complex balance of power. Should Iraq be destroyed, a senior Jordanian official said late last year, Jordan could be left with no choice but to sign a separate treaty with Israel. The Palestinians, unrecognized by Israel as a people with national rights, and with no land of their own, fear they will be left out of the picture altogether.

The Europeans have been well intentioned toward the Palestinians, but ineffectual. The gulf Arabs have paid lip service to the Palestinian cause since the invasion of Kuwait, but they have expelled Palestinian workers and cut off donations to PLO coffers. Many Kuwaitis and Saudis are frank-

ANDY HERNANDEZ FOR NEWSWEEK

Anti-U.S. demonstrators in Amman on the eve of war

THE WAR
LOOKING
AHEAD

Once Iraq is defeated, would you support or oppose a comprehensive Mideast peace conference that would take up the issue of Israel and the Palestinians?

80% Support

9% Oppose

From the NEWSWEEK Poll of Jan. 17-18, 1991.

48 NEWSWEEK: JANUARY 28, 1991

rank high on the agenda after the war—came across as more empty words. “One of the worst effects of this war will be the emergence of Israel as an undeterrable force,” said a senior Palestinian official in Jordan’s government.

A Western strategist might argue that after defeating Saddam, who was Israel's most powerful enemy, Washington will be in position to propel the Israelis to negotiate a durable peace. But all the Palestinians can see is U.S. power crushing their would-be savior. Israel itself remains flatly opposed to the idea of an international conference on the Palestinian question. “There would be no new ideas brought up,” former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin said last week. And Washington historically has failed to bring the unwilling Israelis to the table. “The Americans and the Israelis don’t want the Arab people to lift up their head,” said Khalaf Mahmoud, a dental technician in Amman. “If they

Reflections on Containment

Henry Kissinger

THE SUCCESS AND PAIN OF THE STRATEGY

NO MATTER WHAT Wilsonian-minded American statesmen called them, by late 1945 spheres of influence were emerging across Europe, and they were to remain in place until the collapse of communism four decades later. Under U.S. leadership, the Western occupation zones of Germany were consolidated, while the Soviet Union turned the countries of Eastern Europe into its appendages. The erstwhile Axis Powers—Italy, Japan and, after 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany—gradually moved toward alliance with the United States. The Soviet Union cemented its dominance over Eastern Europe by means of coercion. At the same time, the Kremlin tried its utmost to interrupt the process of Western consolidation by fostering a guerrilla war in Greece and by encouraging mass demonstrations by West European communist parties, especially in France and Italy.

American leaders concluded that they had to resist further Soviet expansion. But their national tradition caused them to seek to justify this resistance on nearly any basis other than as an appeal to the traditional balance of power. In doing this, American leaders were not being hypocritical. When they finally came to recognize that Franklin D. Roosevelt's vision of a peaceful globe guarded by the four police-men (the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and China) could

HENRY KISSINGER was National Security Adviser and Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations. This essay is adapted from his eleventh book, *Diplomacy*, with the permission of Simon & Schuster. Copyright 1994 © by Henry A. Kissinger.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS · May/June 1994

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Henry Kissinger

not be implemented, they preferred to interpret this development as a
temporary setback on the way to an essentially harmonious world
order. Here they faced a philosophical challenge. Was Soviet intransi-
gence merely a passing phase, which Washington could wait out? Were
the Americans, as former Vice President Henry Wallace and his fol-
lowers suggested, unwittingly causing the Soviets to feel paranoid by
not adequately communicating their pacific intentions to Stalin? Did
Stalin really reject postwar cooperation with the strongest nation in the
world? Did he not want in the end to be America's friend?

As the highest policymaking circles in Washington considered
those questions, a document arrived on February 22, 1946, from an
expert on Russia, one George Kennan, a relatively junior diplomat at
the American embassy in Moscow, that was to provide the philo-
sophical and conceptual framework for interpreting Stalin's foreign
policy. Rarely does an embassy report by itself reshape Washington's
view of the world, but what later came to be known as the "Long
Telegram" emphatically did. Kennan maintained that the United
States should stop blaming itself for Soviet intransigence; the sources
of Soviet foreign policy lay deep within the Soviet system itself. For
Kennan, communist ideology was at the heart of Stalin's approach to
the world. Stalin regarded the Western capitalist powers as irrevoca-
bly hostile. The friction between the Soviet Union and America was
therefore not the product of some misunderstanding or faulty com-
munication between Moscow and Washington but was inherent in
the Soviet Union's perception of the outside world.

From time immemorial, argued Kennan, the Russian tsars had
sought to expand their territory. They had sought to subjugate
Poland and to turn it into a dependent nation. They had regarded
Bulgaria as within Russia's sphere of influence. And they had sought
a warm-water port on the Mediterranean, mandating control of the
Black Sea Straits:

At bottom of Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity. Originally, this was insecurity of a peaceful, agricultural people trying to live on vast exposed plain in neighborhood of fierce nomadic peoples. To this was added, as Russia came into contact with economically advanced West, fear of more competent, more powerful, more highly organized societies in that area. But this latter type of

[114]

FOREIGN AFFAIRS · Volume 73 No.3

Reflections on Containment

insecurity was one which afflicted rather Russian rulers than Russian peo-
ple; for Russian rulers have invariably sensed that their rule was relatively
archaic in form, fragile and artificial in its psychological foundation, unable
to stand comparison or contact with political systems of Western countries.

This historical insecurity was, according to Kennan, given a new
sense of urgency by communist dogma:

In this [communist] dogma, with its basic altruism of purpose, they found
justification for their instinctive fear of outside world, for the dictatorship
without which they did not know how to rule, for cruelties they did not
dare not to inflict, for sacrifices they felt bound to demand. . . . Without it
they would stand before history, at best, as only the last of that long suc-
cession of cruel and wasteful Russian rulers who have relentlessly forced
[their] country on to ever new heights of military power in order to guar-
antee external security of their internally weak regimes. . . .

America, Kennan argued, had to hunker down for a long struggle; the
goals and philosophies of the United States and of the Soviet Union
were irreconcilable.

In a top-secret study dated September 24, 1946, Truman adviser
Clark Clifford fell in with this view: "The main deterrent to Soviet
attack on the United States, or to attack on areas of the world which
are vital to our security, will be the military power of this country."
By now, this had become conventional wisdom. But Clifford used it
as a springboard from which to proclaim a global American security
mission, embracing "all democratic countries which are in any way
menaced or endangered by the U.S.S.R." It was not clear what was
meant by "democratic." Did this qualification limit America's
defense to Western Europe, or was it a courtesy that extended to any
threatened area and thus required the United States to defend simul-
taneously the jungles of Southeast Asia, the deserts of the Middle
East and densely populated Central Europe? In time, the latter
interpretation became dominant.

Clifford rejected any similarity between the emerging policy of
containment and traditional diplomacy. In his view, the Soviet-Amer-
ican conflict was not caused by clashing national interests—which by
definition might be negotiated—but by the moral shortcomings of the
Soviet leadership. Therefore, the goal of American policy was not so
much to restore the balance of power as to transform Soviet society.

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Just as in 1917 Wilson had blamed the need for a declaration of war on the kaiser rather than on the threat Germany posed to American security, so Clifford now ascribed Soviet-American tensions to "a small ruling clique and not the Soviet people." A significant Soviet change of heart, and probably a new set of Soviet leaders, was required before an overall Soviet-American agreement would be possible. At some dramatic moment, these new leaders would "work out with us a fair and equitable settlement when they realize that we are too strong to be beaten and too determined to be frightened."

Neither Clifford nor any subsequent American statesman involved in the discussion of the Cold War ever put forward specific terms to end the confrontation or to initiate a process that would bring about negotiations to do so. So long as the Soviet Union maintained its ideology, negotiations were treated as pointless. After a Soviet change of heart, a settlement would become nearly automatic. In either case, spelling out the terms of such a settlement in advance was deemed to inhibit America's freedom of action—the same argument that had been used during World War II to avoid discussion of the postwar world. America now had the conceptual framework to justify political and military resistance to Soviet expansionism.

TRUMAN EXPANDS THE CONCEPT

SINCE THE END of the war, Soviet pressures had followed historical Russian patterns. The Soviet Union controlled the Balkans (except for Yugoslavia) and a guerrilla war was raging in Greece, supported from bases in communist Yugoslavia and the Bulgarian Soviet satellite. Territorial demands were being made against Turkey, along with a request for Soviet bases in the Straits—very much along the lines of what Stalin had wanted from Hitler on November 25, 1940. Ever since the end of the war, Great Britain had supported both Greece and Turkey, economically as well as militarily. In the winter of 1946-47, the Attlee Government of Britain informed Washington that it could no longer shoulder the burden. Truman was prepared to take over Great Britain's historical role of blocking a Russian advance toward the Mediterranean, but neither the American public nor Con-

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gress could countenance the traditional British geopolitical rationale. Resistance to Soviet expansionism had to spring from principles based strictly on the American approach to foreign policy.

This imperative became apparent at a key meeting held on February 27, 1947, in the Oval Office. Truman, Secretary of State Marshall and Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson sought to persuade a congressional delegation led by Senator Arthur Vandenberg (R-Mich.) of the importance of aid to Greece and Turkey—a formidable assignment, since the traditionally isolationist Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. Marshall led off with a dispassionate analysis setting forth the relationship between the proposed aid program and American interests. He elicited stereotypical grumblings about “pulling Britain’s chestnuts out of the fire,” the iniquities of the balance of power and the burdens of foreign aid. Recognizing that the administration was about to lose its case, Acheson asked Marshall in a whisper whether this was a private fight or whether anyone could join in.

Given the floor, Acheson proceeded, in the words of one aide, “to pull out all the stops.” Acheson boldly presented the group with visions of a bleak future in which the forces of communism stood to gain the upper hand: “Only two great powers remained in the world . . . [the] United States and the Soviet Union. We had arrived at a situation unparalleled since ancient times. Not since Rome and Carthage had there been such a polarization of power on this earth. . . . For the United States to take steps to strengthen countries threatened with Soviet aggression or communist subversion . . . was to protect the security of the United States—it was to protect freedom itself.”

When it became evident that Acheson had roused the congressional delegation, the administration stuck to his basic approach. From that point on, the Greek-Turkish aid program was portrayed as part of the global struggle between democracy and dictatorship. When, on March 12, 1947, Truman announced the doctrine that would later be named after him, he dropped the strategic aspect of Acheson's analysis and spoke in traditional Wilsonian terms of a

> Once America had thrown down the moral gauntlet, only a collapse of the Soviet system could end the conflict.

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struggle between two ways of life: "One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections and the suppression of personal freedoms."

Had Soviet leaders been more aware of American history, they would have understood the ominous nature of what the president was saying. The Truman Doctrine marked a watershed because, once America had thrown down the moral gauntlet, the kind of realpolitik Stalin understood best would be forever at an end, and bargaining over reciprocal concessions would be out of the question. Henceforth, the conflict could only be settled by a change in Soviet purposes, by the collapse of the Soviet system, or both. Truman had proclaimed his doctrine as "the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." Inevitably, criticism of the objective of defending democracy appeared at both ends of the intellectual spectrum: some protested that America was defending countries that, however important, were morally unworthy; others objected that America was committing itself to the defense of societies that, whether free or not, were not vital to American security. It was an ambiguity that refused to go away, generating debates that have not ended to this day about American purposes in nearly every crisis. Ever since, American foreign policy has been obliged to navigate between those who assail it for being amoral and those who criticize it for going beyond the national interest through crusading moralism.

Once the challenge had been defined as the very future of democracy, America could not wait until a civil war actually occurred, as it had in Greece. On June 5, less than three months after the announcement of the Truman Doctrine, Secretary Marshall in a commencement address at Harvard committed America to the task of eradicating the social and economic conditions that tempted aggression. America would aid European recovery, announced Marshall, to avoid

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THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE

Charting containment's course

"political disturbances" and "desperation," to restore the world economy and to nurture free institutions. Therefore, "[any] government that is willing to assist in the task of recovery will find full cooperation, I am sure, on the part of the United States government." In other words, participation in the Marshall Plan was open even to governments in the Soviet orbit—a hint taken up in Warsaw and Prague and just as quickly squelched by Stalin.

Only a country as idealistic, as pioneering and as relatively inexperienced as the United States could have advanced a plan for global economic recovery based solely on its own resources. And yet the very sweep of that vision elicited a national commitment that would sustain the Cold War generation through its final victory. The program of economic recovery, said Secretary Marshall, would be "directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos." Just as when the Atlantic Charter had been proclaimed, a global crusade against hunger and despair was found to be more persuasive to Americans than appeals to immediate self-interest or the balance of power.

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THE X ARTICLE

AT THE END of all of these more or less random initiatives, there emerged a document that would, for over a generation, serve as the bible of the containment policy, indeed which supplied it with its very name. All the various strands of American postwar thought were brought together in an extraordinary article published in July 1947 in *Foreign Affairs*. Though it was anonymously signed by "X," the author was later identified as George F. Kennan, by then head of the policy planning staff of the State Department. Of the thousands of articles written since the end of the Second World War, Kennan's "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" stands in a class by itself. In this lucidly written, passionately argued literary adaptation of his "Long Telegram," Kennan raised the Soviet challenge to the level of philosophy of history.

By the time Kennan's article appeared, Soviet intransigence had become the staple of policy documents. Kennan's distinctive contribution was to explain the ways in which hostility to the democracies was inherent in the Soviet domestic structure and why that structure would prove impervious to conciliatory Western policies. Tension with the outside world was inherent in the very nature of communist philosophy and, above all, in the way the Soviet system was being run domestically. Internally, the Communist Party was the only organized group, with the rest of society fragmented into an inchoate mass. Thus the Soviet Union's implacable hostility to the outside world was an attempt to gear international affairs to its own internal rhythm. The main concern of Soviet policy was "to make sure that it has filled every nook and cranny available to it in the basin of world power." The way to defeat Soviet strategy was by "a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counterforce at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world."

Like almost every other contemporary foreign policy document, Kennan's "X" article disdained the elaboration of a precise diplomatic goal. What he sketched was the age-old American dream of a peace achieved by the conversion of the adversary, albeit in language more elevated and far more trenchant in its perception than that of any contemporary. But where Kennan differed from other experts was when

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he described the mechanism by which, sooner or later, through one
power struggle or another, the Soviet system would be fundamentally
transformed. Since that system had never managed a "legitimate"
transfer of power, Kennan thought it likely that,
at some point, various contestants for authority
might reach down into these politically immature
and inexperienced masses in order to find support
for their respective claims. If this were ever to
happen, strange consequences could flow for the
Communist Party: "For the membership at large
has been exercised only in the practices of iron
discipline and obedience and not in the arts of
compromise and accommodation. . . . If, conse-

quently, anything were ever to occur to disrupt the unity and efficacy
of the party as a political instrument, Soviet Russia might be changed
overnight from one of the strongest to one of the weakest and most
pitiable of national societies."

No other document forecast quite so accurately what would in fact
take place after the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev. And in the after-
math of so total a collapse of the Soviet Union, it may seem carping.
to point out just how back-breaking an assignment Kennan had pre-
scribed for his people. For he had charged America with combating
Soviet pressures for the indefinite future all around a vast periphery
that embraced the widely differing circumstances of Asia, the Middle
East and Europe. The Kremlin was, moreover, free to select its point
of attack, presumably only where it calculated it would have the great-
est advantage. Throughout subsequent crises, the American political
objective was deemed to be the preservation of the status quo, with
the overall effort producing communism's final collapse only after a
protracted series of ostensibly inconclusive conflicts. It was surely the
ultimate expression of America's national optimism and unimpaired
sense of self-confidence that as sophisticated an observer as George
Kennan could have assigned his society a role so global, so stern and,
at the same time, so reactive.

Kennan sketched
the American dream
of a peace achieved
by conversion of the
adversary.

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THE INGREDIENTS OF CONTAINMENT

THIS STARK, EVEN HEROIC, doctrine of perpetual struggle committed the American people to endless contests with rules that left the initiative to the adversary and confined America's role to strengthening the countries already on its side of the dividing line—a classic policy of spheres of interest. By abjuring negotiations, the containment policy wasted precious time during the period of America's greatest relative strength—while it still had the atomic monopoly. Indeed, given the premise of containment—that positions of strength had yet to be built—the Cold War became both militarized and imbued with an inaccurate impression of the West's relative weakness.

The redemption of the Soviet Union became the ultimate goal of policy; stability could emerge only after evil had been exorcised. It was no accident that Kennan's article concluded with a peroration instructing his impatient, peace-loving compatriots about the virtues of patience and interpreting their international role as a test of their country's worthiness:

> The issue of Soviet-American relations is in essence a test of the overall worth of the United States as a nation among nations. . . . The thoughtful observer of Russian-American relations will find no cause for complaint in the Kremlin's challenge to American society. He will rather experience a certain gratitude to a providence which, by providing the American people with this implacable challenge, has made their entire security as a nation dependent on their pulling themselves together and accepting the responsibilities of moral and political leadership that history plainly intended them to bear.

One of the outstanding features of these noble sentiments was their peculiar ambivalence. They rallied America to a global mission but made the task so complex that America would nearly tear itself apart trying to fulfill it. Yet the very ambivalence of containment seemed to lend an extraordinary impetus to American policy. Though essentially passive with respect to diplomacy with the Soviet Union, containment evoked tenacious creativity when it came to building “positions of strength” in the military and economic realms. This was because in containment were merged lessons derived from the two most important American experiences of the previous generation: from the New

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Reflections on Containment

Deal came the belief that threats to political stability arise primarily
from gaps between economic and social expectations and reality,
hence the Marshall Plan; from the Second World War America
learned that the best protection against aggression is having over-
whelming power and the willingness to use it, hence the Atlantic
alliance. The Marshall Plan was designed to get Europe on its feet
economically. NATO was to look after its security.

THE CRITIQUES OF CONTAINMENT

AS CONTAINMENT SLOWLY took shape, the criticism it encountered emerged from three different schools of thought. The first came from the “realists,” exemplified by Walter Lippmann, who argued that the containment policy led to psychological and geopolitical overex tension while draining American resources. The spokesman for the second school of thought was Winston Churchill, who objected to the postponement of negotiations until after positions of strength had been achieved. Finally, there was Henry Wallace, who denied Amer ica the moral right to undertake the policy of containment in the first place. Postulating a fundamental moral equivalence between both sides, Wallace argued that the Soviet sphere of influence in Central Europe was legitimate and that America’s resistance to it only intensified tension. He urged a return to what he viewed as Roo sevelt’s policy: to end the Cold War by American conciliation.

As the most eloquent spokesman for the realists, Walter Lippmann rejected Kennan's proposition that Soviet society contained the seeds of its own decay. He considered the theory to be too speculative to serve as the foundation of American policy: containment, argued Lippmann, would draw America into the hinterlands of the Soviet empire's extended periphery, which included, in his view, many countries that were not states in the modern sense to begin with. Military entanglements that far from home could not enhance American security and would weaken American resolve. Containment, according to Lippmann, permitted the Soviet Union to choose the points of maximum discomfiture for the United States while retaining the diplomatic, and even the military, initiative. Lippmann stressed the importance of estab-

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lishing criteria to define areas in which countering Soviet expansion was a vital American interest. Without such criteria, the United States would be forced to organize a "heterogeneous array of satellites, clients, dependents and puppets," which would permit America's newfound allies to exploit containment for their own purposes. The United States would be trapped into propping up nonviable regimes, leaving Washington with the sorry choice between "appeasement and defeat and the loss of face, or . . . support[ing] them [U.S. allies] at incalculable cost."

It was indeed a prophetic analysis of what lay ahead for the United States, though the remedy Lippmann proposed was hardly congenial to the universalist American tradition, which was far closer to Kennan's expectation of an apocalyptic outcome. Lippmann asked that American foreign policy be guided by a case-by-case analysis of American interests rather than by general principles presumed to be universally applicable. In his view, American policy should have been aiming less at overthrowing the communist system than at restoring the balance of power in Europe, which had been destroyed by the war. Containment implied the indefinite division of Europe, whereas America's real interest should be to banish Soviet power from the center of the European continent:

> For more than a hundred years all Russian governments have sought to expand over Eastern Europe. But only since the Red Army reached the Elbe River have the rulers of Russia been able to realize the ambitions of the Russian empire and the ideological purposes of communism. A genuine policy would, therefore, have as its paramount objective a settlement which brought about the evacuation of Europe. . . . American power must be available, not to 'contain' the Russians at scattered points, but to hold the whole Russian military machine in check, and to exert a mounting pressure in support of a diplomatic policy which has as its concrete objective a settlement that means withdrawal.

From among its intellectuals, America was able to draw on the thinking of both Lippmann and Kennan while they were at the height of their powers. Kennan correctly understood communism's underlying weakness; Lippmann accurately foretold the frustrations of an essentially reactive foreign policy based on containment. Kennan called for endurance to permit history to display its inevitable tendencies; Lippmann called for diplomatic initiative to produce a European settlement while America was still preponderant. Kennan had a

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better intuitive understanding of the mainsprings of American soci-
ety; Lippmann grasped the impending strain of enduring a seemingly
endless stalemate and of the ambiguous causes that containment
might lead America to support.

THE MOST COMPELLING ALTERNATIVE

IN THE END, Lippmann's analysis found a substantial following, though mainly among the opponents of confrontation with the Soviet Union. And their approbation was based on only one aspect of Lippmann's argument, emphasizing as they did its critique while ignoring its prescriptions. They noted Lippmann's call for more limited objectives but overlooked his recommendation for more aggressive diplomacy. Thus it happened that in the 1940s the most compelling alternative strategy to the doctrine of containment came from none other than Winston Churchill, then leader of the Opposition in the British Parliament.

Churchill supported containment, but for him it was never an end
in itself. Unwilling to wait passively for the collapse of communism,
he sought to shape history rather than rely on it to do his work for
him. What he was after was a negotiated settlement. His "iron cur-
tain" speech at Fulton, Missouri had merely hinted at negotiations.
On October 9, 1948, at Llandudno, Wales, Churchill returned to his
argument that the West's bargaining position would never be better
than it was at that moment. In a much-neglected speech, he said:

No one in his senses can believe that we have a limitless period of time
before us. We ought to bring matters to a head and make a final settlement.
We ought not to go jogging along improvident, incompetent, waiting for
something to turn up, by which I mean waiting for something bad for us to
turn up. The Western nations will be far more likely to reach a lasting set-
tlement, without bloodshed, if they formulate their just demands while they
have the atomic power and before the Russian communists have got it too.

Two years later, Churchill made the same plea in the House of Com-
mons: the democracies were quite strong enough to negotiate, and
would only weaken themselves by waiting. Defending NATO rearma-
ment on November 30, 1950, he warned that arming the West would
not by itself change its bargaining position, which, in the end,
depended on America's atomic monopoly:

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Henry Kissinger

[W]hile it is right to build up our forces as fast as we can, nothing in this
process, in the period I have mentioned, will deprive Russia of effective
superiority in what are now called the conventional arms. All that it will do
is to give us increasing unity in Europe and magnify the deterrents against
aggression. . . . Therefore I am in favour of efforts to reach a settlement
with Soviet Russia as soon as a suitable opportunity presents itself, and of
making those efforts while the immense and measureless superiority of the
United States atomic bomb organization offsets the Soviet predominance
in every other military respect.

For Churchill, a position of strength was already in place; for
American leaders, it had yet to be created. Churchill thought of nego-
tiations as a way of relating power to diplomacy. And though he was
never specific, his public statements strongly suggest that he envis-
aged some kind of diplomatic ultimatum by the Western democra-
cies. American leaders recoiled before employing their atomic
monopoly, even as a threat. Churchill wanted to shrink the area of
Soviet influence, but was prepared to coexist with Soviet power within
reduced limits. The American leaders had a nearly visceral dislike of
spheres of influence. They wanted to destroy and not to shrink their
adversary's sphere. Their preference was to wait for total victory and
for the collapse of communism, however far off, to bring about a
Wilsonian solution to the problem of world order.

The disagreement came down to a difference between the historical
experiences of Great Britain and America. Churchill's society was all too
familiar with imperfect outcomes; Truman and his advisers came from a
tradition in which, once a problem had been recognized, it was usually
overcome by the deployment of vast resources. Hence America's prefer-
ence for final resolutions and its distrust of the sort of compromise that
had become a British specialty. The American view prevailed, because
America was stronger than Great Britain, and because Churchill, as
leader of the British Opposition, was in no position to press his strategy.

HENRY WALLACE AND THE RADICAL TRADITION

IN THE END, the most vocal and persistent challenge to American
policy came from neither the realist school of Lippmann nor
Churchill's balance-of-power thinking, but from a tradition with
roots deep within American radical thought. Whereas Lippmann and

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Churchill accepted the Truman administration's premise that Soviet expansionism represented a serious challenge and only contested the strategy for resisting it, the radical critics rejected every aspect of containment. Henry Wallace, vice president during Roosevelt's third term, former secretary of agriculture, and secretary of commerce under Truman, was its principal spokesman.

A product of America's populist tradition, Wallace had an abiding Yankee distrust of Great Britain. Like most American liberals since Jefferson, he insisted that "the same moral principles which governed in private life also should govern in international affairs." In Wallace's view, America had lost its moral compass and was practicing a foreign policy of "Machiavellian principles of deceit, force and distrust," as he told an audience in Madison Square Garden on September 12, 1946. Since prejudice, hatred and fear were the root causes of international conflict, the United States had no moral right to intervene abroad until it had banished these scourges from its own society. The new radicalism reaffirmed the historical vision of America as a beacon of liberty but, in the process, turned it against itself. Postulating the moral equivalence of American and Soviet actions became a characteristic of the radical critique throughout the Cold War. The very idea of America having international responsibilities was, in Wallace's eyes, an example of the arrogance of power. The British, he argued, were duping the gullible Americans into doing their bidding: "British policy clearly is to provoke distrust between the United States and Russia and thus prepare the groundwork for World War III."

To Wallace, Truman's presentation of the conflict as one between
democracy and dictatorship was pure fiction. In 1945, a time when Soviet
postwar repression was becoming increasingly obvious and the brutality
of collectivization was widely recognized, Wallace declared that "the
Russians today have more of the political freedoms than they ever had."
He also discovered "increasingly the signs of religious toleration" in the
U.S.S.R. and claimed that there was a "basic lack of conflict between the
United States and the Soviet Union." Wallace thought that Soviet pol-
icy was driven less by expansionism than by fear. In his speech at Madi-
son Square Garden in August 1946, Wallace laid down a direct challenge
to Truman, which caused the president to demand Wallace's resignation:

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We may not like what Russia does in Eastern Europe. Her type of land reform, industrial expropriation and suppression of basic liberties offends the great majority of the people of the United States. But whether we like it or not the Russians will try to socialize their sphere of influence just as we try to democratize our sphere of influence. . . . Russian ideas of social-economic justice are going to govern nearly a third of the world. Our ideas of free enterprise democracy will govern much of the rest. The two ideas will endeavor to prove which can deliver the most satisfaction to the common man in their respective areas of political dominance.

In a curious reversal of roles, the self-proclaimed defender of morality in foreign policy accepted a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe on practical grounds, while the administration he was attacking for cynical power politics rejected the Soviet sphere on moral grounds.

Wallace's challenge collapsed after the communist coup in Czechoslovakia, the Berlin blockade and the invasion of South Korea. As a presidential candidate in 1948, he gained only one million votes against more than 24 million for Truman, placing him fourth. Nevertheless, Wallace managed to develop themes that would remain staples of the American radical critique throughout the Cold War and move to center stage during the Vietnam conflict. These emphasized America's moral inadequacies and those of the friends it was supporting; a basic moral equivalence between America and its communist challengers; the proposition that America had no obligation to defend any area of the world against largely imaginary threats; and the view that world opinion was a better guide to foreign policy than geopolitical concepts. When aid to Greece and Turkey was first proposed, Wallace urged the Truman administration to put the issue before the United Nations. If "the Russians exercised their veto, the moral burden would be on them. . . . [W]hen we act independently . . . the moral burden is on us." Seizing the moral high ground meant more than whether America's geopolitical interests were being safeguarded.

Though Wallace's radical critique of American postwar foreign policy was defeated in the 1940s, its basic tenets reflected a deep strain of American idealism that continued to tug at the nation's soul. The same moral convictions that had conferred such energy on America's international commitments also had the potential to be turned inward by disillusionment with the outside world, or with America's own imperfections. In the 1920s, isolationism had caused America to withdraw

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Reflections on Containment

on the grounds that it was too good for the world; in the Wallace
movement and its heirs, it revived itself in the proposition that Amer-
ica should withdraw because it was not good enough for the world.

THE COMPLEXITY OF CONTAINMENT

ONE RESULT OF THE containment policy was that the United
States relegated itself to an essentially passive diplomacy during the
period of its greatest power. That is why containment was increasingly
challenged by yet another constituency, of which John Foster Dulles
became the most vocal spokesman. His constituents were the conser-
vatives who accepted the premises of containment but questioned the
absence of urgency with which it was being pursued. Even if con-
tainment did in the end succeed in undermining Soviet society, these
critics argued, it would take too long and cost too much. Whatever
containment might accomplish a strategy of liberation would surely
accelerate. By the end of Truman's presidency, the containment pol-
icy was caught in a crossfire between those who considered it too bel-
licose (the followers of Wallace) and those who thought it too passive
(the conservative Republicans).

This controversy accelerated because, as Lippmann had predicted,
international crises increasingly moved to peripheral regions of the
globe, where the moral issues were confused and direct threats to
American security were difficult to demonstrate. America found itself
drawn into wars in areas not protected by alliances and on behalf of
ambiguous causes and inconclusive outcomes. From Korea to Viet-
nam, these enterprises kept alive the radical critique, which continued
to question the moral validity of containment. Thus surfaced a new
variant of American exceptionalism. With all of its imperfections, the
America of the nineteenth century had thought of itself as the beacon
of liberty; in the 1960s and 1970s, the torch was said to be flickering
and would need to be relit before America could return to its histori-
cal role as an inspiration to the cause of freedom. The debate over con-
tainment turned into a struggle for the very soul of America. As early
as 1957, even George Kennan had come to reinterpret containment in
this light when he wrote: "To my own countrymen who have often

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asked me where best to apply the hand to counter the Soviet threat, I have accordingly had to reply: to our American failings, to the things we are ashamed of in our own eyes, or that worry us; to the racial problem, to the conditions in our big cities, to the education and environment of our young people, to the growing gap between specialized knowledge and popular understanding.”

A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security.

A decade earlier, before he had become disillusioned by what he considered the militarization of his invention, George Kennan would have recognized that no such choice existed. A country that demands moral

perfection of itself as a test of its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security. It was a measure of Kennan's achievement that, by 1957, the free world's parapets had been manned, his own views having made a decisive contribution to this effort. The parapets were in fact being manned so effectively that America permitted itself to indulge in a hefty dose of self-criticism.

Containment was an extraordinary theory—at once hardheaded and idealistic, profound in its assessment of Soviet motivations yet curiously abstract in its prescriptions. Thoroughly American in its utopianism, it assumed that the collapse of a totalitarian adversary could be achieved in an essentially benign way. Although this doctrine was formulated at the height of America's absolute power, it preached America's relative weakness. Postulating a grand diplomatic encounter at the moment of its culmination, containment allowed no role for diplomacy until the climactic final scene in which the men in the white hats accepted the conversion of the men in the black hats.

With all of these qualifications, containment was a doctrine that saw America through more than four decades of construction, struggle and, ultimately, triumph. The victim of its ambiguities turned out to be not the peoples America had set out to defend—on the whole successfully—but the American conscience. Tormenting itself in its traditional quest for moral perfection, America would emerge, after more than a generation of struggle, lacerated by its exertions and controversies, yet having achieved almost everything it had set out to do.⑫

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Beginning of the End of the Kohl Era

Chancellor Helmut Kohl's coalition has prevailed with the narrowest margin in parliament since the first German national election after the war, when Konrad Adenauer emerged as chancellor by dint of a single vote (presumably his own). Kohl's is nevertheless an extraordinary achievement. He rebounded from being behind by double digits to win his fourth consecutive election despite a major recession, in the face of a substantial tax increase in West Germany to cover the unexpectedly high costs of unification, and in the midst of the pangs of upheaval associated with the political and economic restructuring of East Germany.

In the German political system the margin by which a chancellor is chosen is not necessarily an indication of his ability to govern. Once established by the parliament, a chancellor can be replaced only by a majority vote for a successor and not, as in a parliamentary system, by a vote of no-confidence or a majority against specific policies. A hostile, closely divided parliament can harass the chancellor, as this one surely will. And the upper house will in any event be dominated by the Social Democrats. But a positive vote to replace him remains hard to achieve. No wonder foreign policy professionals and financial markets breathed a sigh of relief at Kohl's accession.

Adenauer's narrow margin did not prevent him from becoming a dominant chancellor. And it will not by itself diminish Kohl's authority, because the Kohl coalition's real margin is greater than it appears. No current leader would accept becoming chancellor through the 30 seats of the former Communist party, which entered the parliament by a heretofore inoperative clause in the constitution. To change the chancellor, the Free Democratic Party with its 47 seats would have to switch coalitions.

But this is precisely why the election is likely to be viewed in retrospect as an augury of impending upheaval in the German political landscape—in fact, as the beginning of the end of the era of Kohl, an event that will bring home to Europe and to America how much Atlantic and European cohesion has come to depend on his towering personality. He has managed the NATO missile deployment, the unification of Germany and the integration of Europe with such matter-of-factness that few remember how precarious these processes were at every step along the way.

But the election makes it likely that Kohl's coalition partner, the liberal Free Democratic Party, will at a minimum become increasingly fractious. It may even abandon the coalition altogether and switch sides by midterm. For the Free Democrats are having an identity crisis. They know that they scraped by in this election by the skin of their teeth; they came very close to failing to achieve the 5 percent of the total vote which is

a prerequisite to entry into the federal parliament. They may well have crossed that hurdle primarily because Kohl's party encouraged the switch of enough of its own votes to sustain the governing coalition. And they have lost every election to state parliaments in the past three years.

The FDP seems to have reached the point which former vice chancellor and foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher described to me in 1980, when his party had been in coalition with the Social Democrats for more than 10 years. He had said then that the FDP would have to look for an opportunity to switch during the next electoral period because if its voters became too accustomed to a permanent coalition with the SPD, they would lose interest in a separate existence and vote for the SPD directly.

That situation seems to have arisen again, though the current FDP leader does not have the manipulative skill of his predecessor and would have to take into account the risk of a complete disintegration of his party if he tried to change coalitions. But self-interest will drive the FDP toward greater assertiveness and, at an opportune moment, tempt it to switch coalitions.

If, in the wake of the recent election, the FDP joins the Socialists and the Greens, it will be in a position to elect a new chancellor. Kohl's position will therefore be unprecedentedly precarious, and his government will require far greater effort than

ASSOCIATED PRESS

(over)

it has heretofore to pass its legislative program. In
addition, his own party may be tempted into
succession maneuvers, though Kohl's domination
of the machinery has so far squelched all would-be
successors.

Kohl had hinted strongly that if elected he
might not serve more than two years and would
hand over the rest of his term to a successor of his
own choosing. But after the recent election, such
a procedure could trigger the shift in coalitions by
giving the FDP a pretext to reject the Christian
Democratic Union's choice. On the other hand, if
Kohl serves out the course, he will have an
exhausting term as a prelude to fighting another
bitter election battle with—this time—very un-
certain allies constantly reviewing whether they
are more likely to reach 5 percent as the right
wing of an SPD-led coalition or as the left wing of
a CDU coalition.

To me, these are melancholy prospects because
I consider Kohl one of the seminal figures of our
period. He has been a guarantee of Germany's
Atlantic and European orientation and a shield
against the nationalistic or romantic temptations
from which his people have suffered through
much of their modern history. This does not
reflect a lack of confidence in the leaders of the
principal opposition party, the SPD, which proved
its sense of responsibility under chancellors Willy
Brandt and Helmut Schmidt. Since then, however,
its radical wing has grown far more restless; its
coalition party would be the Environmentalists,
the Greens, whose formal program rejects the
Atlantic Alliance and a major international role for
Germany. The center of gravity of such a coalition
would be much further left and would make the
implementation of traditional Atlantic policy much
more difficult.

The approaching end of the Kohl era is due not
only to electoral arithmetic but to the transition in
generations. Kohl is the last West German leader
with a living memory of World War II and its
aftermath, and for whom American help in recon-
structing Europe represents a personal, indeed a
sentimental, experience. The next generation—of
all the parties—will be less tied to traditional
interpretations, more cool-headed about assessing
national interests, and more ready to assert a
national German role. This will be reinforced by
the growing influence of the formerly Communist
part of Germany, a region whose people have
lived under totalitarianism for 60 consecutive
years, did not experience the great period of
Atlantic cooperation and European construction,
and who saw in nationalism a refuge from Com-
munist oppression.

These trends are compounded by the fact that
the post-Cold War world has cut Germany loose
from some of its previous moorings. When Ger-
many was divided, Europe provided a political

home and a substitute for a national policy. So
long as German armies stood on the Elbe, the
Atlantic Alliance was essential for German securi-
ty. Germany's unification removes one incentive
for subordination to supranational institutions, and
the retreat of Russian forces from Central Europe
eliminates another. At the same time, there has
been no American initiative to define new purpos-
es for the Atlantic Alliance other than the Partner-
ship for Peace, which erodes geographic delinea-
tions without developing new common purposes.
No wonder that both the extent and the content of
Europe have become controversial—all tempta-
tions to a more national role.

For America, the approaching end of the Kohl
period represents a watershed of its own: whether
to continue emphasizing new universalist institu-
tions that threaten to weaken progressively the
Atlantic Alliance and change the nature of the
European Union, or to turn to revitalizing the
existing building blocks of the European order and
the Atlantic Community. The Clinton administra-
tion will not have time to pursue both approaches
in partnership with Kohl; it must establish priori-
ties. Unless the Atlantic Alliance is given a
mission and a purpose reflecting its historic es-
sence, it will gradually dissolve in a mishmash of
universalist slogans indistinguishable from those
of the United Nations and of general collective
security. One can hardly build Europe—or an
Atlantic partnership—if one is not willing to
define where Europe begins and ends.

In the time remaining, America must work with
Kohl on defining membership in both the Atlantic
Alliance and the European Union for the states of
Eastern Europe, and on creating new but different
structures for political consultation with the states
arising out of the former Soviet Union. A clear
sense of identity of the Atlantic Alliance and a
clear definition of the European Union is a prereq-
uisite to good relations with Russia. The reluc-
tance to draw new lines means reliance on those
made irrelevant by the end of the Cold War.
Neither Europe nor the Atlantic Alliance can stop
at the East German border without creating a
vacuum between Germany and Russia—the his-
torical source of European wars.

Revitalizing European and Atlantic institutions
would be a noble culmination of Kohl's steward-
ship. It is important, for whatever happens, Amer-
ica and Europe will not soon find so reliable and so
courageous a partner as Chancellor Kohl.

Henry Kissinger

Out of Haiti—Fast

*Another attempt at nation-building will trap us in an endless enterprise
before it ends in a fiasco.*

The Washington Post
Sunday, September 25, 1994

The ink was barely dry on the agreement negotiated by President Carter's team in Haiti when second-guessing developed. It came as a shock to many that the administration postponed its proclaimed goal of over-throwing the junta and that the landing in Haiti was brought about with the cooperation of leaders described by President Clinton as mass murders only 72 hours earlier.

But the criticism should focus not so much on the culmination of the crisis as on the policy that left no other option except military invasion by a high-tech superpower of a practically unarmed country and the poorest nation of the Western Hemisphere. The agreement negotiated by the Carter team saves American and Haitian lives, removes the Haitian junta, albeit with a slight delay, and returns the deposed elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to power, sacrificing only grandiloquent statements that should never have been made. Most important, the brief interval in which these changes take place provides an opportunity for sober reflection about just how deeply America should launch itself into the Haitian morass.

In my view, any prolonged military occupation must be avoided; another attempt at nation-building will trap us in an endless enterprise before it ends in a fiasco. Too much has already been staked; some relationship between means and ends must be reestablished.

The basic dilemmas of postwar American foreign policy have been the result of enterprises undertaken lightly, with little if any opposition, and from which extrication proved hellishly difficult. The Carter mission has eased the entry of American troops—a success that is also an admission ticket to the far more complex danger of American forces finding themselves engulfed in the passions and conflicts of Haitian factions much more practiced in violence than in pluralism and which may yet undermine the agreement. A prolonged U.S. military occupation of Haiti would almost guarantee that the hatreds accumulated over decades would overwhelm the purposes for which we entered.

I have always had grave doubts about military intervention to restore Aristide. That America should favor an elected president over the murderous junta was inherent in our values, and justified diplomatic pressure and embargoes of the kind that had, after all, contributed to the overthrow of the Duvalier dictatorship. But American lives should be risked only when there is a demonstrable threat to the national security, on behalf of clearly defined objectives and with forces proportionate to the objective.

The administration policy failed all three tests. Haiti posed no conceivable direct threat. Contrary to administration statements, the junta represented no model any Western Hemisphere nation might be tempted to follow. The stated objectives were vague, and the force deployed was disproportionate to any sensible goal. When CNN shows daily briefings by the press officer of the American Embassy in Port-au-Prince describing locations from which to view the planned invasion of the country to which he was accredited and promising the arrival of additional personnel to handle the overflow demand for invasion coverage, the argument that the threat represented by Haiti cannot wait for the operation of less drastic measures becomes hardly plausible. (Moreover, it raises the question of how to curb public relations efforts whose proconsular character undermines America's relations with the other nations of this hemisphere.)

Ambassador Madeleine Albright's invocatio-
ion of moral absolutes that transcend all
practical considerations is belied by the actual
record. The administration did not intervene
in Bosnia or Rwanda, where the atrocities
were far greater; in Rwanda, President Clin-
ton stood apart from genocide with the argu-
ment that America could not serve as the
world's policeman and that it had no national
interest in that part of Africa. The current
administration, like any other, cannot escape
the need for selectivity.

Thus the principal achievement of the Carter mission is that it provides a graceful exit from becoming engulfed in the vortex of Haitian domestic politics. It is senseless to talk of the "restoration" of democracy in a country that has never known democracy, or to equate the fact that Aristide was elected with a certificate of democratic practices—as Sen. Nunn has wisely pointed out. To turn Haiti into a pluralistic society may take a decade or more and cannot be achieved by military occupation.

Even the limited task of disarming Haiti's
armed forces implies difficult decisions: How,
when and by whom is the army to be disarmed
or restrained? To whom do we provide protec-
tion once Aristide is back in power? What
precisely are the terms of the amnesty and
which parliament approves it—the existing
one or that emerging from future elections?
Will Aristide abide by the amnesty despite his
opposition, and what is America's obligation to
enforce the Carter agreement?

(OUER)

Nor can the dilemmas of a prolonged military operation be avoided by turning nation-building over to the United Nations. I hope that President Clinton was speaking euphemistically when he presented America's policy on Haiti as reflecting some kind of international political consensus. For the international support we elicited was a tribute to America's power, not to its purposes. With the exception of Argentina, it included not a single major country of Latin America. Most of the nations participating from outside the hemisphere do so because of the economic strength of the United States, as a quid pro quo for past or future American security assistance, or to gain some influence over actions they far from approve. Neither Bangladesh nor Israel has heretofore exhibited any major political and security interests in the Caribbean. Thus there is no other group to which this assignment can be turned over. International support of a military occupation may provide a few auxiliaries and a modicum of financial help. But in the real world, the military occupation of Haiti will remain America's problem.

The artificial nature of this international support has already levied an exorbitant toll. One of the most hallowed principles of American foreign policy has been to keep the military power of other continents out of the Western Hemisphere. From the Monroe Doctrine to the 1947 Rio Treaty setting up a collective security system for the Western Hemisphere and in the decades since, every U.S. administration has insisted that hemispheric problems be settled by the nations of this hemisphere. Yet the administration recoiled from involving the institution specifically designed for that purpose—the Organization of American States—because it realized that our partners in this hemisphere would never approve military intervention, though they would and did support diplomatic and economic measures short of it. Appealing for the military assistance of nations outside the hemisphere on an inter-American issue sets a precedent that future American administrations may well come to regret.

Another such booby trap is inherent in the Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force for the purpose of replacing the Haitian junta, a resolution that passed with Russian support. The precedent for Moscow's ambitions in what Russia calls the "near abroad" is hard to miss—the worrisome policy of forcing the republics of the former Soviet Union to return to the imperial fold. That this tacit quid pro quo is understood in Washington is reflected in pronouncements by Ambassador Albright and President Clinton stating that each major power has a special responsibility for peace-keeping and stability in "its own back yard."

It is a dangerous doctrine. America's actions in Haiti, however ill-advised, do not affect overall security. America's interventions in this hemisphere have been short-lived; Russia's military advances have tended to be permanent. They are certain to rekindle ancient fears and tensions. Three conclusions follow.

* America's military presence in Haiti ought to be brought to a rapid conclusion, preferably by the end of this year. We will have restored an elected president. By then, we will have disarmed or neutralized those Haitian armed forces threatening his rule. Aristide should be able to maintain himself after that by his own efforts, helped by generous American economic aid.

If our armed forces stay beyond this mandate, they will either become spectators in a bloody spectacle or participants in struggles where it may not be easy to tell which side to back—rebellious crowds or forces appearing in the guise of law and order. In the end, even Aristide will turn on the United States, if only to demonstrate that he is a genuine nationalist and not America's instrument—a tendency already implicit in his conduct.

* Once American forces—except for a small training mission—are withdrawn, the remaining tasks can be assigned to inter-American institutions, which, when freed of the Latin American fear of U.S. military intervention, could prove quite effective. Governmental reform could be assigned to the OAS, economic assistance to the inter-American financial institutions—backed up, of course, by a continuing U.S. interest.

* The Haitian crisis provides an occasion for the administration to review the practices that have produced such stark alternatives and such an obsession with public relations. Symbolic of these tendencies is the decision to launch the 82nd Airborne Division while American emissaries were still on the ground in Haiti. Given the possibility of glitches in any military operation, what was the hurry? What if the Haitian junta had not yielded, the attack had proceeded, and Carter's plane had blown a tire on takeoff? What if the junta, learning of the launch—as it is said to have done—had taken the American delegation as hostages? Surely there was no need for surprise when the projected landing sites could be seen on television. If the purpose was to land before Congress could pass a resolution of disapproval the next day, the enterprise marked an astonishing disintegration of the executive-congressional relationship.

It is painful to come to such conclusions while a military operation is underway. But the greatest risk we now face is an open-ended commitment of military forces to tasks for which they are not designed. The greatest need is a bipartisan reassessment of our foreign policy and above all a prudent definition of the circumstances in which American power is to be engaged.

The Washington Post

Tuesday, August 16, 1994

Henry Kissinger

# It's an Alliance, Not a Relic

By far the most worrisome aspect of American foreign policy—far more troubling than Bosnia and Haiti—is the progressive erosion of the Atlantic Alliance, for half a century the keystone of American diplomacy. It goes without saying that the disintegration of the Soviet empire, the retreat of Soviet armies and the unification of Germany require major changes in NATO structure and purpose. What is taking place is not adaptation, however, so much as decline into an empty shell and with nary a public discussion.

On three trips to Europe this year, President Clinton discussed the Alliance as if it were a relic of the Cold War. He defined its contemporary significance almost exclusively in relation to the Partnership for Peace which, in his view, is not about security but about reconciliation: to "use our military power to do something never before done in the history of the nation state on the European Continent: to unify truly free and independent nations of their own free will in a Europe that is truly free together rather than have some new and different divisions of Europe...."

To use military power to unite nations of their own free will would, until our more enlightened time, have been considered a contradiction in terms—especially when the area envisaged is vast, covering most of the Northern Hemisphere: the Atlantic Alliance, the former satellite orbit, the successor republics of the Soviet Union, the European neutrals and, of course, Russia itself. Such a grouping is an altogether different animal from NATO and the European Union as heretofore conceived; it is in many respects contradictory to it.

Having been approved by the NATO Council, joined by Russia and a host of other Central and East European countries, the Partnership for Peace is now a fact of life. But it is not too late to prevent the Partnership from submerging the Atlantic Alliance.

The Partnership for Peace is a hybrid of the Wilsonian concept of collective security and of the Henry Wallace ideology of the 1940s—both of which reject the very concept of alliance. NATO was designed for security; its purpose was to resist a definable danger. The Partnership is designed not for defense but for reassurance. The joint military planning of the Partnership is an end in itself; it assumes no specific peril; it is undertaken bilaterally between NATO and each partner. But what common threat or purpose

unites, say, Uzbekistan and Spain? The Atlantic Alliance assumed that its threats came from outside the treaty area, while the Partnership seeks to pacify threats within its area by affirmations of good intentions. This is what President Clinton describes as the truly new aspect of the Partnership: "for the first time all nation states really do respect the territorial integrity of one another."

The Wallace ideology of the 1940s resonates in the convictions of Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott—the architect of the Partnership—who, as late as 1990, wrote that the Cold War had been unnecessary and that a more conciliatory Western policy would have ended it decades earlier. No wonder that the Partnership is based on the proposition that the extension of NATO to Eastern Europe is "provocative" and "divisive." The Partnership is in fact a replay of the Locarno Treaty of the 1920s, when Great Britain, eager to avoid an alliance with France, settled for a German recognition of the French frontier.

The quest for novelty for its own sake makes it impossible to learn from history. Through most of its history, Russia did not so much challenge the borders of its neighbors as it sought to dominate these neighbors by pressure or blackmail. Recognizing borders, as the Soviet Union did at the European Security Conference of 1975, was not considered incompatible with maintaining the satellite orbit or insisting on the Brezhnev Doctrine claiming a right of intervention if Communist rule was threatened. Nor did Russia ever consider itself an exclusively European power. Bordering Asia and the Middle East, it was never prepared to submit its relationship with its neighbors—including those of Europe—to international decisions. And it has not interpreted membership in the Partnership to involve that obligation, as shown by its conduct in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Tajikistan and, most recently, Chechnya.

The breakup of the historical empire is perceived by many Russians as humiliating; the temptation to use an assertive nationalism for fostering unity is reappearing in a democratic Russia with respect to the "near abroad."

The truly novel aspect of Clinton's European policy is that it seeks to build the Atlantic area from East to West, reversing the architecture of the postwar period. But making Russia the hinge of America's Atlantic policy places an exorbitant strain on one of the most brittle nations. And it lures the United States into assigning a role to Germany which its leaders have not requested, which its circumstances do not favor and which unnecessarily wounds Great Britain and France. During his visit to Berlin, President Clinton called on Germany to assume a special responsibility for Eastern Europe and Russia in particular; he called the American relationship with Germany "unique" and "singular" because Germany had a more "immediate and tangible concern" with relations with Russia "even than our other friends in Europe."

Even to hint at a solitary and preeminent role for a country whose disasters have been caused by its inability to manage a purely national policy in the center of the continent is as disquieting to Germany's neighbors as it is to the architects of German postwar policy.

I have advocated the closest relationship with Germany since the founding of the Federal Republic in 1949. I have admired the constancy with which all of Germany's major parties have continued the legacy of the great Chancellor Konrad Adenauer—to seek a major German role not on a purely national basis but as an integral part of the Atlantic Alliance and of the European Union. And it is not without significance that, in responding to President Clinton, Chancellor Helmut Kohl—perhaps the wisest leader in today's Europe—specifically invoked that

(over)

tradition. The impact of a so-called "sin-
gular" German-American relationship on
the rest of Europe—already uneasy
about the impact of German unifica-
tion—will be to foster separation of
Western Europe from America, wide-
spread fear in Eastern Europe and the
isolation of Germany within Europe: in
other words, quite the opposite of the
administration's intent.

If present trends continue, NATO poli-
cy will become increasingly rudderless.
Despite ritualistic assertions to the con-
trary, the administration's Atlantic policy
is creating two categories of frontier in
Europe: those that are guaranteed are
not threatened, and those that are
threatened are not guaranteed. The re-
sult is a gray area in Eastern and Central
Europe that the nations affected find
severely disquieting and that can only
tempt dangerous tendencies.

The nations of Central and Eastern Europe are joining the Partnership for Peace because they see it as a steppingstone into NATO. Russia is joining to drain NATO of content, as is evidenced by various Russian proposals amounting to a veto over NATO decisions. Thus, when America's leaders imply to Poland that NATO membership is just around the corner and to Russia that it can participate in any security arrangement open to its former satellites (in other words, join NATO eventually), confusion (and worse) is inevitable when the promissory notes fall due. In any event, the prospect of Russia's eventual membership in NATO removes NATO as a safety net against rogue tendencies. For NATO is designed to defend its members against threats from outside the NATO area, not against threats from other NATO members.

A coherent Atlantic policy has two requirements: to infuse the core Atlantic Alliance with a new sense of direction (including settling its membership) and to separate the activities of the Partnership organizationally from those of the Alliance.

An administration that so frequently
invokes the need to enlarge democracy
should not be so reluctant to give a new
impetus to America's relationship to the
countries with institutions most compat-
ible with ours—the Atlantic democra-
cies. We should remember that our
NATO allies stood with us in the Korean
War, the Cuban missile crisis, the gulf
conflict and even now have troops in

Bosnia. While ethnic conflicts and reli-
gious fanaticism are rising, and new pow-
er centers are emerging, it is reckless to
hollow out the security institution that
has worked on the whole successfully for
half a century. And it is hard to believe
that these democracies should be unable
to generate more meaningful common
purposes than the empty military pro-
grams of the Partnership.

Until the question of membership in NATO is settled, the revitalization of the core Atlantic Alliance will languish. The Partnership served a useful purpose in opening a discussion of NATO expansion. But further delay invites Germany and Russia to fill the vacuum between them either unilaterally or bilaterally—a contingency everyone in Europe, Germany above all, seeks to avoid.

At the same time, so long as NATO and the Partnership are merged organizationally, it will prove very difficult to define common objectives for the core Alliance. Twenty-two nations have already applied for membership in the Partnership; scores are eligible. Each nation is supposed to come up with its own program of bilateral cooperation with NATO. No one familiar with how NATO operates can believe that, as now constituted, the Alliance bureaucracy can plan individual Partnership programs and simultaneously generate a creative adaptation of the Alliance itself to the new circumstances.

I agree with the administration about the need to integrate Russia into the international community. But since this is above all a political and economic challenge, NATO is not the best institution for that task. Russian membership in the political aspects of the G-7 meetings and participation in multilateral forums dealing with the Balkans and Korea are important. Bilateral consultations between Washington and Moscow will play a crucial role. The European Security Conference comprising all the nations eligible for the Partnership was designed for precisely this role. The Atlantic Alliance was not. Why destroy the safety net when forums for reconciliation already exist?

©1994. Los Angeles Times Syndicate

*The writer, a former secretary of state, is president of Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm which has clients with business interests in many countries abroad.*

fort was suspended. In return for "good faith" negotiations, Pyongyang agreed not to reprocess the plutonium it illegally removed from the reactor. In return, it has asked for America's recognition, a U.S. pledge not to use nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula, and an economic aid program in the guise of resources for a light water reactor.

The essence of these proposals is, in effect, U.S. acquiescence in what Pyongyang has already accomplished in return for restoring partial "safeguards" under which the present North Korean nuclear capability was developed. In fact, the much touted Pyongyang concessions are more compatible with an attempt to gain time than with a serious effort to solve the nuclear problem.

Pyongyang's postponement of reprocessing would mean something only if the forthcoming negotiations lasted more than three months. For when plutonium emerges from nuclear reactors it is too radioactive to reprocess. A "cooling down" period is needed. Pyongyang's overture may be designed to prevent an air strike against the reprocessing facilities during the crucial next three months, when there is no danger of fallout.

In the best of circumstances, the North will retain the essence of its nuclear program and the ability to sell nuclear technology, plutonium and ballistic missiles. Apparently, it is able to continue building a new, much larger nuclear power plant.

The danger extends far beyond Asia. A no-lose prospect is being put before rogue states aspiring to enter the nuclear club: they can extract blackmail for abandoning their programs or they will be left with nuclear weapons. They have been given no incentive whatsoever to avoid the road toward nuclear weapons technology. Nonproliferation is being dealt a heavy blow.

The beginning of wisdom for American policymakers is to recognize that no compromise is possible between a nuclear and a non-nuclear North Korea. A freeze of the North's activities leaving it in possession of the existing weapons and the growing plutonium-producing capability would pose a mounting threat to vital American interests in Asia, to Asian stability itself, and, in

the longer run, to America's role in the region and to nonproliferation in general. A rollback is needed.

It is necessary for the president to explain these realities to the American people. Acquiescing in the existing weapons because they were produced during the Bush years may be good politics but it is poor foreign policy. The administration may not wish to run the risks of denuclearizing North Korea, but Americans owe it to themselves not to be deluded about the broad consequences of acquiescing in a nuclear North Korea.

Unless the forthcoming talks with North Korea make rapid progress toward ending the North Korean weapons program, the United States should call a conference, within the framework of the nonproliferation treaty, of nuclear states and Japan, because of its vital interests in Northeast Asia. America must stress there its convictions and invite their proposals, especially as the nonproliferation treaty is coming up for review next year. Only after such a conference can it be determined whether the United States should proceed unilaterally.

The American message in such a diplomacy should be unambiguous. While America would welcome normal relations with Pyongyang and is prepared to help find alternative sources of energy for it, these measures cannot be extorted by a nuclear weapons program. The precondition for improved relations must be full compliance with IAEA inspections of all sites, whether declared or suspected, an accounting for past production, and a return to the nonproliferation treaty. Obviously, if North Korea begins to refuel the reactor or reprocess the plutonium, Washington should break off the talks with it and immediately seek full sanctions against it.

Before any military action is implemented, another serious diplomatic effort is necessary. But it must have a definite time limit; it should remove, not entrench, the North Korean weapons program. In the meantime, the president should prepare himself, his administration and the American people for the possibility that even the most dedicated diplomacy may not succeed.

© Los Angeles Times Syndicate.

Henry A. Kissinger and Cyrus R. Vance

The Right Decision on China

Presidents rarely have the luxury of making easy decisions. By definition, when an issue reaches the Oval Office, its resolution will demand trade-offs among competing objectives.

President Clinton made a difficult but correct decision in extending most-favored-nation treatment status to China and in decoupling that status from the objective of promoting better human rights in China. The result is a new China policy, which will better serve both American interests and those of peace and stability in Asia.

America's broader interests in Asia require a reasonable relationship with the region's emerging superpower. Peace and economic progress in Asia are in America's interest and require Chinese-American cooperation. Lacking the pattern of cooperation developed by the European countries since the war, Asia bristles with potential disagreements. Stability there is in America's interest but is only possible if both America and China are engaged in its pursuit. Withholding MFN would have ruptured one of the world's most important bilateral and potentially productive relationships.

America and China share many other interests in the region. These can best be advanced through a regular, comprehensive and frank dialogue at the highest levels. President Clinton's meeting with the Chinese president in Seattle in November was a useful first step. We hope that with the MFN decision behind us the two leaders will establish a strategic dialogue between our two countries.

The promotion of human rights has been a part of our history from the founding of our country. And China must recognize this special concern. In return, Americans need to consider the unique aspects of China's national experience. It is a great power that cannot be told what to do about its government and economy any more than we would tolerate their dictating these matters to us.

While Americans strongly believe in the universal appeal of human rights, the Chinese consider our demands interference in their domestic affairs, especially when the U.S. goals are publicly and loudly proclaimed. Preaching at the Chinese about our values in public was bound to exacerbate relations without substantially advancing our human rights objectives.

So American policy risks holding other American interests in China hostage to our concerns over human rights. China has a dynamic economy in the most rapidly developing region in the world today. If we had cut off MFN, China would surely have retaliated against American commercial interests. The losses would have been: American consumers, who by some estimates would have to pay $10 billion more each year for higher-priced imports; American workers, some 165,000 of whose jobs depend on our exports to China; and American businesses, which last year sold almost $9 billion worth of goods to China.

European, Japanese and other businessmen would have rushed to fill the resulting vacuum. America would have been isolated, not China.

Moreover, suspension of MFN for China would have poked a stick in the wheels of the rapidly growing private economy there. China's private sector already accounts for more than half of the country's gross domestic product and has been a major force for liberalizing Chinese society. Since China's economic reforms began 15 years ago, rural incomes have tripled, and urban incomes have doubled. By giving Chinese men and women access to jobs, more income, better goods and services and ideas, an expanding private economy is the best guarantee of a more pluralistic Chinese society.

The president's courageous decision does not mean that America is abandoning its support for human rights in China. But as the president said, "We cannot help change human rights in China if we are not there." The issue is

not whether to continue pursuing better human rights in China but how best to balance this objective with other American interests. By placing our legitimate human rights concerns in the broader context of overall bilateral relations, we are more likely to see results. Indeed, Chinese leaders have made clear to both of us that they are willing to take into account American concerns if these are not presented as unilateral demands.

The administration's new China policy opens the door to broadening and strengthening our relationship with China without abandoning America's historic values. Pursuing better relations with Beijing is not a favor which America bestows on China. It is in America's interests. America and China need each other in our mutual search for regional stability. America needs China's cooperation on any number of major issues, such as dealing with North Korea, the proliferation of advanced weapons technology and threats to the environment.

China's cooperation on these matters cannot be taken for granted. China will base its decisions on a hard-headed assessment of its own national interests, as will we. Settling the MFN-human rights issue, vital as it is, does not guarantee smooth sailing on other issues, such as humane practices in Tibet or nuclear nonproliferation. But cooperation is more likely to be forthcoming on such important issues if Washington and Beijing both work to strengthen the central strategic relationship between our two great countries. In this way, we are more likely to advance respect for our values if the Chinese will be given to understand that these, too, are discussed frankly in the context of a relationship based on reciprocity and mutual respect.

©1994, Los Angeles Times Syndicate

dam Conference in 1945. Once President
Roosevelt's vision of a collective security
system monitored by "four policemen" col-
lapsed, the United States required nearly
three years to develop the alternative
which came to be known as "the contain-
ment doctrine." Dedicated to the objective
of preventing further Soviet expansion,
containment provided an operational defi-
nition for the cold war, and it served as a
guide to every administration for the next
40 years. There were tactical disagree-
ments (some of which I shared) but no chal-
lenge to the overriding concept.

No comparable concept has been evolved for the post-cold-war world. There is no longer a worldwide ideological threat, nor an overriding geopolitical one. At the same time, upheavals seem to multiply around the world, some profoundly offensive to our moral convictions, and some deeply disturbing even when they do not pose a direct threat to the United States. These conditions would exist no matter who was president. Where the administration has created problems—for itself and its interlocutors—is in failing to articulate an operational theory and to relate individual events and crises to it.

A number of characteristics of the Clin-
ton administration have contributed to this
failure. First, the convictions of many of the
top officials of the administration were
formed in opposition to the cold war and
ironically are now even more outdated.
These include a distrust of America's pow-
er, a preference for multilateral solutions
and a reluctance to think in terms of nation-
al interest. All these impulses inhibit a real-
istic response to a world of multiple power
centers and diverse conflicts.

There is a curious academic quality about
many administration pronouncements.
What passes for conceptual thinking is
translated only with great difficulty—if at
all—to concrete actions. For example, last
year the national-security adviser made a
speech announcing “enlargement of democ-
racy” as the administration’s alternative to
containment. But containing the expansion
of the Soviet sphere was a clear strategic
concept that anybody could understand and
to which day-to-day policy could be geared.
But what precisely does enlargement of de-
mocracy mean? Whom does it imply we
should support? With what means? Over
what period of time and at what risk? If those
questions cannot be answered, our policy
risks appearing morally intrusive and oper-
ationally impotent.

Similarly, before meeting with the Asian
heads of state in Seattle, the president talked
of a "Pacific community." The meeting itself
was a good idea. It is very important for the
president to stake U.S. interest in the fastest-
growing region in the world. On the other
hand, what was meant by the word "commu-

nity"? The reality is that Japan and China
consider each other potential adversaries.
Korea is afraid of both. China is concerned
not only about Japan but Russia and, to some
extent, India. Indonesia is afraid of Japan
and China. Absent a realistic assessment,
bilateral relations with the key Asian na-
tions have deteriorated even while commu-
nity is being proclaimed.

This tendency toward abstraction is com-

mastering not only the concepts but also the
nuances of execution. The Clinton adminis-
tration has not yet achieved enough coher-
ence to insist on such operational mastery.

The reluctance to deal with foreign policy
consistently and conceptually has resulted
in a paradox. The president is actually
spending more time putting out one foreign-
policy fire after another than he would have
to if he had devised a strategy and put in
place a machinery to monitor it. For foreign
policy to have credibility, foreign leaders
must believe that we mean what we say, that
we understand their concerns and the na-
ture of the global situation, and that we will
carry through on our pronouncements. Yet
many of these elements are now missing.
Thus, even when the day-to-day policies are
prudent, the administration receives insuffi-
cient credit, because its second thoughts are
measured against original positions. Too of-
ten this leaves an impression of weakness.

Bosnia is a good example of an essential-
ly prudent policy defeating itself because
of the inability to convey its purpose and
the failure to impose discipline in execu-
tion. During a three-week period in April,
the administration went through at least
four phases with respect to the situation in
Gorazde: a statement by the defense secre-
tary that force should not be used; a dis-
avowal of that statement by the national-
security adviser; an ineffectual bombing
attack; a presidential statement disavowing
force and re-embracing diplomacy, and,
finally, an ultimatum demanding Serbian
withdrawal.

That clutter, typical of much of the ad-
ministration's Bosnian policy, inhibited the
articulation of the basic choice: whether to
give priority to the political issue of the
territorial integrity of Bosnia or to the mor-
al issue of ending the suffering. When Clin-
ton came to office, the civil war had been
raging for nine months and about 35 per-
cent of the territory had been occupied by
Serbian forces. Restoration of the entire
territory would have been achievable only
by protracted outside intervention, proba-
bly requiring ground forces. This neither
the administration nor its allies was pre-
pared to undertake—even though Wash-
ington's rhetoric implied otherwise. The
other option was to impose a cease-fire by
methods similar to those applied over a
year later in Sarajevo and Gorazde. One
mechanism for this would have been sup-
port for the plan of U.N. mediators Cyrus
Vance and David Owen. That, however,
would have left some 40 percent of Bosnian
territory in Serb hands and was thus de-
clared unacceptable by the administration.

The clash between the administration's
convictions and willingness to run risks
was never resolved. It is debatable whether
Bosnia should have been established as a
nation in the first place, given that it has no

NEVER-NEVER LAND: Bosnian Serb forces

President Clinton must
respond to the existing
vacuum in global
leadership or doom the
United States to
increasing irrelevance

TOMISLAV PETERNEK - REUTER

pounded by an extraordinary obsession
with public relations. Exorbitant attention
is devoted to blunting short-term domestic
criticism, treating foreign policy as if it were
a domestic issue susceptible to consensus
through trade-offs. But foreign affairs is a
continuing process; segmenting it into indi-
vidual cases generally ends up offending
everybody, at home and abroad.

The administration's foreign policy is
also marked by an extraordinary lack of
discipline. The difference between an out-
standing football team and an ordinary one
is that while every coach knows the same
plays, only a few are capable of squeezing
additional nuances out of their system. Sim-
ilarly, an effective foreign policy requires

JUNE 6, 1994 NEWSWEEK 37

INTERNATIONAL

clear-cut ethnic, historic or cultural identi-
ty. But leaving that question aside, the Clin-
ton administration was never prepared in
practice to restore Bosnia to the status quo
ante because that would have required a
massive deployment of U.S. ground troops.
Therefore, the only objective that was ever
credible was to stop the fighting by seeking
a cease-fire along the existing dividing line.

Since the administration never explained that reality to the American public, the result was a kind of never-never land in which there was no real sense of any direction. And while the administration was debating, the Serbs conquered more Muslim territory. Now the administration is talking about committing U.S. peacekeeping forces to monitor a cease-fire that both sides would accept, if at all, only under duress. This is bound to transform peacekeepers into potential hostages. What is desperately needed is some comprehensive statement of goals commensurate with actions we are prepared to undertake.

Haiti presents similar problems. The president has implied that we may have to intervene militarily because Haiti is nearby. Yet geographical proximity is not a reason to use force unless there is a clear threat to U.S. security, which there is not. If we intervene because Haitian institutions are morally offensive, are we proclaiming a general principle or a target of opportunity based on propinquity? If the objective of a military operation is fundamental reform of Haiti's domestic situation, has the American public been prepared for such a protracted process? And if the objective is to stop immigration to America, have we faced the reality that most immigrants are economic refugees and will want to leave as long as Haiti is poor, whether we intervene or not? In the face of these ambiguities, do we really want to challenge the near-unanimous opposition to intervention in the rest of the Western hemisphere?

Bosnia and Haiti symbolize the basic
challenge before the administration: in the
absence of an overriding ideological or geo-
political challenge, it must develop some
idea of the national interest to guide Ameri-
can policy. Even President Clinton's wise
decision to extend Most Favored Nation
status to China, which has removed an ob-
stacle to a constructive relationship, has not
defined a context for it. What is urgently
needed is a high-level political dialogue to
define what objectives are common, what
policies can be coordinated and which dif-
ferences can be eased. And in the process,
China must understand that even in the
absence of sanctions, relations with the
United States will always be facilitated by
progress on human rights.

Even more imperative is a new look at
the relationship with Europe, for so long
the bedrock of American foreign policy.

Obviously, American priorities in the post-
cold-war period will change. But the ad-
ministration is not simply altering priori-
ties; it is reversing the entire trend of one of
the most creative periods of American di-
plomacy. The North Atlantic relationship
has heretofore been an end in itself. Now it
is becoming an adjunct to the relationship
with Russia and subordinated to the ab-
stract multilateral concept of joint planning.

GIANT STEPS: Chinese Prime Minister Li Peng

Even the wise decision to
extend MFN status to China
has removed an obstacle
to a constructive
relationship without
defining a context for it

the purpose of which is nebulous. President
Clinton has described his proposed Part-
nership for Peace as bringing together
NATO, the Warsaw Pact, the former re-
publics of the Soviet Union and European
neutrals in a structure that would engage in
joint military planning. Yet what can Ka-
zakhstan and Belgium plan together? Oper-
ationally, the Partnership for Peace implies
an arrangement aimed at China and Japan,
or an empty shell.

The practical result will be to bring about
two categories of borders in Europe: one
protected by NATO, the other not. Yet the
borders that NATO would not protect are
precisely the ones—indeed the only ones—
that some Europeans are most concerned

about. Countries that view themselves as
threatened will be given an incentive to
make their own arrangements with Mos-
cow, further weakening NATO.

In order to entice Russia into the Part-
nership, Washington has also signaled that
Moscow would be granted an undefined
special status within NATO. But to Russia's
neighbors, that can only be seen as a move
toward resurrecting the historic Russian
claim to a veto over the former satellite
nations of Eastern Europe and the new na-
tions on the territory of the former So-
viet Union. What started out as a proposi-
tion designed to eliminate discrimination
against Russia has wound up discriminat-
ing against Russia's historic victims in East-
ern Europe and the Baltics.

The proposal of Russian Defense Minis-
ter Pavel Grachev to the effect that NATO
be placed under the European Security
Conference, together with the European
Union and the Commonwealth of Inde-
pendent States, would give Russia a veto
over all institutions integrating the Atlantic
area. Thus Russia would achieve the emas-
culation of NATO, which has been the goal
of Russian foreign policy for 45 years. What
will be left of the North Atlantic Alliance if
all this comes to pass? What is its new
purpose? It is to be hoped that the presi-
dent's forthcoming trip to Europe will deal
with some of these issues.

I strongly favor Russian participation in the Group of Seven and the European Security Conference. But NATO must be the safety net underneath all these other arrangements. NATO remains the only institutional structure that relates America to Europe. It must not be jettisoned on behalf of U.S. relations with Russia; the effect would be the opposite of what is intended.

President Clinton and his foreign-policy
advisers have come to power in an America
that can no longer afford all the obligations
of the cold-war period. They face a situation
in which diplomacy and economics must
replace the militarization of the two-power
world. But that only makes it more urgent
to define what remains vital to U.S. inter-
ests, and where we will place our priorities.
Reality will impel these choices anyway;
the real issue is whether they are developed
by leadership or in chaos. Will we be driven
to decisions in a way that makes us appear
weak and rudderless—and tempts intransi-
gent foreign leaders to test us—or can we
formulate a basis of U.S. policy that allows
us to anticipate the challenges of the new
international situation before they erupt
into crisis? Most of the administration's
shortcomings are remediable; the opportu-
nity for great achievement still remains. But
answering that basic question requires
more discipline, organization and focus
than has been demonstrated thus far.

**38** NEWSWEEK JUNE 6, 1994

INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, MONDAY, MAY 16, 1994

# South Africa: For Once, History Offers Hope

By Henry Kissinger

NEW YORK — The post-Cold War world, so disappointingly the stage of barbarous ethnic and national conflicts, has just witnessed what may prove to be one of its most hopeful moments: the emergence of the first truly democratic multiracial government in Africa.

To be sure, the election of Nelson Mandela and the creation of a government of national unity in South Africa is only the first step of what is bound to be a long and difficult journey. Conflicts between and within ethnic groups, devising a balance between central and provincial authorities, and the possible insistence by the newly enfranchised majority on more rapid social and economic progress than the system can bear have the potential to defeat the hopeful prospect. And yet the challenges already surmounted are a kind of guarantee for the future.

Ten years ago, Nelson Mandela was

serving a life sentence at hard labor; his organization, the African National Congress, was banned; Frederik de Klerk was minister of a government insisting on the most total and degrading segregation of the races; Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi was the Zulu tribal leader refusing the government's offer of a "homeland" because he did not wish to cooperate with apartheid.

Today, Nelson Mandela is president of a government of national unity in which Mr. de Klerk is a deputy president; Chief Buthelezi's party, despite its belated participation, has won the election in his home province. Mr. Mandela has transcended a physical prison; Mr. de Klerk has overcome a psychological one. Chief Buthelezi, though he has traversed a far

shorter distance than his compatriots, does raise under the banner of federalism the key challenge to multiethnic societies: the relationship between central authority and local autonomy.

South Africa encompasses more ethnic groups than almost any other country. And within the African population, the Zulu leadership claims autonomy from the Xhosa-dominated African National Congress, a federalism perceived by many in the ANC as the forerunner of secession and thus as a threat to national unity.

Ethnic rivalries are complicated by what Mr. Mandela, in a television interview on May 6, described as the tendency of veterans of the anti-apartheid resistance to apply a definition of democracy relying on consensus and intolerant of opposition.

Nor is proclivity to violence confined

to one group. Inkatha, the Zulu party, has a highly organized militia, and the militant wing of the white community has always rejected a multiracial solution. Moreover, societies reared on the British parliamentary system find the concept of checks and balances alien. Even Mr. Mandela at one time expressed perplexity — at least in personal conversations — with regard to the concept of judicial review.

South Africa is fortunate that these problems are being addressed by an extraordinary array of leaders. Nelson Mandela's career is the embodiment of endurance made possible by spiritual depth. As early as the (1964) speech in which he defended himself against the charge of treason — a truly moving document — Mr. Mandela affirmed his devotion to a multiracial society: "It is not true that the enfranchisement of all will result in racial domination. Political division based on color is entirely artificial and when it disappears, so will the domination of one color group by another. The ANC has spent half a century fighting against racialism; when it triumphs, it will not change that policy."

Mr. Mandela has kept his word. I three decades of incarceration have left no visible residue of bitterness — certainly much less so than among some of his colleagues who spent the interval in exile. Perhaps this is because, for the exiles, the memory of the struggle became the paramount experience and not the realities of a multiracial society.

The transformation of Mr. de Klerk is equally astonishing. Until he came to power, apartheid had reigned supreme for half a century — institutionalized, enshrined in law, and buttressed by not a few theological arguments.

Like the demise of Soviet communism, the end of apartheid occurred with a speed unimaginable even a decade earlier and with a relative minimum of violence. Philosophical idealism and practical insight forged a partnership between the imprisoned revolutionary and his jailer. By 1991, Mr. de Klerk could pronounce as an Afrikaner goal what had only yesterday been illegal:

> "We want to make all South Africans proud; we want to build a South African nation in which, yes, all the various composite parts can feel safe, in which there will be acceptance of joined and common goals ... A new vision for our country is crystallizing, a vision of justice, fairness, equality and democracy."

As an essentially tribal leader, Chief Buthelezi had less reason to change his position. His insistence on autonomy and some kind of federalist solution has remained constant. While the chief's tactics have often been intransigent and irritating, he deserves credit for raising a crucial challenge to South African democracy: how to reconcile the rule of the majority with the rights of ethnic minorities. For so long as voting largely follows ethnic or tribal lines, the minority can never hope to become a majority.

At the same time, the ANC has reason for its concern that if the ethnic divisions are enshrined as sacrosanct, national unity may remain elusive — the perennial nightmare of many new nations, especially in Africa.

In overcoming its problems, South Africa has advantages which transcend personalities. In many developing countries, the creation of the state follows independence. As a result, too frequently political opposition is equated with treason. In South Africa, the legitimacy of the state is well established; existing groupings have considerable experience in dealing with each other within a larger political framework.

And while governments of national unity are generally more useful in papering over differences than in resolving them, the subtle interim institution created by Mr. Mandela and Mr. de Klerk — in which every party achieving a certain percentage of the votes also achieves representation in the cabinet — creates a useful framework for the practice of mutual cooperation in the crucial early stages of power sharing.

Few countries have as much to gain from a moderate evolution as does South Africa. It has vast resources, a well-established infrastructure, significant manufacturing base and a higher level of education than any of its neighbors — a level, moreover, which Mr. Mandela has pledged to improve rapidly. And the very multiplicity of its ethnic groupings provides a certain insurance against civil conflict. For once that Pandora's box is opened, the consequences are ultimately unpredictable.

This bult-in incentive for moderation was brought home to me when Lord Carrington and I — together with experts from five countries — were asked by Mr. Mandela and Chief Buthelezi in the month before the election to mediate the constitutional issues between the ANC and the Inkatha (Zulu) parties for the five-year interim government.

We found that the constitutional issues for the interim period seemed capable of fairly rapid resolution. What we

could not resolve was the issue of partic-
ipation by Inkatha in the election. Chief
Buthelezi had asked for a delay; Mr.
Mandela had rejected postponement. As
mediators, we refused to address the
issue on the ground that outsiders have
no right to determine the date of a peo-
ple's emancipation. Moreover, there
seemed no solution to the election issue
because, even if Chief Buthelezi had

A moderate evolution here
would give hope to all of
Africa and to every other
region where men of good
will seek to rescue cohesion
from out of the hatreds
history has spawned.

changed his mind and decided to partic-
ipate on the appointed date, there would
not be enough time to print the ballots.

After the mediators left, the prospect
of civil war produced an unexpected
solution. Chief Buthelezi, realizing that
failure to participate in the election
would deprive him of his political base,
agreed to participate through the device
of affixing stickers to the bottom of the
existing ballots. For its part, the ANC
chose compromise over the uncertainty
of confrontation. As a result, the interim
constitutional issues were settled along
the lines the mediators had discussed
separately with the parties — though
federalism is certain to re-emerge as a
principal bone of contention in the
drafting of the final constitution.

The elections seemed to confirm the
trend toward moderation. Whether by
prearrangement or thanks to the good
sense of voters participating for the first

time, the outcome is almost ideally sujt-
ed for reconciliation.

The ANC achieved a preponderant
vote that was nevertheless a few percent-
age points short of the two-thirds need-
ed to rewrite the interim constitution
unilaterally; Mr. de Klerk's National
Party transformed itself into a multira-
cial entity (though appealing mostly to
Indians and mixed-race "coloreds") and
became the second largest grouping. In-
katha achieved about 10 percent of the
vote and, surprisingly, a majority in Na-
tal, assuring itself three seats in the na-
tional cabinet and a political base. And
Mr. Mandela has done his part in creat-
ing a cabinet largely tilted toward mod-
eration and inclusiveness.

All this is only a beginning. No one
can foretell the outcome of power strug-
gles between radicals and moderates in
each political grouping; of the succes-
sion to Mr. Mandela, on which so much
depends; of the reaction of the white
community to the inevitable modifica-
tions of their social and economic sta-
tus; or of the degree to which the hither-
to disenfranchised population may
insist on economic gains beyond the
country's capacity.

All one can say is that, in contrast to
so many other parts of the world, there is
reason to hope and cause for the maxi-
mum moral and material support.

The industrial democracies can best
help by encouraging private investment
rather than by government-to-govern-
ment aid. And they must take care not to
impose their own domestic experiences
on the much more complex situation
in South Africa.

South Africa is not the place to test
liturgies for either the radical left or the
radical right. For a moderate evolution
would give hope to all of Africa and to
every other region where men of good
will seek to rescue cohesion from out of
the hatreds history has spawned.

Henry A. Kissinger

EULOGY FOR RICHARD M. NIXON

April 27, 1994

AS DELIVERED

During the final week of Richard Nixon's life, I often imagined how he would have reacted to the tide of concern, respect, admiration, and affection evoked by his last great battle. His gruff pose of never paying attention to media comment would have been contradicted by a warm glow and the ever so subtle hint that another recital of the commentary would not be unwelcome. And without quite saying so, he would have conveyed that it would mean a lot to him if Julie and Tricia, David and Ed, were told of his friends' pride in this culmination to an astonishing life.

When I learned the final news, by then so expected yet so hard to accept, I felt a deep loss and a profound void. In the words of Shakespeare: "He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again."

In the conduct of foreign policy, Richard Nixon was one of the seminal Presidents. He came into office when the forces of history were moving America from a position of dominance to one of leadership. Dominance reflects strength; leadership must be earned. And Nixon earned that leadership role for his country with courage and skill.

When Nixon took his oath of office, 550,000 Americans were engaged in combat in a place as far away from the United States as it was possible to be; America had no contact with China, the world's most populous nation, or negotiations with the Soviet Union, the other nuclear superpower; most Moslem countries had broken diplomatic relations with the United States; and Middle East diplomacy was stalemated - all of this in the midst of the worst domestic crisis since the Civil War.

When Richard Nixon left office, an agreement to end the war in Vietnam had been concluded and the main lines of all subsequent policy were established: permanent dialogue with China; readiness without illusions to ease tensions with the Soviet Union; a peace process in the Middle East; the beginning, via the European Security Conference, of establishing human rights as an international issue, weakening the Soviet hold on Eastern Europe.

- 2 -

Richard Nixon's foreign policy goals were long-range, and he pursued them without regard to domestic political consequences. When he considered the national interest at stake, he dared confrontations in 1970 and 1972, despite the imminence of elections, and in 1973 in the midst of the worst crisis of his life. And he bore - if with pain - the disapproval of long-time friends and allies over relaxing tensions with China and the Soviet Union. He drew strength from a conviction he often expressed to me: "The price for doing things half-way is no less than for doing them completely. So we might as well do them properly." Then Nixon's greatest accomplishment was as much moral as it was political: to lead from strength at a moment of apparent weakness; to husband the nation's resilience and thus to lay the basis for victory in the Cold War.

Shy and withdrawn, Richard Nixon made himself succeed in the most gregarious of professions and steeled himself to conspicuous acts of extraordinary courage. He held fast in the face of wrenching controversy to his basic theme that the greatest free nation in the world had a duty to lead and no right to abdicate.

Richard Nixon would be so proud that President Clinton and all living former Presidents of the United States are here, symbolizing that his long and sometimes bitter journey had concluded in reconciliation.

I wish that in his final hours I could have told Richard Nixon about Brian McDonnell who, during the Cambodian crisis had been fasting on a bench in Lafayette Park across from the White House until, as he said, President Nixon had redeemed his pledge to withdraw American forces from that anguished country in two months - a promise which was in fact kept. Across the chasm of the decades, Brian called me the day Richard Nixon fell ill and left a message: "When you talk to President Nixon, tell him I am praying for him."

- 3 -

So let us now say goodbye to our gallant friend. He stood on
pinnacles that dissolved into precipices. He achieved greatly
and suffered deeply. But he never gave up. In his solitude, he
envisaged a new international order that would reduce
lingering enmities, strengthen historic friendships, and give
new hope to mankind - a vision where dreams and possibilities
conjoined.

Richard Nixon ended a war and he advanced the vision of
peace of his Quaker youth. He was devoted to his family, he
loved his country, and he considered service his honor. It was
a privilege to have been allowed to help him.

NYT Book Review
4/24/94

Letters

Henry Kissinger replies to Ern

Kissinger's 'Diplomacy'

To the Editor:

With the collapse of Communism, the disappearance of a global military threat and the simultaneous emergence of new power centers in Asia and Europe, the problem of how to build a world order has become central to American foreign policy. In my recently published book "Diplomacy" I sought to examine how previous periods have dealt with such a change in their environment, from the emergence of the modern nation-state to the present. In particular, to draw lessons for America's future, I tried to describe America's unique blend of hope and necessity, of the oscillation between seeing America's role as building the nation into an example for others and rebuilding the world in America's image.

A contrary approach portrays international relations as a permanent conflict between good and evil. Ernest R. May, who reviewed "Diplomacy" (April 3), apparently belongs to this school of thought. Had he openly elaborated this disagreement, he could have sparked a significant dialogue. Instead, Professor May proceeds by innuendo, ascribing value judgments incompatible with my actual views to entirely descriptive material. And he attacks my scholarly qualifications in a specious and nit-picking search for errors, laced with personal invective.

Professor May's idiosyncratic treatment of quotes from "Diplomacy" tempts him into blatant distortions. For example, Professor May alleges that I wrote "contemptuously" about Gladstone and then produces a quote which contains no evaluation by me whatsoever, and which was part of a respectful description of Gladstone's political thought ("Diplomacy," pages 160-62). He claims that a reference to the similarity between Napoleon III's quest for public approbation and that of modern political figures is "elitically" aimed at Jimmy Carter. This is simply untrue. Oddly enough, the chapter on Napoleon III deals only with Napoleon; Carter is nowhere mentioned, nor is any contemporary personality.

Similarly, Professor May alleges that I "admit admiration" for Stalin. I did no such thing. It takes unusual ingenuity or bias to distill admiration from a quote which begins, "Stalin was indeed a monster," and is followed by a sentence, omitted by Professor May, which clearly conveys that I am talking about the method by which Stalin concluded the Nazi-Soviet pact: "Without knowing it, the Western democracies were temoting fate by counting on an irreconcilable ideological conflict between Stalin and Hitler, by teasing Stalin with a French pact that forswole military cooperation, by excluding the Soviet Union from the Munich Conference." Nor does Professor May mention my many discussions of Stalin's tyranny, for example, *inter alia*, on pages 411, 440-41, 449-50.

Using the same method, Professor May alleges that I also express admiration for Mao and other "tyrants of Beijing." Once again he separates a purely descriptive sentence from its context,

which deals with the way Richard Nixon and the Chinese leaders managed to come together despite profound ideological differences. And he omits to mention that the same paragraph refers to Mao as a "visionary, ruthless, pitiless, occasionally murderous revolutionary."

In his determination to demonstrate that I never met a dictator I did not like, Professor May even implies, in a sentence directly following the one charging me with admiration for Stalin and Mao, that my objection to Hitler was not so

pay tribute to the son's book (Harcourt, 1939), which was an intention, and in it

With respect to the commission, Professor May's method of neither holding nor butting them. (page 222) that a determination "on thoroughly mean that they

much moral as snobbish and intellectually fastidious: "Mr. Kissinger is impatient with Hitler because he 'operated by instinct rather than analysis.'"

Professor May's unworthy innuendo is drawn from a factual account of Hitler's governing style, and no more "impatient" than my reference to Gladstone was contemptuous. What he omits is the phrase that begins that section: "Hitler's advent to power marked one of the greatest calamities in the history of the world. ... The

Professor May next turns to a hunt for errors. He claims to find one error of omission and three of commission, arguing that these would preclude me — a former colleague of his at Harvard — from achieving a "pass degree" in history were I a student, and that they constitute "amateurish" history.

This silly comment is hardly supported by his evidence. Professor May describes the error of omission as follows: "Neither a line of text nor a footnote mentions Sir Harold Nicolson's elegant book of 1939, also entitled "Diplomacy." Yet footnote 33 of Chapter 4 cites Nicolson's book, and the copyright page of "Diplomacy," in a prominent, set-off note, states the following:

> The title 'Diplomacy' has been used before. Both the author and the publisher

concept, he argued per publishers in the United States. However, the issue of the authorship (pages 160-62) — 1939, 1941 — had dominated the First World War historiography, and not in the research of European histori

The rest of the elements had been adjusted to promote the requirement of a precise definition over the printed populations."

The detail how the pages had dominated the First World War historiography in the United States, and not in the research of European histori

Professor May in the quote attributes (in a chapter that Woodrow Wilson with Lloyd George, "squeeze Germany to thews.") May calls wrong and unjust

Review

Letters

Henry Kissinger replies to Ernest May.

which deals with the way Richard Nixon
and the Chinese leaders managed to
come together despite profound ideologi-
cal differences. And he omits to mention
that the same paragraph refers to Mao
as a "visionary, ruthless, pitiless, occa-
sionally murderous revolutionary."

In his determination to demonstrate
that I never met a dictator I did not like,
Professor May even implies, in a sen-
tence directly following the one charging
me with admiration for Stalin and Mao,
that my objection to Hitler was not so

pay tribute to the late Sir Harold Nicol-
son's book (Harcourt, Brace & Company,
1939), which was quite different in scope,
tentions, and ideas."

With respect to so-called errors of
commission, Professor May returns to
the method of ascribing to me views I
neither hold nor expressed and then re-
butting them. Interpreting the sentence
(page 222) that Wilson's doctrine of self-
determination "put European diplomats
on thoroughly unfamiliar terrain" to-
mean that they had never heard of the

often attributed to Lloyd George, it may
well have originated with a member of
Lloyd George's government. But far
from misstating Lloyd George's views —
as Professor May asserts — the quote is
an accurate reflection of them: after all,
he ran the khaki election of December
1918 on the platform "Hang the Kaiser";
at Bristol on Dec. 11, he vowed that
Germany "must pay to the very last
penny" and that, in that quest, "we will
search their pockets for it." Lloyd
George's attitude toward Germany at
the end of the war was also reflected in
his statement to the War Cabinet on Oct.
26, 1918 (quoted on page 270): "The ques-
tion arose whether we ought not to con-
tinue lashing her as she had lashed
France."

These statements make nonsense of
Professor May's allegation that the dis-
puted phrase "caused trouble for Lloyd
George, who clung to a last-ditch hope
that public opinion would not demand
unreasonable reparations from just de-
feated Germany." After all, Lloyd
George had done as much as anybody to
generate, or at least to exploit, that pub-
lic opinion. True, in the course of the
subsequent peace negotiations in the
spring of 1919, Lloyd George substantial-
ly modified his earlier views, a change
described on page 241 of "Diplomacy" as
"too late" to affect the outcome. Profes-
sor May is beating a debating quibble to
death.

Professor May finds a third error in
the description of the so-called Hossbach
memorandum on page 309. Once again,
he takes out of context two sentences
entirely peripheral to the thrust of the
argument, which dealt exclusively with
tracing when Hitler first revealed his
long-term objectives to his military lead-
ers. Professor May correctly points out
that the phrase that Hitler revealed his
plans to "almost all of Germany's gen-
eral officers" is inaccurate. In fact — as
my own research showed — only top
general officers representing the Ger-
man High Command were present. In the
final stages of copy-editing, the word
"top" was inadvertently dropped from
before "general officers." The mistake is
one of those technical errors that, in
normal circumstances, are corrected in
later editions without comment. The rest
of the paragraph would, moreover, sug-
gest to any unbiased reader that it deals
with the top command. Professor May
argues that this technical error (which
has been corrected in the German and all
other editions by restoring the word
"top") skews the German postwar de-
bate about the responsibility of the Ger-
man generals for the war. I find it flatter-
ing though hard to believe that one mis-
placed adjective could affect a debate
going back over 40 years, to which it was
not addressed and which has generated
many volumes of scholarly research.

Professor May has done significant
historical research in the past; it is there-
fore not possible to consider his com-
ments as inadvertent. He would have
contributed more to general understand-
ing had he articulated and debated his
philosophical differences instead of pre-
senting petty distortions and personal
aspersions.
HENRY A. KISSINGER

New York

DAN YACCARINO

Professor May next turns to a hunt for
errors. He claims to find one error of
omission and three of commission, argu-
ing that these would preclude me — a
former colleague of his at Harvard —
from achieving a "pass degree" in histo-
ry were I a student, and that they consti-
tute "amateurish" history.

This silly comment is hardly supported
by his evidence. Professor May de-
scribes the error of omission as follows:
"Neither a line of text nor a footnote
mentions Sir Harold Nicolson's elegant
book of 1939, also entitled "Diplomacy."
Yet footnote 33 of Chapter 4 cites Nicol-
son's book, and the copyright page of
"Diplomacy," in a prominent, set-off
note, states the following:

"The title 'Diplomacy' has been used
before. Both the author and the publisher

concept, he argues that leading newspa-
per publishers in Milan and London had
advocated the same thesis previously.
However, the issue was not whether the
d doctrine was known — after all, I trace
Wilson's antecedents to Gladstone
(pages 160-62) — but whether it had ever
been implemented. Once again Profes-
sor May omits the sentence following the
one he quotes, even though it contains a
precise definition of what I meant by
"unfamiliar":

"The assumption behind European set-
tlements had been that borders could be
adjusted to promote the balance of pow-
er, the requirements of which took prece-
dence over the preferences of the affect-
ed populations."

The rest of the page explains in some
detail how the principle of equilibrium
had dominated various European con-
gresses in the century preceding the
First World War, and was in that sense,
and not in the misleading exegesis of
Professor May, that Wilson's challenge
drew European diplomats onto unfamiliar
terrain.

Professor May finds a second "error" in the quote attributed to Lloyd George (in a chapter that deals principally with Woodrow Wilson and only peripherally with Lloyd George) — that he would "squeeze Germany until the pips squeak." May calls the reference both wrong and unjust. Though the quote is

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 31

Henry Kissinger

Mexico's Moment of Truth

I saw Luis Donaldo Colosio, the Mexican presidential candidate, 10 days before his assassination. We met in a small, nondescript private residence on the outskirts of Mexico City that he said he used as a retreat for personal reflection. The trappings usually associated with political power in Mexico were absent; no security personnel were visible.

Colosio received me in a tiny sitting room for a somewhat wistful conversation lasting about 1½ hours. We had talked on numerous previous occasions while he held offices that mirrored both his rise in politics and the evolution of Mexican society. When he headed the PRI, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which has governed Mexico without serious challenge since 1929, he stressed that the economic reforms under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari would sooner or later undermine the one-party rule which had brought peace and stability but also political stagnation to his stark, beautiful and passionate country.

This conviction was reinforced when, some years later, Colosio became secretary for social development, the ministry charged with improving Mexico's social conditions and easing its economic inequities. Having himself come from humble origins, he saw in the ministry an opportunity to prove that the PRI could earn public support by service rather than by insisting on its monopoly of power.

Much the same views have been expressed to me by Ernesto Zedillo, the new candidate. Of the same humble origin as Colosio but somewhat more academic, Zedillo is also the quintessential representative of the Salinas cabinet: young, American-educated, a believer in open economic and political institutions.

Colosio entered the limelight at the precise moment when Mexican politics began to be dominated by a demand for fundamental political change, which had been accelerated by the revolutionary achievements of the Salinas presidency. Salinas had assumed office at a time when Mexico, burdened by foreign debt, had submitted itself to a courageous austerity program under President Miguel de la Madrid. Salinas opened the Mexican economy and forced it to become competitive. Instead of import substitution, he advocated free trade. He privatized state industries to attract foreign capital, which in turn was used to help develop a social infrastructure severely frayed by a decade of recession. The culmination of the Salinas presidency was the North American Free Trade Agreement.

One measure of the Salinas revolution is the increase in social expenditures even as the overall budget was drastically reduced and inflation brought under control. Between 1988 and 1994, spending on education more than doubled. It rose by 82 percent for health and social security and by 51 percent on urban development. Thirteen and a half million more inhabitants were provided with drinking water, 11.5 million with sewage service, and there were 4 million new users of electricity and 2.5 million new houses built.

Yet it is the history of revolutions that the greatest unrest often occurs at the moment when significant progress is being made. The revolutionary advances of the Salinas administration accentuated the unevenness of the progress. Many Mexicans looked at what remained to be done rather than at what had been accomplished.

All this generated growing demands for popular participation in government. The Salinas administration responded, though it did not believe it possible to maintain the same pace of political reform as in the economic field. Nevertheless, non-PRI candidates won state governorships for the first time. A law limiting campaign expenditures was enacted. A fairer distribution of media time was ordained. The upcoming presidential election promised to be the most open in Mexican history. Colosio was still expected to win, but by a narrow margin.

Colosio faced extraordinary difficulties, though. The strength of the PRI resided in its remarkable ability to accommodate a wide variety of views. The PRI candidate would emerge by a rite whereby, after consultation among the party leadership, the outgoing president would announce his successor from among three or four known candidates. The winner would enjoy quasi-monarchical powers for his six-year term as president, and the rejected candidates would generally disappear from politics.

Colosio's selection broke this pattern. Three remarkable candidates drawn from Salinas's cabinet were competing—arguably the finest array of talent in any government I know. They were Colosio, Pedro Aspe Armella, the finance minister and champion of fiscal reform, and Manuel Camacho Solís, the mayor of Mexico City, who laid claim to a moderately leftist mantle. Each was a supporter of Salinas's economic revolution, and each would have been a plausible candidate.

Against all precedent, the choice of Colosio did not lead to a closing of the ranks. Aspe congratulated the victor, but at the time of Colosio's assassination, Camacho had not yet either congratulated or endorsed him. Instead, Camacho resigned as mayor of Mexico City (a cabinet position) rather than manage his former colleague's campaign in a city that would have been crucial to Colosio's victory. For a few weeks, Camacho was shunted off into the position of foreign minister. Then, in early January, Salinas unexpectedly chose his old schoolmate to become the government's peace negotiator with the Zapatista guerrillas in Chiapas. This gave Camacho an honorable opportunity to resign governmental office so that he could act at arm's length from the formal trappings of central power.

Under a provision of the Mexican constitution, no one who is a member of the government six months before an election is eligible to run for the presidency. Thus the peace mission gave Camacho a highly visible platform to emerge as a candidate representing one of the smaller parties or, in the extreme case, as a replacement for Colosio if the PRI candidate should falter. Camacho publicly flirted with the possibility of challenging Colosio, roiling Mexican politics. Though the day before Colosio's assassination Camacho denied that he would be a candidate, he never made a Shermanesque refusal of the nomination.

When I saw Colosio and, a few weeks earlier, Zedillo, they were facing an unprecedented challenge to the PRI's preeminence at the precise moment when the guerrilla uprising in Chiapas had fundamentally altered the political landscape. Justified local grievances were linked by the rebellion's organizers to demands for national political changes within a short time frame, threatening vast dislocations perhaps incompatible with democratic processes.

The government's initial response was traditionally ruthless. But within 10 days, Salinas changed course, appointed Camacho as the negotiator and committed himself to negotiation. It was a harbinger of a new, uncharted era. When a Mexican government traditionally relying on strong central power negotiates with armed guerrillas wearing ski masks in a church under the auspices of a bishop where, only yesterday, priests were prohibited from wearing clerical garb in public, much less playing a political role, a new balance between authority and dialogue was obviously emerging.

After several weeks of negotiation, Camacho announced an agreement. It provided for sweeping reforms in Chiapas but contained as well two clauses that called for accelerated democratization for the rest of Mexico. The guerrillas let it be known that they would require 90 days to consult their followers. In any case, they would not disarm until democratization was implemented.

For its part, the government announced that it did not feel bound by the provisions going beyond Chiapas. At the same time, ostensibly as an independent decision, Salinas submitted further sweeping electoral reforms to the Congress. All political parties (though not the candidate of the leading left-wing opposition group, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas) agreed to this package, which provided for a nonpartisan supervisory body for the election, strict neutrality for the media and even tighter control over party finances.

(OVER)

What this meant was that both the govern-
ment and the Zapatistas had reserved their final
positions for a later test of strength. And
Camacho, assuming the role of an independent
mediator, proclaimed himself the conscience of
the process of democratization—whose criteria
he reserved the right to define.

Colosio's campaign found itself in an anoma-
lous position. Traditionally, the PRI candidate
avoids any hint of interfering with the sitting
president. Colosio was therefore largely silent
on the issues of Chiapas and played second
fiddle in the media to Camacho, who was in
effect creating a new center of power. And
Colosio faced the likelihood that if he won, his
victory would be challenged as undemocratic
and unleash a new round of violence.

Amid this turmoil, I found Colosio remark-
ably serene. Aware that he was precluded
from influencing the present, he exuded in his
understated manner a determination to shape
the future. Proud of his part in the Salinas
revolution, he meant to preserve its economic
legacy. But he insisted that his administration
would extend the revolution to the political and
social realms so that, by the end of his six-year
term, democratization and social reform would
be as firmly established as market economics is
now. Zedillo's attitude as campaign manager
was similar, if somewhat more pugnacious.

Colosio would have found the task to which
he seemed committed formidable, both within
the PRI and in the country at large. Zedillo's
challenge will be compounded by the assassi-
nation. Decades of a monopoly of power by a
single party have left a legacy of suspicion
difficult to overcome by democratic methods.

As in all revolutionary situations, the various
elements are diverse and not necessarily com-
patible. In Chiapas, the revolt combined an
Indian population with vast grievances, libera-
tion-theology priests, Central American revo-
lutionaries and big-city intellectuals. In the coun-
try at large, the extreme left sees in turmoil the
last chance to restore the statism and anti-Amer-
icanism of the past, while the extreme right may
consider violence as the best means to reestab-
lish strong central authority. Within the demo-
cratic majority, many are willing to abide by free
elections while others believe passionately that
the only proof of democracy will be the defeat of
the PRI's candidate.

Friends and admirers of Mexico can only
hope we are witnessing the birth pangs of a
new democracy rather than a return to the
violence of the Mexican Revolution. For the
United States, the outcome will determine
whether the most creative American policy of
recent years, the creation of a Western Hemi-
sphere Community, can proceed. President Clin-
ton's reaction to Colosio's assassination has been
firm, timely and wise. Clinton must now make
sure that the lower levels of his administration
keep their missionary proclivities in check.

I hope that the shock of Colosio's murder
will restrain the temptation toward further
violence. Some good will have come from
that tragedy if it recalls all of Mexico's
democratic groups to the realization that, in
the end, democracies are built by victories
but sustained by reconciliations.

The Washington Post
Monday, March 28, 1994

Henry Kissinger

# China: The Deadlock Can Be Broken

The debate evoked by Secretary of State Warren Christopher's visit to Beijing has been too much about whether his mission "failed" to promote human rights. The main consideration ought to be whether America's overall political relationship with perhaps the key country for long-term stability in Asia is being put at risk.

The public confrontation in Beijing was all the more dramatic because it occurred at the end of a period of steadily improving American-Chinese relations. Last October President Clinton lifted the ban on Cabinet-level meetings in effect since the Tiananmen Square uprising; shortly after, he met with Chinese President Jiang Zemin. Many Cabinet-level meetings followed. The administration significantly reduced its terms for extension of most favored nation status. The Chinese leaders hinted at a willingness to accommodate concerns not found to be incompatible with Chinese law—an elastic criterion.

What, then, went awry with a visit that had reasonably been expected to culminate this progress? Apparently the U.S. administration, very conscious of domestic pressures, thought the Chinese "owed" it human rights concessions in return for its restoring high-level contacts. But the Chinese, implementing traditional diplomacy, base concessions on reciprocity; they consider that they are "entitled" to the same unconditional high-level contacts extended to them by all other nations. They do not view the removal of a unilateral threat as a concession, and they are extraordinarily touchy regarding any hint of intervention in their domestic affairs. So long as human rights remains the principal subject of the Sino-American dialogue, deadlock is nearly inevitable.

Nevertheless, the deadlock is not unbreakable. The issue is not—as is sometimes claimed—whether America should abandon its pursuit of human rights altogether, but rather how to pursue its values in balance with other crucial aspects of the complex American-Chinese relationship.

The fundamental motivation of United States human rights policy rests deep within the American tradition. No other nation has been so explicitly founded to vindicate liberty or been populated as extensively by refugees. Other nations need to take this attitude seriously: To most Americans, the national interest cannot be separated from some concern for human rights.

On the other hand, America's perception of itself as defender of human rights is so ingrained that we often forget how unusual that perspective is. Every other major country conceives foreign policy as the balancing of risks and rewards so as to affect the actions of other societies outside its borders. What Americans call human rights has generally been deemed to fall within the domestic jurisdiction of societies and thus not the subject of diplomacy. This is why not a single Asian nations supports the American human rights approach to China.

Prickly insistence on sovereignty is a particular attribute of the Chinese government. In China, Western intervention is perceived as an uninterrupted humiliation since the Opium Wars, though America is blamed less than other societies. To base Sino-American relations entirely on Chinese progress toward human rights will therefore mortgage both the underlying relationship and progress on human rights—especially as every other industrial nation will eagerly fill the vacuum left by America.

It is also a distortion of reality, since American objectives go beyond the promotion of human rights. China has the world's fastest-growing economy, and its population of over 1 billion represents the single largest market. To exclude the United States from these prospects is not a trivial decision.

More important, Asia is both the most dynamic region of the world and the one with the greatest potential to threaten world peace. Its nations have not developed the patterns of cooperation that emerged in Europe after World War II. Like the nations of 19th century Europe, the Asian states eye each other as potential strategic competitors and conduct their relationships at least in

> "A reduction of public pressures and a genuine broadening of the dialogue will produce a solution compatible with the self-respect of both sides."

part on the basis of geopolitics. Fostering an Asian equilibrium is therefore central to world peace and must be a key objective of American diplomacy.

Stability in Asia is most likely if both China and the United States participate. Conflict with China would require us to organize all the rest of Asia against Beijing. While an overbearing Chinese foreign policy could at some point in the future drive American foreign policy to such an expedient, nothing in the contemporary world calls for a policy of isolating China. No Asian country will participate in a policy of isolating China over human rights; America will only wind up isolating itself and lose its ability to shape a stable order.

America and China have a parallel interest in equilibrium in Asia. Both countries have their reasons for opposing the domination of Asia by a single country. China wants the United States to help balance its relationships with powerful neighbors—Japan, Russia and India—at least until it is strong enough to do so on its own. America needs Chinese cooperation on these matters as well as on a peaceful evolution of the future of Taiwan, on nuclear proliferation as in North Korea, and on the transfer of weapons technology.

These are the sort of issues which should be key elements of the Sino-American dialogue at least for the next decade. If they moved to the center of Sino-American relationships, they would facilitate dealing with human rights issues by providing a strategic context. In the course of their country's long history, China's leaders have frequently taken account of the special needs of their counterparts provided such an action also served Chinese interests. What they will not accept, or will accept only under extreme duress, is the implication that America bestows its cooperation as a special favor to be withheld at will.

(OVER)

The element of reciprocity has been sorely missing in current Sino-American relations. The United States put forward a catalogue of human rights in return for which it offers extension of MFN—something which to the Chinese looks like the temporary lifting of a unilateral blackmail.

In my view, the principal reason for the aura of confrontation during Christopher's visit to Beijing was the neuralgic Chinese reaction to unilateral demands, compounded by a publicity that focused nearly exclusively on human rights. In the prelude to the visit—including at several stops on the secretary's trip—it was

stated officially and repeatedly implied that the U.S. delegation came for the primary purpose of evaluating Chinese concessions on human rights. The Chinese interpreted the designation of the assistant secretary for human rights, John Shattuck, as "advance man" for the secretary's trip as another signal that human rights was to be its principal focus. The stage being set for a confrontation, the Chinese side showed its own skill at devising provocative acts, such as harassing dissidents on the eve of Christopher's arrival.

The basic challenge remains: If the U.S. interest in China is primarily human rights, the tactic of public pressures is appropriate, and may even work. But there is a high risk of trapping both sides in a choice between capitulation and confrontation. The administration may be tempted to continue watering down both its demands and its penalties until its apparent victories are largely public relations exercises. The Chinese may repeat their self-inflicted wounds of the 1950s, when they expelled all Soviet advisers for being too intrusive. The victim of such a process will be the American-Chinese political relationship that is key to Asian stability.

But if, as I believe, the United States has other objectives that it must serve simultaneously, then a more reciprocal pattern is necessary. This would not require America to abandon the current reduced list of human rights objectives, though some might have to be modified. It would, however, call for clear presidential leadership outlining American purposes and strategy with respect to China. Such a statement needs to set forth the importance attached to American-Chinese cooperation in specific areas and on specific topics; it cannot merely be a shopping list of American priorities. At the same time, it could emphasize the need for each side to take into account the special concerns of the other—a phrase Beijing will surely understand as referring to American human rights concerns.

I believe that a reduction of public pressures and a genuine broadening of the dialogue will produce a solution compatible with the self-respect of both sides.

Even those of us who questioned the original linkage of MFN status to human rights would urge China to understand that a concern for human rights in some form is not an administration idiosyncrasy but inherent in the American value system as expressed in congressional pressures.

The administration should recognize that China's interest in American relations is based on its expectation of cooperation on global or at least Asian strategy. To that end, it may well be prepared to make human rights concessions, provided they can be presented as having emerged from its own free choice.

Congress should understand that, beyond a certain point, public pressures tend to produce the opposite of what is intended. Congressional concern has been clearly demonstrated; the administration should be permitted to pursue it quietly on its own.

The short-term objective should be to achieve sufficient progress on the existing human rights agenda to enable the administration to de-link human rights from MFN status once and for all. Afterward, the United States would pursue human rights objectives via normal diplomatic processes within the context of an overall political and strategic dialogue. Such a solution would preserve the dignity of both sides.

CSIS

Center for Strategic & International Studies

Washington, DC

March 11, 1994

The Honorable Henry A. Kissinger
350 Park Avenue, 36th floor
New York, New York 10022

Dear Henry:

You were kind enough to suggest that you might do a blurb for my book, so I take the liberty of sending you the manuscript (or at least the bulk of it -- the remainder will follow shortly).

It is to be published in the Fall by Scribner's (a.k.a. Paramount).

I will send you the bound galleys as soon as available, which will be far easier to handle. However, my publisher believes that a blurb from you would be enormously helpful to have in hand, for promotional purposes, by the end of this month.

My hope is that this book will be seen as illuminating an important dimension of the history of the Cold War, as well as providing a valuable case study of the American approach to foreign policy. It also attempts to offer lessons about the world that America confronts today. Any hyperbole you could furnish along these lines would be appreciated.

As you will see, the book draws heavily on the intellectual capital I acquired in your tutelage (with appropriate credit in the text, footnotes, and acknowledgements). I am grateful for whatever you can do at this point, as I am for everything in the past.

Warm regards,

Peter W. Rodman

1800 K Street Northwest, Suite 400 • Washington DC 20006 • Telephone 202/887-0200

FAX: 202/775-3199

International Herald Tribune
Monday, January 24, 1994

# Europe Needs a Strong NATO, Not Utopian Gimmicks

By Henry Kissinger

NEW YORK — Perhaps the most significant aspect of Bill Clinton's progression across Europe was obscured by the atmospherics. In fact, the trip ushered in an important re-evaluation of heretofore accepted premises of American foreign policy. In effect, the president's statements elevated the radical critique of Cold War policies into the operational premises of contemporary American foreign policy.

For nearly half a century, that critique had maintained that Soviet policies were as much caused by American policies as by Communist ideology; that the Soviet government was divid- ed, just like the American, between hawks and doves; that it was the task of American diploma- cy to ease Soviet fears, many of which were quite legitimate, and that an attitude of genuine coop- eration would overcome Soviet bellicosity.

As late as January 1990, these propositions were refurbished in a Time article in which Mikhail Gorbachev was anointed Man of the Decade. Its author was Strobe Talbott, recently chosen to be deputy secretary of state, who argued that the doves of 40 years of Cold War debate had been right all along and that it had not been the West's policy that brought about the Soviet collapse but the inherent weakness of the Soviet system; indeed, that the collapse might have occurred earlier had Western hard- liners not enabled the Soviet leaders to rally their people on behalf of security.

The essence of these themes was repeated by President Clinton on many occasions during his European trip. To explain why he did not favor the admission of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia into NATO, he argued in effect that such a step might be provocative.

He added: "I say to all those in Europe and the United States who would simply have us draw a new line in Europe further east that we should not foreclose the possibility of the best possible future for Europe which is a democracy everywhere, a market economy everywhere, people cooperating everywhere for mutual security."

The assumptions behind his statements challenge the intellectual foundations of NATO, the core of America's postwar foreign policy.

Whether the former victims of Soviet imperialism should join NATO is a complicated question. There are many ways to accomplish that goal, from full membership to various levels of associate membership or, indirectly, via membership in the European Union.

But the key issue is not the timing of NATO expansion. In putting forward the Partnership for Peace, the administration did not just delay East European participation, it emphatically rejected the principle despite many misleading statements to the contrary.

The Partnership invites all the successor states of the Soviet Union and all of Moscow's former East European satellites to participate with NATO in a vague, multilateral entity specializing in missions having next to nothing to do with realistic military tasks; it equates the victims of Soviet and Russian imperialism with its perpetrators and gives the same status to the Central Asian republics at the borders of Afghanistan as it gives to Poland, the victim of four partitions in which Russia participated and the route across which Russia has historically invaded Europe.

Therefore, if the Partnership for Peace is designed to propitiate Russia, it cannot also serve as a way station into NATO, especially as the Clinton administration has embraced the proposition, rejected by all its predecessors for 40 years, that NATO is a potential threat to Russia.

An official traveling with the president's party expressed the logic behind the administration's position when he stated that Eastern Europe would have to find security in placating its feared neighbor. "The most effective thing for us," he said, "is to try to protect Eastern Europe by encouraging anti-imperialist, democratic tendencies in Russia."

It is instructive to compare the current approach with that of Dean Acheson when NATO was founded. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the secretary of state was asked whether the Soviet Union had reason to fear NATO. His reply was: "Any nation which claims that this treaty is directed against it should be reminded of the biblical admonition that 'the guilty flee where no man pursueth.'"

What does it say about Russian attitudes if the expansion of NATO is perceived to be provocative? No reasonable observer can imagine that Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary or Slovakia could ever mount a military threat against Russia, either singly or in combination. The countries of Eastern Europe are terrified, not threatening. And NATO forces, doctrine and deployment are strictly defensive.

Moreover, Russia could easily be given additional assurances, for instance, that no foreign troops would be stationed on the soil of new NATO members — assurances that already exist with respect to the former East German satellite.

The key question, however, is what the American theory means for NATO. What is to be NATO's precise role in the new dispensation?

If a security guarantee along the Polish-Russian border creates an unacceptable dividing line, why is the current eastern border of NATO any more pacifying? If Russia can veto NATO membership now when it is in need of economic support, what will it veto when it has been strengthened through reform and American economic assistance?

It is high time to take another look at the administration's Russia policy, which stakes everything on a kind of psychoanalytic social engineering. The world evoked by Mr. Clinton's reference to "democracy everywhere ... people cooperating everywhere" is decades away. In the real environment of today's ethnic conflict and internecine struggle in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, how is security and progress to be organized until that utopian world is reached?

Can it be wise to create two categories of frontier — those which NATO protects and others which are refused protection — when both frontiers face in the same direction? The practical consequence will be to bring about an unprotected no-man's-land between Germany and Russia, which has historically been the cause of all recent European conflicts.

A realistic approach to Russia policy would recognize that integrating Russia into the international system has two components that must be kept in balance: influencing Russian attitudes and affecting Russian calculations.

The Clinton administration deserves support in extending generous economic assistance to Russian reform. And Russia should be made welcome in institutions that foster economic, cultural and political cooperation with the West. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe would be a far better home for this than a Partnership for Peace that invents common military missions, within the framework of NATO, whose essential irrelevance underlines the artificiality of the conception.

The administration's tendency to treat Russian leaders as if they were fragile novices easily flustered by exposure to the realities of international politics is an invitation to disillusionment and misunderstanding. These are tough men who have survived the brutal school of Communist and Russian politics; they are quite capable of comprehending a policy based on mutual respect for each other's national interest. In fact, they are likely to understand such a calculus better than appeals to an abstract and distant utopianism.

Russia is bound to have a special security interest in what it calls the "near abroad" — the other republics of the former Soviet Union. The test is whether the rest of the world treats this relationship as an international problem subject to accepted rules of foreign policy or as an outgrowth of unilateral Russian decision-making to be influenced, if at all, by appeals to Russian goodwill.

Perhaps the most serious misapprehension of the Partnership for Peace proposal is that a reformist Russian government would automatically abandon traditional foreign policy goals. For the incentives of the most well-meaning Russian government are quite different.

Nationalism is on the rise, and there is a great temptation to ease the pain of transition to market economics for the Russian population by appealing to that basic instinct. This is

reflected in President Boris Yeltsin's refusal to go along with NATO in punishing Serbia and in his reaction to the Partnership proposal.

Mr. Yeltsin is reported to have asked that all the successor states of the Soviet Union and all former East European satellites join it simultaneously, thereby fulfilling a decade-long Kremlin policy of diluting NATO to the point of irrelevance.

(over)

At the moment, Russian armies are in Mol-
dova, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Latvia and
Tajikistan and participate in some of the local
civil wars with a strategy that seems designed
to make these new republics — all of them
members of the United Nations — rue their
independence. The foreign minister of Russia
has repeatedly put forward a scheme for a

Russian monopoly on peacekeeping in the
"near abroad," indistinguishable from an at-
tempt to re-establish Moscow's domination.
By its silence and its repeated invocation of an
American-Russian partnership, the United
States acquiesces in these actions.

A moderate Russian foreign policy will be impeded, not helped, by turning a blind eye to the reappearance of historic Russian imperial pretensions. Russia's effort at reform cannot exempt it from accepted principles of conducting foreign policy. It is in fact ambiguity about dividing lines, not their existence, and ambiguity about Western reactions, not their certainty, that tempt militarists and nationalists. Reform will be strengthened if moderates are put in a position of highlighting the dangers of a nationalistic Russian policy.

Russia and America share a mutual interest
in a stable Europe and Central Europe. This
can be achieved only by America's presence in
Europe, which is based on NATO. Stability in
Europe requires reaffirming the centrality of
NATO rather than diluting it in an abstract
multilateralism.

This leads to the following conclusions:

* The Partnership for Peace should be redefined to deal primarily with political, economic and cultural issues for which the proper venue is the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, not NATO.

* NATO must face the fact that some form of membership for Poland, Hungary the Czech Republic and Slovakia is inevitable. In the wake of the NATO summit, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl has urged speeding up the entry of these four countries into the European Union, of which they are already associate members. Since almost all the members of the European Union are also members of NATO, it is inconceivable that the Union will for long accept the notion that some of its territory is not protected. At that point at the latest, either the NATO guarantee will be extended or NATO will fall apart.

A statesman can always escape his dilemmas
by making the most favorable assumptions
about the future. The new Russian leadership is
entitled to understanding for the anguish of
trying to overcome two generations of Commu-
nist misrule, and to help in building a new
society. But in pursuing that goal, American
policy must not be embarrassed to emphasize
that domestic reform, however desirable, con-
tributes to a better world only if Russia em-
braces the disciplines of a cooperative inter-
national system as well as its benefits.

AN IMPRUDENT PLAN
FOR REFORMING NATO

NEW YORK POST, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1993

COMMENTARY

HENRY KISSINGER

In the most significant foreign policy initiative of the Clinton Administration, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Secretary of Defense Les Aspin have put forward ideas for the reform of NATO. These would revolutionize what has been aptly called the most successful alliance in history. They would also unfortunately risk dissolving it in a vague new concept called Partnership for Peace.

NATO, as it has operated for four decades, is clearly in transition. An alliance formed when Soviet armies bestrode Central Europe cannot have the same significance after Soviet power has receded to the Russian border, the satellite states have collapsed and the Soviet Union itself has disintegrat-ed. At the same time, the Atlantic Alliance remains America's sole in-stitutional link to Europe, and the most natural way for the United States to influence the political evolution of Europe. It also pos-sesses a nearly irreplaceable com-mand and logistics system.

Threats to peace have become far less immediate and overwhelming; they have also become more frequent and festering as nationalist, fundamentalist and ethnic conflicts have become more widespread. Despite the discouraging experience of Bosnia, the challenge before the Alliance is to translate common interests into common policies and to create an Atlantic zone of stability in a turbulent world.

Ironically, the American initiative was elicited by countries applying for membership in NATO, and which like it as it stands: Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. The timing of the request was premature, before the Administration had had an opportunity to

develop its Atlantic policy. And consideration of it could have been postponed for some time without much damage.

Instead, the Administration used the occasion to merge its Atlantic and East European policies by putting forward the Partnership for Peace. Affirming its rejection of "blocs" and its desire to erase Europe's dividing lines, it invited all the components of the former Soviet Empire — the 15 republics that have declared their independence, together with Russia and the former East European satellite states — to form a Partnership for Peace. This is to have four missions: peacekeeping, crisis management, search-and-rescue missions and disaster relief.

When Secretary Aspin was asked whether what was meant was "peacekeeping" (preserving an established agreement) or "peace-making" (imposing a settlement), he replied that it could be either because "the words were not drawn with care." All partners are to be eligible for NATO membership on a "non-discriminatory" and "inclusive" basis for which, however, Christopher has rejected any specific timetable.

Refused a security guarantee and offered the placebo of nebulous joint missions, which have neither been defined nor respond to their concerns, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary must have noted the absence of any distinction between Russia, the cause of their anxiety, and themselves, the victims of Russian aggression.

The leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary clearly prefer Russian President Boris Yeltsin to any alternative but obviously are not prepared to base their nation's security on this preference. They seek some reassurance, if not vis-a-vis the incumbent Russian government, then against an unforeseeable though by no means unimaginably different government in the future.

When Czech President Vaclav Havel, a left-leaning intellectual of anti-military instincts, and Polish President Lech Walesa, whose country has suffered more than any other and would be the first victim of unnecessary confrontations with Russia, insist on NATO membership, what do they miss that Washington understands?

According to Aspin, Eastern Europe will be given a "sense of stability" and some "comfort" by its right to consult within the Partnership for Peace. The opposite is the case. The Partnership would force the concerned countries to consult with the very country that is causing their discomfort.

I agree with Christopher's statement that "helping democracy prevail in Russia remains the wisest — and least expensive — investment that we can make in American security." I strongly support the Administration's program of economic assistance to Moscow. I also accept Yeltsin as the most plausible leader of reform.

Where I draw the line is when the Administration declares every partner in the new Partnership to be eligible for membership in NATO — though it was not indicated how or by what procedure. A political process like Russia's, that has led to two attempted coups in two years, should not be given a veto over NATO membership or be declared eligible for NATO membership itself.

We have to face the implication of our own proposals. If the purpose is to avoid "blocs" and "discrimination," there will never be a good time for East European membership without Russia; and if it is made dependent on Russia, Moscow will have been given a veto or the option of watering down the existing institutions to the point of irrelevance. And if later on Eastern Europe is taken into NATO because Russia has turned out badly, the crisis would surely be exacerbated. We resisted blackmail when Russia was strong; does it make sense to permit Moscow to blackmail us now with its domestic weakness?

["The European Security Confer-
ence seems the ideal instrument\nfor enabling Russia to cooperate\nwith the other nations of the Atlan-
tic area on political, economic and\ncultural subjects. And it could be\nexpanded for that purpose.", "But when even the Russian re-\nform leadership continues to main-\ntain armies in nearly all the suc-\ncessor states of the former Soviet\nUnion, in most cases against the\nwishes of the local authorities, and\nwhen these armies participate in\ncivil conflicts in Georgia, Moldava\nand Azerbaijan — all members of\nthe U.N. — it is surely not the mo-\nment to hold out the prospect of\nNATO membership to Russia.", "Russia is entitled to every consid-\neration for its historic security con-\ncerns. But so is Eastern Europe en-\ntitled to its equally well-founded\nfears. The Administration's reluctance to risk the emergence of a\nhostile Russian government should\nnot be pushed to the point of fulfilling Russia's quest of 300 years: to\nshape the policies of its neighbors.", "The concerns of both Russia and\nEastern Europe could be met by a\nqualified NATO membership for\nPoland, the Czech Republic and\nHungary that enables them to be in\nNATO, like Spain and France,\nwithout joining the integrated milli-\ntary structure. In that scheme, no\nnon-national forces would be de-\nployed east of the Cold War demar-\ncation line. (Even though all of\nGermany is in NATO, no inte-\ngrated forces are deployed in the\nformer East Germany.) That plan\nwould turn NATO into a defensive\nguarantee without adding to its of-\nfensive capabilities. I would even\nargue that by drawing an unam-\nbiguous security line, historic Rus-\nsian temptations would be discour-\naged. This would provide the\nsoundest basis for East-West coop-\neration.", "NATO membership for Eastern\nEurope aside, there is reason for\nserious concern even with respect\nto the existing framework. German\nDefense Minister Volker Ruehe has", "expressed his discomfort with\nplacing NATO's eastern frontier\npermanently along the German/\nPolish border. He obviously would\nprefer it to be along Poland's east-\nern border. Though he was quickly\nsquelched by a government which\nseeks no quarrel with the Clinton\nAdministration in a German elec-\ntion year and which seems genu-\ninely to like the President, he ex-\npressed a valid geopolitical reality.\nThe Partnership for Peace would\ncreate a vacuum in Eastern Eu-\nrope. If things turn out badly in\nRussia, it would lead to the emer-\ngence of a no-man's-land between\nGermany and Russia, which has\ncaused so many European wars.\nAnd Poland would once again be\ndefined as a potential victim.", "The Atlantic Alliance has united\nnations with substantially common\nobjectives, though at times major\ntactical disagreements have oc-\ncurred. Nevertheless, the goals out-\nlined for the Partnership for Peace\nare unlikely to be perceived in the\nsame way in the former Soviet\nUnion. For example, peacekeeping\nhas a special meaning there, often\nindistinguishable from restoring\nthe former Russian Empire.", "The Partnership for Peace would\ndilute what is left of the Atlantic Al-\nliance into a vague multilateral-\nism. When Gorbachev first put for-\nward the idea of a Common Euro-\npean House extending from Van-\ncouver to Vladivostok, his purpose\nwas clearly understood to be to\nmake the Atlantic Alliance less\nrelevant. For Washington now to\ngo all the way and, in effect, to\nequate the Atlantic Alliance with\nthe Common European House is to\nsignal the decline of NATO.", "When Russia is as eligible for\nNATO membership as Poland,\nwhat is left of any common pur-\npose? If Uzbekistan is eligible, why\nnot India? If everybody between\nVladivostok and Vancouver is eligi-\nble — if everybody is allied with\neverybody — why even have an At-\nlantic Alliance? What difference re-\nmains between NATO and the new\nPartnership for Peace? Either\nNATO has in fact become vestigial\nor, alternatively, Asia will see the\nnew grouping as ranging the white\nraces against the peoples of the\nFar East. Though the Administra-\ntion implies that the core NATO\ngroup of 16 will be held together, it\nhas been silent as to what their spe-\ncific functions will be other than to\nparticipate in the Partnership for\nPeace. Indeed, how can they have a\nfunction if blocs are to be avoided?", "For over 40 years, the domestic\ndebate in each country of the North\nAtlantic Alliance has been polar-\nized between the advocates of a\ncohesive alliance and proponents of\na vague multilateralism extending\neast. For 40 years, American policy\nhas supported the advocates of\ncohesion. With the Partnership for\nPeace, America is shifting its con-\nsiderable weight to the multilateral\noption and is making Russia its\nprincipal partner. This will have\nthe profoundest impact on Euro-\npean politics.", "The Partnership for Peace would\naccelerate the trend toward Euro-\npean nationalism and, once Russia\nregains strength, toward European\nneutrality. It would align us in\nWestern Europe with many of the\nforces that have opposed all the\nmeasures which brought the Atlan-\ntic Alliance its successes. That is a\nfateful step, not to be taken lightly.", "Perhaps it is impossible to adapt\nthe Atlantic Alliance to the post-\nCold War world. But we owe it to a\nhistory of common effort and to the\nneeds of a turbulent world to make\nthe attempt. The Administration\ndeserves credit for its efforts to re-\nlate Russia to the mainstream of\ninternational politics. But the new\nEast-West relationship must not\nbegin by submerging the Atlantic\nAlliance in a morass of ill-defined\nmultilateralism.", "A new international order always\ninvolves something of a high-wire\nact as the old and the new interact.\nLet us not begin it by destroying\nthe safety net.", "Henry Kissinger's analyses of\nworld events appear regularly in\n*The Post*."]

The New York Times
Book Review

Sunday, November 14, 1993

# The Right To Be Right

Mrs. Thatcher's memoirs are lucid, opinionated, self-assured, indispensable — like herself.

## THE DOWNING STREET YEARS

By Margaret Thatcher.

Illustrated. 914 pp. New York:

HarperCollins Publishers. $30.

By Henry A. Kissinger

ONE of the curiosities of British politics is that the party of the insiders — the Tories — should have produced two great Prime Ministers from among rank outsiders: Benjamin Disraeli, of Jewish origin; and Margaret Thatcher, a grocer's daughter. Both proved extremely controversial. Both helped to define a new role for Britain's Conservatives. Disraeli showed the Conservatives that they need not fear mass democracy; Mrs. Thatcher set out to demonstrate that the Conservatives could prosper while dismantling the role of the state and stressing individual responsibility.

Margaret Thatcher was one of the most remarkable British prime ministers of this, or any other, century. When she took over its leadership in 1975, the Tory Party was participating in the seemingly inevitable enhancement of the role of the state — at a slower pace than the Labor Party but in the same direction. When she left office 15 years later, British politics had come full circle. Now it was the Labor Party that was trying to slow down the seemingly irreversible trend toward privatization and reduction in the role of the state. So great was the transformation that the current official platform of the Labor Party is not very different from what Mrs. Thatcher inherited in 1975 as the Conservative program.

The style of Mrs. Thatcher's domestic politics was as important as the substance. She abandoned the contest for the center that in her view homogenized democracy and deprived the public of any real choice. She replaced it with an explicit — and at times strident — Conservative ideology whose purpose was to emphasize the dividing lines between the parties. In the end, her insistent elaboration of distinctive issues defeated her. But that is no more than saying that every political revolution sooner or later reaches its end after the public becomes exhausted from being jolted into one new effort after another. It is the measure of Mrs. Thatcher's achievement that she carried on for so long —

hectoring, unyielding — longer than any other British prime minister in the 20th century.

In foreign policy, her break with the past was less explicit. All postwar British Governments of both major parties had emphasized the special relationship with America, and had shown far more caution toward a supranational Europe than their partners on the Continent — especially after de Gaulle's departure from the scene. Mrs. Thatcher elaborated both these strands of British politics and gave them a cast of principle that was distinct from the typically pragmatic British style. Her friendship with the United States was both unqualified and unconstrained by the tinges of neutralist pacifism characteristic of the radical wing of the Labor Party. During the Reagan Administration, she achieved an influence over American decisions, especially with respect to NATO and arms control policy, not seen since Churchill's day.

MRS. THATCHER took British reserve regarding European supranationalism to equally absolute lengths. For Britain, the move into Europe has always held a different significance than it has for the nations of the Continent. Historically, danger had always come to Britain from Europe, and salvation, at least in the modern period, from across the ocean. No British prime minister — Edward Heath excepted — felt comfortable in loosening ties with the United States as a way of increasing England's role in Europe.

But all other postwar prime ministers sought to mitigate their reserve by a dose of pragmatism. Mrs. Thatcher took her stand on principle. She would not permit the slightest step toward limiting British sovereignty, nor make the tactical compromises urged by her dissident Cabinet colleagues to prevent British isolation. Mrs. Thatcher did not mind standing alone; the impres-

sion is unavoidable from "The Downing Street Years" that she thrived on it, and saw in it an endorsement of her rectitude. In the end, her intransigence on European supranationalism turned into the pretext for her downfall — though the comments on her memoirs by her colleagues leave little doubt that they would have found some other pretexts, if necessary, once her standing in the polls had begun to drop. In retirement, at least she has had the satisfaction of seeing her basic instincts vindicated by the fate of the Maastricht approach to a supranational Europe.

The leadership role of a British prime minister is more difficult to discover than that of an Amer-

> Her zest
> infuriated her
> opponents but
> swept the
> doubtful along.

ican President, since the British head of Government acts on behalf of the Cabinet and, in theory, has far less scope for unilateral decisions than a President. Though often the case, that truism has not applied to the really outstanding prime ministers, who tend to carry their Cabinets with them by the force of their personalities and convictions. In both domestic and foreign policy, it is difficult to imagine another prime minister from the ranks of the Tories who would have been prepared to adopt policies of comparable sweep or to maintain them with the same determination as Mrs. Thatcher did.

I had some personal experience of this during the Falklands crisis in 1982. On the occasion of a speech during the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the

(OVER)

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founding of the British Foreign Office, I was invited to lunch with Francis Pym, the Foreign Secretary, and his top advisers. They proceeded to outline to me various alternatives for a negotiated compromise. Believing these to be official policy, I asked Mrs. Thatcher later that day over tea which option she preferred. It proved to be an infelicitous inquiry, for Mrs. Thatcher vehemently rejected the very concept of compromise — so vehemently, in fact, that I did not disturb her misapprehension that I, and not the Foreign Secretary, was the originator of the compromises. This temporarily deflected the wrath from her colleagues. But only temporarily. For, as she makes clear in her memoirs, she subsequently encountered the quest for compromise in the Cabinet. She resisted because she would not permit any change to be extorted from Britain by force. Mrs. Thatcher tells us that she would have resigned had the Cabinet gone along with any of the compromises outlined by Mr. Pym or by the American Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, whose shuttle between Buenos Aires and London she describes with suspicion bordering on distaste.

Nearly all key political decisions are close calls; if the pros and cons were not fairly evenly divided, there would be no dilemmas. Mrs. Thatcher's bearing conveyed that while Britain's problems were difficult, they were soluble, and that she, at least, would not rather do anything else. Her zest swept the doubtful along even as it infuriated her opponents.

Mrs. Thatcher's memoirs are essential for an understanding of her time because they capture all the qualities of her character and, inevitably, some of her defects as well. They are lucid, opinionated, self-assured, wide-ranging and indispensable. She has chosen to cover all the principal decisions of her tenure, which means that she has included events of only marginal interest to American readers. But the account is so full that even the reader who concentrates just on material of special interest to himself will be rewarded by the gripping tale of a leader who has triumphantly answered the question nagging at every political figure: whether his or her actions are making any real difference.

Mrs. Thatcher has been criticized in Britain for her sharp delineation of some of her Cabinet colleagues. At this distance, it is not possible to judge the accuracy of all of these portraits. But there is no doubt that she has an extraordinary gift for conveying essential attributes. She describes her dismissal of Christo-

pher Soames, Churchill's son-in-law, as leader of the House of Lords in this way: "I got the distinct impression that he felt the natural order of things was being violated and that he was, in effect, being dismissed by his housemaid." (As a longtime friend and warm admirer of Christopher's, I found this plausible.) Or her view of the veteran Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti: "He saw politics as an 18th-century general saw war: a vast and elaborate set of parade ground maneuvers by armies that would never actually engage in conflict but instead declare victory, surrender or compromise as their apparent strength dictated in order to collaborate on the real business of sharing the spoils."

SKETCHES such as these are scattered in great profusion through the nearly thousand pages of text. She admired Ronald Reagan, liked Jimmy Carter, felt unappreciated by George Bush and distrusted Secretary of State James Baker. Like many great leaders, Mrs. Thatcher had a better eye for the weaknesses and foibles of her contemporaries than for their virtues. Yet the standards by which she judges them illuminate her approach to politics as a noble enterprise, a mixture of principle and personality, of careful analysis and heady conviction.

Memoir writers tend to sound self-righteous, especially when they defend controversial policies. But this is nearly inevitable, since their decisions represented their best judgment at the time, and the passage of time rarely alters the conclusions. This is especially true of leaders like Mrs. Thatcher, who eschewed expediency and affirmed principle. And, after all, there were not many failures. Most of what she set out to do was achieved. The debate about Mrs. Thatcher's tenure has to concern the nature of her objectives rather than her ability to reach them.

It would be preposterous for me to pretend to neutrality with respect to her objectives. I believe Mrs. Thatcher made a vast contribution to the public debate and to the direction of our time. It is a pity that she did not set out at greater length the reasoning that brought her to the views she holds. So strong are her convictions

(cont'd.)

-3-

## The Likable Mr. Gorbachev

Mr. Gorbachev... insisted on the superiority of the Soviet system. Not only did it produce higher growth rates, but if I came to the U.S.S.R. I would see how the Soviet people lived — " joyfully." If this were so, I countered, why did the Soviet authorities not allow people to leave the country as easily as they could leave Britain? ...

If at this stage I had paid attention only to the content of Mr. Gorbachev's remarks — largely the standard Marxist line — I would have to conclude that he was cast in the usual Communist mold. But his personality could not have been more different from the wooden ventriloquism of the average Soviet apparatchik. He smiled, laughed, used his hands for emphasis, modulated his voice, followed

an argument through and was a sharp debater. He was self-confident and... he did not seem in the least uneasy about entering into controversial areas of high politics. This was even more so in the hours of discussion which followed. He never read from a prepared brief, but referred to a small notebook of manuscript jottings. Only on matters of pronunciation of foreign names did he refer to his colleagues for advice. His line was no different from what I would have expected. His style was. As the day wore on I came to understand that it was the style far more than the Marxist rhetoric which expressed the substance of the personality beneath. I found myself liking him.

From "The Downing Street Years."

that she feels no need to explain them.

Mrs. Thatcher's passionate views sometimes lead her to excessive policy judgments. She correctly under-

> So strong are Mrs. Thatcher's convictions that she feels no need to explain them to her readers.

stood the powerful, perhaps dominant, role that a unit-ed Germany would come to play in Europe. But, in the end, foreign policy must relate analysis to what is

possible. By the time the Communist regime in East Germany collapsed, there was no longer a practical alternative to German unification. Mrs. Thatcher, according to her memoirs, tried to interest François Mitterrand in supporting two, albeit democratic, German states; he, in turn, brought a similar proposition before Mikhail Gorbachev. One has the impression that both leaders shared her concerns but judged themselves too weak to sustain a permanent policy of confrontation in the center of Europe against a resurgent Germany.

In the contemporary period, to say that a statesman had the courage of her convictions, perhaps even to excess, is to describe a quality that is in regrettably short supply. When all is said and done, what Margaret Thatcher stood for was that man is not the product of circumstance but of choice, and that politics is not about expediency but about purpose. Her book bears witness to that message, for which free peoples owe her a debt of gratitude — whether or not they agree with all her conclusions. ☐

Henry A. Kissinger is working on a book about the history of diplomacy, to be published next spring.

DEFINING A RATIONAL
FOREIGN POLICY

by Henry A. Kissinger

PRESIDENT Clinton deserves support for his effort to disen-gage from Somalia, where we had no national interest and where we should never have become in-volved militarily.

But his deeper challenge is to define a rationale for continued American engagement in regions where our national interest does compel it. The president has called attention to this need, but his administration's statements are so muddled as to compound perplexities.

The basic problem is that administration spokesmen, including the president, seem to shrink from any geopolitical or security context for the use of American force, or of any implication that the national interest may sometimes require the application of power.

In its quest of general causes and multilateral action, the administration reflects the attitudes of a generation whose defining experience was the Vietnam War. Convinced that the Vietnam disaster was caused by an excessive concern with national security, they are now trying to submerge the national interest in multilateral ventures.

This point of view misunderstands the past as much as it misjudges the present. America entered Indochina as it did all wars in the 20th century — on behalf of universal principle, as for example in Wilson's dictum "to make the world safe for democracy."

In Vietnam it had been on behalf of the doctrine of collective security, to oppose what was judged to be a global Sino-Soviet military offensive, and to safeguard democracy against what was perceived as a global strategy of guerrilla warfare. The error of Indochina was not that America was too nationalistic, but that its goals were too universal; not that it was too self-centered, but that it was too undiscriminating.

The fear of having a national foreign policy explains the administration's neglect of such traditional instruments of policy as our existing alliances and the scarcity of references in its statements to a common interests with other countries — except to carry out an American agenda of such universal causes as human rights, non-proliferation and collective security.

Thus the president's appeal that America must find the "right course" for staying engaged in the world lacks any criteria for what this "right course" is. In their absence, we cannot judge the "unacceptable costs" the president urges Americans to avoid.

The doctrine of collective security assumes that all nations perceive international problems in the same way and are prepared to run the same risks for vindicating their view. But the essence of the new world order is its fragmentation on a national and even ethnic basis.

Universal causes, however, are hard to come by. Even during the Cold War, when there existed a global threat, it was rarely possible to obtain an international consensus except for defending the center of Europe, and that task was policed by NATO — a traditional alliance — rather than by the United Nations. The oft-invoked Gulf War was less a multi-

lateral action than an American action multilaterally supported by other states to gain an influence over American decisions.

In situations like Somalia, meaningful "collective security" is to all practical purposes out of reach. Witness the extent to which many of the military forces sent there by other nations adroitly avoided combat. Nor is the repeated distinction between "political" and "military" solutions very helpful.

The mistake in Somalia was not that a political police mission was abandoned for a military one, but that the Bush administration sent military forces without defining a goal permitting extrication. The American military is not designed for humanitarian missions, and its difficulties were magnified when Clinton's U.N. Ambassador, Madeleine Albright, added "nation-building" to the agenda.

The misery in Somalia was manufactured; it was the product of exactly the kind of clan warfare into which the president has told us we should not meddle. I agree, but there was never a way of ending the humanitarian mission without either returning to the conditions which had produced the need for it or else by engaging in nation-building. And nation-building required the very warfare we are now being told to abjure.

Once a military conflict exists, the situation on the ground will determine the "political" outcome. If in Somalia a "political" solution implies anything different from the status quo ante, it can be achieved only by military pressure or at least the threat of it.

In other words, debacle was inherent in the initial intervention, which was doomed from the start to end in Somali domestic chaos and starvation, or in American involvement in a Somali civil war.

Administration statements continually cite Cambodia as an example of a successful U.N.-led "political" solution. In fact, Cambodia proves the opposite point. No other country has been so exhausted by military conflict. After 20 years of warfare, all the parties had come to the end of their ropes. The "political solution" reflected the military situation; it was not a substitute for it. The United Nations provided the forum in which the exhausted parties could talk.

It is ironic that an administration so determined to distinguish itself from the past seems so in danger of repeating America's traditional error of invoking general causes for all situations and all regions — under the labels of enlargement of democracy and multilateral initiatives.

If it is true, as President Clinton has said, that "it is not our job to rebuild Somalia as a society or its political structure," why does it follow in the same press conference that we send military personnel to Haiti "to retrain the army, to rebuild the nation"?

Are we embarrassed to say that it is because Haiti, being close, is a security concern and Somalia, being far, is not? And if security is our principal worry in Haiti, can we define it and are there other ways of achieving it than by using force to restore a leader who is universally described as extraordinarily unstable and reckless?

How are the administration statements on Somalia to be reconciled with our attitudes toward China and Peru or, for that matter, Russia?

Somalia has come early enough in the administration's term to enable it to define the nature and the limits of future American military intervention. At stake must be an American interest that the American public can understand.

If there exists no American purpose other than to fulfill an international consensus, and if one cannot explain to American families that their loved ones are risking their lives either to enhance America's security or well-being, it will not be possible to stay the course until "success" is achieved.

This national interest must be translatable into a military mission achievable within a time period sustainable by the American political process. If other nations have views compatible with the above, America should welcome their cooperation — as it did in the Gulf War. What we must not do is to permit our objectives and missions to be defined by invocations of an international consensus.

In developing a national strategy, the administration would do well to keep in mind that conventional wisdom has enthusiastically endorsed all our national debacles, from Indochina to Somalia, only to do a flip-turn at the first sign of trouble.

At this moment, conventional wisdom applauds America's Russia policy, which is being presented as defending the cause of democracy against dictatorship, and of peace against militarists, all of this on the basis of support for one leader.

But do we really know enough about the workings of democracy in distant societies and cultures? Clearly, in the last Moscow upheaval Boris Yeltsin was far preferable to the rabble of fascists, ex-communists and fanatical nationalists who supported the rump Parliament. The reason was not that he is a democrat — on which the jury is still out — but because he is less likely to pursue a policy dangerous to our interests than his most recent rivals.

And that is a national security, not a moral, judgment.

Do we not run a huge risk endorsing under the banner of democracy parliamentary elections for a country without electoral law or constitution, and whose president has dismissed the supreme court and banned political parties and newspapers without any pretense of legality? Is it really wise to extol as democratic a process that can easily turn into autocracy and then, finding us disillusioned, tempt us into unnecessary confrontations?

The organization of the territory that used to be the Soviet Union will affect the future peace of Europe. The successor republics include Ukraine (with a population equal to that of France) and several other states comparable in size and significance to medium-sized European countries. These have been substantially neglected through two administrations.

The insistent requests by Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to be permitted to join NATO testifies to their perception of the European security problem. If Russia restores its empire by force or pressure, some of the patterns of the Cold War will reappear, as Russian actions in Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, and toward Ukraine and the Baltic States foreshadow.

The administration, in its overemphasis on Moscow politics, has given no indication to Moscow that it is concerned about this.

Indeed, do not the repeated claims of the great success of our Russian policy reflect a certain arrogance? Can we really believe that Yeltsin succeeded because we blessed him or is his victory not much more likely the result of support by the Russian army? Do our statements not tempt the risk of dissociation by Yeltsin to prove his nationalistic commitment?

The administration has been very sensitive to genuinely global problems: nuclear proliferation, economic development, the environment and the fostering of free institutions.

But so far, it has neglected the need to rebuild the Atlantic Alliance, to relate the former Soviet satellite orbit to Europe and the Atlantic Alliance, to engage in a mature dialogue with China (though it is making progress), or to establish a serious dialogue with former Soviet republics other than Russia.

For these goals, it needs to elaborate a concept of the national interest.

Nonetheless, the administration's mistakes have been largely of omission. In designing foreign policy, no president since Truman has faced such an empty sheet. It took Truman four years to install a new doctrine for American foreign policy. It is therefore far too early to demand conclusive answers. But it is not too early to expect appropriate questions.

*Henry Kissinger's analyses of world events appear regularly in The Post.*

SPECIAL REPORT

# Turning a Fairy Tale Into Reality

BY HENRY A. KISSINGER

FOR VETERANS OF WHAT GOES BY THE name of the Middle East peace process, the ceremony at the White House had the aura of a fairy tale. It seems only yesterday that I walked the streets of Tel Aviv with my valued and trusted friend Yitzhak Rabin after the '67 war, when he was the hero of conquests. Now he was seeking to become an instrument of conciliation. And next to me sat the serene and beautiful Mrs. Sadat, suspended between hope and regret that it took nearly twenty years for Yasir Arafat, the leader who had vilified her husband, to embrace Sadat's noble path. In my last conversation with Sadat a few weeks before his assassination, he spoke of his dream of building a mosque, a church, and a synagogue on top of Mount Sinai to symbolize the hope for peace and reconciliation. Would it now be Arafat who at last fulfills that vision?

It was one of those rare occasions on which hope suspends all doubt. Neither I nor anyone else present will ever forget the anguish and hope in the nearly Biblical remarks of Prime Minister Rabin. Nor could one fail to be affected by the culmination of Arafat's tortuous journey, which had finally brought him acceptance as a world leader on a level with the other protagonists. President Clinton's dignified chairmanship of the ceremony and the Russian foreign minister's minimal role also testified to the unchallenged global leadership that is now America's.

Only the most churlish or fanatical would refuse to join the almost palpable hope expressed at that historic ceremony. On the other hand, statesmen who base their policy on the expectation of recurrent miracles usually suffer shipwreck. In the years ahead, the idyll on the White House lawn can only be fulfilled if all the parties concerned apply its spirit to resolving the nagging questions which remain. For example, what exactly was being recognized by each party? Was it premature (however unavoidable) to invest Arafat with the aura of a head of state three years after his support of Iraq in the gulf war, and on the basis of "granting" Israel a status that is the automatic prerogative of nearly every other nation? Was the euphoria in which we all shared a spur to the process? Or will it prove an obstacle if it leads to disillusionment after the inevitable deadlocks appear?

Whether the agreement leads to greater flexibility or greater tension will depend crucially on the United States. Until now, every Arab-Israeli agreement has been brokered by the United States, and many of the formulae leading to solutions were designed in Washington. Yet in the phase that is now beginning America must not assume responsibility for breaking all the deadlocks, lest it give each party an incentive to shift the diffi-

cult choices to us. After the signing ceremony, one of the PLO negotiators said to me that the PLO had learned that American pressure on Israel for specific concessions usually backfired and that a settlement could be sold best to the Palestinians if it was freely negotiated.

On this occasion, the United States allowed just that—staying on the sidelines at crucial junctures and even allowing itself to remain uninformed. Even now, America is not needed on a daily basis, hard as this may be for some of our more missionary experts to accept. But what America should do—and is the only country in a position to accomplish—is to use the confidence of both sides to create the conceptual framework for progress. America alone has the ability to reconcile the clashing notions of sovereignty, and

perhaps even to create areas of mixed sovereignty where the populations are particularly intermingled. It should hold the line against outside intervention, making clear to traditional friends, especially to Israel, that the peace process strengthens America's commitment to their future, and making clear to traditional adversaries that continued moderation is the only road to progress.

The ceremony at the White House was made possible, paradoxically, by exhaustion: material exhaustion on the part of the PLO; psychological exhaustion on the part of Israel. This is why all the truly contentious issues have been set aside—borders, settlements, refugees, and Jerusalem. Even the mutual recognition on which the agreement is based is ambiguous. Israel has recognized the PLO but seems to believe that it has not recognized a Palestinian state and that it can choose the representatives with whom it is prepared to deal. This is surely an illusion. I have in the past expressed grave reservations about the consequences of creating a Palestinian state. But after Arafat has been received at the White House on an equal footing with Rabin and elections are held in the occupied territories, a Palestinian state is inevitable sooner or later. And its leaders will emerge from the elections.

At the same time, Arafat, with the best will in the world, will be unable to endow his recognition with the nearly mystical significance given to it by many Israelis. Any political leader depends on his constituency. And in the past, the PLO has been an umbrella organization including terrorists, rejectionists, and radicals, many of whom have condemned the agreement and are unlikely to ever be converted to views contrary to those of a lifetime. Even granting Arafat's unreserved commitment to peace, the pressures he faces will make him an increasingly complicated partner. If he pursues a PLO or radical consensus, he will be forced to be ambiguous; if he goes beyond his constituency, he may be removed or become irrelevant.

When the Palestinians recognized Israel, did they mean that they have become genuinely reconciled to its existence? Or was it with the same attitude that France renounced Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1871, as a stage in a continuing struggle? I asked this question of a PLO representative after the signing. He answered: "I consider

PAUL KERN—SYGMA
Israelis in Jerusalem celebrating the handshake last week

## Will the euphoria prove an obstacle if it leads to disillusionment after the deadlocks appear?

32

NEWSWEEK SEPTEMBER 27, 1993

myself as coming from Jaffa. My children, who have never lived in Palestine, will also tell you they are from Jaffa." At the same time, he was voluble—and I believe sin-cere—in protesting his yearning for peace.

The follow-on negotiations must strive to remove this ambivalence. They must make clear that there is a point beyond which Israel should not be asked to make concessions, and that Israel's international support has been enhanced by the risks it is taking for peace. They must also convince the Palestinians that their dignity is an essential aspect of a final settlement.

It will be painful for each side to accept the consequences of its own decisions. After the elections in the occupied territories, which must be held in nine months' time, the Israeli recognition of the Palestinian entity will be irrevocable, as will the withdrawal of Israeli troops. Israeli politicians who speak blithely of abrogating the agreement or of reoccupying vacated areas are deluding themselves. The international isolation such acts would produce would prove unsustainable. And even if Israel should withdraw its recognition of a Palestinian entity, the rest of the world would not follow.

**Benefits:** At the same time, the Palestinians must not delude themselves that they can resort to their traditional pressure tactics. The follow-on negotiations cannot succeed and coexistence in the occupied territories would be thwarted if the PLO returned to harassment, not to speak of terrorism.

In the immediate future, Israel will gain considerable benefits. It will no longer need to deal with the nearly half

of the total Arab population of the occupied territories living in Gaza. It will be able to withdraw its forces from the population centers in the rest of the occupied territories and thus reduce, perhaps even eliminate, the impact of the *intifada*. Cooperative patterns between Israeli and Arab authorities on the West Bank are sure to develop. Relations with other Arab countries will improve, though I would expect full recognition to be withheld pending an overall settlement.

The Palestinians' major achievement in the initial period is the de facto recognition of a Palestinian entity and the establishment of the PLO as the governing authority in the occupied territories. After a while, this fact is bound to alter the negotiating pattern fundamentally. Once follow-on talks begin, the continuing presence of Israeli settlements, military bases, and unrestricted use of roads is certain to be challenged—perhaps even in the interim period of two years and surely after that.

An even more serious challenge may come from within the Muslim world. Since 1948, every major step toward peace in the Middle East has been followed by an in-

crease in terrorism. Dissident groups have tried to interrupt the process either by assassinating those who carried it forward, as happened to Sadat, or by triggering Israeli retaliation. Some leading Israelis seem to believe that Arafat and the police force that the PLO will be permitted to organize will help keep the West Bank quiet. But the "strong" Palestinian police force envisioned in the agreement is likely to become, at best, a study in ambivalence. With what energy will they resist acts aimed at subverting the Israeli presence? With what conviction will they pursue terrorists returning from Israel? When will they become the problem rather than the solution?

The most serious danger is that the dissentive groups will try to create Lebanese-style

conditions in the occupied territories. The central authorities may not be able to prevent terrorism, either against moderate Arabs or against Israelis. If conditions become too chaotic, Israel may intervene, or outside Arab forces may try to infiltrate the West Bank, or both. The same result could occur if the PLO entity seeks to intervene in Jordan. All these developments could usher in another Middle East war.

The prospects of a permanent peace thus depend on how well the interim arrangements can be made to work, and after two years whether the follow-on negotiations on Jerusalem, borders, settlements, etc. will show progress. In this respect, the outside world has a major responsibility. While the role of economic development is often exaggerated, in this case rapid progress in that

field is one of the few tools available to give the parties—especially the Palestinians—a stake in an evolutionary approach. A substantial aid program is necessary. America has quite properly taken the lead, but major resources must come from the Arab world. In addition, the world community has an obligation to come down hard on terrorism. Heretofore, the pattern has been token opposition to terrorism and passionate condemnation of Israeli retaliations. That pattern must end.

But the ultimate challenge remains the follow-on negotiations. Fitting two states into a territory fifty miles wide—the distance from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River—would be difficult even if irredentism were not built into the situation. This

remains above all a psychological problem. Israel will have to navigate between the two extremes of an occupation mentality on the one hand, and a nearly mystical belief in a formal peace (for which there is no historical warranty) on the other. After all, most wars start between countries that are legally at peace; recognition has never precluded war or even conquest. The PLO must overcome the twin temptations of sustaining the intifada and using softer language to disarm Israel while pursuing its traditional objectives.

America's role should be to rally support for the development of the autonomous area, insisting that most of these funds come from the Arab world. It should use its influence with the moderate Arabs to end their boycott of Israel, and to encourage Palestinian restraint. It should be available at times of deadlock, but without returning to its dominating role. And it should organize plausible international sanctions against terrorism and make clear to the PLO that this is a key test of its seriousness.

What America must not do is to offer its military forces as the *deus ex machina* for solving every security issue. Nothing would more undermine the willingness of the American people to support the peace process than a permanent stationing of U.S. combat troops, especially in the heavily populated territories on the West Bank, where they could easily repeat the experiences of the Marine contingent in Beirut.

A formidable agenda thus lies ahead. Like all diplomatic documents, the agreement signed in Washington represents a compromise which must be compared not with what each side would consider ideal, but with what would exist in the absence of the agreement. All the parties must now learn to live with what they have built, which is quite different from what is familiar to them. The spirit of the emotional signing should be a huge help in getting the parties to their destination. ■

AP
Palestinian police train for duty in the occupied territories

## At what point will the Palestinian police force become part of the problem and not part of the solution?

SEPTEMBER 27, 1993 NEWSWEEK 33

The Washington Post - Tuesday,

July 20, 1993

Henry Kissinger

# NAFTA: Clinton's Defining Task

Before the end of the summer, President Clinton will ask Congress to approve the North American Free Trade Agreement linking the United States with Canada and Mexico in a free trade area comprising a population of 370 million and a gross national product of $6 trillion. It will represent the most creative step toward a new world order taken by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War, and the first step toward the even larger vision of a free trade zone for the entire Western Hemisphere.

And yet, recent polls show that barely half the American people have ever even heard of it.

This presents the president with a rare opportunity for leadership in educating the American people to the opportunity before them. Since the end of the Cold War, it has become apparent that fear of communism can no longer serve as the cement of the international order. With the collapse of the ideological challenge, traditional patterns of nationalism have gained ground nearly everywhere. The post-Cold War world has already witnessed growing rivalries reminiscent of the tensions preceding World War I.

In this light, developments in the Western Hemisphere become crucial to global order. Here, a group of democratic nations has pledged itself to the Enterprise for the Americas initiative based on popular governments and market economies. The sole dictatorship remaining in the Western Hemisphere is Cuba; state-run enterprises are being privatized; nationalistic, protectionist methods of economic management are being replaced by export-oriented economies hospitable to foreign investment and supportive of open international trading systems. The revolution sweeping the Western Hemisphere can point the way to an international order based on cooperation.

It is this revolution that is at stake in the ratification of NAFTA. What Congress will soon have before it is not a conventional trade agreement but the hopeful architecture of a new international system.

Strong presidential leadership in the ratification battle is urgently required. As the only nationally elected American leader, the president is in the best position to put NAFTA into a broad strategic framework and to show the American public why its passage serves the fundamental national interest. He must not permit the treaty's opponents to define NAFTA as a problem of economic arithmetic. In this task, the president is entitled to bipartisan support. NAFTA is so vital to prospects for global progress that it needs to transcend partisanship and merits a demonstration of nonpartisan unity.

America has never had a neighbor of the importance Mexico will acquire in the next century, with or without NAFTA. By then it will be a country with a population of well over 100 million and equal to the Asian "little tigers" such as Korea. Our de facto open borders make friendly relations a vital national interest.

Even on strictly economic grounds, I believe NAFTA to be to our long-range advantage. Most studies suggest that we would gain more jobs than we would lose—though of course the problem with that calculation is that those who lose jobs are not usually the ones who benefit from gains in employment.

Nevertheless, let us not delude ourselves: The movement of American industry to Mexico cited by many NAFTA critics has occurred despite present tariff barriers, which are already quite low. What the critics are implying is not just a defeat of NAFTA—which would not accomplish their objective—but an increase in tariffs against Mexico. Such a policy would

put an end to any hope of a new Western Hemisphere relationship and encourage the rise of nationalism.

For Mexico has been in the vanguard of the revolution sweeping the Western Hemisphere. Not so long ago, its foreign policy was defined by anti-American rhetoric and its economic policy by statist left-wing attitudes. Import substitution, the fashionable euphemism for protectionism, was the dominant trend, and anti-gringo suspicion a principal feature of the internal Mexican debate.

Starting with the presidency of Miguel de la Madrid in 1982, Mexico began to reverse these patterns. Under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the process assumed tidal proportions. Salinas turned Mexico on its head. He opened it to foreign investment, lowered tariffs, insisted on free competition, quelled corruption and brought into office an extraordinary group of young, highly trained technocrats. I know no government anywhere that is more competent.

In going all-out for NAFTA; Salinas has overcome considerable domestic Mexican reservations. He has gone to great lengths to respond to American concerns—even to the point of negotiating side agreements on the environment and labor that his left-wing opponents describe as gringo interference in domestic legislation.

Nevertheless, to this day the ancient themes of Mexican political discourse are still just below the surface. They remain the staple of Salinas's left-wing opposition. NAFTA's defeat would cause them to boil rapidly to the surface, and would humiliate President Salinas in his bet on trust and cooperation with the United States. This would be a particular problem as Mexico gears up for next year's presidential election.

(over)

History will almost surely record the Enterprise Initiative for the Americas as one of the most important American initiatives since the Marshall Plan. It is a blueprint for which the North American trade agreement with Mexico is the vital first step for a new kind of community of nations, built on a common base of democratic values, drawn strongly together by the free exchange of goods, services and capital, dedicated to human rights and committed to the preservation of their common environment. Argentina, Venezuela and Chile have already indicated a strong interest in it. It looks far beyond the Organization of American States, the only existing institutional expression of common purpose in the region, and its outmoded concentration on national security; rather it responds to the contemporary agenda.

At a moment when all the major Latin American countries have raised their sights to a new partnership based on values the United States has been espousing for decades, a retreat from it by America would be a shattering blow to their enthusiastic response to this vision for a new and better world.

A regional Western Hemisphere Organization dedicated to democracy and free trade would be a first step toward the new world order that is so frequently cited but so rarely implemented. It would permit the countries of the hemisphere to respond creatively to any of the various ways the international order may evolve. Almost every country pays lip service to a global free trading system and to the urgency of the Uruguay round as its expression. It would be shortsighted, however, to ignore the regional groupings emerging in both Europe and Asia as possible alternatives.

A Western Hemisphere-wide free trade system— with NAFTA as the initial step—would give the Americas a commanding role no matter what happens. If the principles of the Uruguay round prevail, it will become a major participant in global economic growth. If regional groupings dominate, the Western Hemisphere, with its vast market, will more than hold its own in regional competition. Opening itself up to associate membership by nations outside this hemisphere could create a system for global free trade based on incentives for those willing to abide by its principles and by penalties for those nations not playing by the rules.

President Clinton has understandably preferred not to deflect Congress from concentrating on his economic package. But the stakes are too high to wait much longer. He must take the lead in defining the issues. But he should not be asked to fight this battle alone. It should be possible to enlist former presidents, secretaries of state and other leaders in one of the broad-based coalitions by which previous new departures in foreign policy—like the Marshall Plan—have been put before the American people.

If that happens, Clinton's will be perceived as a seminal presidency whatever else transpires while he is in office.

INTERNATIONAL

WESLEY BOXCE—JB PICTURES

The American will to convert foes to the cause of peace: U.S. Marines at a Somali military base on the eve of their arrival into Baidoa

Clinton and the World

He must find a role for an America that can neither dominate nor retreat

By Henry A. Kissinger

When President Clinton spoke to The New York Times a week before his Inauguration about how to deal with Saddam Hussein, he said that he was a Baptist, and he believed in the possibility of conversion. This comment was widely criticized as evidence that the new president might not possess the diplomatic acumen required to function effectively on the world scale.

In fact, Clinton's attitude was not very different from that of Franklin Roosevelt, who, in the 10th year of his presidency, after Stalin killed as many Russians as the Germans had, proclaimed that the Soviet leader was a reasonable person "possessed of stalwart good humor." At the Teheran summit, Roosevelt went a step further by referring to Stalin as Uncle Joe and reporting afterward

that "the ice was broken and we talked like men and brothers."

Clinton's remarks reflected an old American nostalgia for the conversion of adversaries as the key to peace. As the only nation explicitly created to vindicate the idea of liberty, America has always believed that her values were relevant to the rest of mankind. That conviction has been reflected in two somewhat contradictory impulses. One is that these values can best be served by concentrating on their perfection at home—this was the basis of isolationism. The other is a sense of missionary obligation to crusade to transform the world in our image.

The belief in conversion explains why President Reagan, who began by talking about the Soviet Union as an evil empire, later came to pride himself on having brought Gorbachev to an appreciation of democratic values. At various stages of the postwar period, a number of other opponents have been similarly described as ei-

ther having almost converted to the American viewpoint or as having realized that economic cooperation and democratic progress were more important than political gain. It was a replay of the fantasy often found in American movies, where a villain finds sudden illumination due to some dramatic event and, from one day to the next, turns benign.

President Clinton seems to believe in both strands of this tradition—the belief that America should focus on affairs at home, and that she should promote democracy when she ventures abroad. And he is far from unique in that respect. Therefore, the real issue is not what he may or may not know about the fine points of diplomacy, something he is in any case sure to learn on the job. His challenge as president will be to understand that, for the first time in her history, America now finds herself in a world which she cannot dominate, but from which she also cannot simply withdraw.

NEWSWEEK: FEBRUARY 1, 1993 45

INTERNATIONAL

The cold-war period was dominated by
two superpowers. The so-called new world
order contains five or six power centers of
nearly equal strength. Even the nuclear
equation is beginning to edge toward parity
as START II reduces the arsenals of the
erstwhile superpowers into the numerical
range of such nuclear countries as France,
Britain and even China. A multipolar
world must seek stability through balance
of power—a concept to which America has
been traditionally hostile, preferring to
treat all nations as more or less inter-
changeable and hence subject to salvation
by domestic transformation.

Take, for instance, the U.S. attitude to-
ward the Persian Gulf. After the fall of the
Shah of Iran, the moderate regimes in the
gulf faced two preponderant threats, nei-

the gulf remains how to organize some out-
side force to balance Iraq's continued ambi-
tions as well as the growing strength of
Iran. And we can no longer hope to create
that balance by conciliating Iraq.

Problems of equilibrium are emerging in
other parts of the world as well. In the
former Soviet Union, the growth of democ-
racy and market economics is widely seen
as the solution to historic foreign-policy
problems. I favor economic assistance to
Russia and the encouragement of its nas-
centdemocracy. But prudent policymakers
must prepare for the fact that a Russia
made stronger by economic reform will no
doubt lead to far more complicated rela-
tions with its neighbors. Most Russian lead-
ership groups still find the disintegration
of the old empire difficult to accept. A

China, it has the highest sustained eco-
nomic growth rate in the world, which will
be increasingly translated into military
strength. Finally, Korea will begin to rival
the stature of European nations. America
must seek to promote a healthy evolution in
its relationships, but her role will have to be
more like Britain's traditional approach to
Europe, as a balancing agent rather than
as a dominant force.

President Clinton wisely pointed out that there are now also forces in the world that do not fall into traditional categories, such as environment, population, nuclear proliferation and catastrophic diseases. And the drive toward popular participation in government will surely remain a dominant theme. Unfortunately, the importance of a challenge does not automatically guaran-

DAVID BURNETT—CONTACT

LES ASPIN
SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

Developed expertise as
chairman of the House
Armed Services Committee.
Rejects the Pentagon's "all
or nothing" approach to the
use of force; believes new
technology enables precision
responses. Keen instincts for
what the public will tolerate.

IRA WYMAN FOR NEWSWEEK

SAMUEL (SANDY) BERGER
DEPUTY NATIONAL
SECURITY ADVISER

A deputy to Anthony Lake in
the Carter era, during the
campaign he coordinated
foreign-policy advice for
Clinton. Cares about human
rights, but believes that
"diplomacy disengaged from
force isn't much diplomacy."

LARRY DOWNING—NEWSWEEK

WARREN CHRISTOPHER
SECRETARY OF STATE

Old enough to be Clinton's
father; the corporate lawyer
is careful, deliberate,
judicious. Not known for his
vision or identified with any
particular school of foreign
policy or ideology. He is a
lawyer who (deftly) carries
out the wishes of his client.

JEFF MITCHELL—REUTERS-BETTMANN

ANTHONY LAKE
NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER

He split with Kissinger
over the invasion of
Cambodia. But he's no dove:
he sees America as an
internationalist power
pushing free markets and
democracy globewide. Seen
as the foreign-policy team's
intellectual powerhouse.

ther of which they could handle by them-
selves: radical, secular Iraq and fundamen-
talist Iran. When these two nations started
fighting each other in 1980, after Iraq
sought to annex Iranian territory, a bal-
ance-of-power approach would have dictat-
ed support for the weaker country, which
was Iraq—but only so long as it was weak-
er. Then, as soon as Iraq won the war, that
support should have been withdrawn.

The Reagan and Bush administrations
supported Iraq against Iran out of an ap-
preciation for the balance of power, but
failed to carry that policy to its logical con-
clusion. They chose to believe that Saddam
had learned the virtues of moderation and
that continuing to support him after the
war ended was not only expedient but just.
By extending assistance after Iraq became
the strongest power in the gulf, they con-
tributed to its later aggressiveness, which
culminated in the annexation of Kuwait.
Today, the basic geopolitical challenge in

stronger Russia is likely to challenge its
neighbors with respect to the treatment of
Russian minorities, borders and alleged
common security concerns, creating the
premise for renewed domination. We may
also see the emergence of a kind of pro-
market authoritarian government like
that of Pinochet in Chile. The Clinton ad-
ministration would then have to weigh the
traditional American impulse to insist on
democracy against both the danger of con-
flict among the republics and the political
future of Russia itself.

Balancing agent: A strategy is urgently required for promoting Russian progress but also—paradoxically—for the potential impact of that evolution on relations with Russia's neighbors. Similarly, Japan will not rest content during the Clinton presidency with being an economic superpower while remaining politically inactive and militarily weak. And a more autonomous Japan will rattle Asia's equilibrium. As for

tee that American action can resolve it. The so-called global problems continue to be filtered through the prism of national perspectives. Commitment to the spread of democracy does not ensure our understanding how to make it relevant to other societies, how to buttress our convictions with appropriate policies or how to keep these slogans from being exploited by essentially anti-democratic groups. What are slogans in domestic politics, foreign policy must transpose into international strategy.

President Clinton's biggest challenge is therefore conceptual: to impart to his impatient people goals and strategies for an era whose turmoils reflect the painful initiation into a new international order. He will, moreover, have to do so while being inundated by daily cables alleged to require immediate answers, and by the pleadings of bureaucracies that subtly—or not so subtly—will try to push him in their preferred directions. Foreign leaders will descend on him in the

46 NEWSWEEK : FEBRUARY 1, 1993

hope of establishing a personal relationship or extracting statements that they can use to their advantage later on. If Clinton permits himself to be engulfed by the minutiae of diplomacy, he risks losing, or never establishing, a sense of direction. Foreign leaders may not understand this, but they would do themselves a favor by waiting until Clinton has had time to organize his administration and think through what he must do.

Clinton would be wise to resist the pressures to conduct too much personal diplomacy, despite his considerable charm. The latitude for real concessions is defined by the national interest. It can be marginally extended by personal contact but not fundamentally altered. Moreover, when heads of government negotiate on details, there

sides disagree, a compromise should be sought somewhere in the middle. If the other party knows in advance that this is the operating principle, it will have every incentive to stake out an extreme position so that the "compromise" comes as close to its real position as possible. There is also the belief that deadlocks must always be broken by new American proposals as a demonstration of our flexibility. The practical result is often to promote the very deadlock one seeks to avoid. In my view, the best negotiating tactic is to stake out a moderate, reasonable position and then stick to it. Salami tactics of making little concessions one at a time please the bureaucracy but confuse the other party.

President Clinton has said that he wants foreign policy made in the White House and

necessary sense of nuance to the apparatus that must implement policy decisions. Though the National Security Council staff should frame policy options, it is the secretary of state who must have a primary voice in the final selection.

Some conflict of views within the new foreign-policy team is inevitable, and should not be discouraged by the president. It is much better to be presented with clear-cut alternatives than to insist on recommendations in the form of predigested compromises. Usually, that has the effect of shifting the field of the bureaucratic battle from phraseology to interpretation. For the foreign-policy bureaucracy has a truly remarkable skill in hearing only what supports its preconceptions. The president may think that he has approved a

JOHN HARRINGTON—BLACK STAR

WINSTON LORD
ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR
EAST ASIAN AND
PACIFIC AFFAIRS

The GOP Yalie is, like Lake, a former Kissinger protégé. Ambassador to China during the democracy movement, he will be tougher on Beijing than Bush. But he's too realistic to cut the Chinese off.

JACQUES CHENET—NEWSWEEK

PETER TARNOFF
UNDER SECRETARY FOR
POLITICAL AFFAIRS

Will move to restore State's career experts to the policy-making role that Jim Baker's people usurped. "Process Man" is more a facilitator than thinker; may be better at setting up the seminar than answering the question.

ROB CRANDALL—PICTURE GROUP

TIMOTHY WIRTH
UNDER SECRETARY FOR
GLOBAL AFFAIRS

Former senator bargained hard for a job at State with clout. New post recognizes that environmental degradation, population growth, drug trafficking and refugees pose real threats to U.S. security.

MARIO RUIZ—TIME MAGAZINE

STROBE TALBOTT
AMBASSADOR AT LARGE

Another Yale smoothie, the longtime Time editor and Russian expert is a Friend of Bill. New post focusing on free markets and democracy for former U.S.S.R. signals a Clinton priority. Talbott has many friends among the old East bloc's reformers.

are two risks. One is a genuine potential for misunderstanding, when each thinks he has convinced the other, but in fact neither has. The other is that they may make their disagreements too explicit. For world leaders tend to achieve their eminence with the aid of highly developed egos, and they do not like to be perceived as backing down from well-publicized positions.

When I was in government, I generally tried to avoid situations in which the president would meet a foreign leader without knowing what the foreign leader was going to say ahead of time. I also made every effort to tell foreign leaders what the president would have to say to them. When heads of government meet, surprise should be reduced to a minimum and major emphasis should be placed on conceptual understanding.

For a new president, it is important to be wary of certain conventional wisdoms regarding negotiations. One is that if two

implemented in the State Department. This was certainly the operating style in my early years in the Nixon White House. But it was due to emergency circumstances not applicable to current events. The Vietnam negotiations, while exhausting, concerned a few relatively simple issues. The opening to China was a spectacular but singular event. Economic issues were not then as crucial as they are now. In any event, it is not a pattern to be repeated when the challenge is to devise a new concept of foreign policy and to implement it across the entire spectrum of our nation's endeavors.

**Primary voice:** Given this need, it would be a mistake for a president, particularly one with little international experience, to try to run all aspects of foreign policy from the White House. The range and complexity of issues facing the United States today are so great that a secretary of state needs to be involved with the development of concepts from the start in order to convey the

pre-negotiated compromise, but each department will interpret the decision in the way that suits its own purposes.

Ironically, President Clinton, who campaigned on the proposition that America should place her top priority on domestic restructuring, has come to office at a time of great international turmoil. Yet this also presents him with an opportunity to redefine America's role in the world. Truman knew little about foreign policy when he started his presidency, yet he became responsible for designing the architecture for a generation of successful foreign policy. Clinton faces a similar challenge, though of course under different circumstances. If he can teach America to reconcile her twin impulses of missionary zeal and isolationism to her interests, he will have laid a groundwork for a lasting peace. History will then little care how well he understood the world when he entered office.

NEWSWEEK: FEBRUARY 1, 1993 47

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October 29, 1992

John T. Bethell, Editor
The Harvard Magazine
7 Ware Street
Cambridge, MA 02138-4001

Dear Mr. Bethell:

Re: Book Review by Richard Marius (November-December Issue, 1992)

It saddens and shocks me that a contributing editor of Harvard Magazine who is also the Director of Harvard's Expository Writing Program could spume up such a scathing, vitriolic so-called book report on Walter Isaacson's "Kissinger: A Biography". It is not much of a contribution to truth; frankly, it reeks of malevolence. It is diatribe on Kissinger more than it is a discussion of the book itself.

What Isaacson admits to some ambivalence (and I personally contest many of the allegations and revisionist history), nevertheless he credits Kissinger with many accomplishments. Marius, with pure venom and full denunciation of Kissinger, faults the man as well as his activities. He did not treat the book in a dispassionate, objective fashion, but rather launches furious attacks. The indulgence in hateful slurs and innuendoes on Kissinger's ethics is conduct unfitting an academic. Marius is presumably well versed in English, but obviously not in international affairs or psychology. I hope he teaches his students with less venom and less bias, for he is more than unkind, acting more like a character assassin. He attributes motives he cannot possibly verify. His review belongs more to a tabloid than to a prestigious publication like Harvard Magazine.

Kissinger, a Nobel Prize winner, (lest we forget) is a scholar, teacher, a statesman, a diplomat, an historian, and an entrepreneur. In turbulent and disturbing times, he has performed great and genuine services to Harvard and our country. He well deserves his worldwide honors, and Marius is being scurrilous when he calls him "a Godzilla of duplicity" and "a kind of geisha boy selling his influence and celebrity". Does such meanness and pettiness merit inclusion in a proper book report?

I trust there is no censorship policy in Harvard Magazine. However, I hope your editorial staff looks at obviously biased, scandalous, nearly libelous material and suggests a contributor exercise mature judgment

NEW YORK POST
Tuesday, October 27, 1992

A TRIBUTE TO WILLY BRANDT

EVERY once in a while, there appears a statesman who rises to symbolic heights due to the confidence of the needs of his society and his own character. Such men serve to seize a historic moment and, having fulfilled their mission, disappear from the scene to remain forever as deeply honored symbols.

Willy Brandt was such a man.

Though I knew Brandt for 30 years and saw him frequently, we never achieved real intimacy. I admired his achievements even when I was — occasionally — uneasy about his specific policies. I supported these while he was chancellor and helped in negotiating the Berlin Agreement of 1971, despite my skepticism about Ostpolitik when it was first formulated.

Brandt was a seminal and compelling figure even to those of us who could not claim him as a friend and the world will be a lonelier and less worthy place without him.

ONE cause of the ambivalence was that Brandt's policies were subjected to the criteria of diplomacy, which deals with the familiar, while his historic role was that of the apostle of a new era for his people and, in the end, for all of mankind.

For those of us wedded to the traditional Atlantic verities, Ostpolitik challenged many firm beliefs. Brandt's effort to deal with the Soviet Union directly on the future of Germany seemed risky and possibly beyond Bonn's capacity to manage by itself. At the end of this process, a nationalist Germany might have emerged subject to extortion by Moscow's East German satellite and by a Kremlin doling out progress toward unification piece-meal and on its own terms.

Yet the more Brandt's initiative gained momentum, the more I came to realize that he was forcing the West onto the only path it would be able to sustain. Whatever the pitfalls of Ostpolitik, the alternative was riskier still.

When Brandt became chancellor in 1969, he inher-

ited a policy that laid claim to Bonn as the sole representative of the entire German nation, and which demanded a policy of non-recognition of the East German regime from all other nations. To preserve bargaining chips for an ultimate peace negotiation, the Federal Republic refused to accept Germany's new borders with Poland along the Oder-Neisse line.

As time went on, it became increasingly clear that the Hallstein Doctrine, according to which Bonn would break diplomatic relations with any government that recognized the East German satellite, was unsustainable. By the mid-1960s, Bonn itself had modified it with respect to the East European communist governments with the somewhat lame argument that these were not free in their decisions.

The problem went deeper than any legalism, however. In the 1960s, it seemed inconceivable that Moscow would simply let its East German satellite collapse without a struggle, or that it could happen without a long period of weakening of SovietCommunism first taking place.

But the Berlin crises of 1958-62 had shown that no one in the West was prepared to run the risk of war or endless confrontation over what juridical status was to be accorded to East Germany's de facto authorities.

Any crisis that could plausibly be presented as the result of German insistence on its national aspirations contained a high potential for splitting the Western

HENRY KISSINGER

Alliance.

There had been no rush to the barricades in Western Europe when Nikita Khrushchev threatened to turn over Berlin's access routes to the East German communists, implying an indirect grant of sovereignty to East Germany.

Without exception, the Western Allies acquiesced in building of the wall that was to divide Berlin and that seemed to seal the partition of Germany.

The Western Alliance's German policy was collapsing. Continuing it had a far greater potential to divide the West than the feared consequences of Ostpolitik, most of which were conjectural and all of which were long-term.

Thus I came to regard Ostpolitik as the salvation of NATO even while I believed that to Brandt — in his heart of hearts — NATO was a necessity, never a top priority. In my view, the Western Al-

The only way out was to link Ostpolitik as a largely German enterprise with a solution to the Berlin crisis as a largely Allied effort.

That this linkage succeeded — even brilliantly — owed most to Brandt's dogged inspiration. But it was not easy either for Brandt or for his allies.

We were all too aware of the centuries-old German struggle for unity, and of the tensions in the German soul springing from its geographic, and perhaps psychological, location midpoint between East and West.

The late unification of the German states had obstructed the development of a concept of the national interest. The memory of two world wars, and especially of the Nazi period, compounded misgivings.

Brandt's contribution to this process was both extraordinary and indispensable. Not for him was the

The chancellor who restored postwar Germany's honor

liance could only be held together by supporting Brandt.

Only in this way would the Allies be able to keep Germany within the institutions — such as NATO and the Common Market — to which it had committed itself. Only thus would Germany assume the major responsibility for unification; no ally, however close, nor the Alliance as a whole could play that role. Twenty-five years after the war, there was no scope left for tutelage in Germany's life-and-death national question.

Had the West refused to cooperate with Brandt, a solitary German course would have been inevitable sooner or later. Germany would have sullenly explored a lost opportunity; the Western Allies would have come to resent being forced to sustain repeated crises with the Soviet Union on an issue that was bound to concern them less than their German ally.

haggling over the details of such esoteric subjects as access to Berlin. This task he left to his friend, the indefatigable Egon Bahr, who seemed more ready to discuss the calculus of rewards and penalties with which the Nixon administration was comfortable.

What Brandt did was to move the psychological issue to a plane far beyond day-to-day calculation of benefits and risks. He understood that before Germany could act like another nation, it would have to overcome the lingering legacy of its past. And this was a mission not subject to the usual give-and-take of diplomacy.

Postwar Germany had had the enormous good luck to have had as first chancellor the great Konrad Adenauer, who ended Germany's oscillation between East and West. Adenauer recognized that a policy of playing Germany's neighbors off against each other

I thought you might be interested in seeing this.

Henry A. Kissinger

Letters

Sunday, October 25, 1992

## Henry Kissinger's Harvard Years

To the Editor:

Walter Isaacson, an assistant managing editor of Time magazine, has written an 893-page biography of Henry Kissinger.

Theodore Draper's praise of "Kissinger" in the Sept. 6 Book Review is effusive; he writes: "In its range and research, it is the book to end all books on Mr. Kissinger.... It is based on both documentary sources and interviews with just about everyone who ever worked with its subject." Mr. Draper goes on to say that on the subject he himself knows best, being the historian of the 84th Infantry Division, the unit in which Mr. Kissinger served during World War II, Mr. Isaacson's account is "somewhat garbled." I would like to make a more fundamental criticism. On Mr. Kissinger's two decades at Harvard — virtually half of his adult life, from 1947 to 1968 — Mr. Isaacson's account is very garbled.

First, his text is filled with factual inaccuracies. More serious, certainly, is the inadequate use Mr. Isaacson has made of documentary sources, all in the public domain, at least for this period of Mr. Kissinger's life. Finally, the author fails to understand what an interview can in fact elicit in the way of information, how much it depends on the right questions being asked, the approach made always to individuals who have knowledge and good memory of past events, now two, three or more decades ago. In a full-scale biography of the life of Henry Kissinger where Leslie Gelb receives a greater number of citations than Willy Brandt, Valéry Giscard d'Estang and Denis Healey combined, one can only assume, charitably, that the author's duties at Time prevented extensive travel abroad.

Walter Isaacson names over 150 men and women whom he interviewed. Given the importance of an institution that Mr. Kissinger founded while at Harvard — the International Seminar — it is curious he never thought to interview even a handful of the dozens of former members still alive. What might he have learned had he approached, say, Hélène d'Andlau in France, Gian Brioschi in Italy, Fred Mulley (now Lord Mulley) in Britain, Siegfried Unseld in Germany? He would have heard a story substantially different from the one told him by former Harvard colleagues of Mr. Kissinger who, in a number of cases, were not even in Cambridge when the International Seminar was founded, let alone during the years when it flourished.

If the data on the life of Henry Kissinger between 1947 and 1968 are inaccurate, if the interpretation is generally confined to conventional accounts of his activities during these years by men who scarcely knew him, if the evidence on his personal life cannot have come from his first wife or others who knew him at all well, what are we to say of Mr. Kissinger's biographer?

Is it possible he lacked his subject's principal attribute, industry? If so, in taking short cuts, did he, intentionally or unwittingly, distort the truth?

On the matter of factual errors, they abound: the "Carnegie Foundation" was the Carnegie Corporation; Klaus Epstein, a close friend of Mr. Kissinger's, was a historian, not a political scientist; the government department at Harvard was neither unique nor even a leader in appointing Jews to permanent positions after World War II; Louis Hartz was never chairman of that department, but of a very small committee on American civilization; John Conway has no memory of his rooms at Eliot House being "the hangout for many of the government department's graduate students in the early 1950's," and would never claim that his quarters served so important a purpose in the education of the young Henry Kissinger. One could go on to cite any number of comparable mistakes.

Yet the more serious ones, which lead to a substantial distortion of how Mr. Kissinger lived at Harvard, what mattered to him in those years, are the ones that merit attention. Mr. Isaacson's account scarcely gives any information on the things that occupied Mr. Kissinger, least of all his perpetu-

al reading and writing. Only a handful of his contemporaries published more assiduously. Harvard provided the occasion also for his creation of one very remarkable institution, the International Seminar, and another, much less successful: Confluence, a quarterly journal that failed after only six years of publication.

On Mr. Kissinger's research and writing — which consumed a vast amount of his time during these years — his biographer is sparing in detail, except for that which makes for disparaging gos sip. A serious study of Mr. Kissinger's many books and articles, from the perspective of the 1990's, would have been enormously revealing. It would, however, have required months of reading, and this was not a task Mr. Isaacson cared to undertake.

As for "Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy," the book that gave Mr. Kissinger his early fame, we learn more about the quarrel between him and Paul Nitze concerning the Council on Foreign Relations group that spawned the effort than we do about the content of the work. Many of those who served on that study group and in the council at the time are alive; there is nothing to suggest that Mr. Isaacson thought it necessary to speak with them.

To liven his story, he prefers to dwell on the indignities Mr. Kissinger's first wife suffered during the time the work was being written. Ann, "trying hard to remain unheard," is represented as having "dutifully slid trays of snacks inside the door of his study as he wrote." The detail is magnificent; its only flaw is that there was no study, and no door, unless one assumes that he wrote principally in the bedroom. In his small apartment on East 73d Street, which a serious biographer might have thought to visit, if only to have a sense of how Henry Kissinger lived at the time, Mr. Kissinger worked mostly at the dining room table.

The story of the International Seminar, as rendered by Mr. Isaacson, is inaccurate in almost every detail. The remarks on Mr. Kissinger's undergraduate tutor and, years later, "patron," William Yandell Elliott, are conventional. Again, the author relies on hearsay, and not always from reliable sources. He speaks of Elliott's best scholarship, on "European political relations," as having been completed in the 1920's. Anyone who would describe Elliott's "Pragmatic Revolt in Politics" as a study of "European political relations" has not delved much into that large work.

These, however, are small matters in comparison with the astonishing assertion that Elliott "knew that his tutee was already surpassing him as a thinker." Did Elliott ever say this to anyone? Is it even conceivable, given what we know of the man, that he was capable of thinking it?

Elliott, in his capacity as director of the summer school, according to Mr. Isaacson, set out "to help his fledgling graduate student where he needed it — finding work, making some money and establishing a social and political base in an academic community that was not enthusiastically embracing him." These, the author claims, were the circumstances that led Elliott to agree to the creation of the International Seminar. The analysis is fanciful.

The real story is much more interesting, though in some ways more mundane. Because Europe had been closed off from the United States for more than a decade — first by the war, then by the rigors of reconstruction — a good number of Europeans, including many in the younger generation who had reached maturity during the 1940's, had never visited the United States. Given the ideological and political conditions of the day, Mr. Kissinger, consulting with others, decided that an International Seminar at Harvard, associated with the summer school, would be a great boon for a generation of promising younger Europeans. They would learn something of the United States in seminar sessions especially created for them, and would undoubtedly contribute to the intellectual atmosphere of the Harvard Yard. At a time when both the United States and American culture were suspect in many places abroad, such a proposal had

obvious appeal, not least to Elliott.

Mr. Isaacson tells us Mr. Kissinger chose most-
ly young men and women "in elective office, civil
service jobs or journalism." He is said to have
usually "sprinkled in a poet or writer."

Again, error on error. The group that came
from the humanities was generally almost as large
as those concerned with what we would today call
public policy. The poets, painters, writers and
sculptors — some of whom subsequently achieved
substantial renown, others of whom disappeared
into obscurity — when taken with those who came
from more institutional settings, formed a striking
group. In time, junior civil servants also came,
along with politicians, but they never dominated
the seminar.

There were no "fat fees" for the professors invited to lecture, let alone those appointed to handle the seminar each week. Participants lived in barely furnished rooms in the Yard, and those invited to speak from outside Harvard were generally paid modest honorariums. The whole operation was low cost; Mr. Kissinger did not spend "much of his time hustling funds."

Isaacson quotes Thomas Schelling, one of
Mr. Kissinger's less friendly Harvard colleagues,

MARK SUMMERS

as saying: "Henry collected a repertoire of people. ... I don't think it was altruism. He had an instinct for inviting someone who could turn out to be his host later." The issue of "altruism" is a red herring, to be discounted. Mr. Kissinger knew that he profited personally from the seminar. The profit, for him, was overwhelmingly intellectual. He also believed that Harvard gained from having such a company of men and women in its midst. His greatest concern, however, almost to the end, was with showing able men and women from abroad what the United States was at its best.

If Mr. Isaacson has scant understanding of the
nature or purposes of the International Seminar,
his ignorance about the journal Mr. Kissinger
founded, Confluence, shows equal blindness. Per-
suaded it was produced for the same reasons that
moved Mr. Kissinger in all other matters — the
wish to win power and to consort with the great —
he goes to extreme lengths to prove both. One
presumes he looked at the journal, but he mistaken-
ly describes it as "a quarterly magazine filled with
foreign affairs disquisitions." Even a superficial
glance at Confluence would have suggested that
this is a distorted description of its content. The
first number, truly gray — a term Mr. Isaacson
uses — carried articles on the subject "What Are
the Bases of Civilization?" with the major essay by
Pierre Emmanuel, a relatively unknown French
poet at the time whom Elliott had brought to
the summer school to teach, who years later gained
"immortality" as a member of the French Acad-
emy, only to renounce it for political reasons.

Mr. Isaacson speaks of "a dazzling array of
famous contributors whom Kissinger, as editor,
was able to court." In its last year of publication,
Confluence published such eminent individuals as
Leo Silberman-de Villiers, Guido Calogero, Huma-
yun Kabir, Hazil, Herbert von Borch, Gunzo Ko-
jima and R. J. Henle. It would be surprising if Mr.
Kissinger's biographer, or any of his readers, rec-

ognize even two of these names. Mr. Kissinger
could not have been seeking a "power base" with
articles written by such luminaries, on subjects
such as "Education Today" and "Woodrow Wilson
and the Problems of Liberalism." His interest must
have been a different one. His concern, in fact, was
to create the first really international quarterly,
not at all like the Anglo-American reviews that
existed at the time and are even more common
today.

Mr. Isaacson, searching for support for his
arguments on Mr. Kissinger's motives in creating
Confluence, finds it again in Thomas Schelling, who
is quoted as saying that he always suspected the
journal was "a fake." Mr. Kissinger, according to
Mr. Schelling, "used to keep piles of issues stashed
away in his closet because he didn't even have a
distribution system. He used it, like he used the
summer seminars, to make contacts, to gather
articles from people he wanted to meet. It was
primarily an enterprise designed to make Henry
known to great people around the world." Would
anyone reading this damning indictment by a for-
mer Harvard colleague realize that Mr. Schelling
was not even at Harvard during the time that
Confluence was published, that he did not arrive
until a year after it had ceased publication? Would
anyone be surprised that a former editor, with no
other storage space, had "piles of issues stashed
away in his closet"?

Why is any of this important? For one reason,
principally. If a biographer is cavalier in treating
the life of his subject when all the documents are
available, can he be trusted to treat that part of his
life when many are not? His description of Mr.
Kissinger's divorce, for example, while not libelous,
is invented out of whole cloth. It is patronizing and
simple, awkward in its prose, insubstantial in its
content. Mr. Isaacson writes: "Ann was, in her
unpretentious way, rather sophisticated. She liked
music and art, and she could be an engaging con-
versationalist around people who made her feel
comfortable. Nevertheless, Kissinger grew some-
what embarrassed by her as he began to move in
more glamorous orbits. She did not have the style
to fit in, he thought, with a Rockefeller or Kennedy
crowd." What authority can the author cite for such
statements? Mr. Kissinger did not move very much
in the "Kennedy crowd," and there is no evidence to
suggest that he found Ann an embarrassment in the
Rockefeller family circles, very different from
those of John F. Kennedy.

But this is not all. Mr. Isaacson writes: "From
Ann's perspective, Henry did not fit into the com-
forting and ordered home life to which she aspired.
She wanted a husband, not a statesman." Did Ann
Kissinger say this to Mr. Isaacson? Did she say it to
others who repeated it to him? Not very likely. It
was not the reason for the breakup of the marriage,
and Mr. Isaacson, relying wholly on gossip, has no
notion whatever of why the marriage ended.

That such a book, based on such evidence, is
accepted by a commercial publisher, that it will
make a great deal of money for the author, perhaps
releasing him from his chores at Time magazine, is
in no way surprising. That an able journalist, Theo-
dore Draper, experienced in the close study of
documents, should have been taken in by it is much
more serious. Lives — even those of famous men —
ought not to be reduced to such conventional and
trite late-20th-century clichés.

Today, when journalists and historians have
begun to rewrite the history of our times, Mr.
Isaacson repeats the conventional wisdom of yes-
terday. Mr. Draper is wrong to say that this "is the
book to end all books on Mr. Kissinger." Before the
century is out, a young historian or journalist,
fastidious and fair, endowed with energy, patience
and tact, may be inspired to write accurately about
Mr. Kissinger's years in Cambridge and Washing-
ton. Such a work will rely not on casual gossip or
secret sources. Contemporary history is too impor-
tant to be so demeaned. Mr. Kissinger's own mem-
oirs merit a new reading, not least in the light of
what has happened to the world since 1989. No such
reading was made by Mr. Isaacson; he looked for
transcripts of a handful of recorded telephone con-
versations and consulted those who told him what
he wanted to hear.
STEPHEN R. GRAUBARD

STEPHEN R. GRAUBARD
Cambridge, Mass.

Here is a clarification that you might want to see.

Henry A. Kissinger

60 Minutes Broadcast August 9, 1992

Morley Safer:

And regarding the story we did on Henry Kissinger and his
international consulting firm: Dr. Kissinger believes some of our
viewers may have gotten the impression that he supported Saddam
Hussein. The fact is we said just the opposite: that he was a
long-time critic of the Iraqi dictator. At no time did we say, nor
do we believe, that Dr. Kissinger had anything to do with U.S.
agricultural credits to Iraq or that he had business interests in
that country. We did say, quite accurately, that Dr. Kissinger was
a member of the advisory committee of a bank that made illegal
loans to Iraq. Dr. Kissinger was concerned that some viewers may
have thought his being on that advisory committee meant he knew
about the loans. As far as we know, he didn't.

THE WASHINGTON POST

Sunday, August 2, 1992

Henry Kissinger

# The Path to Peaceful Coexistence in the Middle East

In a few days, President Bush and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin will be meeting at a moment of rare opportunity for progress toward peace in the Middle East.

U.S. diplomacy has created the negotiating framework. The collapse of Soviet power and the defeat of Iraq have reduced, if not eliminated, a confrontational option for radical Arab states. The moderate Arab governments, especially in the gulf, have been disillusioned by the Palestinian conduct during the Kuwait crisis. They are no longer so ready as heretofore to support extreme demands; in their heart of hearts, they may even see some benefits in a regional military counterweight to extremist regimes. And the Israeli elections have produced a leader capable of making the necessary decisions.

Rabin's predecessor—Yitzhak Shamir—had raised important security concerns, especially with respect to final borders. But Shamir's hostility to any territorial concessions whatever ran counter to the basic premise of the peace process, which has been to trade land for peace. These procrastinating tactics guaranteed constant frictions with America, Israel's only reliable friend. In the end, Israel became the prisoner of a peace process to which it refused to contribute.

Rabin is in a strong position to break this deadlock. A distinguished military leader, he understands Israel's essential security requirements. His people know that the man who was the hard-line defense minister during the intifada will navigate between facile rhetoric about peace and intransigence in the guise of theology.

Israel has no better analytical mind than Yitzhak Rabin. If any of his interlocutors are counting on influencing him by charm or legalistic skill, they are heading for disillusionment. Small talk is not his forte; 'personal charm not his specialty. Redundancy taxes his patience; the commonplace does not capture his attention. He is as tenacious as he is intelligent. In 1975, during Rabin's first term as prime minister, he once gave me a list of 12 Israeli points for Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's consideration. The Egyptians accepted 10 of them, leaving only two items that seemed to me relatively minor. When I took this "accomplishment" to Jerusalem, Rabin's reaction was deadpan: "Why have you let us down?" I am not sure to this day whether Rabin was pulling my leg or putting me on notice. Probably he was doing both.

American and Arab leaders are not likely to find Rabin a jolly companion on their journey through the thickets of Middle East diplomacy. But Rabin is relentless in separating the chaff from what is essential. These qualities will now stand him in good stead, for the protagonists need to disenthrall themselves from the attitudes that have produced the impasse.

For nearly a half-century, Palestinians have hitched their policy to the hope that in the end they would be able to generate a combination of international and Arab pressures to destroy the state of Israel. For international pressures, they counted largely on the Soviet Union, with some help from Western Europe; for Arab pressures, they relied at various times

## For almost 50 years, Israel has had nothing to lose and much to gain from procrastination.

on Egypt, Syria or Iraq. And since the Palestinians have had a veto over Arab peace plans—they were, after all, the most aggrieved Arab party—these plans have shared preconditions Israel could fulfill only by giving up its essence.

Faced with these attitudes, Israel adopted procrastination as the best strategy. Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, noted in his diary a remark by Israeli diplomat Abba Eban: "An armistice is sufficient for us. If we chase after peace, the Arabs will demand of us a price—borders or refugees or both."

The way the peace process evolved seemed to confirm this judgment. In 1947 Israel's Arab neighbors went to war rather than accept the Jewish state. In the '50s and '60s, some of them began to move toward accepting the '47 frontiers but not those that existed. For example, in 1954 Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser demanded that Israel retire to the frontier of the U.N. partition plan of 1947—that is, reduce Israel, as it then was, to about 40 percent of its size and leave Jerusalem an internationalized city surrounded by Arab territory. Similarly, Anthony Eden, speaking also for the United States, recommended a compromise between the 1947 frontier and that which existed (which we now describe as the '67 frontiers). In the '70s and '80s, the United States and some moderate Arab regimes, though not the PLO, accepted the '67 frontiers, but once again balked at those that existed.

In the face of these constantly improving offers, Israel had nothing to lose and much to gain from procrastination. It emphasized procedure, especially direct talks at the head-of-government level. But there was no interlocutor available for the Palestinian side, an Arab summit having assigned that role to the PLO, with which Israel refused to negotiate. Israel also developed an exalted definition of the word "peace," endowing it with an apocalyptic and comprehensive quality incapable of being achieved in a single negotiation. All this has doomed negotiations about Palestine.

Both sides have new incentives to modify their attitudes. For the foreseeable future, no major foreign country is in a position to arm an attack on Israel or to support a policy of confrontation diplomatically. No Arab country is strong enough to start a war with Israel and maintain itself long enough to trigger outside intervention.

Arab handicaps are not, however, automatic Israeli gains. Israel is sufficiently powerful to maintain the status quo indefinitely by force. But it is not self-sufficient enough to sustain the moral and political isolation such a course would incur.

America is becoming more isolationist and more protective of its resources. The readiness to run military risks in faraway countries will diminish in a multipolar world in which doctrines

of collective security and U.N. actions rule the day. Israel can afford to go it alone only as an absolutely last resort.

Thus, both sides are facing a rare window of opportunity—or maybe even of necessity. The Palestinians must realize that Israel is here to stay. Israel has learned—in the hard school of American pressure—that a deadlock for which it can be blamed courts moral, political and economic isolation.

A comprehensive agreement settling all issues is not negotiable at this stage. Neither Israel nor the Palestinians can decide on final frontiers. They cannot agree on the future of Jerusalem. Israel is not ready to accept a fully sovereign Palestinian state, while the Palestinians cannot make a final settlement in the absence of a sovereign state.

But if formal peace is not yet possible, peaceful coexistence is attainable and, with wisdom on all sides, should prove negotiable. Tranquility will not come to the Middle East on the basis of unenforceable legal documents. The peoples of the region will be able to breathe easier only when Israelis and Palestinians have learned to live together in dignity on a day-to-day basis.

The mutual opportunity of Israelis and Palestinians now is to negotiate an interim agreement dedicated to learning to live together and to leave a final settlement until that possibility has been tested. To such an end, Israel will have to grant genuine self-government to the largest possible area of the West Bank in keeping with reasonable security objectives. For the Palestinians, it implies settling for something less than full sovereignty—though it should usher in substantial control over all the civilian aspects of their lives. They need to be wise enough to understand that once a self-governing entity exists, further evolution is inevitable. Friendly nations all over the world will surely enhance its status. Israel's risk with limited sovereignty is much greater than that of the Palestinians; it should be taken as Israel's contribution to blunt animosities and grievances. In such a negotiation, the focus would shift from land for peace to land for time—time to see whether patterns of coexistence can be developed.

Since limited sovereignty could turn into a time bomb, serious attention will have to be paid to Israel's security concerns. Because any self-governing unit may evolve increasing attributes of sovereignty, the '67 borders are not compatible with Israel's security. No Israeli leader can settle for frontiers that would establish a corridor only nine miles wide between Haifa and Tel-Aviv and leave those two cities within mortar range and Jerusalem within rifle range. Therefore, the area of self-government should exclude areas essential for Israel's security. Given the distribution of the population on the West Bank, this could still leave most of the Arab population of the West Bank under Arab control.

There are negotiating gimmicks to avoid this step. If the whole West Bank were included in the self-governing area, it might be possible to divide it into security zones with varying degrees of Israeli military control. It would be far wiser, however, to avoid stirring up future trouble by such a complex approach. For the next phase, Israel should be responsible for the external security of the autonomous region; the Palestinians for internal security with a gray area where the two considerations merge.

The precondition of an interim agreement is Israeli generosity in granting all but complete self-government and Palestinian acceptance of provisions for Israel's security concerns. The role of the United States is as delicate as it will be decisive. Secretary of State James Baker's successes have made it necessary to redefine America's role. Until now the American influence depended on pressure to organize a conference. Because Israel seemed to be dragging its feet, it was not unreasonable to emphasize conflicting views—even if occasionally the disagreement grew too exuberant.

At the present stage of the peace process, however, a prior agreement between Israel and the United States regarding the framework of an interim agreement is imperative. Israel will drag its feet as long as it fears that any concession might open the floodgates to ever escalating demands in the direction of the '67 borders and the internationalization of the old city of Jerusalem. Israel will have to know the point beyond which it will not be pushed. The Palestinians will delay as long as they can hope to add American pressures to their own. They will have to be convinced that America will not press for more than self-government at this stage.

The issues of final frontiers and the future of Jerusalem are not central to the negotiation outlined here. What needs to be agreed on are the borders of the self-governing unit, the definition of self-government and the nature of the Israeli security role in the self-governing area.

As for Syria, the same approach could be used. To keep open the principle of an eventual overall settlement, an interim agreement might be negotiated on the Golan Heights involving some adjustments of territory. Syrian President Hafez Assad is likely to prefer this to a formal peace agreement, which in any event he will only conclude after the Palestinian issue is finally resolved.

In such an agreement, Israel gains by eliminating the sense of permanent tension; the Palestinians gain dignity and the prospect for further evolution. Rabin and Bush thus have a chance not given many leaders: to make a real difference on the road to peace in a brief period of time.

©1992, Los Angeles Times Syndicate

The Washington Post
Sunday, July 5, 1992

Henry Kissinger

Charter of Confusion

*The new Russian-American summit document takes partnership too far.*

President Boris N. Yeltsin's dramatic and successful visit to America occasioned a document that seeks to give concrete meaning to the term new world order. Titled Charter for American-Russian Partnership and Friendship, it could, if its ideas take hold, involve a revolutionary reordering of global relationships that should not be implemented without a full national debate.

True, statements of principle are rarely implemented literally. But they do reflect a state of mind and hidden assumptions that shape long-term policy.

The most significant premises of the charter are that, with the end of communism, no geopolitical issues remain between the United States and Russia and that the spread of democracy will guarantee permanent peace. Russia is assumed as sharing identical goals, making possible a "strategic partnership" between the two nuclear superpowers "in the international arena, in the interest of advancing and defending common democratic values."

Are these premises valid? Is it prudent to base policy on the assumption that an evolution barely three years old has already reversed a pattern of centuries?

The collapse of the Soviet Union is surely the seminal event of our time, and the Bush administration has handled it with consummate skill. But the nature of what is to replace it in the vast area stretching from the Polish border to the Pacific, from the Arctic Circle to the approaches to the Middle East, is still unsettled. We must take care not to foster principles of world order that unintentionally encourage instability, even violence, and constrain the evolution of newly free countries.

American leaders have generally justified their policies by universal, often legal, principles rather than by national interest—the last time during the gulf war. This approach worked during the Cold War because there was an overwhelming ideological and geopolitical danger, and much of the world felt more or less uniformly threatened.

But with ideological fires banked and global threats diminishing, the problem of world order has changed. The United States must mute its undifferentiated globalism. It must learn that it cannot involve itself in every crisis. It must learn to distinguish the vital from the peripheral. Russia, struggling with the end of centuries of imperialism, must not be tempted to reverse that process.

In its approach to international security, the new charter seems to move in the opposite direction. The document is permeated by a tone redolent of a global Russo-American condominium. Russia is called a "strategic partner." In addition, "the United States and the Russian Federation will unite [emphasis added] in their efforts toward strengthening international peace and security, preventing and settling regional conflicts, and solving global problems."

Can America sustain such an undertaking? Are we luring ourselves into commitments beyond our physical and psychological capacity? Should Russia be encouraged into a global role, which is like putting liquor before a reforming alcoholic? Where does this leave America's allies? NATO is included only as a possible contributor to an as yet to be created "Euro-Atlantic Peacekeeping Capability." Japan is not mentioned at all, even though the United States and the Russian Federation have pledged themselves to "cooperate" in strengthening "confidence and stability in Asia and the Pacific region."

This atmosphere of condominium emphasizes the curious clause stating that the two countries abjure "the threat of use of force against the territorial integrity and political independence of each other [emphasis added]." Could this not be read to mean that the threat of force against other countries is permitted by the charter? Previous American-Soviet statements of principle always contained clauses declaring that nothing in them superseded existing obligations, or they made new mutual obligations general. The new restrictive clause, even if inadvertent, is bound to be noted.

The charter emphasizes a vast new effort by America and the Russian Federation to "support the strengthening of the Euro-Atlantic Community" because "security is indivisible from Vancouver to Vladivostok." When this concept first appeared in the Gorbachev era, it was the slogan of European and Soviet leaders seeking to reduce American influence and to gain maximum freedom of action for essentially national purposes. For once everybody is allied to everybody else, existing institutions will dissolve in a vague structure incapable of joint action and therefore, in the end, best suited to nationalistic policies.

The Euro-Atlantic Community seems to include NATO, the European neutrals, the new East European democracies and all the successor states of the Soviet Union—some 15 in number. The interests of all these countries are assumed to be identical and to flow naturally from their democratic domestic structures. But in the real world, can this melange be called a community? Does the phrase "indivisible security" entitle either superpower to act alone in the likely event there is no consensus, or does each side have a veto? Is the choice between hegemony and paralysis?

And in what way can the five Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union or the three new states of the Caucasus be said to belong to a European security structure, not to speak of a Euro-Atlantic Community? If Kirghizstan, one of the Central Asian republics, becomes "European," why not nearby Pakistan or India; if Azerbaijan is European, why not Iran, which it borders? The unspoken premise is that all the states of the former Soviet Union, however different their culture and history, are still treated as if they were under Moscow's tutelage.

This unprecedented role for the European Security Conference and the phrase that "America and the Russian Federation cannot accept another phase of European instability" points up the charter's basic incompatibility with existing Atlantic institutions. Within NATO, America insists on integration of strategy and policy. It opposes a separate European military force on the ground that it weakens the integrated command. The charter, however, leaves little scope for NATO except to contribute forces and resources to the newly invented Euro-Atlantic Peacekeeping Capability, together with the WEU—a heretofore largely moribund grouping of West European states—and other countries of the CSCE. Such a downgrading of NATO is likely to magnate European suspicions of America. The same is even more true of Japan and China. At the same time, the Euro-Atlantic Community is likely to appear to Japan and China as an exclusive anti-Asian club.

Similar ambiguities weaken the charter's relevance to the strains produced by the breakup of the Soviet Union. In less than a year, 15 new states have emerged in that vast region. All have become members of the United Nations. The United States has established embassies in each of them. These new nations share some unique features. None of them—except the Baltic states—has known independence for the past 150 years. Hundreds of thousands of troops of the erstwhile Red Army remain on their territories. These come and go and maneuver without asking the permission of independent countries recognized as members of the United Nations. Most republics have been afraid to ask them to leave, and those that have dared—like the Baltic states—have received evasive replies. These troops intervene in local conflicts, as they did recently in Moldova and Georgia directly upon Yeltsin's return from North America—ostensibly to protect Russian minorities.

But Russian minorities are everywhere. The Russian Empire had mixed up the nationalities by conquest, and Stalin, to facilitate central control, drew borders in such a way that no ethnically pure republics remained. Almost all republics also contain other minorities, especially in the Caucasus and Central Asia. To complicate matters further, most educated Russians identify the origin of their country with Kiev, the capital of the new nation of Ukraine, which has a population of 58 million, and in fact view all the successor nations as ingrates duty-bound to return to the motherland.

While the Russian Republic has not directly challenged the independence of the new states, it has not fully accepted it either. Russian

(over)

(2)

leaders maneuver with great persistence to estab-
lish themselves as the linear descendants of the
historical empire rather than as an entirely new
and separate state. The entry of all the successor
republics into the European Security Conference is
a measure of the success of this campaign. Russian
leaders try—at least tacitly—to keep open the
option of repeating the events of 1917-22, when
many of the current group of independent repub-
lics attempted to break away only to be forced in
the end to return to Moscow's fold.

Precisely because economic reform, even with
considerable outside help, is certain to be painful,
an appeal to the historical empire may be a
tempting way to rally support. This may explain
why the defense minister of the Russian Republic
has declared that his country will consider any
troop concentration along the borders of the for-
mer Soviet Union as justifying Russian interven-
tion by crossing the territory of theoretically
sovereign neighbors. Not a single Western country
has commented on this extraordinary proposition.

Such a state of affairs is potentially even more
explosive than Yugoslavia, and with far greater
implications for the peace of the world. If Moscow
attempts to recentralize its former empire, some
sort of military conflict is highly probable. If it
succeeds—even partially—alarm bells will ring all
around the Soviet periphery, but especially in
Eastern Europe. The traditional pattern of mutual
fear between Russia and its neighbors will reap-
pear. The U.S.-Russian partnership will collapse.

This may not be an acute problem so long as
Russia, together with all the successor states,
faces economic disaster. But as they recover, the
question of whether the new charter reduces the
dangers becomes relevant. Some provisions are
clearly helpful, for example the reaffirmation of
respect for national borders, including those of
the new states. At the same time, Russia and the
United States promise support and "leadership"
to the protection of minorities and the settlement

of ethnic disputes. In the code language of the
region, these phrases can more readily justify
intervention than restraint, for it is so-called
ethnic conflicts that will be the most likely
pretexts for recentralization.

The Bush administration seems to assume that
liberal democracy and market economics will
by themselves achieve and preserve peace every-
where. But even if true, that point will not be
reached for decades. In the meantime, America
must contribute to international stability by a
foreign policy going beyond social engineering.
The effort to shore up the Russian government is
laudable, and Congress should support it. But we
must not so idealize and personalize the relation-
ship as to lose sight of geopolitical imperatives. We
need to balance the respect and cooperation to
which Russia's reforms and potential power entitle
it against the dangers of hegemony over smaller
successor states. The deferential way Yeltsin is
treated in the West, as compared with the leaders
of the other republics, and the fact that almost all
foreign aid goes to Russia, threaten this balance.
Indeed, if present IMF plans are implemented,
Western policy will encourage a ruble zone whose
practical effect will be to force most successor
states back under Moscow's economic tutelage.

The deepest question raised is whether Rus-
sia, seeking to build democracy and a market
economy without previous experience with either
and in need of vast amounts of foreign assistance,
can possibly fulfill the role assigned to it by the
charter. Is it really wise to divert it into a global
enterprise that in the end may keep it from even
defining a responsible role with respect to the
internal relationships of the former Soviet Union?
At the end of an evolution which we should assist,
Russia may turn into the partner envisaged by
the charter. As of now, such a role is at best
premature, at worst dangerous.

INTERNATIONAL

Germany's Master Builder

By HENRY A. KISSINGER

Hans-Dietrich Genscher is to resign today as German foreign minister after 18 years in office. The news last month gave me a sense of almost personal loss—an odd reaction because, as much as I value Genscher as a friend, I have not always agreed with the foreign policies he conducted. But he was a master builder of diplomacy in the cold-war era, and a chief architect of his country's reunification. Genscher's resignation is an occasion for reflections not only on the past but also on Germany's future—and on the role he might yet play in it.

My first encounter with Genscher was shortly after he took office, in Bad Reichenhall at the southern tip of Bavaria. It was in June 1974, in the waning weeks of Richard Nixon's presidency. And though in those early days Genscher's grasp of foreign policy could be most charitably described as minimal, he conducted himself with extraordinary aplomb at a time of great unease in the Western Alliance. He announced a "gentleman's agreement" to ease tensions between the United States and what was then the Common Market, and proved as good as his word.

Over the next three years, we worked closely together. There was no foreign minister in whom I had greater confidence. Genscher's grasp of foreign policy grew at an astounding pace. As he developed into the dominant foreign minister in Europe over the next decade and a half, we saw each other frequently. I maintained a special affection for this clever, dedicated, vulnerable man—passionate in his convictions yet wary of frontal battles, sensitive to personal slights yet prone to maneuvers inviting those slights.

Genscher approached his goals so obliquely that his dazzling skills occasionally obscured the high purpose that animated them. In later years, some of his complex maneuvers worried me. Without them, Germany probably would not have achieved such a high level of diplomatic influence. But there was a danger that, in less subtle hands, the Genscher style might jeopardize a hard-earned confidence in

German steadiness. That such ambivalence could be generated by a solitary individual who represented (and did not even lead) a small party is in itself a tribute to an extraordinary personality. His resignation reminded me of the diplomat at the Congress of Vienna who is said to have reacted to the death of a colleague with the remark "I wonder what his motive could have been." Was Genscher's departure a withdrawal, or a move into a new role?
I do not pretend to know the answer.

tion are to be avoided. Genscher may calculate that if his Free Democratic Party stays in the current coalition through the 1994 elections, it would end up sharing the blame and suffer serious losses.

For the past four decades, the German Constitution has produced extraordinary political stability. The statutory provision that a party must win at least 5 percent of the popular vote to be represented in Parliament prevents the emergence of small splinter parties. For most of Germany's postwar history, there have been three principal parliamentary parties. Over the past two decades the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats have oscillated between 34 percent and 49 percent. Genscher's Free Democrats ran from 7 to 11 percent. Whichever major party exceeds 40 percent typically combines with the Free Democrats to form the government. In the 1990 elections, Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Christian Democrats polled about 44 percent, the Free Democrats about 11 percent, the Social Democrats about 34.

**Increased options:** In the present Parliament, the Free Democrats can form a government only in combination with the Christian Democrats. On the other hand, as the most popular German leader, Genscher may reason that his resignation will enable his party to avoid criticism for switching sides in the middle of a crisis and yet increase its options for the future: perhaps by means of a coalition of all the major parties to deal with the emergency, as is favored by many leaders, or by an alliance of the Free Democrats with the Social Democrats in the 1994 elections. Any of these combinations could bring Genscher back as federal president, or as the architect of a new coalition after the 1994 parliamentary elections.

Genscher's foreign policy has been driven by similar dynamics. Just as his party had to maneuver between the two dominant parties, his country had to navigate through the narrow passages among two superpowers and a number of suspicious neighbors. A native of Halle, in former

(Continued on page 61)

ALLAN TANNENRAUM—SYGMA

Ambivalence about allies: With Secretary of State James Baker

Genscher was passionate in his convictions yet wary of frontal battles, sensitive to slights yet prone to maneuvers inviting those slights

Perhaps Genscher does not know either. From the point of view of his place in history, Genscher chose an ideal moment. Behind him is his triumph in forging German unification while retaining the Atlantic alliance. At the same time, his resignation coincides with a moment of unprecedented turmoil in postwar German politics. Unification is exacting ever-greater sacrifices; the disciplined support for a national economic policy characteristic of the German labor movement is eroding; austerity seems inevitable if inflation and stagna-

44 NEWSWEEK: MAY 25, 1992

THE JOHN F. KENNEDY LIBRARY NEWSLETTER

*A Publication of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation*

History in the First Person: Discussions
With Distinguished Americans

In the fall of 1991, the Library launched a new program, "History in the First Person: Discussions With Distinguished Americans." The program marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of John F. Kennedy's birth and the thirtieth anniversary of the Kennedy administration. Financial support is being provided by the Lowell Institute and an anonymous donation to the Kennedy Library Foundation.

The series will bring to the Ken-
ney Library men and women who
played significant roles in Ameri-
can public affairs, as participants
or commentators, during the years
1961 to 1991. They will be people

uniquely qualified to discuss both
the history of the period and the
condition of our nation and the
world in the 1990s.

Each visit will include a break-
fast or luncheon meeting for ap-
proximately fifty people at which
the guest will speak for twenty
minutes and answer questions for
an hour. Many guests will also speak
at larger public forums and/or con-
ferences organized for students,
teachers, political, business, profes-
sional and labor leaders, and others.

The discussions will focus on
the contributions these distinguish-
ed men and women have made to
their country—how each has made
a difference—and on the way in

"The ignorance of one voter in
a democracy impairs the security
of all."

John F. Kennedy
Address, Vanderbilt University
May 18, 1963

which their perceptions of various
events, decisions and leaders have
evolved in the last thirty years.

The Library will publish a book
or collection of reports on the visits
and prepare material for classroom
use. The information gathered will
add to the documentation in the
archives of the Kennedy Library,
contribute to the Library's mission
of teaching about American politics
and recent history, and assist in
placing the major political develop-
ments of these decades into his-
torical perspective.

The first guest in the series was
Henry Kissinger and the second
James Farmer.

Dr. Kissinger spoke at a
luncheon at the Library
on October 31, 1991. The
following are excerpts from
his remarks:

"I recall with great pride and
warmth my brief association with
the Kennedy Administration. It was
an extremely exciting period. I had
the privilege of knowing both the
President and Robert Kennedy, and
whenever possible associated my-
self with their unique combination
of progressive domestic policy and

*continued on page 2*

WINTER
1992

Dr. Henry Kissinger addressing a group of civic and corporate leaders as part of the Library's "History in the First Person" series.

1

*continued from page 1*

a firm foreign policy. Later on, our
paths diverged somewhat."

"The first President I had ever
met was Harry Truman while I was
working in the Kennedy Admin-
istration. I remember asking him
what he was most proud of — what
achievement he considered to be
the most significant. And he said
something very American: 'We
defeated two enemies totally, and
we brought them back into a com-
munity of nations. Only Americans
could have done that.'

I cannot imagine any other na-
tion transferring technology the
way we did to enable Japan to
become a competitor of such
magnitude. Other nations might
have helped on relief, but it was
a very American thing to assume
that the stronger other nations
are, the better it is for us."

"I think President Bush knows
more about foreign policy than
any other leader today in either
party. He is extraordinarily skillful

in the tactical handling of issues
as they arise. One problem every
President has is to make sure that
he is addressing the important as
well as urgent. The tendency is for
the urgent to drive out the impor-
tant. I would have to say in all fair-
ness that most statesmen probably
do not spend enough time reflec-
ting on where they are heading as
they do on handling contingencies."

Mr. Farmer spoke at a breakfast
at the Library on December 5,
1991. The following is a look
at his contributions to the
civil rights movement:

by Nick Bryant

"We were in a war thirty years ago. It was a kind of second civil war. Our activists were soldiers, non-violent though they were. It was a war without violence on our part, but a war nevertheless." The 'war' to which James Farmer refers, of course, was the struggle for black equality which convulsed American society throughout the 1960s; the soldiers, the countless

activists whom he and others led
in their attempts to break down
the remaining vestiges of de jure
segregation in the South and de
facto discrimination in the North.

Although James Farmer was rela-
tively unknown outside the civil
rights movement at the time of John
F. Kennedy's election in November,
1960, he had established himself
as one of the leading figures of
the second reconstruction by the
time of the President's death. His
increased prominence was largely
the result of the 1961 'Freedom
Rides' which he initiated in an at-
tempt to dramatise the prevalence
of Jim Crow in interstate transpor-
tation and to test a recent Supreme
Court decision banning segrega-
tion on buses and at bus terminals.
Groups of young activists, trained
in the principals of Ghandian non-
violent protest, boarded a Grey-
hound bus in Washington and
headed South. Fire bombs were
thrown onto the bus and the riders
were kicked and beaten as they fled
from the burning bus after they
where stopped by a white mob on
the outskirts of Anniston, Alabama.
The following day, police officers
looked on and FBI officers merely
took notes as the riders were set
upon at the bus terminal in Birm-
ingham, Alabama.

Prior to the bus burning at An-
niston, Farmer had been informed
of the death of his father and re-
turned home for the funeral. He
was reunited with the riders when
they reached Montgomery. Again,
their lives were threatened when
an angry mob encircled the church
where Martin Luther King had
joined with the riders for a service
of thanksgiving. With a thin line
of US Marshalls as the congregation's
only protection and with the intro-
duction of troops increasingly im-
minent, Robert Kennedy telephoned
King and asked for a 'cooling-off
period'. King relayed the message
to Farmer whose caustic reply was

James Farmer, noted civil rights leader, meets with a group of middle and high school teachers during his visit to the Kennedy Library.

2

PETER TURNLEY FOR NEWSWEEK

trying to undo 74 years of Communist history. It was probably the last stand of the institutions of the old guard—the military industrial complex, the KGB, the army, the Communist Party. On the other hand, the second revolution—the one that will determine the location of the new borders of the Soviet Union, and who belongs to it—is just beginning. And the players are not necessarily the same.

Before the coup attempt, the United States was sliding into a situation where its emphasis on the personality of Gorbachev risked involvement in a power struggle between him and the republics. I thought that was a mistake, since it would have put America on the side of the centralizing establishment, albeit its reformist wing. In fairness, in the early period of Gorbachev there was no alternative. It was Gorbachev, holding the then still all-powerful position of General Secretary of the Communist Party, who started the process of reform. Gorbachev must have believed that he could promote

change through the Communist Party, and he undoubtedly underestimated the difficulties. Two years ago, he told me that he once thought the whole process of perestroika would be completed in four years. And then he added with some melancholy: "Now I realize it hasn't even started."

Gorbachev's tragedy has been that he recognized the weakness of the system but could not bring himself to overthrow what he had worked for all his life. So he attempted reform by working within the institutions that had nurtured him. His methods were those taught by Leninism: seize the bureaucratic heights in order to carry out your objectives. In the end, Gorbachev was more successful than he wanted to be, perhaps even expected to be. Eventually, the institutions he created to put pressure on the Communist Party made it impossible for him to save the institutions to which he owed his career. Nor was he any longer able to break deadlocks through sheer force of personality and will.

Gradually, Gorbachev was transformed from a leader of the reform movement to a manipulator of contradictions that he himself had created. His initial strategy was brilliantly successful, because he convinced the reformers that a faster pace would trigger a revolt by the right-wing opposition, and he persuaded the rightwing leaders that he was the best barrier to victory for the radicals. He kept this highwire act going with great skill for many years; but as the new institutions developed lives of their own, his difficulties mounted.

The price he paid was a gradual loss of confidence on all sides. When Gorbachev came back from the ordeal of being deposed and detained, his former friend and confidant, foreign minister Shevardnadze, wondered publicly whether the President himself might have been the chief plotter. Clearly, Gorbachev's capacity to inspire the people who used to be his disciples has substantially eroded. And the celebrations af-

NEWSWEEK: SEPTEMBER 2, 1991 61

SPECIAL REPORT

ter the failure of the coup conspicuously excluded him.

American policy has no choice but to base itself on these new realities, however poignant the fate of this attractive and remarkable leader. Gorbachev deserves admiration for his historic achievements. But he no longer has the capacity or the authority to act as the principal agent of change. The focal point of reform and decentralization has shifted to the forces that defeated the coup. None of them fought under the banner of Gorbachev; most enlisted in the name of Yeltsin. Gorbachev's only constituency may lie within what remains of the institutions that tried to overthrow him. The military industrial complex might yet see Gorbachev as their best hope for holding the country together. Yet this is precisely why Yeltsin has been so insistent on staffing those institutions with his own people.

Whether we like it or not— and many Western leaders in the past have demonstrated an ostentatious dislike for this idea—the coup has elevated Yeltsin to the position of commander of the reform movement. Ironically, Yeltsin's career has been entwined with that of Gorbachev. They were both Communists. Yeltsin was a Gorbachev protégé. It was Gorbachev who brought Yeltsin to Moscow, from Sverdlovsk. But they parted company when Yeltsin concluded that Gorbachev was too ambivalent about reform and too committed to the Communist Party. Yeltsin grew convinced that the Communist Party had to be eliminated, or put into a position where it could not veto reform.

Unlike Gorbachev, Yeltsin bit the bullet. He faced the fact that Marxism-Leninism was dead and that the Communist Party was discredited. He has based his program on the restoration of private property, the establishment of democratic institutions, the repudiation of the Communist Party and autonomy for the republics under a loose confederation. The thrust of all these measures was to wreck the centralized Leninist system. The replacement of the hammer and sickle with the czarist flag and the installation of Yeltsin by an Orthodox priest symbolize a major transformation.

All these objectives are now within reach. Perhaps Gorbachev still hopes to make a comeback as the republics cope with the dissatisfactions that are bound to accompany the shift to market economies. But in the wake of the coup and the abolition of the Communist Party, Gorbachev's only realistic option seems to be to retreat into a position similar to the one occupied by the British monarchy at the end of the last cen-

Transforming a society: Nixon and Brezhnev in 1974, JFK and Khrushchev in 1961, Gorbachev with Bush in July

tury: as a constitutional ruler with considerable personal influence, particularly in foreign policy, but no final authority. Over time, these powers will no doubt atrophy and the president of the federation may come to occupy a more and more ceremonial position. In the emotional Soviet Parliament meeting at the end of last week, Yeltsin and his supporters seemed intent on pushing Gorbachev in this direction. As for the United States, it should take care to avoid getting involved in these internal Soviet disputes. It must be seen to support principles, not personalities.

The United States and its allies must also understand that the coup leaders, despite their incompetence, reflected some real grievances. The Soviet people will face severe hardship this winter. And the industrial democracies need to make every effort to alleviate it. They should be prepared to extend emergency aid in the form of food and medical supplies. They should form imme-

diately a group of experts to determine what is needed. But they should use the new conditions to ensure that aid helps those who need it, rather than turning it into a tool for strengthening central government organs. Emergency aid should be given as much as possible through the republics.

Getting through the winter would permit a study of what long-term aid may be appropriate. Earlier this year, I opposed the so-called Grand Bargain, which would have committed $30 billion a year in Western aid to the Soviet Union in exchange for promises of reform, for two reasons. It seemed to me a device to give patronage to the Soviet centralizers behind Gorbachev, possibly for use against the reformers around Yeltsin. Second, the Grand Bargain risked fostering the dangerous illusion that the Soviet Union can be bailed out by government programs.

That is simply not the case. No democratic government or combination of governments has the resources, and the Soviet Union

SIPA

JOHN FICARA—NEWSWEEK

lacks the appropriate institutional framework for such a program. East Germany, a country of 16 million with a much better infrastructure than the Soviet Union, requires a yearly subsidy of about $100 billion and still has 40 percent unemployment. To do as much on the Soviet scale would require a trillion and a half dollars yearly.

There is no shortcut to a restructuring that can attract the largest pool of available capital, which is private investment. This requires two steps: the adoption of a constitution which establishes a relationship between the central government and the republics, and the passing of laws to create a predictable environment for investment. The declaration of independence by the Ukraine casts further doubt on the timeliness of a comprehensive program.

Nevertheless, the aborted coup permits another look at aspects of the Grand Bargain. An intermediate step between emergency- and long-term aid would be assistance in the field of energy. The Soviet Union has vast resources. The world is heading into an energy shortage. The Western democracies have an interest to reduce their dependence on Mideast oil. It should be possible to generate foreign capital rapidly to modernize the infrastructure for exploring, mining and transporting Soviet deposits of oil and gas. Over time, this could become a precedent for major cooperation in other areas.

With amazing swiftness, the failed coup

has all but settled the Soviet internal struggle over the role of the Communist Party and its organs of repression. The fight to overcome 74 years of Communist history appears to be at its end. But the struggle over the future of Russian imperialism is still to be completed. It has entered an entirely new phase with the declaration of independence by the Ukraine. Almost certainly, the various minorities now in the newly independent republics—especially the Russian minorities—will clamor for some special recognition of their rights. A repetition of the current conditions in Yugoslavia cannot be excluded.

The outside world has a huge stake in this beyond a philosophical preference for democracy. The Russian Empire has always been highly centralized. The large army required to control the various nationalities has created a constant temptation for foreign adventures. Evoking a foreign danger has served as a means of suppressing differences between nationalities. No European country has sent its armies abroad as frequently and with such missionary zeal as the Russian Empire. Annexation became almost a routine matter. Since there were already so many nationalities in the empire, further additions seemed to be consistent with the essence of the state. Were repression to start again, these now dormant tendencies would almost surely reappear.

On the other hand, the United States

SPECIAL REPORT

should not risk reawakening Russian para-noia by acting as if it wanted to break up the Soviet Union for its own purposes. Gorbachev may still be able to salvage a loose confederation, along the lines of the so-called "nine plus one" agreement, which was negotiated between nine of the republics and Moscow. The Bush Administration has so far rightly acted with great circumspection. But the post-coup restructuring is the time to put forward some fundamental principles to avoid misunderstandings later on:

■ The United States has never recognized the incorporation of the Baltic States into the Soviet Union. It would be simply carrying through the implications of existing policy if it moved towards recognizing the independence of these states.

■ As to the other republics, the U.S. actions should be geared to whether they act democratically to fulfill the conditions laid down for secession in the "nine plus one" agreement. When these are met, the United States should move towards recognition.

■ In any event, the United States and its allies should leave no doubt that repression of freely elected governments in the republics will be received with the same condemnation and opposition as the coup.

■ The United States and its allies must not become totally preoccupied with events in the Soviet Union. In Eastern Europe, the

coup revived the nightmare of resurgent Russian imperialism. The Western countries must now move decisively to ease those fears. The fate of the democracies of Eastern Europe must be linked rapidly to that of the West. The European Community should end its petty haggling over East European associate membership in the Common Market. The United States should assist with some aid in a part of the world where substantial governmental assistance can make a difference. Allies on both sides of the Atlantic should consider appropriate security arrangements, short of moving NATO forces to the Soviet frontier.

If the Soviet Union evolves in the direction foreseen by the nine-plus-one treaty, Russia's neighbors will be freed of a threat that has been part of their landscape since Peter the Great. With new republics along the Soviet western border, with the Ukraine declaring itself independent and Belorussia part of a loose confederation, the institutional basis for Russian westward expansion will diminish, if not disappear. This would lay the basis for linking Russia to Europe in a way that has always been thwarted by Russia's scale and the ambitions of Russian rulers.

Such a realignment will also bring about a shift in the center of gravity of Russian foreign policy. At this point, it is too early to

tell whether the Muslim republics with their 65 million people will opt for independence or association. In either case, they will be very sensitive to developments in the Islamic countries along their borders. That will make it likely that the Soviet Union, whatever its new frontiers, will become an increasingly active player in the Middle East.

As the Russian center of gravity moves toward the Urals, Moscow may resume a historic activism in Asia. It was within this century, after all, that Russia and Japan fought a war over which country should govern Manchuria and Korea. It is far too early to speculate about the long-term initiatives of the new leadership in Moscow. But it is not too early to begin reflecting about the nature of a new world order in conditions that now seem quite foreseeable. This should be a subject of intense consultation with all friendly countries, our allies as well as China. Above all, it should be on the agenda of imminent U.S.-Soviet dialogues and any future summits.

In a remarkable historical irony, the coup has brought about in one week everything the plotters dreaded: the end of the Communist Party and disintegration of the Russian Empire. And if the moment is seized, it could mark a historic watershed when the attention of the world turned decisively towards creating a lasting structure of peace. ■

The Washington Post
Monday, May 13, 1991

Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance

Yes to the Fast Track

Rejection would be a disaster.

Within a few weeks Congress will
face a seminal decision: whether to
approve the so-called fast-track leg-
islation enabling the administration
to negotiate for a free trade agree-
ment with Mexico. We strongly urge
Congress to grant this authority. In
our opinion, such an agreement
would be the most constructive
measure the United States would
have undertaken in our hemisphere
in this century.

The agreement is part of the En-
terprise for the Americas Initiative,
which looks ahead to a community of
neighbors united by free trade and
strengthened by expanded investment
flows, environmental protection and a
reduced official debt burden.

The proposal is well timed. The
nations of Latin America are moving
forward in rare harmony and through
remarkably free and democratic pro-
cesses to open their economies,\ stamp out inflation and expand eco-
nomic output. The Enterprise Initia-
tive is the right response by the
United States to such dramatic prog-
ress in Latin America.

A free trade agreement with Mexi-
co would contribute to a closer and
more cooperative relationship with
our neighbor to the south, whose pop-
ulation is approaching 100 million and
with whom we share a border of some
2,000 miles. The destinies of our two
countries are being increasingly
linked, and the free trade agreement
would accelerate the trend.

Mexico is already becoming a ma-
jor market for U.S. goods and servic-
es. It is our third largest trading
partner—behind only Canada and Ja-
pan. In 1990 U.S. exports to Mexico
approached $27 billion, while exports
to all of Latin America were larger
than those to Japan. This growth in
U.S. exports to Mexico is largely the
result of the dramatic reduction of
Mexican import barriers and to the
dynamic leadership of President Car-
los Salinas de Gortari, under whose
administration Mexico has turned in-
creasingly toward market economies.
The free trade agreement would only
accelerate these opportunities.

We take most seriously the issues
that have been raised in connection
with Mexico's environmental protec-
tion and labor standards. Consider-
able progress has been made, as

evidenced by the closing of the oil
refinery in Mexico City. Neverthe-
less, we agree that it is appropriate
for Congress to register a special
concern that the eventual agreement
be accompanied by appropriate
measures in these areas.

The free trade agreement with
Mexico would therefore be an essen-
tial first step toward building a more
enduring relationship with Latin Amer-
ica. Such a relationship will enable our
country to compete more effectively in
the new global environment. It cannot
but be helpful to find global solutions to
such problems as the environment and
nuclear proliferation.

We are convinced that if our nation
turns its back on the Enterprise Ini-
tiative, a grievous blow to democracy
and economic reform in the hemi-
sphere will have been dealt. For it
will surely be taken as a sign that the
United States is not really prepared
to participate decisively in support-
ing what is a historic effort in Latin
America to turn the corner toward
prosperity. The consequences will
reverberate throughout Latin Ameri-
ca, where a U.S.-Mexican agreement
is being seen everywhere as the
opening of a new chapter in U.S.-Lat-
in American relations.

We see no incompatibility between
free trade within the Americas, on
the one hand, and a strengthened
multilateral system—the objective of
the Uruguay Round of negotiations in
the GATT—on the other. We en-
dorse the dual strategy reflected in
the request for fast-track authority
for both. Enhanced free trade be-
tween the United States and its re-
gional partners does not raise barri-
ers to non-regional trade. Indeed, the
Enterprise Initiative will add measur-
ably to the constituency of nations
committed to liberalized trade.

This is an issue that transcends
partisanship, and that is why we urge
from both parties extension of the
fast-track authority. The Enterprise
Initiative, with its opening round of a
Mexico Free Trade Agreement, is an
extraordinary opportunity to build a
new sense of community in the
Americas. Our country is once again
at a historic turning point in its rela-
tions with the other nations of this
hemisphere. The issue hangs on Con-
gress's decision.

The Washington Post

Tuesday, April 2, 1991

Henry Kissinger

# A Sea Change in U.S.-Soviet Relations

The recent Soviet referendum turned out to be as inconclusive as it was ambiguous in its formulation. For the Soviet Union, it raises the question of whether the Russian empire built by czars and commissars for over 300 years can be preserved now that the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe has collapsed. For the United States, the Soviet turmoil casts doubt on the expectation that democracy and market economics produce peaceful Soviet conduct. Nevertheless, if the Soviet Union transforms itself from a cause to a nation, and if the United States learns to deal with it on a non-ideological basis, prudence may bring about what idealism precludes at the moment. For all foreseeable Soviet outcomes will reduce for a considerable time the threat of land invasion that has been hanging over the heads of all of Russia's neighbors since the time of Peter the Great.

The result could be a revolution in postwar diplomacy that would shift the center of gravity of Soviet policy to east of the Urals and that of the United States toward the Western Hemisphere.

The three most likely outcomes of the evolution of the Soviet Union are: (a) a reassertion of central control and the reappearance of an essentially monolithic Soviet state, though perhaps technically non-Communist; (b) the creation of a loose confederation of republics with a common foreign and defense policy and joint essential services; or (c) the breakup of the Soviet Union into its constituent republics.

Naturally, no outcome is likely to be clear-cut, and the Soviet Union will probably experience all three in succession: disintegration followed by attempted repression and, failing that, a gradual drift toward confederation of at least some of the key republics.

Since the 18th century, the Russian monolithic state has been pressing against its borders as Russian armies have invaded Europe at least a dozen times in pursuit of a variety of causes.

Thus, the weakening of the central authority of America's principal strategic rival is certainly a short-term geopolitical advantage. At the same time, a collapse of the Soviet Union would produce dangers of its own. Almost all the Soviet republics contain large, unhappy minorities. Civil war could trigger mass migration into the fragile new democracies of Eastern Europe or into adjoining countries in the Middle East. Repression could spill over into military action against neighboring territories. And who in the end will control the Soviet military forces, especially the nuclear forces? What will be the legal status of existing agreements with the Soviet Union?

Moreover, Russia's historical role in preventing hegemony in Europe (even while, at times, itself seeking it) must also be recognized. The defeats of Napoleon, of Imperial Germany and of Hitler would have been impossible without Russian help. Thus Russia faces us with a paradox. When monolithic, it threatens domination; but if impotent, it threatens disequilibrium.

The ideal outcome for both the peace of the world and for the Soviet Union would be a state strong enough to defend itself but not so centralized as to be able to conduct geopolitical offensives; sufficiently cohesive to fulfill aspirations truly common to all its peoples but not subject to absolutist rulers manipulating foreign dangers and embarking on international proselytizing missions.

Such a Russia has never existed. But any of the outcomes described earlier must diminish significantly the Soviet capacity to project large ground armies abroad, especially against technologically advanced countries. In case of repression, the reasons will be practical: saving the army to control domestic unrest combined with the inability to modernize during inevitable economic isolation. Under the confederal outcome, it will be for structural reasons: the inability to command a consensus for expansionism.

Repression would surely strain the economic and cultural links with the industrial democracies created since perestroika. Soviet leaders might then well revert to invoking the familiar specter of a hostile world. But the security context would be quite unlike that of the Cold War. For one thing, the isolation that would result from repression would widen the technological gap between the Soviet Union and the industrial democracies, progressively reducing the Soviet military potential. Then, the Soviet armed forces would be located 800 miles farther east, and the need for vast standing armies might well be challenged internally. So long as the Soviet Union maintains a substantial nuclear arsenal—as it is sure to do—it will be able to deter invasion by the implicit threat of nuclear retaliation.

Thus, while instinct may draw Soviet leaders toward repression, realism may counsel confederation of at least the core republics (Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Byelorussia) and probably several of the others except the Baltic states, whose independence seems inevitable. In time, Soviet leaders may even recognize that expansionism has been the bane of Soviet history and that security can best be achieved by a more defensive posture. For only thus can they gain access to the aid, investment and technology they need to become a truly modern state.

(continued)

In either case, a shift in Soviet priorities is likely. The recent turmoil bids fair to move the Russian center of gravity east of the Urals. An integrated, technologically advanced Europe and a Japan on the way to becoming an economic superpower—both backed militarily by the United States—are too formidable to challenge directly.

Russian foreign policy is likely to focus on less developed regions of Asia and especially on the Middle East. This shift has been accelerated unintentionally by recent arms control negotiations in the conventional field which have enabled the Soviet Union—violating the spirit of the agreement—to move more than 10,000 tanks from Central Europe to east of the Urals.

Under any hypothesis, Russia's southern flank will grow increasingly sensitive. For 60 million Muslims now living under Soviet rule cannot remain unaffected by radical currents sweeping the Muslim world. And as Soviet oil production declines, the region will become economically more and more important to Moscow as well.

All of this will require the United States to reassess its policies. The alliances with Europe and Japan—the bedrock of American foreign policy for four decades—will change in character. Our allies will conclude that aggression from the Soviet Union is less likely; that they are increasingly able to handle foreseeable pressures with their own forces; and that a Soviet challenge threatening their national existence would have to be of a magnitude that would deprive the United States of any choice but to come to the rescue. Hence there will be a decline in the willingness of the traditional allies to align their foreign policy with Washington's.

To be sure, Japan will not lightly jeopardize its access to the American market. Germany will not wish to relinquish the American hedge against Soviet nuclear blackmail. Britain and France will look to the United States as insurance against a resurgent Germany. America, too, will continue to have a significant political and economic stake in Europe and Japan.

Still, none of these elements will create sufficient incentives for our allies to concede the type of American preeminence that was characteristic of the Cold War, or for America to seek it. Alignments will become less rigid and more ad hoc, diplomacy will grow more flexible, and the center of gravity of American foreign policy will gradually move to the Western Hemisphere.

If the Soviet Union indeed abandons the historical policy of putting pressure on its neighbors, a sea change in U.S.-Soviet relations may result. Heretofore, periods of relaxation of tension were either tactical maneuvers or motivated by a fear of nuclear holocaust. But the United States will have few clashing interests vis-à-vis an inward-turning Russia serious enough to warrant military confrontation. This will surely be reflected in reduced military programs by both sides, even in the absence of formal arms control.

Finally, in the '90s the Middle East is likely to become a key test of U.S.-Soviet relations—whether the Soviet Union will seek its goals by encouraging moderation and restraint or whether it uses its Muslim population as a springboard to gain favor with radical, perhaps even fundamentalist forces.

As political dialogue becomes more important, traditional arms control seems to have reached the end of the line. Conventional arms negotiations have gone as far as they can in reducing the threat to Europe. The next phase could actually increase the threat by undermining the minimum American deployment necessary for Atlantic security. Nor can it be in America's interest to encourage a further redeployment of Soviet armored forces toward vulnerable neighbors.

As for strategic arms talks, their principal—and most important—benefit will be to provide a pretext for Soviet central authorities to move their strategic weapons to territories under firm political control. At the same time, limitations on strategic defense will have to be reconsidered in light of the gulf war experience; no responsible leader can henceforth deliberately leave his civilian population vulnerable. But an East-West dialogue on security should be continued—perhaps by periodic meetings of review commissions—if only to stay in touch with the increasingly powerful Soviet military leadership.

The evolution described here depends on two factors. The United States must not lose sight of the need for a military establishment strong enough to balance that of Russia, which even if truncated will remain the second most formidable military power. Second, as East-West relations turn more cooperative, it is essential that America avoid giving any impression—as it occasionally does—that its goal is a U.S.-Soviet condominium.

Nothing would more surely tempt a recurrence of historical Russian tendencies to wedge us out of Eurasia. Sino-U.S. relations are especially sensitive in that regard. In an era of growing diplomatic flexibility, it cannot be in America's interest to deprive itself of options; or to push together the second largest nuclear power and the world's most populous state. A strategic dialogue with China is not a favor we do for Beijing; more than ever it reflects the necessities of a multi-polar world—especially now that all the other industrial democracies have reestablished high-level dialogue with Beijing.

The Soviet upheaval should bring home to us the need to redefine the national interest as well as the scope for American leadership. Ours is a time of transition from trying to right every local imbalance to overcoming primarily those challenges which threaten the global equilibrium.

# A Scenario for the Endgame

BY HENRY A. KISSINGER

## THE WAR
DESERT
STORM

President Bush was right to call Saddam Hussein's offer of withdrawal a "cruel hoax" and to reject it out of hand. Yet paradoxically, that proposal may still turn out to be the beginning of the endgame. Never before has Saddam stated that he would withdraw from Kuwait, or that he would observe any relevant United Nations resolution. Up to now he has always said that he would be prepared to discuss the Gulf along with other issues, without being explicit about what his response would be even if these other conditions were met. The celebration by the civilians in the streets of Baghdad indicates that they understood the most recent offer to be the first tortuous step toward peace.

In the initial phase, it is not necessary for the administration to do anything to respond directly to Iraq's proposal. President Bush can afford to wait for Saddam's next move, which will probably be somehow to separate his conditions from his offer of withdrawal. The process may be somewhat like this: President Gorbachev, or a combination of Arab leaders sympathetic to Baghdad (like the Algerians) could take responsibility for pursuing Iraq's conditions in the aftermath of a withdrawal. Saddam then would affirm that he is prepared to withdraw based on those assurances. And we will be able to say—and mean—that we are not bound by what these other parties proclaim on their own.

While the United States is waiting for some process separating the issues to unfold, it would be helpful if we spelled out publicly what we mean by withdrawal—lest Saddam in the end use a prolonged pullout to salvage success. We must not be caught in a situation where Saddam announces a "complete withdrawal" that extends so long as to enhance his bargaining position and allow him to try to split the alliance by accusing us of raising new terms.

Our definition of withdrawal should include these elements:

* Saddam must agree to a timetable so short he cannot regroup his forces while ostensibly withdrawing—no more than 96 hours.

* The first stage of the withdrawal must be so significant that it is in effect irreversible.

* Iraq's forces should be pulled back far enough from Kuwait's borders so that they cannot continue to overhang its independence. Although that distance is for the military to judge, it should probably be at least 30 miles.

* Economic sanctions should be maintained until other conditions are met, such as reparations, removal of mines and the implementation of a U.N. inspection system.

There should be no cease-fire until Saddam has begun his withdrawal. Then we should be prepared to declare a 12-hour cease-fire

on the hour specified for withdrawal, to see whether it is being carried out. We should not announce that we are holding off on a ground offensive, because that would give him another incentive to prolong the negotiations. And once a ground war starts, we cannot permit a cease-fire in place. Then the allies cannot stop until their objective is achieved.

The lesson of the Korean and Vietnamese wars is that it is disastrous to suspend military operations while terms of a cease-fire are being discussed. Military pressure created the incentive for cease-fires; once that element was removed, the opponent had the opposite incentive: to protract the process in order to exploit war-weariness in the U.S. It is crucial for the prospects of a creative postwar policy that Saddam cannot claim any success. Saving his face mortgages the peace.

After the Middle East war of 1973, some Arab countries learned that confrontation with the U.S. did not advance their objectives. Thus the peace initiative started afterward with the moderate Arabs produced a series of agreements, including the Israeli-Egyptian peace accord. In this case, the Arab leaders associated with us should be encouraged to take the lead in any development process, as well in other areas, including the Arab-Israeli issue. Under no circumstances should an Iraqi withdrawal be linked to reconstruction aid, which would be interpreted as reparations, or to a U.S. withdrawal, which would establish a false equivalence between aggression and resistance. There

must be no ambiguity about which side won.

If the terms outlined here are met, the allies will be able to claim success even if Saddam is left in power. I would prefer for Saddam to be overthrown, but I do not see how we can risk lives and the cohesion of the coalition to achieve an objective that was never stated. Saddam's future would then be left to the ruling group in Iraq. He will have lost at least a third of his army and all his long-range offensive power in taking Kuwait, only to abandon it—this following an eight-year war with Iran in which he lost hundreds of thousands of people and gained nothing. One has to wonder about the acuity of this leadership group if they allow Saddam to stay in power after such a string of disasters.

It would be helpful to let the Soviets know before they involve themselves further precisely what we mean by withdrawal. But we do not need the Soviets to end the war, and we should not be overly solicitous. The major requirement is to stay the course now that the end is near. The less ambiguous the outcome of the war, the more it will enhance the stature of the moderate Arab countries that cooperated in Operation Desert Storm—and the more creativity it will allow our diplomacy in solving the problems of the Middle East in the postwar period.

MICHA BAR-AM—MAGNUM

Egyptians taken prisoner during the 1973 Yom Kippur war

NEWSWEEK : FEBRUARY 25, 1991 31

A Postwar
Agenda

BY HENRY A. KISSINGER

Newsweek

January 28, 1991

This is why, in the final analysis, all of the so-called diplomatic options would have made matters worse. Each would have left Iraq in a militarily dominant position. None addressed the root problem of the gulf's lack of security, which drew 415,000 Americans into the region in the first place—a deployment that certified the gap in military capability between Iraq and the moderate Arab countries. Any diplomatic solution that did not produce a dramatic reduction of Iraq's military power would have been a victory for Saddam Hussein. From then on, he would not have needed to engage in actual physical aggression. He could have let Iraq's demonstrated superiority speak for itself, progressively undermining the governments that supported the United States. He would have been able to exploit his position within OPEC to achieve an increase in oil prices, as well as a greater share of production. These two steps would have given Iraq vast additional resources to increase its already

Yet ironically, maintaining equilibrium in the region requires us to navigate between a solution that leaves Iraq too strong and an outcome that would leave Iraq too weak. After all, one of the causes of the present crisis is the one-sided way the Western nations rushed to the defense of Iraq in its war against Iran, forgetting that if Iran was excessively weakened Iraq might become the next aggressor. It would be ironic if another bout of tunnel vision produced an Iraq so weak that its neighbors, especially Iran, seek to refill the vacuum.

The new balance of power in the region cannot be based on the permanent presence of American ground forces. This was the weakness of diplomatic solutions that would have kept Iraq's military preponderance intact. A major Western ground force in the area would inevitably become the target of radical and nationalist agitation. The cultural gap between even the best-behaved American troops and the local population is unbridgeable. After a brief period, American ground forces would be considered foreign intruders. There would be a repetition of our experiences in Lebanon, including terrorism and sabotage. American ground forces in the area should be withdrawn after victory; residual forces should be stationed beyond the horizon—at sea or perhaps at a few remote air bases. Any monitoring of Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait should be done by Arab members of the coalition.

(continued)

Progress will depend on a proper perception of the issues involved. The Arab-Israeli problem is usually stated as a negotiating issue: how to convene an international conference that returns Israel to the 1967 frontiers, defines a new status for Jerusalem, induces the Arabs to "accept" Israel and provides international guarantees for the resulting arrangements. I have grave doubts about every one of these propositions.

Third, acceptance of Israel is not only a legal but above all a psychological challenge. And I find it hard to believe that any legal formula can by itself provide for Israeli security. After all, Kuwait lived in a state of legal peace with Iraq without being able to prevent Iraqi aggression. And Saddam attacked Israel in a war from which Israel had kept totally aloof because it calculated that many Arabs would support Iraq against Israeli retaliation, no matter how justified. American leaders understandably felt this danger real enough to advise against retaliation. But when reaction to an unprovoked attack becomes an international issue, Israel is still certified as a pariah and is held hostage for the actions of others.

(continued)

Page 2

News week

January 28, 1991

■ A conference would be assembled, under the aegis of the U.N. secretary-general, composed of the United States, Israel and the Arab states allied with America in the gulf crisis.

■ The moderate Arab countries would agree to act as trustees for territories that are returned to Arab control for a specified amount of time, say five to 10 years.

■ The moderate Arab states would also commit themselves to demilitarizing these areas under U.N. supervision. —

■ Israel would give up all of Gaza and the most heavily populated areas of the West Bank, retaining only territories essential to its security. It would be allowed to participate in verifying the demilitarization of any territory it evacuates.

■ Precise government arrangements would be established by agreement, but would not for the interim period lead to a separate state. As a practical matter, the trustee powers would undoubtedly establish an administration containing individuals acceptable to the PLO.

If this particular scenario turned out to be impractical, some other interim approach must be sought to break the deadlock. The aftermath of an allied victory over Iraq will offer a perhaps never-to-recur opportunity. Moderate Arab states are disillusioned with the PLO, which in effect has backed Iraq. They are also dismayed by the fact that the PLO has never unambiguously dissociated itself even from terrorism aimed at the moderate Arabs. As a result, these governments may no longer be prepared to give the PLO a veto over their actions.

As for Israel, it must avoid two possible nightmares. If it insists on holding onto every square inch of occupied territory, it could suffer the fate of South Africa and find itself ostracized, and even ultimately under U.N. sanctions. On the other hand, if it follows the maxims of conventional wisdom and gives up all the occupied territories, it runs the risk of winding up like Lebanon, gradually squeezed to the point of obliteration. For its own sake, Israel must find a middle way. And there is no better moment to do that than when its most dangerous enemy has been defeated.

In several thousand years of recorded history, the Middle East has produced more conflicts than any other region. As the source of three great religions, it has always inspired great passions. It is therefore unlikely that any one negotiation can bring permanent tranquility to this turbulent area. An Arab-Israeli negotiation will not end all the turmoil, because many Middle East problems are quite independent of that conflict. Fundamentalism in Iran has next to nothing to do with the Palestinian issue, though Teheran has exploited it. And Saddam Hussein would have tried to dominate his neighbors even if the Palestinian problem did not exist. But what the Arab-Israeli conflict has done is to make it difficult for the voices of moderation in the Arab world to cooperate with their supporters in the West. Victory in the gulf will create a historic opportunity to alter that particular equation—and it should be seized. ■

Page 3

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The Heritage Foundation
214 Massachusetts Avenue, N.E.
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The First Annual
B.C. Lee Lecture

Wednesday, February 1, 1995
Four Seasons Hotel
Washington, D.C.

THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION

The Heritage Foundation is honored to present the B.C. Lee Lectures on international affairs. These annual Lectures will focus on U. S. relations with the Asia-Pacific region. They are funded by an endowment grant from the Samsung Group in honor of the late B. C. Lee, founder of the prominent Korean corporation.

The Asian Studies Center of The Heritage Foundation was established in 1983 to focus the attention of policy makers in Washington on U. S. economic and security interests in the increasingly dynamic Asia-Pacific region. Its purpose is to promote mutual understanding and enhance cooperation between the United States and the countries of the Asia-Pacific region.

The Heritage Foundation also takes great pride in dedicating an executive conference room to the memory of the late B.C. Lee. Mr. Lee was a true visionary. Through his leadership, the Samsung Group contributed greatly both to the economic development and well-being of the Korean people and to the development of mutually beneficial relations between the people of the Republic of Korea and the United States.

Reflections on U.S.-Asia Relations

By Henry Kissinger

This is a complex period for American foreign policy. We have achieved a tremendous victory in the Cold War. If one compares what American leaders said in the late 1940s and early 1950s with what has come about, there is a truly extraordinary correlation. In fact, it is rare to find—I can think of no example—where a nation brought about as closely what it had set out to do or in so short a period of time.

But such a success brings one face to face with a dilemma that was described by George Bernard Shaw when he said: "There are two tragedies in life. One is to fail to fulfill your heart's desire, and the second is to fulfill your heart's desire." That is the challenge for our period, and it comes at a moment when many of the traditional premises of what foreign policy ought to be ought to be re-examined.

The American international experience has been unique. We are the only major country that was populated almost entirely by immigrants; the only major country whose history has a definite beginning which can be dated; the only major country that has never had a powerful neighbor; and, therefore, the only major country that could believe its involvement in foreign affairs was entirely up to it, that it could choose its involvements and withdraw from them at will. Also, the immigrant experience gave rise to the conviction that, by making the world conform to its own domestic experiences, it could guarantee universal peace and the end of international conflicts. The ideas of collective security, self-determination, and world government were largely introduced by Amer-

2

Henry Kissinger

ica into international affairs. Unchallenged within the United
States, they have dominated the thinking of our century.

Now the United States finds itself in a unique position in terms
of its past. All its previous foreign involvements were triggered by
the perception of some specific threat. Each major effort of the
United States was viewed by its leaders as bringing about some
sort of terminal point after which the world would live in an atmos-
phere of reconciliation. Thus, all of the great initiatives of the post-
World War II period were given terminal dates. Today, we dwell
in a world without a clear-cut strategic adversary. We live also in a
world without a specific ideological enemy, or many ideological
adversaries, whichever way one wants to put it. We have not yet
developed, and we may not be able to develop, a concept of some
kind of terminal point toward which we are working. And yet, at
this precise moment, we are the strongest military power, the only
super power, the most vital economic power, and a nation on
whose actions as much depends as it did in the immediate post-
World War II period.

Yet, in the immediate post-World War II period, we were re-en-
acting to some extent the two seminal national experiences of this
half-century: overcoming the Great Depression of the 1930s and
overcoming our enemies in World War II. In the period into which
we are now heading, we do not have such clear-cut agendas or
precedents of approach. So there must be a debate in America. It
will not be easy to formulate a bipartisan approach under present
conditions because the premises are not self-evident. There is a big
difference between whether one believes that all problems must be
dealt with primarily multilaterally, or whether there has to be a
clear definition of a national interest. It makes a difference
whether one believes that alliances are still valid or whether one
believes that alliances are a vestige of a forgotten or transcended

3

period and can therefore be largely ignored. I am struck by the fact
that in very few of the public statements of our politicians does
one find what used to be almost ritualistic statements about the At-
lantic Alliance and other alliances. Precisely because they were
ritualistic, they provided a fundamental anchor in the days when I
was in government, as they did before and after. It would have
been impossible to clear a presidential speech about foreign policy
if it did not mention the Atlantic Alliance or our relationship with
Korea or other allies—even if it made for a very general sentence;
today, general speeches which make no NATO reference are the
rule. I point this out only to illustrate that a philosophical issue
must be there.

The traditional American premise that there was some general
principle which could be applied equally in every part of the world
—for example, containment or the spread of democracy as the
principal goal of foreign policy—is very difficult to apply in the
present period. In a way, it is probably what led us into the tragedy
of Vietnam, which is to say that, even during the Cold War period,
it did not apply fully. In the present period, the United States has
to begin with some concept of its national interest in various re-
gions of the world, and that national interest must of course encom-
pass our moral and social values, but it must also relate these to
other concerns.

I want to make these general statements before I turn to my dis-
cussion of Asia because Asia is the region of the world in which
American thinking is in many respects in greatest need of clarifica-
tion. (I must say that I have read the various Heritage papers on
the subject with considerable agreement.)

4

Henry Kissinger

In Europe, we are dealing with nations exhausted by their experiences in war and unlikely ever to consider each other as enemies; they have become strategic allies working toward some sense of community. But even if they do not fulfill that goal, conflict among them is extremely improbable. In Europe, the real question is where the borders of Europe begin, what should happen to the nations of Central Europe, and what is to be the new relationship with Russia and with the successor states of the Soviet Union.

But in Asia, we are dealing with nations that in no sense consider themselves part of a single community. In Asia, we are dealing with societies each of which is in a process of fundamental transformation determined to an extraordinary extent by national and cultural characteristics. It may be possible to speak of an Asia-Pacific Community in the economic sense but, politically, the relationships of Japan, China, Korea, and Asian Russia to each other, as well as the relationship of all these nations toward Southeast Asia, is not defined primarily by a sense of living in a community. Many of them have closer relationships with the United States than they have with each other. Moreover, the end of the Cold War has affected all of us in very special ways.

Let me begin with Japan. Some Americans have the tendency to believe that all of history works automatically toward our preferred institutions and that conversion to these is the ultimate goal of foreign policy. Therefore, we had the conviction that, after its defeat in World War II, Japan would evolve into a society very similar to ours. In Japan, we thought we saw a permanent feature of the post-war international scene. But that could not be the case. Under the shock of defeat, Japan gave its priority to economics. After the trauma of World War II, it was natural for a country defeated for the first time in its history to attempt to emulate some of the methods of the victor. It was also the quickest way toward re-

5

covery. Moreover, with only one clear-cut enemy, the Soviet Un-
ion, strategic objectives of the United States and Japan were bound
to run parallel.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a
new generation in Japan, it seems inevitable that Japanese foreign
policy will take a more national turn. It is inherent in the politics
of the region and accelerated by the single-focus approach of
American foreign policy that has produced one trade crisis after an-
other. To maintain the alliance, which is desirable, requires restor-
ing political dialogue. Yet, when it comes to Japanese culture,
producing dialogues of any kind is not exactly an easy assignment.
The Japanese communicate by creating a mood. We communicate
by asking direct questions. When a Japanese Prime Minister says
"yes," it only means that he has understood what has been said,
not that he is going to do it. Conceptual discussions of strategic
and political issues therefore do not come easily with the Japanese.

And yet the Japanese-American relationship will not prosper un-
less it is broadened beyond trade issues. Some common concep-
tion of the political evolution of at least Northeast Asia, and
probably all of Asia, is needed. That dialogue remains yet to be
conducted, and really needs to be conducted—not only on the gov-
ernmental level, perhaps not even primarily on the governmental
level, but in the many institutions that were so important in estab-
lishing some sort of common approach with the West European na-
tions during the period of the Cold War.

Our relations with China, too, suffer from cultural shock. In
China, most provinces have a population larger than the largest
European country. And if you ask a Chinese to date something, he
will mention a dynasty, whereas a Westerner would give you a
date. But most dynasties have lasted longer than the entire history

6

Henry Kissinger

of the United States, which inevitably produces a difference in
time perspective.

What China has wanted from the beginning of our dialogue in
1971 was to have a strategic relationship in the widest sense. They
seek an understanding of our perception of the evolution that was
going to take place in Asia and preferably in the world, and then to
see whether we could come to an agreement—not in the way allies
do, but in some fashion leading to a framework to enable us to
comprehend their actions.

Having the longest uninterrupted history of any nation of the
world, the Chinese have been obliged to deal with many idiosyn-
crasies, so I think the Chinese can understand, even if they don't
agree, that we should have certain moral preferences which need
to be taken into account, and that indeed we have every right and
indeed need to make those clear. But the key issue in our relation-
ship is how we can bring our various priorities into a relationship
to each other that enables us to act on behalf of our mutual inter-
ests and in as coordinated a way as circumstances allow. I believe
that, in Asia, stability requires a major effort of understanding be-
tween the United States and China and, therefore, I have opposed
efforts to sanction China even on issues where I have agreed with
the objectives of those who recommend the sanctions. It is extraor-
dinarily important the United States and China find a way toward a
serious political dialogue which, at this moment, is not taking
place adequately.

Having discussed these two major countries, let me say some-
thing about Korea. Korea was the first Asian country in which I
spent any amount of time. I was there during the Korean War, and
I traveled from Pusan to Seoul in a rickety troop train. I have seen
Seoul when it was devastated, and all the cities that had been occu-

7

pied by the enemy troops. It took courage and dedication to re-
build this country at a time when it was conventional wisdom that
Korea was doomed forever to being an underdeveloped, somewhat
backward Asian society. I have tremendous admiration for what
Korea has been through. As a veteran of the Vietnam negotiations,
I am also very conscious of what happens in a divided country
when one party participates in negotiations, not necessarily to
achieve an agreement but to delegitimize the other party, espe-
cially when the other party is our ally.

The rule with which we could start in Korea is to do nothing to
permit it to become isolated or separated from us. Therefore, in all
negotiations involving the future of the Korean Peninsula, we
should not talk with the North Koreans without the participation of
South Korea; and if the North Koreans are not willing to do this,
then I don't think we should talk to them. (There may be issues
that are bilateral between us and North Korea which could be dealt
with separately.) We should also keep in mind that our interests
with respect to Korea are not always the same as those of Korea's
neighbors.

I am not happy about the way that the Korean Nuclear Agree-
ment came about. I don't think it is good policy to have an Ameri-
can negotiation in Korea that excludes Seoul, and I am uneasy
about our having acquiesced to the nuclear status quo in the pen-
inusula. On the other hand, we have an agreement, and the best
that can be done now is to be very cautious about making sure that
the obligations of that agreement are rigorously carried out.

I don't want to go through every country of Asia with the same
kind of analysis, but my basic point is that Asia is undergoing a tre-
mendous economic revolution. I find the changes in China, which
I visit every year, awe-inspiring. I remember what China looked

8

Henry Kissinger

like in 1970 and even in 1979 when compared with what it is now. I
can see happening in China in the next century what happened to
Japan in this century as a premier economic power, whatever the
political situation.

Throughout Southeast Asia, we face an extraordinary opportu-
nity. The United States is present everywhere, yet to take one issue
and make it the test of an extraordinarily complex relationship
would be a mistake. Still, in no Asian country would America's
withdrawal be welcome. In Southeast Asia, as they pointed out to
me, the strategic divisions run along the line of which nations are
more concerned about Vietnam and which are more concerned
about China. Those more concerned about China are friendly with
Vietnam. Those more concerned about Vietnam are friendlier with
China.

In conclusion, what does all this mean for the United States? If
you ask the nations I have mentioned to list their principal security
threat, not one of them would name the United States. Not one.
Each of them would refer to some other country of the region. The
United States is an Asian power for a unique reason. It is the only
major power that not only can afford to but has an obligation to
have friendly relations with all of the nations of Asia. It is the only
power that can conduct simultaneous dialogue with China, Japan,
and both Koreas and maintain a position in Southeast Asia.

So, in this sense, what goes on in Asia affects our perception of
international affairs in general. One often hears that this sort of
analysis is now outdated and that we should emphasize the envi-
ronment, population issues, and drug abuse. Those of you who
know Asia should ask yourselves this: if this were the only thing
we could talk about, how would we handle what I have described
in geopolitical terms? Yes, these are issues with some consequence

9

and, in the decades ahead, they will undoubtedly become of still
greater consequence. But what is immediately required is to con-
tribute to a structure of relationships in vital and crucial regions of
Asia.

Since World War I, all the great decisions in foreign policy have
in one way or another come from the United States. It is a truism
to say that this must be so when all the world is looking to us. Yet
it must be the case for a few more decades. That is our burden, our
obligation, and our opportunity.

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