As he turns 88 this week, the world’s most famous diplomat is just as
outspoken as ever, finds Philip Sherwell
For a sweeping historical tome on China written by the most famous living
practitioner of international statecraft, Henry Kissinger’s latest book has
a dedication striking for its unexpectedness. “To Annette and Oscar de la
Renta”, it reads, a tribute to the fashion designer and his wife, who lent
Kissinger their opulent home in the Dominican Republic for his writing.
But then the former US national security adviser and secretary of state has
never been a conventional diplomat. Even when he dominated US foreign policy
at the height of the Cold War, the Harvard professor with the distinctive
German accent was also a media celebrity with a reputation as a ladies’ man.
“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac,” he once noted, dryly.
Another phrase associated with Kissinger is “shuttle diplomacy”, coined to
describe his Middle Eastern peregrinations in the 1970s. And just days
before turning 88 later this week, he is still advising – and still
shuttling. This weekend, for instance, he is in London for a conference on
how the world can defuse the threat of “loose nukes”. He arrives from Berlin
where a prestigious prize – named after him and awarded annually for
outstanding contributions to transatlantic ties – was presented by Bill
Clinton to Helmut Kohl, the German chancellor who oversaw his country’s
reunification.
But if the focus there was the success of the long-established Atlantic
alliance, Kissinger is also busy promoting his model for a new Pacific
community.
On China, his 13th book, is part grand historical tour, part riveting memoir,
and part geopolitical analysis. With the world focused on the dramas of the
Arab Spring and the killing of Osama bin Laden, it is a timely reminder that
China and the US are jockeying for power and pre-eminence as the aspiring
and existing superpowers of the 21st century.
Kissinger’s book connects China’s ancient past and philosophy to its current
global ambitions. But its core is his personal involvement: the veteran
statesman has visited China more than 50 times since making his first secret
trip in 1971 to broker the great rapprochement between Chairman Mao and
President Richard Nixon.
As interlocutor-in-chief, he has spent much of that time trying to explain the
mysteries of the two countries to each other. “The relationship between
China and the US is central to world peace and its importance reflects the
shift in the centre of gravity of global equilibrium towards the Pacific.
And, since I have probably had more experience and contact with high-level
Chinese than any other American, I thought to sum up my conclusions could be
relevant to considerations of where we go with the relationship.”
Kissinger is illuminating, for example, on the way the West tends to react to
short-term crises while China takes the long view – and that long view can
mean centuries, if not millennia.
“The Chinese approach to policy is conceptual while ours is pragmatic. For the
Chinese, history is part of current reality. For America, current reality
usually begins with the perception of a problem we are trying to solve now.”
He illustrates this with an example of Mao, during a border war with India,
referring his commanders back to two historic Indo-Chinese conflicts. “It
would be like a British prime minister calling his war cabinet together and
saying that during the period of Charlemagne in Europe, we had the following
adventures.
“This leads to different perceptions of the strategy of deterrence. In the
West, we look to assemble overwhelming force; the Chinese look for a
superior psychological balance. The West waits more or less passively for a
provocation and then seeks to overwhelm it. The Chinese think that
provocations have to be pre-empted, though not necessarily overwhelmed.”
Kissinger is an engaging and sharp interviewee. We meet in his spacious New
York office lined with photographs of him with half a century’s worth of the
great and the good: Kissinger with Barack Obama, say, and with George W
Bush. And behind them, a portrait of Richard Nixon, the man who elevated him
from academia to the most powerful job in American foreign policy.
“Don’t draw any conclusions from those photos. The cleaner moves them each
day,” he insists, his accent still bearing witness to his Bavarian roots –
his Jewish parents fled Nazi persecution in 1938 when he was 15. He also
retains the measured tones of top-table diplomacy, parsing every phrase for
nuance and emphasis.
Kissinger looks as distinctive as he sounds. Today he is wearing blue braces
decorated with red scales of justice, but has swapped his trademark heavy
dark-rimmed glasses for a contemporary steel-rimmed set. He is also a little
shorter and rounder than in his days as an unlikely sex symbol: before
marrying his second wife Nancy Maginnes, a philanthropist, in the
mid-Seventies, he was linked to a string of glamorous women including,
Candice Bergen, Jill St John, Shirley MacLaine and Liv Ullman, who called
Kissinger, “the most interesting man I have ever met”.
As well as opening relations with China, Kissinger’s legacy is, well,
legendary. He introduced realpolitik – the 19th century German concept of
power politics – to the US, oversaw a policy of détente with the Soviet
Union, and negotiated the end of the Vietnam War – winning the Nobel Peace
Prize in the process even though critics have portrayed him as an
international war criminal for the secret carpet-bombing of Cambodia and
other dark Cold War episodes.
Realpolitik is a diplomatic modus operandi that is at odds with both the
studious multilateralism of Obama, who arrived in office with a message to
the world that he was going to tone down displays of American power, and the
neo-conservatives who sought to spread democracy through American
intervention.
But what is striking as Kissinger surveys recent world dramas, is that
America’s current foreign policy highlights continuity with previous
administrations as much as the fractures.
“President Obama clearly reflects a different viewpoint from his predecessors.
On the rhetoric there is a substantial difference. But in his actions, there
are considerable parallels. On the Osama bin Laden operation, there would
have been no difference at all. On China and Russia, I do not see any
significant difference.”
In the wake of events in the Arab Spring, Kissinger has developed a theory of
“pragmatic idealism” in determining whether the US should intervene
militarily abroad to support human rights and democracy, or only as an
expression of vital national interests. “Our values impel us to alleviate
human suffering,” he has written. “But as a general principle, our country
should do so militarily only when a national interest is also at stake.”
But he accepts there are exceptions – and Libya is one of them. “I
unenthusiastically endorsed intervention,” he says, although he does not
back the broader interpretation by Britain and France of the United Nations
mandate to protect civilians.
Kissinger also warns that we are only at the first stage of a dangerous
“five-stage act” in Libya. “The true test is what emerges. One cannot deduce
the outcome of a revolution from the pronouncements of those who start the
revolution. And one has to assess a revolution not only in terms of its
initial enthusiasm. As a general principle, the greater the destruction of
existing institutions, the greater will be the violence in re-establishing
order.”
He is disdainful of the “cocktail-party wisdom that we should have seen an
explosion was coming” in the Arab world. And of bin Laden’s death, he notes:
“It must have an effect on the morale of al-Qaeda and the view of their
relevance, considering that there were so few protests in the Arab world.”
It is also, he believes, a major domestic political boost for a president
who had been tagged by critics as a “wimp”.
As Obama and David Cameron now assess the options for reducing their nations’
troop numbers in Afghanistan, the dilemma of how to withdraw forces from a
far-away conflict zone is one of which Kissinger is all too aware. For
although Nixon was elected in 1968 committed to ending the war in Vietnam,
he wanted “peace with honour” and withdrawal “with dignity”.
So how does he think the US and its allies should be handling a situation in
Afghanistan that is often compared to Vietnam?
“There is an emerging consensus that we should negotiate with the Taliban. But
even if you can get an agreement from them about withdrawal how do you
enforce that? Otherwise it develops into a unilateral withdrawal. That was
the tragedy of Vietnam, where we thought we had an agreement but our
domestic situation didn’t permit it.
“In Afghanistan, I think withdrawal will become a political necessity because
of the inability to create a structure which we can turn over. So I would
negotiate with surrounding countries who would be threatened by a terrorist
Afghanistan if it emerged.”
And in this policy prescription of talks, he believes that including Pakistan
is “an indispensable part”. He is not someone who wants Pakistan cut out of
the loop after bin Laden was found hiding deep in its soil. “We should stop
beating-up on Pakistan,” he says.
Since leaving office, Kissinger has run a lucrative international consultancy
business, and his counsel has been sought by the six subsequent
commanders-in-chief and countless foreign leaders. But it is with Chinese
officials that he has struck the most consistent relationship; he recently
had dinner with Dai Bingguo, the top official at the Chinese foreign
ministry, who was visiting the US for talks.
That friendly meeting was a far cry from his first encounter with Chinese
officials in 1971. After diplomats from both countries had established
initial feelers, Kissinger set off for a tour of Asian states with a stop in
Pakistan, which had good relations with the US and China.
Once there, Kissinger feigned a stomach upset and the line was put out that he
was going to a former British hill station to recover. Instead, he and his
team flew to Beijing.
Kissinger disappeared for 48 hours – this was an era when it was still
possible to do that. Even so, the ruse almost failed when a British
diplomat’s son spotted something wrong – his family had a home in the hill
station, and when the boy watched the convoy that was supposedly carrying
the sick US diplomat, he noted that several of the cars were empty.
“He told his father that I wasn’t in the convoy and his father told him not to
be so silly,” Dr Kissinger recalls. “The boy was right, of course, but his
father believed the official version.”
It was a great step into the unknown that involved a mix of drama, tension and
mystery. As Kissinger co-drafted the joint communiqué at the end of the
mission that would pave the way for Nixon’s visit to Beijing the following
year, his Chinese counterpart, the premier Zhou Enlai, noted: “Our
announcement will shake the world.”
But world-shattering import was not at the forefront of Kissinger’s thoughts.
“When we were drafting it, I was not thinking we were making history; I was
just trying to get the phrasing right. You don’t feel the drama when you’re
in the middle of it; you just worry about the next step.”
Kissinger’s book has been criticised by some US reviewers who believe that he
downplays the Tiananmen Square massacre – an approach that fuels the view of
many that he considers democratic niceties and human rights an impediment to
an uncompromising foreign policy.
“That is a philosophical debate where there can be respectful disagreements,”
he says now, couching his position as ever in diplo-speak. “I was shocked by
the actual events, but I believed in a policy of engagement rather than
confrontation. Those of us who had access to the Chinese government sought
to use our influence to improve human rights through quiet diplomacy rather
than showdown.”
With Obama’s visit to the UK later this week, Kissinger has thoughts, too, on
another bond: the so-called Special Relationship.
“I think this Administration started with no special feeling about the
relationship – if anything, that Britain should be treated like any other
European country.
“Although I don’t think the Special Relationship is what it was in its heyday
during the Cold War, my impression is that the Administration has developed
a greater appreciation for the special role that Britain is playing and can
play. They will come [to the UK] with a more positive attitude and with the
intention of restoring the high degree of confidentiality and trust that
existed previously.”
Indeed, despite the superficial tensions he believes Britain’s performance
over recent months has impressed them, notably in Libya. “The British
Government seems to be handling Libya to the great satisfaction of the
Administration. The White House believes that more should be done by the
Europeans in Nato – and Britain is doing that.”
*'On China’ by Henry Kissinger (Allen Lane, RRP £30) is available from
Telegraph Books at £26 + £1.25 p&p. Call 0844 871 1516 or visit
books.telegraph.co.uk
America’s
former culture–accountable government, rule of law and presumption of
innocence, respect for others and for principles, and manners–has gone
by the wayside. Many Americans, especially younger ones, are not aware
of what they have lost, because they don’t know what they had.
The
debt ceiling law, passed in 1917, enables Congress to place a statutory
cap on the total amount of government debt rather than having to
approve each individual Treasury bond offering. It also, however,
forces Congress into an open and presumably somewhat shameful vote to
approve more borrowing. If the new Republican majority in the House of
Representatives gives in to establishment pressure by voting to increase
the debt ceiling once again, you will know that the status quo has
prevailed. You will know that the simple notion of balancing the
budget, by limiting federal spending to federal revenue, remains a
shallow and laughable campaign platitude.