http://www.iht.com/a...dkissinger.htmlHenry Kissinger: Now, back to defining a new world order By Henry A. Kissinger AFX
Saturday, November 6, 2004
The election campaign that has mesmerized America - and the world - is over. What remains are the challenges that gave rise to this occasionally frenzied battle and the responsibility of dealing with them.
No president has faced an agenda of comparable scope. This is not hyperbole; it is the hand history has dealt this generation. Never before has it been necessary to conduct a war with neither front lines nor geographic definition and, at the same time, to rebuild fundamental principles of world order to replace the traditional ones that went up in the smoke of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
George W. Bush will have to lead an effort to define and then maintain an international system that reflects the new, revolutionary circumstances.
I supported Bush during the campaign. But the United States cannot tackle this agenda except in the context of a commitment by all sides to healing. All concerned with the future must find ways to cooperate so that the world will again see Americans working toward a common destiny both at home and in the community of nations. It is to such an effort that this article seeks to make a contribution.
No issue requires bipartisanship and international cooperation more urgently than the next phase of Iraq policy. If a radical government emerges in Baghdad - because the United States is defeated or tires of solitary exertions, even more if Iraq falls into terrorist chaos - the entire Islamic world will find itself in turmoil.
Other nations should find it in their interest to participate at least in the tasks of political and economic reconstruction. There is no shortcut: The restoration of security in Iraq, especially in areas that have become terrorist sanctuaries, is imperative.
The first national elections scheduled for the end of January are the next step. They should be viewed not as a culmination but as the first and least complicated stage in the quest for Iraqi self-government.
The country is composed of three major groups: Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis, with the Shiites representing about 60 percent of the population and the other two groups about 20 percent each. For 500 years, the Sunnis have dominated by military force and, during Saddam's rule, with extraordinary brutality. Thus national elections, based on majority rule, imply a radical upheaval in the relative power and status of the three communities. The insurgency in the Sunni region is not only a national struggle against America; it is a means to restore political dominance.
The January elections in Iraq, therefore, must be regarded as the beginning of an extended contest among the various groups, involving the constant risk of civil war, or of a national struggle against the United States, or both.
In the potential cauldron after the January elections, some degree of internationalization is the only realistic path toward stability inside Iraq and sustained domestic support in America. And meaningful internationalization requires a focus other than security, and the participation of countries other than - or in addition to - NATO.
This is not an abdication to consensus. The United States, by virtue of its military presence and financial role, would retain the leading position. After the January elections, an international contact group, under UN auspices, to advise on Iraq's political evolution would be desirable. Logical members would be countries that have experience with militant Islam and much to lose by the radicalization of Iraq - countries like India, Turkey, Russia and Algeria, in addition to the United States and Britain.
While militant Islam is the most immediate and obvious challenge to international order, nuclear proliferation is the most long-range and insidious threat to global survival. The international system is now confronted by the imminent spread of nuclear weapons into the hands of two countries with a worrisome agenda: the odd, isolated regime in North Korea, and Iran, whose current regime has supported a variety of terrorist groups in the Middle East and continues to declare America its principal enemy.
On North Korea, the issue is whether negotiations should be conducted bilaterally between the United States and North Korea or in the existing six-party forum in Beijing, comprising North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.
Each of the parties in talks has special political and strategic objectives in the back of its mind. Thus the technicalities of nonproliferation pale compared with the objective of elaborating a security system for Northeast Asia. A similar analysis could be made in the case of Iran, for which a forum does not yet exist.
In any event, the solution cannot be left to bilateral U.S. talks with the proliferators. The insistence on U.S.-North Korean bilateralism would leave America as the sole enforcer of any agreement at the borders of China. And it would invite Pyongyang to use the new agreement for future blackmail - the pattern it followed after the bilateral agreement of 1994. The same applies in a different context to relations with Iran.
For all their importance, the regional crises are dwarfed by the fundamental transfer of power within the international system. Historians agree that the emergence of a unified Germany over a century ago unbalanced the European system by introducing a state stronger than each of its neighbors. In our age, the rise of China as a potential superpower is of even greater historical significance, marking as it does a shift in the center of gravity of world affairs from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
To be sure, China will not conduct as imprudent a policy as the Soviet Union, which threatened all its neighbors simultaneously and challenged the United States to a contest of survival. The special case of Taiwan aside, it will seek influence commensurate with its growth by diplomatic and political means.
Leaders in both Beijing and Washington have a responsibility to help shape the judgments of emerging generations. With respect to China, the priority should be to keep the nationalism that is replacing Communism from taking a confrontational turn. In America, it is to transcend the temptation to view history through the prism of the most recent experience rather than of the long-range view.
China and the United States require a permanent strategic dialogue at a high level seeking a common definition of long-range purposes - to make them compatible where possible, and to reduce the dangers of confrontation when that effort fails. They need to keep the Taiwan issue from undermining the relationship.
All this brings us back to Atlantic relations. The political campaign has cast Atlantic disagreements in terms of American short-term tactical errors. This is a misreading of reality. The problem goes deeper than personalities.
The impasse is partly due to the fact that the generation that formed the Atlantic relationship has passed from the scene.
In Europe, the nations that invented the concept of the nation-state are now in the process of seeking to abandon their sovereignty to a European Union not yet possessing the traditional attributes of the state.
All this has generated a witch's brew of mutual misunderstandings. These conditions cannot be removed by consultation on any one individual issue, and require a fundamental change of attitude on both sides of the Atlantic. The nations bordering the North Atlantic need to ask themselves the fundamental question that has always underpinned the alliance - that is, what will the allies do for the relationship beyond the international consensus reflected at the United Nations?
Much of European debate today implies that the answer is "very little." To subject common military action to prior approval of the Security Council is incompatible with the very concept of alliance, which implies a special set of obligations. It spells the ultimate disintegration of a world order with the Atlantic partnership as its centerpiece.
The Atlantic relationship, to be meaningful, needs to have a special character. The United States and Europe should be prepared to do things for each other in the sphere beyond the immediate dictates of national interest and without insisting on universal consensus.
A deepening of the dialogue between the two sides of the Atlantic is imperative. should be supplemented by a new approach to the Palestinian-Israeli problem. For decades, the diplomatic stalemate has been deepened because Europe was perceived to champion the Palestinian claims and America the goals of Israel. But new circumstances permit envisaging how the two positions can be brought closer. In this process, the Atlantic alliance could rediscover its common purpose.
The debate between unilateralism and multilateralism must be transcended with this perspective in mind. Unilateralism for its own sake is self-defeating. But so is abstract multilateralism.
The dilemma of our age was perhaps best summed up by the philosopher Immanuel Kant over 200 years ago. In his essay "Perpetual Peace," he wrote that the world was destined for perpetual peace. It would come about either by human foresight or by a series of catastrophes that leave no other choice. Which it will be is the ultimate question the newly re-elected president will have to face.
