Transcripts For CSPAN3 Henry Kissinger On The Fall Of The Berlin Wall 20141208

Central to the origins, conduct, and end of the cold war. For those of you whose appetite is whetted simply by all of this, theres copies of henrys most recent book on world order, available for a reasonable price outside. He and i will have a conversation for a bit, and then well open it up to you, our members. And theres one other reason that im so glad to have henry here. Id like to think that the way he in some ways got his start was in this institution sixty years ago, when he was the rapporteur of a study group looking at then the Emergent Technology of Nuclear Weapons. And in the same way that some people today are beginning to sit down and say, what is the consequence of all these new technologies in cyber and what might they mean for the conduct of American Foreign policy and international relations, henry, with some of the giants in the field at that time, met here at the council to really do the intellectually groundbreaking work on the Critical Emerging Technology of that era. He wrote about it, among other places, in Foreign Affairs i think he did about a dozen articles in our magazine before he went into government in the nixon administration. And he has done several since. In the administration, as you know, he served as National Security adviser, as secretary of state, and, uniquely, for several years as both. I once described that to him as playing tennis and calling lines on both sides of the court. And it was a period i thought, of again, tremendous accomplishment. Lets start chronologically, sir, if we may, with in some ways what might be the most fundamental historical question when one looks at great power relations throughout history. Here you had after world war ii the United States and the soviet union occupying by scale a unique position or a shared position. Was cold war inevitable, simply given the lessons of history and what drives great powers . First of all, let me thank you for inviting me to come here and for the objective and fair introduction [laughter] which you made. Touche. Let me tell you, the audience, this is a fascinating topic for me. And ive lived through much of it, but i havent systematically addressed some of these issues recently, so what you are hearing is ideas that pop into my head. In 1945, i was a Staff Sergeant in the 84th Infantry Division of the American Army on the elbe river and i had sort of the view that the russians were probably permanent allies. I had no fixed Foreign Policy Foreign Policy views at the time, because i hadnt gone to college before [inaudible] the one thing i remember very much is, we met a Cossack Division of the russian of the soviet army. And from the beginning, they treated us they were under strict instructions to limit their contact, and one had the impression, at my low level, of i wouldnt say necessarily adversarial assistance. Now, speaking as a professor, do i think the cold war was inevitable . Certainly, as it was evolving, i did think it was inevitable, because if you read what stalin was saying at the time about the nature of international systems, it was imperative for him to have a confrontational atmosphere between the two systems. Partly, i think now because he needed to rally his own society after the disasters and suffering of the war, and with so many prisoners returning, but partly because if you read the many i cant think of any really conciliatory statements of an operational nature in, say, the first five years of the cold war. So i think it was inevitable. I think it was inherent in the nature of the two societies. Can i just interrupt you there . When you say it was inherent in the nature of the two societies, do you see the principal driver of the cold war the ideological differences between the two countries and societies . Or do you see the principal driver more the geopolitical aims of the two . I think it was a combination of both. It took the United States a while to accept that it had any geopolitical objectives. And so america slid into the cold war because countries appeared to be threatened and we had to explain why we should assist them, like the greekturkish aid program, and then that had to be done in the terms of a threat, and then that had to be done being american in terms of a program that had a time limit and, therefore, the time limit had to have some eschatological outcome, and [laughter] because thats the nature in which American Foreign policy is made. On the soviet side, i really think that stalin thought he had to reinvigorate society with a communist interpretation. He you know, the berlin airlift, and so many of the and not just the actions he took. I have in this book i have out there, a conversation i had with gromyko, in which long afterwards, when he was president of the soviet union he had been retired and so he had time to [inaudible]. I said, what were you people i asked him what were you people thinking when you did the berlin airlift . You had just lost 20 Million People in the world, what were you thinking about when you did the berlin airlift . He said, a number of people said that to stalin, and he either disregarded or dismissed them, and he said three things the americans will never fight a nuclear war over berlin, allegedly. Secondly, if the americans attack along the autobahn, youre ordered to resist, you dont have to come to me. If the americans mobilize along the whole front, come to me. So his view clearly was that what temporarily what [inaudible] i dont i mean, there was a move in the early 50s of offering perhaps neutrality to germany if and unification if it accepted neutrality. But that was not a that was a move of removing america from the continent. It was not an anticold war. That was an aspect of the cold war. Well have a chance to circle back all this when we open it up to our members, but i wanted to ask you about something i mentioned before, which is the role of Nuclear Weapons. How central do you think Nuclear Weapons were to keeping the cold war cold . Or put it another way, if Nuclear Weapons hadnt been invented or introduced, is it your sense that this Great Power Competition would have gone the way of most other Great Power Competitions and would have led to conventional war . Yes, i think there was a high likelihood that it would lead not necessarily to allout war, but that it would have led to conventional war somewhere in which soviet and American Forces were involved. And Nuclear Weapons prevented created a situation of producing reluctance to get the conflict started at all. You mentioned gromyko before. I wanted to talk about somebody else who you spent a lot of time dealing with, i assume, which was brezhnev. And he was described this morning i cant remember by whom, i apologize as, quote, unquote,a lot steadier,unquote, than khrushchev. And was that what was your take on brezhnev in terms of his conduct of soviet Foreign Policy and his management, if you will, of the cold war from the soviet Vantage Point . You know, i have never heard anyone else express this view, so i looked at brezhnev in retrospect as a kind of forerunner of gorbachev. He, in my opinion, he thought he had sort of a messy system to deal with and but he was not the most penetrating mind. And so [laughter] he didnt want to he didnt want conflict. He was eloquent in saying these things. But i also thought that in his conduct, in the various crises in which we confronted him, and from the little we know of the dialogues that went on, i think he genuinely wanted a relaxation of tension with the United States. He had no very precise idea how to get there, but i talked i dealt at that time with kosygin and podgorny and gromyko and all of the other top people. And i thought they were sort of fixed in the communist ideology, and he was fixed in the communist ideology, too. But i i do think that he sought a relaxation of tensions. Unfortunately, at the time that we were in a position to proceed, then the debate evolved in the United States in which every aspect of the socalled detente became controversial and every aspect of the nuclear agreements, we thought of the nuclear discussions as a means of educating the soviets in our thinking on the nature of our strategy. And i my impression was that in the European Security conference negotiations, he was on the side of the more moderate on the more moderate side