Henry A. Kissinger: Realists vs. idealists

Henry A. Kissinger: Realists vs. idealists

Henry A. Kissinger TMSI THURSDAY, MAY 12, 2005

NEW YORK Extraordinary advances of democracy have occurred in recent months: elections in Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine and Palestine; local elections in Saudi Arabia; Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon; the opening up of the presidential election in Egypt, and upheavals against entrenched authoritarians in Kyrgyzstan. Rarely have conditions seemed so fluid and the environment so malleable. This welcome trend was partly triggered by President George W. Bush's Middle East policy and accelerated by his second inaugural address, which elevated the progress of freedom in the world to the defining objective of American foreign policy. Pundits have interpreted these events as a victory of "idealists" over "realists" in the debate over the conduct of American foreign policy. In fact, the United States is probably the only country in which the term "realist" can be used as a pejorative epithet. No serious realist should claim that power is its own justification. No idealist should imply that power is irrelevant to the spread of ideals. The real issue is to establish a sense of proportion between these two essential elements of policy. The progress of democracy did not occur entirely under its own momentum. Circumstance was as important as design. Elections in Iraq and Afghanistan were made possible by American military victories over the Taliban and Saddam Hussein; the Ukrainian election grew out of the collapse of Soviet and Russian power in Eastern Europe; the Lebanese upheaval reflected the isolation of Syria after the Soviet collapse, and the Palestinian elections were made possible by the death of Yasser Arafat and the defeat of the second Intifada. The debate between realism and idealism, therefore, usually misses the point. The realist school does not reject the importance of ideals or values. It does, however, insist on a careful, even unsentimental, weighing of the balance of material forces, together with an understanding of the history, culture and economics of the societies comprising the international system - above all, our own. The idealist school of thought is impatient with self-imposed restraints. It does not necessarily reject the geopolitical aspect of realism. But it translates it into a call for crusades on behalf of regime change. Though advanced as a new doctrine, the regime-change prescription follows well-established precedent. It was the impetus behind the religious wars of the 17th century, the wars of the French Revolution in the 18th and early 19th centuries, the Holy Alliance, the Trotskyite version of Communism, and the contemporary Muslim jihad. Realists judge policy by the ability to persevere in the pursuit of an objective in stages, each of which is imperfect by absolute standards but would not be attempted in the absence of absolute values. The acolytes of idealism sweep away such restraints; focusing on the ultimate objective, they reject the contingent discussion of feasibility with its inevitable geopolitical component. Realists seek equilibrium; idealists strive for conversion. This is why crusaders have usually caused more upheavals and suffering than statesmen. American exceptionalism, viewing itself as a shining city on the hill, has always insisted on representing universal values beyond the traditional dictates of national interest. In a world of jihad, terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, President Bush in his second inaugural address put forward a challenge at once going beyond the interests of any one country and that different societies could embrace without prejudice to their own interests. He elaborated that the United States seeks progress toward freedom, not its ultimate achievement in a defined time, and that it recognizes the historical evolution that must be the foundation of any successful process. On this basis, realists and idealists should go forward together. A clear-eyed commitment to the freedom agenda should keep the following principles in mind: The process of democratization does not depend on a single decision and will not be completed in a single stroke. Elections, however desirable, are only the beginning of a long enterprise. Americans need to understand that successes do not end their engagement but most probably deepen it. For as we involve ourselves, we bear the responsibility even for results we did not anticipate. Elections are not an inevitable guarantee of a democratic outcome. Radicals like the Hezbollah and Hamas seem to have learned the mechanics of democracy in order to undermine it and establish total control. In countries where a vacuum must be filled and U.S. forces are present, the American capacity to affect events is considerable. Even then, however, it is not possible to apply automatically models created over centuries in the homogeneous societies of Europe and America to ethnically diverse and religiously divided societies in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. In multiethnic societies, majority rule implies permanent subjugation of the minority unless part of a strong federal structure and a system of checks and balances. To achieve this by negotiation between parties that consider dominance by the other groups a threat to their very survival is an extraordinarily elusive undertaking. It will, however, determine the degree to which democratic goals in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, in Afghanistan can be achieved. Lebanon illustrates another aspect of these considerations. The upheaval that expelled Syrian forces is a testimony to the growth of popular consciousness but also to the changed strategic environment. Three times since 1958 - the United States that year, Syria in 1976 and Israel in 1981 - foreign intervention held the ring in Lebanon to prevent collapse into violence and to arbitrate among the Christian, Sunni, Shiite and Druze groups that constitute the Lebanese body politic. The test will be whether the United States and the international community are able to bring about an agreed political framework and whether they can mobilize an international presence to guarantee that the conflicting passions do not once again erupt into violence. It is the fusion of strategy and values, the merging of the practical and the ideal - and not an overemphasis on one at the expense of the other - that holds the key to Lebanon's future. In Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the vacuum is potential, not actual. A wise policy will navigate between efforts to overcome stagnation and pressures that will dissolve the existing political framework into a contest of radical factions or the victory of one of them. Policies erring in either direction could turn these countries into the Achilles heel of the entire Middle East policy. Finally there is the challenge of how to deal with societies such as China and Russia, which so far have relied on the Western political tradition only to a small degree, if at all, in their transition to the globalized world. So far they have used their own histories or national senses of identity as guides. To what extent and by what means can America influence this process? And in what direction? The implementation of the freedom agenda needs to relate the values of the democratic tradition to the historic possibilities of other societies. We must avoid the danger that a policy focused on our domestic perceptions may generate reactions in other societies rallying around patriotism and leading to a coalition of the resentful against attempts at perceived American hegemony. A strategy to implement the vision of the freedom agenda needs consensus-building, both domestically and internationally. That will be the test as to whether we are seizing the opportunity for systemic change or participating in an episode. (Henry A. Kissinger, the former secretary of state, heads the consulting firm Kissinger and Associates.)