Diplomacy

“Nations have pursued self-interest more frequently than high-minded principle, and have competed more than they have cooperated. There is little evidence to suggest this age-old model of behavior has changed, or that it is likely to change in the decades ahead. What is new about the emerging world order is that, for the first time, the United States can neither withdraw from the world nor dominate it.”

Kissinger is a prominent member of the realist tradition, which regards the struggle for power as the dominant and ineradicable fact of political life. He also holds that America has largely defied realist logic either by removing itself from the struggle for power, which was so long concentrated in Europe, or by being so preponderant in its power that it could simply impose its will without having to balance competing interests. The post-Cold War era marks the end of that fortunate condition, and so one way to summarize Kissinger’s counsel is that America now has to learn to be realist.

“Every American president since Wilson has advanced variations on Wilson’s theme. Domestic debates have more often dealt with the failure to fulfill Wilson’s ideals (some so commonplace that they were no longer even identified with him) than with whether they were in fact lending adequate guidance in meeting the occasionally brutal challenges of a turbulent world. For three generations, critics have savaged Wilson’s analysis and conclusions; and yet, in all this time, Wilson’s principles have remained the bedrock of American foreign-policy thinking.”

In Kissinger’s estimation, US foreign policy in the 20th-century has been uniformly idealistic, dedicated to universalizing the principles of democracy and individual rights that prevail in its domestic politics. Many academics, Kissinger perhaps most notably, have articulated a critique based on the harsh realities of power politics, but with the possible exception of Kissinger’s own time at the helm of the State Department, he regards America as thoroughly Wilsonian, a habit it will have to break, he argues, to manage the geopolitical challenges of the 21st century.