Two Kissingers

HENRY KISSINGER AT a conference on "Vietnam and the Presidency" in Boston on March 11. -

There is a disconnect between intellect and character in Henry Kissinger's personality.

HENRY A. KISSINGER'S affection for India and India's warmth towards him, both highly publicised, are fairly recent. Even in former times, though, he did admire aspects of our national life. Indians began demonising him during the Bangladesh crisis. But they were struck by the deftness with which he established a rapport, simultaneously, with both the Soviet Union and China who were locked in an intense feud. However, his judgment was not as sound as he imagined and his deviousness proved counter-productive. Indians, true to form, got emotional and remain so even now, replacing demonisation with a warmth that only amuses. The Doctor kept his head.

India's pretensions to a moral foreign policy never impressed Kissinger in the past and do not now, though the professions have become far fewer and "the usual suspects", the drummer boys in the media, have replaced professions of morality with declamations of realpolitik, ignorance of both concepts and support to the government of the day remaining constant.

There are, in fact, two Kissingers whom it would be most rewarding to understand. One is the brilliant, deeply insightful scholar. If his book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, published in 1958, won him national and international fame, it was because it has to this day altogether few equals in erudition and original insights. He revealed himself as a policy-oriented intellectual, a trait which became more prominent with the passage of time. His brains went to his head. In office, first as National Security Adviser and next as Secretary of State, he revealed a capacity for intrigue and deception he could well have done without. Daniel P. Moynihan had an explanation for the unnecessary resort to deception. But let that pass. What needs to be remarked is that even as an academic he was a highly successful operator - a species so familiar to us here - who could not contain ambition.

Indian appraisals can be faulted on two major counts. One is an almost total neglect of Kissinger the Scholar. Secondly, the demonisation centred on the Bangladesh crisis in 1971.

Here, again, in conformity with Indian self-righteousness and rejection of the values of scholarship, whenever they were perceived to conflict with a spurious commitment to "nationalism", there is no effort to understand and accept that there was a clash of interests with both sides playing for high stakes and that neither was moral.

There is a mass of documentation on 1971, which remains neglected. Kissinger never comes here without being asked about the deployment of the Enterprise. The eight ships comprising Task Force 74 arrived in the Bay of Bengal on December 15, the day before Dhaka fell. Apart from the fact that such persistent questioning is in bad form, it also reflects professional incompetence. There should have been, instead, one informed sharp questioning which should have included his instigation to China on December 10 to attack India.

But our media are, for the most part, obsessed with trivia. On June 29, 2005, the State Department's documents of 1971 were published. Television channels and most newspapers went to town over the expletives President Richard Nixon and Kissinger had used for India and its Prime Minister Indira Gandhi when they met on November 15. Whether the business interests of Kissinger Associates or genuine, if new-found, affection for India prompted him, Kissinger reacted instantly with a TV interview which was replete with profuse expressions of respect for both. There is a need on both sides to reflect on 1971.

Life, however, moves on. We now have the Doctor's detailed prescription, which should be read by every serious student of India-United States relations. Entitled "Anatomy of a Partnership", this long article was published in the International Herald Tribune of March 11, 2006, and is pegged to President George W. Bush's visit to India.

Some old errors persist. India's non-alignment was surely not based on "the moral equivalence of the two" blocs. Like the "tilt" towards the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, it was based entirely on India's perception of its national interest.

It is amazing that Kissinger should write that "the democratic institutions that the two countries shared did not determine political choices". They never do. This error is of a piece with another that democracies do not go to war unprovoked. This assertion is belied by the United States' attack on Iraq. One of its Founding Fathers, also one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton, refuted the claim that republics are by nature peaceful and monarchies, warlike (The Federalist, No. VI).

Nor is Kissinger well informed about India. "The Hindu religion accepts no converts, one is born into it or forever denied its stringencies and its comforts." This is lifted almost verbatim from his book Does America Need a Foreign Policy? (2001; page 155).

It is the analysis of India's foreign policy that merits attention. Unlike the Condoleezza Rices and the Donald Rumsfelds, Kissinger is keenly aware that India will not join any alliance against other countries; least of all against China. India is "not a comfortable partner for global ideological missions. What it analyses with great precision is its national security requirements. And these owe more to traditional notions of equilibrium and national interest - partly a legacy of British rule - than to ideological debates."

Kissinger realistically notes: "Neither China nor India has so far engaged in a diplomatic or security contest over pre-eminence in the heartland of Asia. For the foreseeable future, both countries, while protecting their interests, have too much to lose from a general confrontation. Too often America's India policy is justified - occasionally with a wink - as way to contain China. But the reality has been that so far both India and America have found it in their interest to maintain a constructive relationship with China.

"To be sure, America's global strategy benefits from Indian participation in building a new world order. But India will not serve as America's foil with China and will resent any attempts to use it in that role."

This should dampen the ardour of some in the South Block who yearn for an India-U.S. alliance; if need be, against China.

Kissinger is almost unique among Americans in recognising that globalisation poses serious problems for India. But he is unrealistic on America's help to India to solve those problems. "In the past decade, reform-minded administrators from both major Indian political groupings have increasingly linked India in the world economy. Therefore, the basic dilemma of globalisation will increasingly have to be addressed by Indian and American leaders. Globalisation frequently imposes asymmetrical sacrifices - benefits and costs affect different elements of society differently. The losers in that process will seek redress through their political system, which is national. The success of globalisation breeds a temptation for protectionism and the need to combine technical achievement with human concern. India and America have an opportunity to overcome these temptations by joint efforts" (emphasis added throughout). The U.S. is more concerned to promote its interests in India than to help India's poor. That responsibility rests squarely and exclusively on the shoulders of India's leaders.

Kissinger opposed sanctions on India after Pokhran-II in 1998. He had blown the roof after Pokhran-I in 1974. He opines that "nuclear co-operation with India is appropriate" but does not explicitly support the accord of July 18, 2005, as elaborated on March 2, 2006. The cautionary advice he gives is sound: "The scope of the nuclear cooperation should avoid the rhetoric and the reality of a nuclear arms race in which China could be tempted to support nuclear programmes in Iran and Pakistan as a counterweight.

"The goal should be an Asia that navigates between an unacceptable hegemony by any power and an arms race that replicates the tragedies of Europe, only with fierce weapons and even vaster consequences." This cannot be achieved except by China-India and India-Pakistan understandings on the nuclear balance in this region.

This article must be read with Kissinger's statement to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on July 13, 1995. He said: "The current world contains six or seven major global players whose ability to affect non-military decisions is essentially comparable. In such an international order, there are only two roads to stability; one is hegemony based on a country's dominance; the other is equilibrium, which is another way of describing the notorious balance of power." It is not hard to identify "the six or seven". They are the U.S., Russia, China, Japan, Germany, France and Britain.

But he said also that the U.S. should be prepared to act alone. In Asia his prime concerns are China and Japan. His fears of Asian nations "forming a block inimical to America's purposes" are unreal. More realistic is his perception of the growth of Japan's - "a Japanese nuclear programme in the next century cannot be excluded" - and China's power. His concern at the deterioration in the U.S.' relations with Japan and China is understandable. "It ought to be a settled maxim of American foreign policy not to take on the principal Asian nations simultaneously."

One reflective passage bears quotation in extenso because it applies as much to a definition of a stable order in South Asia as in the world at large: "The reality is that the emerging world order will have to be based on some concept of equilibrium, at least some concept of balance among its various regions. In practice, this requires a balancing of dissatisfactions. It is impossible for every participant in an international system to be perfectly satisfied with every aspect and at all times, that happy condition has never been achieved by humanity. Still it may be possible for the major players to be sufficiently satisfied that they do not seek to overthrow the international system by violence, terrorism, economic warfare, or other methods so well elaborated in our century."

Nearly 50 years ago, he had said something similar and as wise: "The quest for absolute security inevitably produces a revolutionary situation. A legitimate order is distinguished by not pressing the quest for security to its limits, by its willingness to find safety in a combination of physical safeguards and mutual trust. It is legitimate not because each power is perfectly satisfied, but because it will not be so dissatisfied that it will seek its remedy in overthrowing the existing system." Every power must learn to live with some insecurity. Absolute security for one is absolute insecurity for others. It spells a mindless, endless arms race.

To return to 1971, India did not march into the then East Pakistan to uphold moral values or check the genocide which Pakistan had let loose after its army crackdown on March 25, 1971. Indira Gandhi "actually made the commitment" to march into East Pakistan on April 6, less than a fortnight later and before the massive refugee influx, as the then Joint Secretary in the Pakistan Division of the Ministry of External Affairs, A.K. Ray, revealed. The Cabinet endorsed this on April 28. After the rampages of the officially sponsored Mukti Bahini, Indian armour moved in on November 21. Outside India, that is regarded as the day on which the war began. India's action did not check the genocide one bit. Most of it lay in the past.

Given Pakistan's criminal behaviour, there was not the slightest possibility of East Pakistan accepting even partnership with the West. Thirty-five years later, there is not the slightest exertion in retrospect whether India could have followed a different course and achieved the same result without incurring the odium and the expenses of a war.

Nor is Kissinger given to introspection on this subject. The U.S. might well have retained India's friendship, as also the new links with China, and got independence for a grateful Bangladesh. Kissinger was not only devious but, what would be more hurtful to his ego, also utterly inept. He ruled out any help for a peaceful transfer of power from Islamabad to Dhaka. Only the Soviet Union had the sense to think of it, albeit belatedly, through the two famous Polish resolutions of December 14 and 15, 1971, in the United Nations Security Council.

The National Security Archive published, on December 16, 2002, a set of documents which included a memorandum of conversation between Kissinger and China's Ambassador to the U.N., Huang Hua, in New York on December 10. Why not question him on that? These extracts reveal a lot. Kissinger said: "The President wants you to know that it's, of course, up to the People's Republic to decide its own course of action in this situation, but if the People's Republic were to consider the situation on the Indian continent a threat to its security, the U.S. would oppose efforts of others to interfere with the People's Republic. We are not recommending any particular steps, we are simply informing you about the actions of others...

"Our judgment is if West Pakistan is to be preserved from destruction, two things are needed - maximum intimidation of the Indians and, to some extent, the Soviets. Secondly, maximum pressure for the cease-fire... . we have an intelligence report according to which Mrs. Indira Gandhi told her Cabinet that she wants to destroy the Pakistani army and air force and to annex this part of Kashmir, Azad Kashmir, and then to offer a cease-fire. This is what we believe must be prevented and this is why I have taken the liberty to ask for this meeting with the Ambassador... .

"We want to keep the pressure on India, both militarily and politically. We have no interest in political negotiations between Pakistani leaders and East Pakistani leaders as such. The only interest that we possibly have is to get Soviet agreement to a United Pakistan. We have no interest in an agreement between Bangladesh and Pakistan. We are prepared also to consider simply a cease-fire. We are prepared also to follow your course in the U.N. which most of my colleagues would be delighted to do and then Pakistan would be destroyed.

"If we followed your course of insisting on cease-fire and withdrawal and do nothing then Pakistan will be destroyed, and many people in America will be delighted. If you and Pakistan want this then we will do it. That is no problem for us... . We will not cooperate with anyone to impose anything on Pakistan. We have taken a stand against India and we will maintain this stand. But we have this problem. It is our judgment, with great sorrow, that the Pakistan army in two weeks will disintegrate in the West as it has disintegrated in the East. If we are wrong about this, we are wrong about everything.

"What did you think of cease-fire without political negotiations? The only reason we want political negotiations at all is to preserve East Pakistan, not to weaken it... . When I asked for this meeting, I did so to suggest Chinese military help, to be quite honest. That's what I had in mind, not to discuss with you how to defeat Pakistan. I didn't want to find a way out of it, but I did it in an indirect way." What is Kissinger's explanation for this sordid manoeuvre?

The entire record on 1971 deserves an objective and thorough appraisal. Meanwhile, we can study the Doctor's prescriptions, not least his tome Diplomacy. After leaving public office in 1977, Kissinger took to writing and lecturing and floated a consultancy firm - Kissinger Associates.

Had he been merely an ambitious politician we might have understood. Had he stuck to the high road of scholarship, he would have been hugely admired as an intellectual giant. But in either event the world would have lost a singularly colourful statesman and India an adversary of old determined to make amends now.

That there is in him a disconnect between intellect and character was well known to all. Kissinger's record reveals a disconnect also between his writings and the policies he pursued in office and advocated since. The one central theme in all the writings is the need to establish and maintain an international order which enjoys legitimacy. He is too intelligent not to realise that George W. Bush has stripped the international order of legitimacy and undermined international law. Yet he supports the invasion of Iraq as ardently as he did U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

The explanation for this glaring discordance is simple, though not commonly appreciated. In academia his writings were cerebral. In office, the conduct was emotional, whether he was an adviser or a performer. On the Berlin wall his advice in 1961 was to tear it down. He is a congenital hardliner with a preference for the quick fix and the clever device. The vision itself was narrow because his was not equipped intellectually to scan a broader one. Abysmal ignorance of Asia persists still.

But it was the flawed personality which wrecked his career. What George H.W. Bush, who was present at Kissinger's meeting with Huang Hua on December 10, 1971, recorded was most unflattering. Kissinger ran down the State Department to the Chinese envoy. Bush senior saved Kissinger from a faux-pas he was about to commit. "Henry is very excitable, very emotional almost often... hits the ceiling... absolutely brutal to these guys [his subordinates]... arrogant... paranoid... yet he is very bright".

Kissinger bullied subordinates but cringed before Nixon, as he did before Mao. We know now that Nixon was very much in command. For all the glamour and quick fixes, Kissinger's own achievements were few. He simply had not the temperament of a statesman. By 1976, Kissinger had forfeited respect; but retained admiration for the intellect which sustains him and his firm. That implies a conflict between the detachment of a writer and the concerns of a consultant in business. It is hardly necessary to mention which wins in this self-designed conflict.