Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2014 23:49:12 +0200
Kissinger on World Order
TIME Magazine Henry Kissinger
How have Henry Kissinger's views on diplomacy evolved over time? Daniel
Fiott thinks that Kissinger's latest work confirms 1) he has less faith in
historical precedents, and 2) he believes that stability in a post-Western
world will depend on accommodating value systems as much as power politics.
By Daniel Fiott for ISN
5 October 2014
This short piece is an attempt to sketch out, however tentatively and
briefly, the similarities between three of Henry Kissinger's best-selling
and most influential books. The first is
<http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/henry+a+kissinger/a+worl
d+restored/10478043/> A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the
Problems of Peace 1812-1822 , which was submitted as a doctoral thesis by
Kissinger in 1954 before making it into print in 1957. The second is
<http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/henry+kissinger/diplomac
y+28ebook29/9190570/> Diplomacy (1994). The third is his most recent and
perhaps final offering,
<http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/henry+a-+kissinger/world
+order/10495214/> World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and
the Course of History (2014). There is no doubt in the mind of this author
that comparisons between these texts will eventually form the basis of a
doctoral thesis. However, the point of this short essay is to see how, if at
all, Kissinger's views on the conduct and ultimate aim of diplomacy have
changed over time. It is thus a consciously brief exploratory exercise
rather than a definitive account.
A World Restored
Kissinger's first book was essentially a study of the corrupting effect of
revolution on world - or, more specifically, European - order. Kissinger's
(thinly masked) parallel between Napoleon and Hitler made the point that
revolutionary powers - defined as those states that seek to overturn the
established global order - were intrinsically threatening to world peace. It
was up to the reader to make the link between Napoleon, Hitler and the
growing power (at the time of writing) of the Soviet Union. Revolutions,
wherever they arose, needed to be eradicated or, at best, contained.
A World Restored sought to offer diplomats and statesmen of Kissinger's era
a policy with which to deal with 'revolution'. Kissinger wrote largely
through the voice of Prince Klemens von Metternich, even though he refuses
to see the Austrian as an antecedent version of himself. Metternich's
conduct of diplomacy - largely supported by the British Viscount Castlereagh
- rested on a simple equation: world order is maintained by ensuring that
overwhelming power is ready to combat any revolutionary movement that
threatens the system as a whole. This naturally implied that alliances would
be formed on an ad hoc basis to crush threats to the system. The sanctity of
the system itself was more important than sectional or national interests,
even though the national interest was supposedly guaranteed through the
maintenance of the system as a whole.
Revolution held a particularly important place in Kissinger's thinking.
Critics have suggested that Metternich was more interested in maintaining
the monarchical system in Europe (and his personal place at the heart of
this system) at the expense of the popular aspirations of certain European
peoples. Many people tend to forget that Kissinger experienced revolution as
a young man; he fled Nazi Germany as a young refugee after seeing his
hometown razed to the ground. Metternich provided a mechanism to contain
these types of revolutionary movements and lauded the 'hundred year peace'
that had been established by the 19th century balance of power. It was a
mechanistic system but it had brought many people in Europe peace and
economic growth, at least until the balance ended in 1914 with world war.
Diplomacy
Kissinger's second major book on world order was Diplomacy, a work published
in the aftermath of the Cold War. Here, Kissinger was obviously keen to
understand what an abundance of American power would mean for world order.
Given the United States' triumph over communism, the temptation to forge a
world order based on American values and interests was strong. Again,
Kissinger was keen to draw parallels between the contemporaneous world order
and the 18th and 19th centuries. As he explained, '[t]he absence of both an
overriding ideological or strategic threat frees nations to pursue foreign
policies based increasingly on their immediate national interest [.] order
will have to emerge much as it did in past centuries from a reconciliation
and balancing of competing national interests' (p. 805).
In Kissinger's mind, this was an important feature of the post-Cold War
world. He was now less afraid of revolutionary powers having the ambition or
capacity to overthrow the system, mainly because of the superpower status of
the United States. More worrying was the tendency of other states to take
American power for granted or to be aggrieved by it to the point of accruing
their own power, in pursuit of their own national interests, without due
regard for the system's stability. From one perspective, this could be seen
as Kissinger's way of saying that, as the global superpower, America's will
would be done. Alternatively, one can take seriously Kissinger's point that
it is systemic breakdown - regardless of who runs the system - that must be
avoided at all costs.
Diplomacy 's main aim, however, was to counsel against the abuse of US power
in the post-Cold War era. This is why Kissinger was keen to press the point
that world order is not a static phenomenon or an end goal in international
relations. His advice to American leaders was not to revel in America's
preponderance of power or to seek to forge a world order based on American
values and interests. Instead, he wanted American leaders to use the power
they had to deal with future changes to world order. When one considers the
gradual ascent of China, Russia's recent behavior and the folly of war in
Iraq, Kissinger's advice seems sensible. In other words, Kissinger feared
that the irresponsible exercise of American power could jeopardise the very
system it controlled. He believed that while American values were to be
celebrated, changing the international system to reflect those values would
have to be incremental.
World Order
In light of the two others discussed above, Kissinger's latest book is
intriguing. Its themes, especially salient towards the end, are the role of
technology and the challenge of globalization. While these themes are not
new to Kissinger, their complexity challenges his earlier tendency to use
historical generalizations to craft contemporary policy. In a sense this
should not surprise the reader. The pace of technological change and the
extent of globalization have increased significantly since the publication
of A World Restored in the mid-1950s. This is not to say that Kissinger has
given up on history lessons, as his book still refers to the Peace of
Westphalia, the Congress of Vienna and the Ottoman Empire.
Rather, Kissinger now appears to have less faith in historical precedents
than he once did - even if he remains a master of international history. In
the final paragraph of World Order, Kissinger writes: 'Long ago, in youth, I
was brash enough to think myself able to pronounce on 'The Meaning of
History.' I now know that history's meaning is a matter to be discovered,
not declared' (p. 374). He even summons the spirit of Heraclitus to announce
that history is like a river into which 'you cannot step twice'. What is one
to make of this conclusion?
In one sense it strengthens his argument that world order cannot be
sustained by power alone, for order also requires legitimacy. In this sense,
he is perhaps ready to accept that Metternich's system of order had to
eventually fall away because it was not popularly seen as legitimate in a
majority of nation-states. For Kissinger, the central point statesmen must
recognize is that world order requires legitimacy, but that legitimacy is
increasingly difficult to define. World Order is a book that still
celebrates the unique American experience and Kissinger still extols the
virtues of US internationalism, yet it also grapples with the difficulties
of multipolarity. Kissinger recognizes that the present system is not aimed
at containing revolution, nor is it necessarily just about national
interests. Instead, Kissinger describes the coming world order as one of
regional powers interacting with one another in order to find a mutually
agreed-upon definition of legitimacy.
Kissinger still sees the 'West' as the most important region in the world,
although he lambasts Europeans for being overly committed to values without
necessarily having any power. Europe obviously features rather prominently
in Kissinger's works. In Diplomacy, for example, he makes the familiar
comment that the European Union represents a response to the relative
decline of individual European states. Back in 1994, Kissinger observed that
the twin problem for Europe was that the project of unification was
absorbing too much energy, and that the European Union (EU) did not have an
automatic blueprint for how to act on the international scene (p. 24).
The EU features even more prominently in World Order. Kissinger begins on
page twelve by asking an uncomfortable question: the EU was supposed to
transcend power politics, but do the present 'internal struggles of the
European Union [not] affirm' the continued existence of a balance of power
in Europe? For Kissinger the EU is less a post-modern project and more a
potential competitor to the United States in a Westphalian global balance of
power. On this view Europe potentially returns to its global prominence but
'this time as a regional, not a national, power, as a new unit in a now
global version of the Westphalian system' (p. 92). What prevents the EU from
fulfilling the global role outlined by Kissinger?
Mainly, and this is perhaps where Kissinger falls in line with federalists,
the EU's occupation of a 'no mans land' somewhere between, on the one hand,
national sovereignty, and on the other, regional autonomy. Kissinger assumes
there can be no return to national sovereignty, but he is equally aware that
any regional unification will have the mammoth task of ensuring legitimacy.
As Kissinger himself asks, '[how] much unity does Europe need, and how much
diversity can it endure? [.] how much diversity must Europe preserve to
achieve a meaningful unity?' (p. 93). Even more important for Kissinger is
the EU's overall direction, however. Is the EU Western, is it neutral or is
it more inclined to cultivate its regional relationships?
Indeed, for Kissinger the real question for statesmen in Europe and the
broader West, once they have acknowledged that we do not still live in a
Western dominated world order, is how to ensure equilibrium between regions
and ultimately the overall stability of the system. Equilibrium does not
just refer to power, as the real issue for Kissinger is that the legitimacy
of world order will necessarily be an accommodation of different value
systems. This is not to say that Kissinger has abandoned the promise of the
Western system, as he himself states that he hopes world order will come to
be characterized by 'states affirming individual dignity and participatory
governance, and cooperating internationally in accordance with agreed-upon
rules' (p. 372).
>From another perspective Kissinger's conclusion may be a final personal
statement. The keen reader of references will notice that in the final
footnote (see p. 403) Kissinger cites his own undergraduate thesis, entitled
'The Meaning of History: Reflections on Spengler, Toynbee and Kant', which
he wrote at Harvard in 1950. He has thus come full circle on his life of
academic writing. In this respect one can perhaps discern two points about
World Order. The first is that even after a life of writing and diplomacy,
Kissinger is still not sure if he has the ultimate answer about
international politics. The second point is that perhaps, after a life in
the global spotlight, Kissinger wants us to assess the decisions he took
while in office in light of their overall, historically contextualized,
impact, rather than by the historical prejudices of the present period. This
second point will not please Kissinger's critics but it will no doubt ensure
that Kissinger - perhaps like Metternich - remains the focus of study for
political science and international relations students for decades, if not
centuries, to come.
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