BOOK REVIEW One final word? On China by Henry Kissinger
Reviewed by Benjamin A Shobert
It is fitting that towards the end of his life, Henry Kissinger would return to
the subject of what may be his greatest foreign policy achievement: the
coordinated opening of China during his time in the Richard Nixon
administration.
While the policies he advocated for during the Vietnam War remain deeply
contentious, the role he played in triangulating China, the Soviet Union and
the United States is regarded as one of the most masterful foreign policy
achievements in the past 50 years. As national security adviser, Kissinger's
clandestine trip to China in 1971 paved the way for president Richard Nixon to
meet
Mao Zedong in Beijing and the normalization of relations. His first-person
recollection of the events which surrounded this achievement is now presented
in his most recent book, On China.
Together with Nixon, Kissinger set in motion a process that would lead to China
replacing the Soviet Union as the nation most Americans remain increasingly
suspicious of, and in some circles, a country whose aspirations are feared.
Kissinger could not have foreseen that China's rise would be both so quick and
present such a threat to America's peace of mind in the 21st Century.
Yet many readers of On China will confuse American domestic policy
mistakes for errors of diplomacy on Kissinger's part: it was his role to
facilitate a peaceful opening, and it was the politicians' jobs to ensure that
China's entry into the world's economy was handled in such a way as to minimize
the economic dislocation of American workers.
The benefits of hindsight might suggest a more gradual engagement with China,
one requiring more changes made more quickly by China in order to do business
with the West, but these were policy matters long after Kissinger had led the
process through its most delicate stage.
While Kissinger dedicates a good part of the early book towards educating his
readers on China's history, he does this largely to set the stage for how he
viewed China then, and how he views China now: as a country we can and should
do business with, and a country whose desire to expand its power is both
understandable and trustworthy.
To Kissinger, China's leaders have too many domestic challenges for them to
mount a real international strategic threat of the sort many in Washington
suspect. As he writes, "The crucial competition between the United States and
China is more likely to be economic and social than military." Simply put, many
critics of Kissinger and of On China view this as naive.
To them, China's ongoing attachment to authoritarian rule shows a country
willing to use free markets and the promise of political liberalization as
means of achieving their ends of ongoing rule and regional hegemony. On these
points, Kissinger would likely agree with the first, but would suggest that
while ongoing rule and political stability are to outsiders the same thing, to
a Chinese government and its people who are both deeply fearful of domestic
turmoil, they remain worthy goals.
This is where Kissinger's recounting of China's recent history - its civil war,
domestic turmoil and national humiliation - becomes a necessary piece of the
foundation his policy of engagement and real politics has been built. This step
is equally important to ensure that Kissinger can make his most important point
- and one that is not reliant purely on history for its relevance: Kissinger
believes that China's unstable past points towards the reason it can be trusted
to focus first and foremost on its own domestic needs before entertaining any
ideology of expansion and regional hegemony.
As he writes: "Both societies believe they represent unique values. American
exceptionalism is missionary. It holds that the United States has an obligation
to spread its values to every part of the world. China's exceptionalism is
cultural. China does not proselytize; it does not claim that its contemporary
institutions are relevant outside China."
This latter assertion, that China holds no idea about its own "contemporary
institutions [being] relevant outside China" will likely prove to be
particularly contentious.
While it is certainly possible that Kissinger is right, and that his point
about China's use of outward-oriented communication like that of the rapidly
expanding Xinhua news agency or the profligate Confucius Institutes constitute
only a desire to be understood, or to as he suggests export China's cultural
values only, to suggest these efforts are not missionary-like is to confuse
tactics for strategy.
His claim may be entirely accurate, and perhaps these steps should be
understood purely as efforts on China's part to be understood; but On China
goes somewhat further than this more limited point.
In this way, Kissinger seems predisposed - as one might expect any great
diplomatic mind to be - with the idea of his Chinese counterparts grasp of
strategy. Throughout the book, the high acclaim with which he clearly holds
Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong as well as much of China's bureaucratic class, gives
them more credit than their critics will appreciate. For Kissinger,
understanding China requires an understanding and appreciation of their great
strategy game wei qi.
Mastery of this game requires the winning player to act in a disciplined manner
with the focus always on the long-term. It is a game designed to reward the
strategic and punish the tactical. Throughout On China, Kissinger makes
reference to wei qi as a sign of the insight Chinese leaders then
brought, and today understand equally well, when negotiating with their Western
counterparts.
And in some sense, Kissinger may be right: it may well be that China's
centrally controlled economy and political institutions offer longer-term
horizons on key decisions the country must make, horizons which are beyond
those afforded governments in the democratic West.
But an infatuation with wei qi overlooks the enormous errors from the
Chinese leaders Kissinger encountered: it was no great mastery of Chinese
culture or ideology to see the Great Leap Forward to its ignominious end. Nor
was it the silent and masterful hand of a wei qi master to watch the
Cultural Revolution tear down the last bits of Chinese dignity and
self-sufficiency.
These were strategic errors of the first order, the sort made by the wei qi
pupil and not the master, and it may well be that China's current leaders is
making similar errors by its ongoing suppression of dissent and inconsistent
use of the free market.
Yet Kissinger's broader points about the great good that has already come
through engaging China - both for Chinese and Americans - is well made. We live
in a world of Kissinger's making - for good and for ill. And it is towards the
end of On China that we stop getting a history of where relations
between the two countries have come from, and his vision of where it could go.
While his aged and experienced eyes still see the potential for partnership, he
harbors no illusions as to the very real potential for the two countries to
find conflict the easier path. Yet his belief is that those who see conflict as
inevitable lack the sort of creative vision of what could be instead of
dystopian vision of the world as it has already been: "... Historical parallels
are by nature inexact. And even the most precise analogy does not oblige the
present generation to repeat the mistakes of its predecessors ... A serious
joint effort involving the continuous attention of top leaders is needed to
develop a sense of genuine strategic trust and cooperation."
He then goes on to write that while "... Consensus may prove difficult, but
confrontation on these issues is self-defeating."
Towards the end of his book, Kissinger wants to remind his American readers
that "... The United States bears the responsibility to retain its
competitiveness and its world role. It should do this for its own traditional
convictions, rather than as a contest with China."
This easily focuses the readers of On China on the question Kissinger is
easily the least qualified to answer: how will a generation of economically
frustrated Americans view China? While Kissinger's hope for pragmatic foreign
policy engagement has gotten us this far, it may be the dark side of American
politics, which makes going any further with China impossible.
On China by Henry Kissinger. Penguin Press HC, 1 edition (May 17, 2011),
ISBN-10: 1594202710. Price US$ 36, 608 pages.
Benjamin A Shobert is the managing director of Teleos Inc (www.teleos-inc.com),
a consulting firm dedicated to helping Asian businesses bring innovative
technologies into the North American market.
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The benefits of hindsight might suggest a more gradual engagement with China,
one requiring more changes made more quickly by China in order to do business
with the West, but these were policy matters long after Kissinger had led the
process through its most delicate stage.
