Diplomacy

...And when sanctions were applied, they inevitably reflected the lowest common denominator, often proving so ineffectual that they did more harm than good...

...To be sure, he is a close student and brilliant expositor of Europe's diplomatic history, and he may well harbor a sneaking admiration for the likes of Richelieu, Bismarck, or even Stalin, of whom he writes, "Stalin was indeed a monster...

...But there is a British variant of European power politics—the balance of power approach—that is considerably more benign than the Richelieu/de Gaulle/Stalin tradition...

...DIPLOMACY Henry Kissinger Simon & Schuster/912 pages /$35 reviewed by JOSEPH SHATTAN 68 The American Spectator July 1994 Although they could play the game quite well when they had to, they preferred to have nothing to do with it...

...Yet when he was criticized in the 1930s for being anti-German, Churchill neatly summarized the British balance-of-power tradition when he replied, "If the circumstances were reversed, we could equally be pro-German and anti-French...

...It is this complexity, this union of opposites, that Kissinger finds so compelling...

...Where Realpolitik took it for granted that every state would strictly be guided by its own conception of the national interest, "Wilsonianism" believed that countries should cooperate in a League of Nations dedicated to "collective security...

...Kissinger admires Churchill and believes that Britain's self-chosen role of "balancer" did much to preserve Europe's liberties...

...In ruling out a foreign policy based on Realpolitik for America, Kissinger is undoubtedly correct...

...No act of aggression involving a major power has ever been defeated by applying the principle of collective security...

...During the meeting, Nixon asked him to comment on de Gaulle's presentation: Foolhardily, for de Gaulle did not relish debating with assistants—or, for that matter, being in the presence of assistants—I asked how France proposed to keep Germany from dominating the Europe he had just described...

...As Kissinger explains it: In the end, collective security fell prey to the weakness of its central premise—that all nations have the same interests in resisting a particular act of aggression and are prepared to run identical risks in opposing it...

...The rise of Nazism would almost certainly have led Britain to conclude an alliance with France, and the two great European powers, acting in concert, might well have defeated Hitler early in his rule...

...Reagan knew next to no history, and the little he did know he tailored to support his firmly heldpreconceptions...

...Covering some three centuries of diplomatic history, Diplomacy is a rich and complex work...

...K issinger believes there is...

...But a clearer understanding of our interests can give perspective to our idealism and lead to humane and moderate objectives...

...when, as Nixon's national security adviser, he met a living representative of Europe's diplomatic tradition, France's President Charles de Gaulle, Kissinger was genuinely taken aback...

...When American leaders invoked their nation's selflessness, it was because they genuinely believed in it...

...This, of course, is just what Kissinger was arguing back in 1968...

...What Kissinger deplores is that, having chosen to resist Communism in Southeast Asia, we drew the line at the wrong place...

...In a similar vein, "the postwar president most committed to building up America's military strength, including its nuclear capacity, stood at the same time for a pacifist vision of a world from which all nuclear weapons were banished...

...But events, as they say, intervened, and it is only now, a quarter-of-a-century later, that his book has appeared...

...Instead of tempering their idealism with at least a dose of European realism, they took up the Wilsonian banner and, according to Kissinger, came to view foreign policy as a selfless crusade on behalf of freedom and democracy...

...But if Reagan was untutored, he was not uncomplicated...

...To secure the balance, writes Kissinger, "England switched sides or organized new coalitions against erstwhile allies in defense of the equilibrium...

...These were stirring words, but as Kissinger coolly observes, "America's rejection of national interest had cast the country adrift in a sea of undifferentiated moralism...

...it was also a total screw-up...

...U nlike those critics of the war in Vietnam who ascribe our involvement to all sorts of sinister motives, Kissinger believes that it sprang from what was best in America—from our idealism, our optimism, and our willingness to help a beleaguered country fighting for its survival...

...This kind of single-minded devotion to the national interest, Kissinger knows, is simply not compatible with America's character and institutions...

...they were more likely to defend a country to vindicate principle than on the grounds of national interest...

...I would like to think that, even back then, Kissinger was planning to expand his essay into a major book...

...A straight line links Wilson's Fourteen Points to Chamberlain's capitulation at Munich...

...America would find it quite difficult to marshal either the aloofness or the ruthlessness, not to mention the willingness, to interpret international affairs strictly in terms of power...

...As President Kennedy famously put it, we would, "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty...

...they also provide the model for a new tradition of American statecraft: At a time when America is able neither to dominate the world nor to withdraw from it...it must not abandon the ideals which have accounted for its greatness...

...But neither must it jeopardize that greatness by fostering illusions about the extent of its reach...

...But Ronald Reagan's foreign policy got it exactly right...

...Par la guerre (through war)," he replied curtly—a mere six years after he had signed a treaty of permanent friendship with Adenauer...

...He also thinks that the much-derided Domino Theory—according to which the defeat of South Vietnam would have started achain-reaction culminating in a communist East Asia—may have been essentially correct: "Singapore's savvy and thoughtful Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, clearly thought so, and he has usually been proven right...

...Its underlying theme, however, is no different from Kissinger's 1968 essay: the need to develop an American diplomatic tradition that is at once idealistic and realistic...

...That Kissinger should end up heaping praise on Reagan comes as a surprise even to Kissinger...

...American idealism needs the leaven of geopolitical analysis to find its way through the maze of new complexities...

...The result was Vietnam...

...Both the disputes and the threats would have to be assessed almost entirely in terms of balance of power...

...Its basic argument was that the United States had to develop a new conception of its• international role that somehow struck a balance between American idealism and European realism...

...Already then, Kissinger had parted ways with other European emigres, such as Hans Morgenthau or Hannah Arendt, who seemed to think that Americans needed to be taken firmly by the hand and taught the rudiments of political thought by their European elders and betters...

...Disaster overtook it not, as is widely believed, because a guileless Wilson was snookered by the wily Europeans at the Versailles Peace Conference...

...In the aftermath of World War II, however, American policy makers refused to draw the right lessons from the Wilsonian debacle...

...but in the conduct of international relations, he was the supreme realist—patient, shrewd and implacable, the Richelieu of his period...

...in Afghanistan, to rightists in Central America, and to tribal warlords in Africa...

...By contrast, Kissinger realizes that while Americans have much to learn from Europeans, we have much to teach as well...

...This, then, is America's dilemma: Its values and ideals prevent it from adopting European traditions of statecraft, yet its own diplomatic tradition has repeatedly led to disaster...

...Surprisingly, he does not find the solution to our dilemma in the policies of the Nixon administration...

...Cl 70 The American Spectator July 1994...

...Thus, while France desperately sought an alliance and Britain's balance of power tradition virtually demanded it, British leaders placed their faith in "the public opinion of the civilized world" and—when that failed—in appeasement...

...Its unsentimental persistence and self-centered determination earned Great Britain the epithet, `Perfidious Albion.'" T he greatest twentieth century exponent of the British balance of power approach was Winston Churchill—hardly a statesman one thinks of as "perfidious...

...In his own field—international affairs—he has done what immigrants to this country have always done: taken the best in their own tradition and blended it with the best in the American tradition to produce something—in this case, an approach to foreign policy—at once authentically American and genuinely cosmopolitan...

...Experience has shown these assumptions to be false...

...Is there not some third path, some middle ground between the demands of our conscience and the requirements of our situation...

...Obviously, de Gaulle did not consider this query to merit an extensive reply...

...Nevertheless, he does not think that America could follow in England's footsteps: The Palmerston/Disraeli method would require a disciplined aloofness from disputes and a ruthless commitment to the equilibrium in the face of threats...

...Contrary to his public image, Kissinger is not an advocate of European-style power politics...

...With the exception of Churchill and his circle, they had all been converted to Wilsonianism, and looked to the League of Nations rather than themselves for security...

...The Reagan Administration dispensed aid not only to genuine democrats (as in Poland), but also to Islamic fundamentalists...

...where Realpolitik believed that national boundaries should reflect the balance of power, Wilsonianism repudiated the balance of power in favor of national self-determination...

...The real question," he writes, "was not whether some dominoes might fall in Southeast Asia, which was likely, but whether there might not be better places in the region to draw the line–for instance, around countries where the political and security elements were more in harness, such as Malaya and Thailand...

...The high-flying Wilsonian language in support of freedom and democracy globally was leavened by an almost Machiavellian realism...

...Wilsonianism was a noble attempt to translate American ideals into practice...

...Had European leaders merely paid The American Spectator July 1994 69 lip service to Wilsonianism, while conducting their foreign policies along traditional balance of power lines, the doctrine of collective security would not have done much harm...

...where Realpolitik was skeptical of democracy and thought that foreign affairs were best left in the hands of cosmopolitan elites, Wilsonianism believed that democracy and peace went hand-in-hand...

...The root cause of Wilsonianism's failure was its obviousness to the realities of power and its attempt to build a peace on the basis of collective security...

...For the past 300 years, England has identified its own security with the existence of a balance of power on the Continent strong enough to deter—or defeat—any would-be conqueror...

...Reading his account of the crimes and follies committed in its name, I'm reminded of Nick the Greek's description of football: "A game invented by sons-of-bitches for sons-of-bitches...

...Either the world community has refused to assess the act as one which constituted"aggression, or it has disagreed over the appropriate sanctions...

...Many of the historical anecdotes he was so fond of recounting had no basis in fact, as facts are generally understood...

...Nixon's foreign policy, he concedes, "veered too far in the direction of stressing what it perceived as America's geopolitical necessities...

...America's Founders had a similarly low opinion of European statecraft...

...Indeed, until the end of the nineteenth century, writes Kissinger, "the foreign policy of the United States was to have no foreign policy...

...Reagan's was an astonishing performance," he writes, "and, to academic observers, nearly incomprehensible...

...A sense of mission," Kissinger argued, "is clearly a legacy of American history...

...In his view, Reagan's policies not only won the Cold War...

...But Joseph Shattan is a writer living in Silver Spring, Maryland...

...Thus, when America finally developed a foreign policy tradition under Woodrow Wilson, it seems almost inevitable that it did so on the basis of principles diametrically opposed to Realpolitik...

...But the great tragedy—and irony—of the post–World War I period is that while Wilson initially failed to convert Americans to his views, he succeeded all too well with the British...

...But America's idealism would net even allow us to pose the question: America's universalist tradition simply would not permit it to differentiate among the potential victims on the basis of strategic expediency...