Transcription
Um, and thank you for mentioning um, uh, Dr. Kissinger's impending birthday. I was I was going to mention that because we're sitting here in the Kennedy Center um and I believe I might be wrong maybe it was Eisenhower but I think Kennedy was the first president that you actually uh formally advised but >> so okay I got that I got that correct and so although I want us to talk about what's happening now to bring your um your um storied history um in public diplomacy and strategy to bear on today's situation um is I think something that will take up most of this session.
Um now Alec mentioned you've got a book coming out. I'm not going to talk about the the book. Your launch is in a few weeks. Of course you're a typical customary 99y old. You bringing out a book. That's what people do when they're 99. Um but you'll have time to talk about that in a few weeks.
Um, in terms of history, earlier this year, um, we commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Nixon visit to China, uh, the Shanghai communicate. You, of course, were the organizer, the orchestrator of this, um, Sino US agreement. And it was a major shift in the cold war. You split China from Russia, from the Soviets. Um it feels like we've gone 180 degrees. Um and that now Russia and China are back in cahoots. Very tight relationship. Uh and um only this time Russia is the little brother and China is the big brother. I guess my opening question to you is are we in a new cold war with China?
At the time that that we open to China, [clears throat] uh, Russia was the principal enemy. But our relations with China were about as bad as they could be because we had uh fought the Korean War against them or they fought the Korean War against us. And there were a whole series of incidents of uh offshore island uh uh problems. But our view in opening to China was that it was unwise when you have two enemies. uh that you treat them exactly alike and that you should at least provide an opportunity for whatever differences might appear between them or for whatever the international situation might produce of different attitudes to provide a possibility for that. And so this is why in a torturous way we approach China are torturous because in the cultural revolution they all Chinese ambassadors had been withdrawn from practically every country. There were only two or three around. And so this was uh how the opening was started. There was one occasion actually when Nixon and I were at the funeral of the Gaul and there was a reception by the French president of all diplomats in that were uh there for the when Nixon said to me if you see the Chinese ambassador standing alone walk up to him and tell him we want to start a conversation. That would have been a sensation. But he didn't cooperate. He didn't stand alone. So we had to find we asked an ambassador in Warso at the next social location. waso had been designated as a point of possible contact at the next social occasion at which he and the Chinese ambassador were present and that occasion happened to be a fashion show. uh the uh to approach the Chinese ambassador and tell him that we wanted a dialogue with Beijing. The ambassador ran away and our ambassador had to follow him. remember it's the height of the cultural revolution and uh so then he finally cornered him delivered his message and two weeks later the Chinese ambassador showed up unannounced at our embassy and said he was ready for for a conversation. Then it took many other turns which is no reason to discuss but this is how the actual opening occurred and but we could not generate the condition. What produced the opening was the tension that had developed autonomously between Russia and China and which had an expression in border in border its issues. uh which we were so convinced that the Chinese were the more ideologically committed that we at first thought the incidents had been started by the Chinese but that was not true that the Russians wanted to teach China a lesson but the Russia could not could not conceive that China and the United States could get together. And Mao, despite all his ideological hostility to us, Mao was ready to to begin conversations. It's not we cannot generate the circumstance that will let either China or Russia be prepared to have separate conversations with us, but we can put ourselves in a position where it is possible for us to have conversations and not to treat the adversarial relationship across the board. Uh so imprintable it is an alliance which is against western interest is now established. Um, but it does not look to me as if this is an intrinsingly permanent relationship.
>> It is geographically, demographically 80% of the Russian population lives in the European part. Much of the Asian part of Russia, much of most of Siberia was acquired recently as history is measured in the second half of the 19th century. And as one looks at the evolution, it is not I think a creative western policy over an extended period should be able to at least have the possibility of discrete negotiate negotiations. So, I mean, in a moment, I want to get on to where we are in Ukraine with the war in Ukraine and your having met Putin so many times, your prognosis for where that's going to go. But let me just pick up on that thought a little bit further first. There's this phrase, reverse Kissinger. Um now assuming at some point this war ends and at some point Putin goes um I take it from your answer just now that it would be in America's geopolitical interests to at least encourage more distance between Russia and China and you touched um on the great Siberian the great uh empty space north of very densely populated China. I think you could also have mentioned the belt and road initiative coming right through Russia's near abroad. There are neuralas there with Russia being a little brother that are available to exploit or is that wrong?
I think the geopolitical situation globally will undergo significant changes after the Ukraine war. is over and it is not natural for China and Russia to have identical interests on all foreseeable problems. I don't think we can generate possible disagreements but I think circumstances uh the after the Ukraine war, Russia will have to reassess its relationship to Europe at a minimum and its general attitude towards NATO and so will America and especially Europe have to do when the lessons of this period sink in. And so [clears throat] I think it is unwise to take a adversarial position to two adversaries in a way that drives them together. And once we take aboard this principle in our relationships with Europe and in our internal discussions, I think history will provide opportunities in which we can apply the differential approach. uh that doesn't mean that either of them will become intimate friends of the west. It only means that on specific issues as they arise we leave open the option that a different approach. It's we are prepared to explore uh differences in approach in terms of our own relationship without discussing in the abstract what their relationship with each other would be because that will be determined by their own interests and by their own do domestic situation. But in view of general strategy uh in the period ahead of us, we should not lump Russia and China together as an integral element.
So I I mean I take it teasing out from your remarks that the Biden administration's framing of its grand geopolitical challenge as being democracy versus autocracy. I'm I'm picking up an implicit hint that you think that's the wrong framing. My own approach is different. I support the administration in the current Ukraine situation and there would be no significant difference in their actions uh on the this immediate issue. uh I had a different view about the wisdom of uh urging Ukraine into NATO. Uh but that is now will be adjusted in the discussions that will eventually happen uh to end to end this war. I am not in agreement with stating an adversarial position as the basic element of the relationship. But of course we have to be conscious of the differences of ideology and of interpretation that exist. But we should use this consciousness to apply it in our own analysis of the importance of issues as they arise rather than making it the principal issue of confrontation. Unless we are prepared to make regime changes, the principal goals of our foreign policy, which I think given the evolution of technology and the enormous destructiveness of weapons that now exist may be imposed on us by the hostility of others. But we should avoid generating it with our own attitudes.
>> Okay, let's get it to the specifics of today. Now, you made your name of course in the 50s um studying nuclear theory and and strategy. um and then as national security adviser and secretary of state in the 1970s, you have probably more experience than any person alive um of how to manage a standoff between two nuclear armed um superpowers. You had a couple of defcon three or two moments. I can't remember which defcon level they were, but one was when the Soviets um wanted to send peacekeeping troops into the Sinai desert. Let's not get into that, but today's nuclear language which is coming thick and fast um from Putin, from people around Putin, uh where do you put that in the context of all the dangers we went through, Cuba missile crisis, near accidents in 1983, etc. Where do you put today's nuclear language uh in terms of the threat where we we we might be facing today?
>> Well, let me make a brief point about our approach. Uh we were absolutely determined to preserve the balance of power and we were absolutely determined to protect every NATO country. But we had two situations related to the Middle East where we adopted a modified alert in confronting Soviet pressures. So we were perfectly prepared to face the Soviet pressures. But we also thought that the consequences of nuclear war were so horrendous and they are relatively less than what modern technology can produce. that we thought it was at a minimum an obligation to the democratic public that we were perceived as having made every effort for negotiated outcomes. So side by side with the readiness to defend our interests and our values there was the readiness to explore how the tensions could be reduced and to make special efforts in arms control. Now this was with weapons whose impact were while huge were were calculable. We are now in a technology where the rapidity of its change, the subtlety of the inventions uh can produce levels of catastrophe that were not even imaginable in the period that I'm talking that I was talking about. And the strange aspect of the present situation is that the [clears throat] weapons are multiplying on both sides and their sophistication [clears throat] is increasing literally with every year. and their range and automaticity and almost any other noun you want to attach to them. But there's almost no discussion that's internationally about what would happen if the weapons actually became used. So that almost all you know every war that has been fought since World War II has been with conventional weapons. And even in the Ukraine where two nuclear countries are jogging against each other, the emphasis has been on conventional weapons. I think in the new phase that will emerge eventually out of this crisis. The high tech countries will have to give some attention to the consequences of their technology and to bring their diplomacy into relationship to this technology. This is not an advice for next week, but when people can sit back and ask themselves what really happened here and where might it have gone. Uh it is important to do that because you can look I used to be even as a scholar somewhat interested in the outbreak of World War I which can be perceived as not intended by any of the major countries and once they were in it they didn't know how to stop it even though the casualties were mounting with by the month and part of the reason was that the technology limited as as it was had gotten way ahead of strategic thinking. So my appeal in general in my discussions on which whatever side you are in these discussions is to understand that we are now living in a totally new era that we have gotten away as cultures up to now with neglecting that aspect. But it but as it technology it spread around the world as it does inherently diplomacy and war will need a different content and that will be [clears throat] a challenge for the immediate future.
Now, you've met, correct me if I'm wrong, but ballpark, you've met Vladimir Putin 20, 25 times.
Y >> um the Russian military nuclear doctrine is that um they will respond with nuclear weapons or consider the use of nuclear weapons if they feel that the regime is under existential threat that its existence and of course the word existential is in the eye of the beholder. Uh where do you think Putin's red line is in this situation? [clears throat]
I have met Putin as a student of international affairs about once a year for a period of maybe 15 years for purely academic and strategic discussions to try to learn its thinking and impart whatever thinking I had if he as as the as the conversation developed. Uh I thought he was his basic convictions were a kind of mystic faith in Russian history as he conceived it and that he felt offended in that sense, not by anything we did particularly at first, but simply by this huge gap that opened up in between in in between between Europe and uh the east when the security lines were moved from the elbow towards some at first undefined future. And so he as I understood him was offended and threatened and felt Russia was threatened by the absorption of this whole area into u into NATO. This does not excuse and I would not have predicted an attack of the magnitude of taking over a recognized country with which all kinds of uh non-military agreements existed. And so the scope of his attack and the demands made by him are rightly resisted by the NATO countries and and the future evolution of the whole region from there really into Asia beyond the Euros. uh will be affected will be affected by the outcome. So I think he miscalculated the situation he faced internationally and he obviously miscalculated his [clears throat] Russia's capabilities to sustain such a major enterprise and when the time for settlement comes all parties will need to take that into into consideration that we are not going back to the previous relationship but to a position for Russia that will be different as [clears throat] a result of this and not because we demand it be because They have produced it by the kind of war that has been conducted.
You say that Putin miscalculated, I mean arguably massively miscalculated in his expectations of the military conquest of Ukraine and the reception he would get from Ukrainians. Now, a lot of the nuclear theory and strategic theory you worked on assumes people have good information and that they can act rationally on their good information. Do you think he's now re-calibrating having miscalculated? Do you think he's getting good information? And if he isn't, what further miscalculations should we be preparing for?
Well, in all these judgments, in all these crisis, one has to try to understand [clears throat] what the inner red line is. >> Mhm. >> For the opposite number. And if we had met 6 months ago, well, I first, as I said, wouldn't have thought that he would start a war of that scale in Europe or anywhere. Uh so the obvious question is first of all and how long will this escalation continue and how much scope does he have for further escalation? or has he reached the limit of its capabilities? And he has to decide at what point escalating the war will strain his society to a point that will limit its fitness to conduct international policy as a great power in the future. I have no judgment when he will come to that point. The second level is when that point is reached. really escalate by moving into categories of weapons that in 70 years of their existence have never been used. weapons in which nuclear countries accepted defeat from non-uclear countries like both Russia and we in Afghanistan without resorting to weapons which in a purely technical sense could have ended the uh conflict. So if that line is crossed that will be an extraordinarily significant event because we [clears throat] have not thought through globally what the next dividing lines would be and uh we have to think of how to react to happen. But one thing we could not do in my opinion is just accept it because that would open a new method of blackmail. Uh so I'm not here to answer all these.
>> No. I'm going to ask you about China now before I'm going to ask you about China. Um what I mean you've met Xi Jinping many times too and his predecessors. You uh you know China well. Um what lessons is China drawing from this? You you know when foreign leaders meet civilians like me >> or ordinary average >> 99y old civilians >> but I don't control the sit they have a purpose and their purpose is that hopefully I will write something or say something >> that's compatible. So they in other words they're not engaging in streams of consciousness in which they tell me all their innermost thinking. But I would suspect that any Chinese leader now or all Chinese leaders would be reflecting how to avoid getting into the situation into which Putin got himself >> and how to be in a position where in any crisis that might arise is they would not have the a major part of the world turned against them. Uh but of course they already are attempting to organize a concept of international order. uh somewhat different from the one we put forward. And the key decision America and China will have to make down the road and not in any one month is your first question. It's the relationship so adversarial that there is no hope of composing even parts of it and therefore must every issue be dealt with in terms of relative position and therefore it's the best hope of restraint. the self-restraint of leaders on both sides. Or is it conceivable that between the that the two leaders, whoever they may be in the future, that the two leaders recognize that there are ideological differences and there are some strategic differences, but that there is a common interest in preventing the world from destroying itself. It's a unique problem. The United States has never faced an adversary that by itself could achieve supremacy. And China except for the 19th century has been able to think of itself as the dominant country in its region. And the two countries until the 19th century or little earlier as organized societies had relatively little diplomatic contact with each other. Now in the future economies will develop in which there is a propensity on the high-tech side to achieve monopoly positions because that seems to be inherent in the nature of modern technology. Now, is it possible for these societies to work out a [snorts] an understanding or a set of agreements where these attempts at monopoly position technologically, economically, and of course crucially militarily are given some bounce. That does not mean abolishing the adversarial relationship but it means living with it. Of course, ideally one could imagine a global system where these adversarial relationships disappear. But the histories of countries are so different and the faith of countries are so different that that is not the immediately accessible point but it's should be and I think it will be a subject of reflection in the decades ahead. I don't apply that literally to the immediate situation although it sort of should underly it but I think if the line into [clears throat] nuclear weapons were you were crossed that would be something of great consequence. But if it has when it has happened, what makes it of such consequence is that it will not be possible to ignore it and pretend it didn't happen or pretend that one is doing something else. But I don't think that is probable. But in the in the world in which they are and are likely to be adversaries in the world of high technology, one has to reflect that the nature of world order which developed out of the treaty of West Failure nearly 400 years ago. based on sovereign states which with defined legitimacies may come to be altered. I'm not saying this because I like that. I'm saying that structures of world politics have demonstrated demonstrabably be changed from time to time and we have to think about that.
So we have a a short period of time for for questions. Uh we we'll run over a bit. Sorry, Alec. Um but uh so who's who's got questions? There's you put your hand up first. The sitting in the front row.
>> Hello. Uh thanks Adamesia. visiting fellow at Harvard. Thank you, Dr. Kissinger. I was hoping you could just um if we could hone in on what you just said and in the awful um scenario where we do see low yield tactical nuke, what is in the toolkit for NATO? And on the diplom on the diplomatic front um is it an indictment of US diplomacy and decline that so many countries are hedging outside of NATO when it came to the UN and beyond hearing?
>> Yeah. Um, so, uh, let me just restate your question and I'll pick the second bit up first. Um, is is the fact that so many countries outside of the West are hedging neutral, is that, and we'll break them up. Is that a measure of the failure of the Biden administration's diplomacy? No, I think uh I'm not here as a spokesman of the Biden administration. Uh I think that the it is inevitable that when a situation develops as rapidly assisted and that's mil militarily assisted that the national interest perception of key countries uh may differ and so major countries like India, Brazil South Africa have chosen not to participate in the condemnation of Russia either because they have their own own interests or because they think the subject of the issue did not concern them so much. So I uh I I do not know what the administration could have done to in to get these countries involved except to answer the other questions. uh and this doesn't mean that I support basically I I have I have questions about the diplomacy prior to the outbreak of the war. I would not have I would have thought I would have favored a different diplomacy. But I always qualify that by saying that I think Putin went belong beyond the limits of understandings of [snorts] the nature of European order in attempting to take over a sovereign state in one military operations uh on an issue that uh had room for negotiation.
>> Um, thank you. Um, is uh the lady back there.
>> Oh, Kathleen, sorry, Dr. Dr. Kazer, you've emphasized the role of technology in changing uh parameters of world order, but you also mentioned that Ukraine the the alienation of Ukraine from Russia had been brought about by Putin's policies. And it seems to me that in many of the countries of Eastern Europe that have moved away from the Soviet sphere of influence that it's been the soft issues. It's been human rights. It's been freedom of expression. it's been free elections and so on rather than military issues alone and I wonder if you can make any assessment of how those softer issues have changed the nature of the world order that we're facing now. Thank you.
>> I have been of the view that Given my own personal history, human rights are certainly an important issue in my thinking. But I have been of the view that when two societies are clashing with adversarial [snorts] attitudes on human rights. That one should explore the possibilities of resolving some of those issues. in the expectation or in the hope that coexistence is a key element. And so therefore I would not have made NATO membership of Ukraine a key issue on the issue of principle where alliances can never be limited. I would have but that is not relevant to the present issue. This is just to illustrate theoretical points I made earlier. I think that doesn't it's not relevant to the solution of the Ukraine issue. Did I understand the question? My hearing aid is not perfect.
>> You you you understood the question. Yeah.
>> Um there's time for for only one more question. Um uh I think you you had your hand up right from the beginning. Sorry.
>> [clears throat]
>> Dr. Kissinger, thank you for your remarks. My question is, are we naive in the West when we try to deal with people like Putin as they were having the same values that we have on the democratic block? And has been Ukraine uh an outcryer, a way for for us to wake up in terms of who we are dealing on the other side of the table? Could you say that again? Sorry, I got most of it, but just to relate, I think neither of us got 100%. Could you state your question again? Sorry.
>> Yeah, my question is if if we are being naive or when we try to deal with people like Putin like they were having the same values that we are pride of on the western block. uh compare and if it can if it has been this time an opportunity for us to wake up of the idea of having Russia as an equal friend that later on we'll go into the democracy path and
>> okay so are we naive to assume that Putin's Russia and I guess Russia in general have or are going to have the same values as us is it naive to assume Russia after this will become a democracy I I think uh uh a Chinese acquaintance once said to me that in his perception the difference between western approaches and in that case Chinese approaches has that western countries have lived in relatively small confines and that therefore in their relatively small sides were very conscious of the potential security issues all around them. that China being a very large country has usually been concerned with its domestic stability more than its international standing. Now Russia is somewhere in between. Russia has always had the problem of a huge territory uh with uncertain frontiers and it explicit cultural difference on some levels with Europe, but on other levels uh using uh European standards as their possible in inspiration. So that's been the historic problem of Russia and their role has been to preserve this equilibrium of this huge territory against various invasions. Now uh the problem if you look at the world from now on from a Russian point of view you have to assess uh the role of force in protecting yourself. You have to become a part of some larger community and that goes back to the first question. Is it for ordained that they join the region beyond the eurals? Or is it for or is it possible that when the evolution that will occur has done its course that a new definition of Russian, European and Atlantic relationships will emerge from that? That's partly their problem, but it's importantly our problem, too, as Americans and as Europeans, and that it's one of the unsolved problems that will be before the next decades.
>> Well, we run over time. I could keep running over time. Um, but I suspect we'd get in trouble if we did. So, um I just thank you very much for joining us and for making the effort to to come down here today. And um I'm sure everyone else will um join me in appreciation of your