Kissinger's Wisdom... and Advice.

• Author: Mearsheimer, John J.
• Position: Review

Henry A. Kissinger, Does America Need A Foreign Policy?: Toward a Diplomacy for the 21st Century (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 318 pp., $30.

WHEN HENRY Kissinger asks Does America Need A Foreign Policy?, the question is obviously rhetorical. For a global superpower like the United States, the answer is certainly "yes." But Kissinger has a reason for choosing such a title for his newest book. He means to imply that the United States has not had a coherent and effective foreign policy since the Cold War ended, and that it needs one badly as it enters the 21st century. And it will surprise no one to discover that Kissinger thinks he knows what that foreign policy should be.

It behooves us to pay careful attention to Kissinger's views on foreign policy; few are better qualified to write on the subject. Not only was Kissinger, as both National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, the driving force behind U.S. foreign policy during one of the most tumultuous periods in American history (1969-1977), but he is also a deeply learned man who has written extensively and intelligently about international politics for nearly five decades. Indeed, never has there been a statesman with Henry Kissinger's credentials as a scholar, or a scholar with his credentials as a statesman.

Does America Need A Foreign Policy? is a tour d'horizon in which Kissinger analyzes U.S. interests in five regions of the world--Europe, the Western Hemisphere, Asia, the Middle East and Africa--and offers policy prescriptions for each area. Kissinger also devotes separate chapters to globalization and human rights. The most important parts of the book, however, deal with U.S. policy toward Europe and Asia. These two regions, which contain other great powers and in which the United States still maintains a large military presence, are of the greatest strategic importance to America. Hence, Kissinger's emphasis on them is understandable.

Kissinger's prescription is a simple one: the United States must strive to preserve the core alliances it created and directed during the Cold War. Regarding Europe, he wants to see a formidable NATO united around a clear strategic purpose, and he therefore advocates maximally harmonious transatlantic relations. In Asia, he recommends maintaining close relations between the United States and Japan. In essence, Kissinger is bent on preserving the Cold War order in Asia and Europe, even though its original raison d'etre--the U.S.-Soviet rivalry--disappeared more than a decade ago.

Given these goals, it is hardly surprising that Kissinger is distressed by the growing signs that America's diplomatic position is eroding. He is especially disturbed by the situation in Europe, where he sees abundant evidence that the United States and its NATO allies are headed for a messy divorce.

Kissinger is well aware that U.S.-European relations have been plagued by disputes since NATO's inception in 1949. One might even say he wrote the book on this subject 36 years ago, under the apt title, The Troubled Partnership. [1] But the current tensions are much more serious, as revealed by the willingness of European leaders to criticize U.S. policy in ways that would have been unthinkable during the Cold War. Thus, Kissinger is dismayed that French President Jacques Chirac, speaking as the representative of the European Union, stood alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin in October 2000 and "attacked the Clinton administration's plan to explore revision of the ABM Treaty." He also finds the EU'S recent move to challenge the Bush Administration's hardline policy on North Korea even more egregious. Europeans have become so hostile to America, Kissinger notes, that their identity is now defined largely in terms of an "almost congenital opposition to the United States."

According to Kissinger, these tendencies have been exacerbated by errors on the American side. He accuses U.S. policymakers, especially from the Clinton Administration, of exhibiting "overbearing triumphalism", and being guilty of either "self-indulgence or self-righteousness" when dealing with other states. His distaste for the Clinton team even leads him to a certain sympathy for the anti-American views of French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine. Kissinger cannot bring himself to blame Vedrine and others for being irritated when American leaders convey their belief that "the United States was chosen by providence as the 'indispensable nation' and that it must remain dominant for the sake of humankind."

Kissinger also warns that friction within the Alliance has been accompanied by a loss of strategic purpose. Instead of focusing on its traditional strategic mission of protecting its members...