Our guestblogger Howard circulated Henry Kissinger's recent article in Newsweek, America's Assignment. While the good Dr. Kissinger supports Bush, this is not a pro-Bush piece. Maybe he wants his old job back? Here is a summary:
On the Kerry plan to involve allies: "Other nations should find it in their interest to participate at least in the tasks of political and economic reconstruction. There is no shortcut around the next steps: the restoration of security in Iraq, especially in areas that have become terrorist sanctuaries, is imperative. No guerrilla war can be won if sanctuaries for insurgents are tolerated."
On the Bush plan to train Iraqis: "Having witnessed the challenges of creating local security forces in Indochina, I would warn against approaching the security effort in too mechanical a manner. In Vietnam, it took far longer to make units ready for combat than simply fulfilling the requirements of a training manual. The effectiveness of Iraqi forces will depend not only on their military training but on the degree to which the emerging Iraqi institutions gain domestic legitimacy. Units without political allegiance are generally least reliable when most needed."
On the Bush plan to install democracy: "None of the[se] conditions [for democracy to emerge] exists in the Islamic world. Instead there is a merging of religion and politics inimical to pluralism. A genuine democratic government has come about only in Turkey, paradoxically through the imposition of democratic forms by an autocratic leader. The emergence of democratic institutions and of the arrangements which hold them together cannot be engineered as an act of will; it requires patience and modesty."
On the other hand, it is not pro-Kerry either. Kissinger goes on to say that it is unrealistic to expect the Euro allies to come in fast enough to solve immediate problems. Dr K actually is suggesting to Kerry to go after allies outside of Europe. He goes on to outline his view of the New World Order:
On the Bush doctrine of Pre-emptive war: "When implemented by a power with the overwhelming military preponderance of the United States, the doctrine prompts claims of hegemony by some on the American side and increasing resistance by others, particularly members of traditional alliances. ... The new president will want to make a distinction between power and the claims made on its behalf. No nation, no matter how powerful, can organize the international system by itself; over an historical period it is beyond the psychological and political capacity of even the most dominant state. The goal of U.S. foreign policy must be to turn dominant power into shared responsibility-to conduct policy, as the Australian scholar Coral Bell has written, as if the international order were composed of many centers of power, even while we are aware of our strategic pre-eminence. It implies the need for a style of consultation less focused on imposing immediate policy prescriptions than achieving a common definition of long-range purposes."
Where this falls short is to answer the problem of nuclear proliferation to North Korea and Iran. Perhaps there is no good answer there.
A couple of quick points in reply:
1) There is a dynamic of emerging regional powers of which the U.S. would do well to take advantage. Nigeria, Indonesia, Brazil, India, China, and yes, Iran, are all "new" powers on the world stage, and all have signficiant resources of manpower, money, and increasingly modern global-class technologies of government and arms in place. The U.S. is relying upon Nigerian troops to keep the peace in African hotspots; we should be thinking about how to extend this trend, bringing a whole new rank of powers into an expanded global first rank. This is pragmatic as much as anything else; just as the "freshman effect" in so many different venues means that the new guys do a lot of the hard work, presumably a Nigeria or Brazil will be willing to bear that extra bit of the burden to prove that it belongs. Holding out the carrot of an expanded Secuity Council should be an exellent longer-term strategy; something along the lines of the 20-30 year process the EU has just gone through to cajole its various joining members into accepting the Western trifecta of socially moderated capitalism, individual rights, and democracy.
2) The issue is not to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. The issue is to make sure that Iran is a responsible steward of the nuclear weapons which it will inevitably acquire. We are not at all alarmed that France, a country with a mind of its own, and a population and GDP not entirely dissimilar from Iran*, has nuclear weapons. This is because we trust the French to (not) use them responsibly. We are, frankly, pissing into the wind if we want the largest, richest, most culturally sophisticated, most historically important, most presently vulnerable (to Israel; to Pakistan; to the United States) country in the Middle East to foreswear the acquisition of nuclear weapons, and we'd be better off not trying.
* France: 60.5m population, 550k sq. km. area, $1670 billion GDP. Iran: 69m population, 1700 sq. km area, $500 billion GDP.
Posted by: Ethan Stock | Sunday, October 31, 2004 at 03:25 PM