Politicus: 'Rediscoverer' of China has words for Europe: printer friendly version

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Politicus: 'Rediscoverer' of China has words for Europe
John Vinocur
TUESDAY, MAY 10, 2005

Politicus: 'Rediscoverer' of China has words for Europe
John Vinocur
TUESDAY, MAY 10, 2005

BRUSSELS In the International Nostalgia League of political Old Glories, blazing insights are not the usual main attraction.

Top-table guests at lunches and private conferences, eight or ten or a score or two of listeners, often brought together with corporate or foundation funds, could hear a post-presidential Ronald Reagan string together a series of stories without pause or excessive substance for an hour and a quarter and then go back to work amused and mostly unenlightened.

Margaret Thatcher, when she was lunching, railed on schedule. Bill Clinton monologues. Helmut Schmidt admonishes intelligently. John Major reminds people, gently, who he was. And Mikhail Gorbachev, whom I have not heard across the table, is said to bore.

Which brings things to the heart of the batting order: Henry Kissinger. At 82 in a couple of weeks, Kissinger, uniquely, gets audiences of people who expect him to make them smart.

He is sharp and actual, although a master of the flattering or dismissive swerve when required. He focuses on the issues that count.

And in Europe - where he was last week, talking to a couple of government heads, doing a lunch in Brussels, a private conference in Germany and a couple of speeches - if not revered, Kissinger is honored as a one-off spring of experience and vision able to wash clarity into the present's pebbled jumble.

In America, he comes into many rooms with the baggage of Vietnam and Cambodia, a notion for some that he is a bad man, assigned to historical penitence despite a Nobel Peace Prize. Funny, but in Europe, where the U.S. role in Vietnam launched another generation's moral doubts about America, that label hasn't stuck. And not in China, either.

"For Europe, Kissinger is one of the last wise men," said Bernard Kouchner, the Socialist who always, it seems, leads the polls as the best-liked opposition politician in France. Kouchner, the former UN High Commissioner in Kosovo, joined a discussion group including Kissinger over the weekend.

"In spite of the memories of Cambodia and Vietnam, he's the man who rediscovered China," Kouchner said afterward. "He developed the idea of near-continuous negotiations, staying on the case, and I took inspiration from it in Kosovo. And he's remarkably at home in the present, truly intelligent on the idea of the necessary complementarity of the United States and Europe."

Which is absolutely not to say that on the subject of trans-Atlantic relations Kissinger tells the Europeans what they want to hear. But the chronicler of Castlereagh and Metternich is surely the most believable American willing to proclaim to a European audience (and escape their snorts and titters) that the relationship is spiritually and psychologically important for both sides.

There is also the appeal for Europeans of getting something off their chest to Kissinger, thinking he'll understand, and somehow filter their idea back into the consciousness of the American elite. Example: on this trip, hearing from a man that America had lost moral leadership in the world, rather familiar ground since the 1970s for Richard Nixon's security adviser and secretary of state.

These days, Kissinger discusses U.S.-European difficulties most interestingly in the context of the emergence of China and India in the next 20 years as world forces. Since the ground rules of the meetings he attended in Europe didn't allow for an exact rendering of his remarks, Kissinger was asked to talk for partial attribution away from the dining and conference rooms.

He doesn't believe that China, while demanding respect and consideration, will become a Soviet Union trying to take on the whole world. The issue, Kissinger thinks, for both Europe and the United States is whether they develop a strategic approach on China together or compete for influence.

In his view, there ought to be a conceptual approach among the top trans-Atlantic leaders about where they are going.

Failing that, and at minimum, there should be an agreement to function together on pragmatic problems. Yet it was only "sort of true" that European-American relations were improving. European leaders don't think in the same global strategic context, and the Europeans have difficulty (contrary to the cliché) distinguishing between their long-term interests and the short term.

In fact, Kissinger said a part of Europe's leadership - I can't imagine him challenging the idea that France and Germany want to enroll Russia in their vision of Europe serving as a counterweight to the United States - now appeared to approach events by "turning everything into a contest" with the Americans.

"Whether Europe becomes strong is essentially up to the Europeans," he said. "Is there any evidence the United States wants to divide Europe? I am an agnostic on the subject of the European constitution. But we are not attempting to prevent the consolidation of Europe."

Kissinger always stresses that he speaks outside any official capacity (he hasn't held an official job since the Ford administration and Leonid Brezhnev were in power), but at its sharpest, the central element of what he sees now concerning Europe and America is the difficulty for them to arrive at a common vision.

In the United States, Kissinger said, it has come down to this: "The perception of the people who deal with Europeans is that Europeans perceive themselves as adversaries. If you read what some of their leaders are saying, there's some basis for this."

Kissinger's status in Europe wouldn't have been sustained all these years if the deliciously slow-hand of his humor didn't continue to function as the flip side of the message.

Heading for China soon, he was asked last weekend if it were true he once asked Chou En-lai what he regarded as the significance of the French Revolution, and that Chou had replied, "We're working on that."

His voice a mock grumble, this master of ambiguity answered on the next beat. The story, Kissinger said, had the same veracity as the one that had him, hearing Europe had offered its opinion on something, asking if there was a phone number for Europe so he could call back.

E-mail: pagetwo@iht.com

Tomorrow: Roger Cohen on George W. Bush between memories of Nazism and Communism.