Nial Fergusson - The Meaning of Kissinger

7/23/2019 Nial Fergusson - The Meaning of Kissinger

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ESSAY September/October 2015 Issue U.S. Foreign Policy

The Meaning of Kissinger 1

A Realist Reconsidered

By Niall Ferguson

There are reasons other than his longevity why so many world leaders—among them the

Chinese President Xi Jinping—continue to seek the counsel of Henry Kissinger, who

stepped down as !"! secretary of state close to four decades ago! #n this respect, $arack

%&ama is unusual! He is the first !"! president since 'wight (isenhower not to seek

Kissinger)s advice! Periodically, commentators urge %&ama to &e more *Kissingerian!+

%thers argue that he is Kissingerian in practice, if not in rhetoric! $ut what eactly does the

term mean-

The conventional answer e.uates Kissinger with realism, a philosophy characteri/ed &y the

cool assessment of foreign policy in the stark light of national self0interest, or, in the

1ournalist 2nthony 3ewis) phrase, *an o&session with order and power at the epense of

humanity!+ 4riting in 5678, Kissinger)s former Harvard colleague "tanley Hoffmann

depicted Kissinger as a 9achiavellian *who &elieve:s; that the preservation of the state ! ! !

re.uires &oth ruthlessness and deceit at the epense of foreign and internal adversaries!+

9any writers have simply assumed that Kissinger modeled himself on his supposed

heroes, the 2ustrian statesman Klemens von 9etternich and the Prussian leader %tto von

$ismarck, the standard0&earers of classical (uropean realpolitik!

<et the international relations scholar Hans 9orgenthau, who truly was a realist, once

memora&ly descri&ed Kissinger as, like %dysseus, *many0sided!+ #n the early 56=>s, for

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eample, when the agoni/ing .uestion arose of how much the nited "tates should shore

up the government of "outh ?ietnam, Kissinger initially &elieved that "outh ?ietnam)s

right to self0determination was worth !"! lives! 9orgenthau, the authentic realist,

vehemently disagreed!

Kissinger's own intellectual capital has been insufficiently studied.

#n the 56@>s and 56=>s, Kissinger did indeed write a&out 9etternich and $ismarck! $ut

only someone who has not read Aor who has willfully misreadB what he wrote could

seriously argue that he set out in the 56>s to replicate their approaches to foreign policy!

Dar from &eing a 9achiavellian, Kissinger was from the outset of his career an idealist in atleast three senses of the word!

Dirst, even if Kissinger was never an idealist in the tradition of !"! President 4oodrow

4ilson, who sought universal peace through international law and collective security, he

was not a realist! Kissinger re1ected 4ilsonian idealism &ecause he felt that its high0

mindedness was a recipe for policy paralysis! 2s he put it to his friend the historian

"tephen Erau&ard in 56@=, *The insistence on pure morality is in itself the most immoral

of postures,+ if only &ecause it often led to inaction! $ut Kissinger knew that realism could

also &e paraly/ing! 2s a refugee from Hitler)s Eermany who returned in 56FF in an

2merican uniform to play his part in the final defeat of Ga/ism, Kissinger had paid a

personal price for the diplomatic failures of the 568>s! 2nd yet, as he pointed out in a 56@

interview, the $ritish architects of appeasement, "tanley $aldwin and Geville

Cham&erlain, had *thought of themselves as tough realists!+

"econd, having immersed himself as an undergraduate at Harvard in the work of

#mmanuel Kant, Kissinger was an idealist in the philosophical sense! His unpu&lished

senior thesis, *The 9eaning of History,+ was an admiring criti.ue of Kant)s philosophy of

history! Kissinger)s central argument was that *freedom is ! ! ! an inner eperience of life as

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a process of deciding meaningful alternatives!+ *Perpetual peace+ might indeed &e the

ultimate, inelucta&le goal of history, as Kant argued, &ut from the point of view of the

individual, that inevita&ility was not a constraint on freedom! 2s Kissinger wrote in his

thesis, *4hatever one)s conception a&out the necessity of events, at the moment of their

performance their inevita&ility could offer no guide to action! ! ! ! However we may eplain

actions in retrospect, their accomplishment occurred with the inner conviction of choice!+

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Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger listens as U.S. President Barac !bama hosts a

meeting to discuss the Strategic "rms #eduction $reaty at the %hite House& Noember ()*).

Third, from an early stage in his career, Kissinger was a convinced antimaterialist, as

hostile to capitalist forms of economic determinism as he was to 9arism03eninism! #t was

dangerous, he argued in his senior thesis, to allow *an argument a&out democracy :to;

&ecome a discussion of the efficiency of economic systems, which is on the plane of

o&1ective necessity and therefore de&ata&le!+ $y contrast, *the inward intuition of

freedom ! ! ! would re1ect totalitarianism even if it were economically more efficient!+ This

attitude contrasted starkly with that of his contemporaries, such as the economist and

political theorist 4alt ostow, for whom the Cold 4ar could &e won so long as capitalist

growth rates were higher than communist ones! *nless we are a&le to make the concepts

of freedom and respect for human dignity meaningful to the new nations,+ Kissinger wrote

in $he Necessity for +hoice, *the much0vaunted economic competition &etween us and

Communism ! ! ! will &e without meaning!+ #n other words, li&eral democratic ideals had to

&e defended for their own sake, without relying on the material success of capitalism to

make the case for them! This was a theme to which Kissinger returned repeatedly in the

56=>s as an adviser and speechwriter to Gelson ockefeller, whose three unsuccessful &ids

for the epu&lican presidential nomination he supported!

People tend to prefer charismatic leaders to crafty statesmen.

2s Kissinger o&served in the first volume of his memoirs, *High office teaches decision0

making, not su&stance! ! ! ! %n the whole, a period in high office consumes intellectual

capitalI it does not create it!+ "ince nearly all scholarly attention has &een focused on

Kissinger)s time in office, his own intellectual capital—the ideas he developed &etween the

early 56@>s and the late 56=>s at Harvard, at the Council on Doreign elations, and for

ockefeller—has &een insufficiently studied! Properly understood as an innovative criti.ue

of realpolitik, his ideas offer at least four key insights into foreign policy that %&ama, not to

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mention his successor, would &e well advised to study history is the key to understanding

rivals and alliesI one must confront the pro&lem of con1ecture, with its asymmetric payoffsI

many foreign policy decisions are choices &etween evilsI and leaders should &e wary of the

perils of a morally vacuous realism!

HISTORY IS THE MEMORY OF STATES

2fter the philosophy of idealism, the most important thing Kissinger learned at Harvard

was the centrality of history to understanding pro&lems of national security! *Go

significant conclusions are possi&le in the study of foreign affairs—the study of states

acting as units—without an awareness of the historical contet,+ he wrote in his doctoral

dissertation, pu&lished in 56@ as " %orld #estored *Thememory of states is the test of

truth of their policy! The more elementary the eperience, the more profound its impact on

a nation)s interpretation of the present in the light of the past!+ 2fter all, Kissinger asked,

*4ho is to .uarrel with a people)s interpretation of its past- #t is its only means of facing

the future, and what really) happened is often less important than what is thought to have

happened!+ To the political scientist, states might *appear ! ! ! as factors in a security

arrangement!+ To the lawyer, they might seem like interchangea&le parties in an endless

succession of international lawsuits! #n fact, Kissinger wrote, all states *consider

themselves as epressions of historical forces! #t is not the e.uili&rium as an end that

concerns them ! ! ! &ut as a means towards reali/ing their historical aspirations!+

2 recurrent theme in Kissinger)s early writing is the historical ignorance of the typical

2merican decision0maker! 3awyers, he remarked in 56=7, are the *single most important

group in Eovernment, &ut they do have this draw&ack—a deficiency in history!+ Dor

Kissinger, history was dou&ly important as a source of illuminating analogies and as the

defining factor in national self0understanding! 2mericans might dou&t history)s

importance, &ut, as Kissinger wrote, *(uropeans, living on a continent covered with ruins

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testifying to the falli&ility of human foresight, feel in their &ones that history is more

complicated than systems analysis!+

UNKNOWN UNKNOWNS

nlike most academics, Kissinger discerned early in his career that high0stakes policy

decisions often must &e taken &efore all the facts are in! *The choice &etween ! ! ! policies

did not reside in the facts,) &ut in their interpretation,+ he argued in " %orld #estored ! *#t

involved what was essentially a moral act an estimate which depended for its validity on a

conception of goals as much as on an understanding of the availa&le material!+

This was an idea Kissinger later formulated as *the pro&lem of con1ecture in foreign

policy!+ 'ecision0making, he argued in a 56=8 lecture,

re,uires -the ability to pro/ect beyond the nown. "nd when one is in the realm of the

new& then one reaches the dilemma that there0s really ery little to guide the policy1

maer e2cept what conictions he brings to it. . . . 3ery statesman must choose at some

point between whether he wishes certainty or whether he wishes to rely on his

assessment of the situation. . . . 4f one wants demonstrable proof one in a sense becomes a

prisoner of eents.

#f the democracies had moved against the Ga/is in 568=, Kissinger argued, *we wouldn)t

know today whether Hitler was a misunderstood nationalist, whether he had only limited

o&1ectives, or whether he was in fact a maniac! The democracies learned that he was in fact

a maniac! They had certainty &ut they had to pay for that with a few million lives!+

This insight had profound implications for the nuclear age, when the potential casualties of

a world war could num&er in the hundreds of millions! 2lso in 56=8, in an unpu&lished

paper entitled *'ecision 9aking in a Guclear 4orld,+ Kissinger summed up what he called

the *terri&le dilemma+ confronting the Cold 4ar decision0maker

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3ach political leader has the choice between maing the assessment which re,uires the

least effort or maing an assessment which re,uires more effort. 4f he maes the

assessment that re,uires least effort& then as time goes on it may turn out that he was

wrong and then he will hae to pay a heay price. 4f he acts on the basis of a guess& he

will neer be able to proe that his effort was necessary& but he may sae himself a great

deal of grief later on. . . . 4f he acts early& he cannot now whether it was necessary. 4f he

waits& he may be lucy or he may be unlucy.

The key point a&out the pro&lem of con1ecture is in the asymmetry of the payoffs! 2

successful preemptive action is not rewarded in proportion to its &enefits &ecause, as

Kissinger wrote, *it is in the nature of successful policies that posterity forgets how easily

things might have &een otherwise!+ The preemptive statesman is more likely to &e

condemned for the up0front costs of preemption than to &e praised for averting calamity!

$y contrast, playing for time—the essence of the appeasement policy of the 568>s—is not

certain to lead to disaster! 2nd making the least effort is usually also the line of least

domestic resistance!

THE LESSER OF EVILS

*There is not only right or wrong &ut many shades in &etween,+ the young Kissinger wrote

in 56F7, in a revelatory letter to his parents! *The real tragedies in life are not in choices

&etween right and wrong,+ he argued, &ecause *only the most callous of persons choose

what they know to &e wrong! ! ! ! eal dilemmas are difficulties of the soul, provoking

agonies!+ Put simply, the most difficult choices in foreign policy are certain to &e &etween

evils, and so the truly moral act is to choose the lesser evil Aeven if it is politically the

harder choiceB!

#n 56@, in Nuclear %eapons and Foreign Policy, for eample, Kissinger argued that

maintaining an e.uili&rium of power in the Cold 4ar would re.uire such difficult choices



%e are certain to be confronted with situations of e2traordinary ambiguity& such as ciil

wars or domestic coups. . . . $here can be no doubt that we should see to forestall such

occurrences. But once they hae occurred& we must find the will to act and to run riss in

a situation which permits only a choice among eils. %hile we should neer gie up our

principles& we must also reali5e that we cannot maintain our principles unless we

surie.

The philosophical underpinning of the &ook is that an apparently a&horrent thing, such as

a limited nuclear war, may &e the lesser evil if the alternatives are capitulation or

annihilation! #n his final chapter, Kissinger spells out a general theory of lesser evils that

may &e read as a kind of credo

4t would be comforting if we could confine our actions to situations in which our moral&

legal and military positions are completely in harmony and where legitimacy is most in

accord with the re,uirements of surial. But as the strongest power in the world& we

will probably neer again be afforded the simple moral choices on which we could insist

in our more secure past. . . . $o deal with problems of such ambiguity presupposes aboe

all a moral act6 a willingness to run riss on partial nowledge and for a less than

perfect application of one0s principles. $he insistence on absolutes . . . is a prescription for

inaction.

3ater, in 56==, Kissinger made a similar argument a&out ?ietnam *4e do not have the

privilege of deciding to meet only those challenges which most flatter our moral

preconceptions!+ $ut &y then, he had already reali/ed that the war against Gorth ?ietnam

could &e ended only &y negotiation! The nited "tates, he had seen for himself, *lacked any

overall concept for the conduct of military operations against the guerrillas, and for the

&uilding of a nation!+ #ts stock recipe of copious resources and comple &ureaucracy was

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inappropriate! 2 negotiated peace was a lesser evil compared with a hasty a&andonment of

"outh ?ietnam or a further escalation of the !"! military effort against the Gorth!

THE ILLUSION OF REALISM

#n his writing a&out 9etternich and $ismarck—most eplicitly in the unfinished &ook

manuscript he wrote a&out the latter—Kissinger made clear that he regarded pure realism

in foreign policy as potentially pernicious! *"ocieties are incapa&le of the courage of

cynicism,+ he wrote in an unpu&lished chapter on $ismarck! *The insistence on men as

atoms, on societies as forces has always led to a tour de force eroding all self0restraint!

$ecause societies operate &y approimations and &ecause they are incapa&le of fine

distinctions, a doctrine of power as a means may end up &y making power an end!+

To &e sure, there was much in $ismarck)s strategy that Kissinger admired! #t was through

studying $ismarck that he came to see the crucial importance of playing rivals off one

another! 2ccording to Kissinger, after Eerman unification, $ismarck)s new (uropean order

hinged on his a&ility to *manipulate the commitments of the other powers so that Prussia

would always &e closer to any of the contending parties than they were to each other!+ #n

particular, Kissinger came to admire the elegant am&iguity of $ismarck)s 577 einsurance

Treaty—a secret agreement where&y Eermany and ussia would o&serve neutrality should

the other &ecome involved in a war with a third country, unless Eermany attacked Drance

or ussia attacked Eermany)s ally 2ustria0Hungary—the a&andonment of which &y

$ismarck)s successors introduced a fatal rigidity into (uropean diplomacy! <et in his essay

*The 4hite evolutionary,+ Kissinger argued that $ismarck, with his essentially 'arwinian

view of international relations as an amoral struggle for survival, was &ound to fail to

institutionali/e his geopolitical achievement!

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!tto on Bismarc with his dogs& *78*.

2 central pro&lem of the democratic age, as Kissinger saw it, was that people tended to

prefer charismatic leaders to crafty statesmen! *The claims of the prophet,+ Kissinger wrote

in " %orld #estored , *are a counsel of perfection! ! ! ! :$ut; utopias are not achieved ecept

&y a process of leveling and dislocation which must erode all patterns of o&ligation ! ! !

:while; to rely entirely on the moral purity of an individual is to a&andon the possi&ility of

restraint!+ 2gainst the prophet, Kissinger sided with the statesman, who *must remain

forever suspicious of these efforts, not &ecause he en1oys the pettiness of manipulation, &ut

&ecause he must &e prepared for the worst contingency!+ Part of the statesman)s tragedy is

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that he must always &e in the minority, for *it is not &alance which inspires men &ut

universality, not security &ut immortality!+

THAT ‘7s SHOW

#n many ways, Kissinger)s eperience in government illustrated this last point only too

well! 2lthough initially hyped in the press as *"uper K,+ he later &ecame the target of

vitriolic attacks from &oth the left and the right, the former accusing him of war crimes in

the Third 4orld, the latter accusing him of kowtowing to the Kremlin! Perhaps as a result,

there is little evidence that Kissinger)s insights into foreign policy have &een

institutionali/ed or even memori/ed!

*There is no such thing as an 2merican foreign policy,+ Kissinger wrote in an essay

pu&lished in 56=7! There is only *a series of moves that have produced a certain result+

that they *may not have &een planned to produce+ and to which *research and intelligence

organi/ations, either foreign or national, attempt to give a rationality and consistency ! ! !

which it simply does not have!+ That could e.ually well &e said today, more than F> years

later! Kissinger)s eplanation for the lack of strategic coherence stemmed from the

pathologies of modern democracy! nlike the leaders of the nineteenth century, he

eplained, *the typical political leader of the contemporary managerial society is a man

with a strong will, a high capacity to get himself elected, &ut no very great conception of

what he is going to do when he gets into office!+ 2gain, the same could &e said today!

%hateer else one might argue about the foreign policies of the Ni2on and Ford

administrations& it is undeniable that Kissinger had at least deeloped a strategic

framewor within which to address the challenges the country faced.

%&ama and his advisers are not historically inclined! #n one of the most memora&le one0

liners of the L>5L presidential election campaign, %&ama mocked his epu&lican

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opponent, 9itt omney *The 567>s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy &ack,

&ecause the Cold 4ar)s &een over for L> years!+ He was deriding omney)s description of

ussia as *our num&er one geopolitical foe!+ <et only 5 months later, ussia anneed

Crimea, flouting international law! %&ama)s &oast, in January L>5F, that he didn)t *really

even need Eeorge Kennan right now+ soon rang hollow!

Perhaps, however, it was not the 567>s that were calling &ut the 56>s! Then, as now, the

2merican economy eperienced a severe shock, which left a lasting hangover! The oil shock

of 568 has its analogue in the &anking crisis of L>>7! 3ike ichard Gion, %&ama

inherited a war that was not lost in military terms &ut that had &ecome deeply unpopular

at home! #ra. was this generation)s ?ietnam, ecept that, thanks to the surge led &y

commanders such as 'avid Petraeus and "tanley 9cChrystal, %&ama inherited a war that

was &eing won!

3ike Gion, too, %&ama faces a ussia that is much less interested in cordial relations than

it sometimes pretends to &e it is easy to forget that "oviet leader 3eonid $re/hnev, in his

prime, was a Putin0like figure, intent on wielding power not 1ust in ussia)s &ackyard &ut

all over the world! 2nd like Gion, %&ama finds &oth his (uropean and his 2sian allies

eceedingly difficult to manage! Today)s western (uropeans spend even less on defense as

a share of their national incomes than they did in the 56>s! They have forgotten

Kissinger)s old adage that *whenever peace—conceived as the avoidance of war—has &een

the primary o&1ective of a power or a group of powers, the international system has &een at

the mercy of the most ruthless mem&er of the international community!+ 9eanwhile, the

2sians are going in the opposite direction, developing their own military strategies for

coping with the rise of China in the &elief that %&ama)s so0called pivot to 2sia is a sham!

2nd the 9iddle (ast is at least as &ig a powder keg now as it was when Kissinger was in

office!

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4hatever else one might argue a&out the foreign policies of the Gion and Dord

administrations, it is undenia&le that &y the outset of his career as !"! national security

adviser, Kissinger had at least developed a strategic framework within which to address the

challenges the nited "tates faced and that each component of the strategy was &ased on

the four principles outlined here!

The strategy Kissinger &egan to devise in the mid056=>s had three distinct components!

Dirst, he sought to revive the transatlantic alliance with 4estern (urope! To counteract the

powerful &ut introspective forces of 4estern (uropean integration and 4est

Eerman !stpoliti, he tried to revivify &ilateral relations &etween the nited "tates and the

three ma1or (uropean powers Drance, Eermany, and the nited Kingdom! "econd, he

sought to put flesh on the concept of dMtente &y seeking opportunities for cooperation

&etween the nited "tates and the "oviet nion, not least in strategic arms control,

without 1ettisoning the fundamental principle that "oviet epansion should &e resisted and

"oviet power contained! Dinally, and most important, he &egan to discern that despite its

o&viously revolutionary character, the People)s epu&lic of China might &e &rought into

the &alance of power and that "ino0"oviet antagonism could &e eploited &y drawing the

nited "tates closer to each of the contending parties than they were to each other!

Kissinger)s critics have long found fault with the tactics he employed in eecuting this

strategy, particularly in countries he considered of secondary importance! They have not

&een a&le to deny that there was a strategic concept! Today, we see the fruits of nearly

seven years without such a concept!

3en if Kissinger was neer an idealist in the tradition of U.S. President %oodrow%ilson& he was not a realist.

2merican policymakers Aand not only in the current administrationB have for too long

underestimated the importance of history to the self0understanding of nations! #n decision

after decision, they have failed to grasp the significance of the pro&lem of con1ecture,

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sometimes underestimating the &enefits of preemption, sometimes underestimating the

costs of inaction! They have ducked difficult choices &etween incommensurate evils and,

&ehind a veil of highfalutin speeches, practiced a cynical realism that will always lack

legitimacy &oth at home and a&road! Dor all these reasons, the nited "tates finds itself in

almost as great a strategic mess as it was in at the end of 56=7! 2 Kissingerian approach is

&adly needed! $ut first policymakers—and the pu&lic—need to understand the meaning of

Kissinger!

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Nial Fergusson - The Meaning of Kissinger

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