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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ish who wrote (175819)	8/29/2001 8:55:49 PM
From: ColtonGang	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

They're not fear tactics?.....then what are they?

To: Ish who wrote (175819)	8/29/2001 8:57:47 PM
From: Thomas A Watson	Respond to of 769670

An interview with Kissinger on Bush China, Missile Defense, Mideast, Clinton Impeachment When Henry Kissinger served as secretary of state from 1973 to 1977, the hot-button international issues included China, nuclear deterrence and the Middle East. The faces of leadership have since changed, but the problems persist. In an exclusive interview, the 78-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner, author of the new book "Does America Need a Foreign Policy?" (Simon & Schuster), reflected on the state of the world and on how leaders are dealing with it. Q. How would you rate President Bush's first few months on the foreign affairs front? A. He has been amazingly sure-footed. And I agree with the main lines of his foreign policy. Probably it would have been wiser to renegotiate the Kyoto protocols [adopted by the Clinton administration, agreeing to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, but rejected 95-0 by the Senate], rather than abrogate it. But the main line of the foreign policy I support. Q. Whom would you define as America's main enemy now? A. I don't think we have any one anymore. We have a plethora of issues before us. I think the emergence of China as a major country is a challenge to America and to the international system. It is a test for us: whether we can live in a world in which we are the most powerful country, but in which we do not insist on dominating. [Otherwise] we will use more and more of our resources and expend our energy, as we have recently, by turning foreign policy into a series of domestic issues. And we will lose our relevance. Now, it could happen that China becomes our enemy. But it is not foreordained. And it should not happen as a result of our actions. Q. You are an ardent advocate of close U.S.-China relations. At the same time, you support the development of a U.S. "Star Wars"-type program, which the Chinese find extremely threatening. A. I know it's an axiomatic view of the Left around the world that missile defense is sinful, and that it's desirable to keep each nation as vulnerable as possible. But that's a debatable premise. The U.S. must defend itself against whoever has missiles that would threaten the United States. And you don't have to be able to name an enemy. Q. What would you prescribe at this moment in the Middle East? A. Specifically, one could couple the existence of a Palestinian state with some agreement about coexistence with Israel - and leave such issues like the future of Jerusalem to some administrative agreement that does not have the element of finality. Q. Do you see that happening? A. I think it's possible. I think it is not possible to make an agreement that settles all issues for all eternity. Q. Why did last year's Camp David meeting fall apart? A. The Arab-Israeli conflict went from an irreconcilable cultural clash to a belief that maybe it was all a terrible misunderstanding - and that if only the psychological barriers could be removed, a final settlement would be quite easy. This is what led Clinton to organize Camp David, in the belief that in one session you could finish the peace process. It turned out that there were deeply religious and philosophical obstacles. As a result, both parties have trapped themselves and have pushed the situation almost back to the point where it was when the peace process started. I think we have to go back to a much more modest understanding. We have to get back to coexistence. Q. There was a time when this country produced giants in foreign policy -Dean Acheson and George Kennan. Why has no one of comparable stature emerged? A. Because our politics has become brutally competitive. When I was in graduate school, we thought government service was a high calling. Now, foreign policy is not a subject that occupies budding careers. So there is no comparable group to the ones we had in the '40s, '50s and '60s. Q. In his book on the Vietnam War, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara wrote that we were "terribly wrong." A. Well, I don't think we were wrong. We made a mistake. We applied the values by which we had conducted post-[World War II] reconstruction to cultures and circumstances ... to which they really did not fit. I do not think it was a moral mistake. The motive was noble. I don't think Vietnam was the place to exercise it. Q. Did you say that then? A. Then, I didn't understand it well enough. I said it as soon as I visited Vietnam, in 1965. I said that the war could not possibly be won that way ... and I urged a negotiated outcome. Q. As someone who lived through the Nixon near-impeachment, how did you feel watching the Clinton impeachment? A. I was opposed to the impeachment. The correct outcome would have been some form of censure by the Congress. I am very worried about turning into a kind of parliamentary system by using the impeachment process to get rid of our chief executives. Our media culture makes it so that once a crisis starts, it almost cannot end. I saw in the Nixon period this growing preoccupation with survival from day to day and the focus on technical details not decisive for the future of the country. Q. Why, in the Reagan era, did so many conservatives consider you the devil incarnate? A. I was the devil incarnate? Well, some of the conservatives were looking to conduct foreign policy as a crusade. Some of the liberals wanted a morality play. So I was probably too power-oriented for the liberals, and too conciliatory for the conservatives. newsmax.com tom watson tosiwmee