Tag: Henry Kissinger

  • Kissinger on Ukraine

    Kissinger on Ukraine

    Kissinger on Ukraine

    UKRAINE CRISIS

    By Henry Kissinger

    henry kissinger leonid brezhnev Brejnev

    PUBLIC discussion on Ukraine is all about confrontation. But do we know where we are going? In my life, I have seen four wars begun with great enthusiasm and public support, all of which we did not know how to end and from three of which we withdrew unilaterally. The test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins.

    Far too often the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other – it should function as a bridge between them.

    Russia must accept that to try to force Ukraine into a satellite status, and thereby move Russia’s borders again, would doom Moscow to repeat its history of self-fulfilling cycles of reciprocal pressures with Europe and the United States.

    The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country. Russian history began in what was called Kievan-Rus. The Russian religion spread from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then. Some of the most important battles for Russian freedom, starting with the Battle of Poltava in 1709, were fought on Ukrainian soil. The Black Sea Fleet – Russia’s means of projecting power in the Mediterranean – is based by long-term lease in Sevastopol, in Crimea. Even such famed dissidents as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky insisted that Ukraine was an integral part of Russian history and, indeed, of Russia.

    The European Union must recognize that its bureaucratic dilatoriness and subordination of the strategic element to domestic politics in negotiating Ukraine’s relationship to Europe contributed to turning a negotiation into a crisis. Foreign policy is the art of establishing priorities.

    The Ukrainians are the decisive element. They live in a country with a complex history and a polyglot composition. The Western part was incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1939, when Stalin and Hitler divided up the spoils. Crimea, 60 per cent of whose population is Russian, became part of Ukraine only in 1954 , when Nikita Khrushchev, a Ukrainian by birth, awarded it as part of the 300th-year celebration of a Russian agreement with the Cossacks. The West is largely Catholic; the East largely Russian Orthodox. The West speaks Ukrainian; the East speaks mostly Russian. Any attempt by one wing of Ukraine to dominate the other – as has been the pattern – would lead eventually to civil war or breakup. To treat Ukraine as part of an East-West confrontation would scuttle for decades any prospect to bring Russia and the West – especially Russia and Europe – into a cooperative international system.

    Ukraine has been independent for only 23 years; it had previously been under some kind of foreign rule since the 14th century. Not surprisingly, its leaders have not learned the art of compromise, even less of historical perspective. The politics of post-independence Ukraine clearly demonstrates that the root of the problem lies in efforts by Ukrainian politicians to impose their will on recalcitrant parts of the country, first by one faction, then by the other. That is the essence of the conflict between Viktor Yanu­kovych and his principal political rival, Yulia Tymo­shenko. They represent the two wings of Ukraine and have not been willing to share power. A wise U.S. policy toward Ukraine would seek a way for the two parts of the country to cooperate with each other. We should seek reconciliation, not the domination of a faction.

    Russia and the West, and least of all the various factions in Ukraine, have not acted on this principle. Each has made the situation worse. Russia would not be able to impose a military solution without isolating itself at a time when many of its borders are already precarious. For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.

    Putin should come to realize that, whatever his grievances, a policy of military impositions would produce another Cold War. For its part, the United States needs to avoid treating Russia as an aberrant to be patiently taught rules of conduct established by Washington. Putin is a serious strategist – on the premises of Russian history. Understanding U.S. values and psychology are not his strong suits. Nor has understanding Russian history and psychology been a strong point of U.S. policymakers.

    Leaders of all sides should return to examining outcomes, not compete in posturing. Here is my notion of an outcome compatible with the values and security interests of all sides:

    • Ukraine should have the right to choose freely its economic and political associations, including with Europe.

    • Ukraine should not join NATO, a position I took seven years ago, when it last came up.

    • Ukraine should be free to create any government compatible with the expressed will of its people. Wise Ukrainian leaders would then opt for a policy of reconciliation between the various parts of their country. Internationally, they should pursue a posture comparable to that of Finland.

    That nation leaves no doubt about its fierce independence and cooperates with the West in most fields but carefully avoids institutional hostility toward Russia.

    • It is incompatible with the rules of the existing world order for Russia to annex Crimea. But it should be possible to put Crimea’s relationship to Ukraine on a less fraught basis. To that end, Russia would recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea. Ukraine should reinforce Crimea’s autonomy in elections held in the presence of international observers. The process would include removing any ambiguities about the status of the Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol.

    These are principles, not prescriptions. People familiar with the region will know that not all of them will be palatable to all parties. The test is not absolute satisfaction but balanced dissatisfaction. If some solution based on these or comparable elements is not achieved, the drift toward confrontation will accelerate. The time for that will come soon _enough.

    • Henry Kissinger was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977.
    The article was first published in Washington Post.

  • Kissinger: We should ignore intelligence and assume Iran wants nukes

    Kissinger: We should ignore intelligence and assume Iran wants nukes

    By Agence France-Presse

    kissinger

    Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger said in an interview Sunday that the United States should assume that Iran is actively preparing to build nuclear weapons.

    Kissinger, 88, was asked on the CNN show “GPS” if the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon was so dire that Israel would need to launch a military strike in the near future.

    “I am very uneasy with the so-called intelligence report that say we don’t know whether they are actually working on nuclear weapons,” Kissinger told CNN.

    “I think we should start from the premise that they are undergoing all this in order to achieve a military capability. I don’t think that is a disputable point.”

    US intelligence analysts believe there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb — an assessment broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program, The New York Times reported in February, citing unnamed US officials.

    The assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies, the Times reported.

    The US administration maintains that tough sanctions on Iran and diplomatic efforts need to be given more time before any resort to bombing raids.

    Israeli leaders however say time is running out for any pre-emptive strike. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that sanctions against Iran have not worked, and “none of us can afford to wait much longer.”

    US President Barack Obama has cautioned against “bluster” in talking about possible war with Iran, saying there still exists a window of diplomacy.

    www.rawstory.com, 11 March 2012

  • The Grievous Return of Henry Kissinger – An Analysis

    The Grievous Return of Henry Kissinger – An Analysis

    perceptionby Dr. Lawrence Davidson

    The gods protect us, Henry Kissinger is back!

    Henry Kissinger was President Richard Nixon’s National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State. He also held the latter position under President Gerald Ford. While it would be unfair to characterize him as someone who never gave a piece of good advice (he did encourage Nixon to engage in Detente with the Soviet Union), his record weighs heavily on the side of unwise counsel. As we will see he is back in exactly that role, plying bad advice that, in this case, could further erode America’s already messed up intelligence agencies.

    Kissinger was originally an academic. His doctoral dissertation was on the diplomacy of two early 19th century statesmen, Britain’s Viscount Robert Castlereagh and Austria’s Prince Klemens von Metternich. These men were major players at the great Congress of Vienna that took place after the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815. At that meeting Metternich argued for returning Europe to its pre French Revolution political status. Pursuing that impossible end, he backed repressive policies and regimes. One gets the impression that the history of Kissinger’s public service was, at least in part, an effort to achieve the stature of a Metternich. Toward this end Kissinger would pursue “realpolitik” which, more often than not in its American manifestation, entailed the backing of repressive policies and regimes.

    Here are some of the things Kissinger espoused: the bombing of North Vietnam in order to achieve “peace with honor;” support for the murderous, Fascist regime of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and the equally bloody military dictatorship in Argentina; acquiescence in the annexation of East Timor by the Indonesian dictator Suharto, which was followed by genocidal massacres; acquiescence in the Serb and Croat wars against the Bosnian Muslims; support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq; and last but certainly not least, active lobbying for the admittance into the U.S. of the ailing Shah of Iran (yet another American supported dictator) which led immediately to the hostage taking of U.S. diplomats in 1979 and the continuing animosity and tension between America and Iran. I saved this piece of bad judgment till last because it of a piece with Kissinger’s latest excursion into playing the great statesman by pushing folly.

    Jonathan PollardSo what would Dr. Kissinger have us do now? Well, according to a report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Kissinger has sent a letter to President Obama “urging him to commute the prison term of Jonathan Pollard, who is serving life term for spying for Israel.” Kissinger claims that he has consulted with others such as former Defense Secretary Weinberger, former Secretary of State George Schultz and former CIA Director Woolsey (all of whom are supporters of Israel) and found their “unanimous support for clemency compelling.” Kissinger’s letter follows on a lobbying effort by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has made an official request to Obama for the same granting of clemency. Here is what Netanyahu had to say, “Both Mr. Pollard and the Government of Israel have repeatedly expressed remorse for these actions [of spying], and Israel will continue to abide by its commitment that such wrongful actions will never be repeated.” There is something almost childish in this approach. Caught with Israel’s hand in the cookie jar, the spies and their handlers say ‘Oh I’m sorry. If you commute the punishment we promise to be good from now on.’ Actually, in the world of espionage, such promises aren’t worth the paper they are written on. Thus, in 2004 the FBI caught another government employee,, spying for Israel and using the Zionist American lobby AIPAC as the conduit through which to pass the stolen information. So much for promises of future good behavior.

    What Kissinger and the rest Pollard’s supporters seem not to find compelling, or even noteworthy, is the fact that ever since the 1987 trial that sent Pollard away for life, the career officers in the American intelligence services have quietly threatened mass resignation if this Zionist spy went free. Keep in mind that ever since George W. Bush and his neo-conservatives wrecked havoc with the CIA in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, the one Kissinger so obligingly supported, the intelligence agencies of this country have found their morale at the sub-basement level. If Obama commutes Pollard’s sentence it will be yet another blow to their professional well-being.

    But what does Dr. Kissinger care about a bunch of government employees? In his realpolitik version of reality neither government servants nor ordinary citizens are worth much. Here are a couple of Kissinger quotes to show what I mean. Having helped condemn the Chilean people to 16 years under the murderous rule of Ernesto Pinochet, Kissinger rationalized the decision this way, “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.” And, as to the career analysts in the various intelligence agencies, most of whom really are experts in the countries they study, Kissinger just dismisses that expertise as inconsequential. “Most foreign policies that history has marked highly,” he tells us, “have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts.” Well, that is all the “experts” except Dr. Kissinger.

    The real Henry Kissinger, who implausably received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, borders on being a war criminal. That should tell us what his advice is really worth. President Obama would be a fool to listen to a man whose blood stained career should have long ago come to an ignoble end.

    www.tothepointanalyses.com, 9 March 2011

  • McCain calls on rival Obama to free Jonathan Pollard

    McCain calls on rival Obama to free Jonathan Pollard

    By Jennifer Lipman

    John McCain
    Senator John McCain

    Former presidential candidate John McCain has added his voice to a growing number of high-profile US politicians demanding the release of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard.

    According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Senator McCain offered his support for the cause during a telephone conversation yesterday.

    Earlier this week Henry Kissinger, secretary of state during the Nixon administration, backed the campaign to secure Mr Pollard’s freedom five years before his sentence expires.

    A Navy intelligence analyst, Mr Pollard was charged with giving military secrets to Israel and given a life sentence in 1987.

    He maintained that he spied because the US authorities were withholding information crucial for Israel’s security.

    His continued incarceration is a source of contention for right-wing groups in both Israel and the US. Last year Mr Netanyahu announced he would push President Barack Obama for Mr Pollard’s relaese, but the White House refused to contemplate doing so.

    Other figures who have called for Mr Pollard’s sentence to be cut include the ex CIA director James Woolsey and former Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter.

    www.thejc.com, March 11, 2011

  • Henry Kissinger asks Obama to release convicted spy for Israel

    Henry Kissinger asks Obama to release convicted spy for Israel

    Kissinger+MaoFormer US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger asks Obama to release convicted spy for Israel

    By The Associated Press (CP)

    JERUSALEM — Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is urging President Barack Obama to release an American convicted of spying for Israel 24 years ago.

    In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, Kissinger wrote to Obama, “I believe justice would be served by commuting” Jonathan Pollard’s life sentence.

    Pollard, now 56 years old, was a civilian intelligence analyst for the Navy. He was convicted in 1987 of passing classified information to Israel.

    Kissinger’s March 3 letter joins other recent calls for Pollard’s release from former high-ranking American officials, including former CIA Director R. James Woolsey and former Secretary of State George Shultz.

    In January, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also called on the U.S. to release Pollard.

    Jonathan Pollard

    Kissinger: Release Israeli spy Pollard

    By Jeff Stein

    Saying he found the arguments of other top former U.S. national security officials “compelling,” former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on Monday called for President Obama to commute the remainder of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard’s life sentence.

    “At first I felt I did not have enough information to render a reasoned and just opinion,” Kissinger said in his Mar. 3 letter, released today by a public relations firm that has been lobbying for the release of Pollard, sentenced to life in prison for espionage in 1987.

    “But having talked with [former Secretary of State] George Shultz and read the statements of former CIA Director [R. James] Woolsey, former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman [Dennis] DeConcini, former Defense Secretary [Caspar] Weinberger, former Attorney General [Michael] Mukasey and others whose judgments and first-hand knowledge I respect, I find their unanimous support for clemency compelling.”

    Shultz was secretary at the time of Pollard’s sentencing.

    “I believe justice would be served by commuting the remainder of Pollard’s sentence of life imprisonment,” Kissinger wrote.

    The White House declined to comment on the Kissinger letter, referring to a statement by then spokesman Robert Gibbs on Jan. 15 in response to a question about Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s public petition for Pollard’s release.

    “Look, I think the — obviously the State Department answered this a little bit yesterday in saying that they received the request; they’ll take a look at it,” Gibbs said. “I think it is important to underscore that Mr. Pollard was convicted of some of the most serious crimes that anybody can be charged with.”

    Backed by major Jewish leaders, the campaign to free Pollard has been mobilized by David Nyer, a 25-year-old social worker in a New York health clinic.

    Beginning last summer, Nyer has bagged a number of big names in his effort, including former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) who was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee at the time of Jonathan Pollard’s sentencing; Lawrence J. Korb, assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration; former Clinton White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum and former Deputy Attorney General and Harvard Law Professor Philip Heymann.

    Apart from Woolsey, most other intelligence officials have been adamantly opposed to the release of Pollard, a Navy intelligence analyst who provided thousands of highly classified documents to his Israeli handlers. Former CIA Director George Tenet reportedly threatened to quit when the Clinton administration considered it.

    voices.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk, March 7, 2011

  • New Address, Same Politician

    New Address, Same Politician

    Op-Ed Contributor

    Published: April 25, 2009

    Ellijay, Ga.

    Illustration by J. Abbott Miller; Photographs courtesty of the Library of Congress

    “CHARACTER is fate,” Heraclitus told us. The adage is telling for presidencies. And the characters of key appointees — their intellects and professional ethics as well as their personal integrity — also hold a government’s destiny. On both fronts, Richard Nixon’s first 100 days in 1969 were filled with omens, and that history poses its questions for Barack Obama.

    Nixon officials foreshadowed both the historic distinction and seamy underside of the presidency. In his scholarship, careful patronage and freedom from convention, the national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, brought insight and bureaucratic skill that would make him the president’s singular partner in statesmanship, most notably their opening to China and détente with the Soviet Union. But no less indicative in his rise was a pettiness that augured the destructive infighting of the administration and the Eurocentric foreign-policy mentality that indulged Nixon’s pursuit of the Vietnam War, his obliviousness to tragedies from Bangladesh to Chile to Indonesia, and the policies in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan that haunt us today.

    The men Kissinger eclipsed were largely responsible for their own defeats. Nixon named William P. Rogers secretary of state largely because, as a former attorney general, he was bereft of diplomatic expertise and thus would not rival the White House-dominated foreign policy Nixon planned. Rogers was also a figure of exceptional diffidence, leaving an intellectual-political vacuum that was filled by the worst as well as the best of the Nixon-Kissinger policies.

    Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, a congressman from Wisconsin with a history of deferring to the military, had similar effect. His cession of budget and contracting authority to the services had “the military-industrial complex … singing ‘Praise the Laird,’” The Washington Post reported. Meanwhile, policy power grew so concentrated in a secretive White House that the Joint Chiefs of Staff began their own espionage program against Kissinger, the so-called admirals’ spy ring of 1971.

    Nixon’s closest aides carried their own portents. The chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, and the White House counsel, John Ehrlichman, were college friends and former campaign workers whose lack of political acumen and slavishness to Nixon helped bring about the isolation of the presidency and their own ruin in Watergate. When Nixon eventually gave Ehrlichman oversight of domestic affairs, it deepened the disarray in economic and social policy.

    Not least was Spiro Agnew, who rose from Baltimore County executive to vice president in just three years. While the right relished his press-baiting speeches, in inner councils Nixon found him an embarrassment. Asked why he had not replaced Agnew on the 1972 ticket, Nixon replied, that Agnew was his “insurance policy” because “no assassin in his right mind would kill me.” Agnew resigned in October 1973, pleading no contest to charges relating to bribes he took while governor of Maryland.

    Other figures who later proved to be pivotal were still obscure in 1969, though their lives, too, were telling: a remarkably ambitious Army colonel and Kissinger aide named Alexander Haig would be Nixon’s last chief of staff. G. Gordon Liddy, a Treasury officer known for right-wing zealotry, would lead the Watergate burglars. And John Dean, who would replace Ehrlichman as White House counsel only five years out of law school, would give testimony in 1973 that would be crucial in bringing down the president.

    And while there are obvious differences between the presidencies of 1969 and 2009, history echoes over the new government. Can Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Mr. Obama’s top economic aide, Lawrence Summers, overcome careers entwined with a despoiled corporate system and now chart its cleansing? Can officials who rose over four decades in the conventions of the political-bureaucratic culture — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; the national security advisor, James Jones; and Richard Holbrooke, the special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan — forge truly new policies and politics? Can such figures transcend what Heraclitus called their very ethos?

    President Obama will share at least one fate with Richard Nixon. The verdict on his presidency will lie with the public, and for that, too, the philosopher had a warning: “The way down and the way up are one and the same.”

    Roger Morris, a National Security Council staff member under Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon, is the author of “Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician.”

    A version of this article appeared in print on April 26, 2009, on page WK13 of the New York edition

    Source: www.nytimes.com, April 25, 2009