Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by Henry Kissinger
– Anarchy
– Pax X e.g. Romana, Americana, Napoleonica, etc.
– Westphalian Balance of Power
– Vienna Congress = Westphalia + same outlook in regard to internal
order between signing parties (then monarchy)
– G X > China vs. US have different internal orders (authoritarian vs.
democratic regime)
– French Revolution [compare to Chinese Cultural Revolution]
Rousseau condemned all existing institutions—property, religion, social classes,
government authority, civil society—as illusory and fraudulent. Their
replacement was to be a new “rule of administration in the social order.” The
populace was to submit totally to it—with an obedience that no ruler by divine
right had ever imagined, except the Russian Czar, whose entire populace outside
the nobility and the communities on the harsh frontiers beyond the Urals had
the status of serfs. These theories prefigured the modern totalitarian regime, in
which the popular will ratifies decisions that have already been announced by
means of staged mass demonstrations.
What is the raison d’etat?
• Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu developed [in 1624] a radical
approach to international order. He invented the idea that the state was an
abstract and permanent entity existing in its own right. It’s requirements were
not determined by the ruler’s personality, family interests, or the universal
demands of religion. Its lodestar was the national interest following calculable
principles – what later came to be known as raison d’etat. Hence it should be
the basic unit of international relations.
• Salvation might be his personal objective, but as a statesman he was
responsible for a political entity that did not have an eternal soul to be
redeemed. “Man is immortal, his salvation is hereafter,” he said. “The state has
no immortality, its salvation is now or never.”
• Royal power would continue to be exercised by the King as the symbol of the
sovereign state and an expression of the national interest.
• Richelieu saw the turmoil in central Europe not as a call to arms to defend the
Church but as a means to check imperial Habsburg preeminence.
• For two and a half centuries – from the emergence of Richelieu in 1624 to
Bismarck’s proclamation of the German Empire in 1871 – the aim of keeping
Central Europe (more or less Germany, Austria and Northern Italy) divided
remained the guiding principle of French foreign policy.
•
a. Europe
– China had its Emperor; Islam had its Caliph—the recognized leader of the
lands of Islam. Europe had the Holy Roman Emperor. But the Holy Roman
Emperor operated from a much weaker base than his confreres in other
civilizations. He had no imperial bureaucracy at his disposal. His authority
depended on his strength in the regions he governed in his dynastic
capacity, essentially his family holdings. His position was not formally
hereditary and depended on election by a franchise of seven, later nine,
princes; these elections were generally decided by a mixture of political
maneuvering, assessments of religious piety, and vast financial payoffs. The
Emperor theoretically owed his authority to his investiture by the Pope, but
political and logistical considerations often excluded it, leaving him to rule
for years as “Emperor-Elect.” Religion and politics never merged into a
single construct, leading to Voltaire’s truthful jest that the Holy Roman
Empire was “neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.”
– With the end of Roman rule, pluralism became the defining characteristic of
the European order. […] Yet although it was comprehensible as a single
civilization, Europe never had a single governance, or a united, fixed
identity. […] For more than a thousand years, in the mainstream of modern
European statecraft order has derived from equilibrium, and identity from
resistance to universal rule > > Westphalian Peace and Balance of Power
"Roman Empire Trajan 117AD" by Tataryn77 - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
via Wikimedia Commons -
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Roman_Empire_Trajan_117AD.png#mediavie
wer/File:Roman_Empire_Trajan_117AD.png
How can Russia’s difference and
similarity from Europe be explained?
• As Charlemagne’s empire had fractured in the ninth century into what would become the modern nations of France and Germany, Slavic tribes more than a thousand
miles to their east had coalesced in a confederation based around the city of Kiev.
• This “land of the Rus” stood at the fraught intersections of civilizations and trade routes. With Vikings to its north, the expanding Arab empire to its south, and raiding
Turkic tribes to its east, Russia was permanently in the grip of conflating temptations and fears. Too far to the east to have experienced the Roman Empire (though
“czars” claimed the “Caesars” as their political and etymological forebears), Christian but looking to the Orthodox Church in Constantinople rather than Rome for
spiritual authority, Russia was close enough to Europe to share a common cultural vocabulary yet perpetually out of phase with the Continent’s historical trends.
• Russia a uniquely “Eurasian” power, sprawling across two continents but never entirely at home in either.
• Two and a half centuries of Mongol suzerainty (1237–1480) and the subsequent struggle to restore a coherent state based around the Duchy of Moscow imposed on
Russia an eastward orientation just as Western Europe was charting the new technological and intellectual vistas that would create the modern era.
• As the Protestant Reformation impelled political and religious diversity in Europe, Russia translated the fall of its own religious lodestar, Constantinople and the Eastern
Roman Empire, to Muslim invaders in 1453 into an almost mystical conviction that Russia’s Czar was now (as the monk Filofei wrote to Ivan III around 1500) “the sole
Emperor of all the Christians in the whole universe,” with a messianic calling to regain the fallen Byzantine capital for Christendom.
• Russia affirmed its tie to Western culture but—even as it grew exponentially in size—came to see itself as a beleaguered outpost of civilization for which security could
be found only through exerting its absolute will over its neighbors.
• With no natural borders save the Arctic and Pacific oceans, Russia was in a position to gratify this impulse for several centuries—marching alternately into Central Asia,
then the Caucasus, then the Balkans, then Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and the Baltic Sea, to the Pacific Ocean and the Chinese and Japanese frontiers (and for a time
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries across the Pacific into Alaskan and Californian settlements). It expanded each year by an amount larger than the entire
territory of many European states (on average, 100,000 square kilometers annually from 1552 to 1917).
• Thus the world-conquering imperialism remained paired with a paradoxical sense of vulnerability—as if marching halfway across the world had generated more
potential foes than additional security. From that perspective, the Czar’s empire can be said to have expanded because it proved easier to keep going than to stop.
• In this context, a distinctive Russian concept of political legitimacy took hold. While Renaissance Europe rediscovered its classical humanist past and refined new
concepts of individualism and freedom, Russia sought its resurgence in its undiluted faith and in the coherence of a single, divinely sanctioned authority overpowering all
divisions—the Czar as “the living icon of God,” whose commands were irresistible and inherently just. A common Christian faith and a shared elite language (French)
underscored a commonality of perspective with the West. Yet early European visitors to czarist Russia found themselves in a land of almost surreal extremes and
thought they saw, beneath the veneer of a modern Western monarchy, a despotism modeled on Mongol and Tartar practices—“European discipline supporting the
tyranny of Asia,” in the uncharitable phrase of the Marquis de Custine.
• Thus what in the West was regarded as arbitrary authoritarianism was presented in Russia as an elemental necessity, the precondition for functioning governance. The
Czar, like the Chinese Emperor, was an absolute ruler endowed by tradition with mystical powers and overseeing a territory of continental expanse. Yet the position of
the Czar differed from that of his Chinese counterpart in one important respect. In the Chinese view, the Emperor ruled wherever possible through the serenity of his
conduct; in the Russian view, the leadership of the Czar prevailed through his ability to impose his will by unchallengeable assertions of authority and to impress on all
onlookers the Russian state’s overwhelmingly vast power. The Chinese Emperor was conceived of as the embodiment of the superiority of Chinese civilization, inspiring
other peoples to “come and be transformed.” The Czar was seen as the embodiment of the defense of Russia against enemies surrounding it on all sides.
What are the characteristics of the
Vienna Order – how came it into force
•
and what destroyed it?
the revolutionary and Napoleonic armies had redrawn the mental map of Europe. In place of the eighteenth century horizontal world of dynasties and cosmopolite
upper classes, the West now consisted of vertical unities—nations, not wholly separate but unlike.
• Linguistic nationalisms made traditional empires—especially the Austro-Hungarian Empire—vulnerable to internal pressure as well as to the resentments of neighbors
claiming national links with subjects of the empire. The emergence of nationalism also subtly affected the relationship between Prussia and Austria after the creation of
the “great masses” of the Congress of Vienna.
• The Vienna settlement had reinforced Prussia’s strong social and political structure with geographic opportunity. Stretched from the Vistula to the Rhine, Prussia
became the repository of Germans’ hopes for the unity of their country—for the first time in history.
• Once considered among the strongest and best-governed countries in Europe, Austria was now vulnerable because its central location meant that every European
tremor made the earth move there. Its polyglot nature made it vulnerable to the emerging wave of nationalism—a force practically unknown a generation earlier. For
Metternich, steadiness and reliability became the lodestar of his policy: Where everything is tottering it is above all necessary that something, no matter what, remain
steadfast so that the lost can find a connection and the strayed a refuge.
• Finally, the Crimean War of 1853–56 broke up the unity of the conservative states—Austria, Prussia, and Russia—which had been one of the two key pillars of the
Vienna international order.
• For Metternich, the national interest of Austria was a metaphor for the overall interest of Europe—how to hold together many races and peoples and languages in a
structure at once respectful of diversity and of a common heritage, faith, and custom. In that perspective, Austria’s historical role was to vindicate the pluralism and,
hence, the peace of Europe.
• Bismarck, by comparison, was a scion of the provincial Prussian aristocracy, which was far poorer than its counterparts in the west of Germany and considerably less
cosmopolitan. While Metternich tried to vindicate continuity and to restore a universal idea, that of a European society, Bismarck challenged all the established wisdom
of his period. Until he appeared on the scene, it had been taken for granted that German unity would come about—if at all—through a combination of nationalism and
liberalism. Bismarck set about to demonstrate that these strands could be separated—that the principles of the Holy Alliance were not needed to preserve order, that a
new order could be built by conservatives’ appealing to nationalism, and that a concept of European order could be based entirely on an assessment of power.
• The European order as seen in the eighteenth century, as a great Newtonian clockwork of interlocking parts, had been replaced by the Darwinian world of the survival of
the fittest.
• Disraeli called the unification of Germany in 1871 “a greater political event than the French Revolution” and concluded that “the balance of power has been entirely
destroyed.” The Westphalian and the Vienna European orders had been based on a divided Central Europe whose competing pressures—between the plethora of
German states in the Westphalian settlement, and Austria and Prussia in the Vienna outcome—would balance each other out. What emerged after the unification of
Germany was a dominant country, strong enough to defeat each neighbor individually and perhaps all the continental countries together. The bond of legitimacy had
disappeared. Everything now depended on calculations of power.
• This consensus was not only a matter of decorum; it reflected the moral convictions of a common European outlook. Europe was never more united or more
spontaneous than during what came to be perceived as the age of enlightenment. New triumphs in science and philosophy began to displace the fracturing European
certainties of tradition and faith. The swift advance of the mind on multiple fronts—physics, chemistry, astronomy, history, archaeology, cartography, rationality—
bolstered a new spirit of secular illumination auguring that the revelation of all of nature’s hidden mechanisms was only a question of time.
• International orders that have been the most stable have had the advantage of uniform perceptions. The statesmen who operated the eighteenth-century European
order were aristocrats who interpreted intangibles like honor and duty in the same way and agreed on fundamentals. They represented a single elite society that spoke
the same language (French), frequented the same salons, and pursued romantic liaisons in each other’s capitals. National interests of course varied, but in a world
where a foreign minister could serve a monarch of another nationality (every Russian foreign minister until 1820 was recruited abroad), or when a territory could
change its national affiliation as the result of a marriage pact or a fortuitous inheritance, a sense of overarching common purpose was inherent. Power calculations in
the eighteenth century took place against this ameliorating background of a shared sense of legitimacy and unspoken rules of international conduct.
b. China
– Since the times [Han Dynasty 2nd century B.C.]when Europe
was rules by the Roman Empire as a unity a different concept
of order existed on the other end of the Eurasian landmass: it
did not base itself on the sovereign equality of states but on the
presumed boundlessness of the Emperor’s reach. In this
concept, sovereignty in the European sense did not exist,
because the Emperor held sway over “All Under Heaven”[天下
].
– China, in this view, would order the world primarily by awing
other societies with its cultural magnificence and economic
bounty, drawing them into relationships that could be
managed to produce the aim of “harmony under heaven” [大
同] > Confucianism.
– Confucianism [Confucius is by some also called the founder of
sociology] ordered the world into tributaries in a hierarchy
defined by approximations of the Chinese culture. […] Thus
China felt no need to go abroad to discover a world it
considered already ordered, or best ordered by the cultivation
of morality internally;
"Territories of Dynasties in China" by Pojanji from wikipedia. Licensed under
CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons -
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Territories_of_Dynasties_in_China.g
if#mediaviewer/File:Territories_of_Dynasties_in_China.gif
c. Islam
– In much of the region between Europe and China, Islam’s
different universal concept of world order - starting in the
7th century A.D. - held sway, with its own version of a single
divinely sanctioned governance uniting and pacifying the
world: expand over the “realm of war”, as it called all
regions populated by unbelievers, until the whole world
was a unitary system brought into harmony by the
message of the Prophet Muhammad.
– Islam divided the world order into a world of peace, that of
Islam, and a world of war, inhabited by unbelievers. Islam
could achieve the theoretical fulfillment of world order
only by conquest or global proselytization, for which the
objective conditions did not exist.
"Islam percent population in each nation World Map Muslim data by Pew Research" by M Tracy Hunter - Own
work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons -
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Islam_percent_population_in_each_nation_World_Map_Muslim_dat
a_by_Pew_Research.svg#mediaviewer/File:Islam_percent_population_in_each_nation_World_Map_Muslim_d
ata_by_Pew_Research.svg
d. American Universal Democracy
– Geopoliticial Analogy: although such comparisons have been strongly rejected on the Chinese side, it is
without doubt that China can regionally only be compared with Germany in terms of geopolitics and
economic output. China overtook the US in 2014 in PPP as world largest economy; Germany threatened
Britain’s leading position at the beginning of WWI. Moreover, Japan the hereto 2nd largest economy can only
be compared by means of its racial and cultural proximity as well as its geographic peculiarity as what Great
Britain is to Germany. In both situation, the US is somewhat protecting the nation which is challenged in its
regional hegemony.
– Economic Analogy: although the industrial revolution started out in England already in the mid 18th century
and took much longer than in Japan, both economies were the driving forces of economic development in
their region; causing neighboring nations to aspire to its position. In the second half of the 19th century,
Germany did catch up with Britain in terms of economic output as China did during the last 30 years.
– Differences: scale and development. The only differences that I see in between the two cases are the size of
the involved economies and the accelerated development. Both factors imply a much more disastrous
outcome if a war can’t be avoided. It is therefore paramount that the Far East Asian nations and those
bordering the South Chinese Sea form a preventive partnership, which is comparable to the EU.
– Some people I talk to perceive China in a comparable situation to Germany before WWI, some in a
comparable situation to Germany before WWII. I hold the opinion that it is a mix of both: In terms of
regional geopolitics and accelerated industrialization [compare Stefan Zweig’s account of national hybris due
to new technological power in Europe before WWI in Die Welt von gestern] we see a situation very similar to
Europe before WWI, but in terms of a collective mental state some parallels with fascist governments before
WWII are all too obvious. China’s technocrat and authoritarian regime which uses modern information
technologies to divide the “Chinese mind” from all “foreign pollution” builds up a similar nationalism that
was so typical for early Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy. [compare Michael Ledeen: China's leaders believe they
command a people, not merely a geographic entity. […] Just like Germany and Italy in the interwar period,
China feels betrayed and humiliated, and seeks to avenge historic wounds. […] Fascism may well have been a
potentially stable system, despite the frenzied energies of Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy. After all,
fascism did not fall as the result of internal crisis; it was destroyed by superior force of arms.]
Karl Bloch’s Concept of Contemporaneous Realities
[1885-1977; Utopia – Principle Hope]
How does the current power relationship
look like in East Asia?
– China, Korea, Japan, and the US, with Russia and Vietnam as peripheral participants,
are approaching a balance of power
– But it differs from the historical balances of power in that one of the key participants,
the US, has its center of gravity located far from the geographic center of East Asia and
because China and the US, whose military forces conceive themselves as adversaries in
their military journals and pronouncements also proclaim partnership as a goal on
political and economic issues.
– The US is an ally of Japan and a proclaimed partner of China – a situation comparable
to Bismarck’s when he made an alliance with Austria balanced by a treaty with Russia.
– The political and economic map of Asia illustrates the region’s complex tapestry. It
comprises industrially and technologically advanced countries in Japan, the Republic of
Korea, and Singapore, with economies and standards of living rivaling those of Europe;
three countries of continental scale in China, India, and Russia; two large archipelagoes
(in addition to Japan), the Philippines and Indonesia, composed of thousands of islands
and standing astride the main sea-lanes; three ancient nations with populations
approximating those of France or Italy in Thailand, Vietnam, and Myanmar; huge
Australia and pastoral New Zealand, with largely European-descended populations;
and North Korea, a Stalinist family dictatorship bereft of industry and technology
except for a nuclear weapons program. A large Muslim-majority population prevails
across Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Indonesia, and
sizeable Muslim minorities exist in India, China, Myanmar, Thailand, and the
Philippines.
How is the current world order concept being
threatened?
– Westphalian principles are being challenged on all sides, sometimes in the name of world
order itself.
• Islam: Proliferation of a new religious world order and disintegration of the nation state through
radical Islam
• Supranational Organizations: Disintegration of the nation state through pooled sovereignty of
international entities like the EU or probably at a later stage ASEAN
• China: Proliferation of a new cultural world order and corrosion of the existing international world
order through a shift in power and the subversion of international mechanisms and institutions
through setting up a similarily designed shadow system [compare MERICS report on shadow structure
of international organizations set up by China to subvert the existing international order]
– Europe has set out to depart from the state system it designed and to transcend it through a
concept of pooled sovereignty. […] And ironically, though Europe invented the balance-of-
power concept, it has consciously and severely limited the element of power in its new
institutions. Having downgraded its military capacities, Europe has little scope to respond
when universal norms are flouted.
– Q: is Europe still a to be taken serious member of the international order – is economic might
enough therefore?
– Q: is the disintegration of the nation-state a threat per se or only if forced by the spread of
Islam? Compare “The Breakdown of Nations” by Leopold Kohr > the village community as
ideal size for a human society.
– Q: does it really make a difference to the Western person whether its life style would
gradually or abruptly change into a new religious or new cultural world order? To my mind,
religion is part of culture. If a theocratic-totalitarian world order is declared in the name of
religion it is set equal, with what is considered to be culture; in secular states though religion
is only one facet of culture, with a nevertheless deeply ingrained nature, which differs from
nation to nation and from region to region. [compare Martin Jacques: When China Rules
the World; Niall Ferguson: Civilization; China: Turmoil and Triumph]
How is the current international order maintained and
peace secured?
– The current international order is clearly being undermined, but can be maintained if
Western powers are smart enough to accommodate and integrate China as a new
equal player who is entitled to a considerable vote in the joint reshaping of the
existing international order
– Regional EU like partnership between CN, JP, KR and ASEAN
– Reunification of North and South Korea
– Peaceful global superpower partnership between US and CN
– United EU defense policy and structure to counter the shift in power balance and
make up for the shrinking American advantages.
– Japan will conduct this analysis in terms of three broad options: continued emphasis
on the American alliance; adaptation to China’s rise; and reliance on an increasingly
national foreign policy. Which of them will emerge as dominant, or whether the
choice is for a mix of them, depends on Japan’s calculations of the global balance of
power—not formal American assurances—and how it perceives underlying trends.
Should Japan perceive a new configuration of power unfolding in its region or the
world, it will base its security on its judgment of reality, not on traditional
alignments. The outcome therefore depends on how credible the Japanese
establishment judges American policy in Asia to be and how they assess the overall
balance of forces. The long-term direction of U.S. foreign policy is as much at issue as
Japan’s analysis.
What leitmotiv is the foundation of the current world
and its challenges?
– Every age has its leitmotif, a set of beliefs that explains the universe, that inspires or consoles the
individual by providing an explanation for the multiplicity of events impinging on him. In the
medieval period, it was religion; in the Enlightenment, it was Reason; in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries it was nationalism combined with a view of history as a motivating force.
Science and technology are the governing concepts of our age. They have brought about advances
in human well-being unprecedented in history. Their evolution transcends traditional cultural
constraints. Yet they have also produced weapons capable of destroying mankind.
– I can not agree to this simplified application of leitmotifs, which is based on an entirely Western
perception. Science and Technology are already a leitmotif in the Western hemisphere since the
18th century, but this leitmotif is nowadays also accessible to the broad masses. All nations that did
not experience the industrial revolution in its Western beginnings “the so called developing world”
[what a term as we are all constantly developing and implying that industrialized nations have
stopped to develop] have to catch up in regard to this development – some of them as it is the case
with China did nevertheless “great-leap-forward” without experiencing the leitmotif of
enlightenment and reason. China in particular is struggling, because it finds itself torn apart amidst
all of the above mentioned leitmotifs and its government answers with nationalism.
– Thus China has to be viewed as a nation-continent with the power to shape the world order. But it is
trying to shape the world order with its own society’s outlook: a society that has not yet
experienced some important sociological development steps. Similar to the psychological
development of a human being, it possibly causes for the sociological development of a society
severe traumas, if development steps are omitted. It is quite certain that a society can’t grow
mature if certain steps are omitted.
How do new technologies affect world order?
– New technologies transcend political borders – Kissinger discusses two explicitly as: nuclear
proliferation and cyber technology
Nuclear Proliferation
– It seems obvious that nuclear weapons are only means to keep the balance of power; its
application would cause devastation which any country wants to avoid [even though Mao is
quoted to having said, that even nuclear weapons don’t instill fear to the Chinese people,
because in case of a nuclear war the multitude of the Chinese population would give him the
upper hand in an eventual outcome].
– China actively engages in international diplomacy with objectives that are counterproductive to
keeping “nuclear Islam” at bay [compare The Diplomat: How China Complicates the Iranian
Nuclear Talks]
– China pushes similar strategies in regard to North Korea: instead of allowing and supporting a
reunification of the sister nations, it calls a delinquent North Korean government - bereft of
technology except for a nuclear weapons program - its ally, similar to the UdSSR’s relationship
with Cuba during the Bay of Pigs crisis in the 60ies. Kissinger is therefore surely on the right track
when he assumes that working out a collaborative strategy for a denuclearized, unified Korea
between China and the US would leave all parties more secure and more free.
– Bismark: We live in a wondrous time, in which the strong is weak because of his scruples and the
weak grows strong because of his audacity. The existence of nuclear weapons in North Korea
provide an incentive for Japan and Sought Korea to create a nuclear military capability.
– For China, North Korea embodies complex legacies. In many Chinese eyes, the Korean War is seen
as a symbol of China’s determination to end its “century of humiliation” and “stand up” on the
world stage, but also as a warning against becoming involved in wars whose origins China does
not control and whose repercussions may have serious long-range, unintended consequences.
This is why China and the US have taken parallel positions in the UN Security Council in
demanding North Korea abandon – not curtail – its nuclear program.
Cyberspace Technology
– Cyber technology though is a means suiting the Chinese negotiation style: gradual assimilation of the non-Chinese world to the
realm of the Chinese cultural hemisphere. In terms of e-business such a tendency is already visible. The sheer size of the Chinese
market pooled with the autocratic government made it possible that Alibaba outgrew Ebay, Baidu outgrew Google and Huawei
Oracle.
– International trade, in particular e-commerce, corrodes an important factor of national sovereignty: taxation authority over its
subjects (natural and legal persons)
– China applies IT technology to separate China from the rest: If China can not shape the internet, the internet will shape China
[compare my own essay and the Sinica podcast on the Wuzhen internet conference]
– In the virtual world a new world order is about to be formed and will come into full force within the next years. There already is a
virtual world of freedom and Chinese censorship: one virtual world created and approved by a central government reigning over 1.3
billion people, tailored to the “ideal” Han Chinese mind and many virtual realities not approved by the Chinese government and kept
at bay by a Great Chinese Firewall. And with the shaping of the WWW structure China will as strongest contender for the supremacy
in this virtual international order gain the upper hand. All the other nations perceive the WWW as a space defined by freedom, so
governments have hitherto abstained from regulating it purposefully.
– The strategic separation of Chinese contents from non-Chinese contents is on a big scale comparable to book burnings under Nazi
Germany.
https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/resources/China.pdf
Can the US lead Western international order still be
proposed as a system worth being sustained?