World Chaos and World Order: Conversations With Henry Kissinger
The former secretary of state reflects on war, peace, and the biggest tests facing the next president.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG NOV 10, 2016
http://www.theatlantic.com/internationa ... os/506876/The Obama Doctrine
Goldberg: How would you define President Obama’s foreign-policy doctrine?
Kissinger: The Obama Doctrine described in your Atlantic article posits that America acted against its basic values in a number of places around the world, thereby maneuvering itself into an intractable position. Therefore, the argument goes, America contributes to the vindication of its values by withdrawing from regions where we can only make things worse. We must take care lest the Obama Doctrine become an essentially reactive and passive foreign policy.
Goldberg: The animating idea being, in your mind, that Obama’s doctrine is about protecting the world from America?
Kissinger: In my opinion, Obama seems to think of himself not as a part of a political process, but as sui generis, a unique phenomenon with a unique capacity. And his responsibility, as he defines it, is to keep the insensitive elements of America from unsettling the world. He is more concerned with short-term consequences turning into permanent obstacles. Another view of statesmanship might focus to a greater extent on shaping history rather than avoiding getting in its way.
Goldberg: As a practitioner of diplomacy, how useful is it to go to other countries and make mea culpas about past American behavior? You’re a pragmatist. Surely it buys you something.
Kissinger: Foreign countries don’t judge us by the propensity of our president to traduce his own country on their soil. They assess such visits on the basis of the fulfillment of expectations more than the recasting of the past. In my view, presidential reassessment of history, should it occur, should generally be delivered to American audiences.
Goldberg: I believe it’s a true statement, though. The fundamental difference is that she could have been a Cold Warrior, but Obama is post-Cold War. He is more focused on the developing world.
Kissinger: Who was not a Cold Warrior, in that sense, at that time? There was remarkable continuity in the idea that the containment of the Soviet Union was required of American foreign policy. In the beginning—in 1948—there was a debate—the Wallace objections—but after they were defeated, there was really no disagreement about our strategic objective. Some people argued that we went too far in overthrowing Mossadegh—
Goldberg: Obama would say that.
Kissinger: In your interviews with him, Obama implied that there are a lot of places in the world where we should act, but can’t because of our past conduct. For example, that we are handicapped in Iran by the Mossadegh legacy—almost 70 years ago. I doubt that. One can define our past according to that narrative on two levels—things we did, like Mossadegh’s overthrow, or things we—quotation mark—“tolerated.” But the word “tolerated” would be somewhat wrong; it implies that we could have intervened effectively had we been more vocal.
Goldberg: One similarity between your worldviews is that he is very Westphalian in the sense that he does not make very florid or even semi-florid human-rights demands on other countries. Human rights is not the focus of his foreign policy.
Kissinger: His vision of the arc of history produces a more passive policy. A puzzling aspect about Obama is how someone so intelligent could treat his peers with the disdain he did in your article. That’s really puzzling. Someone of that stature usually develops a sense of humility.
Goldberg: What are America’s perpetual, eternal interests?
Kissinger: I would begin by saying that we have to have faith in ourselves. That is an absolute requirement. We can’t reduce policy to a series of purely tactical decisions or self-recriminations. The fundamental strategic question is: What is it that we will not permit, no matter how it happens, no matter how legitimate it looks?
Goldberg: That perspective is very post-World War II, American-led-international-order sort of thinking. It might not be fully Obama’s view. And it was quite noticeable that of the final four major-party candidates left standing in the primaries earlier this year—Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton—only one was a foreign-policy traditionalist.
Kissinger: Clinton is the only one who fits the traditional, outward-looking, internationalist model.
Goldberg: What does this mean?
Kissinger: That for the first time since the end of the Second World War, the future relationship of America to the world is not fully settled.
Goldberg: Hillary Clinton is much more traditional, in fact, than Barack Obama, on questions related to America’s international responsibilities, indispensability, and so on. But have Americans changed so much in terms of understanding U.S. primacy that even a president like Hillary Clinton would be much more limited in what she could do?
Kissinger: To many leaders around the world, Obama remains a puzzle after eight years in office. They don’t know what to make of him or of America’s current diversions. If Hillary wins, she’ll have the advantage that the world will welcome a familiar, traditional figure. In his interview with you, Obama prided himself most on the things he prevented from happening.
Goldberg: There’s always been, more or less, a bipartisan consensus, in this period, concerning the importance of deep American engagement with the world.
Kissinger: This is the first time that this consensus has been questioned to this degree. I think it can be restored to some extent. It seems to me that in the Western world, after the Second World War, we had a vision of a peaceful order. There was no question that we would sacrifice for it. We sent a large army to Europe. We spent a lot of money. We need to rediscover that spirit and adapt it to the realities that have emerged since then.
Goldberg: Why is this dynamic changing now?
Kissinger: We’ve been too indulgent in challenging what used to be considered core national beliefs. I think we can reverse this trend, but it will take a big, essentially bipartisan effort.
Goldberg: Is the idea of America exceptionalism breaking down?
Kissinger: No, the notion of American exceptionalism still exists, but in the sense of “the shining city on the hill,” it’s weakening.
Goldberg: But that is Obama—he has a “shining city on the hill” understanding of American exceptionalism.
“Cold War American exceptionalism is gone. An appropriate adaptation is a principal task of a new administration.”
Kissinger: Not in the sense that we should stop trying to implement our values. Constitutionalism and dedication to human rights are among the glories of American achievement. To be sure, we went too far in believing that we could bring about democracy in Vietnam or in Iraq by defeating our opponents militarily and by the strenuous exercise of goodwill. We went too far because we didn’t bring our military action into relation with what our public could support or a strategy for the region. But the basic effort was an expression of American exceptionalism. Cold War American exceptionalism is gone. An appropriate adaptation is a principal task of a new administration. I instinctively believe that the American public could be convinced, but they would need a different explanation from the one that was valid in the 1950s.
A society has to have a vision of its own future—and it cannot be based on guilt primarily. Every society that has ever existed in human history has at some point declined. You can be arrogant enough to believe that it cannot happen to you, but you need the humility to recognize the limitations of human foresight. That said, you must have some faith in yourself. Lack of faith in a society is an early symptom of decline.
Goldberg: Did you ever believe that it wouldn’t happen to the United States?
Kissinger: I can’t believe it will happen, but on the other hand, history indicates the opposite. You have to act on the permanence of your values, adjusting them when you come into contact with other societies with their own understandings of permanence. But that adjustment will often be partial. That is the dilemma of foreign policy.
Goldberg: Is Obama’s view overly deliberative, or overly passive, as a reaction, maybe, to the previous president, who was overly preemptive?
Kissinger: Perhaps in part; in part out of his own philosophical convictions. Obviously not every preemptive move is right. My own view of the previous president—for whom I have great respect and affection—is that it was right to overthrow Saddam, but the democratization of Iraq should have been a multilateral international effort, if undertaken at all. It should not have remained an exclusively American undertaking.
Goldberg: Obama’s red-line decision on Syria, he told me, was when he broke with what he called the traditional Washington playbook. He didn’t think he would buy the United States credibility by using force. What is your view of the red-line controversy?
Kissinger: I think the red line was, above all, a symbolic issue. It was an unwise decision in a kaleidoscope of ambivalences. But it was a symptom of a deeper problem. Military force should be used, if at all, in the amount most likely to succeed. It should not be a compromise between contending domestic forces.
Goldberg: Did you read Samantha Power’s speech on values in foreign policy, by the way?
Kissinger: She’s a good friend of mine with a somewhat different perspective. I respect her. In the debates she conducts at United Nations, she is very clear about American values, which she relates to American interests. I agree that to the greatest extent possible, moral arguments should influence our actions, but they must also be related to long-term security interests. She is doing a great job, even if she takes an occasional shot at me.
She’s in the process of broadening her approach. When she came to New York as UN ambassador, she was an exclusive liberal interventionist. After living in the real world of the United Nations—making arguments, lining up votes—she’s had to face the necessity of including national security and executing policy in a world of different histories.
But to go back to Obama, in avoiding potential risks, he is quite realistic according to my definition of the word. But he sees the presidency itself in more personal terms; he believes he has imparted unique aspects to it. I see it more in evolutionary terms as a dynamic process.
The Changing Middle East
Goldberg: What would you have U.S. Middle East policy be?
This explosive mix is further stressed by the intervention of outside powers. Russia’s motivation is threefold: first, to attempt to reverse the result of the Arab-Israeli War of 1973, which expelled Russian strategic influence from the region; two, to preserve their naval base in Latakia; three and above all, to check the growth of non-state terrorist groups that could reach into Russia, especially in the Caucasus, if the Assad regime collapsed in a vacuum. Iran supported Assad in pursuit of Shia solidarity but also because of the vision of the reincarnation of the ancient Persian Empire, which reached from the border of China deep into the Middle East.
Goldberg: Obama has said that our Sunni allies have to find a way to “share” the Middle East with Iran.
Regional stability with Iran is analogous to the challenge posed by the Soviet Union after the Second World War, to which we responded with the Kennan containment policy. Iran operates on two levels: as a state entitled to the rights and protections of the international system, and as a non-state entity inspiring jihadist groups around the Middle East in Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen. The prerequisite to a political settlement is an end to Iran’s non-state activities. We will never convince the Saudis of sharing the Middle East with Iran so long as the Iranians possess 150,000 rockets in Lebanon and control a large Hezbollah force in Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria. Iran has to be brought to recognize national borders and to abandon its bid for hegemony. When they do, there can be a relatively stable Middle East. But first Iran has to decide whether it is a country or a cause.
The administration seems to think that it can negotiate this gap between the parties, especially the hostility and distrust between Iran and Saudi Arabia, as a psychological enterprise. But the effort has so far created the impression—and the reality—of an American strategic withdrawal from the region. The rise of Iran geographically and American acquiescence to its nuclear threshold status have accelerated the emergence of two blocs: a group based approximately on Westphalian principles of statehood, and groups rejecting the notion of statehood and asserting the vision of caliphate and empire. Iran is active in both. Two-power worlds are inherently precarious and require a balancer. If the United States does not play at least part of that role, others will emerge, and there will be growing instability.
Goldberg: Well, what can an American president do to convince them that they won’t get away with hegemony over the entire Middle East?
“Iran has to decide whether it is a country or a cause.”
Kissinger: First, (s)he has to convince the Iranian leadership that our relationship is strategic, not psychiatric, in nature. Diplomatic relations are not an exercise in goodwill or expiating past sins but rather a way to balance interests. The United States has to say to its counterparts, especially in Iran, something like this: “Improved relations with the United States are incompatible with proxy—practically terrorist—institutions in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and now Yemen. You are a significant country; we are willing to deal with you now. But we will judge your actions, not your words.” In due course, the Iranians may change their priorities, but they are far more likely to do so in response to our actions and strategy than to our maxims.
The Saudis are convinced that the United States would, in the end, acquiesce to Iranian domination of the region, or at least that the president would expend no huge military effort to save his allies. As long as they believe this, we cannot have the necessary influence on their strategy. Historic friendship gives us a certain entrée, but no responsible leader would say, “Just because I like this country, I will do things that I don’t really believe are in my interest.”
Goldberg: Do you think the Iran deal is working as a broad concept?
Kissinger: My approach to foreign policy has always been to try to link legitimacy and power. The crisis produced by Iran was the linkage of Iran’s nuclear capability with its imperial and jihadist foreign policy. As a result, by the time the agreement was signed, Iran enjoyed proxy influence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. The lifting of sanctions should have depended on more than limiting reactors and centrifuges temporarily; it should have also depended on certain political constraints, particularly on Iran’s support of non-state groups like Hezbollah. I think we should pursue the principle of standing firm against both Iran’s nuclear program and the combination of imperialism and jihadism with which it is attempting to control the Middle East. The assumption that a weapons-specific negotiation would produce a psychological breakthrough in their thinking did not reflect Iran’s 2,000 years of imperial experience.
Goldberg: Would you rip up the Iran agreement?
Kissinger: No. For better or worse, it is the one structure that now exists to which everyone has made the adjustments they have needed to make. What would ripping up the agreement achieve? Our most significant concession—lifting sanctions—has already been made. To abandon the agreement now would free Iran from more constraints than it would free the United States. But the agreement has created a two-power world in the Middle East. To balance a two-power world is inherently difficult, particularly when the United States appears to be withdrawing from the region. Down the road, we will have to come to some understanding with Iran, but before we can do that, we face a challenge similar to the one posed by the Soviet Union in 1945: We must contain Iran within its national borders. We must incentivize it to act as a state rather than a cause. We cannot be indifferent to the power vacuum that has created opportunities for them. There must be a phase of containment of Iran, and at the same time, suppression of the caliphate of the Sunnis. And if Iran accepts acting as a country instead of a cause, then cooperation will be possible and should at that point be steady and sustained. Russia must be built into this diplomacy.
Europe and the Future of World Order
Goldberg: What is wrong with Europe?
Kissinger: For 400 years, world history was made by Europeans. Many of the great ideas by which we live—constitutional government, freedom of the individual, the ideas of the Enlightenment—originated in Europe and were spread by Europe around the world. Now this region, which was dynamic and built the world, has become too preoccupied with itself. It confines itself basically to the exercise of soft power. At present, no European government has the capacity to ask its people for sacrifices on behalf of foreign policy.
Unless Europe can recover some of its historic dynamism, there will be a big hole in the world system as it has until now manifested itself. What has been lacking in Syria is Europe, but their present domestic structures tempt them to avoid difficult strategic issues. You can only ask sacrifices of your people when you can present some vision of getting them from where they are to where they have not been. Otherwise, why should they do it?
Goldberg: Why is there no vision in Europe anymore?
Kissinger: Maybe they have gone through too much. Maybe they have lost too much. If you look at the succession of leaders in 19th-century Britain—Castlereagh, Canning, Disraeli, Gladstone, Salisbury—they were all significant men governing a coherent society. At Queen Victoria’s Jubilee at the end of the 19th century, 100 warships paraded for her. Today, the entire British navy has only one capital ship.
“Unless Europe can recover some of its historic dynamism, there will be a big hole in the world system as it has until now manifested itself.”
Beyond Britain, the EU, despite the economic eurozone, has not been able to unite around a uniform political or strategic approach to the world. It does not seem possible to create a European army. Actually, I do not even see a mechanism with which the continent could develop a strategic concept. Born in Europe, I say this with regret and the hope that I am describing an interval, not a trend. The decline of Europe, which shaped international order for centuries, is going to be a serious loss.
Goldberg: Do you consider it a loss?
Kissinger: It is not yet a loss, but it is striking that three weeks after Brexit, not one European statesman has articulated a vision of Europe’s future. They are the continent that built the international world. And no one has stood up with the vision of Churchill. They’re talking about tactical matters while they’re in the process of giving up the essence of what they’ve struggled for and what they’ve represented throughout history. Today, a standard statement is that when Europe is weak, it cannot conduct great foreign policy, therefore it must be, at a minimum, economically cohesive. That is only partially true. At the end of World War II, when Europe was exhausted and devastated, they produced Adenauer [in Germany] and Schuman [in France] and De Gasperi [in Italy]. They had a vision. Now, their successors risk transforming their vision into a bureaucracy.
Goldberg: Can there be great vision in the internet age?
Kissinger: That’s a good question. I don’t know, but it must be attempted.
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