On February 7th, 1999, Henry Kissinger was interviewed as part of a retrospective series that CNN did on the Cold War. Near the end of the session, the interviewer asked Kissinger for a broad view of where things stood in the present. Here’s that exchange:
INT: Looking at the world then, looking at the world now, a new world order… is there a new world order? Is there a constant theme: what should be the purpose of United States foreign policy? What is the object of United States foreign policy?
HK: The object of United States foreign policy today is the big issue we are facing. In the Cold War period it was really an application of traditional American convictions; that is to say, it was the application of the New Deal and our experiences in two world wars to a global scene. The New Deal taught us that if you narrow the disparity between social classes, social stability will occur. And at least… particularly the Second World War taught us – “taught” in quotation marks – that resisting aggression was the preeminent goal of American foreign policy, and that more or less was adequate to the conditions of that period. At the present time we have this dilemma: American foreign policy without idealism is inconceivable, because this is what America has represented to itself in that society of people who turned their back on Europe and settled here on the basis of conviction. On the other hand, we do not have a clear-cut ideological enemy, and we are now no longer able to present foreign policy to ourselves as a series of solutions to specific problems. Whether we like it or not – and many don’t like it – we are now part of the system, which means there’s no exit, that every solution is an admissions ticket to another problem. And it’s something that Europeans and Chinese have no difficulty at all – it doesn’t even have to explained to them – but for Americans it evokes great rebellion, and it therefore is obviously believed that there is something out there, and now they’re sort of looking for an enemy in China or somewhere, a rallying principle of policy that can be given a terminal date. This is our big challenge right now, whether we can marry American idealism to some degree of…We keep talking about “world order” – there is no world order as such now. Any international system represents some system of order in some abstract sense, but the world of the Eighties has been totally transformed in the Nineties, and at the end of it some order will emerge, in the sense of some principles by which disputes get settled – or not settled. But we are not there yet, and we don’t have a precise blueprint and we can’t have a precise blueprint.
The setting here is the late Clinton years, after the al-Qaeda embassy bombings in Africa and before the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen. At this point, for Kissinger, terrorism has not yet stepped into the breach to provide a rallying principle for U.S. foreign policy. He talks of a “great rebellion” in American foreign policy circles against the idea that we have to work as part of an international system, and that people are always trying to drum up a new enemy (often China) to provide focus.
Notice, also, what he said at the beginning, that, “The New Deal taught us that if you narrow the disparity between social classes, social stability will occur.”
Now, step back for a minute. Try to forget the debate about Kissinger being buddy-buddy with Clinton. Ignore Kissinger’s deplorable record in many areas. Just look at the substance and merits of what I’ve quoted above and how it can be applied to the current presidential campaign.
You have, on the one hand, Bernie Sanders arguing vociferously that income inequality is not just wrong but that it’s tearing this country apart. It’s undermining social stability.
You have, on the other hand, Donald Trump arguing that we can be great again if we focus on a few rallying principles, including the threat of terrorism (ISIS) and the nefarious and double-dealing influence of China.
China actually represents a bogeyman to both candidates, but with Sanders it’s more about American decisions (e.g. granting most-favored nation status and outsourcing) than Chinese ones (e.g. currency devaluation).
You can hold, simultaneously, that Kissinger is a war criminal and that he has much saner worldview than the neocons and Donald Trump.
I’m pretty sure he’s more sympathetic to what Sanders is saying about income inequality than he is to the foreign policies of Donald Trump or any of the other Republicans.
That doesn’t mean he should be accepted in polite company or that people are wrong to object when Hillary Clinton cites him as a job reference.
But it’s worth noting, I think.
Kissinger was an adherent of the realpolitik statesmanship school of foreign policy that he helped to push forward into what became known as realism. I’ve long thought that view of the world extremely cynical. I love that Obama is not a realist but rather a very pragmatic visionary and idealist. You might point to one or two choices to argue otherwise but if one looks at the overall thrust of American foreign policy on his watch, there’s been an overarching sense that we must walk our talk.
The neocons are batshit insane carnival barkers who cause us to look back with fondness on the somewhat less insane practitioners of realism — very much as the younger Bush caused us to look back fondly on his father’s administration. But both were shit. Both school held that American principles didn’t, couldn’t and shouldn’t apply on the world stage when, in truth, our cynicism ultimately caused us to lose trust and credibility.
Realpolitik is so cynical that I think they tend to take the nastiest option when it’s not even necessary, because they’re already committed to that sort of approach. Just to show ’em who’s boss, you know. And that actually creates more problems.
Why? To reveal how far out Trump is? (And I presume you could find a similarly sane-ish quote from many batshit neocons, no?)
I was unaware that Kissinger had ever made any statements reflecting positively on the New Deal. To me, that’s worth noting as part of the broader picture. Doesn’t change my opinion of his crimes.
We all hold contradictory perspectives. Every one of us.
Obama and Clinton’s fp advisors are from the school of Brzezinski and Madeleine Albright.
FDR’s New Deal and capitalism are incompatible.
Bernie Sanders’ view on Social Democracy are much closer to Clinton’s first term view of the Third Way which had proponents in Western Europe (Tony Blair’s Labor Party, Germany’s Gerhart Schröder and the original blueprint from Dutch PM Ruud Lubbers).
To form a new world order, the empire needs to create chaos first. This can be simply economic or financial chaos. The European Union was established on the ashes of World War II and build on an economic union: the EEC – European Economic Community.
From the man that brought us chaos in the Islamic world of AfPak region, the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Twin Towers and president George Bush bringing democracy by invasion/occupation to Iraq. Unfortunately Obama and Clinton did worse in Libya and Syria compunding the quagmire. Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran will be seen as a game-changer in regional powers as was Nixon/Kissingers’ ping-pong diplomacy with China in the 1970s.
○ A geostrategy for Eurasia (Breaking up Russia) by Zbigniew Brzezinski
Both George Bush (think John Bolton) and Barack Obama (think Susan Rice and Samantha Power) undermined the United Nations and the Security Council on matters of war and peace. The US is using its control over NATO to push forward with empire building by expansion to the border of Russia. The EU is too much an economic and financial union tied to the Anglo-Saxon union of US with Britain than a political union making decisions on matters of defense or foreign policy.
The US has used the Ukraine to spearhead into the hart of the former Russian empire.
I see Bernie Sanders as someone closer to the ideals of the original founding of the European Union on a balanced approach to labor and capitalism and a foreign policy of building partnerships and not by pre-emptive acts of aggression or military intervention.
The European Union is imploding right at this very moment as a result of instability due to fast expansion accepting new Eastern European states as member nations. The discontent is growing fast and the right-wing fascist parties are growing at an equal fast pace. The migrants crisis of Syrian refugees and the intervention by Erdogan’s Turkey will ravage Europe and its citizens for many years.
FDR tamed capitalism and made it suitable for civilized company.
It got away and went feral.
Seems to me the EU can’t escape austerity. And it refuses to institute some sort of fiscal union. So each country is left to their own designs within the confines of the austerity package, meaning debt limits.
They are using austerity as a systemic shock to justify the privatization of the commons. Raise taxes in a recession??? It’s only a recession for the 99%ers.
Aren’t currency spreads allowing the Northern EU to predate on the Southern EU? Their mild QE is against EU rules, but I guess they are afraid pull another Greece instead. People might get nervous.
Europe’s economic division north-south can be examplified by Italy’s domestic struggle between the industrial and financial solid north contrary to an agricultural south and the nourishment of the mafia taking wealth out of the economy (Naples and Sicily).
○ European Cohesion Policy in Italy
Through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the European Social Fund (ESF), otherwise known as the Structural Funds, as well as the Cohesion Fund, it invests in thousands of projects across all of Europe’s regions to achieve its primary task: to promote economic and social cohesion by reducing these disparities between Member States and regions. With a budget of €347 billion for 2007-13, Cohesion Policy represents the single largest source of financial support at EU level for investment in growth and jobs, designed to enable all regions to compete effectively in the internal market.
I think it’s useful to quote Kissinger if only to illustrate how much saner he was than all of the current Republican candidates – all wannabee war criminals. And the two key points he makes still stand:
That makes America a profound source for global instability. The USA emerged as the Hero when Nazi Germany and Japan were the bogeymen, and the Soviet Union conveniently fulfilled that role until Gorbachev.
Since then the USA has allowed its global corporates and intelligence agencies to run riot in the middle east in particular, creating such hatred that Islam has been conveniently ginned up to fulfill that role – even if ISIS et al are a parody of what Islam was in previous centuries.
And the greater the domestic instability created by income instability, the greater the need to gin up that external bogey as a focus for national Unity, There is a reason Cheny didn’t go after Bin Laden when he could. In fact he needed Bin Laden to be much more powerful than he actually was.
So if the Republican candidates want to feed off the social instability created by the economic elite, they need to gin up the bogeymen ever more – immigrants, Mexicans, Chinese, Moslems, Iranians, ISIS – and vociferously denounce spineless appeasers like Obama who refuse to play that game, or at least to that degree.
What seperates Clinton and Sanders is far less than what separates both of them from even the more moderate Republican Candidates. But what separates Americans from the rest of the world is the constant need to exacerbate global conflicts in order to create external bogeymen who can provide Americans with a focus of National Unity and allow Americans to feel good about themselves.
Frankly that is far to high a price for the rest of the world to pay. The US has stoked the flames of Middle East instability, and now Europe gets to deal with the resulting terrorist threat and the immigrant Crisis. The US creates financial instability, and the rest of the world nearly collapses.
It’s time we made the USA a much less important player on the world scene. Perhaps Trump can achieve that. Everyone will just laught at him – until he does provoke some global conflict.
Then I strongly suggest you reject our TTIP which plans to give MN corporate bodies sovereignty over any national legislation through independent arbitration courts staffed with trade lawyers using a revolving door to judge one case and prosecute the next.
And over here, …”this is likely to create a situation in which governments at all levels have to worry that labor, environmental, and consumer regulation could be sanctioned under the terms of the TPP. And the sanctioning body will not be the U.S. legal system, but instead special investor-state dispute settlement tribunals that are only open to foreign investors. Their decisions are also not subject to appeal.” (Dean Baker)
Multi-nationals, to a greater extent than I have ever been previously aware, are using the levers of state departments to run foreign policy from their board rooms. Ukraine was a perfect example. Techniques perfected in South and Central America are being unlimbered on the rest of the world.
Our industrial agricultural lobbies are writing the biosafety protocols for African states. Imagine that…
Yep, TTIP basically seeks to supplant national sovereignty with Corporate Sovereignty and there are aenough fools in the EU to allow it to happen. My disappointment is that Obama would sponsor such a Treaty – he at least has the intelligence to know what the real agenda is.
The genius of the conservative movement is that it has made corpocracy almost invisible to the populace who think the are furthering freedom by undermining the only actor – national governments – who can protect their freedoms form corporate rule. We used to be citizens. We are rapidly becoming just customers at best – if we can afford to be.
Yeah, I cannot comprehend. He is already guaranteed to be eternally feted at Davos.
Investor-State Disputes have been common in past trade agreements, but media coverage has been scant about them, for understandable reasons.
Allowing multi-national corporations to be compensated by taxpayers for harm even from health and safety laws protecting the public when national corporations similarly harmed may not take advantage of the same forum and to allowing multi-national corporations to bypass even well-developed court systems that their national competitors must use for redress?
To allow MNCs to then invoke arbitration under the ISDS provision–a non-appealable and often secret or semi-secret arbitration process positively saturated with potential conflicts-of-interest–how do you defend that to your citizens?
Take a look at what has happened to Canada over environmental protections…http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/01/14/canada-sued-investor-state-dispute-ccpa_n_6471460.html
You write: … there are enough fools in the EU to allow it (the TTI) to happen…My disappointment is that Obama would sponsor such a Treaty – he at least has the intelligence to know what the real agenda is.
I’ve finally been able to see how delusional I’ve been for as long as I can remember: Obama sponsors the treaty because that’s who is — corporate authoritarian, a true child of Reagan — and the EU backers are not fools because they know exactly what they’re doing — supporting US corporate authoritarianism. How can Obama and the EU backers be so blind to the reality they are actively working to realize? Really, it hurts to admit it. A friend of mine pointed out recently that the West has lost its world hegemony and now we have to bear the consequences, including extreme austerity. My take is that we have been betrayed by our own people, i.e., the politicians and elites of the western countries countries, big cheeses. Of course he didn’t like my remark, betrayal is a bitter pill to swallow, especially on this scale. You can always find another partner somehow or other, but you can’t find another world anywhere, no matter what. Obama and the EU lakers are consciously, intentionally subverting national democracy in favor of themselves and their small circle of family, friends and acquaintances. It can hardly be more cynical. And as far as Kissinger is concerned, he can go and fuck himself, no matter what said the past, in near past or even what he’ll spout in the future. Anther gem is that he seems not to agree so much with the demonization of Russia. Go figure. And then the Goldwater cheerleader turns up to make his lascivious eyes twinkle.
Kissinger might be sympathetic to what Sanders is saying, but I’m not convinced based on a 17-year-old interview. And trying to gauge Kissinger’s possible attitude towards Sanders’ economic policies versus Kissinger’s possible attitude towards Trump’s and the others’ foreign policies seems like, well, mixing apples and oranges. “Do I like Sanders taste in wine more than I like Cruz’s taste in clothes?”, ponders Kissinger.
Yes, you can argue that income equality is a matter of national security and thus a matter of foreign policy–I wouldn’t disagree. As I vaguely recall, in the late 1800s, the Kaiser floated the idea that national healthcare was important so that Germany could have a ready supply of healthy conscripts when needed, but I’m not aware of anyone supporting Obamacare for similar reasons. (I think I first heard about the Kaiser’s plan when I read an op-ed written by Bain Capital employees and published the week Romneycare was being voted on, back when Romney was governor of Massachusetts. I guess I read it back in 2012, but I no longer have a link to it. Romney’s private-sector employees were obviously willing to pull out all the stops.)
There’s a reason that law enforcement returns to jail cells to get info and advice.
Same here, with Kissinger.
What Kissinger said, in essence that the American psyche is rooted in Marlboro Man/Superhero aspirations, rather than taking things a day at a time.
Here’s the reality. In every home on this planet a terrorist with deadly intentions COULD BE living next door to you and your terrorist caused death could be tomorrow’s headline.
And it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
That being said, I’m going to have a great life. If the neighbors act hinky, I’m calling all the abbreviations and going to the Stratosphere for the night…
Okay — just for those that weren’t around in real time (nor was I for most of the relevant time period), the GOP went silent officially and publicly on the New Deal in the aftermath of WWII for a very practical reason, it was an election loser. That interpretation was reinforced for them after they won Congress in 1946 and promptly went after unions with Taft-Hartley (Truman did veto it and it was overridden). They lost in 1948. (Perhaps voters were somewhat more informed and astute in those days.) But then Democrats whiffed by not repealing Taft-Hartley.
As long as the GOP refrained from a full frontal attack on the New Deal and stuck with being the most strident anti-communists and the boogieman of the USSR, they could win more election. Just not enough to do much more chipping away at the New Deal. Ike was sort of perfect for them at that time because the most socialized institution in the US is the military. Nixon couldn’t have been elected dog-catcher if he’d been attacking the New Deal. (And he and by extension Kissinger weren’t all that interested in domestic affairs anyway.) They needed stable voter political realignment to go there.
They got two-thirds of the way there in 1980, but fell back to one-third in 1986. They didn’t make it all the way until 2000 and that was interrupted by Jeffords’ defection from the GOP in mid-2001. So, that delayed the new “permanent” GOP majority until 2002. Takes some of the mystery out of why GWB dared to put Social Security on the table in January 2005.
Bush’s War put 2008 beyond the reach of shenanigans, imo.
Or they might have actually managed it.
The assumed GOP permanent majority cracked in 2006 and they lost both Houses of Congress. 2008 just put an exclamation point on it. So, no, 2008 was a chronicle foretold in 2006. The fact that they rebounded so quickly after that is IMHO a reflection of not GOP strength but of DEM weakness.
Kissinger knows the difference between good and evil, between life and death, between darkness and light, but chooses evil, death, and darkness every time. (God. Who wouldn’t want his reference?)
When I read Kissinger saying, “The New Deal taught us that if you narrow the disparity between social classes, social stability will occur” it has no moral substance but is merely a neutral fact, of no interest unless useful as a fulcrum point from which to leverage raw power.
Kissinger is a realist who subsumes everything before power. This, if anything, is his point. Read it again. He’s the guy you want on your side when the alien crocodiles arrive.
LOL Why the development of robot war machines? Comes a point you cannot even pay half the proles to kill the other half.
When the state can’t enlist half the proles, its old partner, to kill the other half they rely on a nuclear arsenal supplied by your new partners, the defence contractors.
The ‘robot war machines’ have been with us since the Fifties and Sixties and we neglect, for some reason, their truly awesome destructive power. Their demand on our ‘posture’ has vested in the president unprecedented power with unforeseen consequences that affect us every day.
In case it escaped your attention, Kissinger is an alien crocodile.
But an opportunist, alien crocodile entirely absent loyalty or shame, hence my comment. Cold, dead, black eyes. Seriously, if the problem requires coldly eradicating an entire culture, he’s your guy.
Good thing domestic policy isn’t his thing.
If it involved calling in air-strikes, he’d already have been there.
What Clinton said (slightly modified):
“I was very flattered when Mephistopheles said I ran the State Department better than anybody had run it in a long time.”
Mmmm, the father of lies likes how she can organize a government department. Sounds good to me!
I mean, jeebus, Henry Kissinger? That’s who she goes to for a reference? That’s a mile wide blind spot she has there.