Kissinger’s Advice

At The American Interest Niall Ferguson summarizes Henry Kissinger’s advice to an incoming administration:

  1. Do not go all-out into a confrontation with China, whether on trade or the South China Sea. Rather, seek “comprehensive discussion” and aim to pursue that policy of dialogue and “co-evolution” recommended in World Order. Kissinger sees the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, quite regularly. When he says that Xi regards “confrontation as too dangerous” and thinks that “adversarial countries must become partners and cooperate on a win-win basis,” he speaks with authority. The questions the Chinese want to ask the new President, according to Kissinger, are these: “If we were you, we might try to suppress your rise. Do you seek to suppress us? If you do not, what will the world look like when we are both strong, as we expect to be?” Trump needs to have answers to these questions. The alternative, as Kissinger has said repeatedly, is for the United States and China to talk past each other until they stumble into 1914 in the Pacific, not to mention in cyberspace.
  2. Given a weakened, traumatized, post-imperial Russia, the recognition Putin craves is that of “a great power, as an equal, and not as a supplicant in an American-designed system.” Kissinger’s message to Trump is well calibrated to appeal to his instincts: “It is not possible to bring Russia into the international system by conversion. It requires deal-making, but also understanding.” The central deal, Kissinger argues, would turn Ukraine into “a bridge between NATO and Russia rather than an outpost of either side,” like Finland or Austria in the Cold War, “free to conduct its own economic and political relationships, including with both Europe and Russia, but not party to any military or security alliance.” Such a non-aligned Ukraine would also need to be decentralized, increasing the autonomy of the contested eastern regions, where there has been intermittent conflict since separatist movements received Russian support in the wake of the Crimean annexation. The alternative to such a deal is that we may inadvertently over-use our financial and military superiority, turning a post-Putin Russia into a vast version of Yugoslavia, “wracked by conflict stretching from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok.”
  3. Treat Brexit as an opportunity to steer the continental Europeans away from bureaucratic introspection and back to strategic responsibility. (“They’re talking about tactical matters while they’re in the process of giving up the essence of . . . what they’ve represented throughout history.”)
  4. Make peace in Syria rather as we made peace in the former Yugoslavia nearly twenty years ago. Kissinger now recommends a “cantonization” of Syria similar to the federalization of Bosnia under the Washington and Dayton agreements, with an “off-ramp for Assad” lasting around a year, all under the “supervision” of the interested outside powers. Iran must be contained, much as the Soviet Union was in the Cold War, because it poses a similar threat, acting as both an imperial state and a revolutionary cause. But keep the Iran agreement because to abandon it now “would free Iran from more constraints than it would free the United States.” And finally take advantage of the new-found, albeit tacit, anti-Iranian and anti-ISIS alignment of the Arab states with Israel to achieve a new kind of Arab-sponsored peace deal that would “improve the lives of Palestinians to the greatest extent possible, perhaps including quasi-sovereignty . . . that is, de facto autonomy without a legalistic superstructure.”

in which long-time readers of this blog might discern echoes of things that I’ve been writing for years. Perhaps it could be said that Dr. Kissinger’s recommendations are not incompatible with my views. Whether Mr. Trump is temperamentally, intellectually, or politically able to pursue any of those courses of action remains to be seen. I strongly suspect that the incoming president will be more transactional than either tactical or strategic in his apprroach.

Dr. Kissinger is, however, significantly more Hamiltonian in his views than I. Like Dr. Kissinger there is not a Wilsonian bone in my body. I esteem our values but seek to maintain them here rather than shoving them down the throats of people in other countries.

I suspect that this remark of Dr. Ferguson’s will prove controversial:

…merely by changing Obama’s foreign policy President Trump is likely to achieve at least some success.

To whatever degree I might have been dissatisfied with President Obama’s approaches and accomplishments, I suspect that Dr. Ferguson’s objectives are drastically different from mine.

3 comments… add one
  • PD Shaw Link

    1. China, Kissinger also I believe is skeptical that Americans can think this long term, and a 4-8 year Presidential term doesn’t help. Americans tend to want to solve whatever the current problem is, whereas China tends to think that problems are natural, reoccurring and simply to be contained. Probably the best place to work through these different philosophies is the problem of North Korea, working to fix this problem could be a good way to make concrete a future notion of a world order in which China both gives and takes. The 1914 reference is overdramatic.

    2. Russia. The more plausible argument is Ukraine divides into two, with the East becoming Belarus, and the West becoming a more plausible though ultimately rejected EU/NATO member. I note that Kissinger is attributing personal significance to Putin in a way that most realists are reluctant. I think Putin as head of Russia is different to some extent, not close to 100%, than one headed by someone else.

    3. Europe. I don’t think we are in a position to steer the EU anywhere. What are the strategic interests/issues with Europe today? Europe has a lot of internal issues from where I stand. I don’t find credible arguments that without U.S. actively engaging NATO that Germany will invade France again.

    4. Middle East. Well said on Iran. Otherwise, skeptical of the “Cantonization” (“Balkinization”) of Syria and Palestine in terms of economic viability for landlocked counties without defensible borders in a region of religious extremism and imperial dreaming.

  • I think Putin as head of Russia is different to some extent, not close to 100%, than one headed by someone else.

    Basically, I believe the polls. I think that Putin is acting just the way you’d expect a Russian politician to act given Russian public opinion.

  • steve Link

    I no longer read Ferguson unless someone strongly recommends him. He has become a total hack. Kissinger, OTOH, bears some attention. He may not be right, but he at least has cogent opinions, not just blind partisan opposition. His idea about leveraging anti-Iran feelings to achieve peace for Israel goes nowhere.

    Steve

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