FEUILLETON Henry Kissinger, America, and Kosovo (17): I would be surprised if, when the smoke clears, there will be many Serbs left in Kosovo

Writing for Kosovo Online: Dragan Bisenic

In the lecture "Lessons for the 21st Century" delivered on June 6, 1999, in Geneva, Kissinger emphasized that the 20th century had experienced immense conceptual changes in foreign policy.

It began with the belief that war was unlikely because civilized nations would not engage in mutual conflict. At that time, there was a global economy, encompassing all independent nations. Most thoughtful people did not believe that common interests would be jeopardized in a general conflagration. Simultaneously, an arms race was underway because all nations believed in the balance of power. Surprisingly, in light of what happened, no nation felt that its survival was threatened by the institutions of other nations. The reason for this was the widely accepted concepts of legitimacy and sovereignty.

Lessons of the 20th century

"It was the apex of the doctrine of the sovereignty of the nation-state, a doctrine that people now look at somewhat askance. But we must remember that the concept of sovereignty began to flourish in response to the Thirty Years' War when over 30 percent of the population of Central Europe was wiped out in ideological conflicts that did not recognize boundaries that imposed limitations on the exercise of state power", Kissinger recalled.

"Then came the First World War, which broke the backbone of the self-confidence of the 19th century. This happened in large part because the statesmen of that period did not understand the technology they had created and because they devised mobilization methods that, once set in motion, could not be stopped. None of the statesmen who embarked on the war in August 1914 would have made that decision if they knew what the world would look like in 1980", Kissinger said.

Everyone believed that the war would be over by winter. And as the war progressed, they had to "adjust their horror at the suffering they inflicted on each other to keep pace with the escalation of victims, so that by 1918 the balance of power was destroyed".

The legitimacy of the system was also destroyed because Russia, which was a key element of the pre-war international order, now had a regime that was ideologically hostile to the existing system and hoped to benefit from its conflicts, while Germany was left out of the system as it was not a participant in the Versailles Treaty.

Ironically, the emergence of America introduced a completely new element into international politics. All European states had powerful neighbors. They all, through long historical experience, knew that there were no final solutions to foreign policy problems. They all relied on balance and the relative advantages of stability. And then America appeared, inhabited by a people who turned their backs on Europe, almost entirely with an immigrant population that had never known a powerful neighbor, nor had it ever been involved in a prolonged foreign war; a nation that rightly believed that the secret to its success lay in the democratic institutions it brought to the new world. It was this Wilsonianism that identified, then and seemingly until today, the ideal peace that can be achieved by spreading American values.

"So much of the American internal debate on foreign policy is conducted between these schools of thought: the one that believes that foreign policy is a subset of psychiatry; the one that believes that relations among nations are like relations among people; and the other that considers foreign policy a subset of theology in which foreign policy represents a competition between good and evil", Kissinger defined American foreign policy thinking.

He recounted that as a young professor, he had met President Harry Truman and asked him what he thought he had done that he was most proud of. Truman replied, "I am proudest of the fact that, after completely defeating our enemies, we brought them back into the community of nations as equals. And I would like to think that only Americans would do that".

Kissinger assessed that it had been "a noble thought, and in that sense, the fifties and sixties were the peaks of American involvement in world affairs". Then came Vietnam.

Vietnam started, according to Kissinger, "with the best motives". It was an attempt to apply the lessons learned in Europe to Asia. It was based on the assumption that the nations there would recover just as the European nations did if someone could stop communism in Asia, and that their democratic processes would create such a difference between communism and democracy that, sooner or later, as Kennan predicted, communism itself would be "contained". But it didn't turn out that way because the people we were defending were not nations. In Europe, there was a civil service, and the nations had a historical reality. In Vietnam, there was never a South Vietnamese nation, and the attempt to create one had to be made in the midst of a civil war.

And then there was a rupture in American thinking as American idealism turned inward.

Something rotten in US politics

"In the late sixties and seventies, there was a dominant debate in which the argument emerged—not that we had overreached, but that there was something rotten in American thinking itself and that our agony in Vietnam was a kind of punishment for our moral inadequacy. Therefore, it was not desirable to make the best possible deal but to lose, as that was the only way to morally cleanse ourselves", Kissinger noted.

He was already the national security adviser at that time, going to colleges, among students who demonstrated and protested, saying that America wanted an "honorable peace". Their concept of honor was opposite to his. They thought that honor depended on never being tempted to enter such situations again. No dispute from the 60s and 70s can be understood without a prior understanding of how American idealism turned inward.

Then, after a period of humiliation, came other claims of American idealism, in the Reagan era and in its neoconservative incarnations.

"Neoconservatives in America insist that our real mission is not to defend either the balance of power or our allies but to spread democracy. But how?" Kissinger asked.

"In the seventies, it was said that moral pressure should be used. In the eighties, it was said that economic sanctions should be used. And now there is a discussion about using military force and that traditional principles of national interest are not decisive. It is precisely such beliefs that lead to many challenges America faces today and make our domestic debate extremely difficult", Kissinger responded.

Such thinking was not acceptable to him, and he said that he "belongs to the minority that believes that crusades have caused many more fatalities than wars in the cabinet", so he expressed that he "therefore has more sympathy for policies focused on a broad conception of national interest".

He considered this a fundamental debate taking place in America, as seen in issues like Kosovo, "which is a small country, not even a state, in the small corner of the Balkans". And we see it in the debates about China taking place in the United States. There is a group of people in America who would like to categorize China as the Soviet Union and pursue a policy toward China analogous to the policy that helped win the Cold War.

"When it comes to both Kosovo and China, we face significant cultural problems. Regarding Kosovo, Americans consider multi-ethnicity a natural form of coexistence because, in America, everyone was a refugee at some point, and the 'melting pot' has become an expression of national genius. However, in Central Europe and the Balkans, ethnic groups were occupied repeatedly. The weak were killed, and the conciliatory ones emigrated, and their identity almost invariably became synonymous with religion, which was always a synonym for their group.

Looking at the history of the Balkans, it is evident that these nations often lived together as long as there was an external or dictatorial authority over them. But as soon as the question related to the conquerors' groups became democratic, i.e., 'who should rule with whom', bloodshed ensued. So the effort to find a final solution sometimes becomes a guarantee of an extremely bitter conflict. This is a cultural problem in the Balkans, and I would be surprised if, when the smoke clears in Kosovo, there will be many Serbs left there", Kissinger concluded.

Kissinger was not only deeply involved in global political issues. Soccer was his great passion. He practically brought soccer to America and was the first President of the United States Soccer Federation. Kissinger was most responsible for America hosting the 1994 FIFA World Cup. Because of all this, Kissinger found time to write Pele's portrait amid the bombings, published on June 14, 1999.

Continuation tomorrow: Bosnia is an agreement, and Kosovo is a NATO imposition