Henry Kissinger Legendary Statesman Advocates New U.S. ëGlobal Strategyí by John Shaw He has been lauded as a peacemaker and praised as a global statesman. He has also been castigated as a war criminal and derided as a cynical manipulator. But loved or hated, admired or scorned, Henry Kissinger has been a singular force in American diplomacy for the last half century. As both a thinker and a practitioner, Kissinger, 78, has been intimately involved in many of the crucial American foreign policy decisions of the post-World War II era. With a personal history in diplomacy that includes intimate contact with virtually all of the major world leaders of the last 50 years, Kissinger has insights on international affairs that were formulated in academia but refined by hard experiences in real-world politics. In an interview, Kissinger said that the United States needs to craft a new foreign policy that clearly distinguishes among what the country must do, what it would like to do, and what policies are beyond its capacity to advance. Kissinger said the Un ited States must chart a "global strategy that stretches into the indefinite future" that is based on the complex realities of the current global scene. "A president or secretary of state can not apply a universal recipe. They have to deal with each region on its own and link these to a broader framework," he said. Kissinger said one of Americaís preeminent challenges is to understand the four international systems that now exist side-by-side: First, the United States, Western Europe and Latin America are in the vanguard of the 21st -century economic and political system. Then there is Asia, in which China, India, Japan, Russia, Korea and other nations are seeking influence in ways that are reminiscent of 19th-century balance of power struggles. Third, there is the Middle East, a region whose religious and ideological conflicts are analogous to the sectarian forces that ravaged 17th-century Europe. Finally, there is Africa, whose staggering developmental challenges defy historical analogy and require an urgent and creative response by the international community. Kissinger said crafting a foreign policy that is both coherent and relevant to these different international systems will test the imagination and wisdom of American leaders. "We must understand what the goals we are trying to accomplish are and what our capacities are in realizing these objectives. What we must not do is run the domestic policies of other countries," he said. Kissinger said the foreign policy challenges the United States confronts will require far more nuance and subtlety than has traditionally been required or displayed by the nation. "Historically when we did engage in foreign policy it had a unipolar aspect both in the sense that we were so dominant, and unipolar in the sense that there was only one problem in our perception we had to deal with," he said. Kissinger said the world stage is now far more complex than it was during the Cold War. "Weíre powerful and of course we are going to have our way more frequently than Austria or other small countries. But to the greatest extent possible, we should seek to transmit our preferences to consensus rather than present them on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Otherwise we will spend all of our energies holding people down, which will drain us domestically," he said. Kissinger said the U.S. foreign policy process is particularly complicated because three generations with very different views of the world are vying for influence. There is the Cold War generation that emphasizes the importance of power in international affairs and often views foreign policy as a zero-sum game in which the gain of one party is a loss for the other. Then there is the Vietnam-protest generation that saw the Cold War largely as a misunderstanding made worse by American intransigence. Finally, there is the post-Cold War generation that looks reverentially to Wall Street and Silicon Valley and believes globalization and economic self-interest will produce political harmony and democracy. Reviewing the current world scene, Kissinger took stock of the nations and regions that most affect United States interests and offered his policy prescriptions. Beginning with Western Europe, he said, "we need to get to some conceptual understanding, some sense of direction of what our long-term objectives are in relationship to Europe and whether it is possible to maintain this cooperative relationship of the post-World War II era or whether we will slide into an increasingly competitive position." Kissinger said a new generation of American and European leaders has come to power that has less in common and fewer meaningful contacts than did the previous generation of Americans and Europeans. "I believe that the generation of the ë50s and ë60s had a sense of a common enterprise. The disagreements were about how to achieve a common objective. Now we have these generations that are pursuing their own objectives. Sometimes they can resolve them in technical terms, but the overarching approach is gradually dissipating," he said. Kissinger said another imperative of American foreign policy is to build a more stable relationship with Russia. "We need an understanding of our long-term relationship with Russia as it has evolved beyond the impact of the personalities of our leaders on each other. We need to ground it on something more permanent than good personal relations with our leaders, which has been the temptation of our last three presidents," he said. Kissinger said the United States also must develop a more "settled" view of its relationship with China. America, he said, must learn to distinguish between the challenge China is mounting today and those that might evolve in the future and think about how U.S. policy today can affect the longer-term relationship. He believes the United States should be more modest and realistic about its ability to influence Chinaís domestic policies. "The Chinese leaders think theyíve staggered through 4,000 years without advice from the U.S." he said. Kissinger said he supports a more cooperative relationship with China and added he expects the Bush administrationís views regarding China to be clarified as President Bush prepares for his October trip to that country. The United States should stay engaged in the Middle East and play a role in crafting a "practical arrangement" between Israel and Palestinians rather than focus on a final peace accord, he said. Kissinger blames the Clinton administration for pushing for a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace deal last year at Camp David when the parties were not ready and circumstances were not ripe for a broad agreement. American leaders should prepare for a different relationship with Japan in the coming years, he said. "We took for granted a Japan that was concentrating on economics and playing a secondary role politically for about 50 years after World War II. But thatís not historically the natural style of Japan. Japan is country with a strong sense of nationhood and its particular culture. So as the World War II generation disappears a more assertive political approach is likely to appear," he said. "I think the next phase of Japanís politics will be more nationalónot hostile to the U.S., but more national," he added. Kissinger said that the United States needs to think clearly and act with vision about its relationship with both Turkey and India. Neither nation is given the attention it deserves from American policymakers, he said. "Turkey is an absolutely key country. Turkey is essential for stability in the Gulf and to some extent in the Arab-Israeli dispute," he said. The former secretary of state, who some accuse of indirectly supporting Turkeyís invasion and occupation of the island nation of Cyprus in 1974, did not give specific policy recommendations regarding Ankara but warned that U.S. support was necessary to bolster the government against the threat of Moslem fundamentalism. "If Turkey were to join the camp of Arab radicalism or confrontationists it would be very difficult for us," he said. In Kissingerís view, India will be a major Asian and global force in the coming decades. "India is a country with tremendous potential and can become one of the Great Powers, maybe even a superpower, by the end o f the 21st century. It has not overcome the domestic obstacles that inhibit it. But it has the capacity to do it," he said. "India being democratic is not the principal reason why we should cooperate with it. The principal reason is the geopolitical objectives of India, which they are pursuing in a very hardheaded way, which are quite parallel to ours. We both want stability and calm in the Indian Ocean and neither of us want Moslem fundamentalism to become a dominant force. On this basis, I think we can have a very cooperative relationship," he added. Globalization, Kissinger declared, is a powerful force that is altering the international system and more creative efforts are needed to address the imbalance between political and economics structures. "We must provide the economic aspects of globalization with a political construction of comparable sweep and vision. But Iím not saying I know how to do it," he said. "I donít accept the globalizersí theory that globalization is going to produce a calm foreign policy because globalization has a tendency to produce instability in its foreign policy. Iím not against globalization but is something we need to keep in mind," he said. He said the Group of Eight nations should place the political aspects of globalization on the agenda during their regular meetings. He also said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) must craft more realistic and balanced programs to aid economically struggling nations. "I think the approach of the IMF has been a disaster in many situations because theyíre bringing about political revolutions by economic means without understanding the consequences. Indonesia is a prime example," he said. Kissingerís views of the world are spelled out in detail in a new book, "Does American Need a Foreign Policy?" The book, which is Kissingerís 13th, has received positive reviews and is being studied carefully by members of the Bush administration. The focus of the book is what the United States should do to preserve its position of global leadership. "At the dawn of the new millenium, the United States is enjoying a preeminence unrivaled by even the greatest empires of the past," he writes. "From weaponry to entrepreneurship, from science to technology, from higher education to popular culture, America exercises an unparalleled ascendancy around the globe. During the last decade of the 20th century, Americaís preponderant position rendered it the indispensable component of international stability," he says. Kissinger says that American preeminence in the world is often treated with indifference by its own citizens and notes that in the past three presidential elections little attention was paid to foreign policy issues. Kissinger writes that in the last decade American dominance evolved less from a strategic design than a series of ad hoc decisions designed to satisfy domestic constituencies, while in the economic field, it was driven by technology and the resulting remarkable gains in American productivity. All of this has given rise to the temptation of acting as if the United States needed no long-range foreign policy at all and could confine itself to a case-by-case response to challenges as they arise. "At the apogee of its power, the United States finds itself in an ironic position. In the face of perhaps the most profound and widespread upheavals the world has ever seen, it has failed to develop concepts relevant to emerging realities," he writes. "Victory in the Cold War tempts smugness; satisfaction with the status quo causes policy to be viewed as a projection of the familiar into the future; astonishing economic performance lures policymakers to confuse strategy with economics and makes them less sensitive to the political, cultural and spiritual impact of the vast transformations brought about by American technology," he writes. He notes that the international scene exhibits a curious mixture of respect for, and submission to, Americaís power and exasperation with its prescriptions and confusion as to its long-term purposes. Kissingerís views are still taken very seriously by the American foreign policy community because of their scope and clarity. Since the 1950s, Kissinger has helped shape the way Americans think about the world through his writings, speeches, interviews and government service. He was born in May 1923 to an Orthodox Jewish family in Furth, Germany, that fled the country in 1938 for the United States. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II and then enrolled at Harvard University in 1947. He completed his doctoral program at the department of government in 1954. He remained at Harvard for 15 years, teaching and writing about international affairs. Throughout the 1950s and í60s, Kissinger emerged as a leading scholar of international affairs. His affiliation with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Council on Foreign Relations exposed him to the corporate and political leadership of the United States. He was an aide to New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and then served as special adviser for national security during President Richard Nixonís first term (1969-72) and as secretary of state in Nixonís truncated second term and during the presidency of Gerald Ford. From his posts in the Nixon and Ford administrations, Kissinger argued that the starkly bipolar era of the early Cold War was ending and a more complex world was emerging with five major power centersóthe United States, Western Europe, China, Japan, and the Soviet Unionócontending for influence. Kissinger helped design the Nixon Doctrine, which sought to soften the hard edges of the containment strategy and encourage other nations and regional powers to take responsibility for their own security. He is probably most celebrated for his role in the 1971 U.S. opening to China that set the stage for closer American relations with Beijing and gave the United States leverage in its relationship with the Soviet Union. Kissinger played a key role in negotiating the end of the U.S. war in Vietnam. He won the Noble Peace Prize in 1973 for his efforts to craft the peace accord, but the policies he recommended in South East Asia remain deeply controversial. Despite his efforts, through various autobiographical accounts, to tell his version of events while in office, Kissingerís critics have gained some momentum recently. Among them is British journalist Christopher Hitchensóno stranger to controversy himselfówhose new book "The Trial of Henry Kissinger," paints a picture of a starkly different man. Among his many accusations, Hitchens links Kissinger to assassination, murder and conspiracy in Chile, Bangladesh, Cyprus, Greece and Indochina, among others. The salty Englishman pulls no punches and states that rather than be hailed as statesman, Kissinger should be tried as a "war criminal." But even as Hitchens and other journalists continue to debate the actions of Kissinger, the man whose name has become synonymous with "realpolitik" continues to remain active on foreign policy issues. He continues to write, lecture, travel extensively and meets frequently with international leaders. He is also the chairman of Kissinger Associates, a firm that provides strategic advice, foreign affairs insight, personal contacts, diplomatic door openingóand the cache of having one of the worldís most marketable and prestigious names. John Shaw is contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.