Kissinger, the inconvenient
adviser By Dmitry Shlapentokh
The Iraq war continues to be the central
act of George W Bush's US presidency, and he is
doing his best to find a solution to the problem.
He rallies the masses for the cause, castigating
his Democratic opponents almost as traitors who
comfort the enemy. He also recently invoked a
meeting of notables from previous administrations
to underscore the fact that he looks for advice
from all types of people, not just his close
circle. Among the many invitees, there was a
notable exception - Henry Kissinger, secretary of
state under Richard Nixon and universally accepted
as
one of the most experienced and savvy
foreign-policy experts in recent US history.
While the absence of Kissinger was
surprising for the New York Times correspondent
who covered the story, it could hardly be so for
those who could trace Kissinger's relationship
with the present administration, which is hardly
amicable. He resigned from the chairmanship of the
committee that was to investigate the reasons for
the events of September 11, 2001. He was dropped
from the list of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
advisers, and in general his advice on foreign
policy was not much appreciated. Quite possibly he
had broken some cardinal rules in these important
- and what would seem to be quite lucrative -
fields.
The history of political advising
is an old one; as a matter of fact, one of the
first textbooks on how to be a good adviser can be
found in Iraq. The ancient Babylonian text called
Conversation of the Master with the Slave
deals with a story in which the master asks his
slave about various possible undertakings.
"Slave," proclaimed the master, "I would
spend my life making love to beautiful women."
The slave immediately responded: "Sure,
master, you are absolutely right. There is nothing
more pleasurable than making love to beautiful
women."
"No, slave," the master said,
changing his mind abruptly, "I would not make love
to beautiful women."
"You are absolutely
right. Women are perilous creatures, and you would
ruin your health and fortune messing with women."
A more serious foreign-policy issue was
also raised. "Slave, I am going to war."
"You are absolutely right in your advice.
War is the only proper deed for man. Those who
engage in war bring themselves fame and booty."
"Slave, I will not go to war."
"Yes, master, this is the right decision.
War is a hard labor, bringing wounds and death."
One could, of course, look at this
dialogue from different perspectives. A historian
of philosophy might state that the dialogue is an
example of sophistry, long before the Sophists
emerged in Greece. A post-modernist would assure
us that the quoted text clearly demonstrates that
so-called objective truth does not exist, and that
one simply engages in various "discourses". The
slave himself, if he were resurrected, would say
that this way of engaging in conversation had a
very pragmatic explanation: right "advising"
ensured that he was treated nicely and invited to
the parties with good food and wine.
And
this explains why Kissinger was not invited to the
meeting of notables and has fallen out of favor
with the Bush administration in general. He gave
the wrong advice, especially in regard to the Iraq
war, and in general seems not to be much
fascinated with the performance of the
administration. In order to understand his
position, one should discuss at least briefly the
crux of Bush's problems.
Quite a few of
the president's critics, especially American
journalists at the other end of the political
spectrum, have proclaimed that the major problem
with Bush is that he is an unprincipled liar. He
lied to the American people and to Congress and,
in this respect, is absolutely different from the
majority of honest Americans.
The critics
are wrong: Bush has done nothing different from
the majority. Lying is not an exception; it is a
way of life and is called "advertising" - the very
foundation of US capitalism. Colleges "advertise"
degrees in subjects ranging from "philosophy" to
"women's studies", assuring prospective students
that upon spending thousands of dollars and years
of study learning how to fight "male chauvinist
discourse", for example, their lives and
especially their job prospects will take a radical
turn for the better. The pharmaceutical industry
advertises drugs that will make you healthy and
happy, playing down side-effects. And, of course,
consumers are overwhelmed with propositions
offering often useless goods. Everybody lies, from
the president ("I did not have sexual relations
with that woman") to respectable-looking chairmen
of departments and, of course, the broad masses.
Lying is an essential ingredient of life
and not, of course, only in "the land of the free
and the home of the brave". The problem emerges
not in the process of lying but when those who lie
start to believe their own stories. For
generations, Soviet leaders promulgated the
"monolithic unity of the party and the people" and
the great "friendship" of the people of the USSR.
This worked fairly well because the rulers were
fully aware that it was a lie and kept their iron
grip over the Soviets. Mikhail Gorbachev was
possibly the first and last Soviet leader who,
indeed, believed in what had been preached.
Logically, Gorbachev released the Soviets from the
grip of the Communist Party and the secret police,
and the regime and the empire collapsed.
Similarly, Bush is not so much a liar as a
true believer. He definitely believes that the US
economy is the most efficient, and that "unfair
practices" have prevented US goods and services,
eg education, from being competitive. He believes
that US military power is indestructible and can
beat any enemy. And finally, he believes that US
democracy is the best of all possible institutions
and that the charm of Lady Liberty is even more
irresistible than the shells and bombs of the US
Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force. He
believes all this because it is the belief of a
considerable part of the electorate, who are
induced to such a belief because of the
geopolitical luck of the collapse of the Soviet
Union - one of the major reasons Bush engaged in
the Afghan and Iraq wars. And while Bush is a
spiritual child of this period of US geopolitical
triumph, Kissinger experienced quite a different
era, one that shapes his vision of the current
war.
Kissinger's apparent disapproval of
Bush's course has nothing to do with filmmaker
Michael Moore's blasting the president as a
corrupt imperialist predator who uses the power of
the state and the blood of thousands to enrich the
greedy and utterly cynical super-rich. Nor is he
similar to Zbigniew Brzezinski, former adviser to
Jimmy Carter - - and also not among the guests -
in damning Bush for playing Caesar and forsaking
US democratic traditions. Kissinger, as the
proponent of geopolitical pragmatism, has nothing
against the use of imperial might for tangible
economic benefits. Nor was he a faithful knight of
Lady Liberty: he not only had an amicable
relationship with Leonid Brezhnev and Mao Zedong,
he personally helped overthrow the democratically
elected Salvador Allende and replace him with
pro-American right-wing military dictator Augusto
Pinochet. Moreover, Kissinger's master, Nixon, not
only belonged to the same party as Bush but also
was guilty of the same Caesar-type perspective.
Kissinger's skepticism was not based on
moral/philosophical disagreements or even
partisanship. The reason was much simpler: as US
secretary of state during the Vietnam War, he
understood that the military might of a superpower
was pretty much irrelevant in guerrilla-type
warfare. He also understood that "Iraqization" of
the Iraq war would most likely follow the road of
the "Vietnamization" of the Vietnam War. The war,
if winnable at all, will require that the United
States stay in Iraq and Afghanistan, not for a few
years but for generations. In fact, Vietnam's
guerrillas started by fighting the Japanese in the
1940s and stopped in Cambodia with the death of
Pol Pot in the mid-1990s - a war that lasted for
50 years. Kissinger is quite aware that the
American public would not endure such a conflict,
and that while speedy withdrawal or actual defeat
would be a disaster, the US needs a way to
extricate itself slowly from the Iraqi-Afghan
quagmire.
And here Kissinger believes that
nothing can be done without the help of Iraq's
Asian neighbors, implicitly Iran. In fact, some
Democrats have stated that the US needs this help
to extricate itself from Iraq's problems. Indeed,
Iran is the most probable source because no one
else will keep troops practically indefinitely in
Iraq and because Iran has strong support among
Iraq's Shi'ite majority.
But why are
Kissinger and possibly others advisers not heard?
The question seems to be clear: Iran is openly
pursuing nuclear weapons. India and Pakistan did
the same, becoming nuclear powers without
authorization of the global community. This does
not prevent the US from maintaining the most
cordial relationship with both of them and
providing them with advanced weapons.
There is, of course, another argument:
Iran is a terrorist dictatorial state with which
the "civilized" US cannot talk. This is also
wrong. Both Red China and the USSR were
dictatorial states. Not only did the US talk with
them, but Josef Stalin was amiable "Uncle Joe"
during World War II and was seen as a trusted ally
of the United States. And Mao was equally pleasing
to American eyes during the Cold War, when Red
China was viewed as an essential counterbalance to
the USSR.
And finally, there is the
argument that Iran is sponsoring terror and does
not want actual stability in Iraq. This is also
wrong. To start with, many powers, the United
States included, have used terrorists and similar
shady groups in fighting their major adversaries.
The US actually created al-Qaeda and Osama bin
Laden, using them against the Soviets in
Afghanistan. At the same time, the US is not
equated with terrorists.
The same could be
said about post-revolutionary Iran. There, as in
post-revolutionary Russia and China, revolutionary
ideology soon enough became a cover-up for
primordial nationalism. Iran had no long-term
interest in supporting Sunni extremists. In fact,
the Iranian regime was at loggerheads with the
Taliban and was ready for war with them. So why
could the US not talk with Iran, as Kissinger
implied, as when Kissinger and Vietnamese
representatives talked with each other and the
United States started to extricate itself from the
quagmire, a process that would, of course, be
painful but not as disastrous as collapse?
There are several important differences
between the Americans in Vietnam and the Americans
dealing with the Iranian war - and these
differences are not related to the fact that the
Vietnamese had no atomic weapons and were not
connected to international terrorism. The point is
in the case of Vietnam, the Americans implied that
they were talking not with the Vietnamese
themselves but with their powerful backer, the
USSR, the other superpower. In the case of Iran,
the US would have to speak with just Iran - a
small, underdeveloped country.
This would
imply that the US should regard it as a peer, at a
time when Europeans see the US not as a major
guarantor of their security but as a competitor,
and when US economic and scientific/educational
leadership is increasingly challenged. Direct
negotiation and especially agreement/power-sharing
with Iran would mean, if not geopolitical
"default", at least a strong "correction" of the
US geopolitical net value. And the pain of this
"correction" would be emphasized by the fact that
the Bush administration came to power on the crest
of unprecedented reaffirmation of US global
leadership after the sudden collapse of its major
geopolitical rival, the Soviet Union.
The
very painfulness of this decision explains why
Kissinger and other pragmatists were not heard,
why Kissinger has fallen out of favor with the
present US administration, and why he was not
invited to the president's splendid party of
notables. Bush's "party" did, of course, include
the current secretary of state, whose rise to
power was, apparently, in many ways due to the
maxim well known already in the days of ancient
Babylon: "You always give to your master the
advice that he would like to hear."
Dmitry Shlapentokh, PhD, is
associate professor of history, College of Liberal
Arts and Sciences, Indiana University South Bend.
He is author of East Against West: The First
Encounter - The Life of Themistocles, 2005.
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