Lord Chalfont on Kissinger's grand manner
After one of his more spectacular essays in international arm-twisting, Henry Kissinger was approached by a somewhat uncritical admirer at a Washington dinner party. "Dr Kissinger," he said, "I want to thank you for saving the world." "You're welcome" was the Secretary of State's magnificently simple reply. This characteristic episode encapsulates much of the Kissinger grand manner — most notably his contempt for the more debilitating manifestations of false modesty. It is, of course, arguable that Dr Kissinger has not, in fact, saved the world — at any rate, not yet. There is still a vicious little war going on in Indo-China, although Americans are no longer being killed in it. In spite of intensive American diplomacy in the Middle East, Arabs and Israelis remain in a state of apparently irreconcilable hostility; and however assiduously Dr Kissinger may commute between the Arab capitals and Tel Aviv, the probability is that there will be, before long, another spasm of violence, bringing with it not only death and destruction to those most closely involved, but also danger to the whole precarious structure of international relations. As for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, they are rapidly emerging as a super-power confidence trick of epic proportions. The first round of Soviet-American negotiations resulted in the solemn announcement of an agreement to "limit" nuclear weapons which, in fact, permitted the United States and the Soviet Union to increase their nuclear armouries, already so enormous and destructive that they make sense only in the minds of earnest academic eccentrics engaged in some bizarre two-person zero-sum game.
It is also arguable that Dr Kissinger's manipulation of the levers of power is altogether too cynical even by the chilling standards of realpolitih. Quite apart from his insensitive forays into the minefield of European politics, he has presided over one of the most blatant examples since the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia of great power interference in the affairs of a sovereign state. Whatever may be said about the Allende government and its implications for the balance of world power, the CIA's operations in Chile had a ruthless quality about them which cannot be ignored in any assessment of American foreign policy in the Kissinger era. Yet, even those who find it difficult to admire a virtuoso display of uninhibited power politics are obliged to admit that the American Secretary of State is, for the first time in the history of post-nuclear international relations, bringing the power of a first class mind to the whole complex of interlocking problems which threaten the prosperity, stability and even the survival of the modern world.
Marvin Kalb and his brother Bernard, American radio and television correspondents, have set out to cast some light on the character and achievements of this remarkable man.* The bare story is extraordinary enough. Kissinger arrived in the United States at the age of fifteen, a Jewish refugee from Hitler's Germany. His early years as an immigrant were undistinguished; one of his early jobs would nowadays have guaranteed him an appearance on one of those awful television panel programmes — he was responsible for squeezing the acid out of the bristles in a shaving brush factory. After a short stint as a delivery boy, he was called up into the US Army. After the war he won a scholarship to Harvard, became a Professor there, and after the Presidential election of 1968 was appointed Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. The President was Richard Nixon, regarded by Kissinger only a few months earlier as "the most dangerous, of all the men running, to have as President." Five years later, thirty-five years after the Kissingers had escaped from Germany, Henry became Secretary of State.
The main source for the Kalbs' study of Kissinger is Kissinger. It is not surprising, therefore, that there is a fair amount of gee-whizzery in the treatment. The book begins with the words "Henry Alfred Kissinger is an extravaganza," and the pages which follow are liberally sprinkled with words like "genius," "style" and "magic." This is not to suggest that the admiration is totally unqualified. There are occasional quotations from those whose attitude to the messianic Henry falls some way short of enthusiasm. (One Harvard contemporary described him with classic, if somewhat confused, brevity as "a son of a bitch, a prima * Kissinger Marvin Kalb and Bernard Kalb (Hutchinson £6.00)
donna, self-serving, self-centred"); and there 15 an absorbing account of a momentous confrontation between Kissinger and thirteen of his former senior colleagues from Harvard after the American invasion of Cambodia. These distinguished and infuriated gentlemen des. cended on the White House and, in an hour and a half of tense and uncompromising debate, demanded that Kissinger use his influence to stop "that madman," the President. At the end of the meeting one of the deputation remarked, that Dr Kissinger seemed unhappy. "I hope so, was the laconic comment of Dr Thomas Schelling, the leader of the group. The Kalbs subscribe to the conventional YiFw that Kissinger's approach to foreign policy derives from the thinking which he distilled his doctoral thesis at Harvard in the 'fifties. Ells original plan had been to write a three-Part study of the period of peace lasting from the Congress of Vienna in 1814-1815 until the outbreak of World War I. In the event he wrote only the first part of the trilogy entitled, with somewhat Teutonic prolixity, A World Restored: Castlereagh, Metternich and the Restoration of Peace 1812-1822. His proposition was, that these nineteenth century statesmen hau succeeded in creating a balance of power in which it was in the interest of no country t° allow war to undermine the structure. T,i° achieve this, they had to be cunning a°° patient; they had to play the power game „le total secrecy, unrestricted by parliamerns: which lack the temperament for diplomacY. they were not afraid to use force, when necessary, to maintain order. They did not siu away from duplicity, cynicism unscrupulousness, all of which were regardea as acceptable instruments of internationa politics. The temptation to draw a parallel between Kissinger and Metternich, th.e supreme exponent of this type of diplomacY, Is irresistible. Yet the Kalb brothers point out tha,t Kissinger himself dismisses the Metternich analogy, referring to it with typical candour as -a lot of second-rate psychological junk." It is, however, interesting to recall, as the las,achapter of Kissinger records, that in A W0r1„., Restored, the Harvard graduate who was become American Secretary of State wrote 0' Castlereagh and Metternich: Both dominated every negotiation in which they participated; Castlereagh by the ability to reconcile conflicting points of view and by the singlernind ness conferred by an empirical policy; Metterruc' through an almost uncanny faculty of achieving personal dominance over his adversaries, and the nr: of defining a moral framework which made conceso sions appear, not as surrenders but as sacrifices t° common cause.
The Kalbs' study of Kissinger is not by art,.,31 standards definitive. It is an extended essay t" the journalistic genre of instant hist°r,,Y,.; (Incidentally, it records that when Kissinger, circumstances of elaborate secrecy, flew fr°": Pakistan on his first trip to China, he Wri' spotted at Islamabad International Airport,b!,, one solitary journalist, Mr M. F. R. Beg, I: stringer for the Daily Telegraph. Beg, according to the Kalbs, duly filed one of the greatest exclusives of all time, but the editor on &Pr
e simply refused to believe. it.) However, until tn
Kissinger story is complete, and future histor; 'ails are able to arrive at a more profoun, assessment of his significance, his own portral of Castlereagh and Metternich will do W enough as the first rough sketch for what nng" one day be a picture of the first statesman understand the realities of power in the i.voi of nuclear weapons. Already the legend is se, potent that if a stringer in some remote outpost' of civilisation were to report tomorrow thatID„p Kissinger had been seen embarking in a sPa•-•,ship for Mars to conclude an interplanetarJ agreement, there are not many editors nos"' who would spike the story.
Lord Chalfont was Minister of State at the4 Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 196 to 1970.
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